MICHA.ELMUELLER

 

Morocco

 

I have just returned from a trip to Morocco. With some friends I went there straight after christmas to spent the new years eve and some more days there. This trip was just amazing. So many people met. So many impressions. I am still overwhelmed. I can’t describe all of what I have experienced here, but I will try to write down some of my memories.

We spent one night in Marakkesh. Man, this city is insane. You remember all those insane traffic scenes from movies? People honking at each other all the time, little mopeds driving everywhere, donkey carts besides normal cars? I found every cliché to be true. The next day we straightly took a 4hr-busride to a much smaller city, not so touristicly, deeper in the country at the sea. The city is called Essaouira. We all liked the city so much, that we spent the rest of our time there.

Although we only spent some days in Essaouira we got to know many many people. I had the feeling that if we spent two more weeks there we would know a large part of the foreigners. We were often invited for (a super amazing arabaic) tea and talked to a lot of foreigners.

One man we got to to know introduced himself as a former philosopher. He told us we had to seize the sunset — which we actually did as you can see on the photos. We went through the silent city, to the harbor and walked on the beach. When it was still dark, a straying little dog joined us and stayed with us for the whole time. He walked for hours with us and stayed until we finally got into a place to eat something. On the photo above you can see one of my friends running into a swarm of sea gulls. Once the little dog saw him running, he joined him in scaring the sea gulls.

When we met the philosopher by random again, he invited us for a tea. He and his nephew-teenager are selling paintings to make a living. The philosophers nephew was proud to show us a large catalogue where someone has photographed various artwork from North Africa. On one of the photos one of the nephews paintings was shown. It showed the african continent as an abstract face with eyes, nose and a mouth. Tears were rolling from the eyes. When I asked him why the continent was crying he answered “chômage” — unemployment. People are very poor in this country. Much poorer than the photos below might indicate. It makes me sad that we people here live in overwhelming luxury, pure decadence, compared to the living in some of the third world countries. This is one of the things I often think about: How can we as engineers help solving modern world problems like poverty? How can I use my talents, my knowledge, for something else than maximizing the revenue of some random company.

We spent new years eve on top of our hostel with some other backpackers. Our arabic hosts cooked a huge dinner for us and played traditional music with an electrical amplifier. One of the other people I got to know that evening was Tibari. He makes his living as an artist, specialized in arabic calligraphy and art. I talked a lot to him and we often invited him to join us in the evening. On the last day he cooked a large meal for us and some other backpackers we met at the hostel. We also went to visit his gallery, one of the photos below was taken at his workspace there.

So many interesting cultures. So many interesting people. Damn, I really want to travel more.

 
 
 

Chaos Communication Camp 2011

The CCCamp repeats every four years. It is organized by the german Chaos Computer Club and is basically a big get-together for Hackers from all around the world. The camp is placed in the german city Finowfurt, near Berlin. The Camp itself is on an old Sowjet airport. Lectures are held in the hangars and on the whole camping side you can find old airplanes. Pretty cool atmosphere!

I attended the camp with some friends and had an amazing time. I met many interesting people, attended a hell lot of talks. Did some very interesting workshops and learned a lot new stuff. Probably one of the better weeks :-).

Best talk: OpenLeaks
What to say? I think they are doing a great job, from seeing the stuff and talking to the people behind the platform I have a very good impression. Technically very competent people. Friendly and honest.

It makes me angry to see people talk them down! I was critical in some points and so I went to their tent and talked to them! This is why you go to such a camp! If you talk to people you get new insights and different points of view. In the end this helps you to make up your own judicious opinion.

How I see it, the exclusion of Daniel Domscheit-Berg from the CCC was clearly a mistake. Unrational, childish and in rage. This is an absolutely unacceptable behaviour for a club that advises our government in security issues.

Best workshop: Live Coding with Fluxus
(fluxus) is a framework for Live Coding. It uses OpenGL as a Backend and Scheme as a programming language. The workshop focused on the performance of a VJ and was very interesting. Within 2 or 3 hours cupe_cupe developed a pretty impressive music visualization. There was also a DJane at the workshop who did the music for the visualization 🙂 . This is how a workshop should be!

For the awesome photos below I have to give credit to Seder.
You can download the High Resolution pics from his deviantART page.

We also used a soup for the time during the camp. There are some more photos we took.

Update: Best radio summary I found: 1 live Reportage (WDR) (Audio, Laufzeit 37:56)

 

Amsterdam

I had the luck to spend some days in Amsterdam during the summer, I have been there before and I think the city has some really beautiful sides. Especially with the many small canals Amsterdam has a very unique city architecture.

These are some pictures I took — I think they give a pretty good representation of the city.

I can recommend the café on the left – you can find detailed informations here. The café has some kind of “alternative” touch, all the furnitures are different from each other, the tables are made from big wooden cable wheels, etc. :). You can get great food and a great perspective on the harbour there!

It is a little bit tricky to find — I wouldn’t have known either, but a friend recommended it 🙂 .

 

 

About Me

I am a 32 year old techno-creative enthusiast who lives and works in Berlin. In a previous life I studied computer science (more specifically Media Informatics) at the Ulm University in Germany.

I care about exploring ideas and developing new things. I like creating great stuff that I am passionate about.

License

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