General

Ich brauche ein neues Telefon

~ Enno ~ Leave a comment


Gestern bin ich bei meiner Radtour nach Toensberg gestuerzt, und genau auf mein Telefon gefallen. Nach fast 5 Jahren muss ich mich also von meinem treuen Ericson T39m verabschieden. Das macht mich schon ein wenig traurig, wir haben viel zusammen durchgemacht.

Ein neues Telefon kommt mir nicht ins Haus – gebraucht muss es sein. Ich brauche den neusten Schnickschnack nicht, und was viel wichtiger ist: Mobiltelefone sind toedlich fuer Gorillas. Solange ich ein gebrauchtes kaufe, so zumindest meine Argumentation, wird kein neues fuer mich produsiert.

Ebay waere jetzt mein Freund, wenn es hier in Norwegen ein vernuenftiges ebay gaebe, aber das lokale Pendant dazu, QXL, ist einfach unbrauchbar. Ich habe mal in der Firma angefragt, ob jemand sein altes weggeben will. Eventuell wird’s ein k700i.

Update: Ich habe ein neues. Es ist ein Ericsson K700i, und es kann deutlich mehr, als ich erhofft habe. Ich hab’s zu einem ordentlichen Preis gebraucht bekommen. Und mal so ganz nebenbei: Spiele auf Mobiltelefonen sind immer noch echt Kacke.

[ media | Monty – Captured (SLAY Radio) ]

Anagram Map of Former Rochester Subway

~ Enno ~ Leave a comment

BoingBoing has been spreading a meme where people mix up underground maps by replacing station names with anagrams. My contribution to this a map of a subway that no longer exists.

This is the Rochester, NY subway, or what it could have been. Rochester is the smallest US city to have had a subway, and in a typical case of urban decay, it was abandoned in 1965 and is now one of many industrial ruins. The green line shows the original railway, the orange line shows proposed extensions. None of it ever got past the planning stage.

There are now plans to fill in the tunnels with dirt, utterly destroying this landmark of Rochester history!

I got my map from this site and a lot of information from RocWiki.

[ media | Amadou et Mariam – Aristiya ]

10 things I don’t miss about Germany

~ Enno ~ 4 Comments

Jon Lech Johansen (most commonly known as DVD Jon) wrote in his blog about things he doesn’t miss about Norway, and while I know he’s right on some points, they seem minor. I’d like to see his list about the US when he leaves. It’s really only after you leave a country that you realize what you can do without.

So, here’s my list of things I don’t miss about Germany (sure to be less widely read than his list):

  1. The weather. In northern Germany, winters are depressing gray affairs, with maybe one week of snow, tops.
  2. Dubbing. All foreign films shown on German TV or in the cinemas are dubbed. As a result, most Germans speak terrible English and they miss out on everything but the Hollywood mainstream. The same goes for other media, too: Foreign-language books, computer games or DVDs are rare, and you usually have to shop for them online.
  3. The Smokers. Not only do Germans smoke in restaurants, malls and other public places, but also in your office, on trains, in airconditioned buildings or even schools. Also, advertising for cigarettes is still legal.
  4. Church Tax (7% of Income Tax).
  5. Underpayed jobs in the Game Industry. There’s hardly any game industry to speak of, and everyone I know that works in it is getting about half what I’m paid here.
  6. 11.5% Unemployment.
  7. The Discounters. An often heard Mantra is “stingyness is cool” (Geiz ist Geil), and Germans will choose cheap over good. Not because they’re all poor, but because the idea of paying too much for something is shameful.
  8. Phone sex advertising on TV. These are openly pornographic and obscene. They also seem to be paying well, because there’s virtually no other advertising after 20:00.
  9. Two big political parties that are short on ideas for turning the country around, and apathetic voters that will vote for them anyhow.
  10. Bild.
[ media | Stan Getz & Charlie Byrd – Samba Dees Days]

Secret Code in Color Printers Lets Government Track Yo

~ Enno ~ Leave a comment

Modern color laser printers print near-invisible information about when a document was made and what printer it was printed on. It’s disturbing to see what kind of deals are being made behind the back of the consumer.

A research team led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently broke the code behind tiny tracking dots that some color laser printers secretly hide in every document.

The U.S. Secret Service admitted that the tracking information is part of a deal struck with selected color laser printer manufacturers, ostensibly to identify counterfeiters. However, the nature of the private information encoded in each document was not previously known.

“Underground democracy movements that produce political or religious pamphlets and flyers, like the Russian samizdat of the 1980s, will always need the anonymity of simple paper documents, but this technology makes it easier for governments to find dissenters,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Lee Tien. “Even worse, it shows how the government and private industry make backroom deals to weaken our privacy by compromising everyday equipment like printers. The logical next question is: what other deals have been or are being made to ensure that our technology rats on us?”

Via EFF

[ media | Glyn R Brown – The Recovery ]

bash zen

~ Enno ~ Leave a comment

Today I needed to reverse-engineer a file that could serve as input to the TLJ sound conversion scripts. Who needs ython, when you can do it in bash?

find . -name "*.xarc" | while read ; do DIR=`dirname $REPLY` ; arcx -l $REPLY | grep \.isn | while read ; do FILE=`echo $REPLY | sed -e 's/\.isn.*//'` ; echo levels/$DIR/$FILE.wav ; echo -n $DIR/ ; echo $FILE ; done | sed -e 's/\//\\/g' -e 's/^\.\\/c:\\export\\/' -e 's/\.\\//' ; done > ../../sound/mapping.txt