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]

too bad i cannot add this to my amazon wishlist!
as an avid swimmer i’d love to have an endless pool in my basement or so. at least they send out a free video, so i can dream on a bit :)

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.

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!

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

but 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.

or, 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.
and 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?

as diggory says, the photo diary of a motorcycle tour is one of the most frightening and depressing things i’ve seen in a long while!

[via monkeyfood]

update: boingboing notes that this story probably is some kind of hoax. nonetheless the whole story behind the story is unbelievably sad and should never ever happen again. nowhere!

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]

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.