Kategorie: Allgemein

Bulk Purchase

This weekend we decided to rent a car again to buy some more groceries, so that we don’t have to go to the supermarket every single day. So we made a reservation at Sixt.

Saturday morning René and me went to Sixt at the Belfast City Airport to pick up the car. As there were no cars left of the category we ordered, we got a free upgrade and got a Kia cee’d instead of a Vauxhall Corsa.

After that we went shopping at Lidl. On the one hand we had planned to buy some drinks, so that we do not have to carry the heavy bottles. So the car first looked like this:

our rental car loaded with some drinks ...

We also bought some delicate food and so the car finally looked like this:

... and some delicate food

After loading the car the driving experience turned from a sporty city cruiser into an oil tanker. But we finally made it back to the accommodation and managed to put everything that needs to be cooled in the fridge and the freezer.

Pub hopping

Hi guys,

we was on Friday „pub hopping“.

The first pub was our favourite bar „the Lavery’s“, there we have played pool billiard. But not normally pool with different coloured balls, but orange and red balls, this was new for me.

After that, we were in a gothic themed bar with the name „Benedict Bar“, a bar with cool music, but many „old“ people (to „old“ people).

On the end, we are gone in the „vBar“, a very cool, but small bar. Unfortunately, it was very empty. But apart from that , I can they recommend.

On the end, we are gone home and had there still a little bit fun.

Best regards from Belfast
Benjamin

A funny week is gone… A more funnier weekend is coming…

Hey guys, a very funny and interesting working week is gone… I have got a lot of more experience in developing with Kevin & Co., so I was inspired by Kevin R. and the projects what I have at Volunteer Now to do an own developing project in my community and I have asked Kevin to join this project, too. Well, I think it was a really nice idea, because I can get the chance to do developing on both sides with Kevin. It’s just to develop a frontend as website for administrate a file server which run on a linux server and use a MySQL-DB-Backend as accountingbase. It will be programmed in VBA.NET and telerik on a Apache-Server with the Mono-Mod. Maybe, it will be a really nice experience to work with Kevin on a OpenSource project. My project works very fine at my workplace, it’s just some fine tunings and some customizes of the Microsoft Dynamics Website which will be simple programmed with JavaScript and VBA.NET. Well, I have mentioned that asked Kevin to do something together on this weekend, it’s done and I have enjoyed it to fullest, but I will tell you more on the next blog entry. And now, please enjoy!

When the DART goes out of order

Today after work I went to the DART station in Dun Laoghaire and passed a guy who reminds me of an actor. First I didn’t remembered the name of that actor but then it got into my mind. That guy looks like Ben Affleck! I wanted to double check that but I didn’t had my glasses on and I was already too far away from him.

After a while the DART arrived at the station and I took a seat at the window. I was a bit confused because the train didn’t moved for like 7 or 8 minutes. Then the DART moved and I felt a bit better. When the train arrived at Salthill & Monkstown a voice came out of the speakers. I just understood that the DART is out of order because of broken overhead connections and that we had to take the Dublin Bus to get into the city. So I followed the crowd to the neared Dublin Bus station. After a few minutes a taxi stopped infront of me and the driver asked for more people who would like to get to city center. When I asked him for the fee he told me that it will be splitted under the passengers and it wouldn’t be more than 5Euro. So I hopped into the taxi. After a few minutes I catched the info that over hundrets of people are ordering a taxi at that time just because the DART isn’t moving. When we arrived at the city center the driver told us that he will only charge 3Euro each person. I was like: Cool, perfect time to get rid of my change.

All in all a very exciting afternoon.

Sensors and Connected Health

As written in my last posts I mentioned the project „Sensors and Connected Health“. Now we have get new instructions from our IT-supervisor Damien. At the last days we gathered informations about touchscreen devices like All-in-One PCs and tablet-PCs. On this devices they want to show the informations from the connected person with the medical sensors. Also a big TV-screen is an opportunity. Yesterday arrived the ordered outdoor WLAN access point and Jannik and me tested the device. Unfortunately the extra antenna doesn’t arrived, but it has already an in-built antenna. Today Damien showed us the ALS Simulator and the BioRadio. The Advanced Life Support Simulator is a realistic interactive training manikin for simulating a wide range of advanced life saving skills. He has human attributes like pulse, breathing and he can also make some noise. The BioRadio 150 is a wireless acquisition system capable of recording, displaying and analyzing physiological signals from users in real time. But we don’t know how exactly we must connect this device to the manikin. We tried a little bit, have measured the pulse but it don’t works or we can’t interpret the data from the monitoring software. I don’t know but maybe Damien tell us tomorrow. So I become a specialist in medicine 😉

Cinema visit – The Avengers

Hi guys,

on Tuesday we watched the film „the avengers“ from Marvel in the Movie House in the Dublin Road. We watched the film in 3D, with very cool special effects. The best was, that it has cost only 3 pound (the offer is named “ Crazy Tuesday“), I think that is a very cheap price for so big entertainment.

The Movie House

The film itself was adventurous and has contain many exciting scenes.

I have to say, that it better is, when you have watched also the other Marvel movies. Without this, it is sometimes difficult to understand the story.

For this cheap price can I everybody recommend to go on Tuesday in the Movie House.

Best regards from Belfast
Benjamin

VBA.NET, SQL & Co.

Since the begin of this week, i working on my second project at VolunteerNow. Well, it’s based on VBA.NET & SQL as backend of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM and my new developing environment is euiped with Visual Studio 2010 and with new extensions like Silverlight and Telerik classes, that’s very amazing. On Monday evening, i and my roommates wanted to go the cinema as every week, but the film “ The dictator“ was only for VIP’s, so we was very frustrated and looked for another film and this one was funny, i would to recommend it, but you should not to be shy of blood-curdling scenes, because it was very bloody and this film doesn’t know anything about expurgation and hasn’t any limits. So, he was so bad that he was already well! Ok, i should go back to topic, the new task what i have is very interesting, of course i can learn more and more about programming Visual Studio within an important project such this one. It’s a nice chance to get more skills of developing in the languages VBA.NET and Silverlight, i hope that’s this wasn’t the last one and i can get more skills and knowledge in other programming languages like VBA and Silverlight. It’s a new experience to get another contacts in other countries too and can use this to improve my community with new features, skills and new contacts like Kevin R. and it was great to tell more about experience, so it’s coming more as soon as possible…

Again a perfect evening

Yesterday, Tim, Oli and me decided to go to the cinema to watch the film „The Dictator“. We had to get some things done, so we started at 19:30 and the film started at 19:40. Going to the ciname takes just 3 minutes on foot, so we had no problems reaching the cinema in time. I thought this film could be either very funny or just nonsence. To be honest: it was both of it. Some scenes really made me laugh but others just made me shake my head.

Due to the fact, that we had no time for lunch before, we had some dinner at Nando’s afterwards. They are specialised in chicken. We were a bit disappointed when  we saw the size of the dish. There was not nearly as much food as we expected on our plates but is was really tasty.

The last stop on this evening was Filthy McNasty’s. It was just a perfect idea, because there was live music and it was just awesome. The guy’s name who played is Mark Graham. I really like this evenings with live music. There seem to be so many musicians playing their songs in Belfast’s pubs and this is just amazing. I will really try to find some good locations offering great live music acts when I’m back to Berlin.

 

Another great movie

Today is the release of „The Dictator“ which I watched after work. I also bought some nachos with cheese dip for the show today. Sadly the dip was extremly sour so it wasn’t fun to eat it. Therefor the movie was pure fun. It started with the birth of the dictator and a fast review of his life which was totally funny to view. The best gag in this movie is when Aladeen, the dictator, sits with his old weapon engineer and 2 american people in a helicopter. First Aladeen overacts as pure fan of america and then those 2 talkin in there native language. You really have to see it because it will make you laugh from the beginning to the end. It’s good to understand and the outtakes at the end nearly top the whole movie.

So my advice for you: Watch it!

Great jokes and you may find Osama Bin Laden.

Sightseeing during working hours

One advantage of my placement is that I see a lot of Northern Ireland’s landscape. On Monday, I met with Matt in the office and we started at about 10 o’clock. We had to visit 3 different hospitals and initially a company, called AMI, too. AMI is a company, which cares about WEEE (Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment) and ITAD (IT Asset Disposal) in Northern Ireland. Matt forgot, that he arranged an appointment for Tuesday, so he pulled around the steering whell within the roundabout and continued to the first hospital. We had some hard drives containing patient data, which had to be send to IBM for replacement. So these hard drives had to be erased on a very secure way, i.e. going through two huge magnets for three times. I think this is a very rude way of erasing a hard drive, because on Tuesday, it sounded like a yelping dog or something similar. Arriving at the first hospital, we had to calibrate an EIZO screen which is used at a diagnostics station, i.e. doctors view MRTs and other electronical patient pictures, so the screens have to be fully functional. This took about half an hour. Afterwards we got to the second hospital. There was a problem with an user account, but it was already solved when we arrived, so this job didn’t take long. In the third hospital, there was a hard drive which had to be replaced, which took maybe 15 minutes. I think during the whole day, we covered about 300km. Driving in the car took definetly longer than fixing the problems, but as I already said..sightseeing during working hours is not too bad. We arrived at 5 o’clock in the office and there, Oli waited for me because we had to get some groceries for lunch. We made some chilli con carne for lunch and it was very tasty.