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Well, after my Motorola Milestone 2 was sent in for repairs for 3 times in a row now and I decided to not use any Motorola devices anymore, so when Mediamarkt offered the Samsung Galaxy S Plus for €269, it was an instant buy. I mean, how can Motorola send me a defective unit back from repair not only once, but twice? I haven’t received it back yet from their third try, but oh well, let’s hope somebody on eBay will be happy with it. Okay, no more Motorola, all Samsung now, the Galaxy S Plus works way better anyway. In fact, everything is perfect, except for one little thing. The USB connector of the Galaxy S Plus is on the top. How do you dock a phone in portrait mode with the USB connector on top? eBay suggested a rather ugly method with plugging a cable on top. So I remembered the Palm’s inductive charging feature and wanted it on my new phone. But all guides on the internet are either ugly or voided the warranty, but I wanted the best of both worlds, so my mod has to be invisible on first view and don’t void the warranty of my all new phone. (As the Galaxy S is build identically as the Galaxy S Plus, this mod should work flawlessly with the Galaxy S, too.)

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My friends know that I like to make fun of Apple fanboys, but now I’ve bought a Apple product myself. I was struggling really hard at “Media Markt”, oscillating between the cash desk and the shelves, but I did it! I bought an iPad from Apple. The iPad has everything, big screen, long battery life, (too) easy to use interface, chinese hand-writing input, WiFi and simple games unlimited… It has everything my Mom needs! That and the unbeatable price of € 499 for an actually solid looking tablet, I have to admit there is no better and cheaper solution for my Mom to surf the internet and playing easy games without having to worry about viruses or where the next power outlet is.
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I’ve learned about an interessting illusion called McGurk effect. It shows how your brain is not only using your ears to hear things, but also your eyes. Sounds crazy, but it’s really like this. A specific example of the McGurk effect is hearing “da da da” with eyes opened and watching the video, but hearing “ba ba ba” once you close your eyes.

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Sending Ecards was pretty boring until I found JibJab. JibJab allows you to create little animations with your and your friends heads in it. It’s really fun, see for yourself:

Yesterday, Liu Chengyang (we call him Liu) and his girlfriend Pan Junli (called “Trampeltier”), Qian Le (someone else with similiar name like me), my girlfriend and me wanted to go to Snow Funpark, an indoor skiing hall in north Germany. Because they have been overbooked the last two days, they recommended that we should arrive before 9 am, so we could still get tickets. Anyway, to get there on time, we had to get up early and meet 6:30 am. 2 minutes before 6:30, Liu called me and told me he had an accident. Quite shocked I asked him what happend and he told me that he broke one of the wheels of his car by driving into the curb. But luckily we were able to get the wheel changed at A.T.U. and we could continue our journey 2 hours later. The trip was around 130 miles, so we had a brake at “Walsdorf Ost”. After we all went to the bathroom and sat back in the car, it wouldn’t start, so we called the “ADAC” (a car club in Germany) to ask for help. And in less than 5 minutes, a ADAC car came by and found out that the battery just died. Luckily, the ADAC guy had a reserve with him and installed it for us. 30 minutes later, we were ready to go again. Qian Le already thought it could be some hint for us not to go skiing, but we still continued the travel. Around 11:30 am, we finally arrived in Wittenburg, where the indoor skiing hall was. It is supposed to be the biggest in europe. With over 1000 feet in length, 30° declination and 260 feet width, the hall even had a half pipe. But because the hall just opened at December 8th, the half pipe wasn’t ready yet. the entry was € 15 that day for 5 hours, day tickets weren’t available because they were overbooked. Because of that, we were able to get tickets for 1:00 pm. It was finally time for the fun to begin! The piste was quite long for an indoor hall, but the snow was too thin. The top part of the slope was completely ice, so everyone was sliding and falling there. They tried to fix it, but failed miserably. But for € 15, it is a really good value.

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Well, after 4 month in Shanghai, I have to say it has become the city I like the most in china. After being in Germany for over 16 years, I found a lot of interesting things which I wasn’t very familiar with. Let me list some of them to you:

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Well, it was the first time for me going crazy on those karts. Go-kart racing seems to be a fun but expensive sport. It is 50 Yuan for 8 minutes of pure adrenaline. I have to say… definitely worth it! Although I wouldn’t go there a second time (at least not on that track), but I really enjoyed it. We drove a Yamaha K-9 with a top speed of 80 km/h, the real speed you get with all those corners is probably maximum 60km/h. But sitting all low on those karts, it feels so fast!

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To clarify the topic, this text is about electronic voices and image processing. Well, some days ago, I installed Skype 2.5 BETA and found a funny plug-in for it. It’s called Crazytalk. It is a virtual Webcam for Skype, making images of animals, drawings or people talk. The lips were synchronized to your voice. It looked pretty real, so I wanted to create something similar.

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Somehow is my blog turning into a video blog… Anyway, Frank, my cousin, some other friends and me went to the Shanghai Indoor Skiing Hall. It’s supposed to be the biggest in the world, 380m long, 80m wide. It costs 218 Yuan for unlimited time skiing and 109 Yuan for unlimited time snowboarding. The slope is divided into 3 parts. The highest part was as steep as the second part, but had some small hills on it, where you could perform small jumps. The second part was divided into a fun-area with slide bars and a normal downhill slope. the third part is as long as the other two together. It wasn’t steep at all and is really beginner friendly.

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How safe is the lock of your bike? That’s probably a question that concerns everyone who owns a bike. For Frank’s locks, I have to say not very safe. Why? Maybe because I saw him buying his 3rd bike 3 weeks after he got to Shanghai… Are the thieves too good or was Frank not careful enough? Well, to get to the ground of this problem, Frank and I did some lock picking ourselves. We bought some locks and tried to get them opened without the key.

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