if you’re like me and think that voting is a big part of democracy then this site might be the right thing for you: votez.ch (for obvious reasons only in german).
since sometimes the point of a ballot can be hard to get (especially if the title is misleading) then some background information can be really helpful to help you find your decision
the people behind votez.ch provide you with little blurbs of information for the upcoming elections or ballots and explain you the pro’s and con’s of every tabling and even tell you who says to vote yes or no (e.g. if you always vote with the SP, they tell you what the SP advises to vote).
the good thing behind votez.ch is, that the people which are behind it do not share one political direction. they actually think that politics sucks a wee bit, but also know that it’s important (especially as younger people) to cast its vote in elections.
so, if you think you might need a little boost to actually fill out that slip of paper, then you definitely should subscribe to their newsletter and you’ll get an email tailored about two weeks before you actually have to send the ballot in.

oh, and if you do not know how to actually fill out that slip of paper, then this little illustration might help you (wonderful!)

this morning i went to thömu to see if he has any good bikes to offer (he has). i knew that my mom went to röschu around noon to buy a bike for herself today, so i tried to be there as fast as possible (because i wanted to help her a bit and was already late).
the calculated route from oberried to röschus shop (according to map24.ch) is 11.39 km and takes 19 minutes. with my bike i drove the 9.34 km in 13 minutes and 50 seconds, resulting in an average speed of 40.5 km per hour. not too bad, aight?
now the question is, do i really need a bike that is faster than the one i already own? answer: yes, because it’s even more fun to drive fast with a racing bike than with a street-capable mountain bike.

oh, and in the end it turns out that i’m gonna decide between the bmc streetfire ssx (from our shop) or the specialized allez comp or the thömus slicker team pro. (guesss which one is the cheapest for me…) it’s a really hard decision. the price difference between all three bikes is less than 5% (i’m not gonna tell how cheap (compared to the real price) i get them) so it’s more of a “which dealer do i like most”-question…).
and in the end i also get 1k swiss franks from the insurance of the girl that trashed my bike. it’s not as much as i hoped, but at least the new bike is not gonna be as painful on my bank-account.

today i got a mail from poland.
just take a look at these pictures, and drool over them. i cannot wait until i hold my frame (the black one) in my hands.

i’ve been looking forward to getting that mail since november, so i’m a happy puppy now :-)
now i can start looking for the right parts to build my custom made bike-dream….

i could slap my head!
i’ve been trying to write some files to my flash-stick for about three hours now. the thing was, that the permissions were not set right, so i thought this is some unixy hiccup, no big deal.

i tried to verify the disk itself and tried to repair the disk permissions using the disk utility. nothing.
i relaunched the finder. nothing.
i tried to reformat the stick using the terminal. nothing.
i even tried to rm some files on it using su. nothing (this was l33t-sp34k).
i looked up osxhints how to possibly resolve that issue. nothing
hell, i even rebooted my ibook, a thing only for severe problems. nothing.
and just about now i found out that the little dip-switch on the stick was set on write-protect.
again. i. could. slap. my. head!

good night.

some weeks ago i made a little post about the lastest drool-over-gadget from sony, the librie. now dottocomu posted a first look on the e-book reader which doesn’t seem to be so hot at all.
the look and the quality of the screen are impressive, but the screen is slow and the buttons are awkwardly placed. but the single most disappointing thing is, that you cannot load all books onto the librie (besides that you actually need the ac-cord to sync), but have to “rent” one of only 400 books sony offers to you. in addition those books expire after 60 days. so, if you’re a slow reader you have to buy the book twice or more.
as gizmodo says: a breakthrough device – as soon as some Swedish hacker unlocks the DRM that prevents us from putting our own media on it.
let’s hope that swedish hacker hurries up a bit (there’s hope, because the librie is supposed to run on some flavour of linux) or this will stay in the shelfs like nailed to them.
just imagine, it would be so cool to take the librie, 2 AAA batteries and some books from project gutenberg (or the german equivalent) into your holidays. no more shlepping of books!

after seeing this bike at the velo züri last weekend, i just cannot seem to get the idea to buy a bike like this out of my head.

after some googling i found this shop from the netherlands which carries those bikes (funny URL by the way…) and some really cool other ones.
now i know that kona produces that extremely cool looking bike.

so the question is, should i get one? or should i see if i can get an ever more radical looking chopper from NWCB?

oh, if you’re into these things, you should give bikehotrod.uk a visit! and if you don’t mind to see a chicks bare butt, you should absolutely check out this page here, what an amazing bikeframe!

today we had kind of a family reunion. it was my cousins birthday and she invited all of us for a brunch at her and her boyfriends house. not only was the weather most beautiful, but the whole was also quite funny and nice.
instead of mailing around all the pics i made today i put them online in the pictures section. –> clicketyhere!

this survey by the auntie’s science department is really interesting.
take it to the end and see how you score with your disgust threshold against other people or the prediction of the science-team. the whole survey took me less than 4 minutes to fill out and in the end the results and descriptions of ’em are really interesting. well worth those minutes!

[via boingboing]

tired of having a dimpled and bruised banana?
then you need this piece of fine craftsmanship, the bananaguard!
i have to say that the bananaguard order page reminds me of other things, but that’s a) another story and b) up to your imagination…

[via gizmodo]

reading one of the latest editions of the weltwoche i stumbled over that funny little story.
gorge dubya bush was holding a 45 min speech in orlando, florida. tyler crotty, some teenager, stood behind the big silly man and had to listen to him for the whole time. he couldn’t help yawning, looking at his watch and twisting his head a bit to relieve the absolute boredom he encountered.
you have to watch the video to see how funny that is.
here’s the link to a video of the best moments as a real-player file. if you don’t have installed the real-player, then you can still check out the story on local6-news or take a look at a slideshow of the best moments.
hilarious!

while having a look at my referrers something struck me.
besides all the ubiquitous pr0n-links i get a big bunch of hits from google and a massive hit from other blogrolls (many users of bloglines and postami and alike). hey, even the fscklog links to me in his/her blogroll (as seen on the left).
the thing that struck me is – as arni described it in one of his last posts – that, because i share a big piece of my life on the net with a growing bunch of people i do not know and i’ve never met, all the people who google me find out pretty much anything about me (at least the things i share) it’s like one big massive cv that builds up. arni described that perfectly. sometimes in the future there’s no need to include references in your cv, because the person offering you a job will google your name and find out everything he or she needs to know.
example? search for “cost + HO:YAG laser” and google.nl presents you my thesis, e.g. i did something with lasers in my past
search for “joya rennt trailer“, here i am again, e.g. i am somehow connected to that tv-series.
i could go on and list all the referrers from google, but the point i wanted to make (to those who don’t read arnis blog) is, that pretty much everything i (or any other person) posts/comments or leaves ont the net is gonna be history from the point on it’s there. and most probably, it’s gonna stay, too. this means: do what you want on the net, but do it responsibly, because it’s there and it will be there. treat other people like you want to be treated, and stay true to yourself, because you wouldn’t want your future boss or future business-partner or whatever find out that you acted like a complete asshole years ago. because he will be able to find out if he wants to.
time to go and cook (so my future boss, i like to cook :-).
nightynight!

i just nearly broke my neck.
when i sat on my panton chair (a verner panton original from 1972) it cracked half through and now looks like this:

the saddest part is, that the chair was a birthday present from my parents and is the most expensive piece of furniture i own (besides my selfmade sideboard/shelf which you can see in the background of the pictures).
now i have to decide if i want to shell out big cash to get a new old panton chair from el trapero or a new new cheaper chair from vitra. if you’ve been at the expo in neuchatel you know them, a horrible tupperware-like polypropylene, not the heavy haptically interesting polyurethane.
guess who is soon paying an unreasonable high amount of cash for a simple chair :-)

team laser explosions newest adventure is online. they saved the world. sad, but true, there was no pie in weebl and bob’s newest adventure, but the laser pelvis attack is nearly as good. :-)

[via weebls newsletter]

instead of reading way too much rss-feeds and stuff on tha intaweb i instead watched the fly (the 1986 version, not the original or the upcoming remake).
not that it was a really good movie, but as an example of eighties trick-technique and scientific imagination and computer-trickery it was really enjoyable.
in the end it means that i now only have about 47 unwatched dvds in my treasure chest in the living room.
and to finish a busy day i’ll now make an onion-packing to relieve my aching neck. i woke up with a really stiff neck last monday morning and it still doesn’t feel better so nina suggested this remedy… (she’s studying pharmaceutics, so actually onion-packings are not her thing, she’s a bit more on the chemical side :-)

i’ve always wanted to get a bluetooth headset for my mobile (not that i needed it, but as a tech-addict you can’t argue with that :-) but thought that they’re far too clumsy to actually use them.
but today i saw the nextlink bluespoon 5g headset which is far from clumsy. it looks like you have to pay attention not to loose it in your pockets. you should especially check out this picture from the gallery to see how tiny it is.
sadly it’s only a prototype for now, nextlinks page does not advertise is anywhere…

[via mobile.burn]