occasional prattle

Arrietty - Ghibli's latest masterpiece had me from hello

2011-07-11T15:11:00.000-07:00

Finally I got the chance to watch the movie "Karigurashi no Arrietty", Studio Ghibli's latest animation movie. Being a fan of most their previous work, I couldn't help watching this movie with a great bunch of expectations.

The plot is based on a novel by Mary Norton ("Borrowers", never read it) and describes a short span in the life of Arrietty, a 14-year-old girl only a few inches tall, who has been living under the floorboards of a house with her family - unseen and unnoticed - for as long as she can remember. One day, the cardiac (human, just to mention it) boy Sho moves into the house, merely strong enough to walk, and by coincidence sees the girl.

Arrietty is Ghibli in all its glory : With endless love for Detail, the artists depict life in all its little imperfect ways, showing the beauty and fulfillment a simple life offers. Though being technically up-to-date (Ponyo was created completely traditional, Arrietty uses digital art as well), the main focus of the movie is the characters' relation to nature and life. I've always loved the way Ghibli teaches us modesty, and Arrietty is one more in the line of their movies doing so. Vibrant and harmonious colors dominate the tone, and as in Totoro or Ponyo, there's no villains as such (just the odd, mislead but generally good-hearted family member).

This time around, the director's chair is filled by Yonebayashi-San, who gives an incredibly stunning debut with it. He must be a really devoted fan of Miyazaki-San's work, since the movie is filled with references to it all over. Just to mention a few:

- pathway up to the house looks very much like the Totoro one
- When Sho enters the garden for the first time, a cat and a crow fight there (The cat returns)
- Sho's Grandma is called Haru (The cat returns)
- Fish passing under the Teapot remind of the giant beasts in Ponyo after the city is inundated.

Like Miyazaki-San, Yonebayashi-San is a great observer and shows exactly those things that matter, for example when a 14-year-old girl dresses up for meeting a boy.

The music in this movie comes from the feather of Cecile Corbel and sounds rather light-weight and joyful (not symphonic, sounds rather celtic in many ways), compared to the stuff Joe Hisaishi delivers. This adds to the relaxed atmosphere, and really leaves nothing to wish for (although I'm a fan of Hisaishi's work and hope to hear from him the next time).

I say : Yes, I've found another movie I can have my kids watch without the fear of spoiling them, and that's a rare find these days. It is great to see that Ghibli remains true to its love to nature, and I hope that this masterpiece will get all the claim it deserves.

X-Japan - Berlin - July 4th, 2011

2011-05-29T00:01:00.000-07:00

Looks like this year I'll be celebrating independence day - in Berlin!

It's the return of Mortal Kombat 2 (and no kidding)!

2011-04-26T13:29:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've blogged about games, and I don't really want to spend much time on that now either. So, here's just a brief side-note:

Mortal Kombat 9 is basically a Mortal Kombat for friends of Mortal Kombat 1-3, as it depicts the fighters and story of those parts. 3D graphics are used as means to create great visuals, but are completely left off the gameplay plate - that hasn't worked out so well since MK4, if you ask me.

Instead of inventing an abundance of new fighting feats, the developers have built on the solid base of those used in the early parts of the series. Creating MK3-Style juggle combos using exact timing of jump kicks and punches is just plain fun.

Story Mode is great fun, and you'll have to play characters that are not your faves every once in a while. All gaps left open in the story of MK I - III are quite neatly closed. Unlike other MK games released in the last decade, you have no free world to traverse or stages to clear, just a long sequence of fights sewn together by some storytelling.

To my mind, a large portion of the blood-gushing and bone-shattering violence that I see myself confronted with could have been left out and we'd (still) end up with quite a unique (but no so perverted) game, but it's either sex or brutality that sells, and the game has an strong accent on the latter.

What you get here is a visually perfect 2D beat 'em up and a nice treat for nostalgic MK game fans like me - I remember standing in front of the MKII Koin-Op when playing this...For all those new to the series it's still a good game, although most of them will probably just want to check out the gore.

That ain't no ham, Google!

2011-04-25T23:21:00.000-07:00

In the last five days I have received Spam Emails from 3 Gmail accounts that are in my contact list. Yesterday my account has been compromised and used for sending Spam.

To check whether your account has been logged in to from unusual places, scroll to the bottom of your Gmail website and locate the text "Last account activity". There's a details-link next to it, revealing in my case :

Mobile Peru (190.42.51.51) Apr 25 (12 hours ago)

If you have received any email from my email account that contained a link without any explanatory text, please delete it at once - most of those links redirect you to online pharmacy / viagra stores. The most original feedback I got was :

It actually gave me visa/mastercard numbers for 34 unique numbers. Thanks! Vegas here I come.

Great mid-range pc at low-End costs

2011-03-30T14:15:00.000-07:00

Ever heard about the way AMD produce their Sempron™ CPUs? Actually it's DualCore Athlon XIIs, artificially throttled. What the actually do is block a Core and part of the L2 Cache.

Now that I needed a new PC, I've looked into those Semprons and how to unlock the second core. Seems that all (or most, anyway) Boards with an AMD790GX Chipset and an AMD SB750 Southbridge support unlocking those beauties.

Here's the Setup / Cost :
- EUR 30 - AMD Sempron 140 @ Athlon X2 4400e - Boxed (not silent,granted)
- EUR 70 Radeon 5670. Ordered 3 times, all deliveries faulty : got the GDDR3-based card instead of the GDDR5 one. Finally, I give up.
- EUR 35 Any 4 Gigs of DDR2 Ram @ 800MHz.
- EUR 30 Hitachi 500 GB HDD, model HDS721050CLA362.
- EUR 50 LC Power LC6480S power supply (wouldn't wanna miss the cable management)
- EUR 30 Silverstone PS05 case
- EUR 40, used : Asus M3A78-T

As you see, this is not a machine fit for ultimate gaming but a good one for working on and performant enough to even do some serious 3D calculus.

Long-awaited 'Final Fantasy XIII' kills my PS3...

2010-03-14T16:02:00.000-07:00

...and I'm sad to say I'm not kidding.

Ever since Thursday I banned Modern Warfare 2 from my PS3 to make room for FF13, but after 2 hours of gameplay on each thursday and friday my playstation won't read any blurays anymore. How can this happen?

Since Sony won't see themselves responsible for this, I guess I'll have to contact Square Enix to cover the damage their software has caused me. The internet is full of reports of the same problem!

F**K!!!!

What's the opposite of "LOW"?

2010-03-02T14:43:00.000-08:00

According to folks at Adobe™, it is "VERTICAL".

Fun with Windows 7 64bit (II) - Getting XAMPP to work

2010-01-07T15:14:00.000-08:00

Mentioned this before, Windows Apache is 32bit strict. Period.

So, how can I overcome the gap this produces in my productivity? Well, no way around a virtual pc installation. The greatly announced XPMode, which is a blend of Virtual PC and RDP, does no good here, as far as I've tested. So, VPC it is. After setting up XP on a virtual machine, I configured the desired apache vhosts and modified the vpc's hosts file accordingly. In order to make a call to those host names from my 64bit system, I also had to touch the win7 hosts file and enter the same host names, but redirect them to the VPC this time. Note that the resolution was a bit fussy - using the VPC's machine name failed, it had to be its IP.

Eventually, one more thing to consider : Where will my document root be? Clearly, the best way would have been putting it on a double-secured NAS, but no such thing is available here =) So I tried two ways:

1) Host Filesystem (Physical), then making this path available to the server to access via VPC Setting. This caused some trouble when the webserver tried to write back the compiled Templates. Probably solvable, but don't feel like trying now.

2) Server Filesystem (Virtual), Sharing the Document Root so that the host system can access it as a Network share. This works like a charm, but one drawback is that in the Eclipse-based Zend IDE linking Source Folders (PHP Explorer->build path->link source) works with local files only. Attaching a Network drive to the share circumvents this. Another drawback is that the files reside in that virtual harddisk and not as files on the physical disk.

This way, I can use my IDE in Win7 64bit and have a webserver on the same machine (sort of). I'd be most gracious if anybody told me that Apache could be run natively (and I don't mean blackdot.be's build) under 64bit Windows 7...

Fun with Windows 7 64bit (I) - Atheros / Attansic L1 Gigabit Ethernet

2010-01-07T15:06:00.000-08:00

I recently installed Win 7 64bit and, guess what, whatever I usually do with my PC won't work. My favourized Sequencer works in 32bit environment only, my Scanner is declared incompatible, I can't even install an official Apache webserver!

Well, worst things first. My network was unsatisfyingly unstable and slow. Copying files from another PC reproducably resulted in a system freeze. Driver update. No freezes, but a performance of 5.x MB / sec, which is, how can I put it, bullshit.

So, the driver that works with my onboard Atheros L1 Gigabit Network card is the one located at the following link: http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?model=M3A&os=25&SLanguage=en-us

The board, besides, is an ASUS P5K.

Countdown...

2009-12-31T06:04:00.000-08:00

Just a Microblog: Best wishes to all my friends for 2010 (To all others, too)!

Cheers!

GPU Offloading in new Flash Player

2009-12-04T01:26:00.000-08:00

If you have an ION-based HTPC in your shelf, you might be very happy to read this article. About time this happened, man!

A lot of cover song activity going on

2009-10-02T03:56:00.000-07:00

I haven't found much time for music for a while, but right now I priorized it above anything else I spend my private time with.

My myspace account turns out to be a dead end: The limit of only 5 / 6 songs is as frustrating as the 30 seconds-preview introduced on imeem, and since my myspace account is a non-musician account, I can't even use the 6 songs decently and have to mess around with my dummy account. I dare say, I've just about had it.

The only alternative I really see is to put it all up on YouTube, which has the nice side effect of making every recording feel like a little web-gig.

One more thing in the pipeline is a new version of my private website, which will come later this month, and - along with it - a new skin for my blog.

Welcome, Felix!

2009-07-31T13:46:00.000-07:00

On July 19th 2009 my wife gave birth to our third child and first son, Felix Tim.

No more words for now...

Why Ong Is Not Really Bak (Or: The Not-So-Sequel By Tony Jaa)

2009-07-17T02:01:00.000-07:00

When I first heard the words "Ong Bak 2", I thought to myself "What, you mean Tom Yum Goong?". But I was taught it was true, a real Sequel! How grand must this be?

I have to admit I don't keep track of Martial Arts movies that much anymore, but Ong Bak 2 came to me as a real surprise. In fact, I only ever heard about it
when it was already released!

So I did all I could to get my hands on this movie, cough, and watched it with expectations that were impossible to fulfill, even by Tony Jaa standards. During the course of the movie, I felt my enthusiasm die away, bit by bit, until after the whole length of it a kind of "so, that was that..."-feeling remained.

The Sequel, as it turned out, is only a sequel by name, a marketing trick. Other than that, nothing even references to Ong Bak. To be precise, I even wonder whether the meaning of "Ong Bak" may be something like "Kick Ass", since that is the only thing the two movies have in common.

It's not a bad movie at all, It's just not Ong Bak. And it is way below Tom Yum Goong, as well. Much more swordplay and Jaa performing too many different styles altogether (It's hard to surpass what he's done in his previous movies) make it hard to see the real badass stuff that we used to get.

General Music is Dead, long live General Music

2009-06-15T23:04:00.000-07:00

After my GEM PRP 800 has had a severe failure recently, I sent it to MusicStore, but repair is impossible (lacking parts, since GEM have declared their bankruptcy few months ago).

My current Keyboard is now a Fatar StudioLogic SL990, which I'd rate a lot inferior to the PRP's keys. Anyway, I have fallen in love with the PRP's Fazioli and Steinway sound, so I ordered a GEM RP-X sound module to keep, at least, the sound.

Can't imagine why no-one bought the company (or at least the DRAKE technology).

Windows 7 Street Date confirmed

2009-06-03T00:12:00.000-07:00

Microsoft have finally announced the GA Date for Seven : October 22nd, 2009.

What a great Day this is gonna be!

First impressions of the Intel D945GCLF (Atom) Desktop Mainboard

2009-05-24T13:28:00.000-07:00

My old AMD Geode NX1750-based energy saver machine (I posted about it here) has for some reason passed away - the mainboard keeps on crashing. May it rest in peace.

I took a look around to find out what's current in the energy saving market, just in order to decide whether repairing would be worth it, but in the end i opted for a completely new solution based on an Intel Atom CPU.

Since I always intend to keep investments as small as possible, I chose the Intel D945GCLF all in one solution, containing Mainboard, CPU and Video Card - the smallest solution offered by Intel. I would have preferred the D945GSEJT which is using a better CPU, the far more energy efficient notebook chipset and allows using external 12V adapters (which are all passive and more energy efficient), but it's about twice as expensive. I also try one further energy optimization : I exchanged the system HD with a Notebook drive. All storage comes as PNP USB devices. I could tell myself this will reduce the system energy consumption, but that would be fooling myself, I guess.

The new system brings along two major aspects of optimisation for me :
-I can now use cheaper RAM modules (DDR2 instead of DDR)
-I have a bootable S-ATA Controller, which makes HD replacement rather easy. IDE / P-ATA Disks are supported as well, I currently use an 2.5" IDE disk. I intended to buy a PCI-pluggable controller for the old machine, but that would have been as expensive as the whole new system (~ 55 Euros).

I can't seem to find my ammeter, so I don't realy see the difference in energy consumption. There's a review on the internet that displays some measured values : A system with a 2.5" Disk and DVD-drive supposedly consumes somewhere around 25-30 Watts idle and about 45 Watts in a burn-in-test-scenario.

~~Debian 5.0~~ Windows 7 RC1 runs smoothly on the system, which is meant to be online somewhere close to 24/7. No driver trouble - everything was installed using the netinst DVD image (I only had to tweak the xorg.conf to add a few resolutions) using standard settings.

Of course this system is not perfect, and here's the drawbacks (those that I have come to notice so far, at least):
- audible chipset cooler. I resent that, but I'll have to live with it. That's the skinflint's price for saving at the wrong end. If your main goal is absolute silence, use a D945GSEJT instead. This will mean ZERO noise, but it costs a penny more.
- Low peak performance of the CPU. Firefox with five tabs (running on debian) is about as much as I would give to this hardware. For working, this is useless. For numb tasks like Server-, Router- or Download-Solutions this will do just fine.
UPDATE: Windows 7 (RC1) runs a lot better than Debian 5. No performance problems, even with ~10 Tabs in FF :D

All in all, I really enjoy this kind of hardware :)

GIMP is short for "(Oh, how )Great Is My Photoshop"

2009-04-08T02:02:00.000-07:00

Recently, I've had to deal with the GIMP from time to time, my company lacking a Photoshop license.I think eventually I got a bit into it, but it still makes me chunder whenever I have to use it.

To sum it up:
Using GIMP for photomanipulation is a bit like asking for a car and getting four wheels instead.
Using GIMP for webdesign is impossible.

Amen.

Sustainable Job Disposal

2009-04-07T00:45:00.000-07:00

If you want to lose your job and make sure you won't get another one anytime soon, why not try this ?

Beware of the Crocodeagle

2009-04-02T01:36:00.000-07:00

And that's basically all I have to say. Please check this out

Visual Studio 2008 dies beautifully when performing IDE layout changes

2009-03-06T02:30:00.000-08:00

Very recently my Visual Studio 2008 started to show some strange behaviour:
After moving docking / dockable tool windows to my second screen and arranging them there, I hit F5 to run/debug the application. This caused VS to crash and lose all IDE layout changes I had made so far. Reciprocally, changing the layout while debugging, then ending debug mode, results in the same error. I guess this must mean that the error arises when storing the IDE Layout for later retrieval. This behaviour is 100% reproducible.

The problem seems to be a well-known one in the Microsoft Development department, but no one seems eager enough to fix it, as a list of unresolved issues at Connect show (see here,here,here or here).

After Google did not provide me with a solution, I went on searching by myself, and the very first thing my Windows XP event log hinted me to was the failing component here, msenv.dll. Depending on your System, there are multiple flavours of that file installed (e.g. for VS2005, VS2008, Office11,...).

After some testing around (exchanging DLLs to ensure correct loading), I finally copied the version located at "/program files/commonfiles/microsoft shared/Help 9" to "$VS2008INSTALLDIR$/Common7/IDE", and finally can work properly again.

I draw the conclusion that my msenv.dll has been compromised, but how, by what and why?

What an ugly way of solving things...

My new ride - GEM PRP800

2009-02-10T23:36:00.000-08:00

After playing on my really lovely Yamaha CLP 860 for more than 6 Years, I wanted to go mobile, more or less. For that reason I was looking out for a stage piano.

After having spent some time at the music store in cologne, I have fallen for the Korg SP 250, which has a great keyboard and really quite good sounds.

One alternative I had heard sound samples of was the GEM PRP800, highly credited among musicians for its realistic sound engine. Yup, you haven't misread: It has a sound rendering engine (called DRAKE), and features the sounds of a 7 Foot Steinway and Sons and Fazioli F308 grand piano, among others. I really liked that sound, but the price (899 EUR list price) was a bit off bounds.

Recently a used one of them popped up on ebay, and so I thought to myself, why not give it a try? So I got it for a total of 462 EUR , a deal I won't come to regret so soon. It's really an awesome sounding digital piano, the best I've heard so far (which is probably due to the price range I usually check).

Want to buy a Clavinova CLP 860 ? Contact me...

Five For Fighting - 100 Years

2009-01-22T01:24:00.000-08:00

I can't Imagine how I managed to forget about this song, but it must have been at least a year since I've last heard "100 years" by Five For Fighting.

Now I rediscovered it while listening to my Jango station. Digesting those lyrics, I became aware of the fallacy of my ways. Thanks, John, for this invaluable song!

I will try to credit it by covering it.

a happy new year...

2009-01-05T04:22:00.000-08:00

...to my friends out there. keep the good things coming, kick the worst habits, become better (wo)men. get rich. die trying (or consider living notSoRich - it has its appeals too).

Shoe Thrower, WoW-Style

2008-12-18T00:46:00.001-08:00

see it animated

05-11-2008 : Perfect Symmetry at the Palladium, Köln

2008-10-30T07:17:00.000-07:00

After not having been to concerts for quite a while now, i'm glad to be able to see my favourized band Keane in Köln next week, on November 5th. The location is the Palladium, a remainder from heavy industry days. It has room for roundabout 4000 people and at least looks nice on pictures.

Rich, Tim, Tom : go! go! go!

:D

Keane : Perfect Symmetry

2008-10-22T00:01:00.000-07:00

Keane have released their 3rd Album, which is in many ways great. Similar to the IRON SEA Album, they redefine their sound with it. Here's my favourite tracks :
• love is the end
• perfect symmetry
• Playing Along
• better than this

All in all, another great songwriting done by Rice-Oxley!

yet another browser?

2008-09-05T22:44:00.000-07:00

Google have released a beta of chrome, their web browser.
it looks pretty good and renders as troubleless as firefox.
I haven't had the time to go into detail about this piece,
but first hands-on, it's quite a pick.

Internet Explorer 8 Beta available

2008-08-27T23:00:00.000-07:00

Microsoft have released a beta version of the eighth installment in their IE-Series.
Go check it out at microsoft.

review@heise.de

Final Fantasy XIII

2008-08-18T23:24:00.000-07:00

just a short notice : there will be a FFXIII Demo for PS3 along with the Bluray of Advent Children. More info here.

Yahoo Fire Eagle and Web Self Exposure in general

2008-08-14T00:35:00.000-07:00

Yahoo have launched their service "Fire Eagle", which is like twitter for locations. You can by various means tell the service your current location and have it displayed online. I have tried it. The pixelart design is pretty cool and - from what i see - the website seems to be up to the current technical standard (can't judge the backend...).

No reason to get over-excited, for me. I'd rather spend some time thinking about where the web takes its users.

The (growing) Web population is obviously divided into three groups. Group one is careful, sceptic about things like online banking or ebay, and very reluctant to use them. I don't know what those people actually do online, but they exist in small numbers.

Group two is the "webstertainment" group, mostly online to have a good time, meet friends (we used to do that somewhere under the sky back in my younger days) or watch ostensibly funny videos. Average age probably somewhere between 12 and 24. You can meet them at unique locations like studivz.de, where they are linked to on various photos and expose themselves more or less completely.

Somewhere in between lies the group I hope to be a part of, which is : willing to try but not completely air-headed. Although I fear I have a tendency to slide into group two from time to time...

While people keep on moaning about wiretapping and biometric passports, more and more web apps for self exposure emerge. While networking implicitly requires a certain amount of privacy loss, you should be careful not to give away too much about yourself, especially information that can be used against you in any way. Which brings me back to Fire Eagle : I just read the news about this being staged on heise.de, where critics already said it was a welcome gift for housebreakers and burglars. Knowing that the Millers from house number 18 will be in spain for the next three weeks makes scheming somewhat more easy, it is justifiably said.

Definitely, it is time to think about what information you are willing to share about yourself. Always think about the harm the information could cause. And if you want, try Fire Eagle

Samsung SyncMaster 245B plus - 24" LCD-Display for EUR 309

2008-08-06T02:46:00.000-07:00

Seen it in action, and I love it. If only...

hardwareversand.de

anyone out there who wants to donate?

thoughts on code quality and sparks (or : the good, the bad and the ugly)

2008-07-11T01:34:00.000-07:00

In my seven years of being a developer I have seen quite a few pieces of code, some of which were great works of art, while others were what could only be called a pain in the arse (written some of these myself).

There are many good-coding-dogmas, many design pattern catalogues and, I'm pretty sure, at least one best practice implementation for each problem you face dug in the depths of the internet. It's not always easy to find, though: In a recent search for documentation on IBM.XMS for dotnet, I was desperate for a few days, until eventually I ended up on an IBM-MQSeries board where people would try and help. The manual delivered with the XMS-lib was basically an API-doc and the sample applications did not compile. The solution was later found : Some assemblies had to be added, but no-one really knew why (or has written it down)

For a developer, a project starts somewhere in a meeting room, as a sheet of paper on your desk or, which is most enjoyable, as a spark in your brain while you are doing something completely different (the former cases just mean somebody else has had this spark).

So, whenever you start a new project, you basically face at least one of those thoughts:

• how to get it done?
• can I reuse what I have already coded?
• how can I get it over with really quick?
• how can I produce good code (that I might reuse later)?

It's a person-thing as well as a project thing. If a project demands quick delivery and leaves no time for design, you can be conscientious as you may, but your only ticket to success is a quick solution. The resulting code is often ungeneric and proprietary. But If a project has a more generous schedule, the shores of good and bad coders will diverge. Bad coders will code whatever comes to their mind after forging up a general battle plan. Good coders will spend some more time and go into detail regarding classes and processes or sometimes writing generic frameworks. The danger lies in over-designing things (like implementing a complex pattern where a simple class would have done). Time and again, there are software architects who do the conceptual work instead - a draft with very little understanding of "real-life" implementation problems.

So, What makes code actually good?
First of all, it must be understandable. This can be achieved by using standardized design patterns, but also by "humanizing" code. The target should never be to gain maximum complexity, but rather maximum simplicity. Second, good code is documented. It's not negotiable that some snippets end up being rather complex, hopefully because some things just can't be done in a simple way. Having a documentation (again, human readble) can be a great deal of help in such situations.

And although real beauty also comes with the language you code, it is possible to write some really good stuff with not-so-great languages. I remember the perl daemons designed by Marcus (hi Marcus, please ignore that thing about not-so-good Perl ^^) at sipgate - pure beauty in a language that isn't famous for its OOP capabilities.
Recently, in search for a specific solution, I checked a project done by another coder. Looking at what was done, the coder had programming and abstraction skills that surpassed mine by some length. But all those tiny sparks he's had when coding it just wouldn't leap over to me: there was no guidance through the code, no wiki entry, no inline documentation. after 2 hours of failed attempts, i quit it.

And what makes code bad?
Spaghetti code (not just top-down, but also all-across), lack of documentation, lack of human readability. Anything that shows the coder hasn't loved what he was doing. What good is a highly functional library if no-one knows how to use it? I think this does not need further saying, some of the stuff mentioned above is about bad code as well. Although, just to get rid of this, the most disastrous thing I've had to work with was (also written in perl) a daemon that had functions that spanned over more than 11 full pages. the actions taken were, each one of them, simple and understandable, but the amount of repetitions the absolute lack of documentation in it made me slam my head on the table and deeply doubt in the existence of gods. As pratchett said : "artifical intelligence is beaten by real stupidity every time". He's just so right about that.

Who am I to judge?
A developer, a user of APIs, a resumer of projects other people started. Some other things maybe, but last but not least a human.

What I want to say is: we live and learn. While living can't be helped (it happens more or less automatically), we have a lot of influence on our learning. And that is what we need web2.0 for : a more practicable way of sharing our sparks, the community must pull together more closely. Good code can be less shiny but still gold, if only it's imparted in a helpful way.

take care

hapless turns at Sony's

2008-07-06T23:28:00.000-07:00

Probably you've already heard it: Sony needs a lot of red ink for writing the records of their gaming branch since the release of the PS3.

Sony has - up to PS3 - had a very strong pillar in Games, while other business areas are usully rather unexciting (No pioneers' work in most of them). Thus, the damages caused by this bad streak might cost Sony a lot of their overall stability.

But what went wrong?

To my mind, Sony went very very wrong in the concept phase. Taking a pride in the long-lasting PS2-sales, they threw their new machine on the market without caring about demographical or, on a peoples-scale, economical changes. Consumers want to spend less money on games, PS3 games get more expensive without offering extra benefits to the gamers. You still finish cheap-ass jump'n'runs in a few hours or lose interest before that happens, but pay 1.5 times the price. Or, as Terry pratchett has put economy : "It's very much like dairy farming. The goal is to get a maximum amount of milk with a minimum amount of moo, and I'm afraid all I get these days is moo". Sure, we must pay for entertainment. But if it hurts more than it pleases, it's a habit to kick.

PS2 was, in the end, budget gaming, which kept people buying. The prospect of testing games before buying (using a modchip) also tickled some of their fancies.
Right now, PS3 is still only interesting for enthusiasts, consumers will wait until it gets cheaper (and moddable!).

I consider myself a model gamer citizen : I love playing, I spend a lot of time on it, and I even play a lot of crap. PS2 was a great platform for that, cut out for gaming. It sold very well, because of all consoles it was, while being more pricey, still the best. It was, powerful enough, quite easily moddable and most of all affordable. Recently I prefer Crysis on my PC to what my PS3 has to offer...

While microsoft didn't achieve too much with XBOX on the gaming side, it offered great MediaCenter and Modding potential. Which is why I owned one. Most of the games really sucked, but XBMC had a strong appeal to keep it for a long time.

One more admonition goes to Sony for their policy towards the European consumers. Ever since the PSX, we have stood in queue behind all other markets, finally getting a modified and less interesting product. For more money. Dear Sony, a market consists of people (who might add up to numbers, but each and every one of them considers him/herself a person rather than a digit) who have emotions. Emotions play a very big role in a market, which is how stock trade works. If you treat us like the car's fifth wheel, there will be an according echo.

Have it your way, but if you want people to buy your stuff, it's give and take!

And yes, I can judge this. I am a gamer. I own a PS3. I am very happy about the console and very unhappy about the games available right now. It's like winning a Ferrari in a lottery and having no gas station around. The Sony Store is a good idea, but filled with junk, whoever wants to pay money for crappy B- or C-games they have to download when each and every harmful firmware upgrade (my brother's console was bricked by a regular update) might make you lose the game?

I sincerely hope the modding community will squeeze some pleasure out of the console pretty soon, otherwise it will be a final stop at ebay for mine...

spectacular

2008-06-27T01:31:00.000-07:00

The recent local event "Spektakel" has been dearly anticipated, at least by me. As those things go, it started off with two bands i didn't know and "starred" Bounce, the Bon Jovi tribute band from around the corner.

In short : they rock bigtime and sound very much like the original. Whenever you can, you should check them out.

www.bonjovitribute.de

one step at a time

2008-06-17T02:40:00.001-07:00

hey all,

What a year so far!

I'm happy to announce that gametra.de is well on the way of progress. In addition to Prototype, I have switched over to using 2 more very efficient JavaScript Libraries for the user interface : Scriptaculous and Lightbox v2. The great thing about that : they're all compatible - scriptaculous is based on prototype, lightbox on both of the others. Since Firebug is such a relief for Debug, we can get more serious about using JS than before. Remains to hope that the libs are sufficiently crossbrowser-compatible, because debugging IE will NOT be fun :(

Another project of mine, unbrick.de, will hopefully be online later this week. It has been stuck on my harddisk for something like 4 Months now, waiting for a few graphics, some minor IE-CSS-Debug (yuck!) and a filled database (how should i get this done?)...

Web Recommendations of the month :
• imeem.com - youtube for audio :D
• steinway.de - simple elegance

Back to work!

Hardware fever

2008-04-15T12:59:00.001-07:00

after some time of pondering, I finally made my mind up to get some more current hardware. My config now is :

* intel core2duo e6300 + sonic tower + s-flex/800rpm/120mm
* asus p5k crossfire mainboard
* 2*1GB Team DDR2-6400 Memory
* Gigabyte X1650 Pro/256MB GDDR3/silent pipe II
* Gigabyte X1600 Pro/256MB GDDR2/silent pipe
* 250GB Samsung Spinpoint S-ATA 2
* 500GB Samsung Spinpoint S-ATA 2
* Win XP SP2

Sure this is not bleeding edge (rather budget level), but is a good treat for my needs.

The greatest benefit of all is changing to a 2 Harddisk setup: I do a lot of installing from image files, which can be time consuming when you have your images on the same physical disk as your install target. with 2 Sata2-drives, I managed to install a full 700Megs image in a few seconds. Physically separating soundlibs and temporarily generated audio is also a great advantage for recording, as I have read.

I haven't received my second VGA Adapter yet, I'm really interested in seing how crossfire works (Well, my setup is not optimised for games anyway, with the slower X1600 surely taking the wind from the X1650's sails) and i hope i can get my 3-screen-setup working with it.

what remains now is replacing the PSU, I'm ogling with a Be Quiet! one...

Cheers!

"Zielchen und Merriem"

2008-03-19T14:16:00.000-07:00

after some time of not posting, here i go again.

"Zielchen und Merriem"
time flies, and all of a sudden my kids are so big that i can hardly imagine there ever was a time without them around. very recently, anna (3 1/4 yrs) has named her two fluffy toy cats "Zielchen und Merriem". Strange names, where'd she got those from? Julia (21 Months) has developed a trait of discussing a lot and never giving in. most of her arguments are "no" and "why". So much life to come home to every day, it's great!

I have now finished my first weeks at INKA, a HSBC subsidiary, develeoping WinForms in C#. A step, as I recall, I have first uttered the wish to take, back in 2004.

tomorrow i will post a blurb about software design patterns, since i have had a good / bad time with them.

Eye Of Judgment - big time!

2008-02-05T00:57:00.000-08:00

A few years ago, I used to play Wizards of the coast's Trading Card Game "Duel Masters". It was something that really got me by the conkers, since I like card games, I am easily convinced to collect stuff (you should see my Elton John collection...), and I really like fantasy-monster-stuff. So, there was this new hobby, but lack of time I dismissed it after spending somewhere around 250USD on import cards.

Now WOTC and sony have finally combined their efforts to put up something really grand : The Eye Of Judgment for PS3. The cards are played on a gameplan that is watched by a USB Cam (PS Eye). The software identifies the card and brings it into play, be it a spell, creature or an action card. A nice 3d-representation of the cast entity is then shown on-screen and battles with its adversaries.

Your opponent can be either remote or locally present, It doesn't matter. Just, if you want to play ladder games, you gotta go online.

If you like TCGs, try finding some cool videos on youtube - there's many - and get yourself this freakin' hot game.

Or, if you already have it, why not challenge me? My PSN ID is fopsi. I am also in the german playstation league with this nickname.

Cheers!

10 Years, and then....Welcome back, X Japan!

2008-01-28T03:38:00.000-08:00

I am so damn happy about this reunion...Yoshiki's great music coupled with Toshi's grand voice :D

Well, here they are : X Japan. Finally reunited. Looking forward to some more great stuff. If, you care (you really should), listen to their first new Song, a track from the Saw IV OST.

Edit : Obviously, there's some enthusiasts with a plan to get X over to Europe. I really appreciate their effort and I will participate! For more info klick here

Landtagswahl in Hessen

2008-01-28T03:15:00.000-08:00

Nichts geht über ein gutes Konzept: klick (Youtube)

2008-01-03T05:41:00.000-08:00

I just created a list of the vim-features I happen to use a lot.
Here it is: VIM_CHEATSHEET.PDF

two zero zero eight

2008-01-02T02:17:00.000-08:00

Ho Bang Bang Ho!!!

Santa has buggered off again, the last firecrackers have been flushed down the gutters, life has been set to work-mode again. the Seb-Bot is back in his office and doing whatever he does for a living.

The recently celebrated new year means a lot to him. I detail: a year full of hopelessly overaimed intentions, jolly and rather not so jolly surprises, moral decay and dispositional blunting, too little spare time and too many things to spend it on, undue optimism and all the usual emotional rollercoaster-ride that he refers to as life.

In short, nothing changes (it never does, really) except the big number on the calendar leaves, but as some robots do, the Seb-Bot has reconsidered his existence and all the things he spends his time on.

The result is a pro-familiar and anti-vocational programme for evening hours, a more sportive and more musical approach for hours of solitude. With this, the Seb-Bot has calculated, he can claim more of the grease called "happiness" for his rusty joints and thus prolong his lifecycle and increase productivity.

(How) have you re-adjusted yourself?

this can't be true...

2007-12-13T23:31:00.000-08:00

Yesterday i read about the saddest news for a long long time.

Terry Pratchett is a man whose brain has the overwhelming power of creating a whole new universe, which he did over the last roundabout 20 years. His books have everything I ever wanted to read : They are witty, funny and absolutely fantastic. His imagination and common sense are uncompared, in my opinion.

Now he has told the world that a rare kind of Alzheimer's disease has befallen him, a disease that will, eventually, make his brain disfunctional (loss of language, motoric skills etc.) and basically turn it into a plum pudding over the next 10-15 years.
Pratchett has also told the press that he "ain't dead yet", and i think he will never really be. The wor(l)d is printed, and - even if the man dies - it will remain. Only the good die young.

I want Terry to know that he has enriched my life in a way no one else could have, thank you, Terry. I hope you have many joyous days left. I will stick with you. Right now, I just feel like crying my eyes out...

If anyone cares to read the article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/13/terry_prachett_alzheimers/

hilarious!

2007-11-23T01:50:00.001-08:00

Erfindungen, die die Welt nicht braucht...

2007-10-12T01:52:00.000-07:00

Patent 962 : Der Multimedia-Kamin

just 'nother bout of music

2007-10-10T13:05:00.000-07:00

I hardly believe it myself, but I had a few hours with my piano these days, which I used to experiment with a few instrumental tracks.
Finally I got around to make a kind of compound of 4 of my demo outtakes, which can be heard in my myspace profile as of now.

Furthermore I just made a rough mixup of a few Elton John covers I recorded from time to time, which can be downloaded here. More info on why the sound sucks so much can be found in this myspace blog entry.

I also had the chance to do some interesting new stuff : I recorded a piano segment for a quite cool track ("inquisitors") created by paul garcia, a spanish musician (www.paul-garcia.com). I'm not sure if it will ever be available for public listening, but I'll keep you updated.

So, I get to do things, but hardly have the time to improve my recording quality...well, this life's still got some days in it for me, I hope...

php5 likes transitive access levels?

2007-08-28T07:46:00.000-07:00

When working on a singleton class in php, I noticed a funny behaviour.
The following code will lead to an error

Access level to B::__construct() must be public (as in class A)


class A
{
 public function __construct(){}
}
class B extends A
{
 private function __construct()
 {
  parent::__construct();
 }
}
$B = new B();
?>

Weird...

Yet another CD recommendation

2007-08-17T00:26:00.000-07:00

Richie Sambora, who probably makes most of his fame by working in the Bon Jovi Band, has made some really good solo stuff in the 90s and probably before (I don't know). As far as I'm concerned, this is the best I've heard from him.

Check out my favourite track [Hard times come easy] from this album

Halleluia...

2007-06-22T07:33:00.000-07:00

...is what I recorded two days ago and finished last night.
It's a nice song, written by rufus wainwright. check it out on www.myspace.com/edelmeier

edit : that's what happens if you don't inform yourself. the song was originally written by the man himself : Leonard Cohen

Yadda Yadda!

2007-03-19T03:37:00.000-07:00

all's clearing up.spring is due, the air is full of birdsong, and the sun comes out more daringly.
we have moved and, despite all the remaining work, are happy to live through the year in our new home.The kids love it, and so do we.
I'm in a mood i can only call positive, although my laziness draws me to my PS2 rather than to the good-old PC in the evening hours. I'm taking some timeouts, which is a healthy thing, if I'm any judge.

Last friday, March 16th, I visited CeBIT with Steve and Roberto, which was a fun trip, but only little revealing on the products side. Seeing all those Chinese (sorry for summing up taiwan, PROC and HK like that) fair booths really made me consider opening up a cableshop and selling those cheap imports...The idea is dead, though.

My music production has suffered severely, but I spent a few evenings with my Clavinova and made up or refined some of my ideas, so that now I've got a pretty close-to-the-intended version of "Holding Back (What Walls Can't Hold)" ready for recording and a more concrete idea of "New Beginning". The mood of the former is also defined, the instruments are picked, now it's just a matter of time.
Another song called "Sands Of Time" is in it's early stages of being written, got chords, melody and first verse. it will be written as a duet.

Light on the horizon

2007-02-07T02:32:00.000-08:00

BIIIIG news!!!

Well, at least for us...
We finally have the keys for our new home, so a major move is impending.
The next few days will mark the end of my Wuppertal citizenship,...somewhat strange.
I'm counting down the days till we pack up our belongings.

I know...who cares?!? I do!

xD

Ars Electronica - Shiny Toy Guns

2007-01-23T07:37:00.000-08:00

Just stumbled over this great US-formation of youngsters who make pretty cool music. Beats and synth like we used to get in the 'olden days', flashy melodic stuff. I just like it and feel inspired to make use of some more synth here and there.

Nice Performance of 'LE DISCO'
their space on myspace
their homepage

Keep it up, guns.

Update: Their studio album "We are pilots" is quite nice, but definitely overproduced, the great drum sounds of the LE DISCO performance from the video linked to above is nothing alike.
You should see them perform to get the best of it. Still, nice for a change.

"Old Iron" - First vocalized song ready

2007-01-19T08:21:00.000-08:00

Ciao,

I have finished recording all I wanted to for my Happy-Birthday-Elton-John-Song "Old Iron".
It is audible in my myspace account .
Please use this blog to criticise it, be fair but tough. I can take it. C'mon.

Web-Update : Missing Images and Ugly Errors

2007-01-18T02:21:00.000-08:00

Hi folksy bits,

as you might have noticed, there are not all images and contents on my websites as of now.

The reason : I moved to another server. My backup via FTP didn't work in all path-depths
as it seems, so that everything deeper than 2 folders got lost. I think I have most of the stuff
at home and will restore my own world order somewhen tonight.

Cheers and happy existing

What January brought so far...

2007-01-15T04:34:00.000-08:00

G'Day ;)

January is a very great month as far as I'm concerned:

Family
My family is in good shape, my daughters have their toothing and coughing troubles, but develop so well...I can't even imagine that a mere 3 years ago there was none of that in my life, they're absolutely the best thing that ever happened in my whole life...

...Gaming
After Metal Gear Snake Eater, which seemed the one and only extremely great game on PS2 I sold my black and blue console more than a year ago. Now "FF12" and "FF7 - dirge of cerberus" made me curious. So i went out (alone on horseback) to collect me a ps2, all used and torn, to try those games.
Not a bit of a disappointment, both games rock. I never would have thought that real time battle (like FF12) or an action-shooter concept(D.O.C.) would work that well for me, but i was wrong. I guess I will have to invent a spare-time-multiplier to get everything i want to do done in what little time i have. Final Fantasy 12 is so much better than it's soundtrack, far better than it's predecessors (talking leagues here, friend!), so I give it a lot of my time. Square is the best. Final Fantasy X and X-2 were notches in their otherwise perfect portfolio. Bring back Uematsu and you'll have me until FF-M!

Audio
my first audio-track, 'Old Iron' (a birthday song for sixty-years-on.com) is as far as finished by 99%. This week i will add another few keyboards and revise all that's in there already, then do some remixing and send it to Stephan Heimbecher.
Writing and mixing the song was such a great exercise to get to know the software...As usual, real-life usage turns out to be the only useful exercise. In February I will start other tracks, some of which have been named here...

I hope your January was as fine as mine.

Cheeeeeeers!

Apple iPhone - yikes!

2007-01-10T02:28:00.000-08:00

Apple finally presented their iPhone, a completely touch-screen powered mobile phone with integrated mp3 player and video/photo player. Nice Gadget, and apple stocks have risen by 8% in a single day... to sad i don't have any :(

anyway, check this out:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/

PS3 is rocking it to the fattest

2007-01-04T04:33:00.000-08:00

I just watched another few videos and reports and have come, once more, to the conclusion, that the ps3 will be worth a penny.
the graphics may be a bit below what x360 offers, but the capabilities are endless. nearly, that is.
I really see forward to the EU release of this mighty machine and hope that I will be able to get my hands on one of those.

Metal Gear Portable Ops

2007-01-03T11:06:00.000-08:00

Really good.

Nearly as good as METAL GEAR AWESOME, which can be admired here

Sweet January

2007-01-03T10:51:00.000-08:00

After quite some time it seems we don't have to make trouble a hobby.

The keys for our real estate will be handed over shortly, all flaws have been discussed away (that's talking until they don't disturb you anymore, because talking is far worse a nuisance...), and we will most probably be in the rotten bunker by the end of Sweet January.
Musicing goes on pretty well at the moment. nearly completed my never-to-be-released song "old iron" and will compose more after that.

I am in a good mood to do more right now. I hope I'll find the time. Business as ususal.

Time flies...

2006-11-20T03:17:00.000-08:00

It's past middle of November now and we still haven't moved into our new home, which should have happened about 3 weeks ago. Thus, the dream of a nice Xmas 2006 in our own house will probably remain a soap-bubble.

patient, young padawan, is the winner of the game, eventually.

Xbox Media Center 2.0 : awesome

2006-11-09T13:28:00.000-08:00

After my xbox has gathered a lot of dust, i wanted to check out the latest XBOX Media Center (XBMC) . Once you have a nicely modded box, setup is easy:
Download archive, unpack, FTP to the partition where your secondary dashboard is. done.
From this point on, it's pleasure all the time. One of the best features is the capability of running custom python scripts...so that you can watch youtube clips on tv now.

Lyrics so far

2006-10-16T05:13:00.000-07:00

this is the list of lyrics I have started writing up to now:

Playing it Safe
Fly
New Beginning*
Of Pawns and Queens*
Dreamer*
Holding Back (what walls can't hold)*
Julia
Got Hope
Untitled
Echoes
Full Moon Blues
Nearly Lost You There*
Shipwrecked*

Starred (*) = complete Lyrics, updated where red

myspace account for audio projects

2006-09-05T00:44:00.000-07:00

hiho,

i created a myspace account for making my audio projects available on the web. Stuff can be heard on:

http://www.myspace.com/dummyuser

FFXII OST fails to impress

2006-08-17T05:12:00.000-07:00

Yo, folks.

Being a fan of the games Final Fantasy 7,8 & 9 was easy for me. Great music, great storylines, fantastic athmosphere...Well, talk about music in this place.

Honestly, after Part 9, which had a pretty chacteristic setting and an enourmously adequate soundtrack, Nobuo Uematsu seems to have become less inventive. It seems he lost the love for the subject, with only a few really appealing tracks to occur in FFX ("to zanarkand",ending theme and a tiny amount of others). Also, a big part of the tracks has been handed over to other artists, similar as happened later in FFXI OST and "FFXI - vision of zilat" OST. In these two albums, I liked only one track ("recollection").

Part 12 has been given to Hitoshi Sakimoto, never heard of, and reflects the tendency already visible in parts 10 and 11: The attempts to sound perfectly symphonic overrule the ambition to write memorable melodies, simple tunes like "terra".

FFVII Advent children featured some of the piano collection's songs, but also didn't bring any new amiable stuff.Nobody exepts Aerith's Theme Part II, but this (p.12) is the first FF OST I'm not gonna keep...Really, really disappointing, same development as shines through with the FF game series...

First Impressions on The Captain And The Kid

2006-08-08T09:17:00.000-07:00

there's a lot of stuff on the web about the new album (Basic info: see below). First of all, there's the lyrics on eltonography.com.

First impression: Good with exceptions.
Now eltonjohn.com has sneak-peeked two songs, "The Bridge" and "Postcards From Richard Nixon". I have checked out the first one already, and the sound is awesome. A grandload of Piano and a brilliant voice give the rather weak lyrics of this song a really strong intonation.

More to be added about Richard Nixon later today.

___UPDATE___
It's been released a while ago now, and I still listen to it frequently. Many opinions can be found in the alt.fan.elton-john newsgroup, mine as well.
Long story cut short : The album rocks!

PC-Silence : AMD Geode serves the purpose well

2006-08-08T09:16:00.000-07:00

I needed a CPU for my Audioputer, which i record tunes from my Piano with and edit some MIDI.
The goal was to have a low-power, low-noise computer that has enough power to run i.e. cubase or reason without being more than slightly audible.
I found out about The Geode Series (AMD), with a mere 14-25 Watts for a 1750+ (@1400Mhz) the probably perfect solution for my purpose. Reports on the web said it should be possible to cool the cpu passively, so i took an interest.

Finally after all parts arrived (... after lots of ebaying...) I assembled the following into a nice, small machine:

*AMD Geode NX1750+ CPU (Socket A)
*Asus A7N8X Motherboard
*512MB Kingston Value Ram @266Mhz (...the geodes FSB)-->added 512, so it's a gig now.
*some dvdrom
*Maxtor 160GB 8MB Cache HDD
*seasonic 200Watts Power Supply
*matx case
*creative soundblaster card (nothing special) -->replaced by M-Audio Audiophile 2496
*GF2, 64MB, TVout

Big Drama: The CPU is recognized as An Athlon 800, since the board doesn't support it. More research had the following result:
For the Geode, only a few Boards work properly!

So i exchanged my A7N8X for a ASRock K7S41GX (there is also a non GX version, offering 400Mhz FSB instead of 333, but Geode operates at 266, so go for the cheaper one) and found it working smoothly. Noiseless cooling is achieved by active cooling:
*2 60mm 12V Case Fans @5v
*12V CPU cooler @5V

Everything fine. Windows MCE works properly and I am happy to have a silent beast standing in my room. One drawback nevertheless: The case is not all good for HDDs, since they get pretty hot in their place...

Summary: Geode rules, what a pity so few boards support it.

The Captain And The Kid

2006-07-27T04:07:00.000-07:00

This year Elton John's new Album, 'The Captain And The Kid' will hit the shelves in September. eltonjohn.com informed about tracklist and cover art:

Postcards From Richard Nixon

Just Like Noah's Ark

Wouldn't Have You Any Other Way (NYC)

Tinderbox

...And The House Fell Down

Blues Never Fade Away

The Bridge

I Must Have Lost It On the Wind

Old '67

The Captain and the Kid

After the absolutely stunning Lestat Demos I'm seeing forward to this. If you want to pre-order, amazon might not be the optimum choice. @CDWow it's 2.00 cheaper, there's no shipping costs and the web is flooded with cdwow 1.00 vouchers. This way i get the cd delivered for 11.99 instead of Amazonian 17.99...nice deal.

Of Frog Princes and iron seas

2006-07-10T03:23:00.001-07:00

recommendation

If you want to listen to some good stuff, check out this one:

'Keane, Under The Iron Sea'

except for the hamburg track everythings pretty good to listen to. some are really great ('leaving so soon?', 'Nothing in My Way', 'A Bad Dream').

Inspired some of my own songwriting.

Keep up the good work.

Announcing Julia

2006-07-10T03:23:00.000-07:00

Wahoonies.

It's summer, the soccer World-Cup has just ended and everythings nifty as a pearl. Although the amount of spare time i have has decreased dramatically after getting the first daughter, i still found dozens of ways to spend it. currently it's songwriting.

Now my second daughter, Julia, has arrived. As a friend of mine said: I'm building up my own soccer team. We are all happy that she's in good health and pretty hungry all the time.

Money, money, money!

2006-03-22T07:29:00.000-08:00

it hardly ever seems to stick with me for too long...is it me, being a techie?

Top urges for spending my money (updated as of May 3rd)
1) Sony PSP (Firmware version 1.5/2.0) - got it. momma, worth every single penny, that thing.
2) 2GB Memory Stick Pro Duo -ordered one from HK. Remains to hope that it's a good fake and works properly.
3) Netgear WPN824 (RM) Wireless Router or similar (better : WRT54G)
4) Netgear WPN511 (RM) PCMCIA Card

Suitcaseputer (SCP) Projectt has been kicked for various reasons like time and money, to mention the most important ones.

Release Date of CobaltWeb pushed further

2006-03-02T03:43:00.000-08:00

DID I SAY APRIL?!? WELL,...as you know things tend to get more crowded than they really ought to...no more promises, just facts :-)

good news, everyone!

CobaltWeb is making progress, most probably the raw version (1.0 release) will be available from the beginning of April.
Drawback: This release is excluding the implementation of CobaltMine, a powerful media-database.This release date also marks the launch of my enterprise web page, cobaltlabs.de.

CobaltMine will take another 6 weeks to finish, so that the first all-round-solution should be likely to appear in mid-may, if no major impassibilies crop up.

Anyway, I hope to be able to speed things up.

Internet Exploder 7 Beta Version available

2006-02-01T01:08:00.000-08:00

Internet Explorer 7 is available in an early beta version. You will need Service Pack 2 to install it.
you can download it at bill's playground: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie7/default.mspx

You might be interested in the security issues mentioned on the paged linked to below:
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/09/19/471316.aspx

My first impression is that ie7 brings no major news to browser people. If you ever tried Mozilla Firefox you already know tabbed browsing (Avant Browser, btw does the same thing basing on IE's rendering engine). No need to get over-excitede so far...

PHP: Smarty Template Engine's Limits

2006-01-27T14:53:00.000-08:00

Today i was going to try rather boring recursion (like you need for i.e. a web-filebrowser) for my WIP-CMS called cobaltWeb.
Since I use Smarty for quite everything, i found out that a major pain in the arse is its incapability of handling arrays of indefinite depth, or recursion in general. There seem to be some hacks for smarty right now, but reviews say its lame as a duck can be.

Since I have no idea how to build my data, I will have to go for an ugly php-script. Yikes, php will never be a really good platform...

Gloomph - A growing adventure

2006-01-12T03:37:00.000-08:00

Since I started writing "Gloomph" (working title), a space adventure novel, I haven't contrived to write more than 15-20 pages. I think this blog is a good place to publish the stuff and keep on writing...I will update this topic with a link and keep readers informed about changes...

gamedevelopment made its way to my hometown

2006-01-11T03:27:00.000-08:00

after five years of taking a great interest in game development, but being limited by my own unwillingness to move away, i have found out that there's 2 local game-programming crews.

> www.silentfuture.de
> www.silentdreams.de

i'm happy to see things developing this way. i hope to be able to resume graphical work soon (after moving to my new appartment of choice), so that i can offer myself as freelance helper.

watching out for .NET

2006-01-11T02:43:00.000-08:00

my departure from good old php has been overdue. Working for nearly 5 years with just one technology is like a palsy, just worse, because you could have done something else meanwhile.

After investigating for a while, i pick ASP.NET and C# as my new matter of learning, and hopefully find the time to create some interesting stuff with it.

finally a direction that leads me to system-close programming...

what is a 'blerk'?

2006-01-11T00:21:00.000-08:00

What a nifty thing, such a blog... So I can post my nonsense more frequently and more...just more. So, I flap up the first page of this wonderful, free, database-driven notepad of mine...

Yerssss....