My Boring Life

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  • The Covers Project

    ,

    Did you ever hear a song and – usually much later – found out that it was a remake? Or „cover“, as it’s called when talking about songs?

    Well, I have. And apparently some other people, too. So they founded a web site called the Covers Project, which is dedicated to list cover versions of old songs, and to enable the average human being to check whether a song they hear on the radio is a cover, or whether the artist has done something really new for a change. (Most of the new songs seem to be covers, don’t you think?).

    Anyways, I personally think that the music business is in great need of some new talents. The music these days is noise to my ears usually, nothing new, in style as well as in songs (covers ;-)). Don’t get me wrong – I think the 80’s did have a lot of non-inspiring music, too, but … well, most of the stuff was at least quite nice. Whereas nowadays something like „Dragostea tin dei“ from o-zone is top of the charts for weeks, which is among the worst pieces of music I ever heard. And this even serves as a great example of covering: This piece of sonic pollution was already covered about … what? One month later? Whew. And the new version was actually worse, if that’s even possible. That speaks volumes about the current music situation, don’t you think?

    Anyways, now a site dedicated to list movie remakes would be needed. I just saw „The Saint“ with Val Kilmer, and I think it’s a remake … at least my mother remembers the same movie with a slightly different storyline, which might be an indication. But I don’t know where to look … 🙂

  • Cigar test

    Today I enjoyed a very good cigar … just on my own. Quite a new feeling, smoking by myself. But nice 🙂 . And now I know what to do when I have finished my thesis: Get some more cigars, and some more wine. Cigars without wine are incomplete.

    Anyways, the cigar of today was a Trinidad, a Robusto I believe (my favourite format!). A very nice taste, strong but smooth, and a long smoke. I should do this more often. (Although it’s quite expensive in the long run …). Yum.

  • Ebay Tücken

    ,

    Ich habe gerade bei Ebay verkauft. Ein Plextor 32fach SCSI CDROM, einen alten TEAC CD-R 55S SCSI Brenner (4fach), einen Adaptec SCSI Controller AHA-2940 UW, ein T-DSL Modem .

    Gesamterlös: 5,50 €

    Wow. Aber so isses nu mal.

    Nachtrag: Die Post hat auch zum 1.1. die Päckchenpreise um 20 cent erhöht … das sind dann nochmal annähernd 20 % weniger gewinn, da ich meine Versandkosten noch vor dem Jahreswechsel berechnet habe … jaja …. 🙂

  • Stern.de single-Test

    Well, well. Ich surfte. Zu Stern.de, wo ich die Ausgabe über Buddhismus bestellen wollte. Auf dem Klo, wo ich inzwischen WLAN habe 🙂 . Ich fand nicht die Zeitschrift (warum eigentlich nicht??), dafür aber einen Single-Test. Also ran an die Maus, und heraus kam folgendes:

    Ergebnis: Sie haben 96 von 111 Punkten erreicht
    Der coole Kater
    Wahnsinn! Sie ziehen Frauen bestimmt an wie ein Magnet. Sie senden die richtigen Signale aus, und Sie wissen, wie Sie Ihre Vorzüge betonen, um auf sich aufmerksam zu machen. Achten Sie aber darauf, dass Ihr Aussehen nicht allzu perfekt wird, weil Frauen dann vielleicht vermuten, dass es nur Masche ist oder dass Sie zu selbstverliebt sind, und das mögen Frauen überhaupt nicht. Sie wollen keinen selbstgefälligen Mann. Ein Frau möchte auf keinen Fall mit ihrem Partner um den Platz vor dem Spiegel streiten.

    Das Schlimme ist, ich war sogar ehrlich – wenn ich das sonst bin kommt meist ein eher vernichtendes Urteil raus. Aber ich fand ja schon immer, der Stern sei besser als die anderen … 😉

  • click-freddy vs. command-line-jason

    Ever been in the situation where you would like to rename some many files all in the same way? Under Windows? Well, I am. And – worsening the problem – I have to do this in about 30 directories with about 5 fies to rename in each one. Under Windows searching The Right Tool(tm) is everyting. So we find 1-4a rename, and LupusRename, both free, small, and not working recursively. Thus unfit for the job.

    Remembering the geek-roots of ours we open Cygwin, get a decent command line with the allmighty Unix command line tools in the back, and just do it:

    find . -name tcp_unicast* | while read a; do b=$(echo $a | sed 's/tcp_unicast/rmi_singleton/g'); mv -f $a $b; done

  • Contraproductive behavior

    , ,

    I just played squash with my old friend Patrick. Usually he beats the sh*t out of me, but naaah – not today :-). I „won“ 2:8 (the two was mine ;-)). And the last match was everything else than a sure win for him. We had about 40 services for nine points, so … well, you can guess what a battle that was.

    After that … we went to the Bar Taunus, where we ate the – cite – „World’s Best Chocolate Cake“ (which is basically made of creamy chocolate only and really is the world’s best chocolate cake) and drank a beer to wash it down.

  • Back at work & Happy Birthday

    ,

    Well, it’s time to finish. That’s why I’m back at work right now, watching my computer crunching down gigabytes of raw data into more usable raw data. Ever noticed a side-effect of faster CPU’s? Tools are getting faster. But hey – it’s faster now, so one can update the features to include more of them. And the tool gets slower. On a faster CPU its execution time will decrease again. Then the features … . Then the CPU … . In the end the tool will be as fast as ever, but only with many more features. Great. Alas I need raw, bloody, unprocessed, basic speeeed – and I don’t get it.

    Well, another more enjoyable event today is Melanie’s birthday:

    Happy birthday, Melanie 🙂

    Her being a lady we don’t speak of her new age here, hehe.

  • Gallery Project: People at New Year

    Ho-ho, it’s done: I’ve started my first photography „Project“. It’s kinda small and not very … well, artsy, simply because it’s solely for myself 😉 . It’s called „People at New Year„, and the name is program.

    I intend to collect photos of people I see sonn after New Year’s Day (within a week at most), every year. I thought it would make a nice statement of my life if I collect which people I see at that special time, and how these guys (and girls …) may change.

    You can look at the start of it in the Gallery, of course 🙂

  • No New Year’s Eve Party …

    ,

    Ah, well, life sucks. I didn’t go. Bad for me. Instead I fulfilled an old „dream“ of mine: I slept at midnight. Yeah-oh.

  • New Year’s Eve Party

    ,

    Well, it’s time – it’s New Year’s Eve, or „Hogmanay„, how the Scots would say. Right now I’m waiting on my friend Max to wake up to go to a New Year’s Eve Party in his hometown Nieder Olm City 😉 . Don’t worry, it’s not a bad thing not to know where that is, hehe.

    But usually I do not like celebrating New Year. It’s stupid, don’t you think? I mean, it’s like the old car sticker saying „same shit – different day„. But I’m not complaining of course, any excuse to get some decent fun and get drunk is a good excuse, hehe. (Nah, really, I can use it right now).

    Actually I’m just thinking back to my last year in Australia – there the very year change is already over, them being six hours in front. I don’t exactly remember what I did that day, but I do remember that I wanted to go to a New Year’s party in the Oyster Bar at the beach, which I didn’t do because I hate going to public parties without knowing anyone there. And I can’t emphasize the word „hate“ enough in that context … . I think I was sitting in the living room with Peter and was getting either pissed or stoned, or both. In retrospect that was a good thing to do, actually. I might have a look at my logbook entries later to refresh my memories. If you want to come along, just look here and be enlightened.

    But another thing I actually do remember is that the time there has been endlessly better than the following time here. So this year was some kind of a wasted year, with much to learn but little to earn. Saying that it should be no surprise to anyone if I say I take the new year as a chance to change some things. Thoroughly.

    And after the last six months … things can only get better.

    See you tomorrow.

  • Converted to WordPress

    Well, I’ve done it. I converted from BlogCMS to WordPress, importing all my posts using my own written (broken link)Nucleus / BlogCMS import script. Worked pretty well for my taste 😉 .

    Anyways, the „new“ default design sucked, so I have installed a design called „silver is the new black“ from Alex King’s WP CSS homepage. That’s only a temporarily solution, though, cause I want to have my old „feeling“ back 😉

  • Browser charset encoding detection

    Well. I was faced with the trouble to force a page to be displayed in UTF-8. But although the Content-type meta parameter of the page was – correctly – set to text/HTML; charset=utf-8, the browsers (IE & Firefox) wouldn’t use this encoding. Instead, latin1 was used all the time, which was undesireable because of the Euro (€) Symbol.

    If you have access to the web server directory you can specify a default encoding within the .htaccess file: Simply add the line AddDefaultCharset utf-8 to .htacces, and everything should work fine.

  • New Photos

    I have uploaded my first photos I took with my shiny new camera. Have a look in the (broken link) Gallery … . Of course only the better ones 😉

  • XMas.

    ,

    Stress?

    No.

    🙂

    Relaxed?

    Yes.

    Great.

  • XMas stress

    Yes, I’m stressed. My foot hurts, my brain aches, and I can’t stand more than five people around me right now. I was shopping for presents, the day before XMas, just like every year.

    And I have found great ones 🙂 . The problem is: I love making presents. That’s why it’s always too expensive to be good – a simple, unpersonal, one-for-all-gift for everyone of my friends just isn’t my thing. Damn. But … still, they’re great. (I usually do have more fun giving them than the people on the receiving end 😉 ).

  • Ocean’s 12

    I read in a newspaper a comment from one of the actors: „The biggest joke was on Catherine [Zeta Jones]: She actually thought we made a real movie“. Well, that sums it up: This movie does not want to be taken seriously, and you can see that all the actors had a lot of fun doing it.

    I personally liked it. Nothing like Ocean’s 11, but definitely not worse. Different. More „fun“. But the end is a bit artificial nonetheless. Anyhow, worth to see in any case.

  • First pictures

    Well, it’s done – I have my new camera. First – boring, stupid – test shots have been taken, and I have given 18 pictures over to an internet service for developing. As soon as I got those pictures back from Fotocommunity prints and they are worth a look I will put them into my gallery.

    With many to follow, I hope 🙂

  • Wenn ich schon mal zum Arzt gehe …

    Ein Besuch beim HalsNasenOhrenarzt und Orhtopäden brachte mir folgendes ein:

    • 3 Stunden Arztaufenthalt
    • Akute Gehörgangsentzündung
    • Beginnender Fersensporn
    • Verkürzte Wadenmuskulatur
    • Vorfall / Schaden / Auffälligkeit des untersten Lendenwirbels
    • Schulterschaden unbekannter Art

    Resultierte in …

    • Lasertherapie
    • 7 Röntgenaufnahmen
    • 2 mal Kernspin (LWS und Schulter)

    Mal schauen, was davon ich so alles für sinnvoll erachte …… 8) . Auf dem Weg morgens zum HNO wurde ich noch durch ein Verkehrswarnsystem auf die geltende Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung aufmerksam gemacht, durch einen roten Blitz, der mir netterweisse mitteilte, ich sei zu schnell.

  • Oly E-300

    Finally, it’s here. I made a short intervention which I call „money spending day“ from now on, and bought myself a new camera and a XMas present :-). Some things are simply necessary.

    The XMas present is a picture, but which one I will not tell until it’s ready – until XMas that means, hehe. But I like it, and my aunt (it’s her present) was suffiently shocked. Half the fun, hehe.

    So probably the picture of the new camera will be the last picture taken with my old one. Shabby thing – can’t even get the focus right on the simplest things.

  • Olympus E-300

    Hehe, have a look at my new camera 🙂 . Well, of course the picture is not the final cam, that’s only the raw material, which will finally be forged into one ;-).

    (lost image here 🙁 )

    But I just checked the stores yesterday, being very surprised that the camera was already in there and available on the market for two days. Alas that thing has the feeling of a very edgy thing of another dimension. It simply is not comfortable when gripping it, although menu structure, camera handling etc. is very intuitive and fast.

    Now I’m in trouble: Do I buy Nikon, which I really do not want to do because they just suck (I had a little disagreement with the customer service), although the D70 just flows into your hands? Or Canon, which is even worse: Good handling, but … plastic!! Or Olympus – the very meaning of the word edge becoming solid matter, but superior optical quality, superior handling, dedicated digital technology, not Nikon, but very few accessories?

    …

    Ah, I think Olypus it will be 🙂 So now it’s time to go spend that money. That’ll be fun! 🙂

  • Verrückte Weihnachten

    Film, Dienstag, 4 € Tag. Glücklicherweise. Denn noch eine sinnlose über-patriotistische Hommage an Weihnachten braucht wirklich niemand.

    Kurzfassung: Tim (Allen) und Jamie (Lee Curtis) haben eine Tochter, die zum Friedenskorps nach Peru fährt. Ein Jahr lang. Über Weihnachten. Also beschließen die beiden, Weihnachten ausfallen zu lassen. Keine Geschenke, keine Spenden, kein Weihnachten – dafür zehn Tage Karibikkreuzfahrt. Soweit also.

    Die Umgebung mag das gar nicht: Die Sekretärin ist sauer, dass sie kein Parfum bekommt, die Nachbarskinder veranstalten eine Belagerung mit dem Sprechgesang „befreit Frosty!!“ (ein Pappschneemann zum aufs Dach binden) vor der Tür, der weihnachtsirre Nachbar lässt die Sternensinger vor dem Haus kampfsingen. So gut also.

    Dann ruft am 24.12. doch noch die Tochter an. Sie ist in Miami und mit ihrem (neuen) Verlobten um halb neun zur alljährlichen Party zu Hause. Ergo: Kreuzfahrt? Was’n das? Weihnachten ist angesagt – und alle helfen jetzt mit, damit die Weihnachtsparty doch noch nett wird. Auch der schräge Nachbar und die dummen Kinder. Und ab hier wirds einfach schlimm.

  • Important things to say

    If he hadn’t said that in May I would have thought he didn’t like XMas shopping:

    „For every fatal shooting, there were roughly three non-fatal shootings. And, folks, this is unacceptable in America. It’s just unacceptable. And we’re going to do something about it.“

    And some things simply are truly … wise:

    „When I’m talking about…when I’m talking about myself, and when he’s talking about myself, all of us are talking about me.“

    More of that is here .

  • Things are improving 🙂

    ,

    Well, things are improving again. I was visiting my uncle in Zurich for his 70th birthday this weekend, and it was pure torture. It started with me getting sick from the train which leaned into curves to drive faster, and had seats much too low to be comfortable. If you ever hear CIS Alpino … run.

    Zurich was extremely nice – the share of girls is much higher there than here in DA City, and – for a change – they look much better in average. Not physical, but … style. Still sick I was continuing on to the party, which started in a non-heated barn, where all guests froze their feet off and I won a bike-home-trainer-contest. Whew. It continued for about six hours with talks, songs, talks, songs, more talks, more songs, a movie, … . Pure hell.

    But of course it was fun to see my younger relatives again (my cousins – about 40 years, my nephews – about 9 years of age), who are truly nice people 🙂 . My … well, nephews Gregor and Tobias were especially fond of me, and I was given the name of „Living Plaything“ by their aunt. I came to the conclusion to wait a little longer before having children. Too stressing. The parent’s lauged at that, the kids wanted to know, why – 15 times in a row. Not having a girlfriend was not an argument, of course. (Liberal Suisse upbringing, eh? 😉 ) Tobias ended that discussion with the statement „Just go get a girlfriend, and then … haaaaaahh!! Then it rocks!!“ No comment … .

    Going back (thank heavens in an ICE) I was in bed at 10pm and had a talk with my tutors at 10am next day. This was relaxing, reassuring and productive, thus this front is cleard, too, now.

    And my new electronic dart board has arrived and already caused a great deal of fun during last evening. Things are definitely improving since yesterday :-))

  • Unhappy and enlightened.

    ,

    It seems to become a “tradition” to write my current mood into the subject line. Well.

    Enlightened because: Did you ever want to know where the name „ACME (Corp.)“ used in all those Bugy Bunny etc. cartoons came from? Here is the answer …

    Unhappy because: I have a little disagreement with my tutors, who behaved in a very weird (and unfriendly) way yesterday.

  • There is a light …

    ,

    … at the end of the tunnel. After a completely rotten day I „won“ 11:2 in squash.

    Oh baby.

  • Keepalive entry …

    ,

    Much has happened since last time I wrote. Nothing worth mentioning, though (remember the title? 😉 ). Anyways, a blog is for writing. So, first thing is I have a new Squash racket. Great. Lost 11:0 first time I used it (of course only because it’s still too unfamiliar). It’s an Oliver Wave 77, weighting about „approximately“ 150 grams altogether.

    (sadly, image lost)

    Further, we are probably going to have dinner on XMas, which is not too easy because most of the restaurants are closed that day. (Do they all want to cook on XMas or is that just … weird??). While searching for an open restaurant I saw something … . Have a look yourself … .

    (sadly, image lost)

    Anyways, this is where we will go, and we will go for dinner, so we probably won’t come into trouble if they want to close at four minutes past half past twelve, hehe.

  • AvP

    … and the story continues 😉 .

    Being happy and peaceful I decided to go see some movies … with a bunch of friends. We went into Alien vs. Predator, expecting nothing but an awfully bad, solid, simple and senseless splatter-movie. What we got was awfully bad, solid, simple and senseless. But no splatter … more like rat-race. With a very stupid romance.

    So if you seek action – go somewhere else. Actually, if you seek anything – go somewhere else. (So if you seek nothing you don’t have to go anywhere at all, especially not in that unique movie 😉 )

  • Triple news

    , ,

    Being frustrated to death this morning I did three things. (Well, if _not _doing anything useful can be called a „thing“ then I did four). First of all I went to the local hardware store and bought some … „Perlatoren“ – whatever the English word might be for this sanitary item.

    But the main thing is: I bought myself a new desk (thing one). That really rocks!! And because that rocks just too much to keep it to myself I wanted to tell people about this. But I couldn’t – I had no really working gallery on my page. But Blog:CMS has one included in the new version, so I downloaded this one and upgraded (thing two). After taking the photos of course (thing three 🙂 ) .

    Now I am happy and peaceful.

  • Bourne Identity, Pt. II

    My almost weekly movies event. Bourne again, or in other words The Bourne Supremacy (I’ll have a look what exactly „supremacy“ means quite soon!). Well, but for once I’m not really pissed having paid 8 € for a movie which bored myself to death.

    Of course, the story is a bit thin, and quire forseeable, but it’s solid Hollywood action. Good actors, solid work, nicely done. … well, apart from the camera – that pseudo-documentary style really sucks (it looked like they tried to save money on the camera stands, everything is shaking as if the camera guy was running around without a tripod and without knowing what to actually film).

    But after all … good work. Nice ending title, too (Moby, „Extreme ways“).

  • Nigeria connection, v2.0: Names

    There are some funny things in life. Nigeria connection got updated: They try to address people by their names to appear more credible. Haha!! However, this lyrical masterpiece of the German language just landed in my inbox. I did not remove any newlines, by the way. This really looks like that.

    Lieb Bock, Es ist mein demütiges Vergnügen, diesen Brief abgesehen von
    der Tatsache zu schreiben, die wir uns nicht getroffen haben. Lassen
    Sie zuerst mich anfangen durch Einführen von mich selbst ordentlich zu
    Ihnen. Ich bin Herr Patrick Hurley, Manager, Bill und Umtausch von der
    Ausländischen Geldüberweisungsabteilung, Eko Internationale Bank Plc.
    Ich schreibe Ihnen diesen Brief, um Ihre Stütze zu bitten, und
    Zusammenarbeit, eine Verhandlung ausführen. Wir haben eine verlassene
    Summe von US$7.5Million (7,5 Millionen U. S Dollar) in einem Konto, das
    Ein von unserem ausländischen Kunden Herrn Mark Bock der gehört, ist
    gestorben im November 1997 in einem Flugzeugabsturz in Lagos, Nigeria
    entdeckt. Seit dieser Entwicklung haben wir glühende Bemühungswerbung
    für seinen nächsten Angehörigen gemacht oder irgendein nahes Verhältnis
    hervortreten, dieses Geld zu beanspruchen, aber niemand ist gekommen,
    das Geld zu beantragen. Die Leitung unter dem Einfluss von unserem
    Vorsitzenden und Ausschuss der Direktoren, trifft Vorkehrung für den
    Fonds „UNCLAIMABLE “ und erklärt zu werden, werde dann anschließend auf
    die Bundesregierungsreserven übertragen. Um abzuwenden, diese
    Entwicklung. Mich selbst und einige von meinen Vertrauten Kollegen in
    der Bank, suchen jetzt für Ihre Erlaubnis Sie stehen, als der nächste
    Angehörige zu lassen, da Sie den gleichen Familiennamen damit der Fonds
    (USD$7.5M) tragen, würden anschließend übertragen werden und würden in
    Ihr Bankkonto als der Nutznießer der nächste Angehöriger gezahlt
    werden. Alles, das Dokumente und beweist, Sie zu ermöglichen, erhält
    diesen Fonds vorsichtig geklappt von meinem Tisch und ich werde jede
    Dokumente perfektionieren, in Übereinstimmung zu den Bankwesengesetzen
    zu sein, und Richtlinien deshalb Sie haben nichts, um für wir sich zu
    kümmern, zusichert Sie, dass ein 100% Risiko Beteiligung befreit. Wir
    haben übereingestimmt, dass 40% vom Geld für uns, 10% für Ausgaben sein
    wird, die gezugezogen werden, während 50% für Sie sein wird. Wenn Sie
    werden helfen mir, anzuzeigen durch Erwidern dieses Briefs, in Ihre
    E-Mailadresse, Ihre direkte Telefonnummer stellend. Ich erwarte Ihre
    unmittelbare Erwiderung, uns zu ermöglichen, fängt diese Verhandlung in
    ernst an. Sie können durch diese meine private E-Mail-Adresse patrickhurley2004@walla.com
    oder Ruf auf + 2348035622040 erwidern. Nachdem ich Ihre Erwiderung
    empfange, werde ich Ihnen den Text der Anwendung für unmittelbare
    Anwendung des Anspruchs schicken. Wenn dieser Vorschlag fein durch Sie
    ist, dann erhalten freundlich zu mir sofort über diese vertrauliche
    E-Mailadresse, die nur mich mit Ihrem vertraulichsten Telefon, und
    E-Mail ausstattet, deshalb ich zu Ihnen die relevanten Details von
    dieser Verhandlung kann weiterleiten und kann die Vertraulichkeit nötig
    in diesem Geschäft behalten. Vielen Dank im Voraus für Ihre erwartete
    Zusammenarbeit. Die besten Beachtungen, Herr Patrick Hurley

    But what really annoys me is that obviously my email got known to those freaks and they were even able to connect it to my real name …. . But still: only 2 spam mails a WEEK is a very good rate, don’t you think? 🙂

  • I …

    ,

    … gotta get out of here.

    Fast.

  • Artificial Intelligence

    (broken link)

    as said …

  • Sometimes almost funny

    ,

    The Vollplaybacktheater was almost funny. Sometimes. Well, I counted 7 jokes. But I have to admit it was an enormous effort and a great performance – but simply not my style of humour. At all.

  • The Flow(tm)

    ,

    Whew. Work is going great today. I’m not even finished and have already written about 7K of simulator code. That’s really good, don’t you think? For all people not into programming: Writing 7 kilobytes new, fresh code is not easy if you start something new from scratch! Always remember: every char you type is basically a command to the computer to do some stuff – you can imagine what can go wrong when you issue about 7000 commands to someone.

    Anyhow, I’m going to a Full Playback Theater later, and I can do this with a free mind and without stressing myself about work not being done today. I like that 🙂 . Tomorrow morning squashing is on my schedule again, so this week promises to become a good one.

    (And now I have one blog entry more on my list, hehe, but I think I should add a category named Not really important for postings like this one …)

  • All Blogs Gone ….

    I have been smart again. I did back-ups of all my blog entries, even multiple times, but hey – when you switch to SQL storage and delete all the SQL tables afterwards (accidently, of course …) you are usually happy about that.

    But when you realize that your backups are useless, because the underlying database format was not happy with your latest system upgrade, and MovableType is not able to tell you what exactly is wrong, you’re f*cked again. Okay, they say the database upgrade is trivial, but … well, I upgraded to three … no, four different versions of DB now, and nothing works. So my entries are gone for now.

    Ye-oh.

    But at least this blog is now so much nicer than the last, with graphics, and plugins, and … well, just nicer 🙂 . The main reason for me to change – I admit – was, that BLOG:CMS (the backend software) is free. MovableType is not.

    So, as life continues, this blog will fill again, but still it’s a shame that all the old entries are gone.