i’m off for a week (to some european championships)

i’m leaving for two european championships soon: saturday i’ll be in basel at the ECMC2005 and then on sunday i’ll leave to sweden for the 10th European Masters Championship 2005 in Swimming, Diving and Open Water Swimming in Stockholm. we’re gonna stay on this ship for a week and swim some meters in this pool.

so don’t expect any updates here [1] and please do behave with comment spam and stuff like that. whish you a happy week and take care.

[1]: maybe i’m not completely offline, according to this picture which is from our hostel…

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apple rebate coupon code [update]

i finally ordered an ipod from apple (jan, don’t flame me, please :-).

now apple sent me a rebate coupon code which i can redeem for my next purchase at the apple store. it’s 45 bucks off a purchase of 449 or more CHF. since i don’t plan to use it (it expires at the 15. september) i put it up for grabs here.

are you interested? then leave a comment and i’ll gladly pass it over to you.

nachdem ich letzte woche einen ipod bei apple bestellt habe, schenken die mir einen rabatt-coupon für den nächsten einkauf im apple store (45.- auf mind. 449.-). da ich bis zum 15.9 nix mehr bestellen will, verschenk ich den gutschein.

also, falls du bis dann was im applestore kaufen willst, hinterlass mir einen kommentar oder schreib mir ein mail und ich werde dir den code zusenden.

update: he did, sort of…

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hardcoded blogroll

i was annoyed that my sidebar loaded extremely slow. now i finally found some time to fix this. i hardcoded the blogroll[1] into the template, so there are no external files loaded anymore. i used blogrolling.com for that service, so it was a bit of a chore to get that data off their site.

i exported my blogroll into an opml-file. then i opened that file in my favorite text-editor, subethaedit and “search & replace”d until i could just paste the resulting code into my template. so now you have a much spiffier sidebar on my blog (if you visit it and don’t just pull the posts via rss…)

now i just need to get that validation right, but that’s a task for another free hour, now i’m off to see crimen ferpecto, which is hopefully gonna be good for a laugh or two.

[1]: technically it’s not a blogroll, ’cause some of my friends don’t blog, hence it’s called friendly bits.

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kinder eggs are a scam!

Dsc01118past saturday i went to the migros to buy some stuff for my weekend. and just because we had acute chocolate craving, nina and me bought two kinder eggs at the checkout. when i opened mine back home, i was quite stunned that there was a little car in it (which is not really stunning per se). the car was a smart forfour which consisted of four parts, so it was not even a challenge to put the thing together. since when do they put advertisement into chocolate?

but the best thing comes now: when nina opened her egg, she had exactly the same thing in it. what a scam! not only do they put paid advertisment into the eggs (see image), they also flood you with it.

next time we’re gonna buy real chocolate.

ps: you also get a special code in the eggs which should enable you to unlock a special thing on the kinder egg site, but i couldn’t open it (neither in safari or camino…). guess there are no kids with os x out there :-)

ps2: don’t dare to look up “m-budget” on images.google.com (e.g. don’t click here) if you can’t handle sexually explicit material…

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grand challenge 05

hopefully this year’s grand challenge will be more of a success than the last one.

at least there’s hope, because a contestant is driven by max os x (albeit there could be a kernel panic on track :-)

if you forgot how the last year’s edition ended, then this boingboing-post links to a video excerpt (31mb .wmv) of the satellite-feed from the 04-edition, so you can see for yourself how craptacularly bad most of the autonomous vehicles drove.

[via tuaw.com]

bloggerbraeteln

Folio Curr Img Eckengaaus aktuellem grund mal wieder deutsch;

diesen sonntag findet in konolfingen wieder mal ein bloggertreffen statt, diesmal brätelnderweise. christian hats angerissen und einige wollen kommen (siehe kommentare). wenn schönes wetter ist, werd ich mit dem velo nach konolfingen düsen und hab schon mal beim herr leu angefragt, ob er auch mitkommen will, der ziert sich aber noch :-)

der velobegeisterte aargauer ist ja bekannt für längere touren, und ein mail von mir wartet in seiner inbox, mal schauen, evtl. gibt das ne art sternfahrt :-)

ps: bild via nzz, wieder-gefunden im blog.ch-blog.

famous detective

A man suspected his wife was seeing another man, so he hired the famous Chinese detective, Chen Lee, to watch and report any activities while he was gone. A few days later, he received this report:

Most honorable Sir:

You leave house. I watch house.

He come to house. I watch.

He and She leave house. I follow. He and She go in hotel. I climb tree.

I look in window.

He kiss She. She kiss He. He strip she. She strip He. He play with She. She play with He.

I play with me. I fall off tree.

I not see.

So no fee.

Chen Lee

[via urs‘ mail]

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picture of the week 27 [update]

i spent the past weekend with renzo and eveline which competed in the gigathlon, a race across switzerland involving swimming, inline skating, road- and mountain-biking and running from locarno to basel via luzern. all the athletes and their supporters were housed in two camps, the picture below shows a panorama of the tents in the camp in airolo.

Gigathlon High

oh, and don’t blame me for the barrel distortion, i was standing on a heap of scrap wood, while i took that panorama and feared that i’m gonna fall down, so i could not align the pictures any nicer…

update: all the pictures from the gigathlon can be found here.

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apple doesn’t want to sell me stuff

Applestoreborkeddear apple.

i just spent an hour and a half to layout a book (for a gift) in iphoto. now, that i want to buy it, you inform me, that my credit-card cannot be accepted for this transaction. i double-checked with my credit-card-company, and yes, my card is fully valid and within its limit, so there’s nothing wrong with that. and i’d also love to buy sunny days, but that also doesn’t work.

and hey, it’s a gift which i need soon, so what can i do?

don’t wonder, i already called at the apple help line, but they’re closed so late in the evening…