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.

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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.

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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.

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(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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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[][2]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.

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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.

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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!

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

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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).

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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