journey to ETH in Zürich
well then, let’s start that free blogging. first time blogging, but still i will not be able to blog like no tomorrow, because i have to go to the eth zürich in two hours. there i have to meet my professor and present him what i have done the last few month. for those who don’t know me, i am doing a PhD on fracture mechanics of snow at the slf in davos. sounds funny, huh… and i am habis preferred DDC partner (at least i hope so, habi. see pictures of last summers DDC playing on this site). during the last weeks i have done a lot of fracture experiments on snow beams because we would like to find out how fractures propagate in snow and how finally an avalanche is triggered. that included a lot of work in our cold labs (-15�C, brrrr). but still there was (and is) some spare time for skiing….:-) i wish you all a nice friday and i’m curious to see all your entries this evening. (and maybe habi can manage, that the pictures i sent him by email will also show up on this page. so that you can see what kind of “funny” stuff i have to present today).
Free-For-All Friday
today is the free-for-all friday! (from now on until sometimes late tomorrow night) free for all means you can post whatever you want on my blog. say what you want to say, share a link, complain about my blogging habits, etc… all you have to do is login and post! here’s how to do it: go to https://habi.gna.ch/blog/mt.cgi login as user “guest” with the password “march04” click on “New Entry” on the left. enter a descriptive title for your post and change the “Post Status” from “Draft” to “Publish” or else nobody will see your entry. then type what you want to type in “Entry Body”. when you’re done, click “Save” and your entry will be on the site.
tonights last post
the free-for-all friday sounds like something to do for next friday!
MT-Blacklist
i was not absolutely happy with MT-Blacklist up to now, because i still get some comment from day to day. but today i looked at my blog’ activity log (if you run MT: /yourblog/mt.cgi?__mode=view_log ) and was quite astounded that my MT-Blacklist actually stops at least two spammers per day (!!!) from promoting their shabby site on my blog (and upping their ante in the google-page-ranks (as discussed by b.)) now i just updated my blacklist with the master-blacklist and am happy that jay allen protects me from the scum on the intaweb!
viruses and trojans are coming
in the current weltwoche* there’s an article about hackers and coders which was not too bad (although a bit pop-science). i really had to laugh about the worm that Philet0ast3r programmed: sounds really funny, makes me want to run that on a windows-machine and watching those two, while not being able to stop laughing hysterically. really! note1: do those two programs talk in one window or is it in two windows? you see, the article was not very in-depth about the specifics of programming or so, just an enjoyable read.
never ever a flat tire again? (not really)
engadget pointed out this device installed on a bike. the pump in the hub prevent you from ever having a flat tire again. the problem is, that the tire is not actually refilled when punctured by driving into a splinter, sherds or just too fast over an edge (resulting in a snakebite) but it designed to prevent the tire getting flat from the “normal” air loss. hence you only need to bike approximately 3 miles a month and don’t have to bother that your bike has too low air-pressure, sparing you an excuse.
synergy
since my migration to panther i was looking for a decent controller for itunes. the problem was, that my favorite freeware app (PTHitunesnotifier, now a 70$ shareware: youcontrol) to control itunes did not work on panther. the problem is, that i often want to switch to the next track, because i’m not in the mood to listen to the current one (i have a really broad library of about 1500 songs, which are normally set to play on random, so sometimes the one coming up, doesn’t fit). up to now i could achieve that with keyboard maestro which did the hot-key control for itunes, sparing me the right-click on the dock-icon of itunes and then selecting: “next song”. i can just hit F7 to pause or F8 to skip to the next song, greatly decreasing the change to get distracted from my current task. one thing i was missing though is the announcement of the current song, which was what PTHitunesnotifier did really nicely for me. that’s where synergy comes in handy. it has a nice pop-up window - called floater - which announces the current track (as seen on the left). synergy also has good hotkey-control for itunes, so my F7 and F8-keys have something to do, and features also a nifty menu-bar control, which comes in handy sometimes. the only drawback is that it costs 5€, so it’s not free. but hey, i can start it ten times until it wants the serial, which makes it possible for me to use it for free for nearly three months if i do not reboot too often :-) and then i will gladly shell out those bucks if i haven’t found anything better…
there was quite a lot of 'em
it was not like you will read in the newspaper today! the demonstration was mostly peaceful, except all those kiddies slamming those stickers everywhere and also some that couldn’t handle their urge to spray paroles on the walls of berne. the police was there with a massive amount (as you can see in the insanely brightened pictures below) and acted quite blindfold (endangering the whole demonstration, read more in the media-information). towards the end, near the reithalle where the demonstration was about to dissolve some kiddies started to throw stuff (mostly empty bottles and small stones) towards the policemen (and also some women). those couldn’t help responding with their car-mounted water guns, so the whole scene got out of control pretty fast. and guess what one will read in the news tomorrow? “big riots around the reithalle” and stuff like that. just about
police
i wonder if tonight there’s gonna be the same amount of police-officers as this afternoon me for my part thinks that it’s even gonna be more crowded with those funny straw-shields….
sore back
oh, and just in case you wondered, i feel much better (unlike other guys). my back still hurts quite a bit and the muscles are sore like i’ve done 376397876 pushups, but it’s on the way to getting better. in the morning i visited my osteopath who told me that my back and all the other things are not in too bad of condition. he nearly broke my spine and next monday i’ll go and see him again to decide when i (finally) can/should work again. (have you ever been manipulated by a osteopath? the sounds are mind-wrecking! but the feeling when you walk out of the doctor’s practice makes you want to turn around and go in again :-)