technozid » General

What is missing here?

Michael Keukert — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 11:46:33 +0000

It is day 3 after the Eyjafjallajoekull volcano in Iceland brought the European air traffic down. My friend Lorna from Scotland was the first to report about it, and she told me about the chaos on British airports. Now the choas spreads slowly across the rest of Europe, with our own chancellor stranded in Lisboa. It is – in a scary way – amazing how radically an event of nature can disrupt our civilized life.

I always loved flying. I won a balloon ride as a teenager and my father sponsored me a short helicopter ride as well. My first commercial airline flight was to go visit Microsoft in Redmond, and over the past two decades I amassed quite a lot of flight miles. While flying became routine for me, it still never ceased to hold some fascination.

Now the sky is clear. The image above is a montage of some shots out of my window. Being located close to 3 commercial and one military airport, the sky usually holds 2-3 condesation trails at any time. Those white, kilometer long stripes are such a common sight, that their absence rings a chord. A clear sky is a strange sight.

I spoke to a friend briefly this morning, and we spun the idea that if the ash cloud from iceland blocks air traffic for another 3-4 weeks, how would it change our behaviour and our perception of air travel?

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75.917 spam comments in the queue

Michael Keukert — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 14:04:02 +0000

So this blog was not touched since July 2007, and in those 17 months there were 75k successfully intercepted spam comments. Bandwidth is far too cheap it seems.

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Reliability of digital cameras

Michael Keukert — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 10:49:30 +0000

BoingBoing has a post on the person who photographed the new Harry Potter book. The person obviously forgot to manipulate/erase the EXIF metadata, so the camera type and serial number is known. The real dynamite (at least for me) lies in the quote of a Canon official:

“From what we know, the device is one of the original Rebel cameras, probably a 350D, and given that they’ve been out for three years, it’s likely the owner would have had it cleaned or repaired in that time.”

Pardon? You must be kidding, don’t you? In a 3 year timeframe, that camera had to be sent in for maintenance at least one time?

I just replaced my old analog Canon camera – which I had for 10 years – with a Fuji digital camera. My old Canon NEVER got maintenanced in all these years!

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Vienna, Rome – but not Berlin

Michael Keukert — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 09:30:51 +0000

These have been eventful weeks. I have been traveling a lot, been visiting a dealer and one of his customers in Austria, and I spent several days at a tradeshow in Rome. There, however, my already tattered knee got worse, and I had to take rather strong medication and keep it absolutely calm in order to avoid surgery. Upon my return in the office preparations for the next tradeshow in Berlin were in full swing, so I dived right back into work. One of the downsides of this completely unnecessary knee issue is that I didn’t get a ticket for Berlin myself. Since I do not only love to plan and manage tradeshows, but also love to go there, this was quite a disappointment. But knee surgery is not what I want to experience either.

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Bicycle accident – knee damaged

Michael Keukert — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 10:43:16 +0000

Today is the fourth day after a bicycle accident I had. Fortunately it happened without another party involved – otherwise it might have been even worse. I cycled downhill and had to take a right turn at a crossing – a spot I pass twice each day. Since it hasn’t rained since April 1st the crossing was dusty with dirt an pollen. However a municipal cleaning machine has just passed and sprayed some water on it. The water formed a greasy coating with the dirt/pollen, so my bicycle lost traction and I slammed to the ground and slid accross the crossing. I am covered with bruises, and my left knee was bleeding heavily and was quite swollen. I had to go to the hospital and they took 3 x-rays of the knee. Fortunately nothing is broken, but the swelling only subsides very slowly. On Thursday and Friday I could barely walk at all. Today on Sunday there is still some substantial swelling, not to speak of the battered look which looks as the leg comes right out of a Zombie movie…

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St. Patricks Day – alas without me

Michael Keukert — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 09:33:18 +0000

For the first time in many years I realized a few days ago that St. Patricks Day is coming up – usually this only occurs to me a couple of weeks later. I was looking forward to spend the evening today in one of our three Irish pubs in town and have lots of music, lots of Guiness and lots of chat. And then I found out that I had a dentists appointment for yesterday – to get a “wisdom tooth”(?) removed. The procedure was planned for 5-10 minutes, but then it turned out that the tooth was not really cooperative, so that in the end three(!) people worked on me for 45 minutes. I got anesthesia of course so I felt no pain. Nevertheless it was quite exhausting and stressful for me. And a couple of hours later the anesthesia wore off and that is when the “fun” really started for me…
Today it feels much better, but I’m still taking painkillers and I am very cautious what I drink and eat since the wound is still pretty raw. If it continues like that I would be ill advised if I’d join St. Patricks Day tonight, at least in the pubs in my town. However I have seen a few places in Second Life where they celebrate it too. Maybe a virtual St. Patricks Day is better than none at all.

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Paris II: Sentences that would be completely rubbish 5 years ago

Michael Keukert — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 08:12:08 +0000

Myself to Sean when he took photos of the Eiffel tower at night:

Michael: What resolution does your phone have?
Sean: 3 Megapixels

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I am not going to blog about Vista

Michael Keukert — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 17:18:54 +0000

I mean, who needs it? Everyone I ask does not need it, or want it, or both.

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Kyrill vs. Fiddler's Green

Michael Keukert — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 11:50:55 +0000

On Thursday night I should have been on the fourth concert of the new “Drive Me Mad!” tour by Fiddler’s Green in Cologne. I intended to go there by train, so I would be able to drink a beer and might even catch some sleep on the way back. Hurricane Kyrill didn’t like these plans, and even before I finished work that day, German railways have shut down all trains first in my county, and later nationwide.
This turned out the be lucky for me, since people got stranded in Cologne where no hotel room was available due to a large fair. And even today, two days later, train schedules have not yet fully recovered.
So my next chance for the concert is in March, when the Fiddlers come to Bochum.

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I'm not blogging about the iPhone

Michael Keukert — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 09:27:48 +0000

What a hype! Congratulations to my marketing colleagues at Apple ~~Computer~~ Inc.

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