October 1999:
I'm starting my studies in "Medieninformatik" (Media Computer Science) at the "Hochschule der Medien", a University of Applied Sciences in Stuttgart. On the university's website a description said that the course of studies in Media Computer Science trained its graduates for complex tasks at the interface between computer science and digital media. Another sentence was: "The demand for specialists with the above qualifications is enormous." Another one was: "Applicants should have a consolidated knowledge of mathematics[...]". I believed the first two sentences and and simply ignored the latter. This turned out to be the right decision. Media Computer Science is great stuff.

March 2000:
The second semester begins and we're gradually approaching the time when we can really concentrate on the lectures that are substantial to our course. My mental reservation concerning mathematics was unjustified, I even start to like it. But what is more is that we're slowly beginning to dive into the world of object-orientation with the Java language. Networking becomes my second hobbyhorse, and I'm delighted to see our professor is a real luminary on that area. I get accustomed to living in a bigger town like Stuttgart is. But I sort of miss that damn rooster that sometimes woke me up in my former home town.

October 2000:
The last semester before the two practical training semesters begin. Sure we're looking forward to being unleashed onto the real world but we're not yet sure whether we'll survive that. On the other hand I believe we will: as a basic principle all our relevant lectures so far are split into two halves: the first half is the lecture itself where profs and assistants spare no effort to teach us well and the second half, the practical exercises, in which we have time to immerse ourselves in sourcecode, cables, paper and other cute things. It also starts to pay off that I did away with my maths hatred as we're having a very interesting lecture on Internet Security and Cryptography. And we now know that XML and XSLT are not only buzzwords from a different world or something to eat or so...

March 2001:
At last, I'm unleashed and have the chance to find out what my knowledge is worth in practice. The IBM Development Laboratory in Boeblingen gave me the opportunity to work as a student intern in the field of Systems Management for an IBM Mainframe Computer. My tasks are to write a plug-in for a Systems Management Framework used to configure a large Web Application Server running on IBM zSeries Mainfrage and to extend an existing LDAP browser. It's amazing for me to see how manifold computer science can be. Big fun.

September 2001:
Hardly has the first practical training semester ended when second begins right now. On my way browsing through IBM's intranet to find out what could be a hot task for that second practical semester I came across mobile devices. Though (or just because) the Java technology for mobile devices at the moment is still in it's children's shoes I decide to work on that field. A colleage from my study course and me are involved in developing a toolkit used to synchronize information between mobile devices and servers, the SyncML Java Reference Toolkit. It is my part to write an encoder for WBXML, the Wap Binary XML, which is, as its name states, a binary form of XML. This is a bit tricky because you have to use codepages instead of namespaces and because you have to properky distinguish some ambiguous byte sequences. All things considered this semester is, again, very interesting because SyncML is an industry coalition of several important global players and because this is my first experience in writing software for mobile devices using Java.

March 2002:
Having collected lots of precious experience during the practical semesters I'm now very eager to enlarge my theoretical and practical knowledge on things on which it would have been better to know more during the two practical semesters. The study course is now even more well-staffed and offers new lectures. Not taking advantage of that would be silly, I think, and decide to attend lectures like Distributed Systems, Advanced Internet Security, Media Databases, Digital Image Processing, Current Topics in Network Engineering, and a seminar with the somewhat longish name "Presentation, Moderation, and Negotiation".

Summer 2002:
Developing software for mobile devices using Java looked so challenging to me in my second practical semester that I apply for a job as a student intern at IBM again. From July to September I take part in the software development for a telematics platform used in autocars. That software collects data from a GPS receiver while the car is going from A to B. After a while it uploads that data to a server of the owner's insurance company. The owner is invoiced using those data based on when, where and how often the car is used. It is in March of 2003 that IBM publishes a press release on that programme.

October 2002:
Lots of stuff to do. While Christian, a colleage of mine, and me are sitting in a sunny corridor of the university and are just about finished with knocking together our schedule for the upcoming semester, one of our professors, Prof. Dr. Fridtjof Toenniessen, comes along asking if we feel fit in JSPs, Servlets, Databases and Applets and if we'd like to take part in a development project concerned with E-Learning. We feel a bit as if a car has run over us but we accept his very interesting offer. At the same time Roger, who is another colleage of ours, and Christian and me have already started to develop an electronic university calendar using XML, XSLT, Java, and, of course, the university's database in which all the relevant information is kept. Prof. Dr. Martin Goik intends to eventually put that project online on info.hdm-stuttgart.de. A seminar on Multimedia Software Development, the seminar on Software Design Patterns and being a tutor in exercises take up the rest of my time at the university. But put your mind at rest: Everything goes very fine.

March 2003:
There it is already: the last semester. With only 14 hours per week for lectures it seems only a short way to go to the Diploma. Lectures on Software Engineering, Generative Computing and Current Programming Languages blaze the trail to the final hours at our university. Finding a company that offers an interesting topic as a Diploma Thesis while as well offering the chance to work there after the Diploma is not too easy at the time. But reluctance is not my kind of thing.

May 2003:
After a number of interesting job interviews for Diploma I tend to look into my postbox somewhat earlier than usual in the morning in order to find out if one of the companies has already decided to send a rebuff or a consent.

Projects during my studies
(HTML, german)

Lectures during my studies

Media Computer Science

IBM Development Lab, Boeblingen

Read my CV
(Coming soon.)