• I had a birthday picknick. It was rather successful and yummy, there were no accidents and during the preparation I screamed only at a very few (handpicked) people. Some pictures you can see here.
• I got one thing for my birthday which I always wanted and never dared buy (it being so beautiful and so expensive) – a cubistic sugar box, designed by Pavel Janák.
• I spent the aftermath of my birthday with reading one the book sets I got (I won’t say which, because even I have to admit that it is really big – but very entertaining and relaxing – crap). But still, nine books in one week is not too bad.
• I spent another few days with my favorite co-workers at my favorite software testing site.
• I – acutally quite involuntarily – installed Windows 7 yesterday (you click the wrong button once, and there you go…)
• I bought some nice flowers for the balcony, and got some nice flowers for free for the windows facing West in our flat from the Prague City Council (some program to make Prague more beautiful, I suppose, but why only the windows facing the street, not the ones facing the rail tracks, I have no idea).
• Currently, I’m translating a very interesting project – subtitles for a movie. The interesting part of this is the fact that the movie is Russian, the “original subtitles” (that I’m translating into German) are Czech, and there is a rumor that they have been translated from the English subtitles for the movie. Unfortunately, those English subtitles have gone missing, so I am watching the movie in Russian, with the Czech subtitles (that are not timed and therefore cannot be used in the player) in a Word document, and guessing what belongs where. Not to mention that the movie is awfully depressing (I wonder if there are Russian comedies?), as is the weather here.
• My knee (I don’t know if I mentioned this here, but I had a little skiing accident back in March) is getting better, but it’s still not 100% fit :(
• I found a very useful little program/website which makes installing new systems so much easier (with the downloading issues I’m trying to fix, I wouldn’t call it faster, but you don’t have to sit in front of your computer for the installation, which is a good thing): www.ninite.com

And after having survived this, I hope I will be able to blog some more, again. And I really don’t understand how someone can have Facebook, Twitter, Xing or LinkedIn, a blog and who knows what at the same time AND be active in all of them, AND have a life.

Oh, and I stumbled upon this (girl’s only).

But France (and its mountains) are beautiful!

I’m kind of trying to figure out how to connect my flickr account to my blog in a way that makes sense, so enjoy this picture, there might be more coming :)

After about three weeks (felt three months), I finally managed to upload some new pictures on Flickr (why’s everybody using Picasa anyway???), and at one point in the future I might even learn how to integrate Flickr’s photostream into Wordpress.

Dorts gibts ein paar mittelmäßige Fotos von einem Ausflug in die frisch zugeschneite Stromovka, von der Nachweihnachtsfeier von Magda & Martin in Tisnov und Umgebung und ein Ausflug ins winterliche Prag.

There, you’ll find some medium quality pictures of a trip to Stromovka park under a fresh, nice and clean snow coating, the trip to MaMaJaLu (Tisnov and surroundings) and a trip through winterly Prague.

Im Zuge des letztgenannten Ausflugs waren wir auch endlich im Teehaus U zlatého kohouta, das sehr nett ist und – praktisch im Winter – über einen offenen Kamin verfügt. Der Tee war auch gut, das Teegebäck auch, allerdings war die Bedienung etwas komisch.

In the course of this last mentioned trip, we also finally managed to pay a visit to the tearoom U zlatého kohouta, which is very neat and, very useful and cosy in winter, got a open fireplace in one of its rooms.

And I also found out that Magda’s cousin has a daughter that looks like the Dalai Lama :)

Also, the other day I watched The Prestige with Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman and Scarlett in it. That’s another one you should watch, and I think I’m getting a bit obsessed with movies. Not good.

But at least I’m back to a two phase climbing training programme (plus a dreadful ten minutes of training every day to improve my body muscle structure or whatever it is I am suffering for), and I can now (with only minor difficulties) play a Malaguena theme. I also seem to remember how to say “ocean” in Japanese (very useful if you want to say “I don’t eat saltwater fish, thank you very much, but I will have some of that delicious tuna nigiri over there :)), and Lenka’s back from Chile.

I also wanted to complain that all the snow is melting, but it just started to snow (Marcial, do you want me to send some over to you? :)), so I’ll keep my digital mouth shut and want you to imagine all those wonderful iciles on the roofs of Prague, which you recognize by the police tape or other obstacles (mostly Christmas trees) right under them, or by the fire brigade in front of the house trying to take them down – not so easy if it is frozen to one of the cables hanging from the roof and leading to the ground floor, I suppose.

(And this post is what happens when your New Year’s resolution is to post on a more regular basis, plus lazyness to write everything twice, plus reading China Miéville’s Iron Council.)