Site changes

Hey Everybody!

I am about to graduate from the free wordpress platform! I just purchased some hosting space over at IPage.com, and I am very much looking forward to trying to migrate this blog over there. I will let you know when I get everything up and running. I am looking forward to the added flexibility that I will have and may finally get to try out HTML and CSS.

Unfortunately, this means that for the time being, this site is inaccessible with my domain name (thejoyofgermany.com). Of course, you can still continue to access it from my subdomain (joyindeutschland.wordpress.com)

I will let everyone know when the new site is up and running!

2011
10/20
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Relaxing Craft Evening

My sister, my mother, and their friends are always posting cute scrapbooking/crafty projects on their blogs. Today I finally get the opportunity to post something crafty on my blog.

Maintaining a scrapbooking habit in Germany would be extremely expensive. Scrapbooking is actually an extremely expensive hobby to begin with. But in Germany, you aren’t able to find any of the pretty paper/materials anywhere, so if you want to actually do some scrapbooking you have to import all of your materials (at least as far as I know. If any of my German friends know where to get some cool stuff, please give me a shout out in the comments). I decided to invite some of my friends over tonight to make bookmarks. I bought a laminator a couple of years ago, and it hasn’t seen much use, so I though I would bust it out tonight.

I thought I used my available resources to good advantage. I used basic A4 paper in three different colors. I also used a green gum wrapper which kind of had a metallic feel to it. Then as decorations, I busted out my folder of doodles. It is really hard for me to throw out any doodles, so I always just shove them into a file of drawings (even if they are just stars or something). Some of the doodles actually took me a good amount of time to make though, so I was able to use some of them for my bookmark. On the front, I pasted a little drawing of a fly that I made last year or so and never had the opportunity to use. On the back, I pasted a cool pattern that I drew with metallic gel pens on graph paper last year while I was bored. I was super psyched for the result when tragedy struck. Our bookmarks got stuck in the laminator because they were too thick. We were able to wrench them out, but unfortunately they resembled sun chips. I was able to flatten them out a bit with an iron later, so they are now usable, although definitely not worthy of a museum. Still, I took pictures of the bookmark post ironing, so you can see my  handiwork (and for all you master scrapbookers out there, just imagine your scrapbooks if you had to make all of your decorations yourself).

Here is the front of the bookmark with my fly:

Here is the back:

I made the bookmark just the right size for my bible, so I put part of my favorite verse on the back:

1. Johannes 4:4 Ihr seid aus Gott, Kindlein; und ihr habt sie überwunden, denn größer ist der, der in euch ist, als der, der in der Welt ist. (Deutsch)

1 John 4:4 You are of Got little children; and you have overcome them because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. (English)

Sorting through my old sketches made me a little nostalgic, so I decided to go through my box of souvenirs that I have collected during the last couple of years. I thought that maybe I would find something that I could use there as well. I didn’t, but I did pull out my box of non euro coins and there was a zip lock with a bunch of mixed change in it, so I decided to sort through my change (this also gave me the opportunity to remove the remaining U.S. cents still in my wallet). It was at this point that I decided I would take a picture of the coins, but then my cell phone pretty much broke down. There is a very limited amount of built in memory on my phone and I have been trying to move as much to my SD card as possible and trying to delete all unnecessary information. Unfortunately, I must have deleted some information that was necessary, because the whole phone was on the fritz. I had to reset the phone and delete all of my apps. Luckily, my pictures were all backed up on Google (I don’t take that many pictures and none of them are especially private, so I am not extremely worried about that). I don’t save anything very important on my phone. The only thing that I actually lost was my to do list, but luckily I have a to do list saved in my brain as well. Anyway, here is the picture of my pile of euro coins and my cute wooden box filled with all my coins that are not euro coins:

The box on the right is the box with all my souvenirs. I really do want to find some way to scrapbook all of the tickets/maps/receipts/postcards/everything else that I have saved in that box. I will probably eventually fill up the little scrapbook that my mother gave me last summer.

Speaking of my mother, she and my father were just here in Düsseldorf. They came and visited me for about a week. Here is a really cute pic of my mom and dad in the gardens at Benrath Palace:

This evening was quite relaxing. It made me think that this semester isn’t going to all that bad after all. I have probably been waxing a bit too dramatic on Facebook. I have actually been seriously considering attempting NaNoWriMo again this year, so I can’t be under that much pressure. I am working 10-12 hours a week and have 26 hours of lecture, but I’m sure I’ll come out alright. I always get a little stressed right at the start of semester because I have not gotten used to how everything works yet. Work was just a bit more stressful this week because tomorrow I have to go try to apply for my driver’s license tomorrow instead of working.

2011
10/12
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Test Anxiety

Tests bring out the worst in me. Not an understatement. But testing should actually bring out the best in us right? It should assess our current level of intelligence and we should do our best to make the result as best as possible. And when the actual paper test is in front of me, I almost always do well. With pencil (or pen) in hand, I surrender my brain to the inevitable and get it over with. All in all, I have always been considered to be a good tester. But the preparation for the tests? That always brings out my bad side.

Back in high school, I used to trash the whole basement whenever I had finals. My excuse that it was finals and I was too stressed to worry about having to pick up after myself. But the truth? I find it extremely relaxing to be able to throw my stuff wherever I want to throw it. I don’t feel at home until I can throw a piece of paper on the floor and be able to leave it there for a week or two, or until whenever I decide that I want to pick it up. Yes I know. My roommates inform me that I am a nightmare to live with, and now I am attempting to improve on that particularly horrible aspect of my personality. I will even throw the skirt and jacket under my desk in the laundry tonight. But whatever. Different topic.

Unfortunately, the increase in my sloppiness is not the only one of my negative traits that increase while under the duress of preparing for a test. I usually sit in front of my computer while doing my homework, and somehow, during the week before a test, I begin checking my facebook/twitter/google reader/google+ at least 3x more than usual. I also tend to write more random and unnecessary blog posts to procrastinate on doing any real work (see current blog post as proof). But things start getting pretty insane whenever I get plugged into my computer. I blast my music (w/ my headphones so as to not disturb my roommates. See? I’m not that bad!), I get on some site like http://www.zmovie.tv and stream and watch movies to procrastinate on doing work, I decide that NOW would be a good time to have a Chuck/Smallville/HIMYM/The Office marathon (a hint? It’s not. At all). I used to watch old celebrity interviews on YouTube to “de-stress”. And that is always my excuse. I have to “de-stress”. Before my calculus exam, I chowed down on six twix bars in two days. And I don’t even know what else I ate. Today I managed to down a half a carton of vanilla ice cream (it really helps with stress if you eat ice cream out of the carton with a spoon). If I actually decide to get out of the house to “de-stress”, I usually end up at the mall spending money.

Whatever. Hopefully I will be more productive tomorrow. Test is on Monday and I really have to concentrate tomorrow. There is so much to do. Way too much time for me to waste.

Tonight, at least, I am proud to be a procrastinator! Tomorrow, probably not so much. Especially because I just wrote a blog post about all my personality traits that I personally despise the most. What’s that future Joy? I’m an idiot? Thanks!

2011
09/21
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My Awesomely Funny Text-book

I am reading through my text book to prepare for my final next Monday, and I happened upon some really funny sentences that both shocked me out of the textbook stupor one gets when studying for a test and made me smile. Imagine reading along in your textbook and stressing about how if you don’t learn how to calculate bus cycles and figure out what Microprocessing is, there is NO WAY that you are going to pass this final on Monday. Then you start reading about examples of current CPU chips and you start to relax a little bit because it is a slight bit interesting. Then you read this paragraph:

“The chip is outfitted with a mounting bracket for a heat sink to distribute the heat and a fan to cool it. To get some idea of what the problem is, turn on a 60-watt light bulb, let it warm us, and then put your hands around it (but do not touch it). This amount of heat must be dissipated continuously.”

You are mildly interested in the dilemma, but it still is rather textbooky and therefore non-interesting. Then you read the next sentence:

“Consequently, when a Pentium 4 has outlived its usefulness as a CPU, it can always be used as a camp stove.”

WHAT? Who writes things like that in a textbook? Apparently really good textbook writers. I am probably never going to forget the reason that Pentium 4 chips need cooling systems.

Then I read a bit further. The next paragraph describes why computers go to sleep:

“According to the laws of physics, anything that puts out a lot of heat must suck in a lot of energy. In a portable computer with a limited battery charge, using a lot of energy is not desirable because it drains the battery quickly. To address this issue, Intel has provided a way to put the CPU to sleep when it is idle and to put it into a deep sleep when it is likely to be that way for a while. There are five states provided, ranging from fully active to deep sleep. In the intermediate states, some functionality (such as cache snooping and interrupt handling) is enabled, but other functions are disabled. When in deep sleep state, the cache and register values are preserved, but a clock and all the interval units are turned off. When in a deep sleep, a hardware signal is required to wake it up.”

Again, the paragraph is quite textbooky. But the next sentence…:

“It is not know whether a Pentium 4 can dream when it is in deep sleep.”

Ahhh…I love satire and irony. Now if I could just read further I would be able to finish with CPUs and go on to learning about Microprocessors (the really scary stuff). Keep rooting for me!

(Excerpts taken from Structured Computer Organization, 5th edition, by Andrew S. Tanenbaum.)

UPDATE!!!! Just started to read again and stumbled across this next paragraph about the Pentium 4:

“Despite sophisticated power management, the Pentium 4 can get very hot. The Heat management group deals with thermal management, allowing the CPU to indicate its environment that it is in danger of overheating. One of the ins asserted by the CPU if its internal temperature reaches 130°C (266°). If a CPU ever hits this temperature, it is probably dreaming about retirement and becoming a camp stove.”

Love it!!!!

2011
09/19
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Thoughts @ 4 a.m.

All I can think of right now is the sceen from “What a girl wants” where Colin Firth’s character says, “what are you doing up so late?” and Amanda Bynes’ character replies, “jet lag. What’s your excuse?”
Totally lame movie I know. I watched it on YouTube back in the day when I was supposed to be putting time in in the German lab. And my German turned out alright in the end. Eventually.
But that movie is the only movie that I can think of that actually references the phenomenon that is jetlag. As in the reason that I am still awake at 4 am. But movie stars always whisk away to exotic destinations and never realise the truth: Travelling is not fun. Sure. The actual visit is fun. But the process of getting to your destination? And jetlag? Not so much.
If I were in a movie, I would never leave home. Which is why I am not in a movie. Most boring movie ever.

2011
09/17
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Proud to be an Introvert

Introverts are greatly misunderstood. I have simply commented on the fact that I am an introvert and been rebuked as if being an introvert was a bad thing. I am one those people who always look at the ground whenever I am walking, and I decided today to google it, to see if I could find out if there were any psychological reason why I like to do so. However, the results were less than appealing to me. A whole bunch of forums showed up and the consensus on almost all of them was that the people who always stare at the ground when walking have self-esteem issues. Seriously? They didn’t mention the fact that it is very soothing to look at the brick pattern on the pathway. They didn’t mention the fact that whatever is going on in my head right at thatmoment in time is probably more interesting than the people who are passing me by. And they didn’t mention the fact that making eye contact with someone accidentally is extremely unnerving and creepy. Nope! I apparently have self-esteem issues.

In actuality, I am just an introvert. Making contact with a lot of people drains me of energy and makes me tired. I can sit in front of my computer for 10 hours without getting jumpy. I can sit down in a comfy chair with a 1000 page book and read it all the way through without taking a break. I can stay in my house for 3 days at a time without any human contact and I come out refreshed. That doesn’t mean that I am anti-social or that I can’t talk to people. On the contrary, I really like to have conversations with someone one on one  (or with a small group of friends). I am usually considered to be funny (although most of the time people laugh AT me as opposed to laughing WITH me). It takes me quite a bit of time to make new friends because I am not comfortable with starting conversations with people, but once I actually make friends with them it is for life.

Check out this post about 10 Myths about Introverts over on the Owl City Blog. I got this post via my Google Reader and I immediately hit the favorite button.

2011
08/23
CATEGORY
Uncategorized
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The Muffin Joke

For the past week or so, my brother has been turning out tons of comics on his blog/webcomic ExclusiveBlend. I decided to challenge him to draw “The Muffin Joke”, which is a sort of family joke. It isn’t actually THAT funny, but my mother finds it extremely hilarious. I actually still chuckle when I hear the joke because I picture my mother laughing her head off. Here is the joke as my brother would tell it:

JAMES: “So there’s these two muffins in the oven. One muffin says to the other muffin, ‘Boy it’s hot in here’. The other muffin says, ‘WOAH! A talking muffin.'”

MOM: *laughing so hard she almost cries*

My brother took my advice, and the comic he turned out is quite something. The artwork and coloring job look amazing. Check it out here!

He also challenged me to try and draw it myself. This is what I came up with:

I decided to use GIMP (open-source alternative to Photoshop) to color it. It turned out rather brown/gray, but there isn’t much color about two muffins sitting in an oven. Hope you enjoy it!

2011
08/10
CATEGORY
Comic
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3 comments

The Technology that changed my Life

I have been studying Computer Science for the past year or so, and I have, of course, learned quite a lot of new things to do on a computer. I learned to program with Java/Java SWING, C, Assember, and Scala. I learned how to use Eclipse and Subversion. Recently I’ve experimented with different text editors: Gedit, Nano, Vim, Emacs (which is my favorite so far), and Notepad++ (for Windows). But not one of these things actually changed how I use computers. But then a couple of months ago, I got my first smartphone. I got a beautiful Samsung Galaxy S II with Android 2.3 and a beautiful screen that cost me a small fortune (at least from my budget). Then I was an idiot and lost it. I literally felt like I lost an arm or a leg because somehow in the two weeks or so that I had my phone, I got extremely attached to it.

I was actually quite late getting on the smartphone train. My brother and sister have been rocking awesome android phones for much longer than I have and they are considerably less geeky than I am (at least my sister is. My brother is an engineer and likes discussing calculus in his free time, so he also qualifies as being a huge geek). My mother even got an iPad last year. But once I made the plunge, I couldn’t go back. My replacement phone is the LG Optimus One with Android 2.2 Froyo:


It is a pretty sweet phone. It was not extremely expensive and it has all of the features that you would expect and require from an Android phone. I am not a photo geek (I don’t like taking pictures at all) and I don’t like talking on the phone either (unless I am in the mood), so the apps that I use are mainly for accessing the web from wherever I am. But I thought I would use this post to give a shout out to my favorite apps:

1. Social Networking Apps:

For Facebook, I use the generic pre-installed facebook app. I don’t actually care for it that much, but then again, I don’t really care for facebook all that much either. Google+ is the new social networking site that was released by google about a couple of months ago. The google+ app is quite nice. My favorite social networking site is still Twitter. There seem to be thousands of different twitter apps, and up until recently, I was using Seesmic for my twitter needs, but the links in the tweets stopped working, so now I switched back to the official Twitter app. I won’t really go into detail here about the differences between all of these sites because it would take too long. I am seriously considering doing a blog on that topic though.

2. Google Reader

One of the major changes that Android has made to my life was introducing me to Google Reader. I used to look up all of my favorite blogs by hand and never really thought twice about it. But once I got android, I found that reading blogs with the provided browser is not the best experience. So I went ahead and installed Google Reader on my phone and I LOVE IT!!! Whenever anybody in my Google Reader list posts anything, my phone syncs the info automatically and the little folder on my home screen shows the number of posts that I haven’t read yet. I can just open up Google Reader and read my favorite blogs in the tram, bus, or really boring calculus lecture. One of the disadvantages is that I am no longer able to comment as easily, so I don’t seem to be using the internet as much, when in actuality, I am using it much more.

3. Amazon Kindle

I have had a Kindle ebook reader for a year now, and I absolutely love that thing. I have raved about my Kindle before, and I consider it to be one of my necessary tools in order to survive long trips (I wrote earlier this week complaining about the 17+ hour bus trip I was on. I didn’t have my Kindle. Otherwise 17 hours would have flown by). The Kindle app for Android is also quite nice. When I was flying back from Venice, my real Kindle ran out of batteries, and being able to finish my novel on my Kindle was a lifesaver! It is surprisingly easy to read a book on a 3.2 inch screen.

4. Dropbox

I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t rave about Dropbox at any given time of the day. And it is the truth. If you do have a smartphone, check out Dropbox. There is absolutely no reason not to, and you will not regret it. Even if you only have to sync one file between your computer and smartphone ONCE, you will benefit from it. It is absolutely free to get 2 GB of space! You can sync one file between any number of computers/smartphones. Click here to try Dropbox out and get 250 MB of free space!

5. Email

I managed to find the app “Hot Email” which allows me to check my Hotmail email on my phone. It is alright, although I am definitely open for suggestions. Not that I am that hopeful. I have had my msn address since 2004, and up until I got my phone, I found the email service perfectly adequate. I was just too lazy to actually switch to my gmail account permanently, even though I got that one when Gmail came out (yeah…back in the day when you needed an invite to join Gmail). But now that I have an android phone, I actually use my gmail account more! Why? Because my phone messages me whenever I get an email in my Gmail account and the gmail app is really nice for reading emails and sending them as well. It is awesome! Gmail makes emailing feel like texting.

6. Simple Notepad

I have tried out TONS of different todo applications, but they always annoyed me. I hate it when I have any alarms. I also hate it when I have to make multiple entries and edit a ton. I found that I was missing my mirror (because I always write what I have to do on my mirror). But then I found Simple Notepad. It does have a check-list option, but I always just make a text document and edit it. The nice thing about Simple Notepad is that you can use the widget option to post your todo list on one of your desktop screens like I have done above.

7. WhatsApp

WhatsApp is an app that allows you to text people who also have WhatsApp for free!

8. MyFitnessPal

MyFitnessPal is an excellent app for keeping track of your exercise, calorie intake, and current weight. I just started using it this week because I just started my no sugar thing, but I find it to be a very nice app. I was most surprised with the support it has for the foods in Germany. I found almost everything that I was looking for. It also allows you to record your weight in kilograms which is quite nice.

9. WikipediaMobile

Wikipedia is my search engine of choice, and WikipediaMobile lets me look up whatever I want, whenever I want. It’s pretty sweet.

10. Angry Birds

A very fun and very addicting game!!!

 

This post was inspired because Lifehacker just released their new Pack for Android, so be sure to check that out as well! And if you have your own favorite mobile apps, please comment and let me know about them!

2011
08/06
CATEGORY
Geeky
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10 comments

Summer

Well…I finally have summer break. Actually, it is more like “summer break”. I got done with my Calculus final a week from last Wednesday. And I actually passed! Woot! Woot! Got really excited about that one.

Then I went to a Christian camp for young people in Male Ciche, Poland. It was really quite good. We learned about how Egypt in Exodus actually is a symbol for the world today. We need to cry out to the Lord so that he can bring us out of Egypt!

And now I officially hate buses. We took a bus from Düsseldorf, Germany, to Male Ciche, Poland. It is a 17 hour trip. Then on the way back, there was an accident and the back window of our bus somehow fell out. So we had to chill at a Polish rest area for 5 hours! And there wasn’t any toilet paper or soap. My definition of a horrible time!

Sorry for my bad grammar. I just really wanted to post something because it has been so long since I posted anything. I have decided to cut sugar out of my diet for two weeks (because I am a MAJOR addict). But now I can’t really think clearly because I am having a pretty bad headache from sugar withdrawl.

So Summer is here! But I still have to work around 30 hours and work on my final project for Computer Science. So I don’t think I am going to be getting much free time. Although I am going swimming right now which should be fun.

2011
08/01
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Don’t have an idea? Pick your brain!

School has been pretty intense the last month or so since I have been stressing about finals a lot. So I apologize profusely for posting so little during this month. I sincerely hope that August will be much better. I have been storing up a bunch of good ideas in my brain, so I do have a lot to write about. But today I called up my brother in America, and he (and my sister-in-law) challenged me to draw a comic for the phrase “pick your brain”. My brother does a lot of his own comics over on this blog: ExclusiveBlend. He says that he is planning on drawing his own comic to this theme.

2011
07/17
CATEGORY
Comic
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