May 2004

There were 27 posts published in May 2004 (this is page 1 of 2).

my weekend

simu wants to ride the alpenbrevet, so he talked some of us into that little tour.
so, yesterday morning, ismu, michel, urs, simu and me started sometimes after nine o’clock in kehrsatz. somewhere down in the simmental we met päscu from the velokurier biel who drove up to the jaunpass with us. from there we went over the mittelberg.
(if you dare, here are two movies from the mittelberg-descent)
where soon after ismu and päscu went back home and michel, simu, urs and me attacked the col des mosses (i could hardly attack anymore :-). the last descent from the col des mosses to aigle was the most rewarding of the whole trip. 17 km downhill. then we arrived in aigle, where we went to visit the cmc and then waited that the patron came to open the hotel (guess which one) just for us.
after a really big diner (and i mean BIG) we all went to bed and slept like babies :-)
on the second day we started with the col de la croix (the steepest and longest one on our journey) and then went over the col du pillon. then we managed to get until gstaad where we had to make a break because we were all freezing our asses off (i tell you, driving down to passes with a racing-bike in heavy rain is no fun..)
after a good meal we took the last part of our journey under our wheels. with one little break to fill our bottles (just shortly before i fell off my bike) we drove back to bern where we arrived with a big smile on our faces (and an overall average speed of 27.7 km per hours (hence hämmes comment), which is way better than i thought we’d have).
if you’d like to see some pictures, they are online in the pictures-section.
and now i should go to bed, because i’m working the whole day tomorrow, which is definitely gonna be hard!

here’s the itinerary (provided by finaroute.ch)
day1:
finaroute finaroute-1 finaroute-2

day2:
finaroute-3 finaroute-4
resulting in a grand total of approximately 300 km.

yeehaw! (picture of the week)

osxhints made that little hint on Descent2, that has brought me back to old ages.
if you’ve never played descent2, then you don’t need to bother actually clicking on the link, but if you spent countless hours in front of a glooming monitor trying to master your spaceship while zapping through complicated tunnels and blasting the enemies with CONCSN MISSILE’s, then you absolutely need to!
i think Descent2 was the best 3d-mission game, i remember playing it for hours (i think that was actually one of the few computer-games i played more than two times or so, i never was a gamer…). i cannot wait to actually finish a level and be blasted out of the mother-spaceship.
miklos and b. do you remember?
flashback ahoi!

descent

blingbling

how do you like my new belt?
it’s tha perfect gift i got from new york via my nice sister. her version is a bit more blingbling, but nonetheless i think mine is the coolest :-)
thanks nina!
DSC00990_1 DSC00989_1

i want that car

volta today the newest wired arrived. as always, when scanning it for worthwhile stuff to read, my eyes get caught on the “fetish” page. nope, it’s not your normal fetish like latex and leather and stuff like that, but shining and gleaming gadgets and gizmos.
this time, the wired staff portrayed the toyota volta, a hybrid concept car. the volta is the bigger and much much spiffier brother of the toyota prius, which is a really big hit in the us.
i presume that hybrid cars are the only way electric cars are ever gonna be popular. (heck, even gearbits loves it :-)
a hybrid car is – for all those that do not know – a car that has both a conventional engine and an electrical engine. both share the work, the electrical engine all the work where a conventional one is not good, e.g. accelerating and small burst of power, and the conventional engine comes to help when maximal power is needed, like on auto-routes. thus, such cars manage to be really fuel-efficient and environmentally safe (at least many of times safer than a normal car) while leaving the man or woman behind the steering wheel with the experience of a real car, so no charging of the battery or searching for that hydrogen filling stations.

and hey, who could argue with a sports car (0-100 km/h in 4 seconds) that uses only 1 liter of fuel on 100km? (and is named after a famous physicist :-)

oh, and by the way, i’m not really a car-fan, this is just as geeky as it can get…

amazing!

batteryyesterday evening my ibook crashed. it locked up when i started realplayer to listen to some late-nite tunes while having setiathome running (so the processor was on full duty).
normally such lock-ups are not a big deal, it will recover from itself, i thought, just give it some time. i thought, maybe if i unplug it, it will go to sleep soon and be a happy puppy again. so i lay on my bed and started to read in my book. sometimes later i must have fallen asleep without actually looking how my ibook is doing.
this morning the ibook was sitting happily on my desk, turned off. it did not go to sleep, which is what it normally does when the battery power is too low, but was turned off. so the battery must have been completely drained. no big deal, it only lasted 5-6 minutes anyway, because my ibook is about three years old, and was used a lot on it’s own juice.
the amazing part is that when i rebooted, i saw that the battery icon mentioned that the battery needs about two and a half hours to fully charge again. hmm. that’s much much more than it ever said before. then after these two and a half hours i unplugged the ibook from the juice and the icon says: (after some “calculating…”) that i got an hour and 16 minutes left on battery power. amazing.
i guess the battery was not so bad then. lucky i’m not the winning bidder here :-)

i think the full draining of the battery must have reset the PMU, something i’ve read about a long time ago, when i wanted to rejuvenate the battery with some full load and drain cycles. amazing what a little really complete drain of the battery can do.
i feel like i’ve got a new ibook :-)

kraftwerk

in case anyone of you didn’t go to the kraftwerk-concert* last wednesday or thursday in the reithalle or didn’t see the pictures of it in the blog-o-hood, then here are the ones i made:

k1k2k18k17k16k15k13k12k11k10k9k8k7k6k5k4k3

*as i told reto the day after, it was not really a concert, more a performance, because the visuals actually blasted me away, the music was pretty the same as on their records. as piece notes, a video of the show would be amazing (he links to two smallish videos in his post)

handy dandy!

after submitting a comment spam to the MT-Blacklist, i stopped by at jayallens blog, and found an interesting link.
bopuc proposes a way to view all the comments on your blog as a rss feed, spruced up with all the relevant links to despam and edit the comment and info of the commenter.
here are the directions:
1. go to your MT-HQ and make a new template.
call it something you remember and insert a filename for it (e.g. something.xml)
2. paste the code below into the text field.

>
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”<$MTPublishCharset$>”?>
<rss version=”2.0″
xmlns:dc=”http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/”
xmlns:sy=”http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/”
xmlns:admin=”http://webns.net/mvcb/”
xmlns:rdf=”http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#”>
<channel>
<title><$MTBlogName remove_html=”1″ encode_xml=”1″$> Comments</title>
<link><$MTBlogURL$></link>
<description>Comments</description>
<dc:language>en-us</dc:language>
<dc:creator><MTEntries lastn=”1″><$MTEntryAuthorEmail$></MTEntries></dc:creator>
<dc:date><MTEntries lastn=”1″><$MTEntryDate format=”%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S”$><$MTBlogTimezone$></MTEntries></dc:date>
<admin:generatorAgent rdf:resource=”http://www.movabletype.org/?v=<$MTVersion$>” />
<sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>
<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>
<sy:updateBase>2000-01-01T12:00+00:00</sy:updateBase>

<MTComments lastn=”15″ sort_order=”descend”><MTCommentEntry>
<item>
<title><$MTEntryTitle encode_xml=”1″$> (<$MTCommentAuthor encode_xml=”1″$>)</title>
<link><$MTEntryLink encode_xml=”1″$></link>
<description>
<![CDATA[
<a href=”http://www.your-domain.com/path/to/your/mt/mt-blacklist.cgi?__mode=despam&_type=comment&id=<$MTCommentID pad=”0″$>”>DESPAM</a><br />
<a href=”http://www.your-domain.com/path/to/your/mt/mt.cgi?__mode=view&_type=entry&id=<MTEntryID>&blog_id=<MTBlogID>”>Edit entry</a><br />
<a href=”http://www.your-domain.com/path/to/your/mt/mt.cgi?__mode=view&_type=comment&id=<MTCommentID>&blog_id=<MTBlogID>”>Edit comment</a><br />
<a href=”http://www.your-domain.com/path/to/your/mt/mt-blacklist.cgi?__mode=search&n=50&_type=comment&matchType=ip&ip=<$MTCommentIP$>&re-search=Search”><$MTCommentIP$></a><br />
————————————<br />
<a href=”mailto:<$MTCommentEmail$>” title=”<$MTCommentEmail$>”><$MTCommentAuthor$></a><br />
<a href=”<$MTCommentURL$>”><$MTCommentURL$></a><br />
————————————<br />]]>
<$MTCommentBody encode_xml=”1″$>
<![CDATA[————————————<br />
<$MTCommentDate format=”%a, %b %d, %Y %H:%M:%S”$>]]>
</description>
</item>
</MTCommentEntry></MTComments>
</channel>
</rss>

3. rebuild your blog
4. subscribe to the *.xml-file with your favorite rss-reader
5. if you don’t like the template, edit it to your likings
6. rub your hands and smile mischievously, as this adds even more fun to stopping comment spam

picture of the week

yesterday, urs, simu and me went to winterthur, because the guys from staffel x made an alleycat.
this is what it looks like if you cram three guys with their bikes and baggage in a twingo:

oh, and by the way, i’ve won that alleycat. pity for me that i didn’t go to the last alleycat in basel, because there i could have won a bikeframe, this time the winner got a cap (not even from the staffel x, but from veloexpress) and a beer (and i don’t like beer, so i could change that to a bottle of coke) :-(

folding your t-shirt [update]

this is amazing!
i had to watch that movie (1.4mb .wmv) at least five times to get it.
but from now on i’ll fold all my t-shirts that way, my mom will be jealous, if i show that to her. i’m gonna be the faster t-shirt-folder than her :-)

[via boingboing]

update: for those of you, who rely on more standard-respecting video files, urs points out to a mpeg-file of the same video

grand prix

last weekend i ran the grand prix of bern. i’m not really a big runner, nonetheless i managed to run the ten most beautiful miles on earth in a time of 1h, 9min and 27 seconds. not too bad for that my training consisted of going for a run three times prior to the race :-)

if you want to see how i’ve been doing after those 16.023 km, then you can click here and see my finish (courtesy of finisherclip.de). i’m the guy in the pale blue shirt on the left finishing just seconds after the guy in the yellow tank-top and black shirt finishes. (and i love the woman shouting: “super schämpu” afterwards :-)

here’s another one: nina, my darling finishes 27 minutes later (with 1:36:39) in the white jumper and green t-shirt on the right border of the clip.

the following two clips are from other messengers at work: tom schwarz is the guy all in black with big hair manipulating his watch on the outermost right border finishing with 1:21:31.
and florian and phippu manage to cross the finish-line practically simultaneous after 59min 45s. phippu is the one in the white tank-top congratulating flöru in the blue shirt in the middle of the movie-clip.
congratulations to all of you!

suicmc04.ch

during the first weekend of next october the Suisse Cycle Messenger Championships 04 will take place here in bern.
if you want to take a sneak-peak at the website of the SUICMC04, then you might want to click here. everything is up and running, just “hidden” from the general public until all quirks are sorted out.
yesterday, michel and äbu spent the whole day designing and putting the page online, and i spent a part of the morning with äbu to design and implement the registration-database. everything is live now, so if you want to register yourself on a messenger-event, then you can do it now, i’ll flush the MYSQL-db before the site goes online for real.

if you find a bug or something we need to correct, send me a note, please! (you don’t need to write that the press-release talks about a different schedule, than the page itself, we’re onto that :-)

oh, and by the way, if you (or your company) are interested in sponsoring one of the the biggest messenger-events in europe, then give me a shout! i’d be happy to work with you, and provide you the best package you can get!

funny link

since i’ve keep posting only small blurbs tonight, i’ll try to stick to it:
just listen to that story here (2.0mb mp3-file, only in german). it’s a sad but true story which is not that great that it deserves a link, but the guy reading that story has the absolute evil laugh. max mailed me that file nearly three weeks ago, and already complained that i did not blog it here :-) he saw it in the djforum where some other guy actually made a song out of the schlumpf-story (1.6mb mp3-file). both hilarious!

[via maxes mail]
oh, and by the way max, i wanted to link to you, but google has not much to say about you (these are the best hits i found)) and the handball-club72-page doesn’t seem to work, and this club72 probably has nothing to do with you. sorry.

good music for free

like always, all good things in life are free:
MTV has an upcoming show called MTV Mash. the french duo Loo & Placido made all the bootlegs for that show.
the bootlegs that MTV turned down are now available from their L&D’s site. if you don’t want to sift through their page, the boingboing-post linked below has the direct links to all the mp3’s. go and grab ’em. “Pound for Pound” and “Golden Bastard” are my favorites

[via boingboing]