subservient chicken

tell the chicken what you want it to do (like “sit on the sofa”, “turn around”, “play some music”) and the subservient chicken does what you want.
i haven’t yet decided if this is a late april’s fool joke or a brilliant marketing campaign, either way it’s hilarious!
oh, and if you feel the urge to act like a subservient chicken or if your missus likes these sort of things, there’s even a chicken mask for you to wear :-)

[via glider]

new filewile-track

coming home. checking mail. getting 29 spam emails while being offline for only 4 days.
sifting through the relevant email. seeing the one from dustbowl. going to filewile.com and downloading their new track emitow (which is gonna be on the ccc-compilation). listening to it and enjoying it.
this day is gonna be good.

happy easter

oh, and by the way, i wish you all a happy easter, i’ll be away skiing until monday or tuesday.
i’m visiting a friend (scroll down to see mara bucko) of mine in austria.
i hope to rent one or two good skis, and maybe return with a new snow-weapon.

big fish

yesterday evening i went to see tim burtons latest movie: big fish. if you haven’t seen it, go and see it instantly, it’s such a heartwarming and poetic movie. i hardly couldn’t help crying out loud in the cinema, because the end is so sad and so happy in the same time.

one of the best movies i’ve seen in a long time!

new software

those of you of which english is not your maternal language have probably used a bunch of translation services on the net or use a dictionary from time to time to look up unknown words.

my preferred way of looking up a translation of an english word was to use the excellent dict.leo.org. ages ago i fired up my browser, typed the address in, waited, put the word to be translated in the box, clicked enter and then got the translation. soon i made myself a little bookmarklet in safari (adapted from a hint on osxhints.com) and didn’t need to put in the address myself:

javascript:x=escape(getSelection());if(!x)%7Bvoid(x=prompt(‘Word?’,”))%7D;window.location=’http://dict.leo.org/?search=’+x

dilobut since i’ve read that post on fscklog i don’t even need to switch my browser, i just hit command+shift+F in any application, then dilo fires up and looks up the word, be it either english or german. wonderful!
and the best thing is, that the software is a mere 156kb big. i thought i’d never seen anything like that off my trusty palm.

the second software i installed in the last few days is quicksilver (the new gunslinger, i just love that quote!).
i’ve never got the hang of launchbar et.al. although a lot of people praise that kind of software to high heavens. but some days ago i stumbled over this post on mactechnews.de praising quicksilver as the ultimate power-tool for os x. and i have to say, since i installed it i hardly can work at any mac without it, it’s so amazingly cool.
let’s say i want to email a file to someone i know: up to now i switched to my finder, navigated about three hundred folders down into my hierarchy, then grabbed that file, dragged it to the mail icon in the dock, inserted the name of the recipient and then was able to write my text. time: 25 seconds (or so..).
now i just press command+space, type the name of the file, press tab, write email, press tab, and write the name of the recipient. mail fires up with the desired file in a new email to the desired person. voilà. time: 3 seconds.
but that’s not all. need to fire up that certain application buried deep inside your structure? (like seti@home on my ibook, it’s buried inside /applications/netz/distributed/seti@home). just press command+space, type stihme (which stands for setiathome: quicksilver works with any consecutive letter in the filename) and press enter. voila.

qs_kurieror, do you want to look up that phone-number of someone? again, command+space, type in the name of that person, press left, select the desired number and press enter. and the number is there, in shiny big letters on top of my windows (with the number at work done on the left, not that i’d forget that one, but i thought none of my friends would be happy if i post their phone-number on the web :-). hundred times faster than starting the address book, scrolling to the k or typing in “kurier” in the search boy and then squinting at the tiny phone-number.
doesn’t seem like a big deal, but once you get the hang of it, you will miss it on any mac without it.
qsand you just need to love a piece of software that has the option to turn of superfluous effects in its preferences, aight?

my recommendation, go grab quicksilver now, install it, give the excellent manual a read (worth because of the myriads of feature of quicksilver), read that handy tutorial and be amazed what quicksilver can do for you.

oh, and did i mention that both softwares are free?

guitar god

did you ever play too much video games, so that you had nightmares?
i remember once trying to finish tetris on the hardest possible setting on the gameboy and managing to finish it (so that the space-shuttle bonus screen came up) and having the most terrible night-mares afterwards. i had to dodge out those falling blocks in my dreams, and every-time i couldn’t manage it getting squished to death…

i bet KeiicHi must have had nightmares, too (3.7 mb .wmv movie).
he manages to play the soundtrack of super mario land on his guitar, complete with the power-up and coin-grab sound effects! marvelous!

[via boingboing]

itunes info in sidebar

because something was f[beep] up with the way kung-tunes posted the trackinfo from my itunes to the sidebar, here’s the roundup on how i did it (adding to this post):

– go to mt’s control panel.
– make a new blog (itunes).
– make a new category (nowplaying).
– hit “edit category attributes”, toggle “accept incoming trackback pings” to yes.
– jot down the trackback url.
– add that url to kung-tunes preferences.
– make the format of kungtunes notification:

&title=^t&url=http://itunes.com&#pblog_name=^p#p&#aexcerpt=^a#a

– add three files to the sub-blog (here: itunes), now_playing.html and lastfive.html and last30.html.
– for each of the three above files add something along these lines to the code: (MTAmazon optional for album cover)

<?php
function datediff($datestr)
{
$r = array();
$d = time() – strtotime($datestr);
if ($d > 86400*2)
array_push($r, floor($d / 86400) . ” days”);
elseif ($d > 86400)
array_push($r, “1 day”);
$d = $d % 86400;
if ($d > 7200)
array_push($r, floor($d / 3600) . ” hours”);
else if ($d > 3600)
array_push($r, “1 hour”);
$d = $d % 3600;
if ($d > 120)
array_push($r, floor($d / 60) . ” minutes”);
else if ($d > 60)
array_push($r, “1 minute”);
if (!count($r))
return “now”;
else
return implode(” and “, $r) . ” ago”;
}
?>
<MTPings category=”nowplaying” lastn=”1″><br/>
<MTAmazon search=”[MTPingBlogName] [MTPingExcerpt]”
line=”music” lastn=”1″>
<a href=”<MTAmazonLink>”>
<img border=”0″ src=”<MTAmazonSmallImage>” align=”left” alt=”see the album” />
</a>
</MTAmazon>
<a href=”itms://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/
wa/advancedSearchResults?songTerm=<$MTPingTitle encode_url=”1″$>&artistTerm=<$MTPingBlogName encode_url=”1″$>” title=”Search at the iTunes Music Store”>
<$MTPingTitle$></a><br/>

by <a href=”itms://
phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/
advancedSearchResults?artistTerm=<$MTPingBlogName encode_url=”1″$>”
title=”Search at the iTunes Music Store”><$MTPingBlogName$></a><br/>

from the album <a href=”itms://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/
advancedSearchResults?albumTerm=<$MTPingExcerpt encode_url=”1″$>”
title=”Search at the iTunes Music Store”><$MTPingExcerpt$></a><p/>

was played <? echo datediff(‘<$MTPingDate format=”%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S”$>’); ?>.

<br />
</MTPings>
<br clear=”all” />

– thank b. for whacking out quite a bit of the above code and helping with the initial debugging.
– prettify the code for the 5 and 30 page, because these are the pages the people are gonna look at (iterate lastn=X in: “<MTPings category=”nowplaying” lastn=”1″><br/>”.
– add the code below to the sidebar of the main blog.

<?php require_once(“itunes/now_playing.html”); ?>
you can also see the <a href=”https://habi.gna.ch/blog/itunes/lastfive.html” target=”_blank”>last five</a> or the <a href=”https://habi.gna.ch/blog/itunes/last30.html” target=”_blank”>last 30 songs</a>

– rebuild all involved blogs.
– wash, rinse, repeat

btw: you did not notice that since i installed panther kung-tunes was posting the album title as the song title, did you?

weblogs in the news

nick lüthi (one of the bloggers over at the berner gazette) wrote a nice article about weblogs in (one of) the local newspapers.
he nicely explains terms like blogosphere and points out some hints on how to start your own weblog.
give it a read!

ps: if you don’t have a hard-copy of todays bund, go and read the article now, i don’t know how long it will be freely available in the eBund, i suspect that in a week you’ve got to pay for the access. oh, and by the way, the article is in german.

picture of the week

i’ve been thinking about posting a picture per week for a really long time, and with the picture below i want to start that series. (kind of like the way jeremy hedley does). my pictures will probably never reach the artistic potential of the one’s he posts, nonetheless i’ll try to share some pictures i like with you
the picture below was this afternoon in the rosengarten here in bern.
hidden behind the tree is the cathedral, the mother on the right side of the tree was telling her kid stories for the whole time i was sitting there (around two hours) which i thought was really nice.

DSC00744

good night.

sony – apple teamup? [update]

there’s always quite a bit of rumor that sony and apple might teamup sometimes (or the one is buying the other).
from the perspective as a gadget-lover this would result in the most technically advanced (sony) gadgets which are on top of the industrial design scale (apple).
here’s another evidence that both companies share the same views: if you look at the promotional pictures of sony’s latest hot gadget, the librie they seem to be shot by the same photographer that also does the promotional pictures for apple.
the librie seems to float in front of a white surface, with a subtle shadow, shot from a slight frog perspective.
here’s the direct comparison for you to judge:

librie_apple < ibook vs librie > librie_sony

if you want to drool over the specs (at least i did) gearbits has the lowdown on the librie (and well the sexier pic than engadget :-)
as an avid all-consuming reader i know i will need to tame myself not to buy that thing (except that it’s gonna cost more than any reasonable person would pay for it…)
just imagine going on a holiday trip an not needing to carry those seven books with you, but just carry that sleek little gadget.
the librie looks really promising, the screen has more than double the resolution than your average computer monitor and because the e-ink “paper” only needs juice when the image changes (here’s how it works) you can read around 10000 pages before replacing the batteries, giving you quite a bunch to read on those four m-budget batteries :-)

and now for something completely different:
a) while looking up some links for the post here i found an excellent mac-centric blog which is now on my rss-wachlist fscklog.typepad.com.
b) for all those that still do not get the whole buzz behind rss, the current wired features an excellent little article about what it is.

update: corrected a typo (thanks to commenter :-)

new buttons

amazon_orkutthanks to the fabulous button maker my blog now features two new buttons in the lower sidebar. (besides the other ones, which were also made with the button maker, ages ago).
once a button which links to my amazon wishlist, just in case you want to send me a gift and the other is a button which links to my orkut-profile (which is something like FOAF for dummies :-). you’re free to join there and help build my network of friends.

ffaf is over

thanks for everyone participating on my free-for-all-friday!
some blogs which i will check out soon are now on my 2do list.

(the password is now changed to something private, so you cannot login anymore)
now i need to go to bed, i just returned from the only swiss show of princess superstar the concert is not over yet, but i have to get up quite early tomorrow.
oh, and yes the show was really good, it just started way too late!

Locked Outside!

I pulled this out of my old school composition book. Typed fresh and posting here, I don’t know if anyone is going to like this or not.

What does it feel like to be locked away from home? No transportations, nowhere to go; only one you can blame is yourself.

It doesn�t feel that bad after trying everyway to get back, now I could get mad at myself and consider the rest of the day as a bad day, or I could just make the best out of what I have. So, I have decided to write journals and walk around my neighborhood. I still remember the good-old-days; when I used to come out here in the same playground and ride my bike and play around with the other kids. It seems like events from yesterday. Anyway, I have lived in this neighborhood for a good six years now. Behind my house, there is an elementary school: IPS school 105. Soon after I decided to come to the playground, which is about 200 feet away from my house. I found myself in the playground sitting and observing kids playing kickball. It was amusing to me to picture myself being a kid again and what it�s like to be a kid again. But, I rather observe nowadays than actually participate. Although, I wouldn�t mind partake in, but I love to observe people. I find it quite time passing event. Sometimes, I want to figure out why certain people do certain things also what goes through certain people�s mind. Through observing their behaviors in an anonymous way, I can find out a lot about certain people.

So far, being locked out of the house had its advantages. At least I used the time to write another journal.

– Syedur ::: Life :: Logged!

snow

sigi… your phd sounds cool… (no pun intended) and speaking of snow I’m reading a really cool book at the moment called “high risk” (i think, not got the book handy… doh!) and it’s about avalanches and Everest… really enjoyable page turner…

Speaking of PhD’s snap.. I’m also doing one… total opposites… mines in astronautics… and in the sunny climes of Southampton, England…

Be good have fun…

DJ ::… tbc …::