Scobleize your life

Thomas Hawk asks "what if I only had 30 minutes a day to read blogs?"

Robert Scoble answers.

http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2004/11/24.html#a8709

Desktop Google Finds Holes

The problem is that GDS indexes and finds documents that you may prefer not be found.

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2004/11/desktop_google.html

An Elvis man, you like your women dangerous and your steaks bloody.

I'm Vince: "Tell 'im to shut up, he's gettin on my nerves" An Elvis man, you like your women dangerous and your steaks bloody. You often get wrapped up in landscapes and fail to realize the danger you put yourself into. Don't get cocky, and don't get caught. It might be good to lay off the drugs every once in a while. Just a suggestion. Take the What Pulp Fiction Character Are You? quiz.

To Do List

So, here it is, my ultimative list of things I have to or want to do:

Top priority:
- Find a new job
This has an enormous tail of things I must do: write my resume, make nice pictures of me, find a company were I want to work, write something about "how valuable I would be to them", then maybe move to a different city/country/continent.

Hight priority:
- Write email more offen to Elizabeth
- Clean up my flat
- Put winter tyres on my car

Mid priority:
- Start one of my projects which might lead to my own company
- File my tax papers
- Find friends I can spend time with
- Find a girlfriend (Feels like its allmost impossible at the moment)
- Go swimming on a regular basis
- At least once try my luck in a rallye (enourmos tail factor)

Other things:
- Install Halion
- Make music
- Try out Tracktion
- Find a better RSS Reader
- Find some motivation

Top Coder

As if my todo list isn't long enough...

I stumbled across this site, where you can test your coding skills (Not that I have any at the moment, as I am stuck doing some installer scripts...)

I REALLY have to try it out.

http://www.topcoder.com/

Hiring Technical People

http://www.jrothman.com/weblog/archive/2004_11_01_htparchive.html

Windows XP Service Pack 2 deployment feedback

http://blogs.msdn.com/brucecowper/archive/2004/11/17/258964.aspx

Koders

Koders - A search engine for source code.

http://www.koders.com/

More on XP SP2

http://blogs.msdn.com/paul_fallon/archive/2004/11/15/257658.aspx

XP Command Line Reference

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/ntcmds.mspx

Ohhhh Soooo Slooooow

Why site no workey?
Slow as melting beef jerkey.
Workspace pool of broth.

:-)

http://blogs.msdn.com/betsya/archive/2004/11/23/268701.aspx

Current Lyrics - The Gunners Dream

A place to stay
Enough to eat
Somewhere old heroes shuffle safely down the street
Where you can speak out loud
About your doubts and fears
And what’s more no-one ever disappears
You never hear their standard issue kicking in your door.
You can relax on both sides of the tracks
And maniacs don’t blow holes in bandsmen by remote control
And everyone has recourse to the law
And no-one kills the children anymore.
And no one kills the children anymore.


Pink Floyd - The Gunners Dream

Recruitment

Harvey Nash GmbH
Hays Specialist Recruitment - Jobs, advice, recruitment, solutions
Sanderson Recruitment PLC (UK), specialists in Computer and IT

Am I BIN LADEN or NOT?

Am I Redneck or Not? - judge not, lest ye be judged.

AMI BIOS or NOT? - is that an American Megatrends BIOS you spy?

http://dir.yahoo.com/Entertainment/Contests__Surveys__and_Polls/Polls/X_or_Not_/

The DropMyRights Application

DropMyRights is a very simple application to help users who must run as an administrator run applications in a much-safer context—that of a non-administrator. It does this by taking the current user's token, removing various privileges and SIDs from the token, and then using that token to start another process, such as Internet Explorer or Outlook. This tool works just as well with Mozilla's Firefox, Eudora, or Lotus Notes e-mail.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/security/securecode/columns/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dncode/html/secure11152004.asp

True words of the week

It is sadly ironic that those who strive for success at any cost don't realize that mature and responsible human resource and production practices will more readily bring them what they so desperately seek.

From the IGDA newsletter.

You silly monkey

If you enjoyed wordcount, you might like this word magnet by Zefrank.

http://www.zefrank.com/wp1/magnets/index.html

Blue Sky On Mars - Featured technology blog of the week.

http://www.blueskyonmars.com/

Willie Garson

The number of TV series Willie Garson has appeared in is just amazing. He has shown up in almost all of the big US TV-series (I'm missing ER). PLUS alot of movies.

On TV he appeared in (to name the ones I know):
- Monk
- CSI
- Stargate
- Spin City
- Sex and the City
- NYPD Blue
- X-Files
- Boy Meets Girl
- Nash Bridges
- Early Edition
- Just Shoot Me!
- Friends
- Star Trek: Voyager
- Ally McBeal
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- Melrose Place
- The Practice
- Mad About You
- L. A. Law
- Quantum Leap
- Twin Peaks
- Booker
- Mr. Belvedere
- Cheers
- Peter Gunn

His movie apearances includes:
- Being John Malkovich
- There's Something About Mary
- Mars Attacks
- Kingpin
- The Rock
- Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead
- Groundhog Day
- Ruby (as Lee Harvey Oswald)
- Adventures of Ford Fairlane

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0308606/

And death shall have no dominion

Dead men naked they shall be one with the man in the wind and the west moon.

When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone they shall have stars at elbow and foot.

Though they go mad they shall be sane.

Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again.

Though lovers be lost love shall not.

And death shall have no dominion.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0307479/quotes

sed - The command from hell

I have to do some work with the *nix command sed . Well, it might be very versatile (especially with regular expressions), but it features a syntax from hell.

I hate it already...

In Soviet Russia

In ExtremeProgramming, you continually test your code. In WaterFall, your code continually tests you.

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?InSovietRussia

U-Bahn Hamburg

http://www.u-bahn-hamburg.com/

SCHEISS - Alfa Romeo GTV 2000 Bertone von 1974

http://www.wortfilter.de/kurios/0411/alfa.htm

von:
Die Sammlung kurioser Auktionen bei eBay

Gratis PHP Webspace bei Tripod / Lycos

Tripod hat alles, was Sie für eine eigene Homepage brauchen: 50 MB Webspace, einen WebBuilder und für Experten PHP und MySQL - gratis

http://www.tripod.lycos.de/taketour/

Shoot yourself in the foot with Unix

% ls
foot.c foot.h foot.o toe.c toe.o
% rm * .o
rm: .o: No such file or directory
% ls
%

http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~susan/joke/foot.htm

Only a person who risks is free.

To laugh is to risk appearing the fool.
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out for another is risk involvement.
To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self.
To place your ideas, your dreams, before a crowd Is to risk their loss.
To love is to risk not being loved in return.
To live is to risk dying. To hope is to risk despair.
To try is to risk failure.
But risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is To risk
nothing.
The person who risks nothing dies nothing, Has nothing and is nothing.
They say they avoid suffering and sorrow, But they cannot learn, Feel,
change, grow, love, feel.
Chained by their attitudes, they are slaves.
They have forfeited their freedom.
Only a person who risks is free.

Anonymous

http://www.boingboing.net/2004/01/30/secret_personal_webl.html

Audion R.I.P.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog points to the story of Audion.

http://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/

(From http://apple.weblogsinc.com/entry/1127135368179993/)

Mac OS X Hacking Tools

Here is a list of some Mac OS X command line tools, daemons and so on.

http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/osx/tools.html

Current lyrics: The Thrill Is Gone

I'm in the mood for this song: The Thrill Is Gone.

The thrill is gone away
You know you done me wrong baby
And you'll be sorry someday

You can no longer ignore RSS

Intel now has some RSS feeds and information about RSS. If you still haven't tried out RSS, wake up and smell the coffee.

What is RSS?

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) provides a convenient way to gather and quickly browse information from a variety of sources, including press releases, product updates, or changes to a web site. Small amounts of content, called "feeds," are automatically sent to an RSS reader. Feeds are generally a headline, summary, or preview of the complete content. Through the RSS reader, feeds from various sources can be scanned with the ability to access the complete content relating to any interesting feeds.

How do I get an RSS reader?

In order to access RSS content you must install an RSS reader. There are many different RSS readers available, some available at no cost and some available for a small fee.

http://www.intel.com/intel/rss.htm

The Rules and Practices of Extreme Programming

While we are at it, here are some Rules and Practices of Extreme Programming.

http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules.html

EA Games?

Go decide yourself. I don't know if it is true, but beeing a developer myself, I will think twice about buying a EA Game. I was thinking about buying The Sims, but now...

http://www.livejournal.com/users/ea_spouse/

(From German Heise)

Using Visual C++ Toolkit 2003 from the Command Prompt

Brian Johnson describes how to use the Microsoft Visual C++ compiler that ships with the Visual C++ Toolkit 2003 from the command line. This article is for beginners who've never used a command line compiler before.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/visualc/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dv_vstechart/html/vctoolkitcmd.asp

This is the end - Nullsoft is no more

We will miss you. Rest in peace.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/11/aol_axes_nullsoft/

(From Kristian Koehntopp)

Video Gemetzel im Kinderzimmer?

Frontal 21 bringt einen Bericht ueber Gewaltverherrlichende Spiele und ALLE, WIRKLICH ALLE sind entsetzt.

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/53124

> Brandenburgs Innenminister Jörg Schönbohm (CDU) etwa spricht von einem "unhaltbaren Zustand" und sieht "schnellen Handlungsbedarf", der bayerische Innenminister Günther Beckstein (CSU) fordert gar ein Herstellungsverbot.

Wenn man aber folgendes liest, sieht die Sache schon GANZ anders aus:
http://www.gu-videogames.de/uni-gamecube/index.php3?page=editorials_artikel&artikel=8

Rainer Fromm - Frontal21: «"Doom 3" ist eines der brutalsten Computerspiele. Es gibt nur ein Ziel: Töte Deine Gegner! Das Horrorspiel ist nicht indiziert und gilt als nicht jugendgefährdend, und das mit staatlichem Stempel.» Ein Blick in das Register der USK zeigt: Doom 3 wurde mit „keine Jugendfreigabe“ eingestuft. Nach geltendem deutschem Recht ist der Verkauf eines solchen Titels an unter-18-jährige strafbar.

Was MICH in diesem Zusammenhang entsetzt, wie LAUSIG manche Journalisten recherchieren und wie manche Politiker AUTOMATISCH entsetzt sind. Und ich zahle dafuer GEZ und Steuern.

Frontal21: «Der bayerische Innenminister Günther Beckstein sagt dazu: "Wir brauchen Herstellungsverbote. Denn die Technik hat sich so entwickelt, dass der einzelne Träger dieser Spiele nicht mehr sehr viel kostet, so dass der Preis für Verleihen und Verkaufen nicht mehr sehr unterschiedlich ist. Wenn etwas auf dem Markt ist, dann wird es immer von Jugendlichen erworben und dann auch schwarz kopiert und weiter vertrieben."»

Da hat der Gute doch sicher Recht: Tabakwaren und harte Spirituosen sind ebenso auf dem Markt vertreten – und wir wissen doch: «Wenn etwas auf dem Markt ist, dann wird es immer von Jugendlichen erworben [...]». Ich bin überzeugt, Herr Beckstein wird sich ebenso überzeugt für Herstellungsverbote von deutschem Bier und Spirituosen einsetzen, wie das bei Videospielen der Fall ist – alles zum Wohle des Jugendschutzes – Lang lebe das Oktoberfest mit nem kühlen Maß Cola und Weißwurst!

In diesem Zusammenhang: Ich fordere ein Herstellungs- und Verbreitungs-Verbot fuer Frontal 21 - natuerlich ausschliesslich um die Jugend zu schuetzen.

Gute Nacht

Qtopia by Trolltech

Embedded Linux.

http://www.trolltech.com/products/qtopia/index.html

Does SCO Matter?

I can't see SCO winning its cases. Regardless of that though, SCO has mattered. It will have left us with an enduring legacy: lawyers, rather than developers and entrepreneurs, taking business technology's center stage. It's a legacy I could have done without.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1710679,00.asp

PUNK IS NOT DEAD! FUCK YOU!

Check this out. Make Punk music. Burp.

http://www.zanorg.com/prodperso/punk.htm

Looking for new Home Appliances? The Beer Tender!

Best invention since beer
http://www.beertender.nl
and
http://www.beertender.com

Dart mit Staedtenamen

Der Herr Koehntopp einen schoenen Link aufgetan (via Frau Katze) . Dart spielen mit deutschen Staedten. Und wo zum Teufel liegt Hitzacker? Da war doch was...

http://blog.koehntopp.de/archives/563-Dart.html

Hitzacker liegt an der Elbe und war bei der Jahrhundertflut in Funk und Fernsehen vertretten.

Computer Dealers in Hamburg (Wandsbeker Chaussee)

Sigelkow
http://www.siggelkow.com

BWZ
http://www.bwz.de

WM-Service Computer Discount
http://www.wmservice.de

KWS Computer - Quadras

Based on a Transmeta processor, KWS has build a nice little embedded system. With 135 x 135 mm its 40 % smaller than an Mini-ITX solution.

Prices start at 395 Euro (plus tax).

http://www.kws-computer.de

Computer Refurbished

It had to be done. I done some computer changes. I bought the computer case Silentium T1 from Arctic Cooling, which is quite nice and quite quiet :-) Certainly not top-notch, but enough for my needs. The old computer case, which I bought three years ago (!) (when I had no money at all) just needed to go - It was way too loud. The new case even has a little suspended compartment for the harddrive. Simply nice.

Then I fitted a CPU which is twice as fast as the old one. The new CPU did get a cooler from Arctic Cooling as well. While doing this, I got rid of the internal ZIP drive I wasn't using anymore.

And to give it a nice finishing touce, I finally moved from Windows 2000 to Windows XP. The CD I bought today even has SP2. How thoughtful. I was only missing one IE update (which was zero kB!) and the virus scanner. I got the free-av scanner, which I'm using for ages now and integrates with XP nicely. I hope now that my computer won't get infected again.

And I moved the refurbished system to my living room. I can keep an eye on the TV or listen to music while doing some computer work. Next I will hook my PC up to my stereo and TV to play some CMR2. Lets see if I can get it to work with XP...

In fact, the new system is quiet enough, that I don't mind it runing in the living-room. You can hear it, when I turn off the music or the TV, but it is quiet enough :-)

I will keep a Windows system, but I want to setup a Linux machine as well. I have gotten two CRTs from a friend for the price of a lunch and I have a older Pentium 2 machine I want to use for Linux. Let's see.

Pzizz

As I am preparing my resume (Hello! I develop software in the audio field! You can hire me!) I started collecting the things I did in my profesional life.

I am not going to write here about what I am doing currently, as my current employer will get all pissed, if I should dare to write about the stuff we try to sell. So I keep quite about the things that earn my living today (And miss a great opportunity to advertize about them). You can go and buy the stuff I write about, but I won't see a dime from that...

So first thing I will write about: "The PZIZZ"

So, what is the PZIZZ, you may ask? Well, its a so called powernapping device. Its mobile and battery powered. You connect it to a headphone and it plays nice instrumental music specially composed for this thing. And according to an algorithm, certain recorded "phrases" are played along. I don't remember any of them (Hey, I did this over 3 years ago), but it was something like "You feel energized."

I worked at Pontis when we were charged with implementing the PZIZZ around the year 2000. It was basicly a custom made device based on our soon to be released SP600 MP3 player. After our hardware guys trimmed down the hardware, I was charged with almost all technical points for this thing. We got the display these guys wanted and I fitted it together with their backlight to the hardware. The PZIZZ received a better backlight than our SP600... I changed the software to communicate with the display. I improved the MMC card interface. I wrote a new control software and UI. I tested the powersupply. I wrote the battery measurement part, which never worked really good (sorry, I want to blame it on the hardware). I looked into the headphone amp. I choose the audio codec used for the voice files. I changed the UI vs. audio-processing thread handling. I wrote code to adjust the DSP clock to save energy. And all the time, I worked in this combined software/hardware area, I have never worked before or after. I have written software before, and I am writing software today, but all I see from the hardware is what the software does with it...

What was really fun, afterwards, is the fact, that I could do hardware things I have never done before. I was hired as a software engineer, had little to none hardware experience (despite my almost EE degree). I was soldering DSPs in insane packages. I was measuring clocks with nice osziloscopes. I was logging the MMC card interface with logic analyzers. The trust was enourmous. Nobody said: "You can't do that, you're not qualified." It was something that was necessary at that time, because our two hardware guys were heavily involved in rolling out the SP600. I was missing a bit the guidance back then, but in retrospect, I want this climate again: "Just do it. Here are the tools, if you need any datasheets, get them from the manufacturer and by the way, feel free to use the lab downstairs." (To rephrase a line from the Dyson autobiographie)

http://www.pzizz.com/

Moving from C++ to C# or Managed C++?

If you should ever move from C++ to C# or Managed C++, then you will find this very interesting:

In C++, if you call a virtual function from a constructor or destructor, the compiler calls the instance of the virtual function defined for the class being constructed (for example, Base::SomeVirtFn if called from Base::Base), not the most derived instance.
...
[Things] are different in C#. Managed objects—whether in C#, managed C++, or any other .NET-compliant language—are created as their final type, which means that if you call a virtual function from a constructor or destructor, the system calls the most derived function.

But hey, you shouldn't call virtual functions from ctors/dtors anyway...

http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/04/11/CQA/default.aspx
and
http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2004/04/28/122037.aspx

Windows Embedded Developers Interest Group

http://www.we-dig.org/

Porting .NET to LEGO Mindstorm...

No, I won't babble about what piece of software runs on which hardware, and why this is simply amazing. I just won't. But I would like to.

http://blogs.msdn.com/mikehall/archive/2004/11/03/252125.aspx

Do you need to be surrounded by Pixels all the time?

Make your wall a interactive Low-Res Pixel Wall
http://www.engadget.com/entry/8546655008821855/

Larry Osterman on Coding Conventions

So it's utterly critical, if you're working on a project that uses ad-hoc coding standards that you adopt your coding style to match the code. The future maintainers of the code will thank you for it. Even if your project has strict coding standards, the instant you have to deal with legacy code, you MUST adopt the coding standard of the original author of the code, even if it doesn't match your groups standards.
http://weblogs.asp.net/larryosterman/archive/2004/11/03/251777.aspx

Onfolio 2.0 - Aggregator

http://www.onfolio.com/beta/

(From Robert Scoble)

DEMO2

Right there, in your hands, 70 of the world's most promising new technologies within moments of coming to market.
http://www.demo.com/demo2/

Bleeding Electrons

...the digital audio blog...
http://www.bleedingelectrons.com/

Global Teams

http://blog.fastcompany.com/archives/2004/11/01/global_teams.html

MS Emerging Business site launched

• How can MS help me get funded?
• Can MS fund my startup?
• Would MS like to buy my IP/product/company?
• How do I connect with Microsoft since I'm just starting my company or new idea?

http://blogs.msdn.com/jvast/archive/2004/10/27/248562.aspx

Dedicated Systems Experts

Some infos about RTOS
http://www.omimo.be/experts/

(Rest of links eaten by a 500 Internal Server Error from blogger.com ...)

Windows CE and Windows CE x86

http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/2/f/72fef3b0-9545-46a4-8886-a94f265df9c4/EVA-2.9-OS-CE-01-I01.pdf
http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/2/f/72fef3b0-9545-46a4-8886-a94f265df9c4/EVA-2.9-TST-CE-x86-01-Iss1.00.pdf

(From http://blogs.msdn.com/mikehall/archive/2004/11/02/251157.aspx)

Universal Home API

The semiconductor units of Royal Philips Electronics and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. along with Hewlett-Packard Corporation, the Digital TV Industry Alliance of China and ACCESS Co., Ltd. partnered to solve the task-level complexities that stall innovation and progress at all layers of the home CE stack. As a result, the UHAPI Forum was established to further this vision.

Today, the UHAPI Forum’s mission is to develop and maintain the A/V API for home consumer electronics products such as DVD players and recorders, televisions, media servers, media adapters and set-top boxes. As industry-wide adoption is realized, the hardware-independent UHAPI will enable independent software vendors, system integrators, and CE product manufacturers to create middleware and application software that is easily ported across multiple UHAPI-compliant solutions.

http://www.uhapi.org/home

(From http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/52833)

USB Standard by MS to hurt Linux?

There IS a new USB standard in the works and it is at the heart of Microsoft's sudden interest in USB security. Co-developed with Intel, the new USB standard specifically excludes Linux and probably OS X devices as well. I'm told the Intel folks are quite embarrassed about this, but feel powerless to do anything about it.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20040916.html

Columns by Robert C. Martin

http://www.sdmagazine.com/columnists/martin/

How to Interview a Programmer

http://www.artima.com/wbc/interprog.html

Man-Year? Man-Century!

http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=4738

Strong testing, not strong typing

Another good Entry by Bruce Eckel

[...] I asked "why"? which produced a big discussion wherin I was told that if I kept advocating unchecked exceptions, cities would fall and civilization as we know it would cease to exist.

...

At this point, a strong, statically-typed language would be sputtering with rage, insisting that this kind of sloppiness will cause disaster and mayhem. Clearly, at some point the "wrong" type will be used with command() or will otherwise slip through the system. The benefit of simpler, clearer expression of concepts is simply not worth the danger. Even if that benefit is a productivity increase of 5 to 10 times over that of Java or C++.

http://mindview.net/WebLog/log-0025

Another Bruce Eckel WebLog Entry

In this entry, Bruce Eckel recommends a book, which seems nice to read.
http://mindview.net/WebLog/log-0038

Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully
by Gerald M. Weinberg

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0932633013/bruceeckelA/

Just a site about Smart Playlists

http://www.smartplaylists.com/

Bruce Eckel about Java vs. Python

Bruce Eckel has some interesting thoughts.

"How much value do you put on checking as much as possible at compile time?" That oversimplifies the issue. If the type checking came at no cost, then the answer would be as easy and obvious as Pixel implies with his question. I've generally found that most folks who argue that strong static type checking must be preserved and increased at all costs have no experience of a down side because of it. And if you don't see any down side, then you think that arguing against it is obviously crazy.

http://mindview.net/WebLog/log-0053

Schoene Sonnen-Bilder bei Telepolis

Ich liebe es per Deep-Link Bilder zu "klauen" :-)

As good as it gets - Dilbert via RSS

http://dwlt.net/tapestry/

How to get your blog discovered - By Robert Scoble

I should really read this...

http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2004/09/19.html#a8241

The very first wiki

Started by Wiki’s inventor Ward Cunningham, now working for Microsoft (a little bit more about wikis here)

This site is a wiki whose primary focus is PeopleProjectsAndPatterns in SoftwareDevelopment.

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki