Florian Leitner-Fischer

Heute habe ich von Nafees eine eMail bekommen, in der über die aktuelle Lage informiert.

I find the dictionary helpless to find words to thank you all for this sincere effort & generous donation.

Today I spent all of my day at the two sites where we started to make scratch paper design for the rooms. The most difficult part is to find mason and workers. They are hard to find as every one affected. And all in locality are somehow busy repairing and making their own homes (only those who can afford).

It was a very hot day today. And you also know its Ramadan and I was fasting. I drank about 10 glass as soon as I break my fast. Anyways, I bought four fans (Pedestal) today for 4 families as they have children and nothing to help them dry their sweats and some relief from the heat. Also did some grocery shopping for them. There is so much that I want to write, but am dead tired and have to go early in the morning to the construction site as I am now a supervisor there.

Please update colleagues and other donors too. I plan to keep all of you updated with bitwise proceedings and will send you the photos too. Just arranged a camera today from a friend for this purpose.

Yesterday, on September the first I had my first work day as a PhD student and researcher staff member at the Chair for Software Engineering at the University Konstanz.

My main research topics are the analysis of safety-critical systems, in particular probabilistic and stochastic analysis methods. I will also continue to work on QuantUM tool for quantitative analysis of UML model which I have developed during my master thesis.

Apart from research I will also do some teaching and I will supervise bachelor and master theses.

Since I was a part-time employee of the chair before and worked almost fulltime because I really like my job, there is not much that changes. But it is still yet another station on the road of my live and I look forward to the rest of the journey!

Gestern konnte ich Nafees mit Eurer Hilfe 1000 Euro überweisen. Vielen Dank an Alle die mitgemacht haben. Sobald ich von Nafees neue Informationen über die Lage und die Verwendung des Geldes bekomme werde ich hier wieder informieren.

Und nochmals Vielen Dank!

Liebe Freunde,

Die schweren Regenfälle in Pakistan haben nicht nur eine Flutkatastrophe unvorstellbaren Maßes, sondern auch eine humanitäre Katastrophe ausgelöst. Mehr als 20 Millionen Menschen sind von dieser Katastrophe betroffen.

Ich stehe im Moment in Kontakt mit meinem aus Pakistan stammenden Arbeitskollegen. Er hat gerade seine Familie in Pakistan besucht als Pakistan von der Flutkatastrophe heimgesucht wurde. Hier Auszüge aus E-Mails, die er mir zwischen den Stromausfällen schicken konnte:

The next day, I was told that we have no communication with my uncles(maternal and paternal). Our both villages have been flooded and all one can see is water. No one knows what is beneath. All of our property and crops are gone. In some places where water has descended, the left over mud is like 4 to 5 ft high. In our village the flash floods hit around mid night, trapping so many people. Hundreds of Buffaloes, goats and other pet animals along with human bodies are half buried in the mud. There is a very bad and injurious to health stinking smell all over the place. There is huge shortage of food supplies. Making things worse, the price of bread has jumped 15 times higher. Its very ugly situation out here.

The situation is as worst as one can imagine. My city and village were
the first areas which got flooded and most of infrastructure and
houses are demolished. We had so many people who took refuge with us
at our city home in Peshawar. Rescue part of the effort is over, now
the relief operation is in progress and rehabilitation would take
months to years. Today my brother took cooked food for about 200
people and is still away. Everyone is giving half of their food to the
affectees, but the scale of the disaster is so big. It unmanageable
at times. Soil is so much saturated that a glass of water is not even absorbed,
it gets flown. Because of the standing water, so many diseases have
broken out. Skin and ophthalmological diseases are very common.

Nafees ist direkt vor Ort und hilft den Menschen beispielsweise sich eine neue Unterkunft zu bauen und neues Getreide anzupflanzen.

Um ihm dabei zu Helfen kannst Du ihm per Western Union Geld schicken.
Empfänger: NAFEES UR REHMAN, Stadt: PESHAWAR, Pakistan.
Das geht entweder online auf westernunion.de
oder in jeder Western Union Geschäftsstelle (zum Beispiel im Bahnhof Konstanz).

Wenn du möchtest kannst Du das Geld auch gerne mir zukommen lassen und ich sorge dann dafür das es bei Nafees und seiner Familie ankommt.

Konto: 4116444,
Sparda Bank BW BLZ 60090800,
Kontoinhaber: Florian Leitner
Verwendungszweck: Pakistan

Hier noch ein Auszug einer eMail in der Nafees beschreibt wie er helfen möchte:

As I mentioned in my previous communication I wanted to contribute to make an impact in our best capacity. My coordinated plan with those who affected is as follows:

1. We need to construct shelter ROOMS on safer piece of land in their ownership. Big enough to accommodate all of the family members ( Family average size here is 7 to 8). This would help them live under a roof at least protecting them from the rain, sun, heat and from various insects(mosquitoes, flies, snakes etc).

2. To help them stand on their own feet as continous support would not be that much possible, I plan to help them buy seeds for the next cultivation season so that they can grow some crops and vegetables (which is their main source of income). Further, will arrange for smaller carts/stalls which they can use to sell various items so that they can come back to life and make money for themselves.

The prices of construction material is on its way to a peak. An urgent contribution can really make a difference. I will keep all of you posted and informed of each of the progress here made in this direction. I will leave back for Konstanz by the middle of the next month, I will appreciate an early contribution to at least start the project in my own observation

Wir zählen auf deine Unterstützung!

Vielen Dank!

Florian

On saturday I will fly to Cape Town, South Africa, to attend the International Conference on Software Engineering. On May 3 I will present our paper “Directed and Heuristic Counterexample Generation for Probabilistic Model Checking - A Comparative Evaluation” at the First International workshop on Quantitative Stochastic Models in the Verification and Design of Software System (QUOVADIS 2010).

I’m really looking forward to the conference where well-known scientists from around the world will present their work. Highlights are also the opening keynote given by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Microsoft Research New Horizons Evening.

Our recently published case study “Safety Analysis of an Airbag System using Probabilistic FMEA and Probabilistic Counter Examples” is the cover story over the newest issue of UNIKON the magazine of the University of Konstanz.

Read the Article

On my Windows computers I use Notepad++ for editing text files like html, css, php and other script files. Now, that I’m using a MacBook Pro as work computer, I searched for an equivalent text editor.

The features I need are:

• Freeware
• Syntax Highlighting
• Comparing Files
• Good Search / Replace capabilities

After I tested a few editors, I stuck with TextWrangler which also offers nice features like editing files on a SSH / FTP server.

GPush from tiveriasapps.com brings push mail for Gmail to the iPhone.
At least as soon as the app got approved by Appel. Tiveriasapps confirmed that the app will also work with Google Apps Premier / Enterprise Account.
And it will probably cost 0,99$. Stay tuned for a hands-on report as soon as the app is available.

If you don’t want to wait check out http://andrew.tj.id.au/2008/11/activesync-for-gmail/ for another solution to get push mail support with Gmail.

T-Mobile Germany announced the pricing for the new iPhone 3G S and the new price for the iPhone 3G 8GB.
It will be available from 19^th June with the known montly plans.

See the full press release at http://www.telekom.com/dtag/cms/content/dt/de/675280

** gültige Preise für Nutzung eines T-Mobile HotSpot unter www.t-mobile.de/hotspot
*** Ab einem Datenvolumen von 300 MB (Complete S), 5 GB (Complete L) und 1 GB (Complete M) pro Monat wird die Bandbreite im jeweiligen Monat auf max. 64 Kbit/s (Download) und 16 Kbit/s (Upload) beschränkt.
**** monatliches Inklusivvolumen 200 MB. Nach Verbrauch des Inklusivvolumens werden 0,49 € berechnet.

Weitere Tarifinformationen erhalten Sie unter www.t-mobile.de/iphone

Yesterday I received my new quad core PC and I want to present a list of software tools that I don’t want to miss:

• Synergy: Enables you to share the keyboard and mouse with another PC via LAN.
• Notepad++: Great editor.
• ExpandDrive: Mount any folder that is accessibly via SSH as an network drive.
• Filezilla: Great FTP / SFTP client.
• FolderShare aka Windows Live Sync: Synchronize folders of windows PCs. It just simply works.
• Ultramon: If you have more then one monitor ultramon is a must have.
• Foxit Reader: Fast pdf reader, acrobat is just to slow.
• VLC Media Player: Greatest media player ever.
• Vista Codec Package: All codecs you need.
• Avast Antivirus Home: Free virus scan tool.
• Mozy: The simplest way to backup your data.