Trauma (the book)

posted in: News, On Creativity | 0

 Today I received TRAUMA, a beautiful and very personal gift from Austrian painter Christian Bazant-Hegemark, for which I am deeply grateful. The volume spans fifteen years and tells the story of searching for a visual language dealing with trauma.

I was surprised how many of the paintings and drawings I still knew from my time in Vienna, some of which even appear in portraits I took in 2013....   READ MORE

Dachstein Retreat

posted in: Landscape, Lifestyle, News, Outdoor | 0

Im Herbst 2014 hatten Julia und ich das große Glück, am Dachstein ein Retreat mit Coach und Trainer Hans-Peter Beingrübl von Pushkar Nature verbringen zu können. Sein großes Wissen und seine reiche Erfahrung ruht in seiner allgemeinen Entspanntheit, so dass sich in einem wirklich angenehmen Rahmen ein paar erstaunliche Dinge in Gang setzten.

Nach einer Nacht im Freien ohne Zelt und einer von Apfelstrudel und Freundlichkeit geprägten Nacht auf der Gjaid bei Isi, Hannes und Indra, einer Tour fast auf den Gjaidstein, viel Nebel, einem weiten Blick vom Zwölferkogel und vor der Kulisse des wunderschönen Dachsteingipfels reiften weitreichende Entscheidungen. Und als wir wieder hervorkamen aus dem Gebirgsnebel stand am Ende der Satz »Ich kündige!«. ...   READ MORE

Jördis Tielsch: Virtueller Hut im Lÿz

posted in: Commission, Event, News | 0

Am Samstag, 28. April 2020 spielte Jördis Tielsch gemeinsam mit Peter Schneider ein Benefizkonzert im Kulturhaus Lÿz.

Möglich wurde die Veranstaltung trotz Corona dank des virtuellen Hutes – einer Initiative, die zusammen mit dem Kulturbüro des Kreises Siegen-Wittgenstein lokale Künstler und Kulturschaffende unterstützt und in Zeiten des Kontaktverbots heimische Kultur in die Siegerländer Wohnzimmer bringt....   READ MORE

A Reader!

posted in: Random | 0

Academic publishing can sometimes be pretty much of a one way radio: You’re broadcasting but you never know whether or not someone is receiving – and if someone is receiving, what they make of it.

So I am happy that Dr Dominik Zink of the University of Trier took the time to read and kindly review my PhD Thesis in The Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies 79 (2019) 1, p 555 (published online on 28 March 2019 at https://brill.com/view/journals/ywml/79/1/article-p555_41.xml)....   READ MORE

Possible Worlds

posted in: News, On the Road | 0

In a possible world I would live in the old family farm by the forest. I’d have a wood fired oven, plenty of vegetables and fruit from the garden and more space in- and outside the house than I could possibly fill. I would eat my home baked bread for breakfast in the old chicken yard while enjoying the most stunning view over the Weser-valley.

I’d also have had an idea why I would and could live in the sticks, I’d have had another idea that would fill ex-barn and ex-stable with something sensible – preferably something sensible and income-generating so it would provide me with yet another idea on how to pay for maintenance of the gigantic roof....   READ MORE

Telephone Boxes

posted in: News, On the Road | 0

For several years now I have been taking pictures of a dying breed: telephone boxes. I managed to upload a few yesterday.

at_wien_u4karlsplatz_201512

While some of the boxes have been upgraded to a non-box shape with huge screen and WiFi, many are in a sad state and some even stripped of their primary function. The variety of shapes and types of boxes and telephones even in a single country is astonishing and even the gutted ones continue to serve as advertising space, rain shelters, smoking rooms and toilets for dogs and humans alike.

How to Stream Music from Linux PC to iPhone over Wifi

posted in: Random | 1

There are endless possiblities to stream music from your computer to your phone over wifi, but few dedicated howtos that walk you through the process step by step.

Option 1: UPnP

Universal Plug and Play (UpnP) is developed by the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) and has interoperateability in mind. See Make Use Of for a list of possibilities.

  • Server: Subsonic

    Client: pick one from http://www.subsonic.org/pages/apps.jsp. VLC also works as a client, see https://askubuntu.com/a/109083/80611
    I use play:Sub, another $5
    I also tried Gerbera

    • Add Gerbera-ppa. If you ar not using ubuntu (but, say, Debian or Bunsenlabs) see astarix for help.
    • Install Gerbera. apt-get said “Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages. Used aptitude instead (see here)
    • Failed.

    Option 2: DAAP

    Easy, cheap, but flawed.

    • Server: Install Rhythmbox → open plugins → enable “DAAP Music Sharing” (obviously install if it is not there) → right click → properties → enter name and tick “Share my music”. Done.
    • Client: Install “Simple DAAP” from app store. Open, find your server, done. I keep getting error -1004 and even though the phone can see the server it does not connect. Since DAAP is a proprietary protocol invented by…Apple, you would expect that there are options. But as there’s no native app that can do it and Simple DAAP is the only lonely player in the field, there aren’t. Except of course you find a broken android phone, install Music Pump (costs) or DAAP media player (free) and in under the minute you’re dancing around the house streaming.

    Hat tip: Lifewire

    Video

    Interestingly it was easier to setup video streaming than audio (use vlcstreamer, see upubuntu).

It finally happened

posted in: Random | 4

Seven years ago I worked as head of CorpCom in a software company and as it goes, the job did instill in me the strong urge to go back to academia. My idea was to write a PhD in my field of expertise on something that had a wider social relevance.
woman on sofa reads phd
I started by going to the library one or two nights a week and, once a window of opportunity presented itself, went part time. When I saw that »corruption in German literature« should work well, in 2011/2012 I took a sabbatical in order to write a proposal that would get me funded.

After several applications and interviews in Vienna, Walferdange, Berlin and Munich I settled on Munich. So in June 2012 I began writing properly while commuting from Vienna to Munich every other week. My »office« was in the Arbeiterkammer library and the Ludwig-Wittgenstein-Lesesaal in the Austrian National library.

In October 2015 I was ready and submitted the thesis.

You should think there is a sensation of great relief when you finally hand the work of three plus years over to the officer, but somehow there wasn’t. My defense was going to be in February 2016, so I started preparing the three talks I had to give straight away.

Now, with the defense out of the way, there still was no sense of accomplishment, because you have to publish in order to close the process. So off we go to finding a publisher, setting up the text according to the publisher’s style guides, resetting tables and trees because they don’t fit on the smaller pages any more, brainstorming a cover image with Marianne Vlaschits, test printing and changing the cover three dozen times because the digital printer does not approve of the background color. Then seeing the table of contents in a friend’s brand new book and going back to my own because I absolutely wanted one like it. And on and on.

In the end, thanks to the knowledge, understanding and patience of the good people at UniPrint Siegen, there is a finished product that does make me happy – but still fails to deliver the wash of relief. Because now five books have to get to Munich university library, where the people are not happy. My books lack the title page the faculty requires. When that is adressed, I get told to contact the officer who received the first version in 2015 again in four to eight weeks for the certificate. Which I recieved two weeks ago. The End.
front cover of PhD

Here it is:

Jan Söhlke: »verderben, verführen, verwüsten, bestechen«. Literatur und Korruption um 1800. Siegen 2017, 284 pages.

ISBN: 978-3-936533-81-1

URN: urn:nbn:de:hbz:467-11127

For EUR 12.80 you can order the book at universi (Siegen University Press), you can download it from OPUS (Siegen university’s open access) for free or get it from the source while you’re here.

The back cover reads

Der von Max Weber für die Zeit um 1800 diagnostizierte Übergang von einem patrimonialen zu einem bürokratischen Herrschaftssystem ist mit Roger Callois zugleich faßbar als Wechsel vom aleatorischen zum agônalen Prinzip. Unter dem Vorzeichen der Korruption wird jener Übergang beschreibbar als Wandel von einem Paradigma der Kriecherei hin zu einem der Bestechung.

Diese bisher kaum eingenommene Perspektive ermöglicht es, die sich wechselseitig bedingenden und durchdringenden moralischen, politischen, juristischen und ökonomischen Implikationen der Modernisierung freizulegen. Eine umfassende begriffsgeschichtliche Analyse der semantischen, historischen und sozialen Verfasstheit von »Korruption« bildet die Grundlage für Lektüren von Lessings Minna von Barnhelm, Kleists Der zerbrochne Krug und Schillers Der Geisterseher. Drei kanonische Texte werden so in einer überraschenden Konstellation neu lesbar – und lassen ihrerseits unser Verständnis von Korruption in einem neuen Zwielicht erscheinen.

 

Mendeley Migration

posted in: Random | 0

Alreet.Sometimes Mendeley content has to move. There’s no easy way to tell Mendeley that. So.

  1. sudo apt-get install sqlitebrowser
  2. cd ~/.local/share/data/Mendeley\ Ltd./Mendeley\ Desktop/
  3. sqlitebrowser <you@whatever>@www.mendeley.com.sqlite
  4. Go to »Execute sql«-tab
  5. update Files set
    localUrl = replace(localUrl, 'file:///old/path/‘, 'file:///media/new/path/‘);
  6. click »Execute« (or F5 or ctrl+return)
  7. click »Write changes«
  8. Done. Easy, right?

Thanks to 3.14a and jordi’s comment there. For related Mendeley grievances see khufkens, who can tell you how to sync Mendeley to your own server (instead of feeding Elsevier’s questionable pricing model).

Connect Crunchbang Linux to Bluetooth Speaker

posted in: Random | 0


I got myself one of these and after setting it up properly I must say that while I am a bit disappointed by the reach, I am very impressed with the sound quality for this kind of money (a white label apparently as »C26« sells under various brands and for different prices).

Anyway, the whole setup was a true Linux afternoon, reminding me of my NDISwrapper-days, just like it was 2006 again.

First, It took me a while to get crunchbang to discover the device and connect [1] (Blueman works much better as a bluetooth manager). Then apparently I manually needed to let pulseaudio know where to send the audio [2]. Atfer fiddling with some files, pulseaudio was broken, so I needed to reinstall [3]. Finally, the sound was much poorer than via my phone. I don’t know if I overlooked it or if loading rtirq changed something [4], but in the volume control center of pulseaudio there is a tab called »configuration« where I had to choose »High Fidelity Playback (A2DP)« to get decent sound (instead of »Telephony Duplex (HSP/HFP)« or »off«). Now most of the times it changes to the Bluetooth-device automatically once I switch it on and back when I switch it off. Sometimes not. But hey.

The sources I used were these:

  1. How to make pulseaudio bluetooth-ready: http://askubuntu.com/a/223203/80611
  2. How to switch the sink in pulse audio: http://askubuntu.com/a/108882/80611
  3. How to clean up after you screw up (which I did), i.e. reinstall pulseaudio: http://askubuntu.com/a/435221/80611
  4. How to improve the sound once it works but reminds you of a telephone: http://askubuntu.com/a/520384/80611 and https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuStudio/rtirq

 

KUNSTFORUM Publication

posted in: Infringement, News, Publication | 0


KUNSTFORUM International 230 (2014), p 127.

A short while after my last portrait session with Marianne Vlaschits, KUNSTFORUM International did an interview with her and two fellow artists and she asked if it was ok to use one of my portraits to go with the interview.

One of my pictures published in KUNSTFORUM? Just what I needed to conclude the year.

Unfortunately photo credits were mistakenly omitted, which means that my first KUNSTFORUM publication is anonymous. But in the end this infringement also meant another four malnourished children treated or material for the safe birth of 10 babies or 250 people vaccinated against meningitis or 400 children vaccinated against Measles in the second installment of »Infringing for Médecins Sans Frontières«.

If you, too, want to make a donation, you can do so here.

The 500 Birds

posted in: News, On Creativity | 0

 

»It’s the 499 birds before the 1 that works.« (Alexia Sinclair/via)

or, in the words of Jacob Riis:

When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before. (via)

Amsterdam Family Portrait

posted in: Commission, News, Portrait | 0

Earlier this year my dear friend Nic had asked if I would be interested in shooting a portrait of his family. Since they live some 1200 km away, the crucial question for me was not so much if but more when. Then, in early September, I was in the vicinity (meaning: only 400 km away), and spontaneously opted for the detour to pay a long overdue visit to Amsterdam – and also finally meet their daughter.

I did not have my gear with me and there only was an hour left in between the idea to go for the shoot and me having to be through the door for the train station, so in order to put the opportunity to good use we had to move fast and I had to borrow Marlene’s old Canon. Of course time was even scarcer after the usual displacement of furniture had taken place, and the combination of time pressure, borrowed equipment and a different camera maker resulted in a couple of technical blunders on my part, but we all had a fun time and in the end were pretty pleased with the results.

German UNCAC Ratification is Lipstick on a Pig

posted in: Random | 0

Abgeordnetenwatch.de has a good (if devastating) analysis of the German UNCAC ratification. It already is pretty sad that it took ze germans 11 years to cough up a law against bribing Members of Parliament so they would at last meet UN requirements. But now that they do, it is mostly lipstick on a pig:

Das im Februar beschlossene Gesetz gegen Abgeordnetenbestechung ist weitgehend wirkungslos. Ein Staatsanwalt muss nämlich nachweisen, dass ein korrupter Volksvertreter »im Auftrag oder auf Weisung« gehandelt hat. Wer sich nicht allzu dumm anstellt, hat strafrechtlich nichts zu befürchten.

The law against bribing of MPs is mostly useless as prosecution has to prove that a corrupt representative has been »either instructed or ordered« to act in a certain way. For the slightest chance of criminal liability under the new law, a parliamentarian would need to act in a pretty stupid way.

abgeordnetenwatch.de: Bundestag ratifiziert UNCAC – nach 11 Jahren (29. September 2014)

Some background can be found in my earlier post »Bribing MPs soon illegal in Germany«.

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