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.
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.
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.
Wir haben heute einen Baum gepflanzt im Garten. Einen Fächerahorn. Juhu!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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] Sony’s planned Home service looks pretty rad. 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!
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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%.
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!
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 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.