Central Europe Adventures 2016 – Part Eighteen: Aachen and Liege

June 6, 2016 by Brad

Departing Osnabrück in the rain I had to catch two trains to get to Aachen. I had hoped to stop for a few hours in Dusseldorf but given the wet weather I stayed on the train to Cologne and then switched for the local train to Aachen. The second train I caught was completely full of football fans and I had to stand for close to half the journey.

Once I arrived in Aachen I walked down the road to my hotel, the Ibis Hauptbahnhof, which ironically is further from the main station than the Ibis Marschiertor. After I had checked in I met up with a friend who was so excited to see me she literally knock me to the ground when running up to give me a hug. We then joined a larger group of students and had Flammkuchen for dinner (it’s rather similar to Pizza) and rounded off the night drinking a bottle of wine in the student dorms at the university.

Photos: 20th Biennale of Sydney

May 29, 2016 by Brad

Over the past two months I’ve spent a few weekends checking out the 20th Biennale of Sydney. I haven’t been to all the locations where the Biennale is held this year, but I have seen the exhibits at Cockatoo Island, the MCA and the NSW Art Gallery.

Many of this year’s exhibits are audio/visual in nature but the few photos below capture at least some of the amazing art that’s there to be experienced.

Central Europe Adventures 2016 – Part Seventeen: Osnabrück and Münster

May 29, 2016 by Brad

After four nights in Berlin I caught the train across to Osnabrück where I have a good friend. Osnabrück is only three hours from Berlin but it felt like a very long way. About halfway through the journey I realised I had given my friend the wrong arrival time and he ended up waiting in the cold and damp of the station for an hour. Once we had dropped my bags at his place we headed out to a cafe for cake and a hot drink.

Code Structure, Random Number Generation and Conditional Probability

May 24, 2016 by Brad

I had an interesting discussion this afternoon which highlighted how important it is to understand conditional probability and how code structure can produce unexpected results.

The code contained three lists and a random number generator. The random number generator was meant to randomly chose which list to take something from with equal probability (that is 1/3 chance of selecting from each of the lists). However, somehow one of their lists was being selected far more than the others.

Central Europe Adventures 2016 – Part Sixteen: An Additional Day in Berlin

May 22, 2016 by Brad

On the morning that I was due to leave Berlin I decided to stay an extra day. Although I had been in Berlin for three nights, I had only spent one afternoon in Berlin proper as I had been ill almost all the rest of my time there.

I began the day by meeting up with a friend. We went for a walk along the runway of Tempelhof Feld – an airport that has now been turned into parkland – and the surrounding suburbs.

Central Europe Adventures 2016 – Part Fifteen: Exploring Luther’s Wittenberg

May 15, 2016 by Brad

I’ve wanted to travel to Wittenberg since traveling past it on my previous visit to Germany. I wanted to know how a man from such a small town could have such a large impact on world and church history and beliefs.

I was immediately lost on arrival at Wittenberg train station as the train station is not in the centre of the town like I had expected it to be. To ensure that I was even more lost there was no signage or map at the station showing the way to the centre of town.

Central Europe Adventures 2016 – Part Fourteen: Travel Drama and Sickness in Berlin

May 7, 2016 by Brad

My visit to Berlin was filled with unneeded drama. Upon arrival from Dresden I decided to drop my bags at my hotel before spending the afternoon exploring Mitte. To get to my hotel I needed to catch an S-Bahn from Berlin’s Hauptbahnhof to Hackescher Markt. As I stepped off the escalator onto the S-Bahn platform I just missed a train, and then the next one pulled into the station so crush loaded that you couldn’t get a suitcase onboard. After waiting a very long time for a third train I made it to my hotel.

Central Europe Adventures 2016 – Part Thirteen: Bundeswehr Military History Museum Dresden

May 1, 2016 by Brad

The Militärhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr (Bundeswehr Military History Museum) in Dresden contains a large number of military exhibits covering the modern history of Germany and has free admittance on Monday nights. I was fortunate enough to be visiting Dresden on a Monday, so after spending the day exploring Dresden’s old city and New Green Vault my friend and I caught a tram the few kilometers to the museum.

Completely destroying all data on a Hard Drive

April 24, 2016 by Brad

A few days ago while clearing through some old boxes of computer equipment I discovered an old hard drive. This drive had been removed from an old computer that had been disposed of. At the time of disposal I copied all information from the old computer its replacement and kept the old hard drive as a backup in case something went wrong.

Now more than five years later I no longer need the backup and want to dispose of the physical hard drive. But first, I want to ensure that the drive is completely clear of the old data. Connecting the drive to my current computer it can still mount and read the old drive and I can see all the old files on it. It’s good that the backup has lasted this long but to completely wipe the drive of all this old personal data is a little more complex than just selecting all the contents and pressing the delete button or doing a reformat under Windows.

Central Europe Adventures 2016 – Part Twelve: Dresden

April 23, 2016 by Brad

After a week exploring Vienna, Bratislava, and Prague it was time to return to Germany. The train pulled out of Prague just as the sun was setting on a Sunday evening. To get to Dresden the train runs alongside the Vltava and the Elbe Rivers which was a very picturesque until it became too dark to see outside. Darkness completely descended around an hour north of Prague as we pulled into the Czech city of Ústí nad Labem. Despite the darkness this city looked fascinating to visit and is somewhere I would love to return to.