maybe you’ve seen the ubiquitous ads for the american express bluecard, promoting the link win-a-million.ch.
since my credit card provider offered me to switch to blue for free that’s what i did and i also checked out the bluegame they made to promote their new credit card
the game consisted of 5 levels, most of them were – mildly said – trivial.
i know a guy from nothing.ch, the crew behind the programming of the bluegame (we play ultimate frisbee together). in the training on thursday we talked about the bluegame, because he saw me in the high-score list. i told him, that i thought the stuff was really easy and i only stuck to it, because i thought the later levels would be a bit more demanding. he told me funny stories about people who called, because they could not sign up for the game, or weren’t able to log in to it, and other peekaboo…
to make things short: today i got a letter from the head of marketing and sales of swisscard aecs ag in which he told me that i am under the first 200 contestants in the win-a-million competition. he also told me, that i’m invited to zürich next saturday, where the finals will take place. the whole thing will also be televised, so you can see how i compare to the other 199 people there. and you also might want to wish me luck, that i take that 0.5% chance to win a million!
in the evening i’ll be at the polyball with nina and i’ll guarantee that i will get drunk like hell if i win that money (i suppose it takes around two beers to make me drunk, ’cause i never drink :-).
i’ll keep you updated…
oopsie!
moveable type upgrade
as you can see in the screenshot on the left, my moveable type installation is now upgraded. i think this should help with the flooding comment spam. the whole upgrade process seemed to go really well and painless, but things might be flaky in the next few days while i configure stuff and tweak the settings, so be aware…
comment spam/firefox
the comment spam on the blog is slowly getting out of control (but will be stopped as soon as i can install the new version of moveable type, which will happen soon).
although mtblacklist is an indispensable piece of software, which is blocking a huge amount of comment spam i have to delete some spam from time to time.
one comment spam i’m not gonna delete is the last comment here, because i thought it’s well funny: a team of microsoft engineers – the IE Team – tries to sue me, because i installed firefox. ha!
guys, get it: i’m happily using safari on os x. but i also installed firefox, mostly to see how well it does. and as long as you work on a windows-machine i higly suggest you go and download it now, it’s supposed to be far better than IE and don’t be afraid of some cheeky guys threatening to sue you, try it!
picture of the week 47
the picture of this week is especially for raph and dom from velocité which seem to be avid readers of my blog :-)
it shows a bunch of messengers at the veloblitz on saturday evening. the veloblitz was one of the first messengers that started in switzerland (among the first ones was the velokurier bern) and they had the fifteenth anniversary this weekend. from left to right you can see raphael feiss from velocite, stefan p. fröhlich from flash, randall from flash ans some other messenger. i truly apologize for the bad picture, but the batteries in my camera were so empty that was literally the only picture i took that evening.
the whole evening was really nice, after some terrific food (by lilys) the gals from the blitz prepared a funny alleycat. we from bern fibbed a bit (the alleycat was designed to be made on your own, you had to throw dices to get your next pickup/dropoff, but we wanted to stay together), but we had to, ’cause splint was filming the whole with his fancy helmet-cam. if i get some time (and his camera, firewirecable and all the other important stuff) i might make a nice movie out of his material which sometimes you might get to see here.
you should have seen us (urs, stefan, splint and me) on the trainride back to bern. four sweaty messengers staring into a 2″-screen of a mini-dv-cam and shouting “oh yes, that turn was so good” and “that was soo close!” and “i almost hit that car” while all the other passengers tried to sleep or read or minding their own business.
picture of the week
just a quick note, ’cause i’m late.
this was the best picture i took last week. it’s the view from the kitchen window of my parents home.
nice, innit?
nice cv.
if mr. gueniot doesn’t get a job with that cv i don’t know what he must do to get one!
brilliant!
[via powerbook_blog]
cleaning mood
altough it was my free day, i had to get up early today, because we got a new fridge, so i thought it’s about time to do some cleaning. after i’ve cleaned out my closets and thrown away a bag full of junk i started to catalog my dvd’s (call me obsessive) with the excellent dvdpedia (which i bought rightaway for 18 bucks).
so you are now able to marvel at my collection of 106 dvds. actually at least two of them are missing, ghost in the shell and the crow, but i forgot to whom i borrowed them. but this is never gonna happen again, because dvdpedia has a neat “borrowed to…”-feature which integrates nicely with address book.app on os x. if you click on the image on the left, you can download a three-paged pdf (300kb) of all the dvd-covers which i exported with dvdpedia.
do you want to borrow one?
send me an email!
i’m testing ecto
this is the first post with the new version of ecto (one of the good points of doing a fresh install is that you update all your programs…)
back on track
thanks to the aforementioned disassembly guide me ibook now sports a nifty 60gb harddisk. to make things really pretty i decided to do a fresh install of panther. so things might be slow on the blog for some days, because i need to get back all the programs and little tools i so heavily rely on (just to make sure everything works, i’m writing this from the cloned backup….)
ibook disassembly
after i partially unscrewed my ibook last night i gave up at two o’clock in the morning (mostly because i was too tired to go on and couldn’t see the screws anymore :-)
then this morning i found this detailed pdf (1mb) in which cybergreg nicely explains how to replace the internal hdd of an ibook.
so i just need to grab one of these really small screwdrivers and give it another go…
holy shit!
my internal harddisk is acting extremely funky, and making weird clicking noises all the time.
at first i presumed it’s extreme overheating, cause i was doing some very processor-intensive work yesterday eveing. (rendering a huge mosaic with MacOSaiX). but this afternoon it’s not back to normal the weird clicking sound is still there.
thank god i have got a bootable backup so i can try to do some debugging.
after i booted from my external harddisk i started the disk utility from the backup and tried to verify the startup disk (the internal harddisk on my ibook). after a short while disk utility tells me that “the nesting of folders has exeeded the limit” which is beyond my explanation (see image on the left). i hope disk utility can fix this…
update: doesn’t seem so. i guess then it’s time for some major debugging. maybe i can find the hundreds of nested folders…
farenheit 9/11
i wanted to watch farenheit 9/11 tonight in the television (i missed it in the cinemas). but since i will go to see another movie tonight with wolf, peter and bruni i can’t…
so, while i sit in the cinema, i’m (legally) downloading it via bittorrent, because the internet veterans for truth share their bandwith in the wake of the presidential elections in the us of a. (“…to help you make the right choice on Tuesday.”)
so you can download farenheit 9/11 as a 214 mb .mov file or as a bittorrent of the same size and watch it later on, wherever you wish.
ah, the internet….
pictures of the week 45
today i’ve been in the rope-park with nine (a belated birthday surprise for her).
that was quite an amazing and adrenalie-inducing afternoon.
but the most amazing thing was that nina is able to smile really charming before abseiling herself 15 meters down a tree.
from above
while abseiling
from below
ps: i know the picture lacks in the sharpness-departement, but i like it anyway…
ps2: more pics are on flickr
ps3: can you believe it’s only 7 weeks to go until ’05?
address book apple-script
the powerbook blog linked to a nice hint on macosxhints.ch (features german translations of osxhints.com, but also original german hints).
you might have seen that you can click on any label in a contacts detail (e.g. work address, telephone, etc) to get a nice menu to do things with the data (get it in huge letters all over your screen, look for the map, print label, etc.).
since the release of panther coders can add to these menus with little apple-script-effort. the script mentioned in the hints adds an european map search, but i wanted to alter it to use the excellent map.search.ch. after downloading the nice applescript i changed it to this point:
using terms from application “Address Book”
on action property
return “address”
end action propertyon action title for thePerson with theAddress
return “mit map.search.ch anzeigen”
end action titleon should enable action for thePerson with theAddress
return true
end should enable actionon perform action for thePerson with theAddress
tell application “Address Book”
set z to zip of theAddress
set c to city of theAddress
set s to street of theAddress
end tell
tell application “Safari”
set browser to make new document
tell browser
set URL to “http://map.search.ch/” & z & “-” & c & “/” & s
end tell
end tell
return true
end perform action
end using terms from
so, to use the script, just open script editor, paste the code above (or FAR better, just click here1), save as “script” in ~/Library/Address Book Plug-Ins/ restart your address book and have fun with the address label.
it should work with all swiss addresses, if it doesn’t send me a note and i’ll try to fix it…
oh, and i forgot to mention: the whole thing only works for os x.3!
1that link took me ages!
how geeky can it get?
the image on the left shows how my flatmate notified me of the ready diner tonight. and he even didn’t cook, cause rita made some delicious homemade noodles.
want a mini-dv cam? [update]
i cannot remember the last time i used my video-cam, so i’m selling it.
if you need one, go and grab it on ricardo.ch (or email me and i’ll delete the auction and sell it to you, bypassing the ricardo.ch-fees. i’ll even throw in all my home-videos for you :-) )
update: it’s sold already!
dubya bush doesn’t want you
so, let’s assume you’re part of the internationally interested population and want to read george dubya bushs weblog to see what he (or his blogger) wants to tell you. or do you just want inform yourself about his view on different things that are important to yourself? but since monday morning you cannot access his website (www.georgewbush.com) from europe (or just about any other part of the non-us-world)? since quite a long time the website just times out on you and since monday morning you get one of these funky error messages seen in the image on the left. hm, then you’re left out behind and must stick to kerry’s page :-)
but just in case you really want to read what the still to be us-president has to tell you, you might direct your browser to: http://65.172.163.222/ or httpS://georgewbush.com/.
not that i could care less what he says, because i’d vote for: </bush>, but hey, just in case…
[via boinboing, joi.ito, haslo or jimmiz journal (german, with a link to the the technology used to block the unwelcome users) ]
telly tonite [update]
my selfmade pizza is in the oven and will be ready exactly when the live-movie starts (sorry, the link is only available in german).
i can hardly remember the last time i spent an evening in front of the telly watching normal television, i’ve been watching a lot of dvds lately, but not a live program, so this is gonna be fun.
have a nice evening!
read more about the live-movie project on zdf.de
update: the movie was quite good – although i don’t really like murder mystery stories. while fun to watch the slight errors which occurred through the live-format (delayed appearances of actors, some shaky cameras and two or three times reflections of the camera-team in the well-lit windows) the achievements of the whole team were really impressive. if you want to see a bit more, then zdf has a little after-documentary on its website.
targot.net
as i mentioned in the post below, i played targot.net yesterday afternoon.
targot.net is a project of two guys of the fachhochschule aarau (i forgot the name of one, so both remain nameless…).
the game revolves around modules (on the left) which you have to place on the playground. each module consist of three pieces: the fuse, charge and the shell.
first all participants make their modules, preferably on self-adhesive paper, so they can be placed on walls and alike. when you place a part of a targot, you send the exact place of that module via sms to the gameserver. (something like “put fuse, 1-943, mattentreppe unten, wand” or “put charge, 1-965, rathausgasse 1”). shortly after sending that message, the gameserver notifies all other players where you have put a fuse, charge or shell. then you have to get to that targot-module as fast as possible and add your module (add 1-943, 1987). if you’re the third person to add the correct module the targot detonates and you get a point. the first to reach three points wins. easy as a cake.
to make the whole thing a bit more interesting, every player also has some blocking modules (the white module on the right) where you can block a targot, so noone can add to it anymore, hence no more points. when you block a targot you earn those modules you block, so in the case on the left, bruni earned a new fuse to place somewhere. because yesterday the game was extremely fastpaced we had kind of a headquarter where 3 laptops were available to take a look at the targot-site, where the whole playground is updated in realtime, so you could see who has placed which module where. it was nearly impossible to keep the overview only on the messages you got on your mobile! so if you saw eight people running around in the old town staring on their mobiles and waving around with pieces of adhesive paper you now know why!
the goal is to get a sponsor for the whole site, so playgrounds can be opened constantly, instead of only on saturday afternoons. just imagine a targot-game distributed over whole switzerland. it would be run over weeks! how cool!
but until then the whole game runs in beta-test-mode, mostly because the whole thing is quite costly. yesterday we’ve been 8 users playing in the lower part of the old town and the server has been sending out more than 200 short messages to all users, adding up to 40 bucks only for sending those messages.
so, for the moment you can only play targot.net when you grab four friends and everyone pays 10 bucks to play, which covers the cost for the modules and smses.
anyone up for it? i’d love to play it once more and the two inventors need more beta-testers!