Tired of Christmas Songs?

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

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

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?

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

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

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

Foxy

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!