After building community sites for a while by now I think I have grasped the social dynamics blueprint of community sites to some degree. For example: most community-centered sites are starting out small (naturally), then gathering a relatively small loyal following (#1), then gaining momentum (#2), attracting more and more regulars (#3) and – after a while – die (#4). The circle of life, so to speak. But the devil’s in the details.
Okay, so you want to use SpamBayes on your mail server in order to enjoy working with your webmail or IMAP again. Here’s how to do it. Your DH mail account needs to have shell access. Install the latest Python in your $HOME directory. Install SpamBayes (I recommend the CVS version as the official/stable builds wouldn’t install for me) as described in the paragraph “Procmail” on the linked page. Using your webmail interface or IMAP, set up the following new folders: Spam, TrainingHam, TrainingSpam, Unsure.
Little follow-up to my last work post – now I am comfortable with giving away details. So, we got the new boss, restructuring the tech/server/CMS department and our web/production department. So far, so good. Luckily, “restructuring” (in this case) doesn’t mean “lay-offs”; instead, a few new people are coming aboard. The departments are getting reordered big time, they are actually trying to introduce a higher degree of structure, people are shuffled around and so on.
I hereby proclaim the new official term to describe the casting show / petridish cloning boy/girl band “music”: ProstiPop. “Prosti” as in “prostitutes”, “pop” as in “pop music”. It’s not that far fetched if you think about it. They want fame and money now, without much work (face it, kids… one or two months in a “talent camp” is nothing compared to a life full of devotion and hard work), they are willing to sell their soul as well as their bodies/looks (as in “they’re just puppets, Jim”) for media coverage, and they are fine with the idea to not have old friends as band members but complete strangers.
Big restructuring is going on in the office. For the first time in two- and-a-half years I have the feeling we’re moving. I’m not fully sure yet it’s forward we’re going to - at least not in the short run; in the long term, we probably are, yes. (There are still a couple of people we need to get rid of before we can get up to full speed, I think.
I’m a Bloglines user for, what, exactly 4 months by now, and it just crossed my mind that it is more or less my central one-stop website. I read my daily news with Bloglines, I read my blog subscriptions with Bloglines, I read most of my comics with Bloglines, I read my geek/programming news with Bloglines, I read my gaming news with Bloglines. And best of all, I can do it everywhere I have a browser with web access, and I don’t have to read anything twice or to install.
I’ve been toying around with Dean Allen’s mui funky Textile for a while by now, and finally, as I’m approaching a certain state of development in G-Blog.net v2, I think I have a use for it. It’ll most likely be the formatting gizmo of choice for the next version of this very site. Anyways, while the original version 2.0 beta is great, it’s somewhat annoying to have as part of an object-oriented framework, since this version is basically just a number of functions.
After reading Ender’s Game a couple of months ago, I’ve almost immediately put all Ender books I could find on my Amazon wishlist. This X-Mas, I got the four next books in the series. Tonight, I’ve finished Speaker of the Dead. What an exceptional book. Wow. Even the excellent Ender’s Game looks pale in comparison… Not sure what else to say, still to overwhelmed.
After being annoyed with spam emails for quite some time now (who isn’t?), I was setting up some perimeter defenses to keep the viagra and penis enlargement offers out of my eyesight. SpamAssassin on my server (its threshold is set pretty high after it accidently filtered out some good mails); Firebird’s spam filters are working for me at home, and the SpamBayes Outlook Plugin is keeping me sane in the office.
I’m not going to answer people anymore when I’m in the bathroom. You’re outside, I’m inside for stuff not of concern to you, there’s a closed door between us, and I am not crying for help. So - go away. If I’d want to communicate, I’d either face you or contact you, but I’d not hide in a little box to do it. Get the message? GO AWAY. Thank you. And Happy New Year.
My big “semi-sister” accepted an honest proposal made to her by her boyfriend. In short, they’ll get married. Congrats, my dear Susi. I’m so glad you finally got your ass up, Andreas. ;) I already thought I’d see her implode with excitement over this relationship before you were able to ask her, hehe. This reminds me that my baby sister and her boyfriend decided to get married a while ago as well.
A breakthru for mankind: I’m writing this entry using my lap. Well, the iBook sitting on my lap, to be precise. I love this thing. (The iBook.) Great piece of hardware, definitely a keeper. Which, of course, is directly connected to the rather hefty price tag. Then again, it was a breeze to set up and connect to the Internet, too, and it’s a rather pleasant experience alltogether after all so far.
Wired.com: An implanted male hormonal contraceptive is now being tested. It works in much the same way as its female counterpart, which uses the hormones estrogen and progestin to shut off the release of eggs to prevent pregnancy. In the male version, testosterone and progestin are used to turn off sperm production. “The hormones work by suppressing the production of two other hormones from the brain – LH (luteinizing hormone) and FSH (follicle-stimulating hormone),” said Dr.
Hendrik/Morn and I are back on improving Wakka, his/our little PHP/mySQL wiki engine. A Subversion repository and a neatly installed bugtracking system definitely helped our will to continue fixing this sweet little bugger. ;)
I’m writing PHP code on a regular basis, and I need to document my code. Problem: I’m lazy, and 9 out of 10 times, the basic phpDoc comments for functions or variables/properties are semantically identical. Solution: cDocPHP. It’s a little script I hacked together. It’s neither neatly written nor particularly great nor commented (hehe), but what it does, it does quite okay. So what does it do? Simple: it’s a little form where you can input a package name, your name (i.
Another Sobig worm is making its rounds. It doesn’t make use of any hidden security holes, it solely utilizes the stupidity of people. I still can’t understand why people are opening attachments from people they don’t know. So the worm is spreading like a fucking wildfire, scans the infected PC for email addresses, and sends out mails using the found addresses as either sender or recipient. Somewhere, it found some of my old company email addresses, and now I’m getting tons of “you suck, please fuck yourself and die noisily” mails from virus walls and other companies' security countermeasures which think I sent those mails.
Yesterday I went to a class reunion. We graduated 13 years ago and obviously a lot has happened. The evening was actually quite pleasant, and I had some good conversations. Hell, I even managed to make a demon from the past disappear… and that was a great thing. Well, it was a good night, and now I’m back home in Munich. Somehow, this evening with all the talking, all the memories of the past, this reminiscence as such, makes me feel even more at home here, away from the places of my school days.
Watched X-Men 2 last night. Hoo boy, what a movie. All in all I can say that I’ve enjoyed this one more than X-Men … it’s longer, there are more butts being kicked, Wolverine is opening some cans of whoop-ass (although - for my taste - still not enough), and the story processes nicely. Nightcrawler is da bomb. That’s all I can say w/o spoiling anything. 🤷
TL;DR: An afternoon suffering through the performance of an improv theatre troupe is likely not going to save the company after all. The whole staff had to participate in a mandatory “workshop” today. Until we’ve arrived at the location on afternoon we had no clue what would happen; being the sceptical bitches we are my co-workers and I declared that if this would turn out to be one of those “get off your shoes and hold eachothers hands” type of thing, we’d leave the scene immediately.
Can someone please explain to me why I all get with Dana’s new and tres cool NetMD recorder is crap software with a Flash 5 frontend? This POS called SonicStage is supposed to allow the user to easily transfer music (MP3, CD, WAV, WMA) to a NetMD player. That’s the point: it’s supposed to do that. What you get is a different story. A cluttered interface, a gross insult to usability and an overall disappointing piece of software.
I just saw the news. Not sure yet what to say, except for this: Godspeed to the scientists who lost their lives today in their pursuit of bringing our species closer to the stars. May you rest in piece.
Everytime I think I’ve seen it all, I open another PHP script of that one special co-worker of mine and find myself staring in painful amazement as I read thru the schizophrenic gibberish that is his code. No real structure, fucked-up yet working hacks built upon older fucked-up yet working hacks, no abstraction at all, and a mess in the first place. The irony is that in order to rewrite the application (that’s what I’m trying to do at the moment) I have to understand what the old code does.
The ice is thin, yet I manage to walk. The air is dry, yet I manage to breathe. The night is falling, yet I manage to see. Hope.
The Toronto Star (via Monoklon.de): “Men, looking for the perfect Christmas present? How about giving up pornography? It’s the best present you could give your wife this year. […] But the crowning argument against pornography is the damage it does to relationships with loved ones. That is what motivates this particular column. The reason I highlight pornography here is because I keep running into it as a pastor. I keep encountering couples whose marriages have been shaken by the husband’s secret – and, inevitably, discovered – use of pornography.
Just got an internal job opening in my office mailbox. Looks like my boss is leaving the company. Now wouldn’t that be nice I he would’ve told us face-to- face… we (the department and he) had an excellent relationship, until we were moved around - and he got a separate office in another part of the building. Things went downhill from there. Did he lose “contact with the base”? I don’t know.