Carlo Zottmann: Entirely Unsuspicious Human Person.

★ Hi, I'm Carlo.

2027-09-01T00:00:00Z

G'day, you've reached the personal site of Carlo Zottmann. I'm a freelance software developer, minimalist runner, videogames enthusiast, coffee devotee and husband from Munich, Germany.

I build "applications" or "sites" for them so-called "internets". Among my past and present projects are foto-bundesliga, a German-language league game site for photographers, TwerpScan, a Twitter contact list management tool, and Ephemera, a Mac tool for Instapaper enthusiasts with ebook readers (open-sourced by now).

Since I'm running with the cool kids, all of my (public) code is available on Github.

Comments are disabled as the most prolific comment authors in the past were usually the ones trying to sell me stuff like "Semi-Original Penis Replacement Lamps", and I really don't need that. If you read something here and feel like discussing it, shoot me a twoot or drop me a line via Google+.

Impressum & inhaltlich Verantwortlicher gemäß §10 Absatz 3 MDStV: Carlo Zottmann, Zeisigweg 30, 81827 München, Tel 0176 / 9687 5739, carlo@zottmann.org. Haftungshinweis: Trotz sorgfältiger inhaltlicher Kontrolle übernehmen wir keine Haftung für die Inhalte externer Links. Für den Inhalt der verlinkten Seiten sind ausschließlich deren Betreiber verantwortlich.

Post-It #26

2012-02-17T00:00:00Z

Sublime Text 2 has quickly become my default text editor, and it's great that you can enhance it with some select packages. My favourites so far are Sublime Package Control (great starting point!), sublime-jshint, Gist and SideBarEnhancements.

Allrounder devices FTW! TechBlock's editorial "Samsung’s super-sized Galaxy Note changed my life" is rather in-depth. Beautiful photography, too.

Gumroad is really, really, really simple way to sell links. As in: you have something you want to sell (link/picture/file), you want to accept credit cards, and you want to get it done in under 10 minutes. (Like, oh I don't know, a picture of me saluting you.) Its simplicity is great but due to the absence of an API there's no way to create links programmatically. Still: selling something won't get much simpler than this.

Coffee is helping. Mackenzie Sheppard's short documentary Yoshi's Blend is really touching.

After the earthquake and tsunami, Yoshi Masuda set out to share his love of coffee and vintage gramophone tunes with survivors, driving across Japan in a VW bus and setting up outposts of the HOPE Cafe. His humble goal is to create a scene of normalcy and warmth in a devastated area.

It's just over 8 minutes long, so take a quick break and go for it.

Post-It #25

2012-02-12T00:00:00Z

Alright, let's pick up my old 2007 habit again of collecting interesting links in a quick post.

Quinn Norton's three part series on Anonymous' past and present in WIRED is rather good and very well worth the read:

DocumentUp "Automatically generated documentation sites for your markdown files!" Nice idea, very well executed. Kudos!

That's not quite correct. I believe I found a minor issue with TweetBot's translation service.

I don't always switch between Ruby versions, but when I do, I use Hendrik's rbfu. It's a tiny, lightweight, sane alternative to rvm and rbenv. It even supports auto-switching to a particular Ruby version depending on your current folder. Handy! (As I'm not a fan of rvm anymore.)

The Death and Return of Superman is amusing for all the uncredited cameos (Simon Pegg, Elijah Wood, Mandy Moore etc.) and the overall insanity -- and I say that as someone who doesn't care about Superman at all. Via lots of people.

The big blog move of 2012

2012-01-20T00:00:00Z

So, once again I was fed up with my choice of blogging platform. Tumblr, which I had turned to after ditching Wordpress, is just not what I am looking for anymore. It's not a bad platform in itself, but I noticed more and more that…

I really don't care about "liking" a post (I am talking about Tumblr's own feature, not Facebook's.)
I really don't like reblogging all that much. It's great for quickfire, semi-mindless sharing of other people's content, but I try to get away from that myself, so there.
The lack of a meaningful export is annoying. To be honest, it vexes me that several years after its launch, Tumblr still has no real, official, right way of exporting my posts. Yes, I know the semi-official Mac app written by an (ex?) employee a few years ago, but here's the thing: I wrote all my posts in Markdown, yet the only format the export yields is rendered HTML pages. (Find the error.) Yes, I could've/should've made copies of the Markdown posts in the first place, before submitting them to Tumblr. But that only brings me to my next point:
I don't really feel like composing blog posts in a browser window anymore, so for the last few posts I ended up writing them in a desktop editor, then copying them over to Tumblr's web interface. Now when you want to make a change, what is the source of truth? Why not just skip a step?

As a result, I wrote less and less.

The older I get the more I realize I really want to own my (relevant) content. As an example, should Tumblr go belly-up tomorrow, all my precious blog posts would be gone, and I won't have that. While I could make regular backups, it's impractical and prone to negligence; due to the way things are, "make a Tumblr backup" is equivalent to "set a recurring reminder, then open the app, click a number of buttons, and hope the API isn't overwhelmed right now". This doesn't fly.

Thus, I ended up doing a final export, then writing a custom script utilizing html2text which converted the HTML output back to Markdown (while mangling all footnotes — that was fun). Once I was done with this I knew I can never go back to Tumblr.

In any case, I believe by now it's clear where I am going with this.

Tally

So where does that leave me? What do I want from a blogging service/engine?

I want to own my content, meaning I want to have the original files around even when the service/engine doesn't work.
I don't want to have to copy and paste posts into a form in a browser window. The files on my machine(s) should be the source of truth.
I want native Markdown support. 'nuff said.

Taking all these things into account, it didn't take me long to realize a solution based around (git-)based static file generators might be what I was looking for. So I started testing out jekyll and several other tools alike. Good stuff — I like the idea, yet I noticed I really don't want to be bothered with git or other command-line tools when I feel like writing. (It's a matter of taste, I guess.)

The new kid

Then a few weeks ago I came across Calepin. It's a rather opinionated Dropbox-based service. It'll pick up .md/.rst files in your ~/Dropbox/Apps/Calepin/ folder, generate a static site and serve that for you from its server (not from your Dropbox).

It is opinionated insofar that it assumes you want to use Markdown, might want to point your readers to your Twitter account, might want to use Disqus for comments, and might want to use a custom domain name, while being somewhat desinterested in customizing your blog any further. Which is okay for me, but I'm sure it isn't for everyone.

There's some bare-bones site configuration available in the form of a settings.json file in the same folder — this is how you tell Calepin which Google Analytics ID or Disqus profile to use, for example.

When registering and setting up your blog on the site, you can also specify a custom domain to be used (CNAME).

Pictures and other assets can/should be served from your ~/Dropbox/Public/ folder. Clever idea.

The per-post metadata is something very much like YAML front matter and can be used to set title, abstract, status, date, slug, category and/or tags. If you set the Status: draft directive in a post file, the post isn't published. The slug may contain folder names — for example, Slug: 2012/01/20/zomg will result in the URL [username].calepin.co/2012/01/20/zomg/. I like that.

The publish process is triggered by clicking the aptly named "Publish" button on calepin.co.

But…

Calepin is not themeable. It also lacks support for extra header/footer links, "special" pages, widgets or doodads (yet?). For me, that's not a problem (yet?), tho, since I noticed I can get clever using a page's Slug directive.

(For example, I wanted a "Me" page: I created a file me.md, then set its slug to "me" and its post date in the future (so the page will stay at the top of the front page). For the time being, this works well enough for me. YMMV.)

There's no timezone support yet, at this point all timestamps are UTC.

The future

Calepin's creator, Jökull Sólberg Auðunsson, made some statements regarding future features etc. in the comments to the Calepin Guide.

There might be additional customization options like footer sections or subpages.
A command-line tool is "coming soon".
Calepin might transform into a freemium/premium service at some point. It'll be interesting to follow that development.

And finally…

My new/old/moved blog is back at carlo.zottmann.org. This is where it resided back in its Wordpress days (self-hosted), its Tumblr incarnation was located at blog.zottmann.org.

On a related note, I think iA Writer's lack of full Markdown syntax highlighting (for example, for links and italic text) might turn out to annoy me more than I had anticipated.

Movember 2011: €300! [English]

2011-12-02T22:07:44Z

Well, Movember 2011 came and went, it's time for one final update.

Over the course of the last four weeks I was able to rake in a total of €301 ¹ going to the Movember Global Action Plan benefitting prostate cancer research and prevention world-wide. Many thanks to Susi, Mike, Marcus, Brad, Christian, Hendrik, Alexander, Mario, Dawn and my parents! You guys rock.

Also I've actually talked about prostate cancer with a number of people — it's not necessarily the most awesome topic at a party but it's important nonetheless. And in the end it's what this drive is all about, innit.

And then there were the updates and the pictures. Gods, the pictures. I realized rather quickly why I had decided years ago on going bearded all the time — I look terribly silly without. Thankfully, my hair knows how to grow, and my face got some of its manly fur back rather quickly.

The results speak for themselves, I think.

(By the way, did you realize how crazy expensive it is to get Alan Rickman to (agree to a Quigley Down Under re-enactment photo shoot? Should you feel (like pitching in to help me cover my runaway expenses, be my guest.)

In any case, I had fun! The Movember donation box will remain open until Dec 9th, 2011. A big "thank you" to all who participated and chipped in! :D

That's roughly USD 65.000, I believe. ;) ↩

Movember 2011: €300! [Deutsch]

2011-12-02T13:13:00Z

So, der Movember 2011 ist vorbei, Zeit für ein finales Update.

Über die letzten vier Wochen hinweg habe ich insgesamt €301 für den Movember Global Action Plan eingenommen, der die Spenden an die Prostata-Krebs-Forschung und -Vorsorge weltweit verteilt. Vielen Dank an Susi, Mike, Marcus, Brad, Christian, Hendrik, Alexander, Mario, Dawn und meine Eltern! Ihr rockt!

Ausserdem habe ich mich tatsächlich mit mehreren Leuten über Prostata-Krebs unterhalten, was zwar nicht unbedingt das lustigste aller Themen ist, aber wichtig. Dafür machen wir den Unfug hier ja schließlich, gell.

Und dann die Updates und Bilder. Oh Gott, die Bilder. Mir wurde recht schnell klar, warum ich normalerweise immer einen Bart trage — ohne sehe ich furchtbar albern aus. Aber glücklicherweise ist mein Haarwuchs verlässlich, und so wucherte mein Gesicht akzeptabel schnell wieder zu.

Das Endergebnis kann sich sehen lassen, finde ich.

(Übrigens, ist Euch eigentlich klar, was es kostet, Alan Rickman für ein nachgestelltes Quigley Down Under-Foto zu buchen? Falls sich jemand an den Kosten beteiligen möchte, ich wäre nicht böse.)

Also, hat Spaß gemacht! Die Sammeldose bleibt bis 9.12.2011 offen. Danke an alle, die mitgemacht haben! :D

100 Best Random Letter Combinations

2011-11-08T18:36:53Z

Being an avid reader of [any "high-rated" web development resource site], I always envied their exhaustive web development top lists. Like the 20 best jQuery plugins to make lists. Or the 50 must-read tutorials for finally understanding those web development resource sites.

So, being the absolute link-whoring web development professional I am, I present you with my personal best-of list. This list is the first of its kind, and I'm absolutely thrilled to think about what you guys might do with what you're about to read! These are exciting times to be alive in HTML5/CSS3/JS land!!

Without further ado, here are 100 random letter combinations (unrelated to CSS3 and HTML5!) you might not have known.

dc
vqqq
dakxd
cvcp
fbvt
le
qf
avyl
vhgtj
mfc
ej
vugdf
tmbi
kkjb
fjx
wy
smny
wgk
mrtn
wjq
vhwwa
tiif
hho
aa
akbb
bfywe
ml
oajb
egj
uni
gme
rilr
uj
oxsq
ewcq
jsmpf
jh
tttb
tbgcg
qpqn
cmi
aai
gq
phl
lauq
owu
kodjc
ocv
mq
gofh
bge
wkws
dy
ftn
krws
hrfwy
hgj
fyft
dfax
im
fubpp
mkd
yavfy
mronq
jght
xot
ltg
pxdqe
oylhm
ekxou
yykmj
njylh
yd
photv
xerkh
ko
drwji
ncsu
udymw
tl
bhess
gavqc
hbf
aale
lrf
xlpds
lwb
cmxj
ff
xxv
ts
uxhkf
uynum
nahmv
fglov
iyunj
kgq
dksul
mmhti
vx

Please like me on Facebook.

Movember 2011 [English]

2011-11-01T14:51:00Z

When Hendrik told me I'm missed Cocktober (ask him…), I was very sad. But then I realized this year's Movember is upon us, and I wasn't sad anymore. True story!

So I scrambled to register myself there, pledging to make more of a fool out of myself than usual over the course of the coming month. What for, you ask? For a good cause:

I'm trying to raise money for prostate cancer research. Many men still shy away from the related cancer exams, considering them decidedly un-manly. Reacting to this silly notion a lot of educated gentlemen like yours truly try to counter it with the most manly fur-based inventions of them all: the moustache. (Hence, "Mo-vember" — it's quite clever, you see.)

On November 1st, we shave. Oh, how we shave. I, for one, let go of my luscious beard. During the rest of the month we'll grow mighty 'staches to both direct attention to prostate cancer research and raise money for it. These donations go to the Movember Global Action Plan where it is passed on to researchers around the world. It's a good thing.

Funny thing: there's no dedicated Movember site for Germany (yet?) so I had to improvise. Thus, I've created a profile on Movember Belgium site which happened to be the only European community site that a) shows donations in Euro and b) is available in English.

Well, and here's where you come in now. I'd like you to support this important, good cause and fork over a few bucks. Whether my hairless mug is as shocking to you as it is to my wife or as funny to you you as it looks to me, please donate a few monies to prostate cancer research worldwide. To do that, visit my Movember MoBro page and click the big "Donate to me" button below my still hairy mugshot. Every dime counts! Gracias!!!

As a Thank You I'll keep on entertaining you with my loss of dignity — each morning I'll snap a picture of my mug and my slowly returning manliness, posting them online every other day. Should you find that thought scary: you don't have to watch that.

(My face is freezing… Is that normal?!)

In closing I'd like to thank my lovely wife Dana who started her show of support with a hearty "You do know you look stupid without your beard, right?". Yes, dear, I know. That's part of the concept!

Also a "Big ups, playa" to my first sponsors, Susi Löffler and Mike West — rock'n'roll!

Well then, people — please donate:

Movember 2011 [Deutsch]

2011-11-01T12:21:00Z

Nachdem Hendrik mir eröffnete, dass Cocktober (fragt ihn…) schon vorbei wäre, war ich sehr traurig. Aber dann fiel mir ein, dass auch dieses Jahr wieder ein Movember ansteht, und dann war ich nicht mehr traurig.

Also habe ich mich dort flugs registriert und verpflichtet, mich einen Monat lang zur Wurst zu machen. Und wofür? Für einen guten Zweck:

Es geht darum, Geld für die Prostata-Krebs-Forschung zu sammeln. Viele Kerle halten diese Untersuchungen ja immer noch für unmännlich, und diesem idiotischen Vorurteil halten aufgeklärte Gentlemen wie ich mit der männlichsten aller fellbasierten Erfindungen dagegen: dem Schnauzbart. (Englisch: "Moustache", daher das Wortspiel "Movember".)

Am ersten November rasieren wir uns glatt, und über den gesamten Monat hinweg züchten wir uns dann stylische Rotzbremsen und Suppensiebe, um Aufmerksamkeit für die Krebs-Forschung zu erzeugen und Spenden dafür einzusammeln. Das Geld geht an den Movember Global Action Plan, der es koordiniert an die Forschung weltweit verteilt. Ist eine gute Sache.

Dummerweise gibt es für Deutschland keine eigene Movember-Site, also musste ich kreativ werden. Ich habe mir also ein Profil auf der belgischen Site angelegt, da es die einzige europäische Site ist, auf der man a) in Euro spenden kann und die b) englischsprachig ist.

So, und jetzt kommt Ihr ins Spiel. Ich würde mich freuen, wenn Ihr für diesen wichtigen, guten Zweck ein paar Euro lockermachen könntet. Wenn Euch meine enthaarte Gesichtshälfte ebenso schockiert wie meine Frau oder aber genauso erheitert wie mich, gebt bitte etwas Geld für die Prostata-Krebs- Forschung. Geht dazu auf meine Movember-MoBro-Seite und klickt auf den großen "Donate to me"-Button unter meinem noch bärtigen Gesicht. Jeder Euro zählt! Gracias!!!

Zum Dank werde ich Euch auch weiterhin mit meinem Würdeverlust unterhalten — ich werde jeden Tag ein Foto von meiner langsam zurückkehrenden Männlichkeit machen, und diese Fotos alle ein bis zwei Tage veröffentlichen. Falls Euch der Gedanke abschreckt: niemand muss sich diese Bilder anschauen.

(Mein Gesicht ist so kalt… Ist das normal?!)

Zum Abschluss möchte ich meiner lieben Frau Dana danken, die ihre Unterstützungsbekundung mit den Worten "Du weisst schon, dass Du ohne Bart total bescheuert aussiehst, oder?" eingeleitet hat. ;) (Ja, weiss ich. Das ist Teil der Aktion.)

Ausserdem gilt mein großer Dank den ersten zwei Spendern, Susi Löffler und Mike West — Rock'n'roll, Kinder!

Also, Ihr alle — auf gehts zum Spenden:

A Few Notes About… Chef + Ubuntu 10.04 + Ruby 1.9.2 + RVM

2011-05-26T22:00:00Z

A few notes on getting chef-client to install a Ruby 1.9.2 Rails stack on a production box. I've been spending a good number of hours on this, and I've learned a couple of things I need to jot down real quick lest I forget.

Preface: as you'll see, I'm not a devops guy. I don't have to maintain a lot of servers, so I tend to forget after setting one up that once per year. Eh.

There's no current Ruby 1.9.2 package for Ubuntu 10.04. This made me think I would be best off using RVM as it's quite enjoyable and useful in a local development enviroment.
RVM is ace for development work but as it turns out it's kinda shit in a production environment. Up until a few versions ago the system-wide install of RVM was rather solid (for me) as RVM made sure gems for one particular Ruby went into the same folder no matter whether they were installed as root or regular user (let's ignore permissions for a moment here). That meant that even when a gem had been installed by a user the root user would see it -- if he was using the same RVM Ruby.

These days, you have to use rvmsudo to have your root shell use RVM. As provisioning systems like Chef don't know and/or care about rvmsudo, you're bound to run into issues as chef-client will happily keep installing his gems under Ruby 1.8 -- ignoring the 1.9.2 gems. Brilliant.

I've played around with various ways to cram RVM into my root shells, but it's been a wonky affair. It felt rather hacky and wobbly, i.e. not like something I want on my production machines.

Ditching RVM and spending an hour looking for a 10.04-compatible Ruby 1.9.2 package is less fun than it sounds. Hint: there are no current packages. My Linux-fu being what it is I've decided to not get sidetracked trying to hack together a package myself.
Finally I came to the conclusion that my own knife bootstrap file would be the way to go. (Here's the file.) The general idea being that installing/compiling 1.9.2 from source before anything else would make my life easier. Both root and standard user would use the same Ruby install, no need for hacks and detours.

I put it in the right place (chef-repo/.chef/bootstrap/) and then just call it like this: knife bootstrap mynode.example.com -r 'recipe[chef-client]' -x chef --sudo --distro ubuntu10.04-ruby192

I was right. Works like a charm.

The rest was a walk in the cake, mostly. Not having RVM as middleman makes installations considerably more stable.

So, in retrospect I wonder why noone has bothered with a Ruby 1.9.2 package for Ubuntu 10.04 -- given it's used on so many servers? It's curious, really. Also I now know why RVM is absent from so many cookbooks.

Live and learn, I suspect.

THE END.

PS: Bonus links! chef-denyhosts, chef-ufw.

UPDATE / PPS: Bonus link #3! chef-ruby1.9

Review: Saints Row 2 (360)

2011-05-23T10:40:00Z

A few months ago I picked up Volition's 2008 game Saints Row 2 for €12 on a whim. I'd bought the German version at first --which makes sense what with me being in Germany and all-- but shortly afterwards decided to start over playing the uncensored UK version instead as the DE edition is basically a different/crippled game. (The game was really butchered in order to sell it here, to the extent that XBL actually treats both editions as two entirely different games. It's a huge letdown.)

Well. Not expecting much but maybe a few hours of slightly awkward silliness and probably nothing else, I was in for a surprise.

You play an unforgiving (and hilariously snarky) gang leader who awakes from a coma which he entered at the end of Saints Row 1. Fleeing the surprisingly open high-security prison complex without much trouble, he sets out to revive his old gang, the 3rd Street Saints, with some help from old and new friends.

The story missions are mostly fun and engaging, but not without flaws. Some of the checkpoints had me pull my hair out because they were obviously placed by mad men who hated me personally. Also, there were (very few) occasional glitches, but nothing to lose sleep about. All in all your tasks are fun. So far, so unremarkable on paper.

Yet I came to really like Saints Row 2 because it's not ashamed of what it is, because it's not afraid to proudly fly its colors: a game for adults who understand that this --at its heart-- is pure and unadulterated satire. Volition took the basic setting (gang wars in an urban setting) and made it willfully surreal. It's to real, dramatic gang-related stories what Naked Gun was to gritty, hard-hitting detective movies.¹

I mean, name another game where you can dress in a pink Borat-style swim suit, wearing a traffic cone as hat and space-age biker boots -- and then fly an attack helicopter or conduct "business" meetings. That alone is an indicator of the level of grit, reality and seriousness Volition had in mind when it made Saints Row. They left the grit and deep story telling to the excellent GTA IV that came after it.

Take its mini games for example. Like the one involving insurance fraud. And the one about pleasing ladies in seedy locations². And the one about stealing cars. And the one about "rescueing" other hard-working ladies from their dubious employers. And the one about poopifying³ parts of the city for money. And the one about ATV-based arson. And the one about running around town butt-nekkid, flashing your pixelated man parts and raking up cash doing so. And many, many more. Most of them are worthwhile, many are so-so, none of them are about making a point in any way -- they're about having fun and making some quick money for your ongoing quest to style your growing number of increasingly elusive cribs in the process, and nothing else.

So yes, gang warfare. You fight three enemy gangs, the police and a big-ass corporation which owns most of the city. And 99% of the time SR2 successfully manages not to question its playful background. Stilwater is a clear-cut caricature of a sprawling US city. It's incredibly easy to get lost there in the gang-related shenanigans of the main characters there, their almost comical lack of regard for other people's lives and property and the often hilarious mission pieces. It is a game that full-well knows it is a game, that its city is a ludicrous sandbox, and that's not shy to brazenly cater to its select audience, both in and outside of missions.

Case in point: there is a particular outlandish cutscene after the, let's say, "forceful eviction" of a good number of drifters from the new designated Saints gang hideout. Johnny Gat and the player character sit on a couch, bodies strewn all around them -- then they banter and fist-bump, and you were forgiven for thinking they were just like two regular dudes after another day of hard labour if it wasn't for the dead guy in front of the couch they were using to prop up their feet.

I'm man enough to tell you: yes, I laughed, exactly because it was crazy. Volition knew it when they wrote it, I knew it when I saw it, we were sharing a joke there. Was it deep, meaningful high-brow humor? Hell, no. Funny it was nonetheless.

And while the question of morale is avoided for most of the game, it isn't entirely absent. In one of the final missions there is a dialog between the protagonist and his former leader and mentor, where --in the last minute of said mentor's life-- they discuss their respective motivations. And while the mentor is trying to talk sense into him, telling him all the violence and death can't go on, the Boss (the player character) all of a sudden spouts: "I don't give a shit… I own this city!". I applaud Charles Shaughnessy for his crackerjack voice work as the Boss⁴ -- in this very moment I came to realize that this character does have his own agenda after all, apart from allowing me to wield him as my chosen tool in the joyful redecoration of entire Stilwater city blocks. He is a ruthless asshole, even if I came to forget that over all the lol'ing and giggling in the hours prior. In that dialog his true colors shone through, and though the entire game is basically a huge hedonistic exercise in violent and juvenile humor, the Boss' short monologue gave him quite a bit of added depth -- it hit home for me.

It was a good, maybe even great moment in an outstandingly insane game. How good? I still remember and think about it, even two months after finishing the game. It managed to give SR2 a slightly different tone that reverberated back from the end of the game through my memories of the whole experience. It wasn't a heavy-handed "Gangs are bad, mmkay, kids?", far from it; again, Volition acknowledged its audience, recognized it for what it is --adults-- and gave a little bit of reinforced context to make a subtle point: they know full well what they're making fun of.

Chapeau.

So my overall verdict of SR2 is "absolutely worth my time". I refuse to hand out arbitrary points or scores for games as that system is bollocks anyways. Instead, I'll opt for Marcus' scoring scheme which basically asks you what you would be willing to pay for the game once you've actually played it. How much money do you feel is justified for a copy of this game? For me, the answer is:

Saints Row 2: €40.

Look it up, kids. ↩
But you only see said location from the outside, and have to play by ear and gamepad vibration. Sorry. ↩
Yes, it's a word… now. ↩
Why, I picked the English voice for my character. It's got style. ↩

My Favourite Chrome Extensions

2011-03-27T17:04:00Z

A few months ago I switched to Chrome. It's a solid browser; it does what I want and expect (mostly), it's stable, it comes with a "boxed" Flash plugin so I don't have to taint my entire system with that POS install that wonderful piece of software system-wide.

I've come across a number of handy extensions for it. A few of them I'm still using them after a couple of months; since I try to avoid cruft creep (virtual and otherwise) they obviously have some value to me. Thus, I feel some shout-outs are in order.

My essentials

1Password: one of the first tools I install on every new machine, and of course it comes with a Chrome extension (as well as others for different browsers).
Awesome Screenshot: Capture & Annotate: capture an entire web page, a selected area or just the visible part, then make annotations using the built-in tools and either save the resulting file locally or upload it anonymously to their site. Here's an example of an uploaded screenshot. I like it because it offers a rather streamlined process; I've played around with equally nice Skitch but as most screenshots I take are of pages confined in a browser window, as opposed to desktop application windows, the "Capture & Annotate" addon won. They have a Safari extension available at their site, too.
Docs PDF/PowerPoint Viewer (by Google): opens/previews PDFs and several MS Office document types in Google Docs instead of downloading them. Given that I don't own MS Office, this is obviously very handy.
FlashControl: the nicest and most configurable Flash blocker I've found so far. Allows for whitelisting and blacklisting both pages and Flash files, which is rather neat – for example, I can block all Flash content (ads etc.) on a site but have their Flash videos work normally.
JSBeautify for Chrome: When looking at a JavaScript file, this extension will offer to beautify it for you. It's full of love.
Keep My Opt-Outs: made by my man Mike, this addon permanently opts your Chrome out of cookie-based ad personalization. It only helps with companies adhering to the industry privacy standards, but it's a good start.
Readability: I <3 Readability. On a button click the extension removes all the non-content from a given page, presenting me with a distraction-free version while at the same time attempting to pay the site. It's a novel concept which I support wholeheartedly, so I urge you to take a look if you have not done so yet.
Stylebot: apply custom CSS rules to any website. Do I need to say more?
Window Resizer: pick a window size from a menu, and have your browser window shrink or grow automagically! Forget flying cars and jetpacks, this is way cooler. Comes with a number of presets and allows for custom sizes.
YSlow: Yahoo!'s handy page performance tool. Read more about it on its homepage.

Nice to have

Auto HD for YouTube: allows for setting a default/preferred video quality on YT. Also widens the embedded video right away if you want it to.
Auto Refresh Plus: reloads the selected tab every n seconds/minutes. I use it mostly on the print pages of the Guardian's live blogs.
iTunes Preview: don't launch iTunes: prevents the iTunes Store preview web pages from launching the desktop app.
RSS Subscription Extension (by Google): irritatingly enough, Chrome comes without built-in feed auto-discovery. Instead, Google opted for a separate extension. As you would expect, it displays a RSS button in the location bar of a site when it found a feed. On a related note: is it just me, or are RSS feeds losing importance?
Stop Autoplay for YouTube: prevents YT's auto-play but at the same time allows pre-buffering.

Not sure yet

Snipe: a keyboard-based browser tab finder. Think Alfred/Quicksilver/Launchbar for browser tabs. I like the idea but as I've installed it just today I'm not sure yet about its value for me.

So that's that. If you feel like sharing your list of must-have extensions, let me know in the comments or via Twitter.

Update #1, 10 minutes later: Noticed I forgot JSBeautify for Chrome. Added it to the list of essentials.

The Guardian on Recycling in Germany

2011-03-20T15:24:00Z

Really nice article in the Guardian's Environment section today: A small town in Germany where recycling pays

That's the second Guardian article I've read in the last few weeks that deals with the German recycling system/culture. I find them interesting not because they're news to me but because they pose an outsider's view, written to explain the benefits to an interested (?) outside audience. The system works, it's nothing we think about anymore.

On a related note: here in Munich, bringing waste to the recycling depot is actually free to Munich residents.

The Blind Man Who Taught Himself To See

2011-03-06T14:47:00Z

"Men’s Journal » The Blind Man Who Taught Himself To See": A terrific, stunning article about Daniel Kish, a blind man who has mastered echolocation to live his life autonomously.

Like most people, I don't know many blind people. There were none in my neighborhood, there still aren't even though my neighborhood has changed a few times in the last two decades. Here in Munich you see a good number of white canes (as in any other bigger city), but I do my best to not treat blind or handicapped people any differently. Why would I? They are just other people, living their own lives, they're not helpless victims. If they need help with anything, they'll probably ask.

Actually, up until a few years ago, I merely tried to ignore them, tried not to stare, out of fear to misstep — the usual behavior, I'd say. That changed for the better when I was working at Yahoo!. There was a London-based engineer, Artur Ortega (really nice guy, BTW), who one day came to our office to tell us a bit about the way blind users navigate the net. He showed us his setup (laptop, screenreader etc.), and those few hours really were a eye-opening experience for me. (Pun not intended.)

I've learned a lot about accessibility that day, but also about seeing with your ears. His screenreader was yelling at us while he hopped around websites and his machine, and holy shit, that thing talks fast. And I mean short- incomprehensible-burst-of-vaguely-speech-like-static fast. And Artur stood there, in the middle of it all, grinning and working and explaining. Combine that with the fact that he is constantly traveling around different Y! offices all over the World for talks and work, and all of a sudden it finally hit me.

He's just another guy doing his job. Yeah, so blind people can't see with their eyes. Big deal. If it's awkward, then it's mostly awkward for us, the sighted people. Because frankly, most of us have no fucking clue how to approach a person who's blind or deaf or different in the first place, because we were never trained for that. Political correctness isn't always helpful either. ("Is it 'blind'? Can I say that? Or is it 'visually impaired'? Damn, I don't want to say anything wrong! Forget it, I just walk away, maybe he didn't see me… OMG, what, no! I'm a bad person, what is wrong with me?" etc. It may sound funny if I say it like that, but really, it isn't.)

Anyhow. Great article, go read. It just reminded me again of Artur and that one afternoon, even though we didn't speak much a since then, and I felt like scribbling it down real quick.

Being blind means just another way of living your daily life, I guess. Nothing else. I briefly met other blind people since then, and they all appeared to be rather confident, which makes sense. Absolutely no need to feel pity. Different people, different stories.

Space Tourism: One Giant Leap for Researchers

2011-02-28T20:32:00Z

Cool NYT article is cool: "Space Tourism: One Giant Leap for Researchers".

There's a lot of research that can be done in the few minutes of zero G the upcoming commercial space flights will provide, but the rides are much, much cheaper than the NASA/ESA ones going to the ISS.

I still find it amazing to realize we live in a time where space tourism is a very real prospect, and not far-flung science fiction.

What happens after Yahoo! acquires you

2011-02-24T14:15:00Z

"What happens after Yahoo! acquires you" over at 37signals.com is an interesting read.

Funny story from the Yahoo! trenches: a few years after Y! had acquired del.icio.us there still was no internal bookmarking service. There were a lot of pleas from the tech-minded folks to set up an internal del.icio.us instance, which fell on deaf ears. I believe it was Leonard Lin of the Upcoming team who then installed a copy of Scuttle, an open-source del.icio.us clone, more or less in his spare time, so we had at least some degree of social bookmarking. (It’s rather handy in team environments in case you’re wondering.)

On Apple's new subscription model

2011-02-16T13:21:40Z

Jean-Louis Gassée tweets:

Apple’s new rules rile. But not me: I’m the paying customer and I resent the old model. The new rules are customer-centric.

Like, for example, with data sharing. Apple won’t share your personal information to publishers without your permission. Publishers want unfettered access to that information because they want to sell it, because that’s what they’ve been doing with subscriber information for decades.

– John Gruber

If you want to know where all the hardcopy spam in your postbox comes from, that's where.

Cutting Back On Mindless Sharing

2011-02-13T15:40:13Z

A few days ago I've disabled the auto-posting of my starred Instapaper articles, thus forcing myself to ponder about why and how to share and describe a piece before hitting Instapaper's "Share" button.

I think this worked out well in several regards:

I do less "mindless sharing". My old setup meant that I only had to click the little star icon in Instapaper, and the link would be posted on my Tumblr, which resulted in a barrage of articles which I merely liked. Problem is, I am rather easy to please and always willing to share stuff I like with everyone who would lend me an eye or ear – and so I starred a lot of posts. But if I share basically almost everything I read, I'm nothing but a goddamn one-man link farm, and that's not a label to aspire to.
Less fast-food-minded reading. … Well, no, that's not quite correct. Now when I like an article and have a feeling it might be worth spreading, I try to quantify why I like it. So I ended up thinking more about what I've just read. I don't just munch through my reading list anymore – I chew more slowly. So to speak.
As an added bonus, my Instapaper's "Starred" folder has become more than just a link dump.

All in all, after a week of testing, I'd like to declare this experiment a success. As a result I'll do my article sharing here on my blog – the funny clown pictures and awesome cooking videos will go to my tumblelog as usual.

Ephemera is now open source

2011-01-18T21:21:46Z

I wrote Ephemera a) to learn MacRuby and b) to scratch an itch I had. Since then the iPad was released, and the itch is gone -- I don't read news on my Kindle anymore. Still, Ephemera has a good number of users, but even though I had planned to I simply don't have the time to develop it any further. I don't feel like abandoning it so I've decided to release its codebase as COSS (crappy open source software).

https://github.com/carlo/ephemera-coss

I sure hope someone else will pick it up and run with it! I'm a bit torn about "setting it free" like this; on the one hand I had planned to add new features and fix some of it's bugs but on the other hand I have to face the fact that I simply don't have enough time in the foreseeable future to pursue those goals. I hope you, the users, can understand that.

Notes about the source code and its license (WTFPL!) etc. can be found in the README.

Introducing Your New YUIDoc Theme

2010-08-31T18:21:00Z

I like YUIDoc. I don't like its default theme. Since I couldn't find any other themes on them internets, I wrote my own, named "Dana".

Since I normally use YUIDoc to document either pure Javascript or jQuery code ¹, I didn't keep any of the old YUI code; I've ditched pretty much everything and started from scratch. And this is what I've come up with:

As you can see in the screenshot, as an example I've generated the well-known YUI API docs. So here's the original YUI documentation in its original look — and here is the very same documentation sporting the new Dana theme.

I hope you find the latter more pleasing just as I do. :) Click around a bit; check some of the class documentations for a more in-depth comparison; play with the filters; feel the luxurious yet cheap plastic underneath.

This is a work in progress. It's reasonably stable and working for me so far. YMMV. If you encounter errors, please create a ticket.

You'll find "Dana" on GitHub. If you're so inclined, you can dowload the latest stable release as zip/tgz file, too.

Dual-license, MIT & GNU GPL v2. Tested in Safari 5 (OSX), FF3.6 (OSX), IE8 (WinXP).

UPDATE: the good folks at YUIblog.com asked me whether I wanted to write a post about Dana. I wanted to.

Why yes, YUIDoc works just fine for non-YUI JS code. ↩

Still running: Minimalist, Week 15

2010-08-08T16:47:00Z

Over the last few months I've been clocking in ~180km in my Vibram FiveFingers. For the most part I take it slow; I run when I feel like it (which is rather often), and I check out routes I've not ran before. Sometimes these are long, sometimes not so much.

And I'm happy to say that apart from a one-time, mild case of shin splints caused by running too slowly (I'm not kidding) a few weeks back which "grounded" me for a few days, I am without injury and pain. I run a lot on paved roads these days, due to the currently bad weather and my unwillingness to wrestle muddy tracks. Back in my Nike days, this usually gave me bad sacroiliac joint pain. These days, I'm fine. No complaints, really.

I've bought a second pair of FiveFingers KSOs a while back, and since my current client is a KSO fan and owner as well I was able to wear them in the office. It's good, really.

So yes, I've embraced minimalist running. Not just in the shoes department, but also in my mind. My stance towards me running has changed over the last few months; I've become more relaxed and calm about it. It doesn't feel like a drag anymore, like something you just have to suffer through; I run because I like it and because I want to.

Most days I don't even take a watch with me; I glance at the wall clock when I head out the door and check it again when I come back. That's accurate enough. And in order to find out the distance I've traversed I turn to Google Earth or DailyMile's handy "pedometer" map feature.

My feet have become stronger, I think my feets' arches are not as flat anymore, and my toes have straighten out a wee bit. The money I've spent on my FiveFingers was a good investment in my health, methinks. The downside is that I don't like my "real" shoes anymore. ;)

A sweet side story: when my parents visited us a few weeks back, they saw the FFs and tried them on, deciding they like them. So they've both bought a pair, and to my big surprise picked up light trekking as a hobby! Even my mom is having fun. So much, in fact, that they both bought a second pair "for colder days" — KSO Trek. Clearly, I'm an influencer…

So, minimalist running still works for me; it works very well, in fact. And I still enjoy my Vibrams. And yes, I would and do recommend both to everyone interested in running.

NYTimes: Rivals Seize on Troubles of Facebook

2010-05-24T20:44:06Z

Interesting article in the NYTimes: Rivals Seize on Troubles of Facebook.

Ultimately, I doubt there'll be enough momentum for any of these sites to really take off. And yes, I say that despite me backing Diaspora*. But I believe they will fail to attract a serious following because in the end, you go where your people are, and they're not there yet. Herd mentality meets chicken & egg.

I—as an end user—would need to decide whether my jumping ship @ FB is more important than loosing the "posse" I've built there during the time I've used the site. And I think for most people the answer would be "no".

That being said, I approve of all of these efforts to build some much needed competition for the four thousand million pound gorilla that is Facebook. The prospect of having a portable profile (see Diaspora* for more info) is exciting, but while I hope that their plans come to fruition (especially their hosted service) I remain skeptical.

Still running: Vibrams, Week 2

2010-05-03T23:17:00Z

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Wore my Nike Free yesterday, as they're the most flexible (actual) shoes I own. No time for running, tho, also still some residue muscle pain.

Today: Beautiful morning, decided to ignore the bus and walk to the subway. 3.5 km in my Nikes, and while they're pretty good, I miss the ability to wiggle my toes.

Came home, went for a 3.5 km VFF walk with Dana. My calves seem to man up, finally. With a bit of luck I might be able to go for a run on Thursday again!

Wednesday

Came home, my legs still aching a bit, but I thought "eh, what the eff" and went for a 5 km run. Didn't even take a watch or anything; I just felt like running. The last time this happened to me was never. And I had fun.

To be honest, the combination of THE BOOK and MY NEW SHOES caused this almost eerie, constant desire to get out and run. I'm not making this up; it's uncanny. I've never had this urge to just crunch some miles. And it's not because of stress at work or anything. I'm calm, I'm my usual sunny self, not stressed out… It's just a deep-seated feeling that running would be the right thing to do right fucking now. For no apparent reason. (Perhaps they've put brain-altering chemicals into the book; I don't know… I don't know.)

And I won't lie, I'll enjoy it for as long as it lasts. It might go away tomorrow or next week or in five years time, I don't know, but I'm cool with it. There are worse urges, really.

Also: I can predict the future! Tomorrow, walking will hurt. (I wish my calves would man up quicker.)

Thursday

Turns out I can't predict the future after all — I can walk rather painlessly today. Apparently all the extra post-run stretching and muscle rubbing ¹ was a good idea.

Had a discussion with another (ex) Y! about running barefoot'ish. It's not just about not running on your heels, but about foot strength/health in general. In running shoes, the foot's arch is bolstered and propped up to various degrees. And your toes are pretty much suspended. When running without shoes, the arch acts like a spring, and the toes react to the underground, but they can't do that when shod.

The difference is not just that you're running on your forefeet, it's about giving the foot (and therefore the leg) a chance to work as intended.

Friday

5 km, 'twas okay — not more, not less. The humidity took me a bit by surprise, and my big lunch wasn't helping the cause either. So: eh.

My lower legs are slowly adjusting to the change. Atta boys!

One of the Vibrams is slowly coming apart a bit at the heel (where the mesh is glued to the rubber "skin"), which is a bit strange after only one week of moderate use. They're not falling apart or anything, their function isn't impaired, it's just a visible "glitch" I'm not too happy with. They're one week old after all.

I'll hit the sports store on Monday and ask for either a replacement or (some) money back.

Saturday, Sunday

Rest of the week were wasted on shitty weather and/or me freezing, so no running.

Not an euphemism, thankyouverymuch. ↩

Still running: Going Minimalist

2010-04-25T21:34:00Z

Reading Christopher McDougall's highly interesting and inspirational "Born to Run", I came back to my idea of running (semi-)barefoot. Turns out there are a lot of people with the same idea, and companies catering to this idea. So last Thursday I treated myself to a new pair of Vibram FiveFingers KSO.

VFF are basically what you would get if you dipped your feet into molten rubber, minus, you know, the excrutiating pain, blistering skin and earache caused by your own frantic screaming. They're a thin, highly elastic second skin for your feet, and not much else, really. Needless to say, I love them.

Being the serial enthusiast I am, I'll try to keep a short-form diary of my semi-barefoot running progress and findings for my own sake.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Was paid by a client today, there's money to be spent! Went to the sports store to see whether they have Vibrams in stock; the answer was a resounding yes. Tried them on and was sold. 10 minutes and €105 later I was the proud owner of a brown pair of Vibram FiveFingers KSO.

Wore them on my way home; not bad. A bit strange at first, but I quickly forgot about them. Went home, the weather's nice, decided to go for a quick and easy run. Didn't expect much, but was surprised.

Without trying to, I ran the first 5km straight, without much effort or being winded. Had to take a quick breather (while walking) because I was starting to feel light side stitches. Walked for ~250m, then took off again. When I got home and checked my time, I noticed I had beaten my usual time by roughly 5 minutes. And I was barely exhausted after those 7.4km.

The fun thing about barefoot running (or running with nothing but a thin layer of protection wrapped around your feet) is that your body instinctively knows what to do. You straighten up involuntarily, you (normally) don't land on your heel but on your fore- or middlefoot, and you keep your feet right below your frame while running.

All you have to do is forgetting your old shod running style, really, and listen to your instincts.

Now, when your feet are cushioned (i.e., stuck in your average shock-absorbing running shoe), you tend to land heel-first while going for long strides. A long stride means more distance covered per step, right? True, but it's rather unnatural, because if you'd do it without shoes, you'd end up in a world of pain as the body isn't made for this kind of self-beating.

So, after the first few steps in my new VFF my body adjusted. I was going rather slow, well within my comfort zone, my back was straight as a candle, yet I didn't fall into my usual thump-thump-thump rythm.

Awesome shoes! To be fair, when I got home I definitely felt my calves… they were more sore than usual. No, wrong… They were sore, and they usually aren't. Then again, usually I am sweat-drenched and exhausted by the time I am back on my own doorstep — not this time, so I consider it a good deal. :)

When Dana came home, she wouldn't stop laughing at them.

Friday, April 23, 2010

Holy shit, my calves. They feel like I've actually used them for the first time in my life.

Still, have a good feeling about the Vibrams; even about my calves. I was expecting sore muscles; after all, I'm completely changing the way I run. Obviously, I've done that.

Wore the VFF when getting out for lunch. Not much walking there, but I felt like giddy like a little boy about his new Spongebob shoes, and I never want to take them off again.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Took Dana to the sports store so she could see whether the Vibrams are something for her. Like me (even more like me) she could use stronger feet, and naturally I want to share this new sensation with her. She's picked out a pair of grey KSO.

After we got home we went for a casual 5km walk on my running trail. She liked it, although her feet and legs were a bit sore. Don't tell her, but I was expecting this. ;)

My calves are still hurting a bit.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Beautiful day, and despite the slightly sore muscles I decided to run. Not the best idea I've ever had, really. ;) Now they really hurt.

Well, suits me. I don't blame the shoes, tho. I just didn't listen to my body; the outcome should teach me.

Stupid me, always pushing too hard.

Ephemera v1.1

2010-02-17T12:31:00Z

Last night I've released a new version of Ephemera, my 2-way Instapaper /ebook-reader sync tool for Mac.

Here's what's new:

NEW: The app runs on both 32 and 64 bit Snow Leopard now.
NEW: When auto-sync is enabled and you plug in your reading device, Ephemera will show a "Going to sync…" dialog for 5 seconds, where you can temporarily disable syncing.
NEW: Support for password-less Instapaper accounts.
FIX: Preferences menu item will be correctly disabled during sync.
FIX: Multiple concurrent syncs will not stall anymore.
PLEASE NOTE: Involuntary archiving of all your unread articles at each sync will happen if you've set your Instapaper account to automatic archiving. See this support thread for how to change said Instapaper setting.

I'm especially happy about the 32 bit compatibility. Turns out I've managed to dig up an issue in MacRuby 0.5. Thanks to Thibault and the rest of the MR crew for hunting it down and fixing it. Hat tip, guys. :)

If you're using Ephemera already, its auto-updater will pop up soon enough. If not, go take a look.

If you like Ephemera, feel free to spread the word (there's a little "Share" widget on the site), or tell IUseThis how you feel about the app. Thanks!

Assorted MacRuby Snippets #2

2010-02-17T12:13:39Z

This post references MacRuby 0.5, used with Xcode 3.2 on Snopard (10.6.2); the general technique will likely work on other OS/Xcode version, tho. Just saying.

Apps with more than just one framework

The standard MR app template massages $LOAD_PATH a bit in order to have apps which embed the MR framework use said embedded framework in Release builds. The piece of code in question looks like this:

if Dir.exist?(NSBundle.mainBundle.privateFrameworksPath)
  $:.map! { |x| x.sub(/^\/Library\/Frameworks/, NSBundle.mainBundle.privateFrameworksPath) }
  $:.unshift(NSBundle.mainBundle.resourcePath.fileSystemRepresentation)
end

Which is quite alright if all you embed is the MacRuby framework and are building a release. But as soon as you add another one (Sparkle, for example), the test will always be true, whether you're debugging without embedding MR or not, and your console will show Ruby load errors. The fix is easy, but it took me a few minutes to find the issue, so here we go.

if Dir.exist?( File.expand_path("MacRuby.framework", NSBundle.mainBundle.privateFrameworksPath) )
  $:.map! { |x| x.sub(/^\/Library\/Frameworks/, NSBundle.mainBundle.privateFrameworksPath) }
  $:.unshift(NSBundle.mainBundle.resourcePath.fileSystemRepresentation)
end

Just a heads-up: the rb_main.rb template in the current MR nightlies doesn't contain the code above anymore -- it appears the "magic" was moved into macruby_deploy (changeset), so it's likely my fix will be unnecessary in MR 0.6.

Accessing the Keychain with MacRuby

2010-02-04T18:52:00Z

This post references MacRuby 0.5, used with Xcode 3.2 on Snopard (10.6.2); the general technique will likely work on other OS/Xcode version, tho. Just saying.

At some point in my project I needed to access OSX' Keychain to store sensitive userdata. Unfortunately, due to the lack of void pointers in MacRuby 0.5 (see Trac ticket), I couldn't use standard methods like SecKeychainAddGenericPassword. The guys on the mailing list told me to use a wrapper instead. Doing some reading and poking around the interwebs I finally figured it out, and since it's a neat trick I thought I'd scribble it down, so maybe it will safe someone in a position like me a bit of time. ;)

I've decided to go with ExtendMac's EMKeychain class because it's simple, clean, free and has a liberal license (MIT license, if I'm not mistaken).

Disclaimer: I'm not a Obj-C person, and what you're about to read is what works for me. I've tinkered until everything was moving in the right direction. There might be better ways (I'm pretty sure there are), and if what I've done here is bollocks, I'd be delighted if you would share your knowledge with me. :) Also, I'd enjoy a comment with your thoughts about this here article. Any opinion will do. Just curious is all.

Step 1: Build the wrapper, `EMKeychain.dylib`

First, we'll have to make EMKeychain into a dynamic library. Download it from the site, unzip it, and fire up Xcode. There, start a new project of the type "Cocoa Library".

When asked for the name, call it "EMKeychain". It kind of makes sense. This is what you'll end up with:

In the screenshot you'll notice a file called EMKeychain_Prefix.pch. That's a so-called "precompiled header"; Xcode creates it automatically for you on project creation.

Next, add the files EMKeychain.m and EMKeychain.h to your project by dragging them from the download folder to the "Classes" folder.

Since the EMKeychain documentation said the class needs to be linked against Carbon and Security frameworks, do that by right-clicking on the "Linked Frameworks" folder in the tree and selecting Add Existing Frameworks…:

Following the related MacRuby tutorial's advice, add a constructor to the end of EMKeychain.m:

void Init_EMKeychain(void) { }

Next, adjust the build settings -- switch the base SDK to 10.5…

… and enable GC.

Build a release, and you'll have your wrapper.

Step 2: Using it

Now for the fun part.

Add the just built EMKeychain.dylib to your MacRuby project. (Don't forget to copy the file over.)
Add EMKeychain.dylib to Targets ➔ [project name] ➔ Copy Bundle Resources.

And that's it. If all went well, you should now be able to use EMKeychain's EMGenericKeychainItem.

Step 3: Mopping up

It's very likely that when running your release build it'll crash and burn and complain about a missing /usr/lib/EMKeychain.dylib. In this case, you'll have to adjust the built executable accordingly using install_name_tool.

You can do that by adding a new Run Script build phase to the target, which should contain this code.

install_name_tool -change /usr/lib/EMKeychain.dylib \
  "@executable_path/../Resources/EMKeychain.dylib" \
  "$TARGET_BUILD_DIR/$PROJECT_NAME.app/Contents/MacOS/$PROJECT_NAME"

It's possible that on the next build the executable will mope about a missing /usr/local/lib/EMKeychain.dylib now. Duplicate the snippet and adjust the second one accordingly.

Step 4: Get yourself a beer

Because if all went according to plan, you're done. :)

Ephemera for Mac

2010-02-02T18:13:00Z

I've built my first Mac app: Ephemera, which offers two-way Instapaper.com sync for your ebook reader.

Here's its story, my motivation, and what it does.

Preface

Ephemera is neither endorsed by nor affiliated with Instapaper.com or Marco Arment. I'm just a huge fan.

How it came to be

A few months ago, in Oct or Nov 2009, about an hour after getting my Kindle 2 ¹ I just knew that it would be the perfect device to read my news on.

I was happy with my Cybook gen3 so far, but once I got the Kindle, it became clear that it could've been quite a bit more. The whole K2 experience is superior in every imaginable way; the hardware feels more solid, the UI is much better laid out and consistent (a big plus), its font is lovely… I could go on and on. And for whatever reason, I've never developed the wish to read my news on the Cybook.

So chalk up another one for the Kindle for inspiring me.

Anyways, back then I usually caught up on my news using iPod touch/iPhone, using the wonderful Instapaper app, which (unsurprisingly) is a frontend for the even awesomefuller Instapaper.com.

(If you haven't heard of Instapaper yet, go on, check it out real quick, I'll wait. -- Back? Cool.)

Well, how to get my Instapaper content onto my reader, then?

Application development on the Kindle was out of the question, and still is. (Yes, I know about the upcoming SDK, but what I've read so far doesn't appeal to me in any way; bandwidth and hardware limitations and somesuch.) The next best thing would be a tool running on the Mac, then. Unfortunately, I knew squat about OSX development.

Hence, I've decided to keep it simple, and wrote a little Ruby script I would manually run whenever I wanted to sync the device. Worked well, aside from the manual part. It's just too much work! Still, it was nice to see my Instapaper news on my reader with its "super-easy on the eyes" e-ink screen. Quite early in the process I've added 2-way synchronization: when I would delete an article on the device, it was automatically archived at Instapaper.com during the next sync. Even nicer!

Still, too much manual work.

Motivation

By end of 2009 I've decided I'd go into OSX programming for a change. I had a clearly defined need, there wasn't a tool for it, plus I'd never built an OSX app before -- that's enough motivation. So the first three weeks of the year I dove into MacRuby and Cocoa, just grazing Objective-C ², all while building —drumroll!— Ephemera.

Oh yeah, my first-ever Mac app! :D And within the time limit, too -- my goal was three weeks from start to finish ("finish" being "have something you can show to other people without completely embarassing yourself"), and I've made it. (BTW, meeting tight goals is awesome, don't underestimate the effect.)

Enough of the inane banter, what is it?

Ephemera will comfortably synchronize your ebook reader with Instapaper.com via USB. It works with the Amazon Kindle, Sony readers and pretty much any device capable of reading HTML, Mobipocket or EPUB files, which should cover quite a bit of ground.

It will fetch your news as single articles or in Instapaper's premade bundles (Mobipocket & EPUB). Personally, I prefer the former. I can read an article, delete it on my reader, and during the next sync it'll be archived on Instapaper.com.

Being the lazy guy, I've also implemented a feature I call "Plug, Sync & Go": If you want it to, Ephemera will automatically start up, sync, and then unmount your reader when it detects the USB connection. My idea was that you'd configure the app once, and then just have it work -- by simply connecting your reader.

I've tried to make it as simple and comfortable as possible to get your news onto your reader. For example, the main window has only two buttons, one of them is for opening the preferences, and the important other one you don't even have to press most of the time. So I think I've succeeded.

It's not perfect yet, of course, as there's still a lot of work to do, and I do have a number of ideas I'd like to implement. But I mean, look: I've set up a support site and a Twitter account, so you know I mean business, right? ;)

At the moment Ephemera runs on 10.5 and up 10.6 ³, 64 bit Intel only. I don't think I'll add 10.4 support, but I'm working on the 32 bit version (MacRuby is giving me quite a bit of flak on that front).

UPDATE 2010-02-16: I've released v1.1 today, which runs on all Snow Leopard machines.

Dev notes

Ephemera was made possible by MacRuby. MacRuby sits on top of Objective-C, can be embedded & compiled, which means you can build self- contained applications.

I've started using MacRuby v0.5b2; last weekend v0.5final was released. They say it's not ready for production yet, but I laugh in the face of danger, quite manly actually, because that's how I roll. ;) But yes, it's still a bit rough around the edges (for example, as mentioned before I couldn't get the compiled 32bit versions of the app to work, so I've filed a ticket and hope someone will look into it).

Also, due to the lack of void pointer support there were issues with accessing the OSX Keychain (i.e. it didn't work), so I had to work around that. I've managed to do that; on the upside I know now how to bundle Obj-C libraries in .dylib files which you can then use from MacRuby. (A seperate article on this topic is coming up soon has been written, keep an eye on the MR section of my site if you're interested.)

That being said, if you're feeling a bit adventurous, take a look. It's quite a remarkable and exciting project. Writing OSX apps using Ruby is fun and enjoyable once you get the hang of it. Also, there are brave men working on getting MacRuby going on the iPhone.

UPDATE: Forgot two links to good non-web resources -- you might want to check out Peepcode's "Meet MacRuby" screencast as well as PragProg's "Programming Cocoa with Ruby" book. The latter is a RubyCocoa book, but the overall principles of app development apply to MacRuby as well.

That's all, folks

Anyways, that's the story. I know it's not an app for everyone, but it's been a while since I wrote something I myself would use on a daily basis, and that counts for something. I've showed it to a few people, and some of them actually replied and helped me testing (thanks Mike, Norm, Bernhard & Mat). The overall feedback was very positive, which is encouraging, to say the least.

Yes, and I'm proud of myself. In the eternal words of Chuck Noland ⁴: "Look what I have created… I have made fire!"

Ephemera for Mac.

Insert link here to glowing Kindle 2 review I've yet to write. ↩
The place to be for bracket fetishists! ↩
Snow Leopard only at the moment, as I've ran into some finer points of 10.5/10.6 compatibility settings in Xcode. Le sigh. ↩
From the movie "Castaway", which I've never watched. Nonetheless, iconic scene. ↩

Xcode & MacRuby: Embed, Compile, Fix

2010-01-22T16:47:00Z

This post references MacRuby 0.5b2, used with Xcode 3.2 on Snopard (10.6.2).

At some point you'll probably want to create a release build for your app. You'd like to compile it and embed the MacRuby framework so the app is self- contained. Cool beans.

Unfortunately, it's not as easy as it seems. Yes, the MacRuby Xcode template contains both an "Embed" and a "Compile" target, and they seem to work fine. ;) The problem I ran into, though, was that whenever you would require anything from the Ruby standard library (say, yaml or stringio), the app would forget about the embedded version of MR and look for /Library/Frameworks/MacRuby.framework/….

I didn't notice this at first since this folder exists on my dev machine (big surprise), but when I tested it on a clean machine (i.e. one where MacRuby isn't installed), nothing would happen. Well, nothing except some lines in the system.log, that is:

Being a newb to the ancient arts of compiling shit self-written software I was scratching my head rather furiously. It took me several hours of digging around the Googles and macruby-devel to learn about install_name_tool, and how it's used to adjust the path of a shared library inside a file.

And that's what I did, then. I've created a new build target, "Embed and Compile", which has two sub-targets:

the reference to the default app build phase (which means "MyNewApp" is a direct dependency of the "Embed and Compile" target)
a "Run Script" build phase named "Embed, Compile, Fix"

The script runs macruby_deploy and afterwards tells install_name_tool to do its dirty, dirty work. I found it's not enough to have it adjust the executable only; for me it was necessary to fix all the *.rbo files as well.

So, that's it. The above works for me, it might work for you as well. If you have comments, suggestions or recommendations, please sound off below. I'm still learning all of this, and any input is appreciated. :)

Oh, and in case I sound ungrateful or anything: I am not. MacRuby 0.5b2 is exactly what is says it is: the second beta of a software's pre-1.0 version. It's already pretty damn impressive but not really done yet. I had a hunch what I was getting into, so it's cool. ;)

Assorted MacRuby Snippets

2010-01-17T23:33:00Z

Some things I've learned or discovered during the last few days. Nothing special, but taking notes is usually a good idea, so there.

Get values from`Info.plist`

For example, app name and version:

info = NSBundle.mainBundle.infoDictionary
info.objectForKey("CFBundleName")
info.objectForKey("CFBundleVersion")

Open an URL in the default browser:

url = NSURL.URLWithString("http://municode.de/")
NSWorkspace.sharedWorkspace.openURL(url)

Run an AppleScript

Sometimes you want to execute a short AppleScript snippet to save yourself some time by using the higher-level functionality AS offers instead of writing a huge block of MacRuby. (For example, to eject a FS volume.) Here's how you do it (the AS is deliberately simple):

script = "display dialog (\"omg\")"
pnt = Pointer.new_with_type("@")
as = NSAppleScript.alloc.initWithSource(script)
as.executeAndReturnError(pnt)

More info at developer.apple.com.

Delete nodes/tags from an XML document

Let's say you have a variable doc which represents a NSXMLDocument, and you want to remove all em and cite tags:

error = Pointer.new_with_type("@")
selectors = [ "//em", "//cite" ].join("|")
doc.nodesForXPath( selectors, error: error ).each do |n|
  n.detach
end

More notes might follow at a later date. :)

MacRuby compilation step fixes

2010-01-15T23:30:00Z

Just a note, mostly to myself: The default XCode MacRuby rb_main.rb template will contain these lines:

Dir.entries(dir_path).each do |path|
  if path != File.basename(__FILE__) && path.match(/\.rb$/)
    require(path)
  end
end

Works fine for uncompiled files, but when you want to compile your app, there'll be no *.rb files — just *.rbo files. So rb_main.rb needs to be adjusted.

Dir.entries(dir_path).each do |path|
  if path != File.basename(__FILE__) && path.match(/\.rbo?$/)
    require(path)
  end
end

I just spent 15 minutes wondering about these Unknown class 'Controller', using 'NSObject' instead. Encountered in Interface Builder file at path … in my system log, and I tend to forget this kind of detail so I wanted to jot it down as a reminder to future Carlo.

So, listen up, future Carlo. This is important.

Mini Review: 2009

2009-12-31T12:57:00Z

What They Call The "Real Life"

2008 ended with me getting unemployed. The decision being made for me was a catalyst to finally make my move. I was planning to get out of employment in 2009 anyways, so, you know. Thank you, Yahoo!.
Early in the year I went freelance. As mentioned, I had played with the idea for a while by then, so that was pretty cool. And scary.
Got a few clients, and managed to keep a good "client work vs. own projects" ratio. I'm not getting rich working like this, but I'd like to be truly happy in my job for once, so it's important for me to keep the balance there.
My first freelance project, a WoW-related site named CharPool, was a personal success, but failed nonetheless. About a month after launching it other sites with similar functionality came out and kind of crushed it. I guess I had waited too long to act on the idea for the site. So, in December, I've turned the server off. Well, live and learn.
Speaking of learning, I've learned a boatload of new things this year. Lots of Ruby-related things, of course, but also a lot of *nix stuff. Fun!
Among other things, I rewrote my Twitter contact management site TwerpScan — and had the chance to give a quick talk about it for a mixed audience here in Munich. Another first for me, and I've enjoyed it.
Got myself two ebook readers, a Bookeen Cybook Gen3 and a Amazon Kindle 2. Both nice, but the latter wins, hands down. What a refined piece of technology!
I'm currently knee-deep in RubyCocoa code, which I consider a road to MacRuby, which I need for my next big project… Loving it!
Finally got me an iPhone.

Friends & Family

In August, I had the honor of being best man for M & E. Beautiful, beautiful wedding. It was an absolutely wonderful weekend. I love you guys. :)
We went up to Northern Germany for a nice vacation, including hooking up with my man Hendrik who showed us his hellhole of a city the (mostly) pretty parts of Hamburg ;), and a visit to the BUGA 2009 (i.e. the annual "German Federal Horticultural Show").

Games & Movies

Biggest surprises this year: Batman: Arkham Asylum, Assassin's Creed II. Both games I knew about but didn't have much interest in, until Mike would lend them to me, and then… I really didn't see them coming, but they hit me hard. Good stuff. :)
Also notable this year: the two GTA IV DLC packs, Halo 3: ODST, Halo: Wars.
Avatar — holy shit. That movie really hit the spot for me. Also great: District 9. A good year for scifi, methinks.

Verdict

Awesome year. Really, really good. :)

Here's to 2010. May it be as good as 2009 was.

How to reset your keyboard on OSX

2009-11-18T22:42:00Z

Somehow, after connecting my new Logitech G9 Laser mouse tonight, two keys on my MS Natural Ergo keyboard were swapped. Highly annoying. After some digging around the Googles, I learned that in order to "reset" your keyboard —i.e. making OSX forget your keyboard type— all you have to do is a

rm /Library/Preferences/com.apple.keyboardtype.plist

Once done, disconnect the keyboard, plug it in again, and the "New keyboard found, wot is it?" dialog will pop up again. Problem solved, case closed.

Thanks to Riccardo Raneri, on whose blog I found this hint. Credit where it's due.

City At World's End, 58 Years Later

2009-11-05T23:47:06Z

A while ago I've decided to do a little time travelling. In literature, that is. So I've picked up a novel called "City At World's End", written by one Edmond Hamilton. It's a story about a little rural community in the US heartland having a "super-atomic bomb" go off above it, causing a rift in time, catapulting said city into the far future, and the fight of its citizens to remain on Earth. Adventure! ¹

It is exactly what it sounds like: pure pulp. The characters are rather flat; the premise is unintentionally hilarious. Yet, it's a pretty charming read. :)

When I've picked the book up at feedbooks.com, I had a hunch about what I was getting myself into. After all, this novel is (at the time of this writing) 58 years old. That's right, it's from 1951. But I've chosen the book for exactly that reason (also I was told it had spaceships) — I wanted to know what successful scifi was like in the 50's of the last century. From their point of view, I'd probably be like one of them "space folks". ² But how would I end up thinking about their view of the future? How would I end up describing their vision of the times to come?

Turns out I'd only use one word, as before: "charming". Well, that and "a bit naïve". :)

An example. Said rural community, called Middletown, leaps one million years into the future. One million years! The sun is dying, the Earth is cold, mankind has spread across the galaxy… yet all humans they meet are still ordinary humans like you or me. ³ Given that the first homo sapiens entered the stage just around 400.000 years ago, one would expect meeting rather different beings after another 1.000.000 years. Apparently, evolution took a break or something.

But at least there are aliens! One of them is Chewbacca. No, I'm not making that up. There's a Capellan (i.e. an alien from Capella) whose description is pretty much 100% Chewbacca. He's big, hairy, ape-like, friendly, loyal and a very good engineer. His name is Gorr Holl. — I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE, GEORGE LUCAS.

Then there are the communications. People tend to park their spaceships just out of town (they have spaceships!), yet someone forgot to invent the walkie- talkies, because there's still a lot of people running back and forth, waving and yelling to alarm the others.

Also, the space-age people from one million years in the future are familiar with Einstein. That's fame, I'm telling you. (No mention of Michael Jackson, tho.)

And then… women. Oh, the women, what with their constant wailing or their firm resolve or their pre-Doris Day'ish behaviour. Really, the picture painted of the females is an interesting one, saying quite a bit about the age the book was written in. On the one hand, we have Carol, the protagonist's girlfriend. She's the friendly, quiet type who likes the "old ways". (Not what you think.) Beneath her surface is a fragile young woman, almost a girl still, shaken to her core. On the other hand, there's the new space love interest, Varn Allan from space, the administrator of this neck of the woods space. On the outside, she's a cold and efficient bureaucrat! But during the book, we learn that beneath her surface there's a fragile young woman, almost a girl still, shaken to her core. Diversity! Dope.

So. I know the comparison is not entirely fair, but putting "City At World's End" and its long-term vision (I fail to come up with a better term) next to today's books, like "Accelerando" by Charles Stross or (less hard scifi) "Old Man's War" by John Scalzi, it looks, well, less visionary. I am aware that in terms of "scifi seeds" today's authors have a better (?) starting point than the authors 50 years back, but they seem to do a better job in dreaming up a future working as canvas for their books. Maybe I've just picked the wrong author here, who knows. And maybe the people in the 50s just weren't ready for too "far-fetched" visions yet?

Anyways. The tech and the portrayal of the people are equally fun, and reading the book made me grin and laugh quite a bit. But of course snickering is easy for me, from my cushioned seat in front of my computron device. It's 2009! Yes, we may have global warming and a outrageous lack of everyday space travel and jetpacks, but still: it's an exciting time to be alive. There's new technology surfacing almost weekly, from biotech to personal gadgets to propulsion engines and whatnot.

Well, my verdict: If you are wondering what to read next, get yourself an old scifi book. You might have fun. Many of them are free & legal downloads by now. Both Feedbooks and ManyBooks (if it's up…) are good places to start looking. And if you're unsure what to get, either just pick one with closed eyes or ask around at GoodReads. :)

Oh yeah, spoilers. The books almost 6 decades old by now, give me a break. ↩
In fact, I've started writing this review on the bus, on my iPod. Now that's what I call science fiction. ↩
No offense, eh. ↩

Tools of the trade

2009-10-28T08:15:00Z

Assaf passed the ball ¹, and I'm gonna run with it. So Mr Cooper asks “What are your tools of the trade?”.

On the desk

iMac 24", 3.06 GHz C2D, 4GB RAM, early 2009 model. His name is Rupert, and he's great. Got him in February after my previous iMac" broke down after running ~3 years straight.

Dell 2005FPW. Really nice and affordable monitor. Tilted by 90°, because I can.

iPod touch 16GB. I don't leave home without it.

JBL On Stage. It was a parting gift I got from my co-workers a few years back, and I really like it. I mostly use it for the iPod dock these days, but I've packed it a few times to serve as a portable sound system while on the road.

MS Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000. One of the best ergo keyboards on the market, hands down. Oh, and yes: that's a wire. I think a wireless desktop keyboard is an useless concept — it's sitting on your desk, about half a meter away from your computer, it's rarely moved (if ever). This is a very common scenario, and in my book it's stupid to waste energy (batteries etc.) for powering a wireless connection to bridge a distance that short.

Logitech MX510. Good, affordable, reliable mouse. Also cable-bound, see above. Sitting on a tw@ mousepad.

Sennheiser headset. Full sound, the mike is a bit quiet, not the USB version.

CanoScan LiDE 200. No-frills flatbed scanner.

iWork '06 Install DVD. Used as coaster.

Belkin n52. Funky little left-hand keyboard/peripheral, mostly for gaming, but I've heard of people using it for serious work like 3D stuff. Might be a myth, tho.

Belkin 7port USB hub. It's not bad. Has some troubles with my external soundcard, tho.

Not in the picture:

13" black MacBook, 2GB. Also running Snopard, and kept lean. Used for working remotely.
Western Digital MyBook Pro, 500 GB, Firewire. For backups.
Creative Xmod. Keeps me from having to plug my headphones in and out all the time. If there was a software solution which would let me switch sound output between the built-in speakers and the headphone jack, I wouldn't need this.

In the dock, in my mind

I ride the Snopard, naturally.

Textmate, of course. What else?!
Tweetie. I like it for keeping track of my various Twitter accounts. Both on the Macs and the iPod.
Terminal. I prefer it over pretty much every other shell app so far.
My homedir repo. This is one of the first things I install on each of my local & remote boxes. All command-line-related stuff goes in there, the very same repo is used for each machine, and it's just crazy handy. Tip of the head to Norm for the initial one and Brad for a suitable version to fork from. :)
Mailplane. The ability to keep an eye on several Google Mail accounts at once is nice.
Launchbar. Awesome. Besides app launching I mostly use it for its clipboard history and calculator.
VMWare Fusion for all my virtualization needs. Got a cheap license a few months ago and never looked back.
Dropbox. On all of my machines. Lovely, lovely piece of software.
OmniFocus for all my todo needs, on all my machines, including the iPod.
I'm currently giving BusySync a spin. After trying to coerce Snopard's native Google Calendar conduit into a) synching two 2 machines and b) not sucking for a few hours I've decided my time is too valuable to keep trying, and went with BusySync. Which is really nice and painless so far. I'll probably buy it once the trial is over.
Minuteur for Pomodoro-like 2-hour sprints. (The Pomodoro app is a bit too much for my taste. It's not bad, but not for me.)

Well, not so much "passed it" as "played with it, put it down and went back to work, but I liked it and picked it up a while later". I just want to be a part of the moment… any moment would do, really. ↩

Dev Env acting up when trying to do bulk operations

2009-10-18T14:33:00Z

(What a title…) I was pulling my hair out over the last two days when I was implementing bulk operations in a project of mine.

In this case, the list of operations to do in bulk is compiled in the browser, and then the single requests are sent one by one to the server as single AJAX requests. (Think "mark this as read" functionality.)

My problem was that the first and second call in the bulk list usually went through well, but the rest of the calls just ran against a wall since all of a sudden Rails had problems finding the either logged in user or was missing certain methods and/or attributes. Highly annoying as well as completely erratic, as I was sure my code was okay in the first place.

When trying the same operations on a one-by-one basis, all was good. No issues whatsoever.

So while trying to figure out what the fuck was going on, I've played around with different ways to get the current user, checking for the availability of its methods and so on, all to no avail.

At one point I've disabled the protect_from_forgery call, and one or two different errors started to appear:

A copy of ApplicationController has been removed from the module tree but is still active

That was new. So I've started digging around for an answer, and found it in an old Ruby Forum thread.

Turns out that Rails' development mode was the culprit, as the app's code is reloaded on every request; so when a lot of concurrent calls are made, the code might reload slower than the calls are coming in and hijinks ensues.

The overly simple solution to this problem? In /config/environments/development.rb, I just set config.cache_classes to true, meaning the code isn't reloaded all the time — and as it turns out, my code runs just fine after all! Happy happy joy joy.

The downside is that I'll have to restart my dev server every time I make a code change, but in this particular case, that's not a big deal.

The big blog move of 2009

2009-10-14T22:21:00Z

Just a heads-up: I've moved my blog today — in two ways. First, I've ditched my self-hosted Wordpress setup in favor of Tumblr. Because I ♥ Tumblr. ¹ Second, it's now sitting on blog.zottmann.org instead of carlo.zottmann.org. Old article URLs 301-redirect to their new locations, so all should be well.

Also, I've cleaned up the blog history; about 2/3 of the old posts are gone. Most of them either simply lost their context, contained nothing but (now) broken links or are not worth keeping online. Doing my part to keep the intertrons lean!

The move was made possible by Wordpress' export-to-XML feature, the Tumblr API and a few lines on Ruby code. (The latter is a big hack job, but it works for me. You've been warned.)

And to top it of, I've picked a new Tumblr theme named "PostCreate" and hacked it to my liking.

I'm pleased so far. :)

Case(s) in point: my tumblelog, the TwerpScan blog, the
CharPool blog. ↩

Twittwoch München

2009-10-14T16:51:00Z

Letzte Woche war ich auf meinem ersten Twittwoch, logischerweise auf dem in München. Da Thomas Pfeiffer, der Organisator, nach Leuten gesucht hatte, die Vorträge halten wollen, hab ich natürlich gleich die Chance ergriffen, etwas über TwerpScan zu erzählen.

Der Vortrag lief gut, auch wenn ich mich am Anfang etwas mit der Technik gestritten habe, aber es gab Fragen, Reaktionen und auch Lob von einigen Usern, die meine kleine Site schon kannten. Sowas freut mich natürlich immer. Manchen schienen etwas überrascht, dass TwerpScan aus München kommt, und nicht in fremden Landen gebaut wurde.

Die anderen Vorträge kamen vom Schauspieler Michael Jäger, der mit einer Social-Media-Kampagne seinen Traum von der Rolle des Tatort-Kommissar vorantreibt. Florian Bergmann stellte das Konzept der Barcamps vor. Valentin Pletzer von Chip zeigte uns moviecritter, eine Twitter-basierte Movie-Reviews-Site. Und Markus Gladbach von der Messe München stellte die discuss and discover vor.

Alles in allem wars ein runder Abend mit einem interessierten Publikum, interessanten Talks (und damit meine ich nicht den meinen!) und guten Gesprächen. Ich hab nette Leute kennengelernt, einige Bekanntschaften etwas vertieft, und es gab Bier. Was will man mehr. :)

Der Vollständigkeit halber sind hier meine Slides vom Vortrag, und weiter unten der Videomitschnitt. Großer Dank an Jens von Clipflakes fürs Aufzeichnen und Zur-Verfügung-Stellen. Die restlichen Videos des Abends gibts auf Clipflakes.tv.

Das Original bei Slideshare

Das Original bei Clipflakes.tv

Dies ist ein Crosspost vom TwerpScan Blog.

Excellent Localmemcache

2009-10-09T09:16:53Z

Yesterday's Munich on Rails meetup was the usual mix of interesting talks and geeky, delightful conversations. When I say "usual", I of course mean it's been the kind of evening I by now kind of expect. ;) Many thanks to Roland for organizing and the Experteers guys for the venue and the food. Nom!

Anyways: interesting talks.

Marco Otte-Witte presented his Excellent gem (gotta love the name) for static code analysis. It's mostly aimed towards checking Rails code for smell, although —and he made that clear— it's not targetted at people who strive for the blissful state of "zero warnings". It's more relaxed in that way; merely showing you unusual (or stupid or silly) parts of your code, such as missing validations in your models or having instance variables in your partials and the likes. Sadly, at the moment it's not dealing with HAML templates yet, just ERB. (He's looking for volunteers, by the way.;)) Here are the slides:

I can actually see myself using it.

And then Sven C. Koehler presented his somewhat irritatingly named ¹ yet spiffy Localmemcache. It's a local, shared-memory-based, persistent key/value store, which looks pretty fascinating. I was a wee bit confused by it until it finally clicked — you wouldn't be able to tell from its name, but it's not related to memcached. Aha! It's a C library with Ruby bindings which offers a more or less simple storage system (values are of the type String, but of course that would include Marshal'ed data) and apparently blazingly fast — his benchmarks showed that Localmemcache is almost as fast as accessing native Ruby hashes. Its not for everyone —for example, as I understand, it requires a 64-bit Unix system— but it looks like a pretty interesting alternative to memcached for single-machine setups like, say, your single production machine or your local dev box. This should ease the issue of sharing data between different Ruby processes, for example. I'm definitely going to check that out.

Oh, and Peter Schrammel presented a concept for a truly private asset server. As I'm not entirely sure whether this is really public information yet, I'll keep my yapper shut here. :)

Afterwards we all headed to the Park Café for conversations and drinks. All in all a very nice evening, even though I was still a bit groggy from the day before — the München Twittwoch. (Which reminds me, I should probably whip up a quick post about that as well. Eh.)

Again: my thanks go to the MoR organizers and all the people who showed up, I had a good time. :)

Update: Artikel von Marco zu Excellent auf RailsMagazin.de

To me, at least. Sorry, Sven. :) ↩

Warnfarbenkoalition

2009-09-28T17:37:03Z

So, gestern also Bundestagswahl. Durch den Ausgang der Wahl ließ ich mich dann zu folgendem Tweet hinreissen:

Bullshitrattenfängergeschwätz funktioniert also immer noch in DE! Glückwunsch and Die Linke & FDP.

Gut, das war vielleicht etwas undifferenziert. :p Aber die Wahl macht mir in mehrerlei Hinsicht Magenschmerzen.

Ich fürchte, den dringend überfälligen Atomausstieg können wir auf unbestimmte Zeit abhaken, das Thema wird jetzt begraben. Und durch die sicherlich anstehende Laufzeitverlängerung der AKWs werden die Stromversorger sicherlich wenig Muße haben, in erneuerbare Energien zu investieren. Das wäre große Scheisse, wenn ich das mal so formulieren darf. (Das Thema wurde ja schon überall zur Genüge diskutiert.) Ich glaube nämlich, dass das Festhalten an der Abschaltung den Markt animieren würde, der Krise kreativ zu begegnen. Ich glaube daran, dass der Markt reagieren würde — man muss ihn halt nur lassen.

Desweiteren finde ich die geradezu volksverdummenden Wahlversprechen, die von o.g. Parteien (und auch anderen) gemacht wurden, grob unverantwortlich. Die Herren Lafontaine und Gysi mit ihren vollmundigen "mehr von allem für jeden für umsonst"-Ansagen handeln bestenfalls fahrlässig, sind dabei allerdings sehr erfolgreich, was mich stark betrübt. Nicht, weil ich generell was gegen einen sozialeren Staat hätte, keineswegs; ich reagiere nur allergisch auf offenkundigen Bullshit.

Was mich zur FDP & CDU/CSU bringt: wer angesicht des aktuellen Bundeshaushalts die Dreistigkeit besitzt, Steuersenkungen in Aussicht zu stellen, gehört (im freundlichsten Fall) ignoriert. Und das System, das zum aktuellen Weltwirtschaftsdilemma geführt hat, als Weg aus dem aktuellen Weltwirtschaftsdilemma zu propagieren, das ist dreist und gefährlich ignorant. Nichts gelernt, Fakten ignoriert, und stolz darauf? Uncool.

Allerdings möchte ich nicht alle Wähler in einen Topf schmeissen, das wäre falsch. Millionen Menschen haben Millionen Gründe, warum sie wählen, was sie wählen. Und das ist okay. Ich kann nur sagen, was mich ärgert: die Subgruppe der Wähler, die aufgrund der o.g. Beispiele ihr Kreuz bei diesen Parteien gemacht haben.

Nun denn: schwarz-gelb. Ärgert mich das? Ja, aber in erster Linie deshalb, weil es zeigt, das in Deutschland derlei offensichtlicher Stimmenfang-Bullshit toleriert und honoriert wird. Aber wird davon das Abendland untergehen? Nein. Werden wir in vier Jahren alle am Hungertuch nagen oder auf Einhörnern in den Sonnenuntergang reiten? Sicherlich auch nicht.

Und hey, wenigstens haben wir Wahlen. Und eine freie Presse. Und ich kann sowas schreiben, ohne von der Polizei abgeholt zu werden. Dies' Land ist schon geil, auch mit schwarz-gelb.

Demokratie, FUCK YEAH. :)

Upgrading to Snow Leopard

2009-09-11T15:19:18Z

I've made the switch from Leopard to Snow Leopard today. First, I took the necessary steps, of course: checking this handy app compatibility list, running AppFresh, then SuperDuper!. While the overall install went smoothly on my mid-2009 iMac 24", I ran into some issues which I'd like to jot down real quick.

Terminal.app has issues with my favourite programming font, Inconsolata. The font isn't rendered at all, which is a pain. I went with Menlo (the new monospaced font coming with Snopard) for the time being. (In Textmate, Inconsolata renders just fine.)
The Language & Text preference pane refuses to allow me to use the "German - Microsoft" layout. It's a 32-bit vs 64-bit issue with MS' Intellitype software (which is needed for my Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000) — the 32-bit drivers can't be used in 64-bit apps, and the keyboard reverts to its default "German" layout. According to this Apple support board post it's not even clear whether there'll be a 64-bit Intellitype software at some point. Saying this is inconvenient would be an understatement.
I've switched from 1Password 2 to 1Password 3 Beta since 1Password 2 would've required me to run Safari in 32-bit mode; v3 doesn't. Looking good. Can't say more due to the NDA. :)

The rest seems to be fine. Standing out most:

Booting the iMac seems to be faster now.
Image Capture finally recognizes my CanoScan LiDE 200 scanner out of the box! (About time.)

All in all, not a bad update. The family license goes for €49, so I didn't have to think long about it.

Update: I was able to fix the keyboard problem! Today I found Ukulele, an Unicode keyboard layout editor. After downloading it, I've poked around the DMG and found two files, LogitechGerman.keylayout and LogitechGerman.icns. After copying them to the /Library/Keyboard Layouts/, all that was left was opening the Language & Text preference pane and activating the "Logitech German" layout. Dynomite!

Liebe VOX-Redaktion(en)!

2009-08-24T20:14:57Z

Eure Sendungen sind scheisse.

Nein, wirklich. Ich meine das nicht böse oder abwertend, sicher nicht. Ich seh nicht oft fern, bin von daher auch sicherlich nicht Teil der werberelevanten Zielgruppe. Aber ich finde, Ihr strengt Euch nicht mehr so an wie früher.

Erinnert Ihr Euch noch an die gute alte Zeit? Ihr hattet nur 5 oder 6 Kochshows im Programm; "CSI" lief noch da, wo es hingehört (nämlich bei Euch, nicht bei RTL) und hatte nur 3 Werbepausen und nicht gefühlte 18; Herr Mälzer bereitete auf sehr lockere und durchaus unterhaltsame Art und Weise leckere Speisen aus seiner und anderer Menschen Kindheit zu; das "Perfekte Dinner" war auch noch recht neu und mehr aufs Essen denn auf die Schubladen und wirren Vorlieben der Teilnehmer fixiert; und hin und wieder schneiten Enie van de Meiklokjes und Herr Kühler bei irgendwelchen unbekannten Mitbürgern vorbei und rissen ihnen die Hütte ab. Das war Fernsehen, bei dem man sich wohlfühlen konnte.

Das ist allerdings lange her.

Vor ein paar Tagen schaltete ich beim Abendessen dummerweise mal wieder auf VOX, und stolperte über ein Format namens "mieten, kaufen, wohnen" (das auf Eurer Site irritierenderweise als "Doku" geführt wird). Da gehts um komplett unwichtige Leute, oft mit zuviel Geld, die auf der Suche nach einer permanenten Bleibe sind. Wenn die Leute wie Zuhälter aussehen oder aufstrebende junge Frauen "am Anfang ihrer Gesangskarriere" (Zitat Einblendung) sind, umso besser. Wirklich, ein rundes Magazin. Sehr interaktiv!

Ich vermute jetzt einfach mal, dass Ihr es als "interaktives Fernsehen" wertet, wenn ich die ganze Zeit meinen TV anschreie.

Die Sendung war schon nicht schlecht, aber ich glaube, da geht noch was. Sicher, Ihr habt Rainer Calmund beim Abspecken im Programm, genauso wie "Mein Revier", wo Ordnungshüter beim Von-Arschgesichtern-vollgelabert-werden gefilmt werden ¹, und auch noch einige andere Perlen der investigativen Unterhaltung. Ich versteh schon, Ihr wollt das echte Leben zeigen. Ist ja auch nicht verkehrt. Aber mal ganz ehrlich… Ihr könnt das besser!

Aus diesem Grund war ich so frei, mir noch ein paar Konzepte zu überlegen, die ihr umsetzen könntet. Über meinen Namen im Abspann oder großzügige Geldgeschenke (bitte kein Koks!) würde ich mich freuen, aber dies ist nicht zwingend notwendig.

"Meine Fußgängerzone"

Nehmt fünf Durchschnittsbürger, die sich nicht kennen, aber in der gleichen Stadt wohnen, und lasst sie Euch die zentrale Fußgängerzone ihrer Stadt zeigen. Gutes Vermarktungspotential: die angrenzenden Einzelhändler sind bestimmt bereit, ein paar Euro für mehr "Exposure" zu zahlen. Am Ende stimmen Passanten, die die Aufzeichnung nicht gesehen haben, über die Fünf ab. Noten von 1 bis 10 werden verteilt, wer am Ende 50 Punkte hat, bekommt eine Kiosklizenz.

Pro-Tipp: Geht auch als zusätzliche Wochenend-Version mit Verhaltensauffälligen, e.g. "Promis", die z.B. durch die Kö oder Lüdenscheid traben.

"Damals, gestern, heute"

Menschen von der Straße, die keiner kennt, rezitieren die BILD-Schlagzeilen von gestern oder vorgestern, so sie sich noch daran erinnern. Gern auch mit Aufregern! Das kommt immer gut an. Fußball, Ficken, Friedensverhandlungen im Westjordanland — die Themen sind letztendlich wurscht, wichtig ist nur, dass "einfachere Gemüter" (nicht abwertend gemeint!) die Chance bekommen, sich bei der (versuchten) Selbstdarstellung als Bildungsbürger lächerlich zu machen.

Pro-Tipp: Kann auch als Samstagabend-Format für RTL produziert werden, wo bei Oliver Geissen verlorengeglaubte/-gehoffte Verhaltensauffällige, e.g. "Promis", vor dem Greenscreen die BUNTE-Schlagzeilen der letzten Woche wiederkäuen. Wenn Ihr das irgendwie mit Musik kombinieren könnt, interessiert sich sicherlich auch Hugo-Egon Balder dafür.

"Tanküberfall"

Ein Tankwart wird den ganzen Tag mit der Kamera begleitet. Es gibt unzählige Tankstellen, die Woche hat sieben Tage, das Format könnte also ewig laufen.

Pro-Tipp #1: Hin und wieder könnte ein Verhaltensauffälliger, e.g. "Promi", mit seinem gemieteten Sportwagen zufällig an der Tanke des Tages vorbeischauen. Passt nur auf, dass Ihr Jürgen Drews nicht zu oft deswegen anruft.

Pro-Tipp #2: Für genügend Geld verkauft Euch Roland vielleicht auch die passende Domain. ;)

"Taube, Bischof, Heim"

Ein Einmal-Pro-Woche-Format: Die Wochenrückblende aus der Sicht eines bitteren, pensionierten Klerikers mit Hang zur Ornithologie, der in einem Altenstift wohnt. Ganz ehrlich, dafür braucht Ihr nicht mal einen Drehplan, sowas dreht und sendet sich praktisch von selbst. Wenn das kein Dokutainment ist, dann weiss ich auch nicht.

Pro-Tipp: Irgendwie Otto Waalkes unterbringen. (Mitglied des Pflegepersonals?)

"Catch me if you can"

Kennt Ihr "Deadliest Catch"? Geht in Deutschland natürlich nicht so, weil m.E. die meisten Leute die Beringstraße für einen Berliner Zubringer halten (siehe "Damals, gestern, heute"). Die Thematik (Fischer bei der Arbeit) ist aber trotzdem spannend; vor allen Dingen, wenn man sie —Achtung!— aus der Sicht der Fische betrachtet! Ganz genau, die Kamera begleitet Seetiere, sowohl in der Nord- und Ostsee als auch in Binnengewässern. Man könnte z.B. Welse mit Webcams versehen. Das könnte Deutschlands erste Unterwasser-Edutainment-Show werden!

Pro-Tipp: Es würde sich anbieten, zwei Serien zu machen, eine für die hohe See, eine andere für stehende Gewässer im bayrischen Hinterland. Das Hobbyangler-Segment ist noch nicht ausreichend abgedeckt, glaube ich.

"Pro-Bohno"

Tägliche Show (30-45 min), die aus mehreren statischen Blickwinkeln das Treiben in einem Coffeeshop sendet. Think "Big Brother" ohne Container und mit mehr Laptops. Wäre billig herzustellen: einfach ein paar Webcams aufstellen, und die Streams live zusammenstellen. Der Vorteil wäre, dass der Laden nach ein paar Tagen von noch unbekannten Verhaltensauffälligen (und evtl. auch Boris Becker und/oder Jürgen Drews) überrannt werden würde, die dann versuchen, sich vorteilhaft mit Gesang, Tanz und lockerem Auftreten zu präsentieren.

Pro-Tipp #1: Nach ein paar Wochen könnte man als Steigerung dann einen Rückkanal in den Coffeeshop legen, d.h. ein Fernseher, über den Dieter Bohlen live die Kaffeekäufer beleidigt.

Pro-Tipp #2: Am Samstag könnte man für RTL eine 1-Stunden-Show mit Oliver Geissen produzieren, wo Verhaltensauffällige, e.g. "Promis", vor dem Greenscreen… na, Ihr wisst schon.

Schlusswort

Das sind jetzt nur ein paar Ideen. Die sind alle geil! Und ich hab weder gekokst noch getrunken!

Wie gesagt, über Rückmeldungen und Geldgeschenke würde ich mich freuen. VOX, macht mal was Neues. Ihr wart mal mein #1-Sender der Privaten. Aber all der Unfug, der jetzt bei den Privaten läuft (nicht nur bei Euch), haben mich zu einem begeisterten Zuschauer der Öffentlich-Rechtlichen gemacht. (Srsly, ARTE, Phoenix und der ZDF Dokukanal sind super!)

PS: An alle, die sich jetzt amüsiert haben: glaubt ja nicht, dass das nicht passieren könnte — solcher Mist läuft schon lange, und zwar überall.

PPS: An alle, die sich jetzt amüsiert haben, und bei einem anderen privaten TV-Sender als VOX arbeiten: Euer Sender ist vermutlich noch viel beschissener.

Was, das läuft gar nicht bei Euch? Warum nicht?! ↩

Selling BetterSearch

2009-06-28T11:34:00Z

Since its birth a few years ago, my Firefox addon BetterSearch has been a fun project. People were using it and seemed mostly happy with it, as they could see a thumbnail of the search results on their favourite search engine before actually clicking through. Good times.

This was made possible by displaying preview thumbnails from various sources, such as Amazon's Alexa service and several others. These thumbnails had to be bought from them, which was financed by money I made as an Amazon affiliate. When BetterSearch would find an Amazon product in the list of search results, it would not display the Amazon.com thumbnail but the actual product image, along with the price, average rating and related information. When a user would click through, and buy stuff from them, I (as their affiliate) would get a few cents. ¹

This worked out well. It paid for server, bandwidth and thumbnails, and yes, I've made some extra money from it. Not much, but a bit.

Then, around end of 2008, Amazon changed the terms of their affiliate program -- all of a sudden, what BetterSearch (and several other addons for different browsers) were doing wasn't allowed anymore. No more tagging of so-called "organic search results". Oh noes! The Amazon partner program-related code had to go.

This put me in a somewhat tough spot. On the one hand, I liked my addon, and I know a lot of people were using it on a daily basis. On the other hand, it was just a side project, and the only source of income to counter the costs had suddenly dried up — and to be honest, as much as I like BetterSearch, it's nothing I was willing or able to invest lots of money in just for the fun of it.

But luckily, the company of a former co-worker of mine was looking for something like BetterSearch. They were interested in buying the addon, and we came to an agreement.

What does that mean?

It means BetterSearch, the Firefox addon, is now owned by Abakus Internet Marketing. They will continue to develop it, they will run its servers, pay for the bandwidth and the thumbnails — in a nutshell, everything BetterSearch is theirs now.

For the end user, not much will change — apart from a vastly expanded number of available thumbnails, that is. Firefox will update the addon whenever there's a new version, the way it was before. No need to manually install or adjust anything.

What's not part of the deal

No user-related data was passed along. First and foremost, BetterSearch didn't collect any user data. But of course there's always the case of the thumbnail server logfiles. Everytime a thumbnail is requested, it's noted in a server logfile, along with the user's IP address. (That's the modus operandi for pretty much every server everywhere on the internet. Ask your local geek about the details.) Since I don't care about this stuff, these logfiles were deleted on a daily basis anyone looking at them.

Either way, these server log files were not part of the deal.

The future

I think the addon's future is a bit brighter now as it was a few months ago. Now there's someone with sufficient resources to maintain and further develop BetterSearch. To me, that's a good thing. :)

Some people think it is "amoral" to tag Amazon links in such a way, and claimed it was sneaky. I disagree with both points. For me, it added meaning and context to the Amazon search results. And the information that this was done was disclosed on the addon's website, it's AMO page and in the addon's preferences dialog. Everybody using the addon decided to use it. Free will and all that. So there. ↩

CharPool Has Launched: There's A New WoW Site In Town

2009-05-16T12:27:00Z

Over the last few years, I have always wondered why there was no site that would allow me to track my progress in World of Warcraft. Sure, there's the WoW Armory and sites like Raptr, but all these places take more of a "your char right now!" approach which never came close to what I had in mind. And those that did go into the direction I was thinking didn't click with me.

But what exactly did I have in mind? This is where it gets a bit complicated. I was looking for a site that would automatically keep track of my characters for me, make daily snapshots, let me upload images and notes… Give me a timeline of their progress… In short, something that would allow me to document the "life" of my toons. Maybe something that would give me a bit more, with "more" still being a very diffuse idea.

Anyways, I always felt this was strange there was no such site, as I believe there's an audience for that. So many people do invest so many hours, so much energy and money into the game, I can't possibly be the only one wanting.

I ended up firing up TextMate and starting to code, and only a short while °cough° later, I had something I deemed good enough to release as a beta.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you CharPool.

The site does exactly what I've described a few paragraphs ago, but it also throws in (in my opinion) funky Twitter support, whereas you can tweet in the name of your characters, and these tweets will show up on the chars timeline, together with your achievements and screenshots etc. It also has feeds.

There's also a page which shows you the WoW-related tweets of your guild mates and also of the people you are following on CharPool. The guild support is still rather rudimentary, and at the moment is mostly just a hint at things to come. Again, it's Twitter-based, because I've read somewhere on AOL that it is what the "cool cats" are "digging" right now. ¹

So, I am having plans for CharPool. Big plans. But it's still in its infancy, there're a few rough edges, and I'll need testers to take a look, poke around, and give me feedback. Preferrably WoW players, because, you see, without active characters the site is rather pointless. :)

I've opened up 250 beta slots which are given away on a "first come, first serve" basis. I'd appreciate it if you could take a look if WoW is your cup o' tea. If not, maybe you know someone who is a player? Then you could pass him a note.

Thank you very much in advance.

Gods, I want to be hip, just once. ↩

Update On The Stability Of The Bookeen Cybook Gen3

2009-04-11T15:21:37Z

A post on the MobileRead forums hinted at my Cybook Gen3 stability issues being related to the font face used for displaying text, so I've replaced the very lovely Liberation Serif with the slightly less lovely, but nonetheless enjoyable DejaVu Condensed Serif.

Lo and behold, the stability improved tremendously — my Cybook hasn't crashed once since I've switched.

So, yes, the crashes/lockups are definitely font issues. The more you know.

Review: Bookeen Cybook Gen3

2009-03-08T19:21:53Z

One of the first applications I've installed after buying my iPod touch last year was Stanza, one of the few dedicated ebook reading tools for the platform.

The idea of electronic reading appeals to me. I've tried my luck several times over the last few years, on different devices, with varying success. (Anyone remember Palm? Haha, yeah… me neither.)

First of all, I like a good novel. Being able to carry a number of them around with me, wherever I go, is a good thing. Back then I was spending almost two hours each day in public transit, and imagine that: reading beats staring at subway tunnel walls the whole time.

My second argument is a bit more elaborate. You see, I've read a lot of books in my life, most of them just once. Not everything written by man is a gem begging to be re-read time and time again. And while this is okay --not everyone can be Shakespeare, and most of these books I've enjoyed at least a bit, after all-- it raises the question of what to do with them after reading. There are so many "one-off" books in my basement, it's not really funny anymore. Some of them I gave away, some I've sold, some I've fed to a recycling bin. But the others are sitting there, silently, and everytime I look at them I wonder a) what to do with them and b) how much wood was used up to make them. (Yes, I've actually had a point to make here.) Thus, I'd feel less bad about getting said one-time-read-through novels in electronic form.

Anyways: After a few months with Stanza I've decided electronic reading works well enough for me to warrant a dedicated device for home use -- a real ebook reader. After some shopping around, comparing prices and reading up on different offerings I went with the Bookeen Cybook gen3.

After a few weeks of using it a lot I now feel comfortable enough to share my findings. I know at least a few people are curious about it -- hi Mookie & Bernhard. ;)

Quick Facts

6" e-ink screen
600x800 pixels, 166 dpi
B&W, 4 grayscale
No backlight, naturally
Multi format: reads Mobipocket (DRM and non-DRM), HTML, PDF, TXT, PalmDoc, image formats etc. ¹ Both EPUB and better PDF support are promised for the upcoming firmware update. (Hopefully this'll include reflowing text in PDFs.)
Has an SD slot -- in case the 512MB onboard storage isn't enough.

The Good

Rather affordable: I've ordered mine in the UK, and paid €225 incl. shipping to Germany. The box contained the Cybook, a short pamphlet, and an USB cable. Not more, not less.
It's a light device: Only ~170g, battery included.
The screen is great, the time it takes to turn a page is surprisingly short and not noticeable anymore after reading a few pages.
There's no proprietary software to be installed. Connect it to your Mac/PC, and it'll show up as mass USB storage device in your Finder/Explorer. This is also how you put new content on the device. I like that.
Truetype support: Don't like the built-in fonts? Just copy TTF files to the device and use them instead. I really like that.
Rather simple and logic menu layout. The menus mostly make sense.
Handy display controls: Font family, font size, layout (justification etc.).
Impromptu bookmarks: Turning off the device or going back to the "library" (i.e. the main list of stored texts) during reading will make a note of your progress. Going back to the text later on will bring back to you where you've stopped reading.

The Bad

Doesn't support EPUB yet, but apparently this will be "fixed" within the month.
The PDF support is… well, let's just say that yes, it displays most PDF files. But it either tries to cram one document page into the space of the 6" screen or flips the display 90° and shows either the upper or lower half of the document page. It works, but it ain't fun, yo.
No page numbers: There is an (optional) horizontal bar at the bottom of the screen to display how far you've progressed through the book. It's a neat idea, and a good alternative to page numbers. Well, in theory. It's an idea that wasn't fully thought through, as you can also jump to any page using its page number through the menu. Which is somewhat useless, as the current page number isn't indicated number anywhere. It's just not displayed. I know that on a device that supports different font families and sizes, calculating page numbers can be a drag, but come on: the navigation currently in place is only 4 parts working -- and 1 part barely sufficient.
Stability:
- It locks up every now and then, which puts me in the strange situation that I had to reboot my book. (There's a tiny reset button on the back of the device.)
- Since the reading progress is only stored during shutdown or upon return to the library but naturally not during a lockup, the device will not remember where I was when the crash happened. So after a reset the last automatically saved bookmark will be used -- my progress made between opening the text and the lockup will be lost. This is unfortunate, as there is no "forward ten pages" menu option, so I usually end up flipping through dozens of pages after a crash, looking for the right page.
- Update: The crashes are apparently directly related to the font used -- using DejaVu Serif Condensed instead of Liberation Serif helped the stability quite a bit. YMMV.
Not all books come with a TOC, and it'd be nice if the Cybook would autogenerate one. Alas, it doesn't.
I'm having problems opening the PDFs from the Suvudu Free Library, which makes me a sad panda. I hope this will change with the aforementioned firmware update.
I don't like the available three library views all that much. They're a wee bit uninspired.

The Useless

Plays MP3.
On the left side of the device there are four buttons. Only three of them have a function.

DIY Improvements

I wanted a cover to protect the screen, but didn't want to spend money on them "official" leather covers. So I've …molested a Moleskine (ahem ²). Which actually worked out pretty nicely after all. Because I am a man of many talents! Oh yeah.
Liberation Serif. 'nuff said.
Impress the ladies: MobiPerl and hpricot make for a good team.

The Verdict

It's no Kindle 2. It's a neat device without frills. It's not perfect. But it's affordable and works, and I don't regret the purchase.

A full list can be found at Bookeen.com ↩
I apologize, but this is a pun I wanted to make for years. ↩

Planet Yahoo! Explodes In A Huge, Yet Pretty, Greg-Martin-Inspired Cataclysm

2009-03-05T13:05:56Z

It happens.

I see no point in running Planet Yahoo! anymore, for reasons probably known — i.e. a few months ago Yahoo!'s decided my services as an engineer (and those of my co-workers) were no longer required.

Sorry if you were one of the few people finding some value in the aggregation of all these Yahoo! blogs into one big feed.

God Gotchas

2009-02-25T11:53:51Z

This is a reblog of a post from my new Ruby-themed tumblelog. I know it's kind of cheap to repost your own stuff, but who cares.

I've spent a couple of hours today pulling my hair out while trying to get one of my background job scripts to work with god, the "easy to configure, easy to extend monitoring framework written in Ruby".

Well, it took a while to make it work, tho. Yes, god is cool and simple and gets the job done. But there are some things that cost me hours and which I found out only by reading the source code.

So, I just want to quickly jot down some gotchas before I forget them again, running the risk of falling into the same traps again in the future.

My script used the constant LOG to keep my Logger instance. Logging worked fine when I ran the script by itself, yet when god took over, it didn't anymore. Actually, the script died rather quickly. As there was no logging at all going on, and all STDOUT output was suppressed, I came rather close to losing it. Turns out god itself is declaring a LOG constant of its own, which was done before my script had the chance, so when it attempted to initialize it, it would actually try to re-declare an existing constant, and we all know how well that works. ;)
Once that was done, my script was logging just fine, but it didn't produce any output whatsoever. Raah! Teeth were gnashed… there was definitely teeth gnashing going on. Even telling "my" Logger (the one inside my script) to write to a file didn't produce anything. That was a fun hour, really. The reason for this behaviour: god is closing all open file descriptors when it sets up monitoring a script. Which included my script. Awesome! On the upside, it meant I could get rid of the part of my code dealing with different logger behaviours. Meaning less LOC! It doesn't get any more agile than that, folks.
In case you actually want to capture anything your original script is sending to STDOUT, there's the not-really-documented God::Watch#log. Set it inside your God.watch block to specify a log file. (See example below.)
If you need to set ENV variables, God::Watch#env is your friend. Accepts a hash with arbitrary key/value pairs. For example, I declare a few God.watch blocks, one for each value of an array (think "worker 1 to 5"), and I use God::Watch#env to pass the current value to the worker script. Works well.
When you do a sudo god stop <watch>, make sure to give it a few moments before running sudo god start <watch> again, or you might end up with orphaned unmonitored scripts running rampant in the background.
Running sudo god log without any further arguments will tell you that "You must specify a Task or Group name". That's actually a lie, as it only accepts task names. (A group is a number of related tasks. A task is a single monitoring watch.)

So, yeah.

Don't get me wrong, please: It might not look like it, but once I had figured it all out, I've decided I actually like god. I like the feature set, it's really easy to set up, and it works. I'm happy it exists.

Se7en Things

2009-01-09T17:36:49Z

Damn, Mookie tagged me. Well, why not.

Seven things weird and/or unknown about me:

When I was 8 years old, I've developed an allergy to cats, more or less out of the blue. Which sucked, since I had two female cats at that time, Tina and Nena. (It was the 80s, gimme a break.) We had to give them away, and my room had to be renovated, as I became nearly asthmatic due to the omnipresent cat hair. Interestingly, becoming allergic to something you had no problems with before isn't all that uncommon. Still, not a nice experience.
I'm one quarter Polish. My granny was from Poland.
I have a drivers license for small tanks. I've had the opportunity to participate in the driving school while I was in the Army (90's), and went with it. :) So, I own a license for "Klasse F (Voll- und Halbkettenfahrzeuge) — F2 (bis 30t)" (up to 30 metric tons). I do not, however, own an actual tank, and quite frankly, I am not even sure whether I am allowed to steer a track-laying vehicle (like a tank) outside of the military now (regulations have changed quite a bit since then).
I had a pet rat when I was 14. My parents hated it. :)
The first computing device that was truly my own was an Atari 800XL. Awww yeah, bitches!
I own not five, but six pairs of original Bavarian Lederhosen in various lengths and styles. About 12 years ago, when I moved to Munich, I valiantly declared that I would never ever dress in Bavarian clothing as it just felt wrong. This, of course, led to me ending up with two pairs at my next birthday, as two circles of friends both had the same idea. Things developed from there. I came to like them, even though I very rarely wear them.
I tend to lie when asked by others to talk about things they might not know about me. A lot, actually.

Bonus!

I once met Justin Timberlake. True story.

I'd like to thank the Academy

I'd like to tag everyone who feels like participating in this crazy new meme. For example Mike or Hendrik, who would both really surprise me would they take this thing and run with it. I doubt it, but you'll never know. So… It's a FFA. Find the rules over at Mookie's place.

2009 — My Grand Experiment

2009-01-06T14:43:33Z

As mentioned earlier, Yahoo! decided to shut down its entire Munich engineering department. So since January 1st, I am officially out of a job.

What a downer… or is it?

After some deliberation and discussions with Dana, I've decided to concentrate on the bright side: I have a few ideas for products (read: websites), and now I finally have the time to work on them. I've always contemplated building them in my spare time while still being employed, but apart from a few small experiments (which were fun to write but are hardly my personal "next big thing") that concept didn't work out so well.

Thus, I've decided to concentrate on my own stuff in 2009 — full frontal self- employment. That's right, I'm an entrepreneur now. ¹

I plan on spending about half a year to bring my ideas to life, and then taking on freelance jobs later on to bolster the income these site will (hopefully) generate. My ideas are related to gaming, both because it's something I love and because I am definitely seeing a market there. I think my concept is sound, and I know I can build this …thing. It won't be easy, but I have no problems working for my money. ;)

I don't know whether it will work out or not, but I want, nay, need to try. The time certainly is as right as it gets. Actually, one could argue that I've waited a bit too long with my idea, since a "contender" appeared on the scene a short time ago. ² But I don't see this as a showstopper, quite the contrary — it's good to have competition as it keeps you on your toes. :)

So, 2009: it's going to be my year. It's a grand experiment, and while working alone I won't be alone, as my wonderful wife and my friends are supporting me. Still, I don't know yet whether I will succeed or if this kind of thing will be working for me. Quite honestly, this makes me a wee bit nervous.

Nonetheless, full steam ahead!

Yes I can.

Actually, officially not yet, as there's still a bit of paperwork to work through with a small number of different parties, but this won't have any effect on the decision already made. ↩
I could say he stole my idea, but that'd be bullshit: I didn't tell it to anyone, and besides — ideas are cheap, they only count when you pursue them. ↩

Mini Review: 2008

2009-01-02T08:45:31Z

I was promoted. Then I lost my job. But I came to a conclusion, and found new goals. (More on this later.)
I had planned on running 250km, then hit that goal in October, and ended up doing 400km.
My granny passed away, and I miss her.
My faith in the USA was partially restored (the Obama campaign and its success even gave me hope, and I don't even "count").
We're done with the bulk of the renovating of our 2nd floor. I've installed the floor tilings. w00t!
I was overly surprised by a videogame — GTA IV. I've spent a lot of time on that one. Wonderful adult entertainment.
I got me an iPod touch — which turns out to be a good reading device, thanks to both Instapaper Pro and Stanza.
I've tried to bring Child's Play to Germany, and failed. Oh well, it was the first round. Better luck in 2009.
I've launched a few smaller projects — Twitter Twerp Scan, escaloop (which I've shut down a few months later) and Random.li.
I came to love GitHub. Great site/service.

Verdict

A really good year.

Posts

I didn't write as much as I had planned on doing, but nonetheless, here are a few of my "better" posts (subjective opinion, YMMV).

Have a good 2009.

On (e)Books

2008-12-04T12:57:40Z

John Scalzi:

That said, these are gruesome times for publishing, and a lot of folks are not as well-positioned as I am. Imprints have vaporized, layoffs have begun, and it’s better-than-even odds that a number of authors and books are going to get shaved off of publishing lists. 2009 is also likely to be a singularly lousy time to be an aspiring debut author, as publishing houses consolidate their lists and focus their resources on established avenues (i.e., spend their money on people who are already bestsellers) rather than seeking out new folks. Basically, life's gonna suck in publishing for the next year or possibly two.

I love my ebook reader (Stanza on the iPod as you can't get the Kindle here in Germany yet), and I'd like to buy more ebooks. It's a distribution channel which (I think) would be a pretty good way for the publishers to make additional money …if many of these files wouldn't cost me as much or more than the dead-tree versions.

I mean, really: I like good novels as much as the next guy, and I am definitely willing to spend money on them. Also, I don't like hardcovers for the price tags (yes, I think $25 is a lot of money). One would think that a digital version would cost substantially less than the hardcover, but it’s not always the case. Case in point: "Zoe's Tale" by John Scalzi, currently on sale for $25 (ebook, FictionWise) and $17 (hardcover, Amazon).

I have no problems with paying $7 or $8 for an ebook, but anything over $10 is highway robbery.

Do not misunderstand me: yes, I am tempted to buy it, but I will fight the urge, because quite frankly, John's a great writer, and I enjoy his novels very, very much. Also, I don't think he's the one dictating the price — so who's responsible for these insane prices which seriously keep me from spending money?

(BTW: Yes, you might say "get the paperback", but this is not my point. My point is: I want the digital edition, because it's the version I prefer for various reasons.)

Anyways, I believe right now the publishing industry is facing the same problems as the music industry — they’re shooting themselves in the foot because they are either ignoring the possibilities of using a great distribution channel or actively sabotaging it by asking for completely disproportionate amounts of money.

Angry Carlo is angry.

(This is a slightly longer repost of a comment I've left on Whatever. After posting I wanted to make some clarifications, but couldn't edit the comment, so here we go.)

Es War Einmal… Yahoo! Engineering München

2008-11-24T22:34:54Z

Yahoo! hat am Freitag verkündet, die gesamte Engineering-Abteilung in München zu schließen. Meine Freude war etwas gedämpft, bin ich doch (noch) Teil dieser Abteilung.

Meine Motivation, eine neue "Herausforderung" zu finden, stieg dementsprechend sprunghaft — denn ab 31.12.2008 bin ich somit ohne Arbeit (Stand: heute).

Um ehrlich zu sein, ich weiß noch nicht genau, was ich machen möchte. Will ich als Freelancer arbeiten? Suche ich mir einen (interessanten) neuen Job? Mache ich eine eigene Firma auf? Im Moment bin ich etwas unschlüssig, alle drei Optionen klingen irgendwie verlockend.

Vielleicht muss ich nur überzeugt werden. Also, sollte eine coole Firma in München zufällig nach einem versatilen Allrounder mit einem Faible für Scripting/Hacking (Ruby, Python, Javascript, Perl, PHP, LUA…) und alles Neue suchen, der sich mit geschlossenen Augen in diesem Internetz auskennt: ich würde mich sehr über eine Mail, einen Tweet oder einen Anruf (089 / 317 12 74) freuen. Oder auch über einen Besuch auf meinem LinkedIn- oder Xing-Profil. :) Danke!

Und sollten irgendjemand nach einem wirklich sehr, sehr guten Web Dev suchen: mein Freund und Kollege Mike West ist zur Zeit ebenfalls auf der Suche.

Fritz, Interview, Podcast!

2008-11-17T09:39:36Z

Mein Child's Play-Interview in Trackback auf Radio Fritz war ein voller Erfolg, zumindest in dem Sinne, dass ich mich nicht komplett blamiert habe …denke ich zumindest. Dana meinte zwar, ich hätte allen den Stoiber gemacht — meine "Äh…"-Frequenz war wohl höher, als ich selbst gemerkt habe —, aber ich glaube, das ist okay. Niemand in Berlin kennt Stoiber, oder?

Die Sendung vom Samstag gibts auch als Podcast, als MP3-Direktdownload und zum Gleich-auf-der-Seite-Anhören. Das Interview geht bei ca. 11:05 min los. Der Rest der Sendung ist natürlich auch cool; generell ist Trackback als Podcast ohnehin wunderbar geeignet, um Bus- und Bahnfahrten mit Kurzweil zu überstehen. :)

Vielen, vielen Dank nochmals an Marcus für die Plattform! Jetzt hoffe ich mal, dass mehr als nur wir zwei an der Child's Play-in-Deutschland-Idee interessiert sind. Daumen drücken!

Child's Play in Deutschland, Update

2008-11-14T10:47:25Z

Wer hätte das gedacht, mein letzter Post hat Interesse bei einigen Leuten geweckt. Anscheinend war die Idee, Child's Play nach Deutschland zu holen, doch nicht so absurd. Freude!

Ein alter Bekannter von mir, Marcus, hat mich kurz nach der Veröffentlichung angepingt und gefragt, ob ich Interesse an einem kurzen Interview für seine Radio-Sendung Trackback hätte. Natürlich hatte ich -- wenn alles klappt, wirds was morgen zwischen ab 18:00 und 20:00 Uhr.

Also, Lauscher aufstellen. :)

Ansonsten würde ich mich darüber freuen, wenn Ihr für die Idee ein wenig die Werbetrommel rühren könntet. Verbreitet den Link zur Child's Play-Kategorie auf carlo.log, oder lest nach, was Ihr sonst noch machen könnt (in diesem Post, unter "Child's Play 2009").

Update: Marcus lässt ausrichten, dass Fritz auch einen Livestream hat. Hurra!

Child's Play 2008: Deutschland

2008-11-11T18:54:20Z

(This is a post in German. Are you looking for the English language version?)

Child's Play 2008 ist gestartet. Gamer in vielen Ländern geben Geld oder kaufen Spielzeuge, Games und andere Geschenke für Kinderkrankenhäuser und -stationen und ihre kleinen Patienten; Partner- Kliniken in den US, Großbritannien, Kanada, Neuseeland, Australien und Ägypten freuen sich über vielen Spenden.

Die Frage

Aber warum nicht hier in Deutschland? Die Frage kam mir während des Sommer immer wieder in den Kopf. Wieso gibt es keine deutschen Kliniken, die mit Child's Play zusammenarbeiten? Im Juli fragte ich dann bei Kristin Lindsay, der Projektmanagerin im Hause Penny Arcade, nach und bot präventiv meine Dienste als "freiwilliger Verbindungsoffizier" an.

Die Antwort kam nach ein paar Tagen: "Der Grund ist: Wir sprechen kein Deutsch, was die Kontaktaufnahme ziemlich erschwert. Dein Angebot nehmen wir gern an!"

Die Aufgabe

Im Prinzip geht es nur darum, den initialen Kontakt zwischen Child's Play und interessierten Kliniken herzustellen. CP kennt keine deutschen Einrichtungen. Woher auch? Sie brauchen Gamer vor Ort, i.e. uns, wie in allen anderen Ländern auch. Die Verantwortlichen in den Krankenhäusern haben Fragen, und es schafft mehr Vertrauen, wenn diese von lokalen Ansprechpartnern in Landessprache beantwortet werden.

Rechtlich gesehen sind die Freiwilligen außen vor. Wenn sich eine Einrichtung entschließt, ein sog. Partnerhospital zu werden, wird eine rechtliche Vereinbarung direkt zwischen ihr und der Charity in den USA geschlossen. Child's Play arbeitet dabei aber nur mit sog. non-profit organizations zusammen: z.B. mit öffentlichen Kliniken oder auch entsprechenden Stiftungen.

Wir, die Freiwilligen, kommen erst wieder ins Spiel, wenn das Krankenhaus evtl. Hilfe beim Erstellen seines Wunschzettels benötigt. Der Kauf und die Lieferung erfolgt komplett über Amazon.

Die Geschichte

Eine gute Woche später, Anfang August, war ich wegen einer Untersuchung als potentieller Knochenmarkspender im Klinikum München-Neuperlach. Ich fragte mich zum Sozialdienst durch, wo ich erfuhr, dass Neuperlach keine Kinderstation hat. Knüller! Dafür bekam ich aber vom freundlichen Chef des Dienstes Namen und Telefonnummern von Ansprechpartnern in den Kliniken in München-Harlaching und München-Schwabing. Sehr gut!

Nun, ich hatte nicht wirklich erwartet, dass sich die Leute darum reissen, mich anzuhören. Trotzdem begann ich frohen Mutes meinen Telefondienst. Meine zwei Kontakte waren freundlich und hilfreich, aber nicht die Personen, die Charities betreuen. Ich bekam immer neue Namen von anderen Klinik- Mitarbeitern, die sich "um derlei Anfragen" kümmern, und nach einigen Umwegen hatte ich auch tatsächlich Menschen am Apparat, die mir zumindest Auskünfte und richtige Namen geben konnten. Nur half das nicht wirklich weiter: "Der Verantwortliche heisst [XYZ], aber er/sie ist krank/im Urlaub/auf Reisen".

Die nächsten zwei Monate verbrachte ich dann viel, viel Zeit am Telefon. Ich sprach mit netten und ehrlich interessiert wirkenden Klinikmitarbeitern, die um Infomaterial baten und Fragen hatten. Bei einigen dieser Fragen musste ich bei Kristin Lindsay nachfragen, weil ich die Antworten selbst nicht kannte. Aber hey, leben und lernen! :) Kristin half mir weiter, und ich gab die Informationen auf Deutsch an meine Kontakte in den Einrichtungen. Ich rief im Wochenrhythmus an, fragte nach Neuigkeiten und Entscheidungen. Aber Bürokratie braucht seine Zeit. Ich hakte nach… hakte nach… hakte nach.

Kurzgesagt, ich tat das, wofür ich als Freiwilliger "angeheuert" hatte.

Ende erster Akt

Ende Oktober kam dann aber leider das Aus (für dieses Jahr). Die Städtischen Kliniken München ließen mich in einer kurzen Mail wissen, dass sie Child's Play interessant fänden, ich aber bitte Verständnis dafür haben sollte, dass man nicht Partnerhospital werden möchte. Schade.

Mir blieb nichts weiter übrig, als mich für die Info zu bedanken, und darauf hinzuweisen, dass 2008 sicherlich nicht das letzte CP-Jahr gewesen sein wird.

Tja, und das ist der Grund, warum es zumindest dieses Jahr keine Child's Play-Aktionen in Deutschland gibt.

Die Nachbesprechung

Ich finde es bedauerlich, klar. Und im Nachhinein denke ich mir, dass ich eventuell mehr als nur zwei Kliniken hätte anschreiben müssen. Die Chancen auf einen Erfolg wären klar größer gewesen. Aber ich hatte so etwas noch nie gemacht, und hatte keine Ahnung, wieviel Aufwand auf mich zukommen würde. Ich wollte klein anfangen, und im nächsten Jahr darauf aufbauen. Nach oben hin ist schließlich immer alles offen; aber beim ersten Mal zu versuchen, 10 Kliniken gleichzeitig zu jonglieren, und dann zu versagen, Leute zu enttäuschen, den Ruf von Child's Play aufs Spiel zu setzen -- das erschien mir kein guter Ansatz.

Child's Play 2009

Nächstes Jahr werde ich früher anfangen, nach Krankenhäusern zu suchen. Und ich verändere meinen Ansatz: ich werde die Kliniksuche "outsourcen". :)

Und zwar an Euch.

Kennt Ihr ein Kinderkrankenhaus oder eine Klinik mit pediatrischer Station, das u.U. generelles Interesse an einer Zusammenarbeit mit Child's Play hat? Fragt bei der Klinikleitung oder beim Sozialdienst an -- lasst sie wissen, dass es CP überhaupt gibt. Ich wage zu behaupten, dass die wenigsten Einrichtungen in Deutschland davon wissen. Wenn sie Interesse zeigen, habt Ihr drei Möglichkeiten:

Ihr schickt sie direkt zu CP's Kristin Lindsay.
Ihr gebt Ihnen meine Kontaktdaten.
Ihr kümmert Euch selbst darum. :)

Ich kann nichts versprechen, außer, dass ich jede Anfrage beantworten werde.

Mit etwas Glück wirds in 2009 ein größerer Erfolg, und die Presse hat mal etwas Anderes zu vermelden als "OMG KILLARSPIELE". :)

Das Kleingedruckte

Ich bin kein Mitarbeiter von Child's Play. Ich spreche nicht für die Organisation, und ich vertrete sie nicht. Ich bin lediglich ein freiwilliger Helfer, der sich auf eigene Faust und Kosten für Child's Play in Deutschland stark macht. Alle Aussagen zu legalen Gegebenheiten wurden nach bestem Wissen und Gewissen gemacht, können aber trotzdem großer Unfug sein.

Child's Play 2008: Germany

2008-11-11T18:54:04Z

(Dies ist die englische Version eines ursprünglich deutschsprachigen Artikels.)

Child's Play 2008 is on. Gamers in many countries of the world give money or buy toys, games or other gifts for child hospitals and stations and their little patients; partner hospitals in the US, the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Egypt are delighted about all the donations.

The Question

But where's Germany? This question popped up in my head more than once during the summer. Why aren't there any German hospitals participating in Child's Play? In July, I've asked Kristin Lindsay (Penny Arcade's project manager) about this, and preventively offered my help as "voluntary liason officer".

Her answer arrived after a few days: "We currently have no partners there simply because none of us speak German. If you'd like to help out to get your local facility involved, that would be fantastic!"

The Job

In a nutshell, the volunteers are needed to make the initial contact between Child's Play and potential partner hospitals. CP doesn't know about these local facilities. How should they? They need local gamers, i.e. us, just like in all the other countries. Die people in charge in these clinics have questions, and it helps building trust in the idea when there are local contacts answering these questions in the local language.

From a legal point of view, the volunteers are not really involved. When a facility decides to become a so-called partner hospital, then there'll be a legal agreement with the US charity itself. Child's Play only works with so-called non-profit organizations, tho, this can be either the hospital directly, their volunteer guild or the hospital foundation, whichever is applicable.

We, the volunteers, come back into play later, if at all; for example when the clinic may require assistance in building a wish list. The business side of the charity, i.e. sales and shipping, is handled by Amazon.

The Story

About a week later, early August, I went to the hospital Munich Neuperlach. After my appointment I've asked around and found the social services office, where I was told that the clinic didn't have a pediatric station. Bummer! But the friendly head of the office gave me names and phone numbers of people in two other, applicable local hospitals, Munich Harlaching und Munich Schwabing. Excellent!

Well, I didn't quite expect to see people falling over each other to hear my case. Nonetheless I started doing my rounds on the phone. My two contacts were friendly and helpful, but not the people responsible for dealing with charities. Over and over I was given new names of other clinic personnel which would take care of "requests like yours", and after a few detours I've ended up talking to people who at least could give me some information and the right names. It just didn't really help right away: "The person you want to talk to is [XYZ], but he/she is sick/on vacation/on a business trip".

During the next two months I've spent a lot of time on the phone. I've talked with nice hospital employees who appeared to be seriously interested, who asked for more information. Some of them had questions I couldn't answer; luckily there was Kristin Lindsay. :) I've relayed Kristin's answers in German to my contacts. I've called them on a weekly basis, asked for news and whether a decision had been made yet. But bureaucracy being what it is, this took some time, so I've called them again… and again… and again.

In short, I've done what I've "signed up for" when asking whether they would need a local volunteer.

End of Season One

But then, end of October, all of a sudden it was over (at least for this run). The administration of the Munich Municipal Hospitals told me in a short mail that while they found Child's Play to be an interesting charity, they've ultimately decided against participating. A pity.

In the end there was nothing left to do for me but to thank them for the notice, and reminding them that 2008 very likely isn't going to be the last year of CP.

Well, and that is the reason why there are no Child's Play hospitals in Germany in 2008.

Debriefing

Personally, I think it's a sad outcome, yes. I ponder whether I should've contacted more than just two clinics. The chances for success would've been much higher, of course. But this was the first time I've done something like this, and I had no idea what to expect or how much work it would entail. I figured I'd rather start out small, and increase the numbers in the next year. The sky's the limit, sure; but trying to deal with 10 facilities at once in the first run, and running the risk of failure, of letting people down, of screwing with the reputation of Child's Play -- that didn't look like a solid plan.

Child's Play 2009

Next year I'm going to start out earlier in the year. Also, I've decided to change my approach: I'll "outsource" the search for applicable and interested hospitals.

I'll outsource them to you.

Do you know a German children's hospital or a clinic with a pediatric station which might be interested in a contact to Child's Play? Just ask the administration or the social services people -- just tell them about CP. If I had to venture a guess, I'd say most clinics in Germany have no idea the charity exists. If they're showing interest, you'll have three options:

You send them to CP's Kristin Lindsay.
You give them my contact data if they want to talk to a German.
You handle them yourself. :)

Please keep in mind that I can't promise anything, except that I'll answer each request.

And with a bit of luck we'll have more success in 2009, so the press might talk about something else than "OMG MURDAR SIMULATOR GAMSE". :)

The Fineprint

I am not affiliated with Child's Play. I do not speak for the organisation, and I am not their representative. All I am is a freelance volunteer who thinks the idea of having Child's Play partner hospitals in Germany is a really neat one. All statements regarding legal conditions and practices have been made to the best of my knowledge, but still they might be poppycock.

The Amazing Xmas Gift Ideas Machine

2008-11-06T08:24:44Z

A few weeks ago I was talking with Mike about carefully choosing gifts for our loved ones, about how to select the right things for the right people, so that come holiday season joy would be brought to them. We were discussing this arduous task at great lengths, using big words and long sentences, reflecting the importance of the outcome and the process itself.

I believe our conversation started when the phrase "I need some random Christmas crap" was muttered by one of us.

So obviously, I am not the only person having this particular problem. I am part of a larger group. But this knowledge is no real consolation. What to get family and friends to show them our affection? Each year the same questions arises, like a clockwork, and each year we're more or less at a loss. ¹

I wish there was a way to simulate long browsing sessions in a mall in a very very very condensed way, to allow for picking out gifts -- while at the same time taking my very high-importance, hectic lifestyle into account. Oh, and if there was some soothing music, favorably some sort of Easy Listening, to sweeten the experience, that'd be great.

As it turns out, I had to build this simulation myself. I've decided to call it random.li, which, incidentally, also happens to be its domain! (I know, what are the chances?!)

Here's a screenshot.

random.li grabs a number of different items from your favourite Amazon store, in your selected price range, shuffles them, and shows them to you in a 3x3 grid, along with the prices. You won't even see their titles!

We're talking about fast-paced, crack S.W.A.T. team-style gift finding. Shiny? Check! Affordable? Check! Bag it, we're done!

Clicking an item (or hitting the related keyboard shortcut) will bring up some details: its title, what it is etc. A click on the details display will open its Amazon page in a new window.

It's all rather simple, and I've tried to keep the amount of clutter low (yes, the music player in the lower left corner is an essential for me). There's no registration, no wishlist, no shopping list, no learning curve to speak of. Go there, pick a store, your price range, maybe finetune the categories to search in, that's it.

Well, have a look if you're in the market for gifts. Maybe it'll work for you as it works for me! Comments are welcome, and I've also set up a FriendFeed room for support issues.

If you like it, feel free to use the handy "Bookmark" button at the bottom of the random.li site to post the link to your favourite bookmarking / social networking / web 2.0 site, like delicious, Digg, Facebook, Twitter and whathaveyou. I might even send you a cookie if you do!

Cheers! :D

Over the years it's become less of a problem for me, as I've learned to better keep track of wishes mentioned to me during the year. Still. ↩

escaloop in 2009

2008-10-22T13:51:55Z

The short story is: not going to happen.

I'll be shutting escaloop down in about a month or so. It was a nice toy and a fun experiment, I've used it to get into Ramaze, but I have neither the time nor the energy to work on it any further.

I recommend moving over to FriendFeed or Lifestream.fm for all your lifestream needs. I am sure there are many more such services, just look around. :)

If you should choose FriendFeed, look me up if you want.

Using Yahoo! Pipes: Your Most Recent Nike+ Run in Friendfeed

2008-10-18T18:17:42Z

During the last few weeks, I've built a couple of pipes I want to share. ("Pipe", in this context, means an application built in Yahoo! Pipes.)

Here's one of them.

Your Most Recent Nike+ Run

As I've mentioned once or twice in the past, I've become a more or less avid runner during the last year. One central piece of my equipment is my Nike+. I don't run without it. I am a geek, I love numbers. The Nike+ provides me with numbers. It makes running a game.

I sync my iPod with my iTunes after each run, and the Nike site is taking the raw data, crunching it, giving me graphs and more numbers, and (this is the interesting thing) badges for my website.

Now, I don't really care about those. But when there are badges, there must be an API which provides the raw data to them. Looking behind the scenes, I quickly found it. It's not password-protected or secured in any way; when you set your nikeplus.nike.com profile to "public", the API will return some of your data (run overviews, run details etc. -- no personal details).

So, knowing the API URL, I've built a pipe which will do a few things:

Accept any nikeplus.nike.com "brag"-type of link as parameter (when you're logged in to the site, these are usually labelled "Share with your friends", "Grab the link" etc.).
It will extract your public, numeric runner ID from this link.
It'll fetch the data for the most recent run of the runner with this ID, i.e. you.
It'll build an RSS feed with the data of your most recent run.

When writing the pipe, I've made a few assumptions, namely that…

you sync your iPod after each run
you're using the Nike+ site
you don't run more than once per day.

Since I am lazy, I'll only use the data for the most recent run, so the pipe's results will be exactly that -- just a single item, your most recent run.

That being said, I found this sufficient. After adding the pipe's RSS URL as new "Custom RSS"-type service to Friendfeed, FF will effectively trigger the pipe a few times each day, and your latest run will be added to your stream quickly. Next time you sync your iPod, the Nike site will pick up the new data, the API will return the new data to the pipe, and the new run will be added as new Friendfeed item.

The pipe will post your runs in the following format: "[Nike+ runner name] ran [distance] [km/mi] in [time]", for example "3R ran 11.3543 km in 1:03'54"". The message will link to the public page of the run -- a page like this. (3R is my Nike+ moniker.)

Now, why would I want to add my runs to Friendfeed? Well, why not? For me, running is a nice part of my life. I'm actually enjoying it, I'm keeping it casual, and I am proud of every damn kilometer mark I pass. Plus, as mentioned, I am a geek, and I like to share what I build. :)

If you have questions or suggestions, speak your mind in the comments.

Yahoo! Pipes: Recent Nike+ Run
Friendfeed: the result -- my Nike+ runs as added service.

Using Yahoo! Pipes: Steam Achievements in Friendfeed

2008-10-18T17:47:53Z

During the last few weeks, I've built a couple of pipes I want to share. ("Pipe", in this context, means an application built in Yahoo! Pipes.)

Here's one of them.

Steam Achievements

A few weeks ago, I've first tested and then bought the excellent CrossOver Games. It's an emulator (basically a highly specialized version of WINE) which allows me to play a slate of Windows games, old and new, under OSX. So, that's how I've spent big chunks of my spare time during the last few weeks: playing through the wonderful Portal and the great Half-Life 2 games. (On a related note, I've noticed the World of Goo demo is running flawlessly in CXG. Awesome!)

I've got the games via Steam, and was both delighted and highly annoyed to learn that newer Steam games offer achievements. You see, I am a sucker for achievements. I love them, even though they aren't good for anything. I usually spend too much time trying to get this or that achievement. These meaningless little pixel badges are "awarded" for different things you manage to do in different games. You can get achievements in various games, on various platforms. For example on Xbox Live, or, as mentioned, on Steam.

So, being a male gamer in his mid-30s, I naturally like to use these superfluous thingies to brag about my mediocre gaming skills. Meaning, I want them to show up on my Friendfeed profile.

Thus, I wrote a pipe which grabs the achievements from any (public) Steam ID page (here's mine), spitting them out in an usable format -- in Friendfeed's case, that'd be RSS. (Pipes also returns the data as JSON if you want, or even as a handy HTML badge you can put on your blog or whereever.)

I've then added the RSS URL of the finished pipe as new service (type: "Blog" ¹) to Friendfeed.

So, that's all there is to it. Maybe I am the only one caring about this type of thing, maybe not. If you have questions or suggestions, sound off in the comments. :)

Yahoo! Pipes: Steam Achievements
Friendfeed: the result -- my Steam achievements as added service.

Friendfeed's terminology is a bit misleading here… If you want to add an RSS feed, you'll have to use "Blog" as new service. Eh. ↩

A German's View: US Elections 2008

2008-09-12T22:29:28Z

(This is a rather long piece. It has a point, though… so please bear with me. Danke.)

During the last couple of months I've developed an increasing interest in the US elections. More or less closely following the news about them, scrutinizing and evaluating their talking points and ideas, I've become rather familiar with both candidates, formed an opinion -- slowly realizing that I am actually more interested in the politics of a country I don't live in and an electorate system I can neither influence nor participate in than in my own nation's.

Allow me to elaborate how I came to care about domestic US politics.

A couple of years ago, on a sunny day in September, I was sitting in my office working, when a friend pinged me and told me to turn on the TV, now. A few fanatics had hijacked several passenger planes, using them as weapons. We sat in front of the screen, staring in horror at the looped footage, and couldn't believe our eyes. I remember very clearly turning to my coworkers, telling them that it was very likely we were witnessing the first day of World War III; someone had just attacked one of the most gung-ho empires of the World (no offense) -- this was bound to have long-lasting repercussions. No-one would or could expect the USA to take this lying down. I was expecting to see the US military turning some small part of the globe into a glassed parking lot.

I remember this fear. It was a deep-seated worry for the World as a whole, as meta as this may sound.

I spent the next few months watching news from the United States very closely. The increase in domestic security, the preparations for the war, the passing of the Patriot Act -- to me, the country resembled a wounded predator; maddened by pain, yet ready to throw itself against the ghostly attacker, lusting for the kill. Pretty much everything I heard in terms of news, speeches and sound bites, was not very rational.

Quite frankly, it scared the living shit out of me.

Trying my best to cope with this feeling of terror building up inside of me, I started to look for more reasonable voices from the "inside". Surely all the hate mongering and Giulianiesque approaches to making statements ¹ couldn't be the whole of it. Someone had to remember there is more to any issue than just black and white! But there was all this "If you're not with us, you're against us" madness coming from the US government, and it was not just freaking me out -- I found it highly insulting to the rest of mankind, because it was clearly implying the other nations were either not sympathetic or not interested or just too stupid to come to their own conclusions.

So… There must be some voices of reason, no? Still shaken I started to dig deeper, ignoring the main media outlets, looking for something that could rejuvenate my opinion that not all of the USA had gone mad with pain.

To make it short: yes, I found them. Which was a great relief, because it gave me back my hope that logic and reason might prevail in the long run. I stuck to some of these newfound sources; I read a number of political blogs, for example, and I watch the fine offerings in political satire by your own Comedy Channel.

…

Fast forward to the 2004 US elections.

Well. We all know how that turned out. Speechless and highly disgusted I witnessed the mud shit slinging of the "friends" of the Republican candidate; the despicable and dishonorable "Swift Boat Veterans For Truth" campaign being just the tip of the iceberg.

No matter what you may think about 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry -- he was a man fighting for his country in a war he didn't start, apparently committing acts of bravery, saving his comrade's lives, and many people took a piss at that. The 2008 version of this would be claiming John McCain was merely taking a vacation back in Vietnam, or running a brothel in Hanoi -- this would be wrong, both in a factual and moral sense, and the Republicans would hang you in the middle of the Washington Mall.

So, how could this happen?! How could this possibly work out for the Republican side?

Anyways… I've already mentioned my disbelief and disgust. Still highly worried about the state of the Union.

…

Fast forward again: September 2008.

The last few years have been less than optimal for the World. I don't say all of it is the fault of the United States; far from it. But when you have one of the major players acts like he owns the place and gives a flying fuck about everyone else, it's causing problems. (To be fair, many of the others aren't much better, tho.) I am very sure many things could have turned out better had more diplomatic, subtle and less arrogant paths been taken.

And the US is still scaring me. The reason for my being afraid has changed, though. Since 2001, many things have been going down the drain, both inside and outside the country, fundamentalism is on the rise, and many people acting highly erratic.

If anything, the World is more complex now, yet the government of one of the most influential nations on this planet is busy trying to "secure the borders" and beating its chest, trying to intimidate other countries and ignoring global problems.

And they continue to claim the position of "global leadership" without actually leading.

…

In the presidential race this time are both a 72 year old and a 47 year old man. Here's my rundown from the outside.

The former has a lot of experience in the inner workings of Washington, D.C., agrees with most things still-president Bush has said and done, and doesn't know how many houses he owns. I've seen him in interviews a few years ago, and he seemed decent and honest enough. I liked the old John McCain better than the new "100% P.O.W.!" version; obviously his strategists have decided that having him retell his prison years over and over again is policy enough. Which I find a bit sad since it reduces his whole life and accomplishments to those 5 years in a Vietnam prison; on top of that, in the current context, it's just political fluff. He is very vague about what he's planning to do should he end up being elected. Topics like the fight against poverty (both domestic and global) and climate change are marginalized points of his campaign, at best.

The latter has not as much Washington experience, but spent a good amount of his years working for the disenfranchised, is a professor in constitutional law, and seems to rather spend his time talking with people and about actual issues (like fighting poverty or climate change), while refusing to return the slander thrown at him by his opponents.

And they are doing it again. They mock his work as community organizer, which in my book is something that you couldn't disagree with by any standards. It's basically one of the Christian virtues -- I know that, and I am an agnostic. Why do these self-proclaimed Christians mock somebody for showing compassion? What is wrong with these people?

It pains me to witness hypocrisy on such a scale.

…

So why do I, a German in Germany, root for Barack Obama?

Because the World is a closed system. While I don't believe in the Butterfly Effect, I strongly believe in setting a higher or lower standard for yourself and thereby giving others the idea to follow suit. Leading --or failing-- by example. What works for small groups will work on a global level as well.

A change in leadership in any bigger country in the World will indirectly have an effect on me. This is why I care. (Some issues are more important than others, of course.)

So I was very, very delighted to hear a presidential candidate of one of the biggest countries in the World stand up and say: "These are the problems. Denial doesn't work anymore. Listen, I have kids, so do you, so we'll better fix this shit for their sake -- and here's a rather detailed plan." ²

Yes, I feel strongly about the impending climate change. Everyone should. We are talking about man's homestead among the stars. This is our house. Our only house. If we burn this place down, then we're truly, really, utterly fucked. I am puzzled why anyone would hesitate talking or thinking about it, let alone working on preventing it or slowing it down. These people are delusional idiots.

Please take a minute to compare both Obama's page on fighting climate change and McCain's page. One is a finely formulated plan which gives the impressions people thought about and discussed it at length; the other is a rephrased version of "Someone should do something at some point in time …oh look, an adorable kitten" an intern was asked to put up so the number of 404 errors in the log files would go down.

(On a related note: let's assume Senator McCain actually believes in climate change and the need to do something about it -- the man is still 72 years old. I wish him a long life, but statistically speaking, chances are much higher that he'll die a natural death within the next four years than someone who is 25 years younger. Should he die in office, we'd all end up with an US president who doesn't believe in man-made climate change. That's basically what we have already.)

Now, the European Union is working on fighting climate change, too. Yes, not all EU countries are good at it. But I am proud to say my government seems to care. Still, the EU is just one major player, and a bit limited due to its internal structure. The more big players stop with the lip service and start actually working on it, the better.

So, to sum up:

There are two candidates in the current US presidential election cycle. I believe both are decent and honest men. It's just that one of them seems to care about the actual issues (both domestically and globally), appears to have the fundamental understanding of what's going on in the World, and the right mind set to actually get to work.

I don't think Barack Obama is the second coming of Jesus. That thought is ridiculous. I think he's just a guy with the right ideas. I also think under his leadership the US would ask more of the EU, which is fine with me. I prefer a real, actual partnership over the "We're heading this way, just follow, suckers" methods of the past.

It is my belief that he (working with his VP) has the potential and tenacity to not only nudge the World in the right direction, but to restore the moral standing of the USA -- and to have everyone calm down again. It is my belief that others will follow.

This is the 21st century. I'd really see the US move forward again, for it would actually help the World as a whole.

…

Well.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

If you're an US citizen, come November, I'd like to ask you to make a choice based on logic.

Please, keep the big picture in mind.

Please, do not get fooled by the sepia-tinted pictures of the good old, simpler, imaginary times in small town America.

Please, use your right to vote.

Thank you.

"Eat your broccoli! …9/11." Well. ↩
Paraphrased. ↩

BetterSearch Issues on Google …Fixed!

2008-08-22T16:27:28Z

I was made aware that BetterSearch is currently not working on Google. Apparently, Google changed the HTML of the results page, and BetterSearch doesn't know what to do.

I'll release 1.22 soon. Stay tuned.

Update 2008-08-22: I've just uploaded v1.22 to the Mozilla addon site; once it's been reviewed by the staff there, it should show up here.

Update 2008-08-24: v1.22 was reviewed and approved!

Blog Redesign

2008-08-17T16:46:09Z

I've become increasingly annoyed with my blog's design. It's …too much. There's a sidebar, there's a tag cloud, there's the archives, there's whatnots and doodads and stuff. Funny; a few months ago I've installed it to make the site more lightweight, and had the feeling I had succeeded. (Take a look at my still unchanged tumblelog to see the old design.)

Still, over the last few weeks I felt the urge to further strip it down.

Is less more? Well… I think so. Less clutter, less noise, less fluff. (At least outside the blog posts.) Let's focus on the actual meat! If there is any.

Plus I've tried to read one of my posts using the highly useful Instapaper application on my iPod touch, in its text mode, and got seriously annoyed. So much crap to scroll through just to get to the actual article -- archive, tag cloud, about blurb etc.

This warranted a change.

So, taking a lot of inspiration and hints of Jack Shedd and Ryan Tomayko -- read: fusing their wonderful respective designs into a freaky bastard child -- I've managed to come up with a light and mostly clutter-free layout that's both easy on the eyes and pleasing Instapaper's text mode ¹.

I've removed everything I've deemed unnecessary. Like the sidebar, the external links, the archive, the list of tags, the blurbs, the doodads and whatnots. The article display has been cleaned up and I've removed the "related pages" section. Internally, I've switched the site from Textile to Markdown, and fully migrated the comments from the built-in Wordpress system to Disqus.

I am pretty happy with the results.

It looks fine in both Safari 3 and Firefox 3. It's a bit broken in IE6 (big surprise), and I don't have an IE7 here right now. But since I'm slighly drunk at the moment, I don't really care. I'm not a designer, clearly, but I think it's good nonetheless. :)

Huzzah!

Update: Looks good in MSIE 7, 8 and Opera 9.5x. Thank you, Browsershots.

I really like that app. ↩

Going Paleolithic

2008-08-05T00:03:00Z

In his thoroughly enjoyable Science In The Capitol trilogy, Kim Stanley Robinson (who happens to be my favourite author) talks about a concept called "The Paleolithic Life"; something he also spoke about in a Google Tech Talk on Climate Change (at ~50min in).

The idea is that there are certain activities engraved in the mind of every human, which result in joy and happiness. These are the things the paleolithic man did during his waking hours, things nature rewarded him for by making him feel alive and capable and good, thus helping him evolve and aiding his development.

Mr. Robinson compiled a list of these activities:

Spending the day outdoors
Walking and running
Looking for things
Making things
Throwing rocks
Cooking and eating
Talking and listening
Singing and music
Dancing and sex
Finding a mate
Raising kids
Looking at fire
Seeing by moonlight
Killing animals
Being killed by animals
Making beds at night
Exploring new land
Feeling emotions, including terror, religion, right and wrong, etc.

Especially when you spend your waking hours in an office job, most of these activities are not part of your life anymore. We do not need to hunt for food anymore, we're seldom being killed by animals ¹, we don't throw rocks. But the engraved patterns, the subconcious memories of our ancestors life in the paleolithic, the biochemical reward mechanisms are still within us -- just unused.

What a waste.

Having doubts about this? Here are some quick tests: If you have the chance, find a fireplace in the night and stare at the flames for a while. Or get out at night, take a walk by moonlight. Or meet with friends for self-made dinner. Or have good sex. (Or all of the above, at once.)

KSR's proposal is picking up our old habits again, raking in the old rewards, in order to lead a happier life. In a slightly modernised form, of course. Throwing rocks is awesome -- until someone is crying, that is. Which should be avoided. So, how about Frisbee or Baseball? You throw things at things, with less chance of killing people by accident! And think about walking, running, building things with your own hands…

Intriguing, no?

(His theory doesn't seem to be entirely fresh or new, tho; I think it has influenced some of the storylines in his wonderful Mars books, even though it was not specifically mentioned (it was in the aforementioned Science In The Capitol books). Some of the characters find some inner peace when doing more or less mundane tasks; Nirgal just wanted to run ², Nadia was happiest when she could build and make, John was at the top of his world when he could talk with and listen to people, etc.)

So, long story short, I'm trying to get a bit more paleolithic in my life.

As mentioned, I have started running in April, and it's actually pretty cool. I feel really good after most of my runs (not during them, mind you) -- my new-found ability to run 5km straight is nothing short of a miracle to me, really.

Since I don't feel like hitting and paying for other peoples' stuff, but want to throw things at things, I bought some Frisbees and already took them out for some hilarious practice games with Dana, we had a blast, and I will try to make it a regular activity. I actually want to give casual Disc Golf a try; we'll see.

Already I try to spend (a little bit) more time outdoors, mostly by walking instead of taking the bus, watching my surroundings, i.e. walking with open eyes. Good for the health, and sometimes you'll see interesting things, really. And next week I'll go kayaking. Gonna be interesting.

And I will try not to be eaten by wild animals.

Opinions?

The feeling of successfully outrunning/outsmarting a predator was where the reward and joy lay, KSR mentioned in his Google Tech Talk. ↩
Quite honestly, the figure of Nirgal, especially his recurring wish to "just run" deeply resonated with me. I'd even say he was one of the big influences that made me pick up running. Don't laugh, please. Interestingly enough, Science In The Capitol's Frank Vanderwal's excursions into "running frisbee golf" read so good, it made me order two discs. :P ↩

SearchMonkey Apps Palooza

2008-07-17T08:16:22Z

A couple of weeks ago (mid-June) I’ve participated in our internal Yahoo! EU Hack Day. This time around I’ve decided to tinker with Yahoo! SearchMonkey by building a couple of modules (dubbed SearchMonkey apps) during the 24 hours available.

In case you have never heard about SearchMonkey: it’s a technology built into Yahoo! Search that allows developers to present their own or other peoples’ sites in a different way (examples to follow). These search result augmentations are dubbed “SearchMonkey apps”.

The Search users then have the option to use the SearchMonkey apps they like, which enhances their search results by presenting them in a different way; review sites for example might present their articles in a way that includes the rating or verdict of the reviewed item. There is a good number of different apps available at the SearchMonkey Apps Gallery.

Using SearchMonkey doesn’t influence the ranking or the order of the results; it displays the results in the same order, just differently.

Anyways. I ended up writing 6 apps, and most of them I’d like to share. For more information about a particular app, just click the links. They’ll take you to the related Gallery listing, where you’ll have the option to enable the app for your searches.

Twitter Profiles

Whenever a Twitter profile turns up in your search, you’ll get a bit more information about the person—number of followers, number of people followed, name, bio, location, last tweet. like this:

By the way, it doesn’t query the Twitter API; instead it just grabs the HTML page and extracts the publicly available information.

Once you’ve visited the Gallery page and installed it, try a Yahoo! UK example query to see it in action.

(On a related note, there’s apparently another Twitter SearchMonkey app, but I couldn’t find the installation link to give it a try. Bart, the developer, does things in a more complex and probably more fail-safe way; in my defense, I wanted to keep it simple.)

Wikipedia Quick Lookup

If a Wikipedia article is found, the app will show you its first paragraph and, if available, a thumbnail of the first image. Also the category:

Once you’ve visited the Gallery page and installed it, try a Yahoo! UK example query to see it in action.

Xing Profiles

Xing is a more Europe-centric LinkedIn contender. It’s big in Germany. If a Xing person is found, the app shows the mugshot, the location, the title and the industry. Unfortunately Xing doesn’t reveal the company on public profiles unless you’re logged in, which my SM app clearly is not. Still:

Once you’ve visited the Gallery page and installed it, try a Yahoo! UK example query to see it in action.

Vox Profiles

In a desperate attempt to suck up to Anil Dash (I kid) I’ve hacked together a module to show the profile of any Vox blogger when a related page is found:

Once you’ve visited the Gallery page and installed it, try a Yahoo! UK example query to see it in action.

TechCrunch / Valleywag summaries

Using cutting edge high tech web 3.0 algorithms straight out of Munich, Germany, this module is able to extract the gist of any given Techcrunch or Valleywag article.

I don’t like these sites very much. At least their Yahoo! coverage (which I am interested in, given my background) is usually hysterical and often times sensationalist. DO. NOT. WANT.

Once you’ve visited the Gallery page and installed it, try a Yahoo! UK example query to see it in action.

Well, that’s it. Maybe you like those, maybe not. :) If you’re interested in writing your own apps for Yahoo! SearchMonkey now, take a look at the official Manual for SearchMonkey Developers and Publishers! And if you’re now wondering what other applications might be out there, the Gallery is a good place to start.

UPDATE/DISCLAIMER: Even though I work for Yahoo! during the day, these are NOT official SearchMonkey apps by Yahoo!. You’re looking at personal stuff. Again, this post, as everything on this site and under this domain, is NOT YAHOO! BUSINESS. Thank you.

Granite Yoda

2008-07-07T11:16:41Z

We bought him a few months ago, and now he’s watching over our garden.

He’s sitting right next to the little fish pond. Dana suggested submerging a plastic X-Wing for good measure, but we’re still debating that idea.

Thanks to Mike for the picture.

Still Running: June 2008

2008-07-06T13:38:23Z

After two weeks of not being able to run without pain I’m good again. I had to find a different route, but after poking around in Google Maps and the surrounding forest I’ve managed to come up with a enjoyable one. The slightly annoying part is that I have to walk ~900m before to get to my actual starting (and end) point. Well, I consider it warming up. I’ve added the distance to my usual 5km, and thus I am now at 7km per run.

A few weeks ago I’ve bought some light weights for my hands. They’re ~450g (1lb) each. Doesn’t sound much, but it’s noticable—now my upper body gets some minor workout as well.

I’ve registered myself for the Nike+ 10km Human Race going down end of August. Going to run for the World Wildlife Fund. There’s an official event here in Munich, actually! Unfortunately the whole 10km are over pavement, and I don’t want to risk injury again, so I’ll have to run a different route, I think.

Overall I am well on track towards my “250km in 2008” goal. I believe with my next run I’ll be hitting the 100 miles mark. We’ll see what the Nike+ site is going to tell me. Which is still kind of crappy, by the way. They rather add new and useless features than fixing longstanding issues like the broken OSX widgets.

I’ve discovered Runner+, a site which aims to be Nike+ without the cruft, I guess—but that whole social networking thing is not doing it for me. Also, the data sync is done by either using their desktop widget (requiring the Y! Widget Engine) or manual upload of the XML files or an automated daily sync where I need to give them my Nike+ credentials. Quite frankly, neither method is doing it for me. Plus I don’t really like the site. It doesn’t click with me.

Other options? Yes, OSX software.

Runner’s Log is nice and rather simple, but not exactly what I am looking for. Runs are broken down into “laps”, which might be nice if you’re running actual laps, but I ain’t.
And then there’s TrailRunner for those who not only use a Nike+ but a GPS receiver and heartrate monitor and have a fully staffed lab crew with instruments running with them. So… that’s not me. In their defense, I believe the TrailRunner target audience is a bit more hardcore about their running, biking, hiking, inline-skating or skiing than I am. (Also I was seeing more error dialogs during my 15 minutes with TR than I have in any other software in the last 6 months combined. Probably some Nike+ sync issues.)

So no help on that front. Too bad. If I wasn’t so lazy I’d probably would’ve hacked together something simple that’s making use of the Nike+ web badge APIs. Maybe the day will come, tho.

Addendum: I’ve set up a Nike+ FriendFeed room. Nothing in there yet, but who knows, that might change.

Pleasant Memories Of Times Past

2008-06-13T09:22:05Z

Trying to keep track of the last one or two weeks…

Running again! Avoiding tarmac, thank God there are many forest roads around. Using light weights on my hands now, too. Fun. The most interesting part of the down period was that I was actually missing my runs, and that I was looking forward to start running again. I think it’s official: I like it.
Found out I can watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart & The Colbert Report freely and legally on the web,OMG. Thank you, Comedy Central. Too bad there isn’t an RSS feed. Or is there?
Jeremy Zawodny is leaving Yahoo! – and so is JR Conlin. Bummer, two of my personal heroes gone. Well, I guess ~9 years at the same company is enough for anyone. All the best, guys!
Using FriendFeed now. It’s not bad, really; then again, I mostly use it to have a single place where all my loose threads come together. I really like the stalking helper imaginary friends feature. Makes it easy to keep track of pals who don’t use FriendFeed themselves. I’ve tried subscribing to the combined feed of all the people I’ve subscribed to on the site, but it’s like being fed by a firehose. Unusable, sorry. As I’ve said before, the idea to build a social network on top of peoples’ lifestreams is a bit too meta for me.
Discovered Goodreads. Nice.
I love GTA IV. Incredible game. So many lovingly crafted details, amazing.
New iPhones! Dope. Want. And a revamped .mac! Let’s hope it works as good as it looks in the presentations. The current .mac web implementation is useless for me. It just doesn’t cut it.

Pavement Is Bad, mmmmkay

2008-06-02T09:15:52Z

A week ago, during the day, my left lower back and leg started to hurt. Each step I made stung, and it didn’t get better. I couldn’t think of anything I had done; I didn’t fall, trip or twist my leg. I had just run in the morning.

On Thursday the pain was still there, so I’ve consulted a doctor. She told me to stop running on asphalt the pavement, because no matter how good the shoes, the ground in itself is too hard, too solid, too inflexible. So what I’ve done, in effect, was messing with my joints and cramping up my muscles. I was given a shot and the task to find a better route for running, preferrably something like forest roads.

Splendid.

Anyways, it’s Monday now, I haven’t been able to run for a week by now, and this sucks. I’m sitting around, actually craving to log a few kilometers. Which feels a bit weird because three months ago I didn’t even think about running.

Damn.

Der Vogel

2008-05-30T09:50:44Z

Vorgestern bin ich im Biergarten der Alten Messe zum Mittag. Der Biergarten ist nahezu leergefegt; die Mittagszeit ist eigentlich schon vorbei.

An der Ausgabe entscheide ich mich für Bratwurst mit Sauerkraut. Großer Teller, große Wurst, große Portion Sauerkraut. Lecker! Fix bezahlt und einen Tisch gesucht. Ein paar Meter weiter sitzt ein älterer Herr über einen Masskrug gebeugt; mit einem kurzen Nicken bestätigen wir uns gegenseitig unsere Existenz zu dieser Stunde, an diesem Ort.

Ich setze mich, reisse mein Senftütchen auf—und muss feststellen, dass ich versehentlich Mayonnaise ¹ gegriffen habe. Mon dieu! Entschlossen stehe ich auf, gehe zur Ausgabe, nehme mir ein Senftütchen, drehe mich um…

…und sehe einen Raben auf meinem Teller sitzen.

Kurz nachgedacht: Nein, ich kann mich nicht entsinnen, den gekauft zu haben. Was zum Teufel?!

Ich mache einen Schritt auf meinen Tisch zu. Zehn Meter trennen mich von meinem Ziel.

Der Rabe schaut mich an. Ich schaue den Raben an.

[Tumbleweed fliegt durchs Bild.]

Seine kleinen schwarzen Knopfaugen mustern mich.

Ich mache noch einen Schritt.

Der Rabe greift meine Wurst mit dem Schnabel und fliegt davon.

…

WAS. ZUM. TEUFEL.

Ich bin dann zu meinem Tisch gegangen, hab die Fußspuren in meinem Sauerkraut begutachtet, mich auf- und danach wieder abgeregt, hab die Dame an der Kasse danach gefragt, wo ich den Rest meines Essens entsorgen kann, und ihr auf Nachfrage die letzten vier Minuten meines Lebens kurz zusammengefasst. Als ich auf ihr "Ja, wollen's a naie Portion?" hin antwortete, dass mein Budget für die Pause aufgebraucht sei, überlegte sie kurz, und gab mir trotzdem einen neuen Teller, aufs Haus. Das nenn ich mal Dienst am Kunden! Dafür gibts zwei Pluspunkte.

Ich denke, dies war meine bizarrste Mittagsgeschichte bisher. Verdammtes Rabenviech.

Es wird immer "Mayonnaise" heissen. Der Tag, an dem ich die sog. "neue Schreibweise" benutze, wird der Tag sein, an dem das Abendland untergeht. ↩

Still Running: First Continuous 5km

2008-05-16T09:47:07Z

I ran my first continuous 5km today. My workouts are 5km+ already, but usually I follow a run-walk-run-walk-run routine (2km running, 500m walking, repeat).

This morning I just didn’t stop running until I was back home again, 25 minutes later, which means my “just keep going” pace is ~4:50 min/km.

Damn, I am proud of myself. Harr!

Mini Review: "Iron Man"

2008-05-12T22:24:21Z

Quite a hoot! The lady and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Looking forward to the inevitable sequel.

Worth the money.

Twitter User Reputation, Greasemonkey Script

2008-05-05T21:25:02Z

Remember the other day, when I told you about the user reputation features in Twerp Scan? Yeah, good times.

Anyways, today I’ve cobbled together a quick Greasemonkey script to display the reputation and voting thumbs on Twitter user pages, right above the “About” portion in the sidebar. Like so:

So this means that you can see on a glance whether someone is naughty or nice, right on his or her user page. And you can vote right there, on the spot, if you feel like, and this will of course feed the same database as you rating your contacts in Twerp Scan.

Use Greasemonkey for Firefox or GreaseKit for Safari to install the script, and then visit any Twitter user page.

Still Running: April 2008

2008-05-04T12:44:52Z

Yes, I am still running. I’ve gone through a whole month of running three or four times a week, had some ups and downs, but didn’t quit. Yay, go me. ;) Here’s my April 2008 diary—I want to write it down, because I think that picking up running is one of my bigger achievements in recent years, mostly because it takes so much fricking energy to do it. :p

It still isn’t fun. At all. Yet I know it’s good for me and my health and will pay out in the long run (pun intended). Thus, I keep going.

Gear

I fell for the Nike+ system. It rocks. (See below.) Plus I got better shoes—Nike Air Zoom Structure Triax+. Comfy, light, I really like them.

Also, I bought some simple and light pants for running an a similarly simple “soft-shell” jacket. Makes a bit of a difference, as they keep me cooler than a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt.

Nike+

What can I say: I am loving it.

In case you haven’t heard of it, it’s a little sensor sitting on or in your shoe, tracking the distance you’ve run or walked and your speed. The counterpart is a little dongle for your iPod nano, storing the data and displaying your progress. It offers several training modes (basic, distance, speed…) and comes with little built-in people who tell you how well you are doing. For example, I tend to run 5km in the morning, and the friendly lass in my iPod will now periodically tell me about my progress. In return, I try to make her like me and keep going.

Also, if you sign up on NikePlus.com, your iPod will sync your progress on the site next time you connect it to your computer. And this is the real kicker—you get stats on your runs and overall progress reports, you can check out graphs on your distances and speeds, you can make the site set up training plans, set goals for a month or year, and so on. Hell, if you’re inclined to do so, you can even create or accept challenges for and from other runners all over the world. Plus you get badges for your website or blog if you feel like sharing. Pretty crazy.

Anyways, what I really like about the Nike+ is: It makes running a game. Before, I was just running. But since I am a geek, I crave for numbers. I want to know my progress, right here, right now. How far into the run am I? Will these 2km I’ve said I’ll run in one go never end? What’s my pace? Now I have all this information strapped to my upper arm, on the display of my iPod. It’s great.

And since I know now what I can do, since I have numbers I can work with, since I can see real progress, since I am aware of what I’ve achieved, I now feel much more comfortable with setting goals for myself. My April goal was running 40km alltogether, and I’ve done that. In fact, I’ve done so well that I’ve decided to go for 60km in May. It might not sound like much, but for someone who didn’t do anything just 2 months ago it’s okay, I guess.

My overall goal for 2008 is 250km, by the way.

I think without the Nike+, I would’ve quit some time ago. And to give credit where it’s due, it’s all Russ Pitts’ fault, really.

Finding Your Pace

This is a big one. Thanks to Podrunner I found out that my perfect running pace seems to be 142 steps per minute. I managed to run 2km in a go more than once. Unfortunately, there aren’t many constant 142 bpm music mixes available, so now I’m playing around with a recording of a metronome, the beat sans the music. We’ll see how that’ll work out. The upside is that I might finally end up hearing the birds chirping. ;)

And for the record, my 5km routine is usual split up in 1.5km running, 0.5km walking, 1.5km running, 0.5km walking, 1km running.

NikePlus.com Oddities

Oh yes, NikePlus.com. I have a love/hate relationship with that site. It’s pretty, but atrocious in some parts. Let me explain.

It’s a full-Flash site. Even the login form is in Flash. Well done, guys. I am so glad my password manager doesn’t work there, really.
The run graphs look different on EU and US site. Specifically, the “US graphs” are more detailed than the “EU graphs”. See this example, which are the two graphs for the exact same run (EU first, US second): Eh.
They offer OSX widgets for progress, goals etc.! Great in theory, but these are all broken on Leopard for months by now, with no fix in sight. The users complain, noone really cares. I mean, really, who uses Leopard?!
Oh, and did I mention there are different OSX widgets, depending on whether you’re on an US or EU NikePlus.com site?
Also, there are website badges, little Flash doodads for your website or blog. Nice, and they mostly work. The “Last 5 Runs” HTML badge is only available from the US site, tho. WTF?
The site has a “Coach” section which can be used to set up training plans for you. Again, good in theory, but it seems to have problems w/ custom trainings -- my Mon+Wed+Fri routine became Tue+Thu+Sat on reload. Not just once, no -- every time.

Here’s to running!

Shit, I actually seem to like it. How could that happen? Well, at least I have the feeling I am doing something for myself.

I guess there are worse things.

Twitter Twerp Scan update: Reputation

2008-05-01T00:04:34Z

Another late night Twerp Scan coding session. I mean, why not? ;) So, what’s new today?

User reputation: You know the people you’re following, right? If you like what they do, give them a thumbs up or down rating. (No registration necessary. Just click.)
Some more pagination options: If you want, you can see all your contacts at once now.
The table columns can be re-ordered. Want the verdict right next to the name? Click the column header, hold the mouse button and drag it over.
More vertical space. It’s a wide table, after all.

For me, the reputation is a big one. Up until now, there was no way (that I know of) that allowed for community-driven behaviour rating. Here’s the idea: we can block the “bad guys” all we want, but if I’d block @buyinsurancelol, you wouldn’t know. But now I can give the guy a “thumbs down” in Twerp Scan, and if you have him in your contact list, you will see he’s got a thumbs down.

On the other hand, if a 100 people think @MyBlogLog is an okay guy (he is) and give his Twerp Scan contact list entry a “thumbs up”, you’ll see it in your contact list (on Twerp Scan)—which might convince you his 1:7 ratio and his following 15k other people are okay.

Well, at least that’s the idea. It’s a community-driven experiment. So consider playing around with it for the betterment of interwebs! Since it’s a pluggable system I think there are other possibilities… For example a Greasemonkey script that adds the reputation thumbs to the actual Twitter pages etc. Let’s brainstorm. The comments are open.

Well, that’s it. Head on over to Twerp Scan to check out the new features. And please let me know what you think, either via Twitter or the comments below.

(By the way, big thanks to the YUI team, the Yahoo! Pipes and JS- Kit for making this endeavour so simple. Appreciate it! Now if there only was something so simple to make the page less fugly…)

Twitter Twerp Scan update

2008-04-29T00:46:32Z

Evening, y’all. I’ve been working a bit on Twitter Twerp Scan. Here’s what’s new:

It should be much faster now, due to changes in the processing logic. Up until now, the table was rendered, and then updated once for every scanned follower. Highly inefficient. Now the data is fully loaded before the table is rendered, which helps (at least my) processors to not go up in flames anymore. Let me know how it works for you.
There’s a nice loading indicator now, and a readable countdown! This is the best day of my life.
Table pagination should help readability: by default, the table is now chopped into bite-sized 25 rows per page. There’s a handy little dropdown where you can change this setting.
Bugfix: Not broken in Flock anymore.
Bugfix: countdown accuracy.
Again, there’s a Twitter account for the highly exciting TS minutiae now, @twerpscan. You might want to keep an eye on that one if you’re interested in the service.

Twerp Scan received a good amount of hits over the last few days, mainly due to a post on Download Squad. Honestly, I am a bit surprised about this, but I won’t complain. Nice to see my little experiment is filling a niché for some people. :)

Let me know what you think of the new features. I have more things on my todo list, but my day only has so many hours (and I have a day job).

Good night!

Twitter Twerp Scan

2008-04-28T08:22:09Z

Over the last few days I’ve pursued my idea to build a “Twitter spammer detector” of sorts using only client-side technologies. I didn’t feel like setting up server components at all.

What was it supposed to do? It should check the number of followers of everyone on your contact list, the number of people they are following, and the ratio between those. If the person is following more than 1000 people (can be customised), and has a Following-to-Followers ratio higher than 1:1 (can be customised), you’d be informed (by a handy “Block” link).

Thanks to Pipes, the YUI libraries and the Twitter API returning JSON, I was able to finish the first version of Twitter Twerp Scan in a relatively short period of time.

My Javascript-fu is still a bit weak, but getting better. It’s a nice change to only have one local file to work with (excluding CSS, of course).

Over the weekend, the traffic to that page increased quite a bit, mostly because several people liked the idea enough to link the site.

I've set up a Twitter account for service updates etc. -- twerpscan. The rest of my tweets will go to Carlo as usual.

Out Of Energy

2008-04-21T14:59:08Z

A bit over a week ago, my grandma passed away. (More about her maybe later.) The week between her crossing over and the funeral service I’ve subconsciously kind of “held my breath”.

Since we got back from my parents place, where the service was held, I feel somewhat …deflated, for lack of a better word. Out of energy, burnt out.

I guess this is normal?

Running: Recap Week One

2008-04-08T20:27:52Z

I’m in the running business for a bit over a week so far. I’ve managed to finish the first four runs without breaking down, getting hit by a car, having to cry, falling or getting lost; and without dropping a single run.

I’m kind of proud of myself.

Using an unnamed maps site, I’ve laid out a nice 4.5km route in the neighbourhood. My first route was only 3.75km, which turned out to be too short. I got home while the music was still playing… unacceptable. So, back to the drawing board, add a few streets, great.

I still don’t like it. The second half of each go is nice, tho… because I know I’m about to get home.

Nevermind, I’ll keep on doing it. Can’t hurt, and it makes me feel better.

Unless I break down, get hit by a car, have to cry, fall or get lost, that is.

Ma.gnolia FAIL, Or: Rendering OpenID Useless

2008-04-07T20:42:25Z

I can’t really remember the other few sites where I’ve seen this, but Ma.gnolia’s newly added OpenID support is a good example on how not to implement OpenID.

So I go there to register an account, and sure enough, I find an OpenID form.

I click the button, allow Ma.gnolia to use my ID, and end up here:

Umm, yeah… but no. I used my OpenID so I do not have to think about new usernames. I believe that asking me to come up with an unique username completely defies the concept of OpenID. Using OpenID in this form is like having a story line in a porn movie. Sure, you can boast that your movie has a plot, but who cares? It’s still just a smutty flick.

Somehow I think that one of us two isn’t completely understanding the concept of OpenID. Is it me?

(Disclaimer: I am not discussing the overall quality of Ma.gnolia here. I don’t use it. Others do and seem to like it, so I have no opinion in that regard.)

Mini Review: Need For Speed Carbon (Demo), Xbox 360

2008-04-01T19:57:43Z

Preface

~1GB download.

Lasting impressions

Bad framerate issues. (No joke. Pretty choppy at times.)
Good sound design, especially in the “angry polygon dude yelling at me from his car”-type cutscenes.
Kinda (too) easy.

Verdict

Meh.
It’s no Burnout Paradise (demo).
Srsly—it’s no Burnout Paradise (demo).

"I like it!" (Auto Suggestion)

2008-03-28T08:32:50Z

After much deliberation I’ve decided to give running another shot. No, not the short “omg the bus is leaving!!1” burst-kind of running (I do that rather often), but the type where you excercise three days a week for half an hour or so.

Since I usually don’t come home before nightfall I will go with the morning routines. But I don’t want my work day schedule to change, so I’ll just get out of bed ~45 minutes earlier. At least that’s the plan.

So today I got up at 6:30, brushed my teeth, had a glass of water, got into my clothes, put on the headphones and started running to the music.

Here’s my setup:

Clothing: I don’t have any pants for sport or excercises. There, I’ve said it. My name is Carlo and I don’t “do” sport. Well. Thinking it through, I came to the following conclusions:

I don’t know whether I will stick with it or not (I’ll try to, tho).
I don’t like to look like a confused scuba diver with sunglasses – no black spandex.

I was afraid my amazing efficiently working subconciousness would manage to get me lost in finding the right clothes, effectively foiling my feeble attempts at doing something. Thus, I just donned an old pair of jeans, a longsleeve shirt, a down vest and sneakers.

Now imagine my surprise—I was able to exercise without spending shitloads of money on “Pro athlete”-themed sportswear. I believe the other jogging enthusiasts I’ve met probably think I am a madman.

Hi, I’m Carlo, rebel rookie runner. How you doing?

Music: I’m currently making use of Podrunner Intervals, a free podcast for running exercises. Check it out, it’s pretty sweet, even tho the parts for running are a wee bit to slow for my taste. I’m almost 2m tall, maybe my legs are too long. ;) But I’ll cope.

The single episodes are between 20 and 30 minutes long, and consist of a mix of slower and faster tracks. It’s a good mixture. Each week’s episode is going to push you a bit harder, until after 9 weeks you should be able to run 5 km in one go. We’ll see how that’ll work out.

The first run: Good! I’ve been moving for ~30 minutes. In the end I was sweating but didn’t want to kill myself, which is a big plus. Still, it wasn’t fun. Sport, for me, simply isn’t fun. At all. That said, the “I’ve done something for my body!” feeling afterwards is nice. :)

So, the sole reason I’m writing this is to keep myself from giving up prematurely. Looming shame is a powerful weapon, and this post shall be my reminder it might hit me shouldn’t I suck it up.

Mini Review: "Children of Men"

2008-03-24T22:10:39Z

Wonderful movie that manages to be hopeful and dystopian at the same time. Great cast.The “block under siege” scenes where everyone was united in awe had me in tears.

Go buy/rent.

Planet Yahoo! updates

2008-03-20T23:43:32Z

Evening, y’all. This is Carlo, your friendly Planet Yahoo! maintainer, with a quick note.

A few hours ago I’ve updated the engine that aggregates all the different Yahoo! blogs into the big purple blob that is Planet Yahoo!. Said update adds better ordering of the blog entries, and the feed parsing should be more solid. Most changes are under the hood, so nothing too interesting for the end user, i.e. you.

And it’s the same as with any update: while I don’t think there’ll be problems, it might turn out I was wrong. Heh.

One minor issue: the syndication feed will be marked as “fully updated”; so a number of older entries that you’ve already marked read in your newsreader might pop up as unread again. Not to worry, this will only happen once.

The good news is that in the process I’ve decided to spend some time to build a better (pardon the audacity), yet unofficial feed for the Yahoo! Research site. Also, I’ve updated the MyBlogLog badge, even though I know that most of the readers never visit the site, but just subscribe to the feed.

And that’s it for today about PY!. Cheers! -C.

PS: The rest of my wacky daily adventures is currently been prepared for a multi-part TV treatment over at my blog. But you might know that already.

Sky: Brought Down

2008-03-16T17:24:13Z

This afternoon I’ve finished the first/latest Mass Effect DLC, Bring Down the Sky. It adds a new mission to the game which promises ~90 minutes of gameplay, a new location, a new race and a new XBL achievement (worth 50 gamerpoints). It costs 400 MS Points (€4.80).

The mission was nice, nothing out of the ordinary, tho. Drive around in your Mako, clean out some places, gather “leads” (if you want to call them that) and then face a boss guy. Make some Paragon/Renegade decisions, get a glimpse at a possible new story line to come and be done with it.

The aforementioned new location is an asteroid on a collision course with a colonised planet. The rock itself looks like pretty much like any of the old “lesser” planets from the main game. It’s okay, not more, not less. What makes it special (to me) is the beautiful planet looming overhead — X57, the asteroid, is heading towards Terra Nova, destined to bring doom and destruction. A grim outlook! Still pretty, tho. Seriously, it’s really shiny, but I’m a sucker for stars and planet imagery, so I might take more joy from something like this than other people.

Anyways, why is it heading there? Because of the Batarians, a race of 4-eyed humanoids. Apparently they don’t like the Humans for various historical reasons, and thus use their first on-screen appearance ever for speaking with the protagonists in a resentful manner. And for shooting at them. The audacity!

So, is “Bring Down the Sky” a perfect DLC/addon? No. Bioware’s decision to make this an “in-between mission” is questionable. I can understand it from a storyline point of view -- too much is in flux after finishing the main game, what with the Council and all. But unfortunately it means I have to go back to a savegame where I could freely roam the galaxy -- i.e. a save that was made prior to visiting Ilos etc. —, and for some people that might be a drawback. A co-worker of mine has no save like that left, and that means he’d have to start over, and therefore he won’t pick up the DLC. So… srsly, not a good decision. (Personally, I was lucky to still have a “good” save, tho.) But the implementation could’ve been smoother. Well, I actually expected it to be smoother.

And what’s with the silent team members? I though Garrus and Kaiden were pissed since they wouldn’t talk to me during the mission. Not even random chatter. Meh. It’s a small issue, tho. Just something I found a bit strange.

All in all, tho, it’s been a nice ride. For the average price of a Döner you get ~90 minutes of additional Mass Effect goodness. A good bargain in my book.

Revelation, Garden Store Edition

2008-03-08T22:01:42Z

Dana and I went to the garden store earlier today, since she’s is working on cutting back our apple tree and realised that she needs better tools for that.

Trying to be a good and interested husband, I tagged along.

Now, I don’t like garden stores. Yes, pretty flowers and all that, but I don’t like stores in general, so it’s a drag. But I wanted to help her in finding the right tools, so there.

Then it dawned me that if I would change the premise of picking out tools, I could have much more fun. So I did. My premise?

Impending Zombie attack.

I got to admin: standing in front of all the tools, discussing saws, scythes, spades and hedge shears from the point of view of someone who is preparing for a Zombie attack was actually fun. “Honey, look, if I could apply this thing to the small scythe here, it would give me an extra meter of reach… I could probably decapitate an undead before he comes in attack range. What do you think?” – “Yes, that would probably work.” – “What about the café over there? How many entrances has this place? How long could we hold this place?”

I may be crazy, but I feel better prepared now.

We're Safe, Hooray

2008-02-27T19:26:53Z

Thank the Gods, the huge pile I’ve found on the sidewalk next to our door was just the remains of a friendly neighbour’s dog! Phew.

I mean, you might expect me to be upset since said friendly neighbour was too fucking lazy to pick up the steaming heap of crap his goddamn (and obviously horse-sized) mongrel left behind, but nooooo… not me.

Because for a moment I was seriously afraid some sort of monstrous mutant mole had broken through the asphalt and was now terrorising my ‘hood, but -- phew! -- it was just pooch poop.

A felt metric ton, no less.

Like, 10 meters from my door.

Motherfucks.

Lifestream Craziness

2008-02-27T09:55:19Z

So Friendfeed opened yesterday. Naturally, I had to sign in to take a look.

When I got to the point where it wanted me to configure the feeds and services to grab data from, it first asked for my Google Reader shared items. Okay, can do. Then it asked for my Tumblr name, and this is where my eyebrows went down.

So Tumblr allows me to bundle many of my “activities” in one place. Flickr, blog posts, Twitter posts, links etc., you name it. It does so by querying your Flickr account, your blog(s), Twitter, your del.icio.us bookmark dump (to name a few) via their RSS feeds. And I believe many people are using this feature just for that. I know I do. So that’s usually the first (or even second) re-posting of original content.

Now lifestream services like Friendfeed come hopping along and are going to add another level of abstraction, in the form of aggregation of already aggregated content, or an RSS feed for the aggregated lifestream, or yet another social network layer, and/or by adding comments on top of that.

How much more meta can we go? This is some Zen shit, man.

I swear, one of these days someone will put yet another layer on this Crazy Content Cake of Doom and a black hole will open in the middle of the Internet and suck out all intelligence, reason and original content. (Yes, like Digg, just a wee bit worse.)

Also, I am well aware that I, too, run my own version of a lifestream service, and that my post might seem hypocritical, but by the Gods, there’s a reason why I try to keep escaloop simple.

Update: Added some clarifications.

Podrunner...ing... I guess

2008-02-26T22:24:11Z

It’s amazing what 30 minutes of frantic walking can do for your sanity. Tonight, when getting out of the subway and noticing my bus had just left, I’ve popped in a 131bpm Podrunner mix and started walking. A good 30 minutes later I found myself on my doorstep with a clear head.

Check out Podrunner, a free weekly podcast of one hour gapless music mixes for workouts and the likes. The only trick is to find a bpm range that suits you. Then put it on your iPod.

It’s simply that good.

Nerdy pro tip: once you’ve found your bpm range, build a Pipe like I did and subscribe to this feed instead of the original one to only get podcasts which are “suited” for you. Oiy!

Site(s) Redesign Complete!

2008-02-23T15:18:22Z

I’m done with the redesign. Both my tumblelog and this blog now share the same layout and (the most important parts of the) sidebar, adding some much needed consistency.

Also I’ve got rid of the Google Coop search and put the Technorati search to use instead, it’s good enough in my eyes.

The biggest change in functionality is the switch from the built-in Wordpress comments system to Disqus, on both my blog and tumblelog. Naturally, I’ve added a tiny bit of logic to the Wordpress templates so the existing comments are preserved, displayed, and those entries are still accepting new comments (assuming the Comments Timeout plugin allows it). But for new entries, Disqus is used. I figured if I don’t like it, I can always switch back and cram the exported Disqus comments back into WP.

Yeah.

Now if I could use Markdown for new posts instead of Textile, I’d be a happy camper. The WP Text Control plugin is no help, unless you consider making the server drop the connection every time helping. I don’t.

Repeated tips of the hat to Bill Israel for sharing his wonderful Letterhead Tumblr theme with the crowds (CC licensing FTW!). Due to its beautifully simple semantic structure I was able to transform it into a Wordpress theme in about two hours. Thanks, Bill!

In somewhat related news: the Hendromat has launched a new tumbelog last night—Make Games, Not Love, MGNL for short. Go check it out.

Ode an die Schminkende

2008-02-20T13:41:31Z

Seit mehreren Wochen sitzt in meinem Bus nahezu jeden Morgen eine Frau, die sich mit Hingabe während der kompletten Fahrt zum Bahnhof (~15min) schminkt. Und ich spreche nicht vom schnellen Nachziehen des Lippenstifts, sondern von der großen Packung—Haare zurückstecken und ab gehts.

Ich wollte eigentlich die letzten paar Wochen schon etwas darüber schreiben, bin aber immer davon abgekommen. Vielleicht war das gar nicht so schlecht; da ich mittlerweile ihre handwerklichen Fähigkeiten aus der Ferne bewundern gelernt habe, möchte ich ihr heute etwas hausgemachte Lyrik widmen.

Warum
Oh Frau im Bus jeden Morgen
Warum

Du schminkst Dich
Von Iltisstrasse
Bis Bahnhof Trudering
Oh Frau im Bus jeden Morgen

Jeden Tag
15 Minuten Fahrt
Jeden Tag
Verwandlung von Biest in Schöne
Oh Frau im Bus jeden Morgen

Klammern im Haar
Eyeliner in der Hand
Cremes, Pinsel, Lippenstift
Komplettrestauration!
Oh Frau im Bus jeden Morgen

Mir ist bewusst
Dass Du Dir so 15 Minuten "sparst"
Jeden Tag
Dein Zeitmanagement-Fu erscheint stark
Oh Frau im Bus jeden Morgen

Jedoch
Oh Frau im Bus jeden Morgen
Scheinst Du zu verkennen
Dass der Bus nicht
Dein Badezimmer ist

Im besten Fall
Ist es irritierend für alle Anderen
Oh Frau im Bus jeden Morgen

Vergleichbar nur
Mit dem frohgemuten Popeln im Auto
Beim Halten an der Ampel
Nasenhöhlenwellness
Oh Frau im Bus jeden Morgen

Warum
Oh Frau im Bus jeden Morgen
Warum

WIR KÖNNEN DICH SEHEN

Oh Frau im Bus jeden Morgen
Oh Frau im Bus jeden Morgen

Srsly, stop it. Es gibt für alles einen Ort, aber der Bus ist es in diesem Fall nicht.

*[Srsly]: Seriously

RescueTime Hack: Log your meetings and phone calls (OSX only)

2008-02-13T20:43:12Z

Over the last week I’ve been using RescueTime. It’s a neat little service that’s keeping track of what you are doing all day long on your machine (Mac or PC) by logging which applications are having the focus. On the site you can then tag the different applications with different keywords (for example, my Mail.app times are tagged with “work”, “communications” and “email”).

And, to make it actually useful, you can analyse your time spent, graphs and all! Check the product tour on RescueTime.com for more infos and some screenshots. It’s pretty neat. (Yes, privacy concerns, blah blah blah. It’s not the topic of this article, so please keep it to yourself for the moment. Thanks. :])

So far so good.

My problem, tho, is that I spend quite a bit of time both on the phone and in meetings. Naturally, RT won’t track these times, since these are basically off-screen activities. Uncool.

So after digging around in the RT log files I was amazed to learn they’re just YAML files. Eeeeexcellent. I can work with that!

But I wanted something with a GUI, something a bit “cooler” than just a Ruby script. So I took this as opportunity to get a bit into Applescript. Unfortunately, RescueTime’s Mac doodad doesn’t offer an Applescript API, and I had to improvise.

After two hours of playing around and cursing at Applescript’s syntax (they’re all on crack…), I had something sufficiently cool to show for.

So, what is it? It’s a little application that you run everytime you want to log some off-screen time. Basically, it’s just a dialog that allows you to enter a number (i.e. minutes spent), and has some buttons to either log these minutes as “was on the phone” or “was in a meeting”. If you hit “Cancel”, it won’t do anything. (Surprise.)

Let’s say I’ve just spent 15 minutes on the phone, I’ll run the application, enter “15” and hit the Return key—and the last 15 minutes will be logged as phone call in RT. The app will quit once that’s done. Another meeting, another phone call? Rinse, repeat.

Data-wise, it’ll then create a new file in the right format in RescueTime’s log directory (~/Library/RescueTime/Logs/Pending/). On the next data upload RT will pick up the new file, and it’ll appear in your stats as “manual_phonecall”. Your meetings will appear as “manual_meeting”.

Please note: Neither existing RescueTime files nor the RescueTime application will be touched or tinkered with.

Below you’ll find two downloads. The first one is the actual script in plain text. The second is the script compiled as application bundle. If you’re unsure which to pick, you’ll most likely want the latter. ;)

Have fun.

DISCLAIMER: I’ll take no responsibility for loss of data, hair or life. I am very, very sure there won’t be any losses, but still. It works for me, and I’m sharing. Use at your own risk.

Suggestions for additional explicit service support

2008-02-05T10:59:10Z

Hi all,

so far, escaloop has a couple of services it’s supporting explicitly, which means there are rules to mark these services with their own service icon and maybe an adjusted wording when they are displayed. At the time of this post, these services are:

del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Flickr
Google (search results etc.)
Google Reader (shared items)
Last.fm
Livejournal
Magnolia
Newsvine
Pownce
StumbleUpon
Tumblr
Twitter
Vimeo
Vox.com

Everything else is supported implicitly, which means it’s processed and displayed, but has no special icon or anything, it’s “just” another source.

So my question today is: do you have suggestions for other services that should be explicitly supported? If yes, please reply to this topic and provide both the URL to service/site as well as (if possible) an example feed or two so I can take a look. I won’t promise to include each and every suggestion; unfortunately, my spare time isn’t unlimited, and also it doesn’t make sense to support everything explicitely, methinks.

Well, please tell me what you want! It certainly can’t hurt. ;) Many thanks!

(I’ve closed the comments here, please sound off on the escaloop discussion board instead.)

escaloop v1.1 - Speedier, Facebookier, Diggier.

2008-01-27T16:21:23Z

I’ve spent the last few hours bug testing, then deploying, then yelling at, then hotfixing, then re-deploying a new version of both escaloop site and badge. I didn’t include everything I was planning on initially, and instead decided to go for “release early, release often”.

A few highlights:

Added some juice and stability—hopefully everything runs a bit faster more solid now.
New feature: Source list, add a pretty list of all feeds in a badge to the end of the badge. Check the demo badge for an example and the badge builder for the new config option.
Badge: added explicit support for Facebook, Digg, Newsvine and Vimeo feeds.
Badge: Changes in served badge JS and CSS; if you use local hacks, take a closer look at your escaloop-served “originals”.
Site: Restructured the site a bit.
Site: Added exhaustive workflow diagram to frontpage.
Site: Fix: Preview pages not cached anymore.

I hope you’ll like it. If you find bugs or have questions, let me know on the message boards, please! I’m all ears.

Mini Review: Mass Effect, Xbox 360

2008-01-16T10:36:44Z

Okay, yes, I’m late to the review party. In my defense, it has something to do with this and the fact that I wanted to finish Mass Effect twice before rendering my judgement.

So, my first playthrough on normal difficulty was very thorough. I’ve picked a male (Infiltrator class), took the “good guy” approach (“We have to save the galaxy! -- Wait, what’s that, old lady? Your kitten is trapped in this death maze? We’ll help!”), also did pretty much every sidequest I could find, landed on every rock available, and ended up spending -~43- 34 hours or so. Hey, my char even had freaky, slightly awkward (in the build-up) alien sex with that endlessly blabbering blueberry. Dynomite.

The second time around I rolled a female (Soldier class) and played the whole game on hardcore difficulty in a “I have a job to do, get out of my way” kind of way. Short-tempered, gun-in-your-face attitude, not afraid to leave a crater. In short, for the most part I tried to play it like time actually mattered. This time I clocked in around 20 14 hours. And this time, my leading lady ended up ripping the clothes off one of her male subordinates. Oh, and she had freaky, surprising lesbian alien sex with some random NPC, without meaning to.

Shiny.

The game’s not without flaws, tho. The sidequests on the planets are a wee bit repetitive. There are some rather frequent framerate drops and “Halo 2”-style texture pop-in issues after the loading screens. Background noises were sometimes awfully quiet, and it was really, really hard to make them out, which made some surroundings appear a bit sterile in the aural department. The squad NPC pathfinding took a short break from time to time, making me run back to show one of my compadres how to walk around the car. Oh, and Bioware? My wife asks whether for ME2 you could add some more samples to enemy NPCs, I think if she has to hear “I will destroy you!” or “Go! Go! Go!” one more time, she’ll be going postal.

But ultimately, in my book, it’s really a great game. Hey, it’s mostly “Knights of the Old Republic”, albeit with a lot of changes! It might not perfect, but it comes close. The player char’s gender does make a difference every now and then. I liked the majority of the voice acting, the stories and side-quests were mostly laid out well, and the presentation was usually top notch. Especially the last 1-2 hours were mighty fine. Cinematical, even. Wonderful, wonderful build up of tension.

All in all I’ve spent around 60-70 50-60 hours on Mass Effect, and enjoyed those. I recommend it.

Lieber Saturn Theresienwiese, #2

2008-01-15T14:32:53Z

Ich war gestern beim Saturn, Plasma-TVs anschauen.

Nach einigem Rumrennen finde ich zwei Panasonic-Geräte, die direkt nebeneinander stehen. Beide sind 37”, sind aber in der Form voneinander abweichend, haben recht unterschiedliche Modellnummern und differieren im Preis um die 400€.

Ein männliches Fachverkäufer-Standin kommt auf mich zu. “Kann ich Ihnen behilflich sein?”

“Ja, die beiden TVs… Was sind da die Unterschiede?”

“Puh… Ja… Der eine ist silbern, der andere hat dieses schwarzes Glanzlack- Finish.”

Ich hab mich dann etwas irritiert bedankt und bin gegangen. Ich denke, beim nächsten Mal druck ich einfach die Bilder im Internet aus und lass mich fachkundiger von jemandem beraten, mit dem ich zufällig an der Fußgängerampel auf Grün warte.

escaloop.com is go!

2008-01-12T14:44:34Z

A few months ago I was talking to Hendrik about lifestreams, and in my ongoing struggle for his undying love (as a friend), I’ve whipped up a little somethingsomething using the wonderful Yahoo! Pipes.

“Lifestream?”, you ask. “What the deuce is a lifestream?!” A good question. A lifestream is basically a big bucket where all the updates and update notifications from your blog, your ADD-induced Twitter posts, your Flickr uploads etc come together in one concise way so it’s easier for others to ignore them. ;) Also, you only have one URL to hand out to hot women (or men) in pubs because the stream inadvertedly works as a hub page, too!

Now, while the prototype was quickly hacked together, it felt clunky. Sure, you can pass a dozen URLs or so to the pipe, but what if the URLs would change? Or if you wanted to add a new one or delete one from the list? Then it’d be a lot of tinkering with the script call in your HTML code.

So I had the idea to build a site where you could configure the list of URLs and the layout and everything, and which would give you a HTML badge for your blog or site, a snippet that wouldn’t change.

And today, I proudly open escaloop to the public.

I feel it’s good enough to test the waters, I believe. I’ve played around with it, fiddling with different implementations on different types of pages, and it looks okay. I guess I could try to think of every possibility for every site on earth, but we know how that would turn out.

It certainly looks fine on my own blog. (Considering that I don’t have that many active feeds, that is.)

So with that, I’ll release escaloop into the wild. It’s still a bit rough around the edges, and there might be bugs. That said: Please take a look, play around with it, build yourself a badge or two for your site, blog, MySpace page, whatever. If you have feedback, please let me know in the escaloop Google Group.

Have fun, Carlo

PS: You might ask what took me so long. In my defense, I am a lazy bastard. Also, I wrote the first rough draft in Python, then switched to Ruby. There I’ve wrote the first prototype using the Sinatra DSL, and finally settled to make use of nifty lightweight Ramaze framework. (By the way, Sinatra is nice, but not what I was looking for.)

During the last few months I’ve also had to put a lot of time into Mass Effect, which is a great game. You understand.

Christmas Cheers

2007-12-24T11:08:41Z

Calm down. Christmas isn’t about freaking out and panicking, it’s about not giving a damn about anything other than having a good time.

If you’re stressing yourself out, you’re doing it wrong.

Word of the day: "Kaputtage"

2007-12-14T10:07:42Z

kaputtage

kaputt-age (kä-pŏŏ’tĭj) -- noun

Derived from “outage”, describing the state of something being really, you know, kaputt.

(Yeah, I've made that up.)

Lifestream Tinker Toy, Powered By Yahoo! Pipes

2007-10-20T15:16:38Z

So, (almost) everyone is totally crazy for lifestreams these days. In case you managed to get around the whole issue so far: a lifestream is basically a big bucket (i.e. web page) where all the updates and update notifications from your blog, your ADD-induced Twitter posts, your Flickr uploads etc come together in one concise way so it’s easier for others to ignore them. Also, you only have one URL to hand out to hot women in pubs because the stream inadvertedly works as a hub page, too!

Joy.

Anyways, I was talking with Hendrik about the various stream services out there, and I figured it’d be fairly easy to build something server-less using a wee bit of Javascript and Yahoo! Pipes. So I’ve spent around an hour to do just that.

The basic idea is that you make a pipe containing all your feeds, and then access the output using Javascript from your page. Add some styling, and voilá.

It’s a bit rough around the edges, but hey, it’s just a prototype. It’s not life- or game-changing in any way, but I’d like to share anyways.

Update 2007-11-21: It’s mostly broken right now since I am playing around with something. Not to worry.

Fucking Wiesn

2007-10-02T13:23:57Z

“Wir machen auf der Wiesn Mittag, kommst’ mit?”

Warum lass ich mich immer nur wieder breitschlagen? Was für eine Scheisse. Zuerst Ochsenbraterei, weil es am letzten Donnerstag da so leer war. Oh, alles voll, Überraschung. Okay, dann Paulaner! Dort haben wir sofort einen Platz bekommen, mussten uns aber von der Bedienung “massregeln” lassen, weil ich nix trinken wollte, Min nach einer Limo fragte (Antwort: “Nur in der Mass!”) und Julian um einen Spezi bat (“Hört mal, was seid Ihr denn für welche? Des is’n Bierzelt!”).

Die Speisekarte war ein offener “Fuck you, hahahaha”-Brief an den Verbraucherschutz (die meisten “normalen” Gerichte pegeln zwischen 15 und 22€). Wir wollten dann was zu Essen bestellen, aber die Bedienung meinte nur “Nah, erst die Getränke”, kam dann aber nach 30 sek zurück, um uns mitzuteilen, dass wir, wenn wir in der Mittagspause wären, eh nur Hendl essen könnten, weil alles andere länger als 30 min dauert. Da ich aber kein Hendl wollte, schon gar nicht für 9€, bin ich eben gegangen, und hab mir ‘ne Haxnsemmel geholt. Die war auch nicht so toll.

Julian war das alles irgendwie peinlich, und ich hab ihm nahegelegt, sich bei der Bedienung aufrichtig dafür zu entschuldigen, dass wir sie belästigt haben.

Fuckers. Gott, ich hasse diesen ganzen Wiesnbetrieb. Kann das nicht nach Nürnberg ausgelagert werden oder so?

Open Facebook

2007-09-25T16:13:57Z

(Disclaimer: The following paragraphs might be pointless and you might end up feeling I have once again stated the obvious. So… you’ve been warned.)

TechCrunch reports on Google apparently working with some unnamed industry bigshots on opening up their social networks services.

Yesterday a select group of fifteen or so industry luminaries attended a highly confidential meeting at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View to discuss the company’s upcoming plans to address the “Facebook issue.” […] Google’s goal – to fight Facebook by being even more open than the Facebook Platform. If Facebook is 98% open, Google wants to be 100%.

Well, we’ll see how that’ll pan out.

I have been discussing the whole Facebook API thing with friends and co- workers over the past few weeks. You are constantly hearing about how cool it is that “Facebook is open”, that everyone can build FB applications and become wealthy and all that jazz, but most people have already figured something out—it isn’t open. It’s a goddamn closed system.

So let’s assume you want to use their rich API set to build the next killer application and get rich in the process. How’s that going to work? Yes, you can build cool stuff. Definitely. It’s just—how are you going to monetize your work? In the end, in my eyes, there are but two types of applications:

Advertisements, i.e. marketing widgets/apps that display links (in different forms, of course), trying to get the user to click through to a non-FB site.
For-fun apps like games or graffiti-wall-alikes, which completely run within the boundaries of FB and never leave them.

And that's the thing. Either you're building something that is basically an eye-catcher for your already existing site, not unlike a digital carnival barker, and hope to get attention and visitors coming from Facebook to your site. Or you build something far more complex, inside Facebook, without a viable way to make money from it. Which might cool from a hobbyist point of view, but is crap when you build things for a living. What's built for Facebook stays in Facebook.

Hendrik noted the other day that if there was some sort of “Facebook points” (akin to Xbox Live Arcade points or Linden Dollars), i.e. micropayments, the situation would be far more interesting for professionals. And he’s right. Alas, there’s no such thing. Too bad.

So, to me, it seems that right now everyone developing real applications within Facebook is an unpaid semi-employee of Facebook.com. If you need to make money on the web to put food on your own table, I don’t think is an option. There is no incentive. So far, Facebook is a purely hobbyist platform. End of story.

I might be completely wrong about this, mind you. But I still don’t understand all the applause and excitement about the prospect of writing Facebook applications. Just saying.

Yahoo! Pipes Tutorial: How To Process HTML Pages

2007-09-17T19:28:55Z

Over the weekend I finally had some time to continue playing around with Yahoo! Pipes. (Turns out that quitting World of Warcraft makes your days longer. Huh. Who'd have thought…) It really is a neat toy/tool.

Alas, it is not without hitches. If you've worked with Pipes before, you know that it has a module named 'Fetch Data', but unfortunately this module is only able to deal with XML and JSON data. It's just that it will outright reject anything else. And most HTML pages fall in this category.

Here's my story on how I managed to make Pipes process run-of-the-mill HTML pages. I couldn't find anything on this topic on the net, so even though I don't think I am the first guy to tackle this problem, I want to share what I found out.

A little background. I wanted to build a comic feed for Explosm.net's Cyanide & Happiness, a comic strip for the …wicked. C&H has an official RSS feed, but it only carries links to the new comic pages. Which is fine and dandy for most people, but I am a busy guy, you know, what with my hectic web-3.1 lifestyle and all, and I really can't afford to even lose 20 seconds by clicking through to anywhere. (Read: I'm really lazy.)

So I tried to make Pipes to parse the Explosm.net comic pages and produce a Pipes-powered feed that not only had the link, but also the particular comic image for that day.

I started out with the Fetch Feed module reading the Explosm.net RSS feed. I am usually not interested in anything but the comics, so in a second step, I made use of the Filter module to ditch feed items that doesn't contain the word "comic".

So that left me with a list of feed items, each with a link, a description, a title and some other metadata.

That's where the trouble started. Boy, what was I thinking?! The HTML pages are far from perfect, they sure as hell doesn't validate as XML. Then again -- that's alright! The site wasn't made for scraping or parsing, it was made to display -tasteful- weird comic strips, and that's enough. I like it for that. It's just that there is no Pipes module to grab a glob of textual data and work with it. (Yet? Please, someone say "Yet", employing a knowing undertone.)

After a while of trying to beat any of the available 'Fetch *' modules into submission, I was close to giving up. But then I remember I had come across a HTML Tidy service a few months or years ago. After a few minutes, I had rediscovered it: W3C's own Tidy service. It'll digest any HTML page (you just pass the address), and it will clean it up and return valid a XHTML document, which also constitutes as XML. Huzzah!

Well then, commence plumbing! The third module I used was the wonderful Loop module. It's special because it will process every item in a given dataset, in this case it'd iterate over all remaining feed items. I've told the Loop module to use the String Builder module, there I concatenated the Tidy URL, [http://cgi.w3.org/cgi- bin/tidy?forceXML=on&docAddr=][14], with the item.link attribute, and assigned the resulting string to a new a attribute, item.link_tidy.

Step four consisted of another Loop, in which I would use a Fetch Data module to grab the data from the Tidy'd Explosm.net pages, which had now been transformed into neat and valid XML structures and therefore could be digested by the module. It took me a few minutes to find the exact location of the image element (body.div.table.tr.td.div.0.div.1.table.tr.td.1.div.font.0.content), which I then stored in a new attribute named item.content.

(While we're at it, in the future I would very much like to have the option to use XPath addressing in 'Fetch Data'… or any related module, for that matter. Thanks in advance. :) )

Anyways, the next steps are using yet another Loop to concatenate the image HTML with the original item.description, and then another one to rewrite the original image URLs a bit so the images are served through the free and excellent Coral Distribution Network.

(Technically, I might not be stealing from Explosm.net, especially since they allow hotlinking of their comic strips from message boards and pretty much anywhere, but for the sake of this example and story here, and the assumption that a few people might end up cloning the Pipe -- yes, I am a dreamer --, I feel a bit better knowing I leave less of a footprint on their image servers.)

Then it was applying a Reverse module to flip the order of the items (a cosmetical issue), and that was it.

So, to sum up this long and rather tedious story: you can process HTML pages with Yahoo! Pipes. It's just not as straightforward as you would expect.

Well, and if you want to take a look at it: here's the finished Pipe -- it might not look like much since the HTML preview doesn't show the images, but the RSS output is complete.

Tip o' the hat to Cyanide & Happiness for mindblowing hijinx, the W3C for the free & open Tidy service, and the CDN for being good people.

Now go and use Yahoo! Pipes. It's one of the cooler products we (as a company) have released in the last few years, and quite frankly, it deserves praise.

So there.

Quick links: Finished Pipe, RSS Output

Update, 2007-09-19:* I've slightly adjusted the element addressing in the Pipe to waterproof it a bit. The general idea and order of the modules didn't change, tho.

Update, 2007-12-07: My technique has been superceded by the offical new Fetch Page module -- enjoy! :)

Quick Note Of The Day

2007-09-15T23:27:58Z

I like my life. It’s not perfect, but I don’t care. It’s pretty cool. I could do so much worse, seriously.

w00t!

New Flickr API Output Format: LOL

2007-09-14T08:28:30Z

Looks like there is a new Flickr API output format: LOL. Not my work, no idea who built this, but I really like it.

Here’s an example of returned data (?tags=cats&amp;#38;format=lol):

HAI

IM IN UR BUCKETS MAKING UP FORMATS

GIMME PHOTOS FROM EVERYONE TAGGED CATS WITH GEODATA

I CAN HAS PHOTO IMG_2326

ITZ AT [http://www.flickr.com/photos/blush_response/1377293729/][2]

INVISIBLE METADATA

LOL

KTHX.

I CAN HAS PHOTO IMG_2329

ITZ AT [http://www.flickr.com/photos/blush_response/1378198718/][3]

INVISIBLE METADATA

LOL

KTHX.

I IS BORED

KTHXBYE.

Grab the data as usual, the format attribute is lol, apparently.

So… If you always thought about teaching your cat how to parse Flickr data, now might be the right time to jump in. Progress!

Patience, Young Gardeners

2007-08-25T10:45:21Z

Yeah, it’s actually a granite Yoda. Awesome.

Dear Rapleaf Guys: There Is No Good Spam

2007-08-21T08:53:36Z

I found a few versions of this in my inbox a few minutes ago:

Dear “friends” at Rapleaf.com,

I know you’re probably just “alerting” me that “someone” might have found possibly incriminating links to my various social network profiles, and that is so nice of you.

You know what else it is? Spamming. That’s true! Ask your friends.

Sure, there is this “If you do not want to receive emails from Rapleaf, click here” link at the bottom of each unsolicited mail you’ve sent me. So what? I didn’t opt in for these mails in the first place. Someone searched for my email address, and you’ve simply used it to send out advertising. Face it: That’s what it is.

Okay, listen up, dear clueless people at

The Internet Is Broken

2007-08-16T18:59:25Z

…in Europe. According to the Internet Traffic Report, Europe’s intertubes currently feature around 20-30% packet loss. Average, I might add. It seems like two of three major German routers have fallen of the net.

I can indeed confirm this: My connection graph looks like a comb.

When calling my ISP I don’t even get to the “on hold” loop, the automaton on the other end is telling me “Everyone’s busy, please leave a name and number, we’ll call you back ASAP”. Usually there’s a person answering after three rings max.

Please, dear Intertron, get unbroken again. We’ll be good kids, I swear.

On Monikers

2007-08-16T14:48:57Z

Some fun-name generator told me the other day that my porn name is Reed Funkenstein.

What can I say, I do not plan on breaking into the adult entertainment market, but I like the name. It basically oozes willpower and ingenuity. It fits like a glove!

I will probably use it for my next open source project. Reed Funkenstein is feeling frisky geeky.

Cordless Hardware Is Killing Your Children

2007-08-13T17:44:17Z

Okay, maybe that was a bit harsh, but think about it for a moment. Everyone is complaining about power consumption and global warming and whatnot, THE EARTH IS DYING!!!1oneoneeleven, yet by now it’s really fucking hard to find a decent mouse or keyboard that does have a cable.

Why is that?

I seriously don’t understand why it’s necessary and accepted among computer users to have a formerly cable-bound piece of hardware that now doesn’t “need” a cable anymore, but batteries (rechargable or not). Or worse: the mice that come with their own base stations and power adapters.

Mind you, your mouse and keyboard are usually around 50cm to 1m away from your Mac or PC. So why not use something with a cable?

I am currently shopping for a new mouse, hence the confusion. Well, actually I am annoyed. I was eying the beautiful Logitech MX Revolution, which is a wonderful piece of equipment, is ergonomic, has the right size for my paws, it would be perfect!

Unfortunately (for Logitech) I refuse to buy something as mundane as a pointing device with its own PCU. Sure, they probably don’t care.

/sigh

Meh

2007-08-07T13:04:17Z

Dana is rebuilding our lovely little garden behind the house. We’ll get our new car on Friday (YAY!), and I’m having a frickin’ ear infection, which caused my doctor to cram some tissue and gel-stuff into it.

It seems to help, but I’m basically half-deaf now. At least temporarily. I’m allowed to get rid of the things tomorrow, but daaaaaaamn, it sucks. :P

So, I’m a little cranky. Weeee.

Mr. Mans goes to Brighton

2007-07-29T15:33:56Z

Hendrik moves to Brighton, UK. I still don’t have much to say about that, I am glad for him, but that doesn’t make me feel better about seeing my best friend moving away. :/ I can totally understand his notion, tho - I’ve been at the same point myself a few years ago - so it’s alright.

Well, we also still have the intertubes.

Anyways, he’s also looking for work. If you’re in or around Brighton and searching for a freelance Rails consulting/development ninja, you should at least look him up. :)

Interesting Observation

2007-07-26T17:09:24Z

The more my little WoW toon is nearing lvl70 (he’s @69 now), the less space in my mind is occupied by the game. I am actually thinking about personal coding again, i.e. building more stuff outside the office.

I am not relieved or shocked by this observation, it feels right. My love for the game isn’t decreasing, neither is my love for coding increasing. Both stay the same, yet something is changing once again.

Things I Don't Understand, #312

2007-07-25T08:04:44Z

Jakob Nielsen’s bi-weekly ‘Alertbox’ column, aptly labeled “Current Issues in Web Usability“, does not offer an RSS feed. Why is that?

It’s published for 12 years straight by now (seriously: wow), still no feed.

(There are a number of scraped ones, including one I’ve made myself, but that’s not the point. Shouldn’t there be something official?)

Just wondering.

We're NOT Friends, Sorry

2007-07-24T18:32:57Z

Twitter and Pownce are broken. MySpace, too. Oh, and pretty much every social networking site on the planet, too. For me, at least.

It’s not the technical aspect. Not the concept, either.

(Well, I don’t understand the hype and/or praise sites like Twitter is getting. From a technical standpoint, it’s well done, I won’t argue that, but I don’t get the point of the sites. But back to the topic.)

No, it’s the semantics.

You see, offline, I don’t call many people “friend”. This doesn’t mean I am surrounded by unpleasant people, quite the contrary. But I make a difference between friends and pals or contacts. A friend is someone I would risk my life for. Usually this two-way trust has grown over a few years, and is something important to me.

Now, online, I am expected to call every Tom, Dick or Harry “friend”, and somehow, that doesn’t work for me. I create an account at, let’s say, Pownce, and am instantly bombarded by new friend requests. Usually by people I haven’t spoken to before, let alone met.

Yeah… I am afraid I can’t do that, Digital Dave.

Sites like Flickr do it differently. People are “contacts”. If I decided I like them, I can promote them to “friends” or “family”. Which is okay. If we have spoken online, maybe in the office, maybe even met, then I am willing to add you as “contact”. That’s cool and not diminishing our relationship.

And this is my point: just calling someone “contact” instead of “friend” doesn’t mean I don’t like that person. It just means I don’t know him/her well enough to consider him/her a “friend”. Because to me, this word has a meaning. Shying away from labeling you “friend” isn’t impolite, it’s honest. Because we are not friends.

There are people I am fond of, people I like, but with whom I am not that close. I enjoy hanging out with them, and I enjoy their company, but they’re not my friends. And that is perfectly alright, for both them and myself.

(Truth to be told, it wasn’t always like this. But I’m growing older, and my views change.)

Another example: The other day there was a bit of drama in our little WoW guild. There was a younger lad who we were playing and chatting with quite often. At some point, he felt thoroughly insulted when Christian (pal of mine) and I kindly tried to explain to him that we were not his friends. Heck, we had never met. We were playing an online game together, and chatting a lot while doing so. We tried to get the message across, tried to explain that we liked him, but we didn’t consider him a friend in the true sense. He got upset and left the guild in anger.

Well, it happens. Not much I can do about it.

The net is our (relatively) new world. Our habits are changing, human relationships might, too—at least a bit. Still, should we abandon our values? If everyone is a “friend”, it means nobody is. For me, this prospect leaves a lot to be desired.

Dear site builders, please stop trying to build a virtual Woodstock. I know you’re probably just trying to achieve a feeling of “I belong here” for your users so they come back, but for God’s sake, stop making me pretend I care equally about everyone. Because I don’t.

—

Update, 2007-07-25, 9:18 CEST: jr suggested the use of a new word for this type of online kinship, and I like the idea. His suggestion was “webbie”, but to me that sounds too much like a certain online award.

Anyways, my personal proposal is the use of “webster”. I’ve checked Wikipedia, the original meaning of the word has kind of “expired”, so let’s re-use it. :) Are you with me, people?

I'm an uncle!

2007-07-21T12:36:24Z

During the night, my sister gave birth to two baby girls, Joline and Charleen. They’re all healthy and well. No pictures yet, my parents will visit her, the twins and her husband later today.

Congratulations, Claudia and Tino! :)

That makes us “Uncle Carlo” and “Aunt Dana” then. Huh.

"Web 2.0", "AJAX", "BARF" - A Call To Action

2007-07-19T16:09:38Z

After reading another great press release I think I now know what “Web 2.0” means. Up until now I was convinced that if you asked 10 people what it means, you’d get 10 different answers. Turns out all the tech guys have it wrong, tho.

You see, it’s all in the pronunciation. It’s not “Web two-point-zero”, it’s actually “Web two-point-oh”. As in “Web two-point-OH-MY-GOD WE’RE, LIKE, TOTALLY COOL”.

Don’t laugh.

The other day I looked with a friendly non-tech guy at some purdy web pages. (I am not dissing him for not knowing this stuff, he is not a programmer, which is completely okay. I am just telling this to illustrate a point.) It went like this:

Guy, pointing: “That looks pretty cool, what with it sliding out smoothly and all! Ah, Web 2.0, great. Is that AJAX?”

Me: “No, it’s a ‘dropdown’.”

Guy, pointing: “Or here, all these big image things with the text, that is Web 2.0, right?”

Me: “No, it’s static images with text link overlays.”

Thank you, crazy Internet marketing hype machine. I wish you weren’t decentralized so I could come visit and burn you down.

That term should be banned from the face of the net. Every time I tell people I work on the Intertubes for a living, it’s always “Wow, like Web 2.0?”.

Okay, fellow tech guys, listen up, this needs to stop. I propose answering questions like that with “No, not ‘Web 2.0’ and ‘AJAX’, we’re doing BARF now. ‘BARF’ stands for ‘Bidirectional Asynchronous Request Forwarding’, it’s hot right now. I could explain it, but it’d probably take too long. There’s a number of articles on oreilly.com, look it up, it’s great. It’s going to be in the next release of Django and Rails, man—right in the core, built-in!!”

Don’t tell me it wouldn’t work, don’t tell me it wouldn’t work.

If you’re laughing right now or thinking I am just saying this, you’re mistaken. Let’s turn the Bullshit Train around. I am dead serious.

—

Update #1: The acronym was inspired by the fine Iranian soap products, of course.

Update #2: I changed the phrase from “Bitwise Asynchronous Request Forwarding” to “Bidirectional Asynchronous Request Forwarding”. It just makes more sense that way.

Revelation, Web 2.0 edition

2007-07-17T14:11:30Z

It just dawned me that on the web, Germany must be to the UK and US what China is to the rest of the “real” World (at least in the perception of the rich western countries): copycats.

Cases in point: Frazr vs. Twitter, StudiVZ vs. Facebook, a dozen del.icio.us clones vs. del.icio.us.

Seriously, the (visible part of the) German startup scene is making a sad impression. Pretty much each new German site I see is more or less a carbon copy of a successful UK or US site. The other day I was even approached whether I wanted to help clone Pownce (“Hey, how quickly could one copy a site like that?”). What happened to ingenuity and/or integrity?

I really start to believe I know the only original guy around.

Thank you, Elderlies of Japan

2007-07-13T18:29:16Z

Dear old people of Nippon,

thank you. It is only because of you that I am still the one and only Yahoo!/Google search engine result for the term Gerontomageddon.

Sincerely yours, Carlo

unset(Perl)

2007-07-03T12:05:26Z

Dear Perl community,

I just wasted 15 minutes of my life trying to figure out how to get the index of a particular element in an array. Turns out I have to write a for loop to walk through the array. This is insulting.

Seriously, it’s 2007. If at this point in time you’re still defending your beloved language and/or using words like “elegant” or “quick” when describing Perl, you’re bat shit crazy. My 2c.

Love, Carlo.

Addendum, 2007-07-04, 9:14 CEST: I forgot to mention a few things.

It wasn’t my choice to use Perl, I just have to deal with it.
I was talking about a very limited set of unique strings.
The Perl Cookbook offered a solution, which is seven lines of code, the core being a for loop.

Spock.com invites, anyone?

2007-06-29T10:01:58Z

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

2007-06-27T12:47:02Z

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.)

Weissbier with Timberlake

2007-06-21T17:58:39Z

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

2007-06-16T17:48:28Z

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.

Good bye, Media Temple

2007-06-14T21:50:31Z

After giving Media Temple a go for a few months regarding hosting this little blog on their much-touted plan/platform, I’ve decided it’s definitely not worth $20/month for me.

Seriously, it’s just a wee blog, nothing big. In fact, it’s mostly a plain vanilla Wordpress setup. Nothing special there. And also I don’t get many visitors, so I was surprised to see the site to awfully slow. What gives? On top of that is the SSH access responding at glacier speeds at any given time; very underwhelming, too.

So I’ve packed my things and set up shop at A Small Orange. It’s small, it’s (said to be) reliable, and the change has been astounding (to me). It’s nothing fancy in the sense that they redefine web hosting or anything, they just host my stuff, and that’s it. Which is fine.

In the end, I pay a 1/4 of what Media Temple cost me, and in return get something that is more like what I was looking for. At least for the last two days. ;)

I might keep you updated about the long(er) term experience.

Update 2007-06-15: Some small grammatical fixes.

Mini Review: "Ocean's 13"

2007-06-09T22:05:47Z

It’s funny, highly entertaining, and dripping coolness.

Go watch it.

Madrid, or Why we're all doomed

2007-06-07T11:38:40Z

A few days ago, the company sent me to Madrid, Spain, for a summit.

Madrid was nice. I’ve met a lot of friendly people, co-workers and random passersby alike, taxi drivers and dancers (more on that later), and made some observation which lead me to believe our attempts at saving the climate are futile.

In short: from what I observed over the course of three days, along with what I’ve seen during our days on Teneriffe, Spain’s collective consciousness doesn’t seem to give a damn about energy conservation.

Don’t get me wrong, please. Germany is far from being perfect and totally awesome in that regard, but most people are trying by now. Also the government tries to get people to conserve energy, to recycle, to re-use things. Hell, I remember the recycling ads from my childhood, so apparently the effort is made for a good number of years by now.

But Spain… man, this was nuts. One-off styrofoam cups everywhere. Two or three plastic cups at the watercooler, at once, which are thrown away after one go. (I mean, why wouldn’t you, there are many more available.) I was hard pressed to find four (4!) ceramic cups in the entire office, and used one of those then. (Seriously, I am not recycling my pants off for years, just to start using styrofoam cups again while being away.) People leaving their cars running while they were waiting for someone on the street, for 10 minutes, 15 minutes… Incredible. (Apparently fuel doesn’t isn’t expensive enough yet.) And so on.

Then I talked to a colleague from France who told me that they started a “let’s all recycle!” campaign last year or so. Last year. Which means that until last year, the concept seemed foreign to them.

There were more little things I’ve noticed, and which made me raise my eyebrows every now and then. Now, I am not a tree hugger, and I don’t think I am the awesomest dude around when it comes to energy conservation and reducing waste (thusly reducing CO2 production). But if you’re a concerned citizen human, which at this point everyone should be, I think, then you can’t look at shit like this and help but twitch.

In the end it is a governmental fault. See, here in Germany the political caste has adopted CO2 reduction as an urgent issue, and sometimes, they even act accordingly. But even if they don’t, they usually present it as burning issue, and hearing it over and over again, many people have adjusted or are at least starting to. Somehow the system works, even if it could work better, but we’re getting there… I hope. None of us is without sin, so there.

But apparently a lot of European states seem to hope the problem seems to go away by itself. Which I find highly disturbing, and which makes me think we’re all doomed.

UPDATE: This here post deserved a less doomy follow-up.

Avatare im "SZ Magazin"

2007-05-11T08:16:48Z

Vor ein paar Wochen wurde ich fürs Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin interviewt—es ging um Avatare und die Leute dahinter, i.e. um die Charaktere, die Menschen in Onlinespielen spielen.

Heute wurde es veröffentlicht.

Hendrik, der auch interviewt wurde, hats sogar ins Print-Magazin geschafft, ich war anscheinend zu hässlich und kam “nur” in die Web-Ausgabe. Aber hey, das passt schon. Was ich etwas schade finde: ca. 90% von dem, was wir gefragt wurden und was wir gesagt haben, haben sie nicht verwendet. Schande!

Wie dem auch sei, hier bin ich zu sehen und hier ist Hendrik. Und hier ist ein Screenshot, für die Nachwelt erhalten. (Klick darauf geht zur großen Version.)

Carlo & The Carpet Cutter

2007-05-07T18:09:16Z

A week ago I was doing some home improvement. Well, I tried. And failed. In a spectacular way—the carpet cutter slipped and chopped through the back of my thumb.

For a split second I had a clear look at my joint, then it got messy.

Well, Dana got me to the ER – not after saving my life, tho! Standing upright next to the stairs (upper end), I lost consciousness for about 30 seconds. She grabbed and yelled at me, and after a while I blinked and was back. Oiy.

Anyways, we got into the ER, and the friendly lady at the reception desk said "What's wrong?", and I could finally say the one thing I had always envisioned, yet never had the chance to pull off.

“I’m bleeding.”

Had to grin a bit after I’ve said it. So worth it. (Well, not really.)

To make a long story short, they stitched my thumb together again. Turns out I had actually really reached the joint, and even partially cut a tendon. Splendid.

Now my whole hand is in a cast.

Typing is slow as molasses, mostly because the freaking cast is in the way. The stitches are starting to itch, which probably is a good thing, but that doesn’t make it better.

The doc gave me two weeks off, and until then, the web is mostly “read-only” for me. Because writing is slow, as mentioned—this blog entry took half an hour.

Digg.com Evolution

2007-04-30T17:38:23Z

After many hours in the lab, spent on creating timelines and elaborate flow charts, I am proud to present you, World, my “Evolution of Digg.com”. I’ve manage to condense it into a few short lines, too:

Late 2004, Digg.com created ➔ “a fun site!” ➔ gains momentum, becomes useful ➔ single spammers appear, some fools, too ➔ OMG it’s spammed, lots of fools ➔ unbearable ➔ totally useless ➔ PRESENT DAY.

Don’t go there unless you feel like clawing your eyes out after being confronted with utter stupidity. If you actually do feel like, pick any thread.

That is all.

Erkenntnis

2007-04-30T15:06:12Z

Das Internet ist wie eine externe Version dieses total wahnsinnigen Teils meines überaktiven Unterbewusstseins, der mir dauernd ungefragt lustige Filmschnipsel, Zitate, blöde Songs und uralte Gags auftischt.

So!

2007-04-29T15:23:33Z

Wir haben heute einen Baum gepflanzt im Garten. Einen Fächerahorn.

Juhu!

Maga-what? Reading Habit Meme

2007-04-23T07:25:21Z

Huh, so I’ve been tagged by Frank. Splendid. :P

I’ve used to read quite a few magazines in the day, mostly to feed my habit (PC gaming, back then); a remnant of happy times past, when I was a kid. You see, I grew up in Eastern Germany, and while I had no problems or real shortcomings there, I never really had the chance to buy computer magazines of any sort (programming, gaming etc.)—simply because there were none.

Well, then one happy day, friends of my parents from Western Germany visited us, and lo and behold, they brought a few dozen (slightly outdated) computing magazines, just for me.

Needless to say, a great day in my life.

But with the advent of the Intertron I retreated more and more from reading paper magazine, mostly because they’re too slow. And also have horrible search facilities. Plus the links don’t work, or even worse, there are none.

Still, I read some magazines. Not many, just a very few. Mostly on the weekends, because it’s so much cooler to read while lying in a hammock, and let’s face it, a laptop in a hammock just doesn’t cut it.

So, what do I read these days?

Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin—great little publication, comes with the SZ Friday issue. It may sound silly, but I really fell for that one. I consider it one of my weekly weekend highlights, because I thorougly enjoy it.
The Escapist—a weekly free magazine about gaming culture. Not about reviews and previews and what’s hot etc, mind you. The magazine approaches gaming on a more psychological, human, laid-back level. Each issue has a particular topic, and you can read it either on the web or print it out (beautiful PDF version!) and read it on the subway. Which I do every now and then. Quite frankly, it’s a magazine so good I would actually buy it. Or subscribe to it.
I stopped reading PM Magazin a short while ago, after getting it monthly for a few years. Somehow it doesn’t click with me anymore. Someone once described it to me as “Bunte für Intellektuelle”, which I found funny, while at the same time think it’s slightly incorrect.

Well, that’s it. I toss the topic on to Hendrik, Mike, jeck, Zhaneel, Beryl and - as an experiment - the funky folks at Antigames.de. Go!

Tumblr, a few days later

2007-04-19T10:52:15Z

I have to admit, I really like my new setup. tail -f carlo.log for the “real” blog posts and tail -f carlo.tumblr for the random sillyness and interesting bits and pieces I come across. It works out well and has some advantages over writing a Post-It post every now and then.

It’s more …direct.

So I think I’ll keep using/maintaining it. Remember, it has a separate RSS feed.

Lieber Saturn Theresienwiese!

2007-04-17T20:24:52Z

Es wäre total dufte, wenn ich nur einmal ein Produkt bei Euch kaufen könnte, ohne daheim direkt feststellen zu müssen, dass es kaputt ist. Das passiert mir in den letzten paar Wochen bei Euch andauernd. Beim letzten Mal war es dieser schnieke FM-Transmitter für meinen iPod, der nicht funktionierte, heute ist es dann der tolle Funkuhrradiowecker, der mich hier in den Wahnsinn trieb.

Danke dafür.

Aber das kann ich Euch auch morgen persönlich sagen, wenn ich das an sich coole, aber leider funktionsunfähige Gerät zurückbringe, um mir Ersatz zu holen, den ich mir im Laden vorführen lasse.

Ich werde der Typ sein, der irgendwen verprügelt, denke ich.

In diesem Licht gesehen ist das deutsche Ladenschluß-Gesetz eigentlich ganz sinnig; wer weiss, was passiert wäre, wenn Ihr jetzt noch geöffnet hättet.

PS: i just rued again

Das Tumblringen!

2007-04-16T23:21:37Z

I’ve started a tumble log the other day. I consider it an experiment; first of all, Tumblr is an exquisite service with a whole lot of potential. It serves as an extremely easy and comfortable tool to link all the new doodads, gimmicks, funny pictures and clever quotes I find on the Intertron.

And secondly, all the cool cats are doing it already, so there.

Thus, for the time being, I will do what Hendrik did and deactivate the daily automated splicing of my new del.icio.us links and blog-worthy Flickr pictures into my tail -f carlo.log RSS feed, and opt for Tumblr raking them in automatically. In addition I’ll throw in the gems I found while reading feeds in Google Reader! What a deal!

That means if you want to keep track of the little things I see and find, those which do not warrant a blog post on their own here, take a look tail -f carlo.tumblr. Yes, I know the name is lame, screw you! :p There is an RSS feed, too.

So, yeah.

Mini Review: "300"

2007-04-05T17:43:13Z

Good entertainment. They’ve painted some grand pictures there; I’ve enjoyed the visual style. Loved the presentation; the fighting scenes with the slow/full motion switches were very well done. Featured strong women, always a plus.

Wasn’t as visionary as the hype wanted me to believe, but it has most certainly set a new high in action cinematography for me—it’s as much a visual milestone as The Matrix was back then. (Other than that you can’t compare those two flicks.)

Faramir didn’t really fit in, I think. Good performance, but his blond hair stood out a bit too much.

I still don’t think it should be called ‘600’, tho.

Had the right length.

PS: I don’t feel like barking “This is Sparta!” repeatedly at all. I want my money back.

Post It #24

2007-03-30T12:14:50Z

Jedi Stamps. Apparently the “Jedi Shipping and Mailing Master” wants the collective opinion about the stamp you want to reign above all others. Really. [via Darth Vader]

Late to the party. ADS kids, listen up! What can I say, yes, me too. I still don’t fully get Twitter—I still don’t understand the total awesomeness everyone is so excited about; or the working business model behind it, for that matter.

We gots mail! We have unleashed a new beast—the Yahoo! Mail Web Service. On a scale from 1 to 10, this is so damn cool.

Musical Mind

2007-03-29T11:28:58Z

I am amazed how on some days a song can make you grin like an idiot and even boost your confidence, while on other days the same song doesn’t do anything.

The human mind contains strange mechanics and some weird code.

By the way, the song triggering this musing was Captain Sensual by Groove Armada.

Post It #23

2007-03-27T11:27:50Z

Quote of the day. Today by Beryl. Wise words, for those of you who don’t know or may have forgotten:

Do not pour your heart, soul, and life into your job. When the job goes sour, you may have nothing left.

That said, I really like my job. But it’s not my life—and that isn’t a contradiction.

Schöne Worte. Dana über das, was ich tue—programmieren, gern auch kreativ.

Es ist irgendwie Handwerk, ja. Du arbeitest schon mit Deinen Händen, aber Dein Werkstoff sind Ideen.

How to beat Google. Rich Skrenta lists some thoughts on how to do it.. I like this little nugget of wisdom, because it’s well said. (Emphasis mine.)

You cannot build something new and different with a big team. Big teams are only capable of duplicating existing technology. The sum of 20 sets of vision is mud.

Realization

2007-03-23T08:16:07Z

Last night, while looking around our living room, seeing all the furniture, the floor I put in, the wonderfully big windows, and my wife sleeping on the couch, I realized that I’ll probably never find a finer place in the world.

Post It #22

2007-03-21T20:40:14Z

Ever played flOw? Then you might be able to relate.

Clown car. Seriously, it’s not. (The image is safe for work, the type of humor might not be.) Haven’t laughed that much in a while.

The Daily Show. My favourite TV show, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, is part of the program of the new German Comedy Central. Now here’s the kicker—you can watch every new episode on their website. Let me sum that up, because it’s so fantastic: Daily Show – most recent ep – streamed – legally – free. Awesome!

Review: "Wer fruher stirbt ist länger tot"

2007-03-19T12:14:01Z

Wer früher stirbt ist länger tot gibts jetzt endlich auf DVD. Nachdem wir über Monate hinweg vergeblich versucht haben, den Film im Kino zu sehen, und immer irgendwas dazwischen kam, hab ich zugegriffen, und wir haben ihn uns am Samstag mit Popcorn auf der Couch angeschaut.

Urteil: Großartiges Kino! Sehr lustig/absurd. Anschauen/kaufen. Die DVD hat sogar deutsche Untertitel, also steht dem Verstehen nix mehr im Weg. :)

Respektsbekundung auch an unseren alten Freund Sepp, der auch dabei ist (als einer der Stammtischler). Irgendwie schafft er es immer wieder, in lustigen, kleinen, bayrischen Überraschungserfolgen aufzutauchen (siehe Die Scheinheiligen—auch ein heiterer Film.)

Habe die Ehre.

Battery Hail Storm & Energy Efficiency

2007-03-09T14:03:48Z

Hail: The Return of the Sun is a well-done ad/movie for solar power. Watch it, it’s pretty cool. I saw the ad in a cinema the first time, and I found it quite good.

Staying with the topic energy & efficiency: When Dana and I moved to the new house, we made it a point to use CFL bulbs wherever possible.

Now, after taking a long, hard look at the various doodads sitting around the TV, which are burning energy in standby mode all day long, I’ve decided to introduce a master/slave extension lead to the mix. So these days, when I turn off the TV, the six other machines around it (gaming consoles, sound system, DVR etc.) are completely turned off as well automatically. It’s pretty neat, albeit not perfect yet.

And according to my calculations the 25€ I spent on the extension lead will be paid for by the energy bill savings within less than a year.

Post It #21

2007-03-09T13:59:55Z

Outlook vs. DST. This is what happens when you try to schedule a meeting to handle the DST changeover in Outlook.

PS3 Home. [via the always excellent [Antigames]2] [Sony’s planned Home service looks pretty rad.]3 Now let’s see how much of the glitz they can pack into the final product, eh?

YPLAA. YouParkLikeAnAsshole.com is a site with a real purpose. Period. It even has notices you can print out and attach to offending parked cars! Loving it.

Post It #20

2007-03-07T21:48:15Z

Right, I remember! Did I ever blog about being interviewed (“mentioned” would probably be the better term) by the guys over at the Yahoo Publisher Network blog? About Planet Yahoo!, of course. Hilarious how I completely forgot about this…

April 30. There’ll be an ARG to stimulate the Collective Intelligence to deal with the idea of an oil crisis starting end of April. I must say, I love the idea. There is apparently such a huge demand for ARGs, why not use this raw potential to do something worthwhile? World Without Oil aims to do that. Kudos.

Mac game development. [via [Hendrik]7] [Game developers give the Mac another look]8—this can only be a good thing. Yay!

Troubled languages. English is degrading each and every day, says Glass Maze’s lapsed cannibal in a amusing, yet angry rant.

I often find myself in meetings where the English language is beaten, burned, shat upon, drawn-and-quartered, and finally twisted into a monstrous parody of itself, then slapped onto a powerpoint slide and projected onto a wall, where its shame and ignominy are visible to all.

And you know what? He might be right, but I believe blood would come out of his ears on a daily basis, if he were a caring German listening to his native language. Don’t know what I mean? Take what he said, double it, and imagine parts of any given sentence being peppered with English/German halfbreeds constantly.

I notice that I, personally, see a decline in the quality of my German -- which is my very own tongue, mind you --, due to the fact that I speak English half of the time for a good number of years by now. I switch between the languages without effort, sometimes in the middle of a sentence, and -- worst of all -- interchange English and German words rather frequently. Shame on me.

But the longer I think about it, the more I wonder whether this is a price we have to pay for globalization… Remember Blade Runner with his “gutter speak”? Just thinking out loud.

Post It #19

2007-03-01T17:57:51Z

Description vs. person. defective yeti on match.com discrepancies. Well summed up.

Tables suck. Depending on the context, of course. The topic came up on one of our internal mailing lists, and Chris answered with a link to Why tables for layout is stupid, which is a really nice URL to hand out the next time the issue is raised. Great artwork, too! Go luck.

Blog nirvana. Valleywag came up with an interesting heatmap. Reminds me of Lem’s ‘Rough guide to the state of the Internet, circa 2006’.

Post It #18

2007-02-26T16:05:44Z

YUI hosting. Nate on Free Hosting of YUI Files from Yahoo!:

Coinciding with this week’s release of YUI version 2.2.0, the one year anniversary of the YUI open-source release, and as announced at the YUI Party just moments ago, we’re opening up free YUI hosting from the Yahoo! network to all YUI implementers. If you’re using YUI for your own project, we’ll serve the files for you — gzipped, with good cache-control, using our state-of-the- art network, for free. You can count on these files being continuously available because they’re the same files, served by the same source, that we use for most YUI implementations at Yahoo!.

This is big, folks. Smart move, too.

Dell IdeaStorm. Dell.com’s new suggestions site kind of looks familiar. That said, I really like the idea of companies publicly gathering and displaying ideas from their users—when done right, this can be a win-win for everyone, so power to every company implementing one of those. Anyways, the one suggestion that made me grin?

Have Michael Dell try actually buying a PC using Dell.com

Google Apps. Business 2.0 Beta (how’s that for a blog name?) asks Are Google Apps’ Customers For Real?.

Here’s what Procter & Gamble actually says: “P&G will work closely with Google in shaping enterprise characteristics and requirements for these popular tools.” Translation: “One of our sysadmins is going to sign up for an account and send you bitchy emails about missing features.”

Don’t get me wrong, I like their web-based office tools, even though I don’t use them regularly. They’re well done, no doubt about it. But by now I find it somewhat unnerving that every single time Google launches something, it is hailed as the holy grail of the intarwebs.

Warcraft Lore, told by jokers. WOW Insider’s ‘Know Your Lore’ segments are pretty good. Every now and then they pick a person or event from the rich Warcraft history and recap it quickly in a fun way.

Arthas was the son of King Terenas Menethil, ruler of Lordaeron. As a youth, he trained in the art of combat and joined the Silver Hand, a group of paladins. He became known for his exploits in battle. He also briefly dallied with a young mage named Jaina Proudmoore, but it didn’t work out because long- distance things never end well. They decided to remain friends, which is as big a sign of impending doom as one can get.

Akismet & HashCash

2007-02-23T10:12:50Z

The good fight against blog comment spam continues—I’ve added HashCash to the mix after noticing the Akismet plugin catching up to 250 spam comments per night. Let’s see whether with HashCash this number goes down; after all it is supposed to stop bots, so the comments shouldn’t end up in Akismets queue in the first place. If you have problems posting comments (if you want to comment here for whatever reason… can’t think of anything at the moment), drop me a line. My mail address can be found around here, you know where to look. Update: I deactivated HashCash again. After Akismet had to filter out ~50 spam comments in the last two hours, it became clear to me that HashCash doesn’t help at all. Awesome! :P

Update #2: It dawned me that pretty much all of my incoming spam is trackbacks, and HashCash doesn’t process those for apparent reasons. Huh.

Post It #17

2007-02-20T18:48:04Z

Yeeeeeeeeeaaaah. TheToddTime.com – it probably helps if you’re a fan of Scrubs. And crazy.

Quote of the day. Once again it’s something JR said.

Again, the biggest problem with social networking sites is that they were created by people who don’t have friends.

The quote itself is both a bit inflammatory and highly hilarious, I agree, but the rest of his posts makes perfect sense and also reflects my point of view pretty much 100%.

Karneval -- wurscht.

2007-02-19T18:41:26Z

Ich liebe den Münchner Personennahverkehr. Nirgendwo sonst in Deutschland sieht man alte, distinguierte Herren mit einem “Ich hasse Euch alle / Früher war alles besser / Zu meiner Zeit…”-Blick, denen Konfetti auf der Halbglatze klebt.

Gut, man sieht sie vermutlich auch in anderen Teilen Deutschlands, in denen Karneval gefeiert wird (alle verrückt), aber hier fallen sie auf, weil sie die Ausnahme sind.

Hurra!

Post It #16

2007-02-16T09:44:40Z

Quote of the day. From a rest-discuss post about JSR 311: Java™ API for RESTful Web Services [thanks, Hendrik]:

This is like asking Karl Rove and Dick Cheney to write the Democratic Party platform.

“Bionic Seniors: Gerontomageddon”. Robotic suit to assist easy movement for Japan’s elderly—my initial thoughts:

I want one.
The company is called Cyberdyne and the suit is named HAL. You do the math.
“Suit, I need to sit down.” – “I am afraid I can’t do that, old Dave.”

Here’s a picture.

Passion vs. brains. JR on the recent “OMFG! Yahoo! is ripping off digg!!1!!” debacle:

I don’t want passionate users. Passionate users are morons. i want engaged users. i want folks using products because they find them useful, beneficial and interesting. i want folks to tell us what they like, what they don’t like, and what would make their lives easier. i want users that regularly check out our competitors and choose us again. Sometimes we’ll be better, sometimes they will. Blinders only mean you miss the advantages when they happen. I’ll leave the passionate users to the porn sites.

Outside Azeroth

2007-02-14T21:59:59Z

For months, Hendrik and I were playing WoW with a guy we’d never met before, Christian. Nice fellow, fun to chat with, one helluva warlock.

Today he was making a stop in Munich (travelling by train), and we met for a quick snack, since he and his girlfriend only had half an hour or so until their train departed.

Turns out sometimes the nice people you meet in a game are nice people in real life also. Cool beans!

Send Help!

2007-02-14T21:56:11Z

The other day I had to move my desk to another room, and thus was cut off more or less entirely from the rest of the Y! engineering gang. My homies, my posse, noone around! Mein Leben!

Anyways, during the day I was chatting with Mike, who didn't have to move from the other room (because he is cool). “How you holding up?”, he asked. “Okay, but I’m lonely… SEND HELP”, I said. And then promptly forgot about the whole thing.

Fast forward three days.

An innocent-looking Amazon package is lying on my desk. Contents: a CD — “Help” by The Beatles.

Mike, you jackass. :)

The (n) Ways of Highly Ineffective People

2007-02-14T21:41:01Z

I had the pleasure to watch hordes of co-workers, past and present, struggling to get through their days without going insane. The lot of them are capable people, but they appear to waste a lot of time (and nerves) by not asking the right questions when it comes to technology. And I am talking here about developers and non-developers.

Also, before I go any further, let me clarify one thing: I am writing this not to tell people they suck, but to share some personal findings and experiences about common pitfalls and how to get around them. I am aware that you can buy books about this topic by the dozen, and I don't want to go into philosophy, so this is merely a list of tiny things that I changed on my machines that had quite an impact on my productivity. Also, all this stuff works for me -- it might not for you. I'm just saying.

The general idea is to get rid of some obstacles that keep my mind from running like the well-oiled, finetuned, skillfully honed bucket of bolts that it is. This idea is neither new nor original nor mine, but hey, it's good!

So, onwards -- let me share some observations with you.

IM contact status notifications are EVIL.

The other day I was sitting in a meeting, watching a presentation, when I noticed the constant barrage of IM presence notifications popping on and off in the lower right corner of the presentation laptop's desktop. Approximately one every 15 seconds. "That guy came online" and "The other guy went offline" and "OMG the third guy is out for lunch now". It was hard to follow the presentation, to be honest. The funny thing was that the presenter didn't really seem to notice them anymore. Or didn't care, hard to say. In that case: why did he even turn them on in the first place? Oh, wait, he didn't, the messaging client has them activated by default. My advice: turn them off NOW. Usually these things do nothing else than stealing your attention from your actual work, either your conscious or unconscious attention. Seriously, you probably don't need them anyways. If you want to know whether someone is on, just take a peek at the damn contact list, that's what it's there for.

IM new message notifications are EVIL.

Most IM clients have an in-your-face attitude. When there is a new message coming in, it's slapped across the screen, on top of everything else, stealing the focus. Let's say you're typing a mail, looking on your keyboard, as most people do, and a new IM is coming in -- the message window pops up, the cursor is put in the reply box, and you're writing the rest of the sentence (that was supposed to be part of the email) into the messenger window. My advice: change that NOW. My client is configured to get out of my face. When a new message is received, the window is either popping up in the very background of the desktop, not stealing focus, or it is opened minimized in the taskbar. That's enough. I'll see it soon enough, and it doesn't keep me from working.

IM client sounds are EVIL.

Seriously, they might be hilarious at first, but the constant chirping and barking and clingclanging and dingdinging is unnerving. My advice: deactivate sounds NOW. Mostly because you don't want your IM client to steal your attention or your focus, and sounds are the very best way to achieve that. Nice side-effect: your co-workers will start to like you again.

New mail notifications are EVIL.

Many IM or email clients allow you to watch your mailbox, telling you when new mail is coming in. Constantly. That's almost as bad as IM contact status notifications. How the hell are you supposed to follow a train of thought if shit is popping up all the time? Exactly. My advice: turn them off NOW. You have a mail client, you check it every one or two hours anyways, that's enough.

Reduce email polling interval.

Three words: Information inflow paralysis. I get a few hundred mails per day, something like 1 mails per minute. Mostly mailing list mails and bug tracker mails. My advice: Polling for new mails once per hour is enough. YMMV, of course. You have to answer them at some point, or even read them. At least in my profession (engineering, read: coding and fixing things) I have to do real work somehow, and I won't get anything done if I stare at my inbox all day long.

Now suggesting this I often hear the argument "But I am supposed to answer mails right away!". Really? I mean, really REALLY? I would be surprised. If I had to venture a guess I'd say that isn't true for most people. Unless you're working at NORAD and waiting for clearance to bomb Utah or Thuringia from space, it's probably okay to take an hour or two to reply to a new mail. So what I do is keeping my mail client minimized, and taking a peek every hour.

Email client: Use filters, for the love of God, USE FILTERS.

As mentioned above, I get hundreds of emails. I'd be pulling my hair out if I had to sift through them manually. Therefore, I set up filtering rules in my email client (I use Thunderbird 3alpha, by the way). When new mails are coming in, they are checked against ~3 dozen filters. They are tagged with the name of the mailing list, they are checked for particular keywords and filtered by senders -- and tagged accordingly, too. Once that is done, everything that is tagged is moved out of the inbox into a huge archive. In addition, I have a number of saved searches; one for every mailing list, one for every keyword or topic. I can see on a glimpse how many new mails came in via any given mailing list. I can see on a glimpse whether there are new mails dealing with that particular project XYZ I am working on. But first and foremost, the only stuff left in my inbox is everything that has not been processed, and that's usually the new mail for me. No bug reports, no mailing list mails, just stuff I should probably read right away. Also, the other mails are sorted into neat piles for easy consumption whenever I have the time. So I can see that the clown-workshop-participants@example-company.com list has 3218 new mails, but I also know that this is not important and can wait.

I've seen the inbox of some of my co-workers, and at any given time they have a few hundreds or (deity forbid) thousands of unsorted mails in there. No kidding. I mean, WTF. How can you not feel totally overwhelmed with that many mails, read or not? It's clogging your mind, get rid of it.

Email client: Keep your inbox clean.

Read.
Answer/process.
Tag and archive / move to related folder.

If your inbox is full, even with emails already answered, then your unconsciousness thinks something like "OMG more work" and blocks your thoughts. No good.

Email client: use threading.

Threaded view is great since you don't lose the context of a discussion. It's a matter of taste, of course. I like it. You might not. Nice side effect: you can collapse threads.

Desktop: Delete all redundant and useless icons.

If you open your laptop and see ~200 icons on your desktop, and you don't think that's too much, you're crazy. (I'm not making this up, I've seen desktops like that.) Get help. Without knowing your desktop, I'm sure you could delete half of it without missing anything afterwards.

Sum up.

These are just a few things that come to my mind. I know that thinking about setting up 20 or 30 different email client filter rules might be a bit off- putting, but think about it -- it might be worth it. You might be spending an hour or two, but imagine the benefits: a clean inbox, more room to breathe, less crap your eyes see and which causes your to ponder all the time, knowingly or unknowingly.

All of these things work for me personally. As I've said, YMMV. But I found that jumping through one or two hoops, like reconfiguring your IM client or adjusting your email client, was a good investment of time that helped me deal with all the information that comes my way and the amount of work in front of me.

Maybe it works for you, too. Who knows.

Post It #15

2007-02-14T15:17:13Z

Valentine’s card, JR style. I love his subtle ways.

Every year my company puts out a table full of construction paper, scissors, stickers and markers for folks to build their own valentine. This is why they shouldn’t let me near that table.

Security done right. Microsoft doesn’t fool around when it comes to strong passwords:

Your password must be at least 18770 characters and cannot repeat any of your previous 30689 passwords. Please type a different password. Type a password that meets these requirements in both text boxes.

Kaffe + Crosso

2007-02-13T09:52:11Z

Vor ein paar Wochen hat ein "Discount-Bäcker" in Trudering aufgemacht. Ich vermutete, dass es sich um einen "keine Bedienung, niedrige Preise"-Laden handelt, war mir aber nicht sicher.

Gestern abend sitz ich im Bus, auf dem Weg heim, und seh' durchs Dunkel das erleuchtete Schaufenster. Letzteres mit einem neuen, handgeschriebenen Vermerk.

"Kaffe + Crosso 1.50€".

Was zum Teufel ist ein "Crosso"? Und "Kaffe"? Huh? Verwirrung.

Heute morgen hab ich dann mal reingeschaut und mit der Chefin geplaudert. Die Geschichte nahm dann innerhalb von 15 Sekunden Züge einer Ohnsorg-Theater- Aufführung an.

Ich: "Guten Morgen, ich hätte gern das, was Sie da im Fenster bewerben… was auch immer das ist."

Chefin: "Haha… Kaffee und Croissant. Ist falschgeschrieben, oder?"

Ich: "Ich fürchte ja. Aber hey, es hat mich neugierig gemacht!"

Chefin: "Ich weiss nicht genau, wie man ‘Croissant' schreibt. Hey [Angestellte], wie schreibt man ‘Croissant'?"

Angestellte: "Puh… äh… ich weiss es nicht aus dem Kopf."

Chefin: "Ah, okay. [Angestellter], komm mal her. Hier sind Stifte, schreib das Angebot nochmal richtig auf die Scheibe."

Angestellter: "Wieso, was ist falsch?"

Chefin: "Da steht ‘Crosso', das stimmt nicht. Und ‘Kaffe' ist auch nicht richtig."

Angestellter: "Woher soll ich denn jetzt wissen, wie man das schreibt?"

Ich: (etwas ungläubig) "C-r-o-i-s-s-a-n-t."

Angestellter: "Was? Nochmal, langsamer."

Ich: "C-r-o-i-s-s-a-n-t. Aber dort an der Theke stehen ca. 5 verschiedene Preisschilder, auf denen es steht. Nehmen Sie doch einfach eins von denen und schreiben Sie es ab."

Angestellter: (murmelt, nimmt die Stifte, geht raus und beginnt zu schreiben)

Chefin: "… Ey, das ist falsch! Nimm halt das Schild!"

Der Kaffee war übrigens okay, und das Croissant auch ganz gut.

Post It #14

2007-02-12T11:04:37Z

Quote of the moment. Simon on SEO, SMO and TLA’s:

SMO, or "Social Media Optimisation" — digg spamming now has its own TLA.

Real life recursiveness. Best warning sign EVER. A sign warning about itself. Classic “WTF?” moment. This is deep.

On Mistakes. Glass Maze: Mistakes were made—an angry, yet polite, essay on political semantics.

So if a guy’s ever caught cheating on his wife, say, he could tell her: “Yes, intercourse with someone other than you may have taken place. Ejaculation could have resulted. And I take full responsibility for this unfortunate set of circumstances, as they occurred under my watch.”

Text on the web. The Onion nails what’s wrong with most text on the web, even though they aren’t even trying. The image itself is pretty funny, but it’s a good metaphor also.

Post It #13

2007-02-08T09:24:27Z

Swinging big. Yahoo! Pipes is live! Go play around with it. It’s really good stuff with almost limitless possibilities. I didn’t work on it personally, and I’m speaking from an end-user perspective. Jeremy Zawodny, Tim O’Reilly and Ed Ho (one of the Pipes developers) described the product in detail earlier today already, so go read. And play. Have fun! Awesome job, esteemed colleagues.

And now the weather. Quote of the day [via Beryl]:

You know it’s cold out when teenagers actually wear coats.

Chair folding. Interesting video. I see real practical use for a product like this. Not for everyday, of course, but every now and then…

Sociality. I am aware that this is not a valid word, but then again, this is not really a valid page either. Hey, I had to put it somewhere…

getYear(). getYear. No, not that year! is a funny list of bad Javascript getYear() practices. Stuff like that is both awful and funny:

var year=RightNow.getYear(); if (year==106){year="2006";}

Outages, Overselling, Onwards!

2007-02-07T21:43:16Z

Earlier today Uli, co-worker, shell superman and father to the freakin’ cutest kid on the face of Earth, told me that while my blog frontpage was fine, he couldn’t access anything else—he always got empty pages.

Quickly digging in, I found out that my webserver was sending out some silly information—under certain circumstances (right type of browser etc.) you’d experience no problems, but when using anything else (for example, everything but my own Firefox setup) you’d get, well, bubkis. The error.log was quickly filling up, complaining about Zend APC somethingsomething, stuff I had neither touched nor control over anyways.

Apparently the really friendly, but by now obviously overwhelmed folks at Dreamhost had re-configured something without notice (at least I didn’t get one), which made my site, a rather standard WP install, run haywire. Awesome.

So I packed up my wee blog and finally moved it over to my Media Temple (gs) grid server account.

Don’t get me wrong: Dreamhost is nice. They are rather responsive, always friendly, and most of the time, the hosting quality is good. But that is the point: it’s just good. Six years ago, when I signed up with DH, it was fabulous. They weren’t overselling back then, and it was a really great hoster. Over the years I ran several sites there, some big, some small, all was smooth sailing. And then, a few years ago, the quality started to deteriorate. The were the occasional hiccups, then outages, power failures, hardware failures, routing problems, etc. etc. They always explained what went wrong, and reading and understanding helped to deal with the question that had arisen during these downtimes.

But at some point, well, explaining just didn’t cut it anymore for me. First and foremost, I want good service, period. Whether you charge fees of $8 or $80—I don’t care, the price should match the claims. They don’t sell different levels of service agreements, they sell different packages of features.

Also, I had recommended Dreamhost to a fair number of people who had signed up as well, based on my recommendation. And when things went downhill, I felt somehow responsible for the problems these guys had, since I had trusted my judgement, and now had to deal with bad quality.

Then there is the once-fabled Web Panel. Six years ago, it was the “shiznit”, if you catch my meaning. Well, time moved on, but the panel didn’t evolve, and even though it still does its job, it feels like it’s over six years old.

And then the features. All those features. This plethora of features. With their kind-of-working implementations. Once again, don’t get me wrong: I like features. But I’d rather have a few features less, but practical implementations. An example: they offer Jabber support. If you have a DH hosting account, you can set up as many Jabber servers as your heart desires. And you can add users using the web panel! That’s great! Now here’s the kicker—you can only add or remove them, and that’s it. Now I have a Jabber account on my zottmann.org server there (naturally) with a lot of contacts, but I forgot my password. And …so did my client after an update. But to change the password, I’d need to log in to the account first, which I can’t for obvious reasons. And the DH web panel only allows me to add or remove users, no editing possible. In my eyes, this is a sub-optimal implementation, which exists in this form since July 29, 2002.

I am aware that I am not without fault here, I’ve made mistakes. For example, I could’ve set up and configured my own Jabber/XMPP server, but didn’t. While that was clearly stupidity (hindsight is 20-20, after all), it’s not the point—I’m describing just one feature that, while being present, is severely lacking needed functionality, and showing a lackluster implementation.

Maybe I outgrew the service, I don’t know. At the moment I’m just a bit miffed, and contemplating which of my sites I should move next.

I wish I wouldn’t have to, that’s all.

OpenID & CardSpace

2007-02-07T11:28:21Z

Oiy. Microsoft announces interoperability between CardSpace and OpenID:

On the heels of the Windows® CardSpace™ general availability launch in Windows Vista™, Microsoft demonstrated momentum with industry partners that are working to apply this technology to help consumers realize a more confident online experience. This includes the announcement of collaboration on use of Windows CardSpace with the OpenID 2.0 specification. Through the support of the WS-Trust-based Windows CardSpace experience, consumers can take advantage of increased security against phishing attacks without adding complexity to their identity management experience.

Some clarifications and what it all means by JanRain CEO Scott Kveton [via]:

JanRain will never require users of our libraries or services to use Windows CardSpace™. We offer support for this technology as another option for users much like using our Safe SignIn and Personal Icon technologies on MyOpenID.com. We’ll also continue to support the OpenID efforts going on with Mozilla and Firefox.

(For more meat, read Scott’s blog post.)

It’s still sinking in at this point, but damn, this is big.

Post It #12

2007-02-05T21:16:33Z

Technorati WTF. Technorati launches their WTFsystem. I see the possibility of serious abuse, but we’ll see whether I am too paranoid. Anyways, the short summary:

Know something that’s hot? Explain why! This is your opportunity to write a quick explanation for the buzz around a popular subject. No blog required!

getElementsByClassName() in Firefox 3. Native, built-in! Because John said so.

Get your URLs straight. A good explanation why everyone should be using disambiguated URLs by (of course) Mr. Willison. (Now all I need to do is “fix” my site.)

Presently. Apparently Google is working on a presentation tool. Is anyone really surprised? I ain’t. For the time being, I’ll stick with S5, tho. But I believe Google will be taking a slightly different approach than the creator of S5, i.e. they’ll continue catering to non-geeks.

His name is Rupert

2007-02-05T21:00:31Z

Friday I finally got my new machine delivered to my doorstep: 24’’ iMac, Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, 7600GT.

First impression: it’s huge. Really huge. “A couple of smaller iMacs are orbiting it!”-huge. But very shiny. My 20” Dell flatscreen is still sitting next to it, looking small.

The transition from the Mac mini to the new box was uneventful, almost too easy, if there is such a thing. Next I moved a few gigabytes of porn data over from my PC, the 250GB drive took it with a mere shrug, as expected.

I also installed World of Warcraft/Burning Crusade, since it’s the only game I have lying around for OSX at the moment. (Which reminds me, I also have Uru and Warcraft III and should probably take them for a spin as well.)

Short verdict: frickin’ sweet. 1920×1200px, all settings cranked to max, glow enabled, 16xAF—I get 30-60fps all the time, no matter where I am. One thing that for some reason doesn’t work, tho, is FSAA. Apparently the 7600GT doesn’t do FSAA in WoW, but it’s a known problem, and I hope they’ll fix it at some point. That said, it’s not like the lack of anti-aliasing is really apparent. :)

Also, the box doesn’t really break a sweat running anything. For example, the CPUs hover around 20% while playing WoW. Even when converting AVI videos to something my iPod can handle it was blazingly fast, yet quiet and still responsive, the way it should be. The difference between a single G4 Mac mini and a Core 2 Duo iMac 24” is nothing short of breathtaking. (If it wasn’t, I’d be seriously disappointed anyways.) It performs admirably.

I named it Rupert.

Sweet Microsoft-related Irony

2007-02-01T01:41:14Z

Today is the day Vista is launched by many happy faces at Microsoft. (The World stood still for a very short moment… it blinked, shrugged, and continued to spin, feeling indifferent.)

Today is the day I placed an order for a new machine. It will be big, and I will be very happy the day it’ll arrive—this Friday, if all goes well.

No real connection between these two fantastic events. By the way, one of them excites me to a degree I can’t really communicate, the other… eh… not so much.

Abstruser Moment des Tages

2007-01-31T22:44:20Z

Vorhin im XXXLutz-”Restaurant”.

Kellner: “Was darf ich Ihnen bringen?”

Carlo: “Ich möchte das Tagesangebot, die vier Weißwürscht mit ‘nem Weißbier.”

K: “Nein.”

C: “Was?”

K: “Nein, möchten Sie nicht.”

C: “Möchte ich nicht?”

K: “Nein, die sind grauenvoll. Ganz ehrlich. Wenn ich Sie die bestellen lasse, dann seh ich Sie nie wieder. Bestellen Sie lieber irgendwas anderes, dann kommen Sie wenigstens vielleicht wieder.”

C: ”… Okay, ich nehm dann die Berner Würschtl.”

Die sind übrigens klein, mit Käseadern durchzogen, mit labbrigem Speck umwickelt, und waren auch ganz, ganz schlimm. Vor denen hat er mich aber nicht gewarnt, und jetzt frag ich mich, wie furchtbar dann die Weißwürscht gewesen wären.

Post It #10

2007-01-30T14:41:05Z

CSS Well Of Knowledge. 53 CSS-Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without is a nicely done, dense list of cool techniques (with links).

Great quote. By Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (via):

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

Minty! Mint v2. ‘nuff said.

Firebug video. Last week, Joe Hewitt, Firebug developer, visited the Sunnyvale campus to give a tech talk about version 1.0. The video of this very interesting session (choke-full of JS dev goodness) is available now over at YDN. There’s even a downloadable Quicktime version. Go watch.

I’ll now get me my morning coffee. Have a nice day.

Post It #9

2007-01-28T21:54:15Z

Yahoo! meets OpenID. Simon Willison just released his new site, idproxy.net. Basically it’s a wrapper to “transform” your Yahoo! ID into an OpenID. (To put it simple.) It’s making use of Yahoo!s BBAuth system, and it quite nice. Not perfect and fully fleshed out yet, but cool already. And hey, it is secured by monsters!

Buy MS Vista. Seriously, there are so many versions, there’s something for everyone.

Spring? The snow is melting, the sun is out, and we just got back from Lehner’s where we had some excellent Kaiserschmarrn. Life is good.

Post It #8, Comics Edition (Mostly)

2007-01-27T23:47:05Z

1080p!!!1 I don’t know whether technically this qualifies as joke, but I laughed.

Re-roll. Kind of sad, but I’m in pretty much the same spot. Sans the couch.

Wikipedia. xkcd nails the problem with Wikipedia.

Buzz donuts. [via [JR]4] [Scientist develops caffeinated doughnuts]5. Oh yes. Each donuts contains the caffeine of approximately two cups of coffee.

Post It #7

2007-01-24T22:48:03Z

Chocolate Covered SQL. This particular entry at The Daily WTF is hilarious. Even tho it’s unbelievable wrong, the screenshot of this one Google Accounts captcha page is hilarious.

Nerds! You know you’re a nerd when you read a spam email with the subject “Do You SUFFER from CVS?” (in this case the acronym stands for “computer vision syndrome”—whatever that may be), and the first thing that comes to your mind is “Yes, Subversion is so much better”.

Snow. The winter has finally arrived. About time.

Post It #6

2007-01-23T15:54:51Z

BookmarkID? Ka-Ping Yee came up with a funny idea on how to battle phishing using browser bookmarks.

Google Earth Space Art. [via Mr. Willison] Space Invaders on Google Maps/Earth. Great. :)

Amen. Mr. Alfke, you’re absolutely right:

“[A]nyone who’ll voluntarily use ‘vi’ in the 21st century will put up with anything. [..] And that goes for ‘emacs’ too [..] I thought emacs was really cool, in 1986. That’s when it was really cool to have a DEC VT220 terminal in my dorm room with a 9600 baud connection to a VAX running BSD 4.3.”

Frag Mama! Der Michl ist im SZ-Magazin! Knüller. War ganz überrascht, als ich ihn da sah. Junge, aus Dir wird nochmal was!

Social whitelisting with OpenID, my take

2007-01-23T00:48:18Z

When I read Simon’s proposal about social whitelisting with OpenID this morning, I was immediately intrigued by the idea. Basically, he’s suggesting that by whitelisting trusted OpenIDs, sharing these lists among peers, and using them to decide whether to place a new comment on your own blog in a moderation queue or not, a group of people could build a working, trust-based protection against comment spam(mers).

Go read. It’s good stuff. I’ll wait.

[…]

Welcome back.

Now, I was pondering this while walking home from the bus. Mainly, I was thinking how to make this approach technically feasible. I doubt anyone would be willing to manually collect all the whitelists of his peers by hand. Well, at least I wouldn’t be. So, a polling mechanism would be needed.

Let’s say you have a cronjob gizmo that polls your peers’ whitelists once a day. I think in order to end up with a working implementation that doesn’t require much work or time once built, we’d need to come up with a standardized URL scheme. This would allow for simple inclusion of new trusted sources. For example, my whitelist would be accessible under [http://carlo.zottmann.org/trust/whitelist/][2] (example, my OpenID is carlo.zottmann.org, but the URL is not working right now). Yours would be stored at http://[OpenID]/trust/whitelist/.

Now if I decide to trust another netizen’s judgement when it comes to other people, I’d simply add her/his OpenID (for example, [http://my.open.id.omg/][3]) to my imaginary polling mechanism, which would know where to look for the whitelist—at http://[OpenID]/trust/whitelist/, in our case that’d mean [http://my.open.id.omg/trust/whitelist/][4].

Of course this implies that you have added OpenID delegation to your blog/site. Now if you move to another ID provider, you’d simply adjust the delegation, your ID would stay the same. As would the whitelist URL. You could even place on another machine, as long as the URL remains the same—http://[OpenID]/trust/whitelist/.

Now, when you decide I’m totally out of my mind after making a few bad choices about who to include in my whitelist, you’d simply “unsubscribe” from my whitelist, and that’d be it. On the next caching run our imaginary mechanism would weed out my list of trusted OpenIDs.

Another idea would be something like feed autodiscovery, but for whitelists, although I’m not so sure about that. This would probably allow for more flexible implementation; then again I don’t find the idea of adding the line &amp;lt;link rel="alternate" type="text/plain" href="http://carlo.zottmann.org/trust/whitelist/"/&amp;gt; (example) to my header each and every time I decide to try a new Wordpress theme appealing. (Maybe I should switch to another blogging engine, but yeah… you know how it is.) A simple standardized URL would be, well, simpler. Of course that’s a personal opinion. Update: Mike is absolutely right (see comments), it’s silly to mention delegation while turning down the idea of whitelist autodiscovery. I somehow still prefer the notion of having a default location.

Well, it’s just an idea. I’m probably not the first to think about it, but as I’ve said, I promised myself I’d write about those things this year, instead of just mumbling inaudible while riding the bus home.

Opinions?

Mini Review: "The Fountain"

2007-01-22T00:23:24Z

After a good brunch with our good friends Seyhan, Daniela, Manfred and Hendrik, Dana and I set out to watch The Fountain today, starring Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz.

Even two hours after leaving the theater I am still stunned and deeply touched by the movie.

What’s it about? Yes, well, good question. To me, the movie wasn’t much about a story but about a feeling, or better, about feelings. The movie emanates a distinctive sadness, and yet manages to be full of hope; and it is seriously the first movie that really, really, captured the earnestness of true love.

Not by displaying big budget, singing and dancing and flashy pictures, but by having everything fit together perfectly: a strange and gripping tale, seriously great acting, wonderful aurals (it’s not just music) and working, breathtaking visuals.

I have a hard time describing it, sorry. If there ever was a movie that had the faintest hint of a soul, it must be this one.

It is not for everyone, but we were both awed by it. Seeing it was a gift, at least to me.

Follow-up To "teh shiny" Rant

2007-01-22T00:07:20Z

Apparently, for whatever reason, people came here and read my mad rant about Jabber, OpenID And “teh shiny’‘. To be perfectly honest, I was somewhat surprised about that. Anyways, allow me to address some responses.

Peter Saint-Andre answered with some interesting numbers. (He is Executive Director of the XMPP Standards Foundation, Director of Standards at Jabber Inc., Chair of the XMPP Council, and managing editor of the standards process followed by the XMPP Standards Foundation.)

[T]here are 40-50 million people using Jabber technologies these days, but most of them probably don’t even know it since they think they’re using Google Talk, Live Journal Talk, Chikka, IM services from NTT or BellSouth or Gizmo or whomever, presence services like Jaiku and Twitter, etc. Or they work for FedEx or HP or Adobe or EDS or just about any Wall Street bank and those companies all use Jabber for their in-house IM service. Or they’re in the Marines or work for some other government agency that has deployed Jabber. Or they’re using something that doesn’t even look like IM because it’s in fact a network monitoring service or workflow system or whiteboarding app that just happens to use the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol to send around some XML in real time. Or. Well, you get the picture. Jabber/XMPP is fundamentally infrastructure, not a shiny client. Think HTTP, not Firefox.

Very good point, and very good numbers. (Seriously, I am actually, truly wow’ed.) And I apologize for me not mentioning the infrastructure part. It is part of XMPP, of course, but I was talking about wide-spread adoption of XMPP/Jabber by the average IM user. XMPP is a superior protocol in my eyes, and I was wondering why it didn’t take the public IM landscape by storm. That said, as impressive these numbers are, in my eyes corporate or governmental clients and services really count, mostly because in these cases the employer (be it a company or a country) dictate which client to use. Now if all these people would use XMPP IM clients at home as well, then that would really make a splash.

Now I was wondering why not everyone is using an IM client that uses this superior protocol, and the reason is: there is no client that does really impress the public. Now, please, don’t get me wrong: There are a lot of good Jabber clients out there that appeal to devs and geeks. Hell, I’ve used a fair share of them myself. Some of them are pretty damn cool, others not so much, and that’s okay. But now, even if you kick and scream about the awesomeness of IM client XYZ, the question remains:

“Why is Joe A. IMuser still using ICQ & Co. instead of a good, slick Jabber client?”

Think about it. We’re talking about an good selling point that is heard by the ungeeky masses.

Phil Wilson asked in the comments:

OpenID is for logging in to things. I look forward to your suggestion of a killer app for “logging in to things”. Also, your [..] comparison is fatally flawed. An IM infrastructure and protocol has a default application, an IM server and client, OpenId has, what? a login form?

I was under the impression that it was an identity management platform/protocol. But in the end, yes, that means it is for logging in to things. ;) But as I’ve said, the “killer application” for OpenID could be something quite simple. For example, being an integral part of the Wordpress standard package so every WP installation would allow OpenID authentication by default. Yes, no, maybe? Well, I don’t know…

Really, I don’t have (m)any answers. I was just going with my new years resolution to blog more about what I think about. :)

p>Anyways: In the end, I think Mike sums it up best>

[I]n short, the public has no imagination when it comes to protocols. The fact that Skype took off has nothing at all to do with the backend communication layer, except insofar as that layer was better at getting through firewalls than anything else on the market. People used the protocol, not because of the protocol, but because of the feature the protocol enabled. When you say that Jabber will take off as soon as it has a client with some killer features, I don’t think that actually says anything about Jabber itself: you’re simply arguing for a shinier client. If Y! implemented the killer “Smilmiis” (How’s that for a name? :) ) in Messenger, people would use it. If AOL did the same, people would use it.

Well put, thank you. (The “mi”s in “Smilmiis” stand for “Mike”, I believe.)

On a personal note: I know that I often lack the ability to pinpoint what I am pondering, or where I am going with a rant. I know that. I hope that more frequent blogging and “public pondering” will help me improve that ability.

Also, I might be totally off my rocker. That’s why I tagged it with “rant”.

Post It #5

2007-01-21T03:23:27Z

Summing up YouTube. xkcd does an excellent job of taking a snapshot of YouTube in one single comic strip.

It’s art! jr has an iNsight

Apple is not a business. It’s an art co-op.

Project Censored: Top 25 Censored Stories of 2007. Interesting list. I “liked” #2, Halliburton Charged with Selling Nuclear Technologies to Iran.

How old is the Grand Canyon? Park service won’t say:

Grand Canyon National Park is not permitted to give an official estimate of the geologic age of its principal feature, due to pressure from Bush administration appointees.

Dick in a box. IKEA instructions for making a DIAB.

AG? Nine year old Wired story, still fascinating and mindboggling:

Skeptics had a field day when a scientist claimed in 1996 that gravity could be negated. Now his findings are being investigated in laboratories worldwide.

Solid State Disk Changes The Game [via Simon]:

And, it will change the way your software runs. When there’s little penalty in saving to disk, there’s no reason not to. Your changes are stored as your writing the memo, or playing with the spreadsheet.

linkblog.toggle()

2007-01-20T18:12:12Z

I am thinking about my linkblog for a few days now, and whether to continue it or not.

On one hand, it is kind of comfortable to just share items in Google Reader or to just store another bookmark using Yahoo! MyWeb. (An hourly cronjob is parsing both RSS feeds and feeding it to my site.)

On the other hand, I think the Post Its are the better format. It takes more time (and more work, even) to compile them over the course of a day, but I am more flexible in how to present them. Plus they are part of my main syndication feed.

Hmm.

Bye, linkblog. It’s been a nice experiment.

PS: That also means the related syndication feed will be deleted as well, of course.

Post It #4

2007-01-20T17:27:03Z

Parenting. Mr. Pilgrim on raising little humans:

Parenting is also like that Star Trek episode where they’re acting as anthropologists, watching a civilization evolve at like 100 times normal speed. (Isn’t there a Star Trek episode like that? Well there should be, damn it, I’m trying to tell a story here.) You wake up one morning and say, “Oh my God, Jim, they’re using tools! Next week they’ll be building spaceships!”

Roof status. Still there, unharmed. No storm-related damage at all. Apparently my sister wasn’t quite as lucky—her cellar/basement is a swimming pool now. Oiy.

News reader market shares. TechCrunch asks How big is Google Reader?, and while the chart in that post looks interesting, it doesn’t say much without Google Reader telling the Feedburner bot how many subscribers are there for any given feed.

Uncle Carlo. My baby sister is working on developing two little humans in her womb. Soon, I’ll be an “uncle”. The jury’s still out on whether I should feel proud (current notion) or old. Congratulations, Claudia & Tino.

Carlo Zottmann: Entirely Unsuspicious Human Person.

★ Hi, I'm Carlo.

Post-It #26

Post-It #25

The big blog move of 2012

Tally

The new kid

But…

The future

And finally…

Movember 2011: €300! [English]

Movember 2011: €300! [Deutsch]

100 Best Random Letter Combinations

Movember 2011 [English]

Movember 2011 [Deutsch]

A Few Notes About… Chef + Ubuntu 10.04 + Ruby 1.9.2 + RVM

Review: Saints Row 2 (360)

My Favourite Chrome Extensions

My essentials

Nice to have

Not sure yet

The Guardian on Recycling in Germany

The Blind Man Who Taught Himself To See

Space Tourism: One Giant Leap for Researchers

What happens after Yahoo! acquires you

On Apple's new subscription model

Cutting Back On Mindless Sharing

Ephemera is now open source

Introducing Your New YUIDoc Theme

Still running: Minimalist, Week 15

NYTimes: Rivals Seize on Troubles of Facebook

Still running: Vibrams, Week 2

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday, Sunday

Still running: Going Minimalist

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Friday, April 23, 2010

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Ephemera v1.1

Assorted MacRuby Snippets #2

Apps with more than just one framework

Accessing the Keychain with MacRuby

Step 1: Build the wrapper, EMKeychain.dylib

Step 2: Using it

Step 3: Mopping up

Step 4: Get yourself a beer

Ephemera for Mac

Preface

How it came to be

Motivation

Enough of the inane banter, what is it?

Dev notes

That's all, folks

Xcode & MacRuby: Embed, Compile, Fix

Assorted MacRuby Snippets

Get values fromInfo.plist

Open an URL in the default browser:

Run an AppleScript

Delete nodes/tags from an XML document

MacRuby compilation step fixes

Mini Review: 2009

What They Call The "Real Life"

Friends & Family

Games & Movies

Verdict

How to reset your keyboard on OSX

City At World's End, 58 Years Later

Tools of the trade

On the desk

In the dock, in my mind

Dev Env acting up when trying to do bulk operations

The big blog move of 2009

Twittwoch München

Excellent Localmemcache

Warnfarbenkoalition

Upgrading to Snow Leopard

Step 1: Build the wrapper, `EMKeychain.dylib`

Get values from`Info.plist`