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…

picture of the week 26

i’ve been experimenting with panoramas quite a bit lately [1]. and with huginosx it’s really easy to align ramarkably good panoramas even with handheld pictures, like i’ve done it in the one below.

Velodemo High

this wednesday the ja! [2] made a bike demonstration in bern. they wanted to protest against the newest plans to slash the free bike-parking around the main station here in bern. because of the thunderstorm that just started minutes after the demonstration was about to begin there were not too many people. i tried to document that with that panorama, which makes the waisenhausplatz look quite empty with that little bunch of protesters on it…

[1] maybe you’ve watched my panorama tag over at flickr.

oh, and raph, i’m still waiting for the CMWC-tag (or maybe cmwc2005) to get filled!

[2] we never were 70 people. i counted when we were on the bundesplatz, and we were exactly 34… oh, and can you spot me on that picture?

[3] i really love tagging :-)

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my phonebill puzzles me [update]

today i just got my sunrise mobile phone-bill, and i was quite puzzled by one item on it. i’ve used gprs three times this month (not a hardcore user, am i…).

twice [1, 2] to send a moblog-post from switzerland resulting in a total data rate of 248 kB, and once [3] to send a moblog-post from spain which was 113 kB heavy.

the thing that now puzzles me, is that i actually paid less for my data in spain, although i was roaming with Telefonica there.

in switzerland i paid 0.02 CHF per kB, which results in a price of 20.50 CHF per MB (!!!).

in spain, i paid 0.0116 CHF per kB, resulting in a price of 11.90 per MB, which is nearly half the price i pay in switzerland. and remember, i was roaming with my swiss phone on a spanish network, so i surely didn’t pay the least expensive price there.

ain’t that unbelievable? guess it’s time to look into other options for sending that occasional moblog from my phone. sunrise do you hear me? data is much too expensive with you!!!

do you have any tips to lower my phone bill?

update: bitflux-chregu has some remedies. see his comment here.

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itunes 4.9

Itunes4.9apple just released the new itunes, now with included podcast-feature.

the ITMS now features a podcast-section, so apple released a directory, where anyone can add their podcast. for a start, you can go to the top 20 of apples podcasts, which will be more than enough to fill all your gadgets with stuff to listen to.

so, you podcaster-guys and -gals, get ready for some massive bandwidth-consumption! (cause apple is only linking to your files, i download them from you…)

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filewile on itunes

dejot and dustbowl released a new track today. you can grab their remix of sunnydays from melody & rider here. it’s another pay per listen release, ’cause those laptop jugglers need to make some cash, too… (and a dollar is not too much, innit?)

if you don’t want to pay through paypal or finetunes, then you have to wait a bit, until the other songs are released on itunes, for the moment you can only get the barbarella-ep and emitow from the CCCC IV-sampler in the ITMS. other songs will follow, for sure.

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a new gadget

Axok, i admit, i could also have bought a really long (but marginally less expensive) cable, but i has got me an airport express from ricardo [1].

now i can play all my tunes [2] over my bad-ass stereo with b&o loudspeakers, much better than the puny logitech speakers :-) and if i’d actually had a printer, i could print wireless, but that’s another story. now i just need another wireless enabled gadget to fully use this new one.

[1]: i prefer using it to ebay, it seems less scam-ridden…

[2]: currently 2624 songs, 11.21 GB

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luftstation

Dsc00734yesterday evening i went to see the luftstation, the newest production from the öfföff-team.

from a competition in the kulturagenda/bund i won a VIP-package: i was able to mount the luftstation with the artists, which was really a great experience, although it only lasted for two minutes or so. then all the winner had some time to talk with the artists and learn some more on how the amazing steel-sculpture was built. all in all, it was a great evening on the gurten

because you were allowed to take pictures i managed to take some shots during the performance, some of them turned out quite nice (although wiggly through the long exposure). you can take a look at them over at the luftstation-set on flickr.

if you got the time, go and see it, it’s absolutely worth it (and on the gurten you might even manage to see it for free from the backside…). öfföff are touring through switzerland until the end of the year, so there’s really no excuse for missing it.

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dont’t panic!

monday night i went to see the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy (with a towel). i finished the book on the sunday before, so i had all fresh in my mind. i thought i will be disappointed with the movie, ’cause let’s face it, there’s just not enough time to fit all the gags from the book into one movie (sequel anyone?).

nonetheless i enjoyed the movie a great bit (my flatmates rita and dan also did), it’s very fast paced and chockfull of references to the book, but also chockfull of new ideas, some of them really brilliant. if you go and see the movie, wait through the credits, in the end, there’s another entry of the guide for you to see (warning: spoiler behind the link).

if you’ve seen the film, then those extremely fast 42 games will be even funnier than they are already!

games [via piece]

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my movie collection

since i borrowed star wars VI to VI and the godfather I to III from andi and karin they asked me what movies they can borrow from me. because my dvd-collection is rather big [1] it was easier for me to just upload an export from my library in dvdpedia [2] to the web.

if you want to see what movies i got, then you can step over to /movies.

if you’d like to borrow one, just drop me a line.

[1] 117 pieces at the moment, two of them are missing…

[2] another one of the rare pieces of software i bought.

it’s gone, since i upgraded to tiger

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picture of the week 23 (or so)

this week i got a letter with the picture below in it. some photographer took pictures of the people running at the gp. included was a payment order for 12.80 chf. i don’t think i’m gonna pay 13 bucks for a picture of me pulling up my pants, i’m gonna spend the same amount of bucks to a ticket to the movies tonight and a new towel :-)

Dsc00729

NetnewsWire

i finally decided that it’s worth upgrading NetnewsWire to the full version, mostly because of the searching feature and the bloglines synching. i just downloaded the demo now, which will work for 30 days from now on. anoyne else want to pay for that nice piece of software? because when we pay more than one license, then each one pays 5$ less, which makes it worth that post.

leave a comment or send me an email so we can license-pool…

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