Who I am
Born (on March 5, 1958) and raised in Hamburg, I studied Computer Science and Linguistics at the University of Hamburg. After having been awarded a diploma degree in Computer Science in 1986, I got a job as a Research Assistant that I held for four years. The topics of my research did include Natural Language Processing, Knowledge Representation, Inference Engines, and Artificial Life. One of my last publications during that time was a talk given at COLING 1990 (“On Trying to Do Things with Words”, with Heinz Genzmann).
During that time I co-authored „Das LISP-Buch“ (with Peter Schefe and Andreas Fittschen), a textbook on my favourite programming language, LISP, published by McGraw-Hill in 1988. It has been out of print for many years and is quite obsolete now, especially as it concentrated on an obscure and long since forgotten dialect of LISP. Yet, “Das LISP-Buch” captured many insights into functional programming in general and reflected all I had learned about its didactics, which is why I am still quite fond of it. Moreover, it was my first book.
After a brief stint as freelance software developer and author (for macmagazin, among others), MACup Verlag hired me in 1994 to join its new digital media division. My responsibilities included CD-ROM production – we did a couple of tutorial CD-ROMs on Photoshop, FileMaker, Excel etc. – and managing MACup Verlag’s forum on CompuServe. After occasional contributions to MACup, Screen Multimedia, and macmagazin, all print magazines published by MACup Verlag, I joined the editorial staff of macmagazin in 1999.
Two years later I switched editorial duties and joined ComputerFoto, Germany’s first magazine on digital photography. In fact my connection with ComputerFoto went back to 1996 when I had developed the interface and content management system for its accompanying CD-ROM. Together with fellow editor Andreas Jordan I created a testing methodology for digital cameras based on reproducible data when at the time, reviews of digital cameras often relied on purely visual and necessarily subjective judgements.
In 2002 ComputerFoto, along with most of what was left of MACup Verlag, moved to Poing near Munich, and so did I — at first. After a four months spell in Munich, I quit my editorial job to go back to Hamburg, working freelance but with ComputerFoto as my main client. Andreas Jordan and me established digicam-experts.de as a testing laboratory and a source for articles on digital camera technology and related topics. Andreas has since moved on to join the editorial staff of fotoMAGAZIN and I am now sharing the office space with Christopher Jakob, a journalist offering similar services. Since ComputerFoto’s demise in 2005 my clients have included fotoMAGAZIN, Leica Fotografie International, VICTOR by Hasselblad, PAGE, MACup, DOCMA, Mac&i, and S-Magazine. Some of my articles are available online, for example “The Evolution of Lenses”, “The Bigger the Better” und “Master of Light and Shadow” (originally published in VICTOR by Hasselblad).
What I’m reading
Colin Cotterill: I Shot the Buddha
Jan Costin Wagner: Sakari lernt, durch Wände zu gehen
Georg Forster: Reise um die Welt
Recently finished
Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness
Jonas Karlsson: Das Zimmer
Donna Leon: Stille Wasser
Ingeborg Bachmann: Malina
Julia Shaw: The Memory Illusion
Wolfgang Hildesheimer: Paradies der falschen Vögel
Wolfgang Hildesheimer: Lieblose Legenden
Michail Bulgakow: Das hündische Herz
Ingeborg Bachmann: Sämtliche Gedichte
Philip Roth: Nemesis
Arno Schmidt: Seelandschaft mit Pocahontas
Michail Bulgakow: Meister und Margarita
Lukrez: Über die Natur der Dinge
Italo Calvino: Marcovaldo oder Die Jahreszeiten in der Stadt
Andreas Kleineberg, Christian Marx, Eberhard Knobloch, Dieter Lelgemann: Germania und die Insel Thule, Die Entschlüsselung von Ptolemaios’ »Atlas der Oikumene«
Patrick Modiano: Gräser der Nacht (L’herbe des nuits)
Klaus Modick: Konzert ohne Dichter
Uwe Timm: Vogelweide
Ralph Dutli: Fratrasien. Absurde Poesie des Mittelalters
Klaus Wagenbach (Hrsg.): Störung im Betriebsablauf
Peter Rühmkorf: Der Hüter des Misthaufens
Peggy Parnass / Tita do Rêgo Silva: Kindheit. Wie unsere Mutter uns vor den Nazis rettete
Gustav Meyrink: Der Kardinal Napellus
Jan Costin Wagner: Das Licht in einem dunklen Haus
Tatjana Kruse: Gestickt, gestopft, gemeuchelt
Anita Albus: Liebesbande
Haruki Murakami: Die unheimliche Bibliothek
Reza Aslan: Zealot. The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth
Peter Robinson: Children of the Revolution
Peter Robinson: Watching the Dark
Ilija Trojanow: Der Weltensammler
Thomas Hoeps: Die letzte Kur
Karen Duve: Grrrimm
Krischan Koch: Mordseekrabben
Colin Cotterill: The Woman who wouldn’t Die
Colin Cotterill: Slash and Burn
Colin Cotterill: Love Songs from a Shallow Grave
Jan Schröter: Rettungsringe
Colin Cotterill: The Merry Misogynist
Michel Pastoureau: Blau. Die Geschichte einer Farbe
Angela Carter: The Sadeian Woman. An Exercise in Cultural History
Craig Taylor: Londoners. The Days and Nights of London Now – As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left it and Long for It
Ole Kristiansen: Das Feuer bringt den Tod
Krischan Koch: Rote Grütze mit Schuss
Anita Albus: Paradies und Paradoxon. Wunderwerke aus fünf Jahrhunderten
Florian Illies: 1913
Katharina Münk: Glänzende Geschäfte
Gunter Gerlach: Mohnblumen wie Blutflecke: Händel in Stein
Jan Schröter: Kreisverkehr
A. L. Kennedy: The Blue Book
Nina George: Das Lavendelzimmer
Gavin Pretor-Pinney: The Wavewatcher’s Companion
Daniel Depp: Babylon Nights
Gunnar Kunz: Zeppelin 126
Peter Robinson: Bad Boy
Patti Smith: Woolgathering
Laura Lippman: Another Thing to Fall
Walter Serner: Die Betörung der Excentrique Fanoche
Jobst Schlennstedt: Dorfschweigen
Daniel C. Dennett: Sweet Dreams. Philosophical obstacles to a Science of Consciousness
Christoph Ernst: Dunkle Schatten
Bill Bryson (ed.): Seeing Further. The Story of Science and the Royal Society
Tatjana Kruse: Jeder Mann ein Treffer
Josef H. Reichholf: Einhorn Phönix Drache. Woher unsere Fabeltiere kommen
Antonio Manetti: Die Novelle vom dicken Holzschnitzer
Gustav Meyrink: Der Golem
Laura Lippman: The Girl in the Green Raincoat
Maxwell Bennett, Daniel Dennett, Peter Hacker, John Searle: Neuroscience and Philosophy: Brain, Mind, and Language
Klaus Stickelbroeck: Fischfutter
Martin Arz: Pechwinkel
Daniel Depp: Loser’s Town
Francesco Colonna: Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. The Strife of Love in a Dream
Thomas Hoeps, Jac. Toes: Höchstgebot
Italo Calvino: Wenn ein Reisender in einer Winternacht (Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore)
Thomas Pynchon: Inherent Vice
Colin Cotterill: Curse of the Pogo Stick
Wilfried Eggers: Die oder ich
Peter Robinson: All the Colours of Darkness
Laura Lippman: No Good Deeds
Veit Heinichen: Keine Frage des Geschmacks
Gunter Gerlach: Frauen von Brücken werfen
Charlotte Roche: Schoßgebete
Colin Cotterill: Anarchy and Old Dogs
Peter Probst: Im Namen des Kreuzes
Peter Probst: Blinde Flecken
José Saramago: Die Reise des Elefanten
Olaus Magnus: Die Wunder des Nordens. Erschlossen von Elena Balzamo & Reinhard Kaiser
Marc Ritter: Josefibichl
Kate Atkinson: Started Early, Took My Dog
Sobo Swobodnik: Ahoi Polaroid
Konrad Lorenz: Rohrkrepierer – Eine Jugend auf St. Pauli
Christian Geyer (ed.): Hirnforschung und Willensfreiheit. Zur Deutung der neuesten Experimente
Gabriel García Márquez: Die Liebe in den Zeiten der Cholera (El amor en los tiempos del cólera)
Bruno Schulz: Die Zimtläden und alle anderen Erzählungen
Roland Barthes: Mythen des Alltags (Mythologies)
Ernst Kleemann: Malindi
Nii Parkes: Die Spur des Bienenfressers (Tail of the Blue Bird)
Bohnet Pleitgen: Kein Durchkommen
Gunter Gerlach: Bei Einbruch Mord
Robert Louis Stevenson: Die Insel der Stimmen (The Isle of Voice)
Ingeborg Bachmann, Paul Celan: Herzzeit. Briefwechsel
Physiologus (Greek/German; translated by Otto Schönberger)
Dieter Kühn: Tristan und Isolde des Gottfried von Straßburg
Wolf Serno: Der Balsamträger
Gunter Gerlach: Von Mädchen und Mördern
Marçal Aquino: Flieh. Und nimm die Dame mit. (Eu Receberia as Piores Notícias dos seus Lindos Lábios)
Alexandra Kui: Wiedergänger
Susie Bright (ed.): Three Kinds of Asking for It: Erotic Novellas by Eric Albert, Greta Christina, and Jill Soloway
Martin Wilhelmi: Fernsehfieber – Tödliche Gier
Gunnar Kunz: Dunkle Tage
Christine Lehmann: Mit Teufelsg’walt
Kurt Vonnegut: The Sirens of Titan
Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children’s Crusade
Thomas Hoeps, Jac. Toes: Das Lügenarchiv
Sissel-Jo Gazan: Dinosaurierfedern
Alan Moore, Melinda Gebbie: Lost Girls
Petra Oelker: Die Schwestern vom Roten Haus
Gunter Gerlach: Mord ohne Leiche. Brahms ermittelt
Maiken Nielsen: Das siebte Werk
Daniel C. Dennett: Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
Reinhold Merkelbach: Mithras. Ein persisch-römischer Mysterienkult
Friedhelm Werremeier: Trimmels letzter Fall
Horst Afheldt: Wirtschaft, die arm macht. Vom Sozialstaat zur gespaltenen Gesellschaft
Monika Geier: Die Herzen aller Mädchen
Gisa Klönne: Unter dem Eis
Gilbert Adair: A Mysterious Affair of Style
Dagmar Scharsich: Der grüne Chinese
Walther Sallaberger: Das Gilgamesch-Epos. Mythos, Werk und Tradition
Das Gilgamesch Epos (in der Übersetzung von Hermann Ranke)
Stanisław Lem: Sterntagebücher
Ralf-Peter Märtin: Die Varusschlacht
William Blake: Songs of Innocence & of Experience
Herbert George Wells: Die Tür in der Mauer (The Door in the Wall)
Gunter Gerlach: Jäger des Alphabets
Friedrich Dürrenmatt: Der Schachspieler
Kathrin Passig, Aleks Scholz: Lexikon des Unwissens
Alan Bennett:
Alan Bennett:
Alan Bennett: [i]The Uncom
