email and gmail

yesterday my gmail account was showing 4 invites. Today it has 10 invites. Seems the google people have added fat hardware to the gmail system.
I have been using gmail to read and (also somewhat to write) my emails, even though my university address is still active. Since I am no longer an employee at the university, it was due to expire at the end of this December, but our nice system administrator at the department has extended it for another year. After the Xmas and new year break at the univ., I plan to register myself with the Alumni, and a benefit of that is that one gets to retain the email address.
The email system at the univ. has also been overhauled lately, and now its possible to set up forwarding of emails to another account using a browser front-end. Previously it was a mess, requiring editing a .fwd file and placing it in the right directory etc. for the time being, I forward all of my mails to the univ. account to my gmail account.

a story worth reading

This is a story worth reading:The Graphing Calculator Story

Today was my last day at the department. I am on holiday since the last few weeks, so it wasn't the last day in office, but still, today marks the end of a four year period of my life. Maybe some day I'll take the time and go over the goods and bads of this time.
Last week there was the department's pre-Xmas annual gathering over dinner. I was also there, and was presented with a farewell gift from the colleagues. The picture below shows me smiling (a bit artificially) with the gift. The gift, a book about Hamburg, is really appropriate, and will serve as a reminder of my time here (more than 6 years) in Hamburg.

trip to Spain

This week we went to Spain; to the cities of Granada, Cordoba and Sevilla. Well, the experience was amazing. I'll be posting more details soon. For the time being just these pictures.