Do you know where the first book in Switzerland was printed?

I do, or at least I do know, where the first dated print was made in Switzerland. It was 1470 in the small village Beromünster when the seventy years old canon Helias Helye decided, it would be a nice idea to have a printed issue of the Mammotrectus (some kind of bible-related dictionary written by Marchesino da Reggio). By the way, Beromünster is always worth a visit as it is a really beautiful small village with over 1000 years of history (the site of the printing, a medieval tower called Schlössli - engl. little castle - is still around and is nowadays a museum with a reconstruction of the original printing press) and some interesting stories and personalities, such as Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler, Josef Vital Kopp or Pirmin Meier. By the way: If you're looking for good book to read this summer, I can recommend Kopp's Der sechste Tag (engl. The sixth day), an account of Kopp's youth in Beromünster around the time of the first world war. It's also an interesting portrait of a central swiss catholic milieu at the beginning of the 20th century.

Pay attention where your teaching material comes from

I just saw a promotion for teaching materials called Ideen sind etwas wert (Ideas have a value) on the official swiss education server. Their object is to promote awareness for copyright and intellectual property in music business. So, this is basically an interesting topic, especially for computer science teachers.

Now guess, who has paid for these materials? (Hint: It's not some official swiss education office, you can find the answer in this link). Of course, this made me slightly suspicious and so I took a closer look. Want a sample? There's a claim that copy protection on audio CDs was absolutely necessary because of internet piracy (although they somehow forget, that this measure mostly is a punishment for people who actually buy CDs and - along with the CDs themselves - does not work. Oh, and there's also this story of violating a very succesful standard...). They also remind you of the fact that downloading MP3s is a huge security risk (in comparision with, say, buying Sony CDs?).

Although there are some interesting and correct facts, the makers of these teaching materials seem to have missed quite a lot of the recent development in music business. But then againg, you didn't expect a well-balanced account on copyright from something sponsored from the IFPI, did you?

The Terminal 5 Song Revisited

Parcival is worried about Heathrow's Terminal 5, let's hear what Monty Python said some years ago about Heathrow

Brainfuck on SwissEduc

My Brainfuck lesson is now available on SwissEduc.

Epiphone Les Paul with new GFS Pickups

Epiphone Les Paul Standard Plus with GFS Crunchy Pat High Output Humbuckers recorded with Audacity
and a Line 6 Pocket Pod. For the rhythm part I used both pickups, for the melody the bridge pickup only. Sorry for the bad Quality, I somehow had to operate the computer and play guitar at the same time while balancing no a chair...

Mission accomplished

Gone insane writing Brainfuck programs, gone back to normality, compiled a lot of LaTeX to PDF: LOFS Project finished.

This is for Nicole and Parcival

Have a nice wedding!