taucher gesucht!

ich wollt eigentlich mit nina über auffahrt nach spanien tauchen gehen. da sie nun uni/diplomarbeitsweise doch nicht mitkommen kann, ist in der gruppe vom dive center köniz noch ein platz frei: hast du lust, über auffahrt, von mittwoch 4. mai 23.30 bis montag 9. mai abends – mit nach spanien zu kommen um zu tauchen? das ganze kostet inkl. reise und unterkunft 350.- (den rest zum normalpreis übernehm ich…), dazu kommen noch die tauchgänge und das essen. du solltest ein bisschen taucherfahrung haben, d.h. nicht ein anfänger sein (ich hab auch nicht mehr als 40 tauchgänge…) und 5 tage mit coolen und angenehem leuten in spanien verbringen wollen. und wenn ich dich ein bisschen kenne, ist es auch noch lustiger. hinterlass einen kommentar oder schick mir ein mail (adresse links oben im sidebar). evtl. bis bald unter wasser!

technorati tags:

flickr is upping the ante – giveaway

today i got an email from the flickr-team: in the aftermath of yahoo buying flickr the guys and gals are able to provide more stuff for all the users:

  • 20 mb upload limit for all free users
  • for all pro users (like me), e.g. those who paid for an extended account: an extension to two years, so i get double the bang for my bucks and
  • 2 invites for a pro account to give away.

this leads me to a little contest: i’m donating those two accounts to you, yes you. but because i (occasionally) get more than two readers, you have to fight :-)

send me a convincing picture or something other that justifies the donation of an account from me to you [1].

[1]: since there’s a bit more involved than with a gmail invite, the hurdles are also a bit higher. i think, for instance, i must know you (least a bit) personally and must think that i could like your pictures…

this blog is now gravatar enabled

to make posting comments a little bit more rewarding i implemented gravatars on this blog.

two days ago i commented on an entry over at urs’ blog and some fancy image turned up next to my comment. i’ve seen that already turning up on different blogs (e.g. moblg.uk and blog.ch).

the code with which i implemented it is shown below for your abuse and modification.

<MTComments>

<div class=”comments-body”>

<$MTCommentBody$>

<span class=”comments-post”>

<a href=”<$MTCommentURL$>”>

<img src=”<$MTGravatar default=”https://habi.gna.ch/blank.jpg” size=”40″$>” alt=”gravatar” align=”left” />

</a>

posted by: <$MTCommentAuthorLink spam_protect=”1″$><br />

on <$MTCommentDate$><br clear=”all”>

</span>

</div>

</MTComments>

i made it so that every person gets a gravatar, even it there’s none registered (for example, see peters comment here). if your gravatar is missing the pictures gets replaced by blank.jpg. the gravatar is linked with the url or the (spamsafe) email link of the person that left a comment.

so, ladies and gents, if you want your picture to show up in the comments, then step over to gravatar and register yours.

thanks, goodbye.

cory doctorows latest short story [2nd update]

cory doctorow (of boingboing-fame) released a short story called i, robot. since i like reading stuff on my clie while on the train or so i made a palm-doc file of the story.

if you’d like to read the story on your palm, then you can get it here: cory doctorow – i, robot.pdb (49 kb)

for converting the file i used PorDiBle, a nifty palm-doc conversion tool, which is absolutely fabulous to convert any text or rtf-file to a compressed .pdb file. this (and the adobe reader for palm os) helps me to read any file i want on my clie.

have fun with it.

after talking to cory i found out that his publisher holds the exclusive rights on the stories for two months. so i couldn’t release the file until today, but anyway, here it is for all of you to abuse.

update: eileen released the file. you can also grab it on the infinite matrix-site.

2nd update: i’ve been boingboinged…

pixmix

Derblaueadleraus akutellem und bernbezogenem anlass in deutsch:

nächsten mittwoch abend findet pixmix vol III[1] in der dampfzentrale statt. der urs (bzw. der luchs), gosi und splint machen da eine kleine, sicherlich sehr lustige geschichte, nämlich ein tag im leben eines prototypen des postmodernen proletariats: der fahrrad-eilbote. das heisst, der urs wird eine 7minütige geschichte in 20 bildern erzählen die splint fotografiert hat und auf denen gosi zu sehen ist. so cool wie der flyer rüberkommt, muss das ja gut werden. wenn du links auf das bild klickts, kannst du den flyer in seiner ganzen grösse und herrlichkeit runterladen.

nebenbei werden auch noch einige andere dort sein und ihre pixes mixen, das ganze wird also sicher ein gfreuter abend…

[1] der leumund hat glaubich auch schon mal was darüber geschrieben, und starfrosch.ch ist ein cooles musik-netlabel-ding, dessen macher ich schon immer mal treffen wollte. mal schauen, wie das wird…

the cookie monster on diet

the swiss late news aired a newscast that the cookie monsters eating habits are getting a makeover, so he is not allowed to eat more unhealthy cookies. the americans thought it’s bad, when they see a monster on telly which eats cookies (and letters :-) all the time, so they changed his diet to more healthy stuff. this gets scary i think. when will they change other tv-series? how long will it take before dexter is not allowed to work in his lab anymore, because working with big tools and electricity is dangerous for kids. how long will it take before pippi langstrumpf has to stop running around and lifting horses, because that’s dangerous for kids? oh man, this just gets me the creeps. it’s a friggin’ monster, so he can eat what he wants, and doesn’t need to eat healthy!

if you like, you can watch the german news-broadcast here (in real-video-format). or if you want to read some more on that, then head over to news.google. i’m going to bed and will hopefully dream of a big bowl of cookies. good night.

new paper released :-)

i wonder if the paper i just finished is going to help me with my already long-running quest for finding a job in the field i learned. i guess it needs still some corrections and additions. if you want to read it, then just click on the link below:

David Haberthuer – Emulating Smalltalk and Von Neumann Machines Using Semantical (100kb .pdf). you need to scroll down to see the images, i think they turned out quite good.

[via boingboing]

weird video

Belindaif you’d like to start your week wirh a really weird video, then you might want to step over to pieceoplastic.com. jan posted a link to a video of belinda bedekovic who plays a weird instrument really weird. you can either watch the video as a flash-file or download the 32mb divx-encoded .avi. quicktime refuse to play it, so you might want to grab vlc, which is always the best candidate for those weirdo videos (and all formats :-).

as jan said it: holy mackerel!!!!

ps: why are the comments closed, piece?

finally!

finally i found a freeware panorama solution that works!

i confess: up to now i’ve used different unlegal ways to stitch my occasional panorama (read: cracked software), mostly because i just couldn’t cough up the steep amounts of money needed to buy one of these programs.

but now it’s over: last week i stumbled over HuginOSX, a program in the very early steps of development (e.g. experimental builds), but still useable for my needs.

HuginOSX is a free port of hugin to os x (who would have guessed…). hugin is a frontend to the excellent panorama tools by helmut dersch. the panorama tools are a set of scripts and plugins for different programs (like photoshop or graphic converter (both not free, so no option for me)) which give excellent results with panoramic images, and are free like in beer.

as i said before i am quite geeky, but definitely not the cli-person, i prefer to use a GUI for most of the stuff i do. that’s where HuginOSX steps in. you load in all the images you want, define control points (in quite a nifty way i must say: after you’ve defined one or two per image, the program is getting really accurate at suggesting the next matching control points), click on some buttons to optimize the panorama and to run the needed scripts and then can export the image in the desired format.

everything is still a bit rough on the edges – the toolbar is far away from useable, only flashes up for split-seconds – but it looks like HuginOSX is going to become a very important program for me (and my conscience :-).

for good results you should also use enblend, another free piece of software, which nicely blends the seams between the images. the combination ofTateblend

leads to images like the one seen on the right (760kb .jpg, 3410*1186 pixels).

so i guess in the coming weeks i’ll have some panoramas for your delight and to help me master HuginOSX’ hurdles.

[1]: i couldn’t get enblend to work nicely with HuginOSX, so i stumbled over Xblend by Kevin Kratzke [2], another freeware program. Xblend is a front-end to emblend, which itself is also cli-heavy…

[2]: Kevin is the creator of PTMac, a shareware frontend to the PanoTools which i’ve used before, but as i said, i prefer freeware….

picture of the week 14

finally i got some time to sort through the pile of pictures i took on vacation in london. it’ amazing how many pictures you take, when you don’t have to care about any restrictions. the one below was taken in the tate modern, a very impressive old power-station converted by Herzog & de Meuron, two swiss architects. the main hall (see a panorama here) serves as the “main floor” for exhibitions and was only filled with some loudspeakers (by bruce naumann) (that exhibition was about as good as the link is…). nonetheless i was able to get quite a good shot of the eerie afternoon glow outside.

Dsc00433

a bunch of new feeds

i just returned from the matt blogg+birthday meet which was really nice and interesting. it was really nice connecting the faces to the bits and bites, talking about tagging vs. keywords, map orientations and stuff like that.

i actually suspected to stay around an hour or so, but in the end i turned out to be home around ten at night.

guys and gals, it was really interesting to meet all of you, and i’m surely gonna add some more feeds to my news-reader.

btw: if you want to see the appropriate images, then go to my blog.ch-meet-tag on flickr. (so please tag your images accordingly, so they show up as a whole bunch under the general tag blog.ch-meet.