My Audiobook Collection

With the exception of books on software development, I don't really read a lot of printed books any more, as I prefer to listen to audiobooks (and podcasts). They are just such a time saver. This is my audiobook collection so far:

• 1776 (Unabridged), Part 1
• 1776 (Unabridged), Part 2
• 50 Philosophy Ideas You Really Need To Know (Unabridged)
• A Short History of Nearly Everything (Unabridged), Part 1
• A Short History of Nearly Everything (Unabridged), Part 2
• A Short History of Nearly Everything (Unabridged), Part 3
• Abraham Lincoln: A Life 1809-1837: Lincoln's Frontier Background Shapes the Future President (Unabridged)
• Abraham Lincoln: A Life 1843-1849: A Win in Congress and a Battle Against Slavery (Unabridged)
• Abraham Lincoln: A Life 1849-1855: A Mid-Life Crisis and a Re-Entry to Politics (Unabridged)
• Abraham Lincoln: A Life 1855-1858 (Unabridged) Part 1
• Abraham Lincoln: A Life 1855-1858 (Unabridged) Part 2
• Abraham Lincoln: A Life 1859-1860 (Unabridged)
• Alexander the Great (Unabridged), Part 1
• Alexander the Great (Unabridged), Part 2
• American Lion: A Biography of President Andrew Jackson Part 1
• American Lion: A Biography of President Andrew Jackson Part 2
• Ancient Philosophy (Unabridged)
• Außer Dienst
• Biography: Attila The Hun
• Business Startup: Launch Your Dream (Unabridged)
• China. Das alte und das neue Reich der Mitte
• Churchill
• Das Buch vom geglückten Leben
• Das Mittelalter - Teil 1 und 2 (P.M. History)
• Das Philosophen Portal. Ein Schlüssel zu klassischen Werken
• Das Reich der Pharaonen (P.M. History)
• David Hume (Unabridged)
• Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose (Unabridged)
• Der 30jährige Krieg
• Der Mensch. Vom Ursprung der Kultur
• Die Kraft des Lebens. Schopenhauers Welt als Wille und Vorstellung
• Die Völkerwanderung
• Elizabeth and Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens
• Fire in the East - Warrior of Rome (Unabridged) Part 1
• Fire in the East - Warrior of Rome (Unabridged) Part 2
• From Start-Up to Success in Internet Years
• Geheimnis Sterben (Shortbooks)
• Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (Unabridged) Part 1
• Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (Unabridged) Part 2
• Hannibal: One Man Against Rome (Unabridged), Part 1
• Hannibal: One Man Against Rome (Unabridged), Part 2
• Heroes of History (Unabridged), Part 1
• Heroes of History (Unabridged), Part 2
• Immanuel Kant (Unabridged)
• Inside Larry's and Sergey's Brain (Unabridged)
• John Adams
• Kleine Geschichte der Philosophie 1
• Kleine Geschichte der Philosophie 2
• Lion in the White House (Unabridged)
• Nietzsche für Eilige
• Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (Unabridged) Part 1
• Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (Unabridged) Part 2
• Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (Unabridged) Part 3
• Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (Unabridged) Part 4
• Philosophie der Stoa
• Philosophische Vitamine. Die Kunst des guten Lebens
• Resolute Determination (Unabridged)
• Schnellkurs Altes Ägypten
• Schnellkurs Deutsche Geschichte
• Schnellkurs Griechische Antike
• Schuld und Sühne (Teil 1 und 2)
• Schuld und Sühne (Teil 3 und 4)
• Schuld und Sühne (Teil 5 und 6)
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change (Unabridged), Part 1
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change (Unabridged), Part 2
• The Book of Leadership Wisdom
• The Death of Ivan Ilych (Unabridged)
• The First Americans: Prehistory - 1600 (Unabridged)
• The God Delusion (Unabridged) Part 1
• The God Delusion (Unabridged) Part 2
• The Hundred Years War, Volume 1 (Unabridged), Part 1
• The Hundred Years War, Volume 1 (Unabridged), Part 2
• The Killer Angels (Unabridged), Part 1
• The Killer Angels (Unabridged), Part 2
• The Late Roman Empire (Unabridged)
• The March of the Ten Thousand (Unabridged)
• The Modern Scholar: Alexander of Macedonia
• The Modern Scholar: Antiquity to Renaissance
• The Modern Scholar: Discovering the Philosopher in You: The Big Questons in Philosophy
• The Modern Scholar: Epochs of European Civilization: Reformation to the 21st Century
• The Modern Scholar: Ethics: A History of Moral Thought
• The Modern Scholar: Evolutionary Psychology I: The Science of Human Nature
• The Modern Scholar: Hebrews, Greeks and Romans: Foundations of Western Civilization
• The Modern Scholar: Journeys of the Great Explorers: Columbus to Cook
• The Modern Scholar: Liberty and Its Price: Understanding the French Revolution (Unabridged)
• The Modern Scholar: Masters of Enterprise (Unabridged)
• The Modern Scholar: Shakespeare: The Seven Major Tragedies
• The Modern Scholar: Six Months That Changed the World
• The Modern Scholar: The American Presidency
• The Modern Scholar: The Russian Revolution: From Tsarism to Bolshevism
• The Modern Scholar: Wars That Made the Western World
• The Modern Scholar: Winston Churchill: Man of the Century (Unabridged)
• The Modern Scholar: World War l: The Great War and the World It Made
• The Modern Scholar: World's First Superpower: The Rise of the British Empire, 1497 to 1901
• The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (Unabridged) Part 1
• The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (Unabridged) Part 2
• The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (Unabridged) Part 3
• The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (Unabridged) Part 4
• The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (Unabridged) Part 5
• The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (Unabridged) Part 6
• The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (Unabridged) Part 7
• The Second Coming of Steve Jobs (Unabridged)
• The Steve Jobs Way (Unabridged)
• The Story of Philosophy: From Kant to William James and the American Pragmatists (Unabridged), Part 1
• The Story of Philosophy: From Kant to William James and the American Pragmatists (Unabridged), Part 2
• The Universe in a Nutshell (Unabridged)
• This Sceptred Isle 07 (Unabridged)
• This Sceptred Isle 08 (Unabridged)
• This Sceptred Isle Vol 4 (Unabridged)
• This Sceptred Isle Vol 5 (Unabridged)
• This Sceptred Isle Vol 6 (Unabridged)
• This Sceptred Isle, Volume 1: 55 BC-1087 Julius Caesar to William the Conqueror
• This Sceptred Isle: Empire, Volume 3: 1876- 1947
• Truman
• U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth (Unabridged) Part 1
• U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth (Unabridged) Part 2
• Unbroken (Unabridged) Part 1
• Unbroken (Unabridged) Part 2
• Vom Glück, vom Schmerz und von der Seelenruhe. Eine Auswahl aus Senecas Schriften
• Wer bin ich und wenn ja wieviele
• World War One (Unabridged)

Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past

Watched the movie "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" ("Womanizer" in German (?)) on the weekend, together with my wife. Most memorable are some quotes from Michael Douglas' character "Uncle Wayne", like that one (at a men's restroom):

"Whoa! Never touch a man while he's hanging a wire."

And of course another historical misinformation I noticed. The bride's father, "Sarge" (an ex-Marine), mentions something along the line that "the Korean War caused more American casualties than Vietnam", which is of course not true. Korea ranks #4 behind WW2 (#1), WW1 (#2) and Vietnam (#3) (and that only considering international conflicts, so this excludes the American Civil War). I whispered to my wife immediately, she nodded. She knows me well.

TV-Guide Descriptions Of History Movies

Hollywood movies on world history events are often criticized for their historic inaccuracies. Many of those inaccuracies, at least when they are of a minor kind, are fine for me as long as it's clear they are intended for some good reason, e.g. a better storyline.

I noticed that kind of criticism lately in Austria's most widespread tv-guide. "Director A did this wrong, Director B did not adhere to historic facts", and so on. Which is kind of ironic, given the fact the same tv-guide tends to mess up facts as well. Major facts. And they do so without any logical reason.

Two recent examples:

Movie "The Gladiator" (2000): The tv-guide's movie description referred to the battle scene at the beginning as "Battle of the Teutoburg Forest". But the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest (AKA "Varusschlacht" in German) took place in the 9 A.D. when Augustus was emperor. Marcus Aurelius, the dying emperor in "Gladiator", reigned from 161 A.D. to 180 A.D., and was involved in the so-called Marcomannic Wars at this time (he actually died in the city of Vindobona, today's Vienna). The movie at no point mentions the Teutoburg Forest.

Movie "Alexander" (2004): Here they talked about Anthony Hopkin's role as Ptolemy, and state that "he was Alexander the Great's teacher". That's nonsense. As everyone and his sister knows, Aristotle was Alexander's teacher, a fact that is shown and repeated several times during the movie (Christopher Plummer plays Aristotle). Ptolemy was a childhood friend, then one of Alexander's most capable generals, and ended up being Pharao in Egypt in the political and military turmoil following Alexander's death. This was the foundation of the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt, with Cleopatra among its most famous members.

Yeah, Right

Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.

(Isaac Asimov)

Philosophy Podcasts

My passion for history is a means of ensuring a kind of healthy work-life-balance, a distraction from my daytime job in software development. I am doing a lot of reading on history, podcast listening, plus I visit museums and watch TV documentaries.

However I decided I needed a second branch of interest so that not all of my sparetime gets soaked up by musing on the importance of the cavalry in Napoleon's Russian campaign or stuff like that.

I did some basic reading on philosophy several years ago, and I am planning to continue on that trail. Here are several great philosophy podcasts that I recently started to listen to on a regular basis:

• Philosophy: The Classics
• Philosophy Bites
• The Philosophy Podcast
• Philosophy Talk
• Das philosophische Radio (german)

See How Fast You Can Type!

I don't consider myself to be a good typist. I am not really very fast, and what's worse I often make mistakes, most of the time swapping adjoined characters (I am sure there must be a mental or fine-motoric explanation for that ;-) ). Furthermore I need to gaze at the keyboard every 10 seconds or so - maybe just to calibrate my fingers on the keys, I don't know.

So what I do is trying to compensate for those shortcomings by applying as many keyboard shortcuts as possible when coding, which probably makes me gain some time again.

It's funny because I had taken typing classes back at school (those were the days of electronic typewriters), but for one reason or another did not apply the ten-finger system when writing code for the first several years (I'd rather call it some kind of 6-finger freestyle ;-) ). This seemed ridiculous after a while so I bought one of those typing tutor software packages and relearned how the ten-finger system worked on a PC in the mid-90s.

But hey, I just scored 363 characters per minute on this speed typing test. I candidly admit I had one advantage though: Being a history buff I recognized the predefined text (Abraham Lincoln's famous Gettysburg Address).

Famous Birthdays

My son Thomas was born one week ago, on November 21st. We are very happy and grateful he is doing fine. And thanks for all the well-wishing.

As he is giving my wife and me a little break right now, I did a quick search on which famous people share the same birthday with him. For November 21st the most admissible to me seems to be Voltaire.



For my older son Alexander's birthday (August 6th) it would be his namesake Alexander Fleming.



And finally regarding my birthday, December 26th, all I came up with first was Mao Zedong, who was born in 1893. Gulp. I had to dig further.

Luckily I found a much more admirable celebrity, and at the same time a founding-father of my profession: Charles Babbage.



Yep, that's definitely better. ;-)