General

Today I bought the book "Russendisko" by [[de:Wladimir Kaminer|Wladimir Kaminer]]. I heard about it before, and saw a very long and interesting interview with the author on 3SAT, but never had the opportunity to read anything written by him. Anyway, after I bought the book, I started reading it in the tram, and I continued reading it after I came home, and now, I'm finished, and I enjoyed it so much like I haven't enjoyed a book in at least 5 years. A wonderful, simple and straight style of writing, a nice style of telling stories, and the book is, well, a collection of short stories that the author or some of his friends experienced. Imagine a Quentin Tarantino movie, but with more episodes, more fun, and less violence and all the other weird Tarantino shit (although I do enjoy his movies, no fear). So, a wonderful book, which I can only recommend. I think I will have to buy some of his other books.

If you want to get a (relatively) good and cheap mobile phone, and you live in Austria, get a Motorola A925 with 3Reload from 3. They don't advertise this kind of mobile phone, but the (out-of-stock) Nokia 7600 instead. The advantage of the A925 to the 7600: the A925 comes with UIQ 2.0 as user interface (Symbian OS as operating system), and with 3Reload, the phone costs only EUR 99,- (without any contract, you'd pay EUR 799,- for that phone). So, if you want to do some Symbian programming, and want to start without wasting too much money, this definitely the device to start with.