tail -f carlo.log

Spock.com invites, anyone?

So I have 100 invites for this new site called Spock.com. In a nutshell, I see it as Wikipedia + search engine, but just about people. It’s an interesting approach. For a general quick explanation, feature list, a few screenshots and all around overview, see this TechCrunch article.

The interesting thing is that it’s not a social network, but more of a meta-hub that allows you to find, tag and describe yourself and/or others. Like a mix of Jyte and ClaimID. It’ll be interesting to see it either take off completely (like Wikipedia) or tank completely (because of malicious users).

Anyways, I have invites to give away. If anyone is interested, leave a comment below or email me at carlo@zottmann.org. I’ll need your email address for that.

And if you already have access to it, stop by my entry.

Yahoo! News 2.0

Wir haben heute Yahoo! News 2.0 gelauncht. Gratulation an alle beteiligten Kollegen. :) Die Site hat viel Neues, vor allem eine schickere Präsentation und (hoffentlich) weniger Bugs. Es gibt noch ein paar Ecken und Kanten, aber die schleifen wir auch noch zurecht. Anschauen!

(Ich hab auch ein wenig beigesteuert (Video-Importer), aber das war der kleinste Teil.)

Wordpress plugin troubles: Gravatars vs. OpenID

So Robert notified me that his Gravatar didn’t show up in my comments. After some debugging I found and fixed the problem.

The Gravatars plugin works fine with the default comments, but not with the wpopenid / WP-OpenID+ plugin. Son of a Perl script!

Turns out in the gravatars2.php only checks for the known comment types: comment, comment_type trackback, comment_type pingback. Comments made using an OpenID account (on Wordpress installs with the aforementioned OpenID plugins enabled) are saved with comment_type openid. Aha!

So here’s the fix: in gravatars2.php (you know where to look for it), search for

if (('' == $comment->comment_type)
|| ('comment' == $comment->comment_type)) {

and replace it with

if (('' == $comment->comment_type)
|| ('comment' == $comment->comment_type)
|| ('openid' == $comment->comment_type)) {

There are two occurences. (The line breaks are usually not there, it’s all on one line.) Change, save, and that’s it.

Tip to the hat goes to Robert for pointing out the bug, and narrowing it down. Appreciated! :)

Weissbier with Timberlake

The other day I met Justin Timberlake at a bus station here in Munich.

That was quite bizarre, he was just standing there, apparently waiting for the bus. At first, I wasn’t sure whether it was really him; just a guy in a shirt, jeans and a jacket. I glanced at him a couple of times, the man looked a wee bit pissed, but not too much. You know how it is — you look at someone, wondering whether your mind is playing tricks on you, or whether you’re going crazy, because what you see is highly improbable.

After two minutes I’ve decided to say something. He had noticed me glancing, but hadn’t said anything. And there’s only so much glancing you can do before it becomes impolite or even rude.

I cleared my throat. “Mr. Timberlake?”, I asked.

He looked at me, still appearing a bit pissed.

“Allow me to introduce myself,” I’ve said. “My name’s Carlo Zottmann, I live here, and I work on the interwebs for a living.”

His brows narrowed a bit; puzzled, he appeared to be.

“I like your music. Not everything, but a couple of your songs are rather cool. Just wanted to let you know.” With that, I smiled and turned away.

After a moment he said, “Why did you tell me that?”

I turned back to face him. “Well, I know who you are and what you do. I think it’s only fair to level the playing field. And claiming I’d be your biggest fan and have all your albums would be a lie, so why do it.”

He grinned. “True.” And that was that, then.

Or not. Half a minute later and turned to me again and asked, “Do you know a pub or something around here?”

Heh.

That’s how I ended up having a Weissbier with him at the Lehner’s in Trudering. Who’d have thought? Turned out he was dumped by some woman in the middle of Munich without his entourage (he didn’t want to go into details, but I think it was planned to be a romantic evening), and he didn’t feel like calling them. Instead he had opted for walking around a bit. Makes sense, Munich isn’t that big. We talked about our families and life, the job, the usual stuff. That was pretty cool, I have to admit. He’s just another bloke, his job seems to be more glamorous than mine, but only a bit.

Fun fact: almost noone seemed to recognize him. I ordered for him, and there are a lot of english speakers in town anyways, so hearing another language is not unusual. Heh. When bringing us the bill, the waitress caught a closer look and for a moment seemed to faint. J’s expression hardened ever so slightly, and he seemed to prepare himself for the unavoidable things to come, but I manage to interrupt.

“Don’t. Please.“, I asked her.

“But… this is…”, she started.

“I know who he is. Please, don’t. Show some mercy.” I grinned at her. “I don’t think he’ll object to giving you an autograph, but give the man some quiet time.”

She pondered it for a moment, and finally smiled. “Okay.”

“Thanks.”

So he paid for the food and the drinks, gave her the promised autograph, and then we slipped out. By then it was night, and the humidity of the day had vanished a bit.

“Well, thanks for the beer, Carlo.” he said.

I took the offered hand. “I didn’t pay. Thank you. Hey, need a lift or anything? I could call Dana, we could bring you back to the hotel…”

He interrupted me with a quick shake of his head. “Nah, ‘s cool. I’ll walk back. Or take the subway.”

“Really? You sure?”

“Your town is tiny. I’ll manage.”

“Screw you, Timberlake. Munich fuckin’ rocks.”

He laughed. “Take care.”

“You, too.”

After that, I walked home. It’s only 20 minutes by foot, and it helped me to clear my head. Dana couldn’t believe what I told her after coming through the door, and was (understandably) a bit miffed I didn’t call her when we we’re still at the restaurant. I promised her to let her know right away the next time I met a celebrity at the bus station. Heh.

And that was how I had a drink with Justin Timberlake, of all people.

Now, this anecdote has been one of the greatest in my life, and is obviously completely made up. I consider it an excercise in LIEterature. So there.

Madrid, or Whoaholycraphowcoolisthat

The other day I talked about our impending doom, but Madrid wasn’t totally bad.

In fact, I had two great nights there. On Monday, after I’ve arrived, my esteemed colleagues and I went to a little tapas restaurant whose name I forgot. Too bad, because it was rather spiffy. Nice food, great wine, much fun. We actually walked there from the office, so I managed to get some quick glimpses at the city. Beats driving around in a taxi.

On Tuesday, the good folks of Yahoo! Spain took us to Casa Patas, a Flamenco-themed restaurant. Really nice food, good wine (once again). Around 22:30 we’ve all been really stuffed, and wondering where to go next, when we were told that there was a Flamenco show coming up, and we had tickets.

Now, mind you, I had no idea what to expect. Flamenco had never really appeared on my radar prior to that evening.

To make it short: it was one hell of a show. There were three singers, Pepe Jiménez, José “El Flaco” and Pedro Jiménez, two guitars, Jesus Losada and Victor “El Tomate” (I am not making this up, it’s what the pamphlet said). Also, three dancers: Primitivo Daza, Miguel Canas and Rosa Jiménez. (Thanks to David for letting me use the picture.)

And quite frankly, they rocked the house.

The music was superb. The dancing was mindblowing. It was an awesome evening, and I was completely blown away. The other guys had a good time as well, and it’s been quite something!

Many thanks to both Marcos and Arno from the Madrid office for planning a great night out. Here’s hoping you’ll never come to Munich because quite frankly, I wouldn’t know how to top that. ;)

Unfortunately, I still have no idea what kind of Flamenco I had witnessed. Apparently there are around 50 different styles of Flamenco, and I am a total n00b when it comes to classifying kickass foreign ethno entertainment. :p After spending some time listening to many different artists (Pandora.com and Last.fm be praised), I hadn’t made any progress. So I’ve asked my Spanish coworkers, and they couldn’t tell me either.

Then I’ve mailed the folks at Casa Patas (in English), explaining which show I had seen, and asking whether they could tell me the subtype(s) of Flamenco that were shown this evening, and guess what I got back? A form letter, in Spanish, with a rather lengthy Word document, describing the history of Flamenco, in Spanish. Gee, thanks. I wonder what made them think I could speak Spanish, after writing them in another language. ;)

So, that didn’t help either. It means listening to more music then, hoping to find something I might like. Well, that can’t hurt, but it’s driving me nuts to listen and listen and listen and not find the right thing.

Before discovering the Internet I’ve had a bit more patience, I think.