Camp Nou.

Past weekend my dad came to Barcelona for a short visit and this is what we did. We attended the 257. unofficial very unknown competition of miniature photography at its best. Magnify the following image and you will know what I mean. :)


Of course we went to Camp Nou to watch FC Barcelona vs. Getafe CF. Camp Nou is Barcelona's famous stadium. It has around 100.000 sitting places and is dedicated to good old football only and therefore Europe's biggest stadium for this purpose. The atmoshpere is sheer amazing. It is like a monstrous version of a theatre. People of all ages sitting side by side watching how their team is doing and supporting it with all they have.



As you can see from the following picture Getafe CF was well organized and at the end it was no more than 1:1. Anyway, it's been a great evening and an unforgettable experience.


There were hardly any security issues and we could even stay a little while after the game for a personal tour through the stadium:

The challenge!

3 times air line from Amsterdam to Zurich.
2 brave Austrian men.
1 tiny Spanish rental car.

It was back in spring this year when a friend of mine and me drove 240km by the beautiful blue Danube from Traun in Upper Austria to Vienna by bike in less than 36 hours. That sounds not too bad you may think at first. But reconsider the fact of two quarter-century old more pencil pusher than athlete kinda guys fighting against stupidly heavy rain showers, amazingly friendly old women offering free vine and lots and lots of candy bars to keep themselves alive. For sure it was a lovely trip. :-)

So, the next ass-flattening challenge is about to be conquered. On the 21st of December we are going to drive all the way from Barcelona to Traun by car. This may be around 1600 to 1800km, depending on which highways we are going to take. There is no limitation of time here, except for Christmas Eve maybe, but as far as I know my colleague and myself we are going to get that thing done as fast as possible. :-)

The countdown starts now..

This is what I do.

I'm doing this research project at the Computer Vision Center in Barcelona which is called 'Motion Analysis In Terms Of WVCE'. What is Motion Analysis? What does WVCE mean? Well, I'm currently trying to find that out. :-)
Well, WVCE stands for Wireless Video Capsule Endoscopy and takes its part of medical imaging technologies within computer science. Imagine the following situation: Something hurts inside your stomach and you don't know what it is. You go to the Doc and she says, she has to run some tests on you. Finally she tells you that if you really want to know what it is and where it comes from you have to let them do a procedure on you that is called intestinal endoscopy or gastroscopy. Long story short, they stick a camera mounted on a tube up your ass and taker a closer look from inside. Not good! Therefore some eggheads from the lab have discovered a new method. They let you swallow a capsule with a camera inside. This capsule is not much bigger than a regular pain killer (the very strong ones :-) and follows your digestion like everything else. After that, someone has to elaborate the video. For a trained expert this takes up to 8 hours. This is where the lovely words motion and analysis come into account. A computer should do all of this work instead. So, my work is to find out a sequence of different procedures to make the computer able to "see" and to look through all the videos and identify the motion of the intestine. Weird thing!
The images from inside the intestine are lovely. Unfortunately I can't show them to you because I had to sign a contract to state that I'm going to use all this material very very confidently. I'll keep you informed!

Garraf.

Now look at that! I travelled to Garraf today, a little village settled between the sea and a beautiful national park, just 30 minutes away from Barcelona. I was excited from to moment on I got out of the train:




Fishing seemed to be one half of the work the people of Garraf enjoy.



I got on top of this hill to overview the village and the sea..


.. and an amazing scenery came across my eyes:



Apparently satisfied:



Spoiling tourists seemed to be the other half. To be honest, where else can you see those signs? Parking only for tourists:




Well, I'm still some kind of shy and I didn't want to act like a complete geek taking a picture of a stupid car while its possessor takes his frappucino right next to it on a terrace. But what can you say.. an Aston is still an Aston.. I didn't want to disturb its silence either..

Oh boy!

I can't really believe what happened today. My supervisor proposed me to contract me for 1 year in order to work for him and to write my master thesis here. I suddenly have the opportunity to stay here in Barcelona for another full 12 months, join the medical imaging group of the computer vision center and get a grant of around 12.000 Euro for my master thesis. Am I still dreaming? And all that because they are so convinced of my work here. Success!! :-)
The thing is though, I'm not 100% satisified with medical imaging and therefore I am going to reject this offer. Don't rush by calling me a damn stupid jerk. It is indeed a huge satisfaction for me to see what I can reach when I work hard. And by now I know much better what I want and what I want to go for. And I will. You can believe me when I tell you that it was very, very hard to decide. But I stand by my decision and to be honest, I am as happy as I can be by now.

Spain vs. Austria.

As you probably wondered, what the f**k is this guy doing all day long?!? Well, here's the answer:

As an Erasmus student, studying here for 5 month (officially), I need to achieve 15 ECTS credits in order to gain money from the association of Erasmus. For this reason I'm taking two courses - one in Spanish (which makes me very proud because I understand a lot) one in Catalan (unfortunately) - and of course I got myself my very own place in a research project as half research assistant other half PhD/Erasmus student. There is no explanation on my status. In fact, I'm the first Erasmus student at my faculty who is joining a research project. Therefore, some things got a little confusing and all the administrative stuff is a little weird since none really knows what to do. :-)
But, this is really amazing! For the first time of my life I'm treated like capacity. There is no longer this feeling of being just a stupid student that has to study way more things to conquer a state-of-the-art research assignment. People here are very kind and friendly and you get a warm feeling out of every conversation pretty soon. Unlike in Austria where you feel like a jackass as long as you don't have a damn long title in front of your name. In Spain this is really a bit different, as far as I have experienced by now. I really like that and I feel very comfortable with it. It's a lot of serious work to do but it makes me really happy.

That's the place where I'm working.

I need to do some laundry now but ""I'll be back"" soon with a more detailed explanation on what this project is about. It's pretty interesting so come back again soon! :-)

Escuela de rock!

If you are interested in rock and metal you should definitely give this guy a call!


Oh no, the deadline ran out. Sorry..