Summer had finally decided to land in Rostock, and we have had some fantastic days full of sunshine. They were still a little rare, but I won't complain too much. Living in this part of the world makes one appreciate the sun so much more than I used to! Unfortunately, it seems that Sumer will be short lived, and Autumn is already on the way. The sun is again a rare site, and it's raining more and more often... :(

Introduction

The time had come where I had a lot of music on my computer, a few videos, a TV - and lots of temporary cables in between. This started getting annoying, so I decided to look into have a dedicated device to play my media. Initially, I looked into getting one of those harddrives that can be connected directly to the TV. My attraction to these devices was for the fact that they used very little power. For a device that will spend the better part of it's life 'on', I definitely wanted something that drew little power. But, after working out all the features that I wanted, I generally found these devices just did not cut it. This led to the decision to build my own dedicated computer to do the job.

Having been somewhat frugal with using my holidays throughout the year, as I was always using my overtime, I was coming up to December with about 15 days leave still accrued. This had to be used before the end of the year, so chuck in a few public holidays, and I had nearly the whole December free! This sounded great to me :) A good friend from work, who is a keen windsurfer, was heading to Brazil for the sole purpose of surfing, and had asked me if I was interested. Initially I thought not, the but the idea grew on me quite quickly, as it was cold in Germany, it got dark around 3:30pm, and I couldn't go kitesurfing until April or so... Heck, why not!

Just wanted to let you all know that I have added a new page to the website, called Projects. This just outlines some of the the more interesting things that I have been up to lately. Check it out if you are interested. If you have any questions about what I have written, either just add it in the comments section, or send me an email. I am sure I will get back to you at some stage :)

 

As I have probably excitedly told many of you, I am learning to kitesurf. Kitesurfing is incredible fun, being somewhat a cross between windsurfing and paragliding. It has all the important elements in it – speed, craziness and of course an element of risk :)

In September, I decided to take some of my annual leave from work and do a trip over to Ireland. The reason I choose Ireland, was that I had a good friend who was living in the north of Ireland at the time, and another friend was going to get married at the end of September in England, so it would be a short trip across from Ireland.

Luckily for me, Ryan Air had some sort of sale on, and I managed to get tickets for both myself and Alix for €20 from Lübeck to Dublin, and €20 from London Stansted to Lübeck. So, €40 for two people (wihtout check in luggage) wasn't going to break the bank :D So we took of in mid-September, and landed somewhat delayed in Dublin. As expected with the budget airlines, nothing was free with Ryanair, but if you don't want to eat or drink, it's all good.
We then picked up the car we had hired, a little 2 door hatchback, and proceeded straight south towards Killarney. I have to admit, it felt weird driving again on the left had side of the road, after almost a year being on the right hand side! But, it was all normal again after a few hours.

Not too long ago, my boss at work asked me if I could take a few days off that she had nominated, to reduce my overtime hours. One of these turned out to be a 6 day weekend, so naturally I graciously accepted her proposal! I was pretty happy to have a 6 day weekend, and decided I should do something decent with it. So, I went on a bike ride. To near the border of Poland :-)

After a few months of living in our new home in Rostock, I thought it was time for another update. As of today, Summer has officially started, and while the weather has far improved than that of winter, it still wasn't that great. We have had some ripper days, warm and blue sky, but lately it has just rained or threatened too, and stayed around the 15degC mark. Summer starts with the longest day in the year here, and it is seriously long. The sun rises at about 4:30am, and doesn't set until about 10pm, but there's still light until around 11pm (check out the picture on the right - yep, that's at about 11pm!). I am still trying to get used to going to bed just as it gets dark... Anyway, today has been a pretty good day, so lets hope it stays that way for the rest of Summer :P

Rostock, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is the new home for Felix & Alix. The Rostock Piranha's are their new team. Ice Hockey is the new sport. But the weather is just as unpredictable as Melbourne. In a strange way, this unpredictability is the stable carry over from the old days. The trams are here too. And the trains have the same funky seat covers as they do in Melbourne. Exactly the same.