This is a crucial election for Europe – if you care about our online and offline worlds and want to support Europe, make sure to vote!
There’s still ample time to participate through postal ballot, if you cannot make it on election day – don’t let your vote go to waste!
(Public mail box)
During the weekend, we saw “Der Fall Collini” by Marco Kreuzpaintner, based on a novel by Ferdinand von Schirach.
The film paints a very accurate picture of West Germany in the time after the war and before the 68 unrests, a time when a lot of Nazis were still in positions of power and used their positions to escape prosecution for their war crimes.
Der Fall Collini is most definitely a very important film, especially given the rise of the new Right in parts of Germany and Europe, but most striking is the lead actor – Elyas M’Barek in the role of the lawyer Caspar Leinen.
Elyas handled the transition from comedy to drama really well and excels in his role, torn between family, law and justice.
I believe he’s probably the best young German-speaking actor in the moment and am very much looking forward to seeing him again on the big screen!
(Movie poster at Rex am Ring Lichtspiele, Cologne)
A year ago today was my last day at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. As part of the many reorganizations, HPE were offering very generous redundancy packages at that time and I decided to take them up on their offer and go back to University (FOM), to study Computer Science in Cologne.
I’m now at the end of the first year, and I’m absolutely loving it! It’s such an enormous privilege to be able to concentrate just on learning, given my age and the fact that I have two (almost grown-up) kids.
To stay on top of all the developments around cloud computing I also work part-time at a small Cloud Consultancy, supporting customers on their journey to cloud; by now I’ve become pretty experienced on all things related to Containers and Security too. Serverless will be next!
In the process I’ve also lost over 40lbs – can’t complain! There’re still a couple of pounds to go, though …
(At FOM, looking out from our lecture hall)
Last night we went to the Avengers – Endgame opening night (actually an Infinity War / Endgame double feature).
Three hours of good fun, solid action and no boring parts!
This movie is indeed the grand conclusion of the Avengers saga, very much befitting its epic, world- and time-spanning scope, and opens a lot of roads ahead for Marvel to build on that foundation, and develop the surviving protagonists, old and new.
Highly recommended!
(Poster on display at Metropolis, Cologne)
A week after Bars and Melody, Max and Harvey came for their first ever concert to Cologne, as part of the Coming Soon tour; support was Jenna Raine and I believe it was her first time in Cologne as well. I’m so glad to see so many talented artists coming to my home town!
The venue, Luxor, wasn’t as packed as it was the week before, but the concert was really enjoyable and I hope they’ll return soon
It’s the second video I created with Adobe Premiere – I might have a closer look at Adobe’s Creative Cloud. And a music subscription.
(Max and Harvey stage, Luxor)
On their Choke Tour 2019, Bars & Melody had a concert in Cologne!
As always, it was great fun to see them perform; this time they had Iggy Kelly with them for support.
The club they played in (Luxor) is unfortunately not well lit, so the video did not turn out as good as I hoped it to be, but I’m still quite happy with it.
For the video I changed my editing tool, from Shotcut to Premiere Rush by Adobe – it’s not Open Source, but very comfortable; I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll be keeping it, or going back to Shotcut.
I’m still behind on my videos, I hope to catch up during spring break though.
(Queue outside Luxor)
A tad bit unplanned I found myself driving down to Austria, to Sankt Jakob im Derfeggental (East-Tyrol) – one of my sons had broken his collar bone while snowboarding and I needed to pick him up.
Our new (company) car, a Fiat 500 Twin Air, was surprisingly comfortable during the long drive, for both of us, and I’m quite happy with the choice I made; fuel consumption was also quite reasonable.
Having said this, not being a mountain person, driving Felbertauernstrasse in a hurry is not fun. It’s beautiful, though.
(View from Hotel Olympia, Sankt Jakob)
At the beginning of last week I was able to attend a conference on micro services in Berlin, microXchg 2019.
The conference took place in Kalkscheune, an events venue in a former industrial building near Friedrichstadtpalast.
The talks were a mix of in-depth workshop, regular sessions and lightning talks, spread over three parallel tracks.
Of the many talks I want to mention one, “Introduce kids to STEAM and reduce the gender gap” by Laura Luiz, discussing the progress being made by Hackdays4Girls.
Many thanks to the organizers at innoQ Deutschland GmbH – I learned a lot and will definitely come back!
(Kalkscheune, break area)
On Thursday I had the great privilege to witness Barack Obama in an one-hour interview; the interview took place as part of the World Leadership Summit in Cologne’s biggest indoor arena, the LanXess Arena.
He spoke in great detail about our duty to protect our planet and save the environment for future generations, and outlined his vision for a sustainable future.
In my point of view, he’s still the best leader the free world ever had, and I really miss him! It was such an honor to hear him talk in person.
I do understand that he cannot become US president again, but, if we had such a thing, maybe he could become EU president, or UN president? Please? Pretty please?
One of the most exciting things about Social Media is the ability to meet extremely talented creators and activists from all over the world!
For me, it’s an absolute privilege to be able to support some of them through Patreon:
Oskar (through YouTube Community)
Why don’t you join me in supporting them?
