spielwiese.

encrypting partitions with luks.

felix — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 01:05:59 +0000

since i’m always forgetting what to do to encrypt a harddisk, and have to rely on other sites (which might go offline once), i decided to sum everything up in a post. parts can already be found here in this blog.
note that the disk device name can differ from computer to computer, so i used /dev/sdx in this description which you have to change to the right name.

creation.

first, connect the disk and unmount it. then, delete all existing partitions and create a linux primary partition (or do whatever else you want):

$ sudo fdisk /dev/sdx

then it is recommended to clear the partition with random data:

$ sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdx1

note that this step takes a lot of time.
then, make luks aware of the drive, open it with luks and format it:

$ sudo cryptsetup --verbose --cipher "aes-cbc-essiv:sha256" --key-size 256 --verify-passphrase luksFormat /dev/sdx1 $ sudo cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sdx1 encrdisk $ sudo mke2fs -v /dev/mapper/encrdisk $ sudo cryptsetup luksClose encrdisk

this creates an ext2 file system. now you should be able to unplug the drive and reconnect it, and ubuntu should ask you for a passphrase to unlock the disk. feel free to add -L "label" (at most 16 characters; see the man page for more details); ubuntu will try to mount the disk as /media/label then.

mounting and unmounting.

to mount:

$ sudo cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sdx1 encrdisk $ sudo mount /dev/mapper/encrdisk /mnt

to unmount:

$ sudo unmount /mnt $ sudo cryptsetup luksClose encrdisk

note that for example newer ubuntu versions automatically ask for a passphrase and performs luksOpen / mount / unmount / luksClose for you.

checking.

basically, you just have to open the partition, run the usual file system check, and close it:

$ sudo cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sdx1 encrdisk $ sudo fsck -v -C -n /dev/mapper/encrdisk $ sudo cryptsetup luksClose encrdisk

passphrase management.

note that luks has a storage of several passphrases, which can all be used to open the partition. one can add and remove phrases to/from this list.
to add a passphrase:

$ cryptsetup luksAddKey /dev/sdx1

to remove a passphrase (you have to enter the passphrase to be removed):

$ cryptsetup luksRemoveKey /dev/sdx1

to remove the passphrase from a slot (useful if you forgot one of the passphrases and want to remove it):

$ cryptsetup luksKillSlot /dev/sdx1 0

sapari by orphaned land.

felix — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 13:05:31 +0000

i just got orphaned land’s new album, the never ending way of orwarrior, after long years of waiting. it’s amazing! the first track, sapari, is really catchy. i’m pretty much addicted to it. i might write more about the album later, but for now, here’s the official video for sapari:

in case you can’t see a video here, you probably don’t have the right plugin. the video’s on youtube, maybe you can watch it there, or at least get hints what you have to do to enable playing it.

edit: apparently, century media requested to delete that video and replaced it by another version of the same thing, with a more “hip” title. great. whatever. here’s the new version:

in case you can’t see a video here, you probably don’t have the right plugin. the video’s on youtube, maybe you can watch it there, or at least get hints what you have to do to enable playing it.

for some reason, they screwed it up that a lot of hyphens appear in the title… whatever…

valkaama.

felix — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 05:23:52 +0000

today, i heard about, downloaded and watched valkaama, a movie released under one of the creative commons licenses. (this means that you can actually download the sources of the movie and make your own version. and, probably more important to most people, you can just copy and watch it without restrictions.) technically speaking, the movie is of good quality, except the audio, maybe. i’ve listened to the movie with headphones, which was a bit annoying since voices were often only audible on the left or the right channel, but almost never somewhere inbetween. on speakers, this is fine, but with headphones it sucks. but besides that, everything’s great. so go and watch it, but maybe not with headphones :-) the movie also features inarijärvi, one of the largest european lakes, located in northern lapland.

how to not organize a conference.

felix — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 01:34:57 +0000

after attending the joint mathematics meetings in san francisco, i want to share two points you should not try to copy when you’re organizing a conference.

in case you have a lot of parallel sessions, try to schedule sessions with similar topics in parallel. this minimizes the number of days people from these areas have to attend the conference.
promise wireless internet, but do not provide a backbone which can handle this. after noticing it is too slow, simply turn it off for the rest of the conference.
this applies more to conference center owners. do not install power plugs anywhere near to areas where tables and seats are placed. and by any means, never install power plugs in rooms where talks are held.

people will really appreciate this and regard your conference as one of the best ever.

travelling, and new year’s eve.

felix — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 17:36:17 +0000

for new year’s eve, we traveled to oldenburg. on the way back and forth, we saw some interesting things in osnabrück. finally, on the way to dresden, we saw a historic train of the deutsche reichsbahn in leipzig. here are some impressions.

osnabrück, covered in snow.

new year’s eve.

osnabrück, outside the train station.

a historic train in leipzig.

lüdinghausen.

felix — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 16:55:07 +0000

on christmas, my girlfriend and i visited lüdinghausen, my home town. we visited two castles, burg lüdinghausen and burg vischering, and my old school, the st. antonius gymnasium. here are some impressions.

location.

they are all located relatively near to each other:

the first castle: burg lüdinghausen.

my old school: the st. antonius gymnasium.

the second castle: burg vischering.

in case you wonder: the right photo in the second row depicts a pranger. one can actually try out this one :)

swallow the sun, insomnium and omnium gatherum in leipzig.

felix — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 15:08:17 +0000

last year, some days before christmas, we attended a concert by swallow the sun in leipzig, germany, with support by insomnium and omnium gatherum. it was the last concert of the new moon tour. (no vampire shit, though ;-) ) you might know that swallow the sun is one of my favourite bands. they played in a small youth club, conne island, which wasn’t the easiest to find. but eventually, we found it. fortunately, nobody complained that i took my favourite toy with me; so this time, i managed to make some good photos.
i think that this concert was the best one i attended in 2009. ok, i have to admit there haven’t been many concerts in 2009 anyway. but nonetheless, this one was very good. the bands played great music and obviously had fun. (and: they played the giant, one of my favourite songs, in the encore!) unfortunately, the audience didn’t manage to sing “we want more” in finnish, so most sang a few times “zugabe” and then stopped doing anything at all, resulting in an awkward half-silence. but the band fortunately still came back.
now have fun watching some of the photos. if you want to know more about the concert, read someone else’s report ;-)

omnium gatherum.

insomnium.

during the concert of insomnium, members of the other bands showed up on the stage, and equiped insomnium’s singer niilo with a funny hat and a sign saying “korpiklaani”. he eventually removed the hat by banging his head:

swallow the sun.

during swallow the sun’s performance, members of the other bands had fun installing a pink dildo first at the keyboard and then, later, at the singer’s microphone:

as opposed to the korpiklaani “hat”, the dildo stayed there for the rest of the concert.

squash soup.

felix — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 11:32:09 +0000

well, in december i didn’t managed to post some of the things i wanted to, for example something on a squash soup. i got the recipe from a friend and mixed it with some i found online. it consists of squash, cut into small pieces. note that it is a good idea to take squashs whose hull is edible, like hokkaido squash, butternut squash and buttercup squash).

the pieces are cooked a bit with onions, garlic and spices such as cayenne pepper and curry, until water with stock is added:

after cooking it for 30-40 minutes, one can add crème fraiche (or sour cream if you live in a country where you can’t easily get crème fraiche).

enjoy!

nose hill park, covered in snow.

felix — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 08:21:33 +0000

last weekend, it was rather cold outside, and pretty white. i did a walk to the nose hill park, enjoying the beautiful snowscape as well as the icy wind. here are some impressions.

the winter has arrived.

felix — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:20:34 +0000

it’s white outside. for a couple of days now. after a few white days during october, and rather warm temperaturs during most of november, the coldness finally returned, and with it the whiteness. an unfortunate companion of snow is ice, and by now, there’s plenty of it. mostly on sidewalks, sometimes on the roads. let’s see when the next chinook is coming.

spinach pancakes.

felix — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 04:32:19 +0000

after sharing one pancake recipe more than ten days ago, i thought i’d write about another one which i tried more often. it’s the result of preparing enough spinach sauce for a few days, and trying to combine that with pancakes.
i again made a lot of spinach sauce today, so i can eat a few days from it. i took one onion, one garlic bulp and one red chilli and chopped them. then, i put them in a pan and roasted them gently, adding “some” cayenne pepper.

after that, i added the frozen spinach, and let it defrost. during the process, i added some hot water, some more water with corn starch, and some whipping cream.

as usual, i prepared pancakes and added some of the spinach sauce on one half.

finally, i flipped the other half over, and obtained a small stack of spinach pancakes.

creative cooking: zucchini-mozzarella pancakes.

felix — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:45:17 +0000

often, i experiment when cooking. adding or removing or exchanging ingredients, changing the result a little every time; i guess this is not that uncommon for anyone used to cooking. sometimes, i do some more experiments, like today. two days ago, when shopping, i got a spontaneous idea, namely to try a omlette with zucchini and cheese. well, i bought everything i needed, but on the way home, i continued to think and planned to replace the omlette by pancakes. well, and today, i finally tried it out. first, i cut the zucchini into small slices:

then, i prepared pancake dough – flour, a few eggs, salt, milk, and mixing it together. then, i started baking pancakes.

for the first try, i took the done pancake out of the pan and placed it on a plate. i added grinded mozzarella on one half, put on some of the zucchini slices, and flipped the other half over:

it tastes good, but i thought i can do better. so i tried to add some spices, in particular cayenne pepper, after putting the cheese on. i also put on the cheese while the pancake was still in the pan, as otherwise the cheese doesn’t really melt. it then looks like this:

finally, i had a small stack of pancakes, part of whom i enjoyed eating, while putting the rest in the fridge to enjoy it at tomorrow’s lunch.

a western canadian vacation: calgary’s nose hill park.

felix — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:00:08 +0000

on one of the last days, we did a small trip to calgary’s nose hill park, where i have been before as well. here are a few impressions:

a western canadian vacation: the icefields parkway.

felix — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 10:00:26 +0000

one of the most beautiful parts of our trip was the drive south the icefields parkway, connecting jasper to lake louise. here are a few impressions from our stops. we wanted to drive up mount edith cavell as well, but the road was closed.

astoria river bridge and athabasca river.

a beautiful lake and the athabasca falls.

mountains, and the columbia icefield.

our car, and the upper waterfowl lake.

the bow lake and the crowfoot glacier.

lake louise.

a western canadian vacation: traveling through the rocky mountains.

felix — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 04:00:47 +0000

after two days in vancouver, we rented a car and drove up to the beautiful town of jasper. from there, we visited, among others, patricia lake, pyramid lake and maligne lake, whose photos can be found below as well as a photo taken at a rest stop somewhere north of kamloops.

a western canadian vacation: vancouver.

felix — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 22:00:11 +0000

after yellowknife, we flew to vancouver. things you can see in the photos are the steam clock, vancouver city, stanley park, a spider, views from the capilano bridge and its park, and a sunset at the pacific ocean’s beach.

a western canadian vacation: aurora borealis watching in yellowknife.

felix — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 19:00:48 +0000

on our last night in yellowknife, we had the luck to see an aurora borealis. experiencing an aurora is something hard to describe. the following photos and videos just give a small glimpse of its wafting beauty.

for the more technically interested people, the camera settings i used for most photos are a shutter speed of 8 seconds, aperture of f/4.0 and iso sensitivity of 800. this was the first time where i was really happy that i have a remote for my camera’s shutter and a tripod. below you can view some videos, taken with these settings (hence, between two frames there are around 8 seconds delay). there are six frames per second, whence the videos are around 48 times faster as the real aurora was. each video comes as a flash player together with an avi download (the avi files contain essentially a sequence of jpeg files, so no fancy codec is required). [See post to watch Flash video] download this movie. [See post to watch Flash video] download this movie. [See post to watch Flash video] download this movie. [See post to watch Flash video] download this movie. [See post to watch Flash video] download this movie. [See post to watch Flash video] download this movie.

a western canadian vacation: yellowknife’s great slave lake.

felix — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:00:17 +0000

another day, we did a trip to the great slave lake, a huge lake (its area takes 7% of germany’s area, or two thirds of switzerland’s area).

a western canadian vacation: yellowknife’s frame lake.

felix — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:00:04 +0000

we started our canada tour by flying up to yellowknife, the capital of canadas northwest territories. it’s a town having around 20.000 inhabitants, but it is probably the most touristic place in the northwest of canada, and there are a lot of (non-expensive) flights going there. and, one reason why we went there, it’s quite likely that you can see northern lights. besides that, the area is also very different from southern canada.
on our first day there, it was sunny and we did a hike on the trail around frame lake. this resulted in many beautiful views and photos, some of whose can be seen here:

a western canadian vacation: calgary’s zoo.

felix — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 05:00:35 +0000

next, we did a trip to calgary’s zoo.

the zoo contains a dinosaur part, which i didn’t really commented on last time. it features a landscape which is supposed to look like back then, and a few dinosaur models. some of these models look really unrealistic, or more funny. the following photos also feature some of those:

a western canadian vacation: calgary’s prince’s island park.

felix — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:00:12 +0000

after the ha link peak, we explored calgary’s prince’s island park, where i have been before several times.

a western canadian vacation: the ha ling peak.

felix — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 20:10:10 +0000

maybe you, the reader, noticed that i didn’t really wrote anything here during the last three weeks. well, the reason was that i had a visitor here, namely my girlfriend, and that we did a 10 day tour through western canada. in this and the following posts, i will show some photos from our trip.
the first thing we did was attend our department’s excursion, a hike on top of ha ling peak. here are some impressions from the hike:

worst article on operating systems ever (read by me).

felix — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 07:34:00 +0000

a friend of mine just send me a link to this article, which compares the operating systems windows 7, osx and the linux distribution kubuntu. i must admit that it’s the worst article i ever read on such a subject, containing so many mistakes.
this annoys me enough to write a blog post about the article, trying to point out errors. all quotes are from the version retrieved on october 2nd, 08:55 in the morning (german time).

“Microsoft sorgte im Gegensatz zu den Konkurrenten immer für einen schnellen Patch”

in the past, there have been critical bugs in windows which have been known for more than half a year before they have been fixed. more precisely, i remember a bug which allowed to remotely shut down windows (presenting a 60 seconds or so countdown which could not be canceled, followed by an automatic shutdown) which could be triggered by sending a bad packet to a windows computer (without a firewall, which was the default configuration at that time for windows). that’s definitely not fast, and at that time there was nothing one could do against it but installing third party software (like a personal firewall).

“Bei Mac OS X prüft – wie bei Windows 7 – ein eingebauter Update-Manager in bestimmten Zeitabschnitten auf Aktualisierungen. Unter Kubuntu muss der User selbst daran denken.”

this is not true: ubuntu has an update manager as well, which checks regularly (every day i think?) and allows the user to install the updates. i think it can also be configured to automatically install updates. moreover, kubuntu installes updates for all installed programs (at least the ones supported by the program manager – which are usually all which a standard user uses.)

“Gegenüber Linux haben die großen Anbieter Microsoft und Apple allerdings einen Sicherheitsnachteil: Bevor die Updates an die User gehen, durchlaufen die Bugfixes viele Qualitäts- und Kompatibilitätskontrollen. Der Vorteil der Linux-Community: Oft gibt es schon nach Stunden den ersten Patch – der kann allerdings auch das System instabil machen.”

well, in theory. there have been cases where patches from microsoft have been broken; at the moment i’m too lazy to search for that. and having fast patches for certain (very annoying) problems is a good thing as well. and, no one is forced to install the patches right away. if one waits a few days, possible errors in the patches are usually corrected.

“Apple und Linux gehen sogar noch einen fatalen Schritt weiter: Bei OS-XRechnern ist die Firewall von Haus aus deaktiviert, und wer unter Kubuntu geschützt sein will, muss je nach Distribution die Firewall sogar noch extra nachinstallieren.”

apparently, the author did not notice that he is looking at a very special distribution of linux, called kubuntu, and not at the family of all linux distrubutions, when he wrote “je nach Distribution”. but more seriously, i have some doubts that the author knows what a firewall really does, what the difference between a so called personal firewall and a “real” firewall is, and why one does (not) need one (under linux, all ports are closed by default). for linux, there is usually no need to install a firewall.
the conclusion of the security discussion,

“Der Punktsieg geht hier knapp an Windows 7. Denn dieses ist das einzige System, das bereits heute zeigt, dass es sich im Kampf gegen Hacker einigermaßen durchsetzen kann. Wer hingegen mit OS X oder Kubuntu unterwegs ist, hat keine Firewall, keinen Virenscanner und teilweise lange Zeit ein ungepatchtes System.”

is therefore worth to be ignored.

“Der Nachteil von Kubuntu ist jedoch, dass es je nach Distribution rund zehn Gigabyte auf der Festplatte verbraucht.”

first, kubuntu is a distribution, not a family of distributions. dear author, distinguishing between linux and kubuntu is not that hard. moreover, the full installation of kubuntu installes a huge amount of programs, including open office, a cd/dvd burning program, and lots of games, just to name a few. if you install all such programs under windows, it will surely use more than 10 gb. way more than that. so this comparism does not make sense.

“Bei seinen Programmierern bestand ein Gigabyte aus 109 Bytes und nicht aus 230 Bytes.”

i don’t know if this is the author’s fault, but apparently the person who put the article into the focus system did not compare it with the original, to make sure everything is fine. the 109 should be 10⁹ and the 230 should be 2³⁰ – a huge difference.

“Der Grund: Das Dateisystem von Snow Leopard ist optimal auf das System abgestimmt und insgesamt besser als das Windows-7-FAT-Dateisystem.”

i seriously doubt that windows 7 is using a fat-based file system per default. standard for the last windows version (and for windows nt for a longer time now) is ntfs. the author should definitely know this.

“Windows und OS X nehmen sich beim Kopf-an-Kopf- Rennen nicht viel: 48,22 Frames pro Sekunde (fps) schafft Windows 7, OS X 48,76 fps. Kubuntu hinkt mit nur 43,55 fps hinterher.”

here, the author is missing an important detail: what exactly is measured? a benchmark? a game? a custom application?

“In der Rubrik „Performance“ heißen die Gewinner damit Windows 7 und Mac OS X. Das Apple-System kann schneller Dateien kopieren, während Windows 7 schneller CSS-Websites anzeigt.”

this is not wrong, but i seriously doubt that the file copying really influences the standard users of computers. just think. how many gigabytes you are copying each day? (and besides that, “css-websites” is a very funny expression…)

“Beim Mac OS X fehlt sogar ein Programm fürs Daten-Backup. Wer hier Files sichern will, muss auf das mächtige Time Machine zurückgreifen. Damit sichert das Mac-OS das komplette System auf eine externe Festplatte.”

i don’t get this: first, the author says that osx has no backup software. then, he says how great the included backup software is. i mean, seriously, wtf?

“Kubuntu bietet nur ein einfaches Backup-Tool. Ein komplettes Image des Systems [...] sind damit nicht möglich.”

i don’t know what kind of (gui) backup tools are included with kubuntu, but (almost?) every linux system ships with rsync and tar, two command line programs allowing backups. obviously these are not for the standard user, but they are included. and have been included for a long time.

“Bei der Installation von Programmen gewinnt OS X haushoch: Einfach das gewünschte Tool in den Programmordner ziehen, fertig. Für die Deinstallation einfach den Ordner löschen – simpler geht’s nicht. Keine über die Platte verteilten DLLs, keine Registry-Einträge.”

for the (relatively) short time i was using osx, i noticed that not all programs fall in this category. there are programs (for example, some from apple) which do install stuff at various places in the system and which cannot be installed that easily.

“Kubuntu bietet nur wenige Standardtreiber. Speziell auf die Hardware angepasste Versionen gibt es kaum und wenn, sind sie nur von Informatikstudenten installierbar.”

first, apparently, the author has no clue about the difference between computer scientists and computer technicians. this is really embarrasing.
second, linux contains a huge amount of drivers, in particular for older hardware. nowadays one often has linux drivers for older hardware, for which no windows 7 or osx drivers exist. on the other hand, windows has a huge amount of drivers for modern hardware which osx and linux do not have – but mostly because the manufacturers of the hardware do not produce these drivers. to the end user, this makes no difference, but one could expect that the author mentions this somehow.
well. considering how much information this article contained, a non-trivial amount is wrong or dangerously imprecise. hence, if you need information, do not use this article as a source.

mar de grises.

felix — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 05:58:38 +0000

in my post on wikipedia, i was complaining that the article about the chilenian doom metal band mar de grises has been deleted because it the band is “irrelevant”. hence, i thought it would be a good idea to write a bit about them. when writing the post on wikipedia, i re-started listening to them more intensely, and in fact have been listening to their two albums the tatterdemalion express and draining the waterheart pretty intensively over the last weeks.
their music is a beautiful mixture of dark, gloomy metal, intense doom, beautiful melancholic melodies. progressive elements, sometimes experimental elements, often slow, always dark. it is complex, never boring.
mar de grises is one of the bands you should keep an eye on, as they are rising and they are good.

learning programming.

felix — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:13:03 +0000

while talking with a friend about learning programming, i searched for course material for the best programming course i ever had so far, namely dibo’s “programmierkurs java” (which i praised so often when it comes to this topic). while looking, i found a new website by dibo, called programmierkurs java, which features the lectures (both slides and video recordings!) and exercises. in case you want to learn programming and understand german well enough, take a look there!
ok, so much for advertising. when taking to the friend, another topic was “what is the right programming language to begin with?” in this case, the canidates java and c++ were named. i would definitely go for java, even though i prefer to use c++ myself for most things i program, as java is more allergic to programming errors: if you try to access an array out of the boundaries, it will throw an exception and will not result in unexpected behaviour. moreover, it is widely available (for free!) and easy to set up, there is a huge amount of (good and bad) literature about it, it is not too far off from the real world programming languages which one might use later (in case one wants to learn more than one language, it might also be a good idea to start with something more esoteric, like functional programming). moreover, it can be used both imperatively (which is in particular useful in the beginning) and object oriented (which one shouldn’t touch too early, in my opinion).

backups, again.

felix — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 03:34:53 +0000

i got another external hard drive today. the main reason is that i want to encrypt my (current) backup harddisk, which requires reformatting the disk. but if i do so, i’m left with nothing but the original data on the laptop, and no backup. in case something goes terribly wrong, i’m screwed. i just created an encrypted partition on the disk; this is really pretty easy and not much command line typing is required, in particular if everything is set up: then linux will ask me for the password as soon as i plug the usb cable in, and automatically mount it using that password. that’s how it should be. and so far, it works perfect.
currently, rsync is mirroring my home directory onto the disk. as soon as it is done, i will copy some stuff from the other backup disk over (like my server’s backups) which i don’t have on the laptop’s harddisk (which is 180 gb smaller than each of the backup disks), and after that, my old backup disk will be reformatted as well and also filled.
after that, i will deposit one of the backup drives somewhere outside my appartment: in case something goes wrong (like house burns down, someone decides to break in, …), i still have a backup somewhere. and, as it is encrypted, nobody but me can read it. (even if someone breaks in here, and steals both laptop and backup, they can’t access the data without my password. and yes, i am aware of xkcd.)

prince’s island park, and bow river.

felix — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 07:30:19 +0000

after watching shakespeare’s a midsummer night’s dream, we walked around on prince’s island park, near to the shore of the bow river. the shore area is really nice, it is green while being mostly deserted from mankind. lots of green corners, where one can hide, even though the surrounding freeways are still audible.
here are some impressions:

with shakespeare in the park.

felix — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 07:09:53 +0000

on friday evening and saturday afternoon, i witnessed two performances of with shakespeare in the park, namely romeo and juliet and a midsummer night’s dream. the performances took place in prince’s island park, which i already displayed twice in this blog. both plays were near to the original text, but in a modernized setting. i enjoyed both a lot!
i did not have my camera with me while watching romeo and juliet, but i had it with me for a midsummer night’s dream. here are some impressions:

eating vegetarian in calgary.

felix — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 05:47:32 +0000

last saturday, i was spending the afternoon and evening with a guy from the netherlands who is vegan. hence, for lunch and dinner, we tried to find vegetarian/vegan restaurants. he brought a list from happy cow, and for lunch we decided to go to a vietnamese place called white oak ii. it features a large variety of vegan vietnamese and chinese food, often things which originally contain meat, but where the meat is replaced. this was really amazing. the restaurant is placed in a small vietnamese mall, not obvious to find. i definitively have to go there again.
for dinner, we went to the coup, a vegetarian place at 17th avenue. this was a bit more pricy and stylish, but also very good. a place i also have to go to at least one more time. i had a vegetarian burger there, in fact the first vegetarian burger i ever had: it was really good! as was the spiced (in the sense of chili!) iced chocolate shake (hmmmm) and a cocktail called the “malibu barbie colada” which, despite its funny name, tasted fantastic. for dessert, i had a piece of organic chocolate torte, which in fact is vegan.

dream theater, zappa plays zappa, and more.

felix — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 05:26:08 +0000

last week tuesday, i attended the first non-classic concert this year, namely the calgary instantiation of the progressive nation tour 2009, featuring dream theater, zappa plays zappa, bigelf and scale the summit. originally, pain of salvation and another band should have played instead of bigelf and scale the summit, but unfortunately they had to pull out due to some side effects of the financial crisis. too bad, i would really have liked to see pain of salvation.
i decided to spare my energy in particular for the last two bands, and hence skipped scale the summit. the announced timing for the conference was perfect, and so i arrived directly when bigelf began to play. they were ok, but i was more waiting for the next band. and the very bad part of the evening started during their gig (maybe even before, but i wasn’t there), namely some [insert your favourite curse word here] potheads started smoking weed. it was not as bad as last year, but still very annoying. why can’t these idiots smoke somewhere where they don’t annoy anyone? at least there was no moshpit and the crowd’s density was really pleasant.
after hearing so many good things about them, i was really happy to finally see zappa plays zappa, which is not just another frank zappa cover band, but founded and lead by one of zappas sons. (not that this makes a difference to me, as i have no comparism of zappa plays zappa to other frank zappa cover bands.) i really enjoyed their performance – even though the potheads annoyed the hell out of me.
finally, dream theater entered the stage. they played several songs from their new album, but as usual also a lot older songs, everything including some improvisation and extensions, and several solo performances between the songs.
the concert was really good, even though the potheads repeatedly tried to ruin the whole thing to me. the only way to make it better would be to throw the potheads out and re-add pain of salvation (and maybe reduce to three bands, all of which can play a bit longer in that case).