Category Archives: Personal

Concerning yours truly.

How to set up Windows 10 BitLocker with a YubiKey

Posted on by
40

I use and advocate secure authentication, verification, and encryption methods. Naturally, I have used 2-Factor-Authentication for a long time wherever it is available (Google, Facebook, Dropbox, and many others). In addition, my computers and mobile devices use Full Disk Encryption, protecting my data at rest.

2-Factor Authentication enabled since 2013-01-19.

The YubiKey is a small USB device that augments different authentication methods to accomplish these tasks. I recently purchased two of YubiCo’s latest model, the YubiKey 4 to help me with 2FA and FDE.

My YubiKey 4

 

Continue reading →

Ten Years with Type 1 Diabetes

Posted on by
Reply

Ten years ago, I returned from my student exchange year in Texas. When I got out of the plane in Vienna, I had lost a lot of weight compared to the time I boarded my US-bound plane a year earlier (this is very unusual for exchange students – especially those in the USA). Immediately after my arrival, my family and I went on a two-week holiday in southern France. There, I drank up to nine liters of water or juice a day and went to the bathroom accordingly often. I ate loads of food but still lost weight. I was tired, quiet and glum. Reading books was hard because my eyesight was strangely distorted.

After our return home, we called my uncle, a doctor. He told us to go to the hospital immediately.

Florian shooting a shotgun.

Clay shooting a few days before my return to Austria. I was really skinny; fortunately the recoil still did not knock me over.

Continue reading →

Keeping time in Open Parliamentary Debates – A Debatekeeper Plugin

Posted on by
Reply

Smartphones are almost ubiquitous today and have replaced the traditional stopwatches as timekeeping devices for many debaters around the world.

Most smartphones have a stopwatch built in, but Chuan-Zheng Lee of New Zealand wrote Debatekeeper, a very useful app for Android phones which makes timing debates easier and more convenient for judges, timekeepers and speakers.

The program currently includes the British Parliamentary format as well as several other parliamentary debating formats. One great feature about Debatekeeper is its extensibility. It is trivially easy to use additional debate formats by writing a short and simple XML file and putting it on your phone.

With a view to the upcoming German-Language Debating Championship (2013-05-30 to 2013-06-02 in Munich), I wrote a file to use the Open Parliamentary format in Debatekeeper. Open Parliamentary Debate is an indigenous German format based on BP and invented by debaters of Streitkultur Tübingen. Its most notable features include two teams with three speakers each and three “Nonaligned Speakers” who get to speak for 3.5 minutes before the Whip speakers and may chose to represent either the Government or Opposition side.

You can now download the Debatekeeper OPD file. I also wrote a file with all human-readable text in German. Installation on your phone is easy (the following description was copied from Chuan-Zheng’s site):

You should create a directory called debatekeeper on (the root directory of) your phone, and place the XML file in there. It must have the file extension .xml. If you give your file the same name as one of the built-in styles, then your custom file will override the built-in style. Otherwise, Debatekeeper will just add it to the list.

For more information on OPD, please see Streitkultur Tübingen’s OPD service page (in German). A brief overview of the format is available as a two-page PDF file (in German).

#musiclove – A New Year’s Resolution

Posted on by
3

My music collection is probably larger than the average person’s, but pales in comparison to the vast archives of some of my friends. In late 2011, I noticed that it also hardly grows. I buy maybe four to eight CDs and four or five vinyl records (usually Drum & Bass twelve-inch singles) per year. I can’t remember the last time I downloaded music via file sharing, and I bought my first digital record only a few weeks ago.

By hardly expanding my collection, I seldom listened to something new. That gap was filled mostly by radio (especially Ö1’s and FM4’s late night programming) but ever since I have been working full-time, that is out of the question all too often.

That is why came up with the following New Year’s Resolution:

Continue reading →

Alpine Peace Crossing 2012

Posted on by
2

Did you know that over 5000 European Jews had to flee Europe over the Alps in 1947, two years after the end of World War II and the Holocaust?

The Windbachtal valley in Salzburg, Austria.

The Windbachtal valley offers beautiful green and stone-grey vistas.

I did not, until 4 years ago. That’s when I first went on the Alpine Peace Crossing, an Alpine hike commemorating the flight of these Jews and dedicated to all refugees worldwide.
My father, brother and I participated again this year, along with about 170 others the weekend of 30 June. Continue reading →

The Why The What The Who

Posted on by
Reply

Why I blog:

There is not enough debate in our world. We have plenty of quarreling, name-calling and talking past the point; however, most public discussions are no more than each participant positing their views as unshakable truth. Little if any convincing is ever attempted. I seriously believe this is a big problem in public discourse. Yes, we should argue, fight and battle with words—because you might be wrong, but that doesn’t mean we can’t talk! I want to argue, persuade and convince. I expect others to do the same, which eventually leads to meaningful debate as we start to understand why we want to convince each other. From there, it is a small step to actually understand an opponents’ position and maybe not accept, but at least appreciate it.

What I blog:

Lots of things pass through my head every day, and this blog aims to document those that keep me pondering for more than an hour or so. Specifically, I want to focus on issues of law and economics, debating and public discourse, liberty and individualism, state action and policy as well as daily politics. You should still find plenty of distraction when I blog about photography and food.

Occasionally I might blog in German, especially on topics mostly relevant only to Austria. I apologize in advance.

Who I am:

I was born in 1986, grew up mostly in Austria and have lived in Vienna since 2005. There, I studied law and now work as an associate in the competition law practice of a large regional law firm. I am a passionate debater with Debattierklub Wien and have participated in and organized many tournaments worldwide. I love to shoot photos, cook and climb mountains.