der k-Raum

Tobias Kurfer: Horrorjobs: Wie ich mich probehalber ausbeuten ließ

• Fischer (Tb.), Frankfurt, 2012 (1. Auflage)
• ISBN 978-3-359-619109-3

Der Inhalt.

Der Autor, Kolumnist einer Berliner Zeitung, versucht sich an jeweils einer Schicht in einem „typischen Horrorjob“: Tellerwäscher, Museumswächter, Maskottchen von Eisern Union. Er beschreibt die Arbeit und seine Gefühle; die Chancen, die sich ergeben; das oft dürftige finanzielle Ergebnis. Die kurzen Zeiten in den jeweiligen Horrorjobs erlauben ihm jedoch keine allzu tiefen Einblicke — per constructionem und „die Form bestimmt den Inhalt“.

Aufbau der Kapitel.

In den Kapiteln mischt der Autor Erfahrung im jeweiligen Horrorjob mit Persönlichem. Die zwei Stränge sind optisch gut getrennt. Die Horrorjobs werden detailliert beschrieben, in einer Mischung aus der persönlichen Erfahrung (während der einmaligen Ausübung) und der Erzählungen der Person, die diesen Job eigentlich inne hat.

Umfang und Erwartungstreue

Wer einen neuen Wallraff erwartet, wird leider enttäuscht: Die Horrorjobs sind von streitbarer Ausbeutung. Die „Horrorjobs“ bieten in der Regel wenig Gefahrenpotential und scheinen durchaus durch Arbeitnehmerschutzgesetze gedeckt. Einzig Anerkennung und Bezahlung sind in der Regel auf spärlichem Niveau. Bei den Texten handelt es sich um aufgebohrte Kolumnen; die Beschreibung der einen Schicht im jeweiligen Job ist ausführlich und gespickt mit Anekdoten der Mitarbeiter. Inhaltlich von leichter Lektüre, das Revolutionspotential ist eher gering.

Zur Sprache.

Sprachlich überzeugt das Werk: Viele Eigenheiten der deutschen Sprache werden (i) überhaupt und (ii) korrekt benutzt, um den Leser mitzureißen. Dafür ein Dankeschön!

Today I have a nice tip for our regular ssh users out there. It's the EscapeChar config parameter.

Some might recall sending $CHR(27) from their C64 to an attached Epson compatible dot matrix printer: then the next character will not be printed, but is interpreted as a configuration parameter (like bold face, underline, etc).

Users of GNU screen often type CTRL-A plus something, where something controls the screen session (like changing screen, creating a new one, or killing it). Also telnet comes with a bunch of escape sequences. But what about SSH?

You can define your escape character as an EscapeChar in your ~/.ssh/config, or via the -e switch at start time. To be effective, the escape character has to be typed on a new line. Let's assume ~.

Then ~~ gives a literal ~; ~? prints a help, ~. kills the connection. With ~# you see active port forwardings. Wait, you forgot to forward a port, again? No problem any longer: ~C gives you a command line that lets you add (or remove) port forwardings.

Have a lot of fun.

Got a large letter that didn't fit into the mailbox. Turned out that our local Finanzamt likes to return my stack of receipts for 2011: about 50 pages. They kept the summarising ten pages, but included a formal note:

Dear citizen who is paying taxes,

you are receiving your submitted receipts. Your tax computation is dealt with. Should there arise a refund, the amount will approach you in foreseeable future. Please refrain from further enquiry.

Kind regards, Your Finanzamt

So let's stay tuned...

Weiter lesen bei Der Freitag

For the block course "Grundlagen des Experimentierens" I programmed a small CouchDB based online data acquisition and live visualisation tool. A toy model featuring jquery and flot can be found here.

On the right you enter pairs of numbers (or use the provided (pseudo) random number generator), on the left you'll get a scatter plot. The PRNG gives you 500 pairs of numbers, approximately Gaussian with a standard deviation of 15, centered at (50,50). The lineare correlation coefficient is set to -0.6, but will be adjustable soon.

Much to do these days: next week we host the Blockkurs: Grundlagen des Experimentierens, which is consuming about 6 hours per day of preparation. Did not sleep well, thinking of items for the exam.

Tool using Apache Couch DB for an online correlation of students' data (e.g. weight / size) is running; my 1 bit AD converter (aka one pin of the parallel port) to query a pendulum's light sensor is also working and samples with up to 10 kBq (not kHz, since Linux's scheduler is rather sloppy on a sub-ms timescale); exercises might be ready this afternoon.

And then we have the computer crash course, with talks about on Friday and regexp already tomorrow. Prep just tonight.

Sorry, ML publication postponed again; but I did find some time to incorporate many of JP's remarks.

Okay, it's 8 pm and 2 minutes, and we already have 42 registrations for the next ("last") junien lanparty.

What, still not registered? click here, hurry!

Plot of the first 120 seconds:

In late April there's a symposium "Forschen verantworten" (maybe "account for research") in Jena, organised by scholarship holders of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung.

It's about freedom of research; relations between science, politics, and people; ethics and moral, concerning impact assessment of technology. So a lot of important topics for responsible and farsighted physicists, both students and researchers.



beam me up, Scotty

Our friends over at junien.de finally found a slogan: "langsam wird's albern". Since a junien LAN party is never foolish, registration starts on Sunday, 20 pm local. So get your connection clean, since the first ~50 fools click just in the first seconds.