But anyway, I’m looking forward to the start of Star Trek Online in two weeks. I’ve played the beta enough to know that i’ll spend a fair amount of time there. Who knows, perhaps I’ll eventually become a trekkie but I really gotta catch up on that lore.

Since a couple of years I’m trying to do some catching up. I’ve traveled around Germany quite a  lot, also been to Denmark and Norway to see something new and I haven’t been disappointed so far. Last Christmas we’ve been on another travel, this time through many countries, all in and around Switzerland. Although I grew up right at the border and even work there these days, it was by far the most intensive tour so far – which means something considering it only took three days.

Anyways, it was a lot of fun. Our previous travel to Munich and castle Neuschwanstein was done in a ’93 Toyota Starlet whereas this time around we’ve travelled in a ’05 3-series BMW. Another highlight was the fact that we’ve crossed the border ten times from and to Switzerland, Italy, Lichtenstein, Austria and Germany.

Unfortunately I couldn’t savor its mighty six cylinders and 215 bhp yet, the next autobahn is just too far away. Nonetheless, it feels quite powerful and the whole steering and breaking is so much more sensible than I’ve been used to. It’ll take some while to get used to it. Which reminds me that my good friend Alain was a little swifter and picked up his Mini Cooper two days before; good for us because we could enjoy both of our first real car acquisitions and celebrate accordingly.

However, the awesome moniceiver I’ve been talking about in the last post isn’t ever going to be installed; I just can’t imagine the interior looks to be tinkered with, no matter the benefits; for now the built in CD player and radio tuner is enough to keep me entertained. Instead I’ve been looking into the BMW-branded portable navigation systems, which seem to be exactly what I need for the time being: a car navigation system with bluetooth handsfree functionality for my cell phone. I can live with the fact that the sound output isn’t being redirected to the car’s audio system (which it does for newer models though) because all I want is to avoid loose cables dangling around the center console.

I might also get my hands on some not too pretentious enhancements such as an M gearshift or aluminum pedals but anyway, what’s next might be enough to fill another blog post. I’m anticipating that it might be most interesting to drive a lap or two on a test circuit…

Anyways, the summer vacations in Spain have been awesome this year although I didn’t go spear fishing half as often as I planned to. And that despite the fact that it became a hell lot more difficult to acquire the license, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. After all this way it keeps the waters clear from competitors and inexperienced (read: dangerous) tourists which is good for both the fauna and the quality of the fishing experience.

Now that everything’s back to normal in the work department – and I even decided to increase my workload a little -  I’m looking for a new car. Well, that’s odd because I’ve just bought a ’93 Starlet (55kW) not even a year ago and it’s still having no critical flaw, if  you don’t count the time one tire blew up on the motorway.

So the plan was to drive the Starlet until it falls apart and/or doesn’t pass the inspection while saving for a new one, after all I’ve bought it in a rush in order to get to work and back, nothing more.

Given the financial target that I’ve set for a new car I would’ve to save up for another year now (approx Oct ’10). I’m looking for a car that yields some improvement to my current one and an up to date combustion engine (e.g. more power at the same intake). To be exact I’ve been fancying an Audi S3 or even S4 until I’ve settled for a BMW simply because they’re a little more luxurious and a bit less aggressive – plus the Bavarian touch to it has made it impossible for me to resist. I’ve ordered information and been checking the web for the 1 series because it seemed to be the most economical one. Unfortunately the 3- and 5 door models aren’t an option because the rear looks sort of weird in my opinion and the price impact of the convertible isn’t justified which leaves me with the coupé.

The coupé is a sweet car, looks almost like the 3 series and with a proper engine (120 and above) would more than satisfy my needs. Unfortunately there aren’t awfully many such used cars to be found, especially two years and older. Plus, the truly shocking news for me were the ridiculous prices of used 3 series saloons with similar equipment. To make a long story short, I’m currently crawling traders and offers for an E90 (younger than mid 2005). The engine has a very economical consumption, even the gas version – I guess it should be something between a 320i and a 330d.

So, now that I’ve settled with the model I’ve been looking for the proper interior outfit. Leather seats would be nice and anyway, heat seatings are mandatory for my girlfriend. But what i really want is a proper audio and navigation system. The iDrive (isn’t the i-prefix patented by now?) and Professional navigation kit of the E90 are quite nicely integrated on top of the center console and together with the bluetooth handsfree set it does everything I ever need. But the price impact, even on used cars, is quite hefty and led me to search for alternatives.

That’s when I discovered a wide range of high-end moniceivers which cost approximately half of the stock BMW setup and offer so much more that I really wouldn’t want to have anything else in there. Especially the Alpine IVA-D106R which fits into a single DIN slot and expands a 7″ QVGA touch screen serving all my multimedia needs and together with the NVE-N099P it results in the best navigation system I could ever imagine. There’s a similar system from Kenwood, the KVT-524DVD together with KNA-G421V and misc adapters. Of course these devices offer a lot more than my original requirements, e.g. DVB-T TV, DVD playback, all kind of connectivity and a supported media formats.

I’ll see what the BMW dealer has to offer me this week, but I’m most certainly not picking an iDrive-equipped car even if he’d offer it to me for the same price – it’s just not as flexible. Perhaps there’s even the option to free two DIN slots to install an even more powerful all-round board computer.

The weather forecast predicted that we would’ve had a rainy time there but fortunately they were completely wrong. Under these excellent circumstances we could go hiking the first day in the mountain area northeast of Oslo which is home to a multitude of small lakes and tarns.

We’ve spent the rest of the days to discover the city of Oslo, including the harbor and the royal palace. The city itself is very clean and has left a frugal impression on me – there weren’t many cars in the center which usually cause that busy or even dirty and chaotic look of capitals.

We’ve also taken a look at the Vigeland Park where we got surprised by a rain shower which gave the photos a special look. As the tourists started looking for shelter or unpacking their umbrellas, the Norwegeans didn’t seem to care much about rain.

The Oslo pass allowed us to travel around the city with all kinds of public transport, including ship lines, and granted us access to a wide variety of museums. We took the time to visit two, one of which was the Viking Ship Museum.

Afterwards we took a look at the Norsk Folkemuseum, which was quite a surprise in regards to both quality and extensiveness and even offered hand made traditional waffles. Yum!

At the Akershus Castle we happened to see that a huge cruiser had docked in the harbor. The view was magnificent so I’ve decided to stitch together a panorama photo with hugin again, after almost three years.

What fascinates me most, however, is the aspect of team work in MMOs. This is, with no doubt, present in the PvP area but in my opinion it has this sour taste of class and equipment imbalance between competitors. I rather prefer raiding which requires even more team work and a considerable amount of discipline and patience. Raiding in AoC allows 24 people to join up to master challenges that the game developers created (which is why this aspect is called Player versus Environment, short PvE).  Raiding comes in many phases and normally starts with the frustrating part to find out strategies at the cost of a lot of time and usually followed by a phase of repeatedly completing the challenge in order to receive larger quantities rewards in form of equipment for the players.

Most of this isn’t new and many other games have offered similar features. What makes AoC stand up from the crowd so far is the more brutal and savage setting as outlined in Robert E. Howard’s novels. Compared to World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online or even Everquest, AoC looks much more mature, which might also explain the high average age of players I’ve come across. On top of that there’s currently no MMO which is as good looking (and thus hardware demanding) as AoC – a brave step from Funcom, in my opinion, who didn’t take the safe mainstream path of cartoon-like graphics which run smooth on every average PC. Instead we see details and graphics quality even seldom seen in usual games up to date. As a side-note: AoC is the only game so far which my system can’t fully satisfy.

While Age of Conan is great, it’s setup is an almost worn down genre: Fantasy with swords and magic. That’s why I’ve always payed close attention to new experiences like EvE Online, a Sci-Fi space MMO or Richard Garriot’s Tabula Rasa, a Sci-Fi MMORPG. Unfortunately I didn’t like them too much due to their gameplay and the setting wasn’t very fancy either and seemed rather purposeful instead of innovative.

Recently I’ve come across a new kid on the block though. Also developped by Funcom, The Secret World looks very promising. It features the same excellent engine than AoC and is bound to be released by the end of this year.  The best part for me, however, is the background story, revolving around present day mystery and occult happenings, a topic which the world hasn’t yet seen in an MMO outfit. While that alone doesn’t justify yet another MMO-production, it surely offers a lot of new options and ideas which hopefully find their way into it. There’s a trailer available at the official promotional site which makes waiting even more painful.

The legal situation is still unclear to me or at least complicated. I could legally buy ordinance weapons or – with an acquisition permit – other kind of weapons according to the Swiss law. But as I live in Germany, I’d need to also acquire a German permit (which is considerably more paperwork) and import and export my weapon each time I cross the border to attend a competition or training.

Anyway, at the weapons exhibition I got the chance to try an air rifle with a pre-compression mechanism which was surprisingly smooth. I usually don’t care if it required much force to charge an air gun but as long as it doesn’t have impact on the muzzle energy of the bullet (and thus the precision) I surely welcome it. After all it allows to save the muscle’s ATP to aim at the bull’s eye. In fact it impressed me enough to consider the purchase of a decent air rifle in order to train in our garden. It might not reflect a real rifle in many ways but it’s something to start with. The only problem so far is the limitation of muzzle energy for free purchase. 7.5J is quite few compared to 16J of a regular model.

So our landlords and us decided to order a TV cable connection which includes a broadband internet connection. That sounds kinda simple, but in fact it included having to open the street, passing a cable 10 meters through the ground and from there passing TV and network cables throughout the house. The latter one turned out to be more difficult than expected because the tubes which carried the old (single shielded) TV cable now had to carry both a triple shielded TV cable as well as a CAT5 network cable to each of the three floors.

This all took a while, but now it’s done. After three months and three weeks we’ve finally got cable connection.

I now at least have the possibility to publish photos again and thus perhaps blog a little more. But it remains to be seen how long it will take me to realize that uploading one photo doesn’t take quarter an hour anymore. After all I’ve finally gotten used to reduce my internet consumption to a minimum.

Every day I’m driving to work I have this entertainment deficit so the only way to keep awake is to turn on the radio. It contains a tape slot, too, but I’ve discarded all my tape related devices and media years ago which leaves me with merely one horribly worn down Pink Floyd live recording that I unearthed during the move. That’s why using the available radio stations is my only hope.

Unfortunately the frequency modulation mode of this radio is kinda broken, I suspect the channel seeking mechanism is at fault. In fact I can manually tune to stations and hear them clearly, it’s just that seeking them doesn’t work. My radio however seems to believe that if a the radio station isn’t seekable, it’s not a radio station – and it switches itself off after one minute. I could save one radio station’s frequency to one of the slot buttons and hit it that button every 59 seconds – but that’s hardly a permanent solution.
Anyway, FM radio stations are not as informative in my opinion because they’re usually local and broadcast a lot of music which I don’t feel like listening to.
So I decided to use amplitude modulation mode, despite its horrible transmission quality. I’m receiving BBC and CNN as well as a German radio station all of which provide more than enough interesting information, news and interviews.
Occasionally however, I encounter weird interference peaks which are unbearably noisy and loud, usually twice per travel. Interesting enough they only occur while crossing the railway lines. Furthermore there’s one part of the road which leads along the railway track for about two kilometers during which it’s impossible to understand anything from any AM channel for a minute or so. All these occurrences of interference are not just inducing noise, they also amplify the intensity of the signal.

Obviously the amplitude of a signal is much more sensitive to interference than its frequency plus the electricity supply circuits of railway tracks must carry quite a high voltage, given that its field is responsible for the interference of radio waves.

I guess I should just replace this 15 year old radio with an MP3-player sometime soon.