I just donated $200 to www.laptopgiving.org in the hope of giving a laptop to a child in the developing world.

The initiative is really something. If you can afford it take a moment and check it out as well. Here is a CBS video documentary about it.

Bins:

* Plastic – (the ones with the recycle symbol) have to be put in yellow bags that you get from the townhall*, it has to be the yellow one! Or else your bag is discarded and not picked up. This is collected every two weeks and people put those on the street.
* Paper (Papier & Karton)
* Organic – you will need proper bags for organic trash, don’t use normal plastic ones of course. (bio)
* Glass & Bottles – you have one of these for the street or the area (Glas)
* Other Misc. Trash (Restmüll)

* – Neues Rathaus (Carree)
Foyer
Luisenplatz 5a
64283 Darmstadt, Montag bis Donnerstag 7h – 18h, Freitag 7h – 15.30h

Lots of information: http://www.gruener-punkt.de

I was quite surprised, yet very happy, to discover chaos-darmstadt, a local Chaos Computer Club (CCC) in Darmstadt. CCC is one of the biggest and most influential hacker organizations. It is based in Germany and other German-speaking countries and currently has over 4,000 members. They became world famous when they hacked the German “Bildschirmtext” computer network and succeeded in getting a bank in Hamburg to debit the online account with DM 134,000 in favor of the club. The money was returned the next day in front of the press.

Once I’ve found their website I posted an “Hello” message to their mailing list and in less than one hour I got three replies. It seems they have a meeting each Tuesday (starting at 8PM) at TU Darmstadt – Technischen Universität Darmstadt.

I was even more impressed when I found they are organizing a big event next weekend, called meta rhein main chaos days 111b, where they are going to hold a Capture the Flag security contest, besides other events and lectures.

This type of contest particularly appeals to me, as I have organized 2 or 3 of them back in Portugal in different occasions. It was usually during a LAN party or an local event where me and some friends would set up such a thing. It’s the type of thing where you meet a lot of interested geeks and where you learn a lot (resulting from the sleep deprivation of long hours at the computer of course).

Well, this one seems pretty well organized and I’m looking forward. I’ll even try to find myself a local team to join if I can (the registration period for new teams is already closed). They have over 20 teams signed up now and most of them are external, only participating via the Internet, which is quite interesting as well.

Hi,

After a lot of work, the Mars Express Flight Control Team here at ESA/ESOC have got the Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC) back in operation. :-)

As you know, the VMC is mounted on Mars Express. In 2003, it provided simple, low-tech images of Beagle lander separation, and this completed its original operational role.

While it's not a scientific instrument, it does provide fantastic views of Mars - including crescent views of the planet not obtainable from Earth. VMC's wide field of view also provides global images of Mars - something that is not currently provided by any other spacecraft.

In 2007, the Mars Express Flight Control Team began a test campaign to see whether the camera could be used to image Mars. ((It wasn't even known if the camera would function at all after over three years of inactivity in deep space.)) But the VMC did, indeed, come back to life and the results to date have been very encouraging.

We plan to publish the new "VMC minisite" on Friday, 22 August, around 15:00 CEST. This mail is being sent to a select group of about a dozen bloggers, space writers and media as advance notice, and I hope you will plan to surf by to take a look at the results. Furthermore, we need your help!

Help us with the VMC

• VMC activities are unique in that the camera is operated by the Flight Control Team on a time-available basis (and not by a team of scientists).
  
• Starting Friday, images from the VMC (we call it the 'Mars Webcam') will be made available via the ESA website as rapidly as possible and whenever we have something worth showing - on the understanding that the VMC project is strictly a lowest-priority, "as available" activity.
  
• Open invitation for image feedback:: You can assist the Mars Express team with additional processing of the raw image data files as well as interpretation: What do you see? What part of the Mars surface is being shown? Can you identify any geographical features? What regions of the atmosphere or atmospheric components do you see?
  
• It would be fabulous if you would help spread word of the new site and encourage your readers to visit, enjoy the image galleries and take part, if they can!

((We would be delighted to receive copies of any good results that you get - either processed images or interpretations (more details on the site) - and we hope you'll allow us to publish the best submissions.))

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/VMC/index.html

So, after signing up for the service back in Portugal it was time to install the antenna so we could watch portuguese TV here in Darmstadt. I haven’t stuck the thing into the wall yet but I wanted to test it before the weekend so after a lot of pointing at the air (I didn’t use a compass) I got it to work. The thing you see serving as a support is a rotative chair without it’s top part :)