why haven’t i seen software like this really, really nice screensaver before my switcher days?

i think from now on i switch my screensaver from a blank screen to this:

hmm, i think if i participated in that picture-contest, i would have been the designated winner.
compare the winner with the original :-)

oh, and btw: a huge amount of people might wonder how i always find obscure links like these.

this time it’s a simple chain reaction.
we from bern won the right to host the suicmc04. while looking for sponsors i talked with lüsche from klink (webpartner of the velokurier), he’s got a contact with bluewin for potential sponsoring. to be able to talk with him i needed to get his phonenumber, so i surfed to klink.ch and saw that they programmed a image-database for swiss meat. not too hard, ‘aight?

you got an mms-enables mobile phone?
want to send a real postcard to someone who doesn’t have one of these gizmos?
then click here and follow the instructions :-)

this is a new service from the swiss post (press release). they will print a postcard for you and send it.
the funny thing is, that the first one is free, so give it a go, you only have to pay one mms and a marginal data-amount…
really retro. send a truly digital message and someone gets a truly offline postcard.
silly it costs 3 bucks when you use it more than once…

if you own a mac, then go and download these two:

• sidetrack
• collage

sidetrack is definitely a must! i never thought i’d miss these features until i installed this nifty piece of software. sidetrack is a replacement driver for your trackpad on the mac. it enables scrolling features i now heavily rely on (it almost makes my mouse obsolete…). you now get a defined zone on your trackpad in which you can scroll the screen (preferably the left part for vertical and the top part for horizontal scrolling…)

collage is a funny little plugin for itunes which displays freely available images from the internet as a visualisation. it’s quite hard to explain, just give it a go.
ah, and most important: both pieces are freeware.

if these guys are not amazing, then you have an extremely high level of unimpressiveability!

[via boingboing]

tomazobi will be the hit soon :-)
one of these guys went to school with my sister and all three of ’em have the potential to be the new troubadours of bern (like mani matter and others)
especially their song lulu is just about the best song i ever heard (at least in swiss-german :-)
you need to check out their website, it’s a marvelous example of funny webdesign and crude little ideas (how about their stage-plan for small and big stages?)

btw: my sister is the one on the right :-) the bloke is björn hering, the “used-to-be” host of joya rennt, COO of faro tv and my potential brother-in-law.

well, i have to say the demo-version of realviz’ stitcher is quite capable.
here are some really quick and dirty hacks making a panorama of four images i made in kos.
it’s the castle in kos-city.
here is a 800kb QTVR. and this here is a 400kb jpeg:

it’s a real pity that even the student version still costs 100€…

today i finally got the time to grab renzos pictures and movies from last friday.
and since sigi liked the first tandem movie so much, i thought i’d give it a go and made a second one.
this one here is a 5.7 mb movie, renzo and me driving from the main station in bern to the university hospital of bern (actually with some blood in my backpack).

ps: the movie has no sound from driving because it was just too muffled, absolutely no chance to understand a single word.
ps2: watch out for the upcoming tandem feature movie “drü poschis i drü minute” (three post-coaches in three minutes) with an almost crash…

today i thought i needed to go for a little walk.
as i live really near the allmend here in bern i thought, thats a good idea to go there. but then i discovered that it’s not your typical sunday walk today, instead there was some motorbike exhibition.
although i am no fan of motorized stuff, i couldn’t help watching those guys doing some truly impressing FMX stunts.


now i go and read my newspapers.

yesterday i helped a friend of mine to move. she owns an original ball chair by aarnio eero which is quite a pain in the ass to move.
the picture below is the effort of five people to get that beast into the first floor (it’s too wide to carry up stairs and too wide to get through doors.

i have to say that for me it looks like a scene from Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! .

through some circumstances i could not go and see les triplettes de belleville last tuesday, but managed to go and see it today with sigi & baba (i simply forgot something and could not go to the movies, no big deal).
it’s a really magnificent movie, go and see it! even if you don’t really like animated movies, it’s got so much charm and a huge amount of far out ideas and little heart-warming details.
if you do not know what i’m talking about, go and see the website (which is a really nice flash-site) or download the trailer here.

too much time + some playmobil + a good idea + istopmotion = a funny little movie by sven
(warning: the movie is at least a 10 mb download)

if an oriental rapper doing sexist lyrics while wearing a shabby elvis outfit is your thang, then khai is for you!
you need to check out his videos!
[via PieceoBlog]

well, if you’re interested, one of the tandem movies can be downloaded here.
i have to issue a warning, the file is about 9mb in size and if you got a weak stomach, then you might get ill :-)
further infos: the timeline of the movie is absolutely unedited, we drove down the frickweg with the speed you see on the movie (btw. B. and Hermann, i could not show your house, because i had to concentrate on the sharp turn at the end of the badgasse, sorry) and had exactly those two and something minutes to drive down.
the annoying noise is the wind blowing in the microphone of my cam. remember it’s supposed to take pictures, the movie-ability is just a nifty feature…
and yeah, gimme a break, i know the sound is not edited very thorough, but as i said before, it’s my first try with imovie.

do you remember the movies i made last friday? i’ve been fooling around with ’em in imovie and must say that this app is quite straight-forward (as soon as you figure out how to import the sound from non-standard-mpegs which my camera produces).
i know there are much fancier products which are also free, but with imovie i was able to make a nice little movie with soundtrack, a little transition and stuff like that in a matter of some dozen minutes without even thinking about reading the manual.

but now it’s really late, i got a terrible cold and just want to go to bed, i’ll upload the movie tomorrow or thursday. i think it’s quite funny for a first try in video-editing :-)

good night.

für einmal auf Deutsch :-)
Wer genauso wie ich Abe Hebeisens wöchentliche Kolummne im Bund liebt, wird sich freuen, dass es auf Bernerkultur.ch ein Archiv aller bisher erschienenen Kolummnen gibt.
und dort gibts auch gute Kulturtips, das werde ich heute machen.

and here in english. i just love the translation of Hebeisen into elevation iron :-)

this is why the new nokia n-gage gameconsolemobilephonetacoshell is never gonna be a hit!

update: it might not be obvious, but nokias designers do not read books on industrial design. this means, that the user has to hold the n-gage sideways to make a phone-call with it. how daft is that?

update: see what gizmodo has to say to bad industrial design :-) (actually not really about the n-gage, but about the new nokia 7700 which is sidetalking-enabled, too…)

taking a look at the referers to habi.gna.ch i found that when you search for habi on google, then you get quite relevant hits:

ps: and if you take a close look on the referers, then you see some interesting keywords that list my page really high: “fleisch werbekampagne“, “streetparade 03“, “Grosstierklinik+Bern+Tierspital”

ps: and searching for siegfried and roy on search.ch ranks me quite high. b. (CTO @ search.ch), i think you have to tweak your algorithm a bit :-)

well, i just can’t help posting some more:
the back seat driver made some pictures and even some movies.
i’ll try to reencode them into a more web-friendly format (the longest one is about 60mb, exactly 3 minutes, which is just too big) using imovie and then post them here.
they’re all quite funky to watch, because you feel like being on the bike actually.