It's not a blog, it's a feature

A few pictures taken from our trip to Vienna.
Take a clooser look on the last pictures: Flocksi, Mugsy, HPK and me in Rammstein-grey style!

The proof is on this picture - taken out of our kitchen window

We (Max, Jakob and I) decided to undergo our decks a last test before the Magic-Event of the Year: The PCCP Magic-Masters

So we went to the Spielraum in Salzburg to play an Extended-Tournament. It was my most successfull tournament ranked at a terrific 4th place with the standing of 4:1, loosing only one game against my friend Max (man this match was hard and the result was really close).
I won against a R/G beatdown, a Ravager Affinity, a B/W Clerics deck (my brother Jakob) and a Blue Combo-Deck.
Jakob finished 14. and Max finished 9. - chance for revenge will come soon, at The PCCP Magic-Masters

Links: My DCI-Rating

I remember me as a teenager, sitting in front of the TV, Thursday night, and watching the X-Files. Then the way downstairs to bed, in the darkness, scaried but very fascinated by the stories.
Nowadays, with buying the X Files Season 1 Collectors Box, I have some kind of revival: with the same fascination I watch the series of the first season.

My most favourite Episodes are:

• Ice: Mulder and Scully in an isolated arctic research center with an alien parasite
  
• Eve: Two young girls with their father dying behave the same way - like they are one
  
• Fire: A pyrokinetic mass murder with a weakness for women with red hair ist the aim of Mulder and Scullys chase
  
• The Erlenmeyer Flask: The great final of the first season with the dead of Deap Throat and a mysterious experiment with alien DNA.
  

Now lets start with Season 2 - I WANT TO BELIEVE

I don't want to set up a discussion if the last goal against Barcelona was regular (in fact it definitely was not) or what kind of play is the most successfull. I only want to tell you - for the last time - which kind of soccer I want to see: offensive, attractive play and encouragement from the first to the last minute. So Barcelona is the team of my choice and a soccer dream of me is to live in Barcelona and to have a season ticket. By the way, if I've seen such an attractive, terrific game, it is not that terrible to have my team take the loss - it was great, see you next year in the final.

P.S.: There is one last important thing - Bayern Munich must not be the champion, that kind of soccer doesn't earn that award ...

Caused by the decision to realise a project with three different operating systems (Windows, Linux, Mac Panther), where I want to take the Linux part, I've decided to take a first dip into .Net development with Mono in Suse Linux 9.1

So I use Monodevelop and wrote my first Webservice which (suprisingly) works without a problem with xsp.
So I'm really exited which success our programming project tonight at the PCCP clubhouse will bring or if we will fail to realise this project.

By the way: I am using Suse Linux 9.1 really intensive currently - so this entry is written with the satisfaction of the progress of the Linux development.

Yesterday we started our Programming Project with a few members of PCCP (Max, Dani, HPK and I) - and the problemes where hugh (what does not really suprise me):

• first we spend about 1,5 hours to install Mono on Suse Linux 9.1, especially to run MonoDevelop was the difficulty. The solution was simple but late expected: to install GNOME fully
  
• installing Mono on MacOs X miscarried caused by a damaged dmg-file
  
• a simple webservice was fast written, but when we want to access the SQL Server on Windows Server 2k we failed. We all believe this is caused by the name resoultion but we have no solution for this problem yet - maybe SQLClient could it be, so research should be done until our next meeting
  
• HPK and Max dabbled in using GTK+ on Windows XP
  

Last weekend (19.03.) the second PCCP Magic Masters took at our clubhouse place.
We were 15 players, five from our club (Woifi, Alfi, Mugsy, Jean and me), my siblings Judith and Jakob, Mugsys girlfriend Moni and her brother Mike, Andi and Mike K. from the last tournament, our Magic Master and Teacher Bifi and three Magic-Freaks, who I got to know from a Magic-Forum, Wolfgang, Max and Rainer.

- At the beginning it was really stressful (to organize the tournament, the assignment, ...) but then I had time to play my first round against Wolfgang. He played a deck based on a infinite life combo with Nomads en-Kor, Daru Spiritualist and Starlit Sanctum. First game I managed his combo by killing his key cards with my red shooters and killing him with my fast creatures. Second game he was in his combo in the third round and I was without a chance and third game it was a thought fight but he won. In all of this three games I was not able to play Sulfuric Vortex which would have stopped his combo - bad luck!
First game - first loose, great start ... :-(
- Second round was against Mike who played a Ravager-Affinity-Deck, normally a great matchup for me - but he killed me really fast with Ornithopter and Cranial Plating. So it was time to take my best cards against Artifact decks, Artifact Mutation and Naturalize from my sideboard. Second game was an easy win, because I imprinted Artifact Mutation in Isochron Scepter - he was without a chance to win. Third game was really close (he played three Disciple of the Vault) but I took the win.
- Third round was an important game against Moni, to fix my second place in the preelimination. She played a powerful Psychatog-Control deck. Suprisingly I had no problems to win, her Mana Leak in Isochron Scepter was handled by my solid mana base and she had no answer for my Troll Ascetic.
- Fourth round was no problem against Woifi and his Affinty deck, the deck was without Arcbound Ravager and he made many mistakes.
So I finished on second place and had to play against my sister Judith.

- Round before the quarterfinal: Judith played a R/G beatdown, shoot deck, which is really funny but I knew the key to stop her (because I made her deck) and so she was not able to play her most powerful weapon Shivan Wurm - I killed her both games with my creatures and specially with imprinted Shock and Magma Jet in Isochron Scepter.

- Quarterfinal: against my brother and his B/W Clerics Deck. First game he killed me really fast with his zombie tokens from Rotlung Reanimator. Second and third game I won both because of my Isochron Scepter, my creatures were all removed with his bugging Chainers Edict and Diabolic Edict.

- Semifinal: against Bifi and his Minds Desire Deck, who helped me many times with ideas (and cards) for my deck.
First game we played about 6 rounds and he had a shortage of life, but managed to play his combo before I was able to kill him.
Second game I played my boarded Trinisphere, which means the destruction of his combo. Her tried to remove it with Echoing Truth, but I used Shunt to change the target and so the win was mine. Third round I made a decisive mistake: I believed that I could manage his combo (Tendrils of Agony, Brain Freeze) with Shunt, but this spell changes only one target and the others still killed me - if I had known that I would have taken muligans till I got Trinisphere. So he was the winner, against me and later of the whole tournament.

I finished at 4th place and was satisfied by my success and the fun to play Magic all day long.

Links:
Photos and Results on the PCCP Homepage

Today is the perfect day to sit in front of the PC working on my master thesis and listening to music (beside of reading an exciting book ...) - and what is the best music for this day - CREED! I really love this kind of music: harmonic, powerful guitar play covered with this powerful but also soft vocals by Scott Stapp. I've got all 3 CDs and enjoy to listen to my favourite songs: Beautiful, Wosh away those tears, Say I, What if, Faceless Man, What's this life for, Freedom Fighter, ... - I don't know many bands where every song is that great. It was a shock for me last year in June when Creed announced that the separation of their band is a hard fact - so my dream to watch a concert of Creed will never become true.

But maybe there is a last chance: I want to start an online petition for a last Creed concert in Austria - maybe if there are about 1 Millionen signs of real fans, we could convince them of playing a last concert in Austria.
Don't wait - sign my petition with a comment and we will meet at the concert ...

Links:
German Creed Fan-Homepage