A fun ride through the cyperspace: technozid

Google Apps and Google Alerts

April 19th 2010 Posted at Internet
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Some months ago I moved my mail-domain to Google Apps Standard Edition, which provided a neat way to manage my email boxes “in the cloud”. Soon it showed that while Google Apps indeed provided some great service, the integration into the regular Google account system was not really there. I still needed a “normal” Google Account for services like Google Reader or for certain widgets in the iGoogle start page.

So I was rather pleased to see that behind the scenes Google-Apps accounts and regular Google accounts seem to grow together. I don’t know for how long this has been the case, but today I noticed that Google Alerts now offers to manage both on the same page:

What I initially hoped for was that the Google Apps Account would fully replace the need for a regular Google account, however with a compromise like above I could very well live. Right now I need to do quite some handstands and juggle between Apps and regular account to get the full functionality. It would be nice if that would not be necessary for much longer.

I will write more about the move to Apps in a future post.

What is missing here?

April 17th 2010 Posted at General
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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?

75.917 spam comments in the queue

December 19th 2008 Posted at General
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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.

German actor Ulrich Mühe passed away

July 25th 2007 Posted at Getting older
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Danke!

Ulrich Mühe on Wikipedia

Danke! Ulrich Mühe on Wikipedia

Reliability of digital cameras

July 20th 2007 Posted at General
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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!

Major blogroll cleanup

June 29th 2007 Posted at Internet
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I’m sorry for the ones that dropped out (except for those whose last update was in January or even December), congratulations for those who stayed in. Soem of the dropouts I deleted, a few were sent to purgatory (invisibility) with the chance of resurrection. The otherrs: keep up the good work!

My first guitar lesson

June 28th 2007 Posted at Getting older, Music
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At the age of 16 I taught myself a little guitar. Ever since then, I played – sometimes more, sometimes less, but at a certain point all autodidactic efforts came to a stop. For my last birthday, friends and family gave me some money to get professional guitar lessons. And in about 30 minutes I have my first. Uh-oh… stay tuned.

Next Fiddler's Green concert

June 15th 2007 Posted at Music
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Just to show off – I’m probably the first person to have a ticket for the show in November

Vienna, Rome – but not Berlin

June 7th 2007 Posted at General, Getting older
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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.

Bicycle accident – knee damaged

April 22nd 2007 Posted at General
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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…

technozid