digital home of MacSlow

Combine this…

… with that tune (grabbed via the U1 music-store of course *g*), shake well add some “Autobahn” and “Landstrasse” on top and you’ll get a grin going from one ear to the other!

Not that I’m much of a soccer-fan - but hey - Germany won the fourth round. Well done folks! Only do I feel bad for my colleague and good friend Neil. He’s such a big soccer fan and I cannot imagine the agony he must have lived through… especially for the not given second goal for England.

I even probably made it onto belgian local TV, when taking part in a capoeira-show at the Afro-Latino festival helping out our friends of Mundo Capoeira in Bree, Belgium on Saturday.

This weekend I really released the freak in me… shaked the stress away… was just myself. This I need to do more often, does wonders to the state of mind!

The time of the year has come again, where we invite all capoeiristas and people curious about brazilian culture to our little brazilian corner right here in Aachen, Germany. This is our capoeira-groups batizado, a very important annual event for every capoeirista. But even if you are not into capoeira (yet), come anyway! There is more offered during the weekend, which will easily grab your attention and guarantee you a fabulous time.

(click the image)

On friday, 19th of october, be here at 18:00 CET (16:00 UTC) for capoeira lessons and rodas.

On saturday, 20th of october, workshops and rodas happen here (link shows route from main train-station to gym). The fun starts at 10:00 CET (08:00 UTC). In the evening, starting at 22:00 CET (20:00 UTC), there will be our “Festa do Brasil”-party happening at the café “Status” (link shows route from main train-station to café).

On sunday, 21st of october, workshops, batizado and rodas happen at the same place as on saturday and start at 11:00 CET (09:00 UTC).

So come and visit us during this weekend of october, if you love brazilian culture or love to get to know it. You will be amazed! Should you have further questions regarding the event, you can either visit our groups web-forum here (german, english or portuguese are ok) or email me (german and english is ok, better not try testing my portuguese).

BTW, I will not be able to make it to the batizado, because I have promised to take part in aLANtejo in Évora, Portugal. At this OpenSource-event of the local university there, I will be part of the jury and give a talk about gtk+ and OpenGL. *sigh* life is hard if you have two passions of equal importance

Follow this link, and have fun watching!

We (banGang) were asked to do a few shows at certain benefit-events in the next few months. When this happens normal training routine shifts a little away from pure martial-arts towards stage-fighting. Coming up with visually interesting, entertaining and funny (pretended) fights is anything but easy. Here’s a glimpse of a first idea for 10% of a show…

(click to play back, ogg/theora, ~16 MBytes)

This is still very rough. For a show we have to rehearse every bit until it is completely clean and yields a nice flow for the audience.

We (banGang) are doing our first gathering. Should you be into general flipping, tricking, breaking or the like you will know what this means. A weekend full of acrobatics-fun! If you are in the vicinity of Aachen, Cologne or Bonn consider it and take a look here for further info and contact-addresses.

This is what the gym looks like…

Apart from hacking on graphics-related stuff the other part of my brain is keen to be occupied with being in mid-air… the longer the better. While Guadec was not the ideal environment for flipping-sessions (way too hot and humid, so much cool OpenSource-distractions) I still got a few opportunities to throw my limbs around. Daniel Holbach of Ubuntu-fame, was the friendly camera-man to capture some of my gravity-antagonizing you can see below. My folks from banGang (german and english) will be very happy to see, that I represent our team everywhere.

(click to play back, ogg/theora, ~6.8 MBytes)

(click to play back, avi/h.264, ~5.4 MBytes)

For the marketing-team… “Using Gnome makes you flip around of enjoyment!” Ok, next time I do this I will wear the foot-shirt Should anybody have futher footage or photos of me looking for trouble with the gravity-police, please send them to me. Thanks in advance!

It’s nice to read Bryan’s words about his first encounter with the magnificent brazilian martial-art: capoeira. Bryan, let me tell you, this initial ardour you witnessed does never wear off again. I started almost six years ago, training with the group “Oficina da Capoeira”. I hope to get a few moments of beach-time during guadec and practise some combos and acrobatics. Should there be any other capoeiristas among the guadec attendees, please drop me a line so we may be able to arrange a little roda or something. Capoeira is something once started you cannot stop again ever! It’s very addictive, full of energy and expressive… much like OpenSource.

Not everything in my world revolves about IT, OpenSource, Linux and listening to podcasts made by strange animals like this…

named Jono Bacon among others *g*

Martial-arts (more specifically capoeira) and tricking (note: capoeira != tricking and tricking != capoeira) is a way to rock my world outside of Linux and OpenSource. It is always cool to see a god-like athlete like Sesshoumaru, who packs so much artistic style in his routine, perform. Almost rocketing hissing in the air with each jump, flip and twist this show-cases an ability, which could fill his pocket-book quite easily. I am wondering when folks like him are going to land some advertising-contract with the likes of Nike, adidas or whoever or will be featured in the next flick from Jackie Chan.

On the weekend-trip to our capoeira-groups anual batizado (in Berchem, Belgium) we listened to a few nice boogaloo-, forro- and capoeira-tunes to get in the right mood for two days full of roda, flipping and generally a good time. With the rush we were in, when getting started on saturday, I forgot to take my berimbau with me. No chance to practise playing music with some of the experts. Damn! There were many guests from all over europe visiting this event… some even from as far as down under, the land of eyers-rock, koalas, kangaroos and digeridoos.

I finally learnt to get this macaquinho-movement down. I’ve been trying to learn to pull off correctly for almost a year now.

I hope to get some photos and videos of this batizado uploaded here soon.