Yihaa, finally it’s weekend! Admittedly I spent today in clearing and cleaning our flat, along the way I went shopping. And of course I forgot the citron tea and had to drive to the supermarket once again. After that we had self-made pizza *yummy* and now I will bake muffins.

If you want to bake some muffins as well, here’s my recipe:

Angi’s marble muffins deluxe

• 240 grams wholemeal
• 280 grams meal Type 405
• 4 tsp. baking powder (1 package)
• 1 tsp. natron
• 1 package vanilla sugar
• 100 grams milk chocolate
• 100 grams white chocolate
• 2 eggs
• 280 grams brown sugar
• 160 grams margarine
• 560 milliliter milk
• Unsweetened cocoa
• 1 package icing sugar
• Food coloring
• Sugar patterns, chocolate granules, mini smarties or similar for decorating

1. Preheat the oven on 180° C.
2. Mix meal, baking powder, natron and vanilla sugar in a bowl.
3. Stir the sugar with milk, margarine and eggs in a second bowl to a smooth mass.
4. Stir the meal mixture carefully together with the sugar mass.
5. Divide the dough into two bowls and add cocoa to the second bowl at discretion till the dough is fine dark brown.
6. Hash the chocolate in small pieces and mix the milk chocolate with the light dough, the white chocolate with the dark one.
7. Pour the dough alternately like for a marble cake into muffin forms and bake it at 180° C (circulation air 160° C) 20-25 minutes golden brown.
8. Let the muffins cool about 5 minutes on the tray.
9. Stir the icing sugar with a little water and the food coloring to a ropy mass and spread the muffins with it. Decorate the muffins with granules and smarties.

Feel free to tell me if you like my muffins!

• … if the light inside the fridge really turns off when you close it?
• … why Dalmatians have points?
• … if your pet in secret thinks that it winds you round it’s little finger?
• … how much toilet paper you would need to wrap the whole world?
• … if Bill Gates has got golden water-taps in his house?
• … how it would feel to be a turtle?
• … if dogs really see black and white?
• … why the Milka cow is lilac?
• … how they put the toothpaste two coloured inside the tubes?
• … how the ship comes into the bottle?

And if you’ve got an answer to one of these questions, feel free to post it!

This night I had such a curious dream that I have to tell it. It began with a visit on my parents. This is certainly not unusual ’cause I regularly visit my parents. But don’t panic, it will get curious soon!

My sister and me were sitting in my ancient room which is located in the attic, hence it has got such an aslope bottom hung window. This window was open and we were looking on our garden, when suddenly a huge thick polar bear appeared directly in front of the window. He was climbing around on the roof and now looking forthright in our faces.

We stayed motionless and the bear restarted soaring up the roof. We jumped at the chance and closed the window hastily. Wise decision, because soon the bear was in front of the window again, sniffing around there. We left him there and ran downstairs. My sister screamed: “Moooooooooom! There is a polar bear on our roof!” I took the phone and dialed 110 (german emergency call).

But when I explained to the lady on the phone that there was a polar bear on our roof and she should please send somebody, she answered: “Sorry, this is absolutely not possible at the moment! All colleagues are in deployment, there is nobody we could send.” “Fire brigade, technical social aid?” I suggested. I heard her hastily typing on a keyboard, then she answered: “Oh, you are in luck! The technical aid is in your street at the moment. I will tell them to pick up the polar bear as well.”

I hung up and my mom, my sister and me ran to the window for watching the street – and didn’t believe our eyes. A huge breakdown crane was standing there, elevating a cabrio from the street. Inside the cabrio three occupants were fighting against two metres thick hailstones which were on the verge of crushing them. Left to the crane we saw three police cars with activated hooters were standing around, the soundscape reminded of a Godzilla movie. People were running around all about, screaming and bandying stones about. Across from us a house was burning.

My mother said: “Soon they will start throwing the stones on our house, too. We should close the shutters!” So we lunged for closing all shutters. After having finished we all met in the corridor, as suddenly the door bell rang. We opened the shutters a bit and saw a dark-skinned woman with her little daughter. They were afraid of the stones and the hail, so we let them in.

My mom asked the woman if they polar bear was still on our roof, which she negated. The technical aid hat gotten him down by shooting him, and now he was lying in our front garden. Indeed the bear was lying there, loudly snoring. He seemed to be only anaesthetised.

Mom presented our guestroom to the woman ’cause everybody was very tired. Then we all went to bed. Outside the hooters were still howling, people were screaming loudly, and the polar bear was snoring away peacefully in our front garden.

Some of you may already have heard of Second Life. It’s a kind of online computer game/chat with an 3D virtual reality in which you can create a character for exploring the SL world. It bears a certain analogy to The Sims – but only a smidge.

I was brought to Second Life by Jale, she suggested me to drop over. So I created an account and downloaded the software you need for playing. The basic account is for free, for a premium account which enables owning virtual land you have to pay.

In Second Life you can actually do everything waht you can do in your real life. Build houses, trade, dance, have pets, just hang around… and even a couple of things more like for example teleport and fly. The in-world unit-of-trade, the Linden Dollar, can be converted to real money, so there are already real SL enterprises. And Second Life keeps on growing – every day there are new features to discover!

Exploring the world and the interactions of the figures is so much fun that you have to be attentive not to forget the time. Moreover you can customise your avatar (your figure) at will, the possibilities are nearly infinite. Everybody can look like he or she wants. Today red hair, tomorrow blonde and then black again? In Second Life this is offhand possible!

And this is me in Second Life. Although this actually changes all along…

Yesterday was the so-called Shutdown Day – a day on which we shall switch off our Computers to enjoy the real life once again. Quite a few bloggers and hompage owners participated in this campaign, whereby I finally was called attention to it: Wanted to pop in Jott!s blog and noticed that the page was within reach.

I don’t think this campaign really makes sense – when I’m not keen on my PC I don’t need a shutdown day for keeping it off. But for all who need it…

Today I released the new layout of Angi’s World. For a long time it rather annoys me that every day several spammers are up to mischief on the homepage. Now I finally took the consequences and designed the whole page based on WordPress. Together with a few plugins it gives a really passable CMS.

There are still some bugs to repair and even content is not complete yet, but on the whole I am really satisfied with myself. How do you like the new layout?

I have been selected for testing the new plugin LanguageSwitcher from Poplarware. It is based on the Polyglot plugin, though it brings a couple of new features. For example the languages used in your blog, the default language and some other settings can now be set in the admin panel in an own menu item, so there is no need for editing the php file.

Clearly positive is the fact that the language tags inside the links are changed into permalinks now, they do not longer contain those bothering questionmarks any longer. You can download the plugin here.

The last time I often saw wishlist buttons on miscellaneous homepages. They mostly represent an amazon wishlist on which you can name what you wish for. Very convenient I think, on birthdays etc. you simply have to refer to your list. So I also compiled a wishlist now, due to current events singly composed of DS games. Visitors welcome at any time!

Before I go to bed just a little stats baton, once again found on the Baton-Blog:

• Online since: 11.12.2006
• Visitors: 2.862
• Posts: 52
• Comments: 209
• Pictures: 20
• Files: 3

I trow it over to Christa, Milko and SuMu!

For years I always wanted to visit the CeBIT. A few days ago then I had tickets for the IT fair in my letterbox, I got them from Hostloco bekommen habe. (The advertent reader remembers: Hostloco is the best hoster ever. ) In the course of a banner design contest me and even a few other hostees won tickets.

Hereupon I started a bustling search for a) somebody who accompanies me and b) a cor for getting there. Going by train was too expensive and also I didn’t want to drive alone. Saturday evening approached, and after having phoned all my friends, acquaintances and relatives, I abandonned hope ever getting there bit by bit. Had already found a few people who were interested to come with me – but no car. And no car, no CeBIT…

But then a friend of mine called me and gladly told me that she had a car for sunday. Now I had to redispose swiftly because on sunday noon I was invited for lunch by my parents. Rescheduled the appointment on the evening, and then soon the day was over and I agonised me out of my bed sunday morning at half seven.

It took us about 4 hours to get there. When arriving Hannover we were staggered: Already from the motorway you see nothing but halls, one pavilion after the other. First we took a little refreshment at McDonalds, then we began to search a car park. Parking tax was 7 Euros, but we didn’t care because we were just happy having found a park which still had free places!

Then we entered the fairgrounds. For not losing our way and even improving our time as well as possible, we picked up a plan. The blue and yellow halls, Communications and Digital Equipment, seemed to be most interesting. So we walked across pavilion 10 over to 11, 12 and 13. In pavilion 13 (or was it 12?) chinese and japanese people all over the place, exhibiting a lot of mobile knickknack. Certainly we had to stay there a bit longer… glittering mobiles, mobile socks and pendants are just to lovely.

At the navigation systems we found Michelin and even the Michelin manikin was there. A golden opportunity for a picture which I certainly did not miss! The Michelin manikin, by the way, is very nice!

Short-time before we started to drive there I had gotten a tip on the Hostloco board that pavilion 22 was particularly interesting, and so we went over there. Already on entering the hall you recognise: It’s party time here! Pavilion 22 has got the highest noise level of all because there is one gamer PC nect to the other. In every corner you can see somebody gambling something. Gamer paradise pure!

On a little Gamestar stand (a german PC Games mag) you could get a mini subscription for 10 Euros: 3 magazines and an 1 GB USB stick. We knocked down directly – an USB stick is always useful! A few stands forward the guys from Razer were throwing mouses into the masses – accordant to that lots of people packed into the stand. You could not even pass it!

Need for Speed Carbon you could play in this cool “car”. Accurate with steering wheel and pedals like in a real car!

A few halls further we marvelled at two giant printers, printing pictures in huge formats. About 1 x 2 meters of size! There was one high gloss printer and a matt one. The pictures came out of the gigantic rolls indeed very slowly, but in specious quality.

In the Public Sector Park i located Beck Online, who administrate a very good juristic database. So now I am the proud owner of a Beck Online ballpoint pen! Even the german federal states are represented in the Public Sector Park. On our way back to the exit then we passed the Telekom stands, where amongst others you could sit in a kind of flight simulation with 3D glasses (if you were patient enough for lining up).

In the end for the boys among you a Cebit babe! This lovely young lady doesn’t wear a top, except for the skirt her entire body is airbrushed. Don’t see that on first sight, do ya?

Thanks to her the stand she was advertising for was beleaguered all the time! Oh well, pleasing to the eyes counts a lot, doesn’t it guys? There were a few other models with airbrush bodypaints running around there, but this one was definitely the yummiest. Respect to the artist who painted her!

Knackered, but happy, we made us on our way back home at around four o’clock ’cause I had to be at my parents by eight o`clock. After having lost our way, searching a petrol station, half an hour later we finally found the motorway and so we headed homewards.

When passing Dortmund we were caught up in a traffic jam, but thanks to car sign bingo it went over quite fast. The last hour we passed with loud music (okay, very loud music) and collaborative singing along. And then soon we were on the airport motorway towards Bonn.

My conclusion: There are a lot of things to see at CeBIT, you really don’t know where to look first. It was so much fun and I won’t forget this day for a long time! Solely I missed a nintendo stand. Anyway, if at all possible, I want to be there next year again – due to all those impressions. Thanks, Hostloco!