http://www.hesspoint.com

I am preparing a little geocaching event for my colleages at the company where I work parttime. I created some necessary documents you need when hiding a cache.

1. You need a cache description to put in the box. I made mine with LaTeX:  
2. You need a label to put on your cache box as an identifier. I made a Word form. You simply need to fill in the fields and print it:

You can find some more at google if you dont like these.

Yesterday I was washing the dishes. When I was washing a glass having my hand in the glass, all of a sudden it broke with a bang and cut my hand. Fortunately not too deep but enough to render my right hand useless for a few hours. Now its getting better but I am still somewhat handicaped typing.

One good thing also happened yesterday: My girlfriend took me to a new coffee house in Paderborn, the Meyerbeer Coffee. It is a bit like Starbucks (or Tim Hortons, for all you Canadians), except its colors are blue, not green. They have a good variety and also great american style sweets. The muffins are great, really juicy, not like the dry muffins you normally get in Germany. And if it couldn’t get any better, I went to a new bakery store across the street, the Back-Factory and discovered that they sell fresh bagels. For all of you who are not from Germany: Bagels are really hard to get in here.

Right now I am writing my diploma thesis and I didn’t want to use MS Word as everybody else, because I made the experience that word files often don’t look very nice, especially when using justified alignment and second of all with word I normally waste so much time formating. I heard about a tool called LaTeX, which is a document preparation system for the TeX typesetting system that is widely used for writing books and scientific papers. With LaTeX you can create PostScript (PS), DVI and most importantly PDF files. Click on the linked terms to read more about it. I looked into it and now I just love it, I even use it for my daily correspondece. So to share my enthusiasm, here is a quick insight on how you can use it to:

First of all I got to admit that I am using Windows XP instead of Linux as most LaTeX users. So this is just for you fellow Windows users.

You got to download and install two applications: The LaTeX engine and an editor. Stricly seen, just the engine is absolutely essential, since you could type in wordpad. However, I strongly advise using a special editor, since it makes your life easier. Here is what you do:

1. To download the LaTeX engine, go to the MiKTeX Homepage and Download "Small MiKTeX Installer" (approx. 24 MB). You can alternatively download the full version (approx 250 MB), however I advise the small one because there are many packages you normally don’t need. With the small one you only get the most common packages and whenever a package is needed, it can automatically be downloaded by the system. So you only install what you really need.
2. Install it. It is very staight forward but if you need help, look here.
3. To download the free LaTeX editor, go to the Texniccenter Homepage and Download the TeXnicCenter Setup File. There are other editors you can use, but Texniccenter is a very convinient one and it is freeware.
4. Install it also. Look here for help.

Now you are basically all set. Of course you need to learn LaTeX It is a little bit like html editing in the old days when you coded websites with tools like homesite or even notepad. So you have to learn the syntax. There are tons of sites out there on this topic and even more books. A good guide for beginners is the Kochbuch für LaTeX (sorry only in German). A very good book I recomend is "LaTeX" by Helmut Kopka.

If you want to use the Postscript format, you also need Ghostscript and and GSView to view the documents and if you want to use PDF you need the Acrobat Reader, duh

If you need extensive references I advise to use BibTeX which offers a stuctured way of entering your references. You can either use them manually with Texniccenter or use a dedicated tool for this. Here is a list of tools available. I use BibTexMng which works well.

This are just some suggestions, there are many other sources you can find, just type "LaTeX" into Google. If you get too many porn sites try "latex typesetting" ;-). And I take no responsibility what’s however if you mess up your system

If you have any questions, you can always post a comment and I will try to help. 

I alrady made a post about the Wahl-O-Mat a few months ago. Now it is online again for the elections 2005. The tool lets you agree or not agree with polical statements. According to your answers, you get to know what party you are close to. The tool is certainly a rather superficial approach to something as complex as politics but on the other hand if you have absolutely no idea who to vote, it gives you some ideas.

If you prefer offline, here is a download version.

Also read the article on heise news.

If you want to get some more Infos on who you are voting for on 18th Sept. here are links to all major parties:

• CDU
• SPD
• FDP
• Die Grünen 

The Bundesverfassungsgericht just accepted new elections in September! A good day for Germany! Read here.

I am about to make some design changes on my blog. So if it looks a little weird or messy, don’t worry. Hopfully it will look normal again in a couple of minutes.

Google just released the beta 2.0 version of its Desktop application. The main focus of the tool, to search your own system as well as the web on your fingertips, has been enhanced (or in modern English: pimped up ;-)) by a new sidebar, which lets you read your Gmail account, news, weather, stock quotes or pictures from your harddrive or the web. It’s actually pretty neat!

It is rather obvious that Google is taking on Microsoft on their own turf, challenging its MSN Search Toolbar. Gone by are the years, where Google was "just" a search engine. It looks like MS is finally about to face some competition in the field of desktop applications and OS enhancements.

I mean generally recycling is a good thing and to be able to recycle you gotta have a trashcan near by to dump your garbage. Apparently at this Autobahn rest stop someone took the "near by" a little to seriously. Or he was just the lazyest son of a b…ch on this planet Anyway I lost lost count after about 20 trashcans. Don’t be fooled by the crappy quality of that photo (sorry I just had my cell on me) the line of cans continues as far as the eye can see. If you wanna see this recycolmania for real, because you don’t belive me or you just wanna laugh you ass off, you have to drive westbound on the A2 between Hannover and Bielefeld. The name of the rest stop is "Schafstrift". It is on kilometer 263-

No that is not what you think it is.  No nude girls on this blog!

No seriously, eBabe is a searchtool for ebay auctions. A great way to find real bargins on ebay is to seach for misspellings in the titles. Normally nobody finds these items and therefore they end up being sold at a very low price. eBabe deliberatly creates misspelled versions of a search term you enter and looks for all these keywords, turning up some real bargins. You can downoad it here.

Another one is Fat Fingers, an online search tool that does the same thing.