Posted by muesli in
The third place
Thursday, August 28. 2003
Do you know The Lonely Astronaut?
If not, go here and laugh your ass off 
It's all about the NASA leaving one astronaut behind on the moon. Since no moon flights were planned after 1972 he's still up there and pretty pissed.
This episode's esp. great.
Posted by muesli in
Video Games
Thursday, August 28. 2003
Okay, don't really want to blame Microsoft for that one, but this still is unbelievable:
I just played EA's Tiger Woods 2k3 and made the perfect round:
- Earned Eagle Extravaganza Trophyball for 4 Eagles in one round
- 16 Birdies ->in a row<-
- 50000$ of extra money
I just played the ball for my 17th Birdie as the game crashed. Can't read disc. Please clean.
Clean what? You mean after I ejected the CD and broke it in millions of pieces?
Yeah, I'll clean that one later.
Tell me please: a CD-ROM is a _R_ead _O_nly _M_emory device, which means: If the CD is dirty, tell the game to wait, let the user clean the CD and then play on.
But no, Microsoft had to implement a Bluescreen (tm) in the xBox Framework, too.
Thanks.
Posted by muesli in
Tuesday, August 26. 2003
I used to rip/encode my CDs with Grip, a Gnome application. Since I'm a KDE user and fan, anyways, I tried KAudioCreator for my latest ripping actions.
The program itself is quite slim, just offering the options you need. Of course, you're able to configure the encoder settings via command-line parameters, which allows you to use KAudioCreator with any upcoming audiofile format.
The only bug (don't even know if it's really a bug, could be my lame binary, too) I noticed: I had to change my lame command-line. Here's the correct value for my version:
/usr/bin/lame --r3mix --tt %song --ta %artist --tl %album --ty %year --tn %track %f %o
Actually, the genre parameter didn't work out. I don't care about that crappy information anyway, so I just cut it out.
Have fun,
muesli
Posted by muesli in
Tech & Net
Saturday, August 23. 2003
Nowadays, everybody knows (at least everyone's supposed to) about spamfilters like Bogofilter or SpamAssassin. Their task is to parse incoming mails and rate their "value". The user's task is to train the filter by telling it what is spam and what's not. After a while, the filter knows pretty well to distinguish between spam and private mails just by analyzing their words.
Today I wondered, why there's no similiar system for searchengines? Google's users should be able to tell the system whether a website is spam or not. Just imagine: millions of users should be able to create an awesome spamfilter for websites.
The only problem I see so far: The users have to learn, that they are not supposed to vote for the content itself, but for spam, porn redirects & misleading content.
What do you think?
Posted by muesli in
Tech & Net
Saturday, August 23. 2003
As Sterling Hughes announced today, Thies and him released their "Faster, Harder, Stronger" patch for PHP.
Since both are PHP-core developers for a long time, you can simply expect the best 
The benchmark results are impressive: Over a complete set of 19 (more or less) complex tasks, the patch achieves a 50% speed improvement. (yep: fifty)
Everyone's encouraged to try it, debug it, fix it. All you need is a fresh PHP checkout.
:muesli
Posted by muesli in
The third place
Wednesday, August 20. 2003
Cites impressing me / impressed me:
Life's Tragedy is that we get old to soon and wise too late.
(Benjamin Franklin)
Wer in einem gewissen Alter nicht merkt, daß er hauptsächlich von Idioten umgeben ist, merkt es aus einem gewissen Grunde nicht.
(Curt Goetz, dt. Schriftsteller und Schauspieler, 1888-1990)
There are two types of people in this world, good and bad. The good sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more.
(Woody Allen)
Sein Gewissen war rein, er benutzte es nie.
(S. J. Lec, poln. Satiriker, 1909-1966)
All women become like their mothers; that is their tragedy. No man does; that is his.
(Oscar Wilde)
Das ist schön bei uns Deutschen, keiner ist so verrückt, daß er nicht noch einen verrückteren fände, der ihn versteht.
(Heinrich Heine, dt. Dichter, 1797-1856)
Posted by muesli in
Tech & Net
Wednesday, August 20. 2003
I just got bored of the old black/white mouse cursor on my X11 desktop.
On http://www.kde-look.org, you're able to find dozens of new mouse themes. I picked Crystal XCursors, a nifty theme with blue, shiny cursors.
Installation is as easy as this:
$ tar xvfz 6240-Crystalcursors.tar.gz
$ cd Crystalcursors
$ make
$ make install
You might wanna check your settings - using kcontrol or something similar - but in my case it worked out of the box (Debian/unstable).
...muesli
Posted by muesli in
Tech & Net
Wednesday, August 20. 2003
At SCOForum, the SCO in-house exhibition, SCO showed the "so-called" stolen source code. Some people were able to take some screenshots of the presentation. SCO replaced some parts of it with strange characters, which turned out to be greek, so it was easy to reproduce the whole sourcecode.
Bruce Perens did some research and finally posted his results. As a short subsumption:
Most parts of the source were released as opensource, at least twice. If not, they we're published in books written back in den 70's and 80's...
Some other parts they showed are definitively not in the linux kernel: The syntax of the source is simply wrong, so nobody would have ever been able to compile this kernel. Therefore, I assume, such kernel-releases never existed.
Time to sell your SCO shares.
Bruce's cite: "It strikes me that SCO would show their best example. This is it?!?!? Hoary old code from 1973 that's been all over the net for three decades and is released under a license that allows the Linux developers to use it with impunity? If this is their best example, they are bound to lose."
Amen.
Posted by muesli in
The third place
Monday, August 18. 2003
If life was a videogame, mine would be the never-ending replay of a missed final strike against the last boss.
Remember? Last week, my cellphone was stolen. Then, last friday, our power provider sent a letter, telling us that we wasted energy like a 4-person household and we now owe them about 500 Euros for the last 12 months. Great.
Saturday, I locked myself out of the apartment. I, again, spent 100 Euros for the reopening-service.
I just don't wanna know what's happening this week.
Posted by muesli in
The third place
Tuesday, August 12. 2003
 Today, Hinnie handed over a gift to me
First of all, thank you! But on the other hand: Damn, this is addictive!
It's called Freakycar and it's one of those very small RC cars flooding the market. I never thought of them being that much fun.
It takes only 30 seconds to recharge the car, which then will be able to drive for about 4 or 5 minutes. With a little practising you'll quickly learn how to navigate this little race car.
Also a package of traffic-signs and stuff is included, which allowed me to create a race track on my desk
Posted by muesli in
The third place
Monday, August 11. 2003
Again: life sucks (tm).
Went swimming and just didn't watch my mobile phone for 20 (twenty) seconds... never saw it again. Stolen.
Write down proposals for new phones (with links) here, please.
Did I mention my PayPal Account?
;-(
Posted by muesli in
Wednesday, August 6. 2003
 You know, there are just few things Linux really lacks support - or in other words: sucks.
Here are just a few examples which bothered me more than once at least.
Continue reading "Penguin's last problems."
Posted by muesli in
Tech & Net
Sunday, August 3. 2003
Lurking around the Web, I - once again *g*- found a nice KDE eyecandy tool: SuperKaramba.
It offers a flexible configuration script and a python interface,which enables one to display quite everything you want on your desktop background.
Imagination too weak?
Screenshot here.
My configuration consists of:
- KRoller
- Liquid Weather
- SystemSlickBlue
As soon as Debian's Python Qt Interface package is working again, I might switch to SlickBar
Ey Karamba
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