Most of the various tidbits of information in your life probably are digital by now. It starts with the cell phone number of your boyfriend that you didn’t memorize but only exists in your cell phone that is crashed when you have that little accident where that bystander offers to call him while you’re hauled into the trunk of the ambulance car. And it doesn’t end with 10 years worth of photographs that are only digital today.

When our kids will be grown up in 20 years or so and they will ask “Mommy, Daddy, why are there no pictures of you when you were young?”, do you want to tell them “because buying a second hard disk was too much hassle”?

If you’re a knowledge worker and don’t keep redundant backups you better be on your Creator’s favourable side. I had this conversation numerous times: “You need to help me, my thesis is due tomorrow and my computer doesn’t start/my USB-Stick can’t be read! This is important!” – “Do you have a copy?” – “No?” – “Then it wasn’t important.”

Every bit of digital information in your life quite simply does not exist if it does not exist in at least two physically different locations at the same time. If your laptop or its hard disk die, don’t expect  a warning.

“But I don’t know anything about Computers!” is not an excuse. It’s your tool, learn to handle it or else it will come around to bite you in the ass. If you don’t want to worry about the technical details of incremental backups and scripted automation at the very least go buy a Macintosh and an external hard drive which you use for TimeMachine backups (which has saved my butt on several occasions). Yes you pay a premium but failing a deadline for a prestigious client because you didn’t will cost you at least as much.

Read this. Listen to the guy. He’s smarter than both of us. And the act on it. Coz, hell yes, you do need it before it is too late.

Now having 200 blog posts on one html site might be possible, but, I guess we all agree, is kind of inconvenient. After all, we’re not talking about the endless click orgies of modern news papers’ websites. Thus:

Enter pagination.

What kind of brain-pygmies on pixie-dust would call the pagination link that sends you to an earlier point in time “next page” and the one that leads you back to the top of the stack towards the newest posting “previous page”

Previous and Next in a blog makes no sense at all!

This confuses me every. single. time.

Call it “newer” and “older” for cryin’ out loud, after all, we’re talking about a time bar, not a book of pages. This is completely contradictory to how a book works anyway: “Next” pages go forward in time. (Unless, of course you tell a story backwards, but then still you’re progressing the story forwards, so my point still stands.)

Your blog is not a book. If I progress to the next page, I expect the next posting and not the previous one!

It’s not that hard!

Das Vorgehen dazu ist geradezu kurios:

Der Reisende legt seinen Pass auf ein Lesegerät. Dann betritt er die Schleuse, in der er von einer Digitalkamera fotografiert wird. Ist der Pass echt und stimmen die biometrischen Daten darauf mit dem Foto überein, öffnet sich die Glastür, und der Fluggast kann einreisen. Ansonsten bleibt die Tür geschlossen, und der Passagier wird von Bundespolizisten nochmals überprüft.

Und das Ganze in 15 Sekunden, wie der Herr Wurm von der Bundespolizei versichert. Ich behaupte mal, daß da spätestens zur Urlaubszeit (achtung, schlechter Scherz) massiv der Wurm drin sein wird. Der Reisepaß ist zehn Jahre gültig. Genug Zeit, um sich zu verändern, auch wenn das jetzt in der Pilotphase kein Problem darstellen sollte. In meinem Fall hatten drei Monate gereicht, um den Beamten die Echtheit des Photos anzweifeln zu lassen. Brille und Bart.

Hat man sich im Urlaub einen Bart wachsen lassen? Die Bilderkennung wird gewiß versagen. Trägt man eine Brille, die man bei der Aufnahme des Paßphotos abnehmen mußte? Die Bilderkennung wird versagen. Hat man zwischenzeitlich eine andere Frisur? Die Bilderkennung wird versagen.

In all diesen Fällen wird also wieder der Beamte einschreiten müssen. Jetzt kann man davon ausgehen, daß der Beamte zu Stoßzeiten nicht gerade erst aus seinem Büro angestratzt kommen kann. Also wird er seinen Posten neben der Station einnehmen und aus Sicherheitsgründen wird davon auszugehen sein, daß es nicht nur bei einem Polizisten bleibt. Die Anlage ersetzt also niemanden. Selbst wenn die Anlage funktioniert, es könnte ja sein, daß ein Einsatz nötig wird. Die Anwesenheit von Sicherheitskräften bleibt zwingend notwendig.

Ich bin ja mal gespannt, ob irgendwann rauskommt, wie viel Zeit und Geld wirklich eingespart wurde (die Abschreibung der Anschaffung gar nicht mitgerechnet). Vermutlich eher weniger.

Er „lehne Folter strikt ab“, erklärte Schäuble weiter. Er werde aber Informationen von ausländischen Nachrichtendiensten, die helfen könnten, eine große Gefahr abzuwehren, „nicht deshalb ungenutzt lassen, weil nicht ganz so zuverlässig wie bei uns garantiert ist, dass sie rechtsstaatlich einwandfrei erlangt wurden“, sagte er und fügte hinzu: „Das wäre absurd.“

So sagt der Herr Schäuble laut Handelsblatt. Kein Problem. Bei unseren Verbündeten auf Kuba werden ja gerade Kapazitäten frei. Da kann man bestimmt günstig outsourcen.

Tomorrow the Large Hadron Collider will go online and possibly destroy Earth and everything in its vicinity one way or another.

To put it in clear terms: Tonight is probably your last chance of getting laid. Have fun.

Had to drag the One away from the cookie-stand by force as we were standing in front of them in light summer clothing.

I guess next week they will stock chocolate easter bunnies. Just in case.

If you call me, then I must assume that you call me for one of three reasons.

You call me to discuss a private matter. In that case you most likely know me personally and there is no point in shadowing your identity prior to me accepting your request for conversation.

Maybe you call me for matters business-related. How would you feel if someone wanted to talk to you about topics that, in one direction or the other, will result in the transfer of money, but does not want to disclose his identity to you? Does that sound credible to you? 

Both possibilities give you no reason to not disclose your caller-id. Therefore I must assume that your call has to do with either me winning something (highly unlikely) or you wanting to sell something to me (your succeeding in which is also highly unlikely) or you simply spamming me. 

If you want to talk to me, tell me who you are. Yes, I understand you desire for general anonymity, but aren’t you taking things a bit too far? If you actually have to call someonewho must not know who you are or what you phone-number is (and is certainly not me), then contact you carrier. He will explain to you the codes with which you can turn this feature on on a call-by-call basis. 

So whoever you are, who is trying to call me the past few days, please tell me who you are before me picking up. This also significantly increases the chance of me calling you back.

Thank you.

Mullets already looked shitty in the eighties (go ask your parents), and they sure as hell haven’t improved since then. So, please, don’t put them on your head.

What the fuck is wrong with you people that you don’t realize, how much you are annoying your neighbors and floor-mates, if you practice singstar with your drunk buddies at times where any songbird refuses to make as much as a sound out of respect to his fellow singers and the god damn rest of the world? It’s darkest night, so shut up! Or at least keep the noise at a civil level.

As you must be intentionally having your conversations at a level which (be it voluntarily or not) includes the next three floors in any direction, I happened to witness one of many statements of yours, which I would like to comment on. No, my dear, your boyfriend is definately lesbian. No decent man would ever put up with as much dumbfuckery as came out of your appartment last night. That leads us to the undeniable conclusion that you man (ha!) is a pussy. Thus he is, being your boyfriend and all, obviously attracted to … uhm … other members of the human population (in your case highly debatable I might add!) of the same non-masculine variety. Hence lesbian.

Which is perfectly fine, we are all grown-ups and everyone is entitled to his (or her) own sexual fulfillment, but, please, keep it to yourself! I don’t want to know. Especially not at 2 a.m. Thank you.

Naja gut, daß die Wohnung renoviert werden muß, ist durchaus nachvollziehbar. Immerhin hatten die Nachbarn Kinder. Daß der Handwerk auch nicht gerade warten kann, bis ich aus dem Haus bin, ist auch nachzuvollziehen (Obwohl … XD ). Aber ich hätte mir dann doch gewünscht, zwei oder drei Tage vorher informiert zu werden.