Timeline: Response Times by Cell Phone Type
Here is a funny little (not so serious) statistic about iPhone users and their response times:
After sending an invitation to about 20 people with the request of responding within 72 hours I kept track of the timestamps when the answers arrived.
Just for the sake of curiosity I separated the answers into two groups: People with iPhones and people with other cell phones.
And here is the result in form of a timeline:
Biking Around the Region
After several weeks of laziness it was again time for little bike tour around the region.
Apple Store Hamburg Grand Opening
Yesterday, the brand new [Apple Store in Hamburg](http://www.apple.com/de/retail/alstertal/) had its grand opening. I don't know how many people came to be part of this event but there were a lot!
We arrived at about 8am, 2 hours before the store opened its doors for the public. The first guy in the line said that he was waiting since 1am.
CUDA port of OpenSteer now public
During the last months I was busy writing my bachelor's thesis about parallelizing the [OpenSteer](http://opensteer.sf.net) toolkit using [NVIDIA's CUDA](http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_home.html) technology to make use of the power of today's GPUs.
OpenSteer is an open-source toolkit to test and simulate [steering behaviors of autonomous characters](http://www.red3d.com/cwr/steer/) in animations or video games. Steering behaviors are responsible
to navigate a character around its world in a natural way while reacting on influences of its environment, for example to avoid collisions with obstacles.
The source code of this port is now available on [github](http://github.com/simonboots/OpenSteerCUDA/).
My bachelor's thesis about this project is also available and can be found [here](http://www.stiefels.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Parallelizing-the-OpenSteer-toolkit-using-GPUs.pdf).
On Vacation (with iPhone)
I just came back from a very nice vacation I spent in New York City.
This city is amazing and there is so much to see and to do. One of the best vacations I've ever done.
Two weeks earlier during packing I thought about leaving my MacBook Pro at home. After all, it is a vacation and I don't want to spent too much time with it. But then I realized that there is almost nothing that would require a notebook during vacation when I take my iPhone with me.
Pro Git book now available
The Pro Git book, written by Scott Chacon and published by [Apress](http://apress.com/) is [now available](http://progit.org) for free. A printed version will be released [soon](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1430218339?ie=UTF8&tag=prgi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1430218339).
Scott also [published](http://github.com/progit/progit) the "source code" of the book under a [Creative Commons license](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/).
New Project: Visualization of the Best-Fit Placement Heuristic
Often one has to solve the problem of arranging objects so that they use as less room as possible. In the days before Christmas, for example, people try to utilize the expensive wrapping paper fully in order to save to money for a second roll. Depending on the arrangement of the presents this may work, or not. In the industry, a can factory tries to stamp different sized cans out of a roll of sheet metal. To minimize the waste (and to save money) the company has to think about the cutting of the metal sheet.
Both of these examples describe a problem known as the [two-dimensional cutting stock problem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_stock_problem).
Projects Moved to Github
Just want to let you know that I've moved the repositories of some of my projects to [github](http://github.com/simonboots). I think they are better off there as they are here.
The [project](/projects) pages have already been updated.
More projects coming soon...
Still Alive
It's been almost 2 months since I last wrote something on this blog. Don't worry, I'm still alive. 
The last few weeks I've been busy writing my bachelor's thesis and that's why I had to neglect some things. One of them was keeping this blog updated.
Fortunately, this is over now and I hope to find some more time to write blog posts again.
Germany’s Plan to Implement Internet Filters by Law
There is a nice article written by Johnny Haeusler from [spreeblick.com](http://www.spreeblick.com) about our (Germany's) government's plans to filter the internet using the excuse of fighting against child abuse.
Fighting against child abuse... sounds right, doesn't it? Sure! But just putting stop signs in front of those disgusting webpages (by using DNS redirections) does surely NOT help ANY child. This crime has to be fought against at the roots - the families that abuse their childs. Implementing internet filters by law is a very dangerous plan - and it will (maybe not tomorrow or next year) be used to censor the Internet.
Even if you don't live in Germany, I think it can't hurt to see what's going on right now in the land of poets and "thinkers".
Johnny's [article](http://www.spreeblick.com/2009/05/13/germanys-plan-to-implement-internet-filters-by-law/) is written in english, so please take a few minutes and read it. Thanks!
