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2008-03-12
I've been to the CeBIT in Hannover, this money-burning convention of all big IT-corporations, this weekend. And I'm a little disappointed. Well, the usual suspects were as expected there:
The massively overbred machines:
The tiny machines:
The "lifestyle"-machines (that's ordinary hardware with cheap "adornments"):
Giant screens:
The cars:
... and the gamer's hall (still playing Warcraft III)
So far, so ... expected. However, nothing spectacular or remotely new here. If only this stuff would have been presented, I would really regret the 4-hour drive there! Luckily, there was really innovative stuff, too:
A multitouch-sensitive table (cheap and working!):
By the way: Microsoft's "Surface" was nowhere to see!
A multitouch-sensitive wall (all these people interact simultaneously!):
A driver-less car:
And cool stuff, I've forgotten to take a picture from, like a real fast landscape-render-algorithm, robots, face-recognition-software, ...
Interestingly, none of the real cool gadgets and ideas can be found at the bombastic appearances of big companies, but somewhere in the less frequented halls. And, although it was nice to see some of these ideas in action, little of it was cutting edge - in the field of multitouch interfaces science is light-years ahead.
Conclusion:
Go to the CeBIT. Drool at fast machines, cars and girls. The bigger the booths, the more boring the goods. Don't expect too much.
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2008-03-08
The interest in PhotoPolis just goes on and on!
Now, it has even made it to Spain!
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2008-02-27
... time to drop the niveau!
picture from
IcanHasCheezburger.com
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2008-02-24
"... sadly, teenagers are allowed on the internet, too ..."
XD
today's must-see:
How To Behave On An Internet Forum
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2008-02-22
Here was a hilarious, but temporary, blog-entry. And you missed it, because it'll never be reposted. Haha.
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2008-02-21
taromda (you were just hitting keys for that nick, right?) seems to be right: I'm doing something wrong at Basketball: I got injured again.
>_<
This time it's just a little rip in my upper lip - but, what the hell? In ten times playd at least five times my blood was flowing. That's nearly 75 % - and that's close to every single time! But, well, until the moment of ouch it's always fun - so I'll keep playing. And next time, somebody else wil suffer. Muahahaahahahaa.
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2008-02-18
Today's blog entry is a story of a hero. And (embrace yourself, this may come as a shock) it's not about me. Well, it is about me (after all, this is my blog), but I'm not doing the heroing.
Last Thursday a good friend and I went snowboarding at "Axamer Lizum" in Austria. Good snow, fine weather and my - in comparison to my friend's - superior boarding sk1llz made it a real fun day. Until we got back to the car (imagine some dark ambient notes here).
There, exhausted but happy, I unlocked my car, opened the door on the passenger's side, put the key to the center console for later and went to the hatchback - to find it locked. WTF? I turn around to see that I already closed the passenger's door. Which was locked, too, with the key smiling gleefully from inside the car. A actually managed to lock myself out from my own car. D'ho.
Well, the cellphones had a good time with the key in the car, so we had to persuade people in the surrounding establishments to call the automobile club for us. Well, that finally worked (just so much: The people at the "Olympia"-hotel were very friendly. The owners of the neighbouring restaurant not. Not at least. And, judging by the looks of their kitchen, I would only eat there, when I felt adventurous) and one and a half hours later a car from the ÖAMTC stopped next to my car on the by now deserted parking lot. At this point, the hero of this story enters the stage, so imagine golden light from a spot and fanfares playing.
And his heroing begins as proper heroing begins: He is struck with awe by the grandness of his challenge, so his first words are: "Den krieg ich nicht auf!" ("I won't get that one open"). But he doesn't hesitate and despair, but collects his wits and bravery and rushes to work. Mere seconds later the door is opened a little, just enough to squeeze a wire into the car. With this wire, the door opener is pulled. Once. Twice. But the door won't open!
Don't be afraid, that wasn't the last trick up our hero's sleeve. Seconds later, the engine hood is opened by another genius quick twitch of the wand wire. The grand hero opens the fuse box and manages to magick some juice from the battery into some currents with a wiry-wandy-device. And suddenly, with no sound whatsoever (which proves the environment's lack of dramatic sense), the interior of the car has power again! Big deal? Yes, because now the almighty wire just needs to press the "open"-button in the car - and the task was complete - a little even to the surprise of the hero! I can't remember the last time when I was relieved like that!
To my shame, I didn't even ask the hero's name. But I thanked him effusively and I want to do it here again, even though he won't most likely ever read these lines:
Thank you very much! I won't forget this effort!
By the way: I wanted to add the ÖAMTC-logo to this entry with a big "thumbs-up", but didn't get the allowance. Well, the true heroes there ride in the cars. As it should be.
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2008-02-16
PhotoPolis will be available on the next c't-magazin issue for macs!
Had I known, how much resonance and feedback this program would cause, I would have spent a little more time finishing it! To be honest, I'm a little ashamed of the final quality. I mean, sure, it works and proves the concept, but doesn't actually satisfy my own quality standards :/ It was just a hack to finish an university course, after all.
Oh well, I hope all you users enjoy it anyway. If you don't, rest assured: I can do better!
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2008-02-11
Well, you've most probably noticed already, that the index/news page doesn't load all news-posts anymore, but gives the user the power to select just a part of it. This reduces the size (and thus the loading time) of this page monstrously :)
However, the "Recently changed"-box is bad as ever: These pages are actually loaded. Completely. I'll have to figure out, how to change that.
By the way, this site is completely php by now. Every page, as the navigation bar, is created from database-entries every time a page is queried. And yes, I am quite proud of this ;)
