yeah, another update from the zoo at schoenbrunn - this time with ninsti, as she wanted to see the cheetah cubs too, but had not had the chance to do so yet. so, gladly, i joined her. but at first we paid some bears a visit, namely the cute little red panda[001-002] bear, the brown bear[012-027], and of course the polar bear[029-048]. we also had a look at the cute fluffy wolf cubs[052-075], which also had grown quite much in the meantime. also, there's news from the zoo that there is another litter of three cheetah cubs, but still hidden from the public, so that the mother does not freak out, and the babies can still enjoy their privacy - how cool is that? six cheetah cubs. but for now we totally enjoyed and adored those fluffy little kitties[076-155], playing, running, dozing, fighting, eating, sleeping, pooping, and looking cute. although they have already grown up, i still wished i could take one of them home with me. and, i hope you're not tired of cheetah cub pics yet, because i'm pretty sure next week i will be at the zoo again, as my father will come to pay us a visit, and we planned to take him to the zoo. so be prepared for more...

finally (after nearly two and a half years) i managed to improve my mobile phone. i installed a cyanogenmod rom and so could upgrade from android 2.3.4 to android 4.1.2, and eventually got rid of ballast like facebook, whatsapp, sony ericsson, and all the apps and games which i never liked, and i could never delete permanently, and which took up precious space and resources - a real nuisance. since my phone is pretty old (around three years), i could not make use of the new way of installing cyanogenmod via the handy CM install app. instead i had to do it the old way. so, after downloading the latest version of the cm rom (which was "iyokan-10-20131006-NIGHTLY" for me), i followed the instructions as described in the cm wiki. it all went quite smooth, except for the fact that "fastboot" is available via the repository only for ubuntu 14.04, while i still cling to 12.04. so i got the source files, and compiled it myself. but once rebooted, i noticed i was missing all the google apps. to get them i once more followed the excellent documentation on the cm wiki describing how to install the google apps. as soon as this was done, the contacts, calendars, etc. were all synced. the only thing that was left to do, was to reinstall all my apps that i had installed before the new android version. all in all, a really smooth switch. if i had known it would be that easy, i would have switched earlier. lazy me. i am really happy with my shiny new android 4.1.2.

geekU and his girlfriend alex came to vienna to watch a football game, and had a little spare time on sunday, so we met and went to the zoo in schoenbrunn - a thing we had already planned years ago, but never managed to go up to now. so i showed them around, to the polar bears[001-007], the meerkats[011-012], the very cute and bustling otters[013-014], the seals[015-016], to finally end at the cheetah cubs[017-018] - yuhuuu! unfortunately they were were sleepy and lazy, so we decided to walk on, and return later again, hoping for more cub action. and soon we were not disappointed. the cubs[041-092] have woken up, and were very active. and while i could have stayed for hours, i managed to drag myself away from the cheetahs and show the guests the wolf cubs[093] instead. unfortunately they were at the far end of the enclosure, so it was hard to spot and shoot them with my camera. after alex got her load of elephants and monkey sightings (her main reason for going to zoo schoenbrunn), i managed to lead them on a route around the area to - by sheer coincident - stumble upon the cubs[094-135] again. oh no, my bad. but actually the two enjoyed the fluffy fur balls almost as much as i did, so i had no guilty conscious about it. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, cuteness overload - i wish the kitties would never grow up, and i wish they had a webcam like the zoo in milwaukee has for their jaguar cubs (though they have already grown up several months ago - they were born in december 2013).