Idle Talk

Tired of Christmas Songs?

2009-12-19T13:03:00.000+01:00

A gem I came across when digging for AC/DC songs on youtube. Angus with short hair sure was just as much a spurprise as Steven joining the party was.

Panasonic Lumix GF1

2009-12-19T12:24:00.001+01:00

A beautiful and eloquent review of the Panasonic Lumix GF1. While I am a notorious SLR nazi, this little thing really looks intriguing.

Jarrod Spillers is a Coward

2009-12-03T19:52:00.005+01:00

Or has a mental disorder. Or had a really bad day. Or all of it. Anyways, I read his so-so blog post about git merge vs. rebase where a person called Björn makes two good points about the blog post that help not to get confused by what Jarrod didn't get quite right. Instead of saying “thanks, dude”, Jarrod totally dissed him for the “insanely idiotic things” he writes. Yep, I am citing. Couldn't resist to post a comment myself, which elicited yet another comment by a guy called Sitaram, suggesting that Björn is not exactly somebody who doesn't grok git.

Thought I'd revisit the blog a few days later to check whether Jarrod at least got the balls to say “sorry, dude". Turns out he simply deleted his own stupid comment and mine and Sitaram's along with it. Oh, and of course further comments are closed, now.

One reason I love Google's cache:

Anyways, that was really lame, Jarrod. Get some style.

Microsoft Getting Real?

2009-10-30T18:28:00.000+01:00

Just read an article about Microsoft Germany saying that Windows 7 sells siginificantly better than Vista and that they sold ten times as many packages as expected. Another statement they made is that sales were five times as much. I'll leave the complicated maths to you.

Keyboards

2009-08-13T10:15:00.000+02:00

After my heretic last post I just have to add that this external Apple keyboard is simply the best I have ever had the chance to type on. Ever. It's orgasmic. I am talking about the aluminum one, the slim one, the sexy one. As if there was any doubt.

And just to put it into perspective: I am a keyboard fetishist. Seriously, I am kind of an old-school geek and the keyboard is my main input device. I type a lot, I use keyboard shortcuts a lot. A lot less since I got a Mac but still a whole lot. To make things really clear: I used Emacs for a long long time. And I loved it. That's “Escape Meta Alt Control Shift” for all you GUI wimps.

It all started on a VIC-20 and a C64 and a C16 and a Schneider (Amstrad) CPC464. Boy, those boxes (and their keyboards) sucked. I loved them anyway. The only excuse I have for the lack of taste is that I was too young and inexperienced to know better.

Then the Amiga appeared on stage. It was magic. It was as if the NCC 1701 had appeared in orbit. (I'd prefer the D model but you might disagree on this one.) The A1000's keyboard was the one that made clear to me what a good keyboard actually is, as I hadn't seen one before. Low key drop, low resistance, super crisp keystroke. It was almost like touching a girl's body for the first time. (And now I finally know the reason why they picked the name for that baby.)

After the demise of Commodore and the Amiga I refused to buy a new computer for a few years. PCs just sucked (and they still do, less though, nowadays) and Macs were too expensive (and from a technical point of view they sucked, too). Eventually, when the Pentium was introduced, I decided I had to bite the bullet and bought a superexpensive PC with a superexpensive monitor and a keyboard that was, you guessed it, just as superexpensive. In fact, it was the most expensive keyboard available in the store. And I deliberately typed on all of them before looking at the price tag. The store was run by a geek and I told him my misery about keyboards so he told me to go ahead and test them all. After doing so I pointed at the only keyboard I could at least imagine to type on, without any doubt the best one available. He just gave me a smug grin and said “good taste buddy, got enough cash on you?”. Still it was no match for the A1000 keyboard.

And now, many many many years later, after having typed on so many crappy notebook keyboards, after having been disgusted, after having been annoyed, after already having resigned on that matter, I have finally found a keyboard that puts all the others to shame. And it is sooo stylish. Thank you Apple, thank you Jonathan. And thank you Dieter, I guess.

Well, that should be good enough to get absolution, right?

Fate of the Fry

2009-07-03T19:00:00.006+02:00

This video triggered my admittedly weird humor quite spot on...

Foxy

2009-07-02T17:18:00.002+02:00

Firefox 3.5 is out. I know, old news here. But the old fart^W^Wexperienced user that I am I usually wait for a couple of days until the dust has settled. I don't know about other platforms as I am too snobby to use any but the Mac version has improved tremendously. It feels quicker and that hardly ever happens with a new piece of software. Sites heavy on Javascript like GMail feel like you're on Safari now :P. And the scrolling! Finally as smooth and snappy. Not to mention the new porn^Wprivacy mode. Good job, guys!

Uptime

2009-07-02T13:33:00.000+02:00

Just as I was about to blog that Leopard's sleep mode is finally stable that dang thing froze again. Well, at least 10.5.6 gave me somewhere between 40 and 50 days of uptime. Much better than the two weeks maximum I got before. Let's see what 10.5.7 will do...

Wir sind China

2009-06-30T21:46:00.003+02:00

I guess you can only really understand the headline if you are German. Or if you are seriously studying Germany. Anyways, this picture found on mediengestalter.cc should be fine for anybody with a brain. Which clearly excludes German politicians.

Ursula takes action

Germany goes China

2009-06-16T16:16:00.002+02:00

It seems they are really doing it. As a nerd I will never be able to vote for one of the big parties again. Ever. Well, at least I can move to countries like China or Iran now without sacrificing too many rights. Clearly, Germany likes its walls.

(J|Str)uggling with Eclipse Updates and Plug-Ins

2009-02-26T00:01:00.002+01:00

The Eclipse guys are working a lot on the update mechanism. Which they should btw, because it is still a PITA. Switching to a new Eclipse version takes way more time than it should. I seem to be able to upgrade my whole operating system quicker than Eclipse. (Yeah, screw those Mac OS fanboys.) And I am not even talking about porting home-brewed plug-ins. Anyway, intro-rant over, now for some info.

Now that 3.5 is almost out we dared switching from 3.3 to 3.4. Yeah, I know, we're conservative uptight lamers. Anyways, I used to keep all the plug-ins I collected from random sites separate from the standard ones supplied by eclipse.org. Once you knew how, it worked alright. With the update manager you could create a new extension location (like a directory Eclipse-3.3-Plugins somewhere in your home) that looked like this:

Eclipse-3.3-Plugins/
  eclipse/
    .eclipseextension
    features/
    plugins/

Standard eclipse directory structure except the special file .eclipseextension. An empty file does the job.

Then, when you downloaded extensions you just told the update manager to store the stuff in that location and you were good. When you switched to a new Eclipse version you copied the file configuration/org.eclipse.update/bookmarks.xml from your old Eclipse installation to the new one to keep all your update sites. Not exactly what I call user friendly migration but it worked. Much better than manually adding all the update sites again.

I did that when switching to 3.4. Unfortunately that seems to deactivate Eclipse's new p2 Update Manager mechanisms and enable the Update Manager's compatibility mode. So I googled and read for a few hours. Because I ain't got anything else to do, haha.

In short: fiddling with Eclipse's plugins and features directories is no longer encouraged. I didn't really find a way to add an external directory for plug-ins, though. The option you seem to have with 3.4 seems to be the dropins folder.

There you can either have a standard Eclipse directory structure like outlined above or have plug-ins directly or group them in subdirectories or even have traditional link files. See the p2 document.

After having spent half the day with that, um, stuff, I went for the quickest option and created a symbolic link to my plug-ins directory:

Eclipse-3.4/
  ...
  dropins/
    eclipse@ -> /Users/thm/Apps/Eclipse-3.4-Plugins/eclipse

And no, I don't have the feeling I am an expert on that. I just wanted to make it work. Tomorrow I will try to add all my update sites and see where they are stored. grep(1) is my friend.

Even Macs are just computers

2009-02-24T00:04:00.001+01:00

Every now and then even my Mac bugs me. For some so far (to me) unknown reason Spotlight hogged the CPU the other day. CPU usage was permanently above 150%, as reported by Activity Monitor. After a while that otherwise silent thing turned into a jet plane ready to take off. That's what fans at 6000rpm sound like. Plus the hard disk was grinding away so the machine was barely usable.

Googling did not really reveal anything except an article that gave me a hint that I still have to investigate: maybe Spotlight got stuck on a file. Although I think a grinding hard disk is evidence that Spotlight is not exactly stuck. Smells like some kind of endless loop, rather, and not one on a single file.

Anyways, the only quick way out of it was disabling Spotlight altogether. Great.

Do Mexican congressmen have a brain?

2009-02-22T18:14:00.001+01:00

Can you believe that from April on you will be fingerprinted if you are impudent, no, impertinent enough to want to buy a phone in Mexico? I mean, of course, how dare you?! Stupid me, must be my government-mistrusting paranoia.

But seriously, that's creepy. And the excuse they come up with to justify it is hilarious. At best. It goes like this: there are a lot of criminal bands in Mexico and if they could get all the cell phone users' fingerprints everything would be fine. Yeah, right. Apart from that “argument” (joke, actually) being totally flawed, nobody could really be stupid enough to think that criminals who order kidnappings, extortions and drug deals on their cell phones would be good boys enough to not steal a phone? Or could they?

So yeah, to answer my own question, maybe they have a brain. A single one that they all divvied up.

Oh the weather outside is frightful...

2009-02-19T00:05:00.001+01:00

Who would have thought it is warmer and less snowy in Canada. I am freezing my ass off! And any other body parts, for that matter. Anyways, the Brits have completely different news about the white stuff. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

For the love of Telcos

2009-02-17T14:48:00.000+01:00

The other day I was all over the “city” (town, rather) trying to get internet and phone. So I wasted almost a whole day. Ran to shops. Studied offers. READ FOOTNOTES! For fuck's sake, you won't believe how many "different" offers with how many more footnotes there are. The usual offer looks like this: 16 MBit* DSL, €0 upfront**, €0 per month***, hardware included****, online flatrate*****, phone flatrate******, and whatnot*******. And then there is usually half a dozen offers per provider. And there is at least half a dozen providers. More like a dozen (O2, T-Online, Congstar, Vodafone, Alice, QSC, 1&1, Fucknet, Arcor, Unitymedia, yadda yadda yadda). With lots of variables. And promises. And all the facts carefully buried in tons of footnotes. Apropos, the footnotes for the average offer from above go like this (shortened to the essential information because I'll move my sorry jet-lagged ass to bed in a minute):

* Maximum speed, your mileage may vary. (And if you get only 1 MBit, hey, we're happy you pay us for 16, we told you it's maximum.) ** Only if you sign a 24 months contract. (Once we got you locked in you'll see our real face. You got problems? Too bad, we got your money already. Try calling that 0900 number, it's only €2 per minute. Enjoy being put on hold for a while until we pick up. If we do so at all, that is.) *** For the first month. For the remaining 23 months it'll be €30. (If you're lucky, that is. If you happen to live in a place for which our random number generator said you have to pay more, you're gonna pay more. Usually 5 extra bucks. Um, euros. That's eight bucks. Canadian. Sometimes really just because.) **** Only the crappy^Hbasic model, €39 for the a-bit-less-crappy model. (You want decent hardware? Go buy it yourself. For a decent amount of money of course.) ***** For offers 2, 7, 14, and 42, other offers may be charged by time or volume, see footnotes 17, 18, 19 and 1452. (And I'm just too tired to type in more numbers. I'll leave it to your imagination how those paragraphs look like.) ****** Only valid for the network of [insert provider name here]. No special phone numbers. (And boy will we charge for any other network. And dare you make an international call!) ******* Really, you won't be finished reading that quickly in reality. Appreciate my mercy here. And believe me, you'll always have the feeling you don't have all the information to make an informed decision. Even after reading everything. Twice.

In Denial

2009-02-16T06:04:00.004+01:00

I typed the following while I was on the plane. Surprise.

So I'll be in Germany very soon. But I feel I won't be "back". Nor will I be "home". I'm just leaving Canada. Despite that undeniable fact I'll post some unfinished stories as if I was still here. Well, “here”. As I am writing this I am in the middle of Canada, 10668 meters above the ground, going at 929 km/h, at a refreshing -57 centigrades. Outside, fortunately, which is well worth mentioning in that huge and not exactly tropical country. I tried to cheer myself up watching some silly Mickey Mouse cartoons but it didn't help. I loved that stuff when I was a little Thomas but it seems nowadays it takes a little more. Or just different things. Poor Donald is just getting rock'n'rolled by that huge turkey girl but apparently my favorite comic style has changed over the years. Anybody seen Paprika btw? Weird manga shit. Recommended. Not necessarily a cheer-up either, though. But at least a good time to send out a big hug to Mathieu et Julie. Apropos, I'm slowly getting tipsy. Again no upgrade to business but again a flight that has been selected for a customer survey. Read as “lucky old bastard's getting lotsa booze”. So far it's been Campari red wine red wine water coffee Baileys. Counting. Lufthansa, there's no better way to get drunk. Well ;).

Other than that I watched two movies on the plane. The first one was quite entertaining, Vicky Christina Barcelona or something (yep). The second one, however, was one of those that make you want to watch no more movies. Ever. Maybe it was just me being awake for about 20 hours after a very short night, maybe it was Richard Gere, maybe it was the lack of a story but it was just a pointless sequence of cheesy wannabe-meaningful/touching/moving/... scenes. I really couldn't believe that it went on and on and on and even the doctor died and that little teenage bitch^Hdaughter would suddenly be superclose to her mother blah blah blah. So cheap. Definitely not recommended. I so wish I could sleep on planes.

P.S.: omfg, I started typing my rant too early. Even the horses at the end. Could it be worse? No. Well, hardly. I actually expected doctor Gere to raise from the dead. At least they spared me THAT.

Toilet Humor. Literally.

2009-01-14T20:34:00.001+01:00

Shot yesterday at UVic, CS building. Today, the lower one (which has been there since I got here) was removed. And I thought that one was a joke already... Seems like even geeks have humor. However, it might be the one of a thirteen year old boy.

High-tech urinals at UVIC

Close-up

Lighted Truck Parade

2008-12-08T04:42:00.005+01:00

Um, I am a bit speechless about that celebrating Christmas thing with trucks. I'll cut it short: Well, why not? :P

Count those lights

The revolving thing was actually somewhat funny (aka psychedelic)

Oh, and sorry for the poor quality, going there happened kind of spontaneously and my cell phone takes even worse pictures when it's dark.

Australia

2008-12-02T23:22:00.001+01:00

No, I haven't traveled, I'm still in Canada. That's the movie I watched last night. Let me put it this way: nice reminder why I stopped going to the movies years ago. What a cheap movie. Not in terms of costs I bet. A few nice nature shots, but that made only for a couple of minutes of what felt like five hours.

Mount Wells

2008-09-01T19:13:00.001+02:00

So, second attempt today. As Julie was on Mount Finlayson yesterday we hiked up Mount Wells today. We took the bus to Colwood (or was it or Langford? I was sleepy :>) and met with Dominic and Vanessa. It was a comparably short walk up but nature and the view were still amazing.

On the way up

Victoria

Anything but

2008-08-31T18:41:00.001+02:00

Yesterday the two “big planned events” didn't really work out. The day started great, another delicious breakfast at Lady Marmalade, that salmon benny was just perfect.

Then our plan was to hike up Mount Finlayson so we went to Langford. When we got off the bus, however, there were clouds that didn't exactly look inviting so we decided to have a drink first and went to the Teas'n'Beans. Pretty nice place, I think I had the first Jasmine tea since I was in Beijing. We stayed for a while and unfortunately the sky didn't really clear up. Well, strictly speaking the sky did clear up, it was really just Mount Finlayson that was in clouds. So we went to another place (called Station House) because we had stayed in the Teas'n'Beans for long enough to get hungry and had some dinner.

After that we went home and wanted to go downtown to watch a show at the Fringe Festival but couldn't convince Maude to join us. Well, I managed to talk her into joining Julie later, at the party, provided that I wait for her to get ready so we could walk downtown together. Well, what can I say, later Maude talked me into staying at home and watching a movie. Fargo it was, and I liked it very much.

Opa!

2008-08-30T23:47:00.000+02:00

Last night Christoph, Nancy, Julie and I were at the GreekFest on Elk Lake Drive. The dancing show was quite funny, the PA's harmonic distortion was a bit of a torture, though. On the other hand, that might have also been related to the kind of music. All bitching aside we had a fun evening. Oh, and should you happen to be around, one plate of doughnuts for desert is plenty. Unless you're up for a greasy breakfast next morning, that is.

B.C. coast shaken by powerful earthquake

2008-08-28T16:01:00.000+02:00

That was probably my closest strongest earthquake ever and I didn't even feel it.

Hangovers

2008-08-26T11:19:00.000+02:00

(At the Mint last night) Me: Well, I actually never have a hangover. Julie: I hate you so much.

Salt Spring Island

2008-08-24T18:12:00.008+02:00

Yesterday Christoph and Nancy took me out on a day trip to Salt Spring Island. We weren't able to get on the ferry we wanted to in the morning because the line was too long. There is a well-known market in Ganges where Nancy wanted to buy some stuff and it was really crowded so that's probably why. So we hung out at the harbor and enjoyed the beautiful weather drinking a smoothie. We got on the next ferry and the sail was a short one with beautiful views.

View from the ferry

First we did the important stuff: have lunch. The waitress told us that food would take some time but we were still too optimistic. After a long long time we got some Mexican food. Nancy and me, that is. Unfortunately Christoph wasn't feeling all that good and had some fruit salad. It got worse during the day so we tried to give him as many rests as possible.

Marina

We strolled around the marina for a short while and then went up Mount Maxwell and enjoyed the great view from the top.

View from Mt. Maxwell

Leaving Salt Spring Island

View from the ferry back to Vancouver Island

Blackjack darts

2008-08-22T16:48:00.003+02:00

Yesterday I met with Julie downtown. She was uberpunctual because she did not, in any case, want to be late, knowing that she has an appointment with one of those anal Germans, very cute. I was three minutes late, though, The Blue Bridge was up and I had to take a photo (sorry, crappy cell phone camera only).

Johnson Street Bridge

We strolled around for a short while and entered some random place which turned out to be exactly the pub that somebody else had told her about. We had loads of fun talking but it got even better. After some nice food (a salmon burger and some pasta something pesto blah I forgot the name of) and a pitcher of lager we decided to order another pitcher and play darts. I think we started making fun of some people she knows who kinda strictly follow some rules. We tried that for a short while but quickly made up our own rules and got pretty creative about it, from “most triples” (knowing we'd be lucky getting a single one) to “closest to the edge of the board” (that's when you get to hit the bullseye of course) to “highest score right handed without looking” (we're both lefties). Eventually, we settled on playing Blackjack and I guess I don't have to explain the rules. Julie specialized in playing what we called Julie-game, which was constantly scoring 22. So maybe next time we'll play Blackjulie but I think I'm going to have a hard time winning, then. Anyway, we were laughing hard enough to make my abs hurt. Sweetest workout I've had in a while.

Snatch

2008-08-18T10:14:00.004+02:00

Yay, watched Snatch last night. Even with subtitles on because Julie can't understand people speaking English with an accent. Lucky me.

Victoria Dragon Boat Festival (that was the plan)

2008-08-17T17:23:00.011+02:00

This weekend it was Victoria Dragon Boat Festival. Julie and I started the day pretty easy walking downtown along West Bay Walkway.

View from West Bay Walkway

We had breakfast at Lady Marmalade, delicious! And a cute place, too. After that we walked to Moss Street Market where Julie wanted to buy a few things. She's a pretty decent cook, I'm such a lucky bastard. Then it was time to meet with Christoph and Nancy down at the harbor for what was supposed to be the main event of the day. First we heard a talk about the history of Victoria's Chinatown. Then we met Sarah and went to a nice place I forgot the name of to have something to eat, right at the harbor, great view. The waiter was veeery chatty but still mildly funny and he even persuaded me to not have an Americano but a regular coffee instead—even though those Europeans are quite particular about their coffee he added, but the Americano would simply be too weak at their place. Respect, man. Unfortunately, Sarah was too shy to share some of her German with us even though she lived in Hamburg for quite a while. Fortunately, she told us a way to make that happen. Quoting her: “I haven't had enough drinks, yet.” Well, that can certainly be arranged.

Eventually we walked down to the races. It was so hot I didn't even care about putting my telephoto lens on. The races were rather boring actually and the boats weren't quite what I expected. I guess high expectations can kill just about anything.

Dragon Boats

We strolled around a little more, Sarah had to leave already, I finally got to buy my SIM card (and it was even $10 more expensive than last time I asked, f§$%ers!) and then we went back West Bay Walkway to our place where Julie used what she bought in Chinatown to prepare some great dinner for all of us. Christoph and Nancy decided to go home instead of joining us for open-air cinema so Julie and I went to Beacon Hill Park to watch Princess Bride. We were too far away from the speakers, though, so I could hardly understand anything and I think I even fell asleep a couple of times. I'm such a bore.

Goodbye party

2008-08-16T10:07:00.002+02:00

So yesterday it was Laurie's goodbye party. She's probably my roommate-for-the-shortest-time-ever, what a pity. So before the party Laurie, Ben, Estelle and I went to a couple stores to get some barbecue stuff and stock up with booze. Well, actually I bought some beer, a dark lager. Interesting. “Interesting” is a good key word here, although insane is probably an even better match. Six (small!) bottles of of beer for like thir-teen dollars! I couldn't believe it. Those are the times when you really want to hold on to your one single beer for the whole night. Or get a better job. Anyway, the party was very nice, lots of fun people, and some nice herbs over here. Which was kind of unexpected but I won't complain. Oh, one major drawback for that little arachnophobic sissy here: at one time I saw a giant spider seeking shelter under the fridge, yuck! Later, Julie also joined the party and I traded some of my lager for a couple gin and tonics, good deal there. Eventually, we took a cab back home and watched Fight Club. Well, we started watching Fight Club. I doubt we got more than five minutes before falling asleep on the sofa.

Exploring Esquimalt

2008-08-14T21:21:00.001+02:00

Today I went down to the water from my place. It's pretty close but not exactly obvious to find your way. I wanted to go downtown along the water but there's some kind of a military base so there's a lot of fences with big fat “No Trespassing” signs so I was a little shy to walk further. An older man called Peter showed me the way down to the water, passing old turret mounts from World War II. We sat down and talked a little and enjoyed the view over to the Olympic Mountains. Later I talked to some girls from a day care (probably the same one that my roommates work at because later on I met Laurie, too, with a bunch of children) and one of them said that the military stuff I saw was only military housing and considering my haircut I could have easily walked through the place :). Well, I postponed my plan to walk that part of the coast and took the bus to UVic where I had some delicious dhal together with Jens. And the girl even added some chutney, yummy! For the rednecks among my (zero) readers, dhal is an Indian dish made with lentils ;>.

Telcos suck

2008-08-13T21:17:00.000+02:00

Who do telcos have to suck? They seem to do so all over the world so it might even be some sort of a natural constant. I thought the German ones are the biggest pile of stinking crap in the whole wide world. Hah, even worse in Canada. For example, there are no short term contracts (talking about one of the bigger providers here). That is not really surprising and it would be ok if there were contracts without a monthly fee. Not in Canada of course. So the only “reasonable” option left when you're only here for a few months is pay as you go. But guess what, your balance vanishes after 30 days. Unless you top it up but that effectively makes it some sort of minimum monthly rate. And if you want at least half-decent rates you have to pick a plan that increases your minimum top-up from $10 to $20. Even then terms are worse than in Germany. Now I wanted to buy a SIM card anyway because going on to use my German one would probably drain my account faster than I could say “what the f...”. So yesterday I went to a Rogers store as those guys seemed to have the “best” (least bad) terms. Well, the guy was friendly. They didn't have any SIM cards, though, so he sent me to a Rogers video store close by. The guy there, again, was very friendly, but some sort of central Rogers server didn't let him complete the form he was filling my data in. So a wasted one and a half hours later I went back home without a SIM card.

Sightseeing teaser

2008-08-13T21:05:00.004+02:00

Today Christoph and Nancy took me out on a sightseeing tour. We didn't have much time so it was more of a teaser to visit those places with some more time. We had dinner at the Ottavio and a fantastic view from Ten Mile Point (I think :>, too many new places) over to Mount Baker, in the US. We were also up on Mount Douglas, lots of great views. Need to go there again with a real camera.

Second night out

2008-08-13T13:27:00.001+02:00

No time to waste, Julie took me out to the Swans last night and we met up with two other guys. Nice location, nice people, nice jazzy music, award winning home-brewn beers, return home late at night. What more can I say? :) Oh, there is indeed something: a lovely walkway right at the water, photos to follow.

UVic club

2008-08-12T18:32:00.004+02:00

Today Jens took us to the UVic club (http://club.uvic.ca/) for lunch (and even treated us, thanks Jens!). Nice on-campus location, that was our view while eating:

Fountain in UVic club pond

Happy bus drivers in Victoria

2008-08-12T18:05:00.003+02:00

I went to UVic today to meet Jens and Christoph for lunch. The one striking fact about going by bus in Victoria is that bus drivers here seem to love their job. In Germany they usually hate it with a passion. And in both places you really feel the vibrations when you enter the bus. Today I had a driver, grinning all the time, wearing cool sunglasses, it was a pleasure to watch him do his job. Plus people say “thanks” when they leave the bus. People seem to be friendly here, I like the place. Besides, buses seem to be extremely on time, with a tendency to be early even. That's why I missed my first bus today :).

Mixed flight experiences

2008-08-12T15:12:00.006+02:00

Here I am, finally, after an exhausting flight to the west coast. And beyond, actually, because I'm on Vancouver Island now. I got up yesterday at 5 in the morning, finished packing my bags, turned off water, gas and electricity (reassuring myself here) and took the train to Frankfurt International Airport. Well, actually I got off the train in Frankfurt main station to buy a present for Jens and Christoph and then went on to the airport.

Funky long legs in train door window

Actually I only wanted to write about the flights but now that I write "airport", the Frankfurt one deserves a special note: it was surprisingly difficult for me to find restrooms. I would have even forgotten about it after being awake for about 30 hours but a guy I talked to told me that it was the same experience for him. So at least it wasn't only me being too stupid. The flight, well, it was as good as a flight to the west coast in economy can be. Forcing a 6'2'' body into an economy seat for almost eleven hours simply doesn't feel too good, I still got a sore back. The service was great, though. The flight attendants were extremely friendly, the food was great (I had pasta twice), the drinks were plenty (I had red wine, Campari orange, Baileys, water, coffee, a couple of each actually). Later on I found out what seems to be the reason for the what felt like an extra special treatment, quoting the announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, this flight has been selected to do a customer survey...”. Well, anyway, I can only say that “there's no better way to fly”. Except business class for example.

Lufthansa Airbus

Of course the Lufthansa part was too smooth so Air Canada had to screw it up. I only had one hundred minutes to switch planes. Theoretically, that is, practically the flight from Frankfurt was a little late and the line at Vancouver Airport was long. Half an hour before departure (and five minutes after boarding time) I was still in line. When I finally got to the counter the lady there kept on asking questions why I was coming to Canada, where I will stay, blah blah blah. Then I had to reclaim my baggage, carry it to the customs counter and check it back in for the flight to Victoria! How stupid is that?! And why do you get a schedule that tight when you got so many things to do? So I was running back and forth the hall, literally, from one counter to the next, it was a hot day, I was covered in sweat, they took away my gifts for Jens and Christoph (a special kind of German sausage), I rushed through corridors that didn't seem to end, an elevator here, stairs there, being sent back to put my luggage on a conveyor belt, another security check, with a waiting line of course, having to finish my water bottle (being the evil MacGyver terrorist that I am), being thirsty nevertheless, more corridors, stairs, interpreting signs where to go, never being really sure whether I'm on the right way at all, finally getting to the right gate, running outside, one minute to four, getting on the plane, stewardess closing the door, taking a seat, off we go. That was last minute, literally. The plane was a small one, the flight was a short one, low altitude, nice view, no seat at the window, though. And then, the screw-up: baggage reclaim, well, supposed to be, my bag wasn't there. Being all sweaty and greasy and stinky smelly yucky, having no clothes to change was among the worst things that could happen to me, close to a plane crash. So I went to the Air Canada baggage counter and the woman made up for it. She was really really friendly and helpful and told me that my bag might even be on the next plane coming in from Vancouver. So she filled in some form for me and gave me a delayed baggage card and when I went I luckily saw Christoph waiting in the hall. Well, at least I was pretty sure I saw Christoph since I had never met him in person by that time :). We had already exchanged a lot of emails and he was (and still is) the greatest help since sliced bread. So we went to the Starbucks at the airport and I had an Americano to help keep me awake. Some nice talking later (I guess I wasn't too entertaining, though) we went back to the counter to hopefully get my bag but it still wasn't there. The lady promised me it would arrive the same day because she had still several flights coming in until midnight and on one of them the bag should really be. (A couple days before I went to Canada my brother actually sent me a link to a blog entry while we were chatting. Seth Godin had some interesting thoughts about the air line industry. Although I don't share the damning report of Air Canada being “the single worst major airline in North America”, that might just be because it was only a 22 minutes flight—long enough to mess up my baggage. I guess I don't wanna know what they would be able to do on a ten hour flight :>.) So Christoph took me to his place to lend me some fresh clothes where Nancy, his girl, joined us and then took me to my place where we met my roommates. Julie showed me the place and lend me a towel and told me I could use her shower gel and stuff. The girls went off to an appointment, not without inviting us to join them later. The shower, I simply can't put it in words, was good. The two took me to a drugstore so I could buy some personal hygiene articles, we tried to call the Air Canada “hotline“ a few times and sure enough I was on hold for more than ten minutes each time before I hung up. We went to the Spinnakers for dinner, a lovely place with a great view across the harbor. Plus they brew their own beer, great. After that Christoph and Nancy took me home and I finally finally finally went to bed and fell asleep very very quickly. Only to wake up again at five in the morning but that will be another blog entry.

Final preparations

2008-08-08T20:37:00.002+02:00

So, I'll depart on Monday. So many things done and left to do, and more of them more complicated than I thought they would and than I think they should be. Despite that and despite all of the bureaucracy it will hopefully be a great time in Canada. I finally bought my plane tickets, my traveling bag and got health insurance, the latter one being a crucial item of my todo list as I am a spoiled German (communist, as US propagandists^Hpoliticians would probably add—yeah, I watched Sicko). There's quite a range of prices for health insurance, actually, which kind of surprised me. I got it for €130 now (about $200) and could have easily paid €330+ ($530+). Probably money I should have spent partying but well, health care can get really expensive. And there's still a serious amount of party money left on my account... :)

Moving on from CVS to Git — cvsps reported error

2008-08-06T20:30:00.003+02:00

Don't you just love telling error messages? Like “Error -42”? Or, like yesterday, git-cvsimport: fatal: cvsps reported error Thank you, that'll really help finding a solution. Luckily Mike Schrag got also fucked^Hhit by that error and found that by “simply” launching cvsps on its own first, you can get around that error. There are two things to note here, at least for people who know my humor (they should be scared now): first, why is that so? And, second, why is the “simply” in quotes? I'll leave the first one as an exercise to the eager reader and give you a “try it yourself” for the second one. And no, it's not only RTFM, it's probably UTSL. With Mike's hint I got my last Git post's example working by replacing the single git-cvsimport command by two commands: $ CVSROOT=$(pwd)/ImportRepo cvsps -x --norc -u -A git > /tmp/cvsps.out Then you add another “-P /tmp/cvsps.out” to your git-cvsimport command, like that: $ git cvsimport -A authors-conv.txt -d ImportRepo -C NewGitRepo -P /tmp/cvsps.out git Now it works. At least for me, YMMV. Yeah, seems it's acronym day today, I'm in the mood.

Transparency=No comment?

2008-08-06T13:25:00.002+02:00

The governments discussing the “Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement” made an interesting statement. A spokesperson of the German Department of Justice said: “Die Verhandlungen sollen so weit wie möglich transparent gemacht werden. Da die Vertragspartner aber Vertraulichkeit vereinbart haben, können wir keine Aussagen zu Inhalten machen.” (read on heise.de). This is German and basically means that the negotiations shall be made as transparent as possible but that they are not willing to comment on what they negotiate. If that sounds like a weird definition of transparency to you, you're not alone.

Collateral damage

2008-08-06T03:22:00.002+02:00

Wow, now even the Germans seem to buy that crap. I really can't believe the world just watches the US beta-testing that stuff in real wars, with “bugs” hitting real people, who really bleed and really die. How useful such a war can be. Securing oil fields, developing deadly weapons, *cough*, sorry, establishing world piece of course. And fighting terror! Noble reasons there, all of them!

How many people can you love?

2008-08-05T22:11:00.002+02:00

One? Two? Several? I don't mean love like in friends, I mean love like in companion, partner, darling, sweetheart. Of course you can retreat to the point that it all boils down to how you define love. But I won't be satisfied by splitting hairs. Do you love each one less if you love more than one? Or will there be more of it for each one, even? Or does it have to be one to be “true love”? Will it automatically be only one if it is? Is there anything like a “second half”? An Aristophanes/Plato kind of? And what happens when you found her and not only lose her but are stupid enough to make her go away? What will life be after that? Can you ever love again? Time heals the wounded, they say. Those who are wounded like that, too? (Those who think about that question attentively will notice that the question is twofold. (And I have to admit that I've only noticed while writing this blog entry.) The “how many” can both question how many in parallel and how many in sequence. I started writing with the first question in mind, how many people you can love at the same time. Maybe the sorer question, however, is the second one.)

Moving on from CVS to Git — How to do the import

2008-08-05T01:56:00.006+02:00

Ok, so now Git will be it, what to do? There's git-cvsimport(1), included in git-core. Other people suggest cvs2git(1), especially for complicated histories, i.e. histories with lots of branching and merging. But as branching and merging is a major pain with cvs, I have mostly boringly simple histories, regular release tags and occasional branches being the most complicated stuff. When I organized my CVS repositories when setting them up I majorly messed things up so I want to use the chance to reorganize my repositories and the modules in them. However, git-cvsimport(1)'s man page reads

git-cvsimport [blah] [blah] [cvs_module]

Yeah, that's right, a single module. Googling for hours didn't really reveal anything except trying to rewrite history by using git-filter-branch(1). Being a complete git-noob I decided that's a little too advanced for me. To be honest I hardly understand the man page. kampasky_ on #git gave me the golden clue: simply move the modules you want to intermingle from as many CVS repositories as you like into a common subdirectory (a new ”supermodule” so to speak) and import that. So to transform

CVSRepo1/
    moduleA/
    moduleB/
CVSRepo2/
    moduleN/

into

GitRepo
    moduleA/
    moduleB/
    moduleN/

use the commands

$ cp -pR CVSRepo1 ImportRepo
$ mkdir ImportRepo/git
$ mv ImportRepo/module* ImportRepo/git/
$ cp -pR CVSRepo2/moduleN ImportRepo/git/
$ mkdir NewGitRepo
$ git cvsimport -A authors-conv.txt -d ImportRepo -C NewGitRepo git

If you get the dreaded “git-cvsimport: fatal: cvsps reported error” error message while trying to import be sure to read my next post tomorrow.

Moving on from CVS to Git — Why, and why Git?

2008-08-04T23:58:00.001+02:00

For The Great Trip to Canada I decided to convert my CVS repositories to Git. I've always kept repositories on my notebook because I work a lot when I'm on the way. Or when I'm sitting in a café, for that matter. Well, the actual reason is that until recently it was practically unaffordable to be online then. Yeah you lucky bastards living in countries with free WiFi access points everywhere are permitted to feel smug now. I like to commit often so I need to either be online permanently or to have “the” repositories on my machine. With Git (or any other distributed version control system) I don't need to be online permanently and I have repositories on my machine—note the absence of the word “the” here. I chose Git because of several reasons, the strongest one probably being a gut feeling. I watched Linus talk on git, I read tons of pages and posts about CVS, Subversion, Arch, BitKeeper, Mercurial, Bazaar and Git and pages that compared even more. Then I settled on Git. Maybe because I thought that if the kernel people use it (as a replacement for BitKeeper even) it can't be that bad. Maybe because it seemed to have the strongest momentum. Or maybe I just didn't want to be “wrong, stupid and butt-ugly" ;). So it has been decided. More on the technical stuff tomorrow.

Our lovely society

2008-08-02T21:20:00.001+02:00

I went downtown today to buy some small stuff for the stay in Canada (new electrical tooth brush, power adapter, hygienic stuff) and looked for a bag big enough to carry stuff for three months. After that I happened to meet a friend I haven't met in months and we had a drink on the Königsplatz (king's square). I accompanied him to a streetcar stop (he drives those things) and on the way back to the Königsplatz to get my daily quota of coffee'n'cake I met a very special friend, probably both for the last time this year. Well, so much for trivia (although for some of that the word doesn't fit at all...). So I took a seat in one of my favorite cafés and read news articles from spiegel.de. The Königsplatz is well known as a meeting point for homeless and other poor buggers our society seems to increasingly produce. One of them, a completely drunk and scruffy guy approached a table to ask for a cigarette and a waitress immediately sent him away. Which is her job. The guy was kinda persistent and another waitress took over, older, stricter, bigger (and I really don't mean just taller), more the prison staff or military kind of girl (oops, ma'am, sorry, ma'am, woman of course). And she took it too far. She started making jokes about him. The “audience” (of course I wasn't the only one in the café, it's a lovely summer in Germany—although by the time I'm writing this dark clouds threaten my Mac) started laughing. She enjoyed her role and the “jokes” got meaner, effectively humiliating him. People started to talk, along the lines of “those people have no inhibitions”, “it's a shame”, blah blah blah, just what people without brains tend to think. Everybody was reassuring one another (nodding, laughing, ...) and people started to look at me trying to include me in their circle of shabbiness. All I could do was stare at them without expression. At some point the guy walked away, across the “huge” (we're in Germany) square, all those people watching him as he was staggering away. Filled with disgust I decided to write my first blog entry before Canada. Of course I am to blame for not having stood up to tell them how disgusting they are but instead cowardly deciding to hide behind that blog entry. Guess there aren't too many great people left on the planet.