September 2013 – alper.nl

Week 335

A funny week and with these weeknotes falling ever further behind it is also becoming increasingly vague what ever did happen back then.

Something I didn’t publish back then but I might as well now is this horrible ancient picture that Peter dug up of me from a long ago visit to Berlin. That was in a certain year during the first Web 2.0 Expo that was held in Berlin by O’Reilly. We made it out here with a Dutch group and attended the event along with Barcamp Berlin and lots of parties. Fun times in a Berlin that was very different.

Also this week Cuppings was featured rather prominently both on twitter and in publications which all in all did not lead to the exponential sales you may have been expecting. It turns out that the visibility windows of twitter are too short to lead to any serious conversion.

We watched this rare talk by Jack Schulze which is recommended viewing.

“He has to make what he is thinking in order to express it.” —Schulze

And Kars was in Berlin so we iterated on the Cuppings game version which should be published somewhere in October for you all to play.

Symphonie Cinétique

Tonight I saw the magical Symphonie Cinétique works at MADE in Berlin.

Iepe Rubingh who I to my shame only met last night told me about these beautiful works of art by Joachim Sauter (and music by Ólafur Arnalds) and this being the last chance to see them. I don’t think I have really seen a music and installation piece before where both parts combine this well. Julio Le Parc’s kinetic work in the Palais de Tokyo is comparable, but this is better.

This is Berlin at its finest.

Voting advice for the German elections

I will be gone during the peak of the horrible German election campaigns (in fact I’m just back and voting is this Sunday). The only thing that is keeping things somewhat bearable are the low-budget fake news broadcasts by Tagesschaum. I pay taxes in this damned country but I am not eligible to vote. That’s why I penned this election advice before I left for those that are. I didn’t have time to polish it then but here it is, better late than never.

I agree with others that votes should not be cast on FDP, CDU or SPD because they are all cynical douchebags, one not much better than the other. You would think that the SPD are sort of good but they aren’t really and yesterday I found out thanks to the Wahl-Apparat that they are both for weapons sales and the Kirchensteuer.

Then to treat the remaining parties:

The Left – They have some policies with significant merit. The abolishment of the two class healthcare system is long overdue and their other economic policies hit the right tone in a time in which almost everything is being sold to the highest bidder.
But I can only recommend voting for them in protest and if you do, hope that everybody else doesn’t do the same. When they were in power, these people perpetrated some of the worst crimes against society in recent history (see the pictures from the Stasi archives). They even have an actual Stasi member (source) leading their list. And for economic redistribution to work there has to be an economy, something I’m not so sure will still exist if these people come into power.

The Pirates – It’s hard to take these guys seriously anymore but they seem to have some good —even if probably frightfully naive— candidates that you may be able to elect directly. Giving your protest vote to them is also by far the most harmless option.

The Greens – They are not the idealists that they were anymore (that honour goes to the Pirates). This does not prevent them from applying their ideals onto the world with horrible consequences. Their economic policies are about as good as those of the Left but more oriented towards yuppies as are their environmental policies. Large parts of the party also seem to be batshit crazy —though probably not much more than the other parties— and there are lots of controversies that I haven’t read up on and can’t really write about.

Having taken that all into account I would advice a vote for the Greens anyway because they are mostly harmless and because it is the party that is most adamantly pro-bicycle. On the local level their policies are already paying off and a strong national faction will only supplement that. Putting your vote behind cycling in a single issue fashion is not that bad and it is an issue that is being clinched right now. Next time around the choice may be slightly less hopeless.

Also: I will be talking on stage to a Dutch delegation here for the elections about what it’s like to live and work in Germany.

Week 334

I’m writing this from Japan after seeing I have fallen seriously off the blogging horse. I think this particular week I was a bit under the weather but I did manage to get out a minimal prototype for AJI.

That was the week of the Somewhere cocktails event here a lot of friends were present.

Co-up had their summer barbecue which was a fun grill and beer on the street.

And end of the week we got to meet Simon and Ulla who were visiting Berlin. It’s always awesome to have friends drop by (you should too!). We spent the afternoon drinking coffee and eating Austrian food.

And after that we went to a gallery in Kreuzberg with an exposition about the influx of new people into Berlin. The artist had outfitted a proper German Behörde and given us a form to fill in about our reasons for coming to Berlin. I was amazed to read the growing number of Dutch people coming to Berlin every year now. Nobody in Berlin is really from Berlin.

Week 333

This week was a bit more stationary than the last thankfully. I tried out a competitor to Cuppings called Bean Seeker which is a rather terrible app.

That night I attended the IoT Berlin meetup organized by Martin and had dinner with a rather interesting set of people.

I also started playing DOTA2 this week for which there is a working Mac client available and which is a deep but somewhat too hardcore experience.

Cuppings was featured on Fontanel and we got a mention from London’s Best Coffee. Both of those are from people we respect which makes it mean the world to us. It also made us hit top 3 in the Food and Drink category of the Dutch store, which is nice to see (and altogether too easy).

I met Will Perkins and Nikos Green both highly capable people who I look forward to work with (again).

I read up about SpriteKit which is in the forthcoming iOS7 release and should make 2D game programming very very easy for developers. Looking forward a lot to iOS becoming an even more capable platform than it is.

On Friday we tried to attend the inaugural Biteclub which turned out to be too busy if you actually want to eat something.

That Saturday I started to work on the AJI prototype in earnest which is coming together nicely as we speak.