From the monthly archives:

March 2005

It’s Nice To Be Noticed

31 March 2005

It’s great to make a mistake at work, and then later read in my RSS reader that someone noticed that I screwed up. Yes, blogg.de was down for half an hour. When my boss starts blogging about my screw ups too, then I’ll know I’m really in trouble.

For the record, when you add an alias [...]

Read the full article →

The Man Who Saved the World

31 March 2005

Moscow News: The Man Who Saved the World Finally Recognized In 1983 he was supposed to push the button. But didn’t. (Anil Dash)

Read the full article →

Two New Old Expat Blogs

31 March 2005

In Actual Fact is “about an Englishman living in Germany” who used to blog under his real name. He’s now hiding his identity about as effectively as Christopher plays hide-and-seek (hiding under a bedsheet and giggling uncontrollably).

chicagokarl writes about “life in a German farming hamlet” Addrup in Lower Saxony. His blog reappears after a 2 [...]

Read the full article →

TerriGate

30 March 2005

A persistent vegetative state is no obstacle to blogging. Thousands prove it every day.

Read the full article →

BBEdit 8.1 adds Subversion support

29 March 2005

BBEdit 8.1 adds Subversion support (Ranchero)

Read the full article →

The Totals On The Board Are Correct

28 March 2005

Anyone who ever saw a Twins baseball game in Minnesota would recognize the voice of Bob Casey, the Twins PA announcer since before I was born, who turned a no smoking announcement into a work of art, and bellowed the name of every player, home or visitor, as if he were a superstar (even if [...]

Read the full article →

Ein Bier für Hartz IV

28 March 2005

I’m not sure how well this is known outside Germany, but the number one beer sold in Germany is no longer a national premium brand like Warsteiner, Bitburger or Krombacher, but the discount brand Oettinger. Spiegel Online calls it Ein Bier für Hartz IV, after Schröder’s social reform package, since Oettinger usually sells at half [...]

Read the full article →

greenpeace.spiegel.de

28 March 2005

Wortfeld on greenpeace.spiegel.de:

What is the cooperation with Greenpeace supposed to mean for Spiegel Online? It’s under the category Politics, within the website navigation and in the regular design, but in the text and appeals “we” always stands for Greenpeace. Rhetorical question: would the printed edition do this?

Read the full article →

Everybody Loves Anil

28 March 2005

Everybody Loves Anil! I bet you’d look great in his clothes.

Read the full article →

Lack of Testing

28 March 2005

Hack the Planet on Autopackage:

I’m not sold on the Autopackage system, but I agree with their analysis of the problems with kitchen-sink Linux distributions and extreme software modularity. One issue that is not mentioned is that Autopackage encourages installation of untested configurations; this is not too surprising given that everybody else does, too, and the open source world [...]

Read the full article →

Otto fand ich gut

27 March 2005

German mail-order and online merchant Otto Versand fires Heidi Klum for becoming pregnant, she announced on her website. It’s not like she doesn’t have other engagements.

Read the full article →

Soccer Made In Germany

26 March 2005

Allesaussersport notes a couple of American articles on the German Bundesliga.

Business Week: Germany’s League Of Limping Football Teams New York Times: Germany Still Consumed by a Scandal

I haven’t checked them out yet, but by the titles I’m guessing they are none too positive.

Fussballwetten Quoten are amongst the highest grossing sportsbetting options in Europe and [...]

Read the full article →

Flower Pot

26 March 2005
Read the full article →

Meet Us at the Flakstellung

26 March 2005

Tonight is the annual Easter Fire here in town, the biggest event of the year. Like every year, I got a chuckle from the announcement that it would be held at the Flakstellung. There are no signs or anything, you just have to know that that’s the hill outside of town where the Fl(ieger)a(bwehr)k(anone) (anti-aircraft [...]

Read the full article →

Teenage Mum Home Office

25 March 2005

Sims-style “Teenage Mum” public service ad. Doing home office with a child isn’t much different. (Boing Boing)

Read the full article →

Carstensen in Exile

24 March 2005

It’s dangerous to watch news channels with the sound turned off. I glanced at N24 this afternoon, and they were scrolling headlines from Kyrgyzstan while showing pictures of Peter Harry Carstensen. My first thought was that mobs had stormed the Landtag in Kiel and had forced the the CDU leader into exile.

Given everything that’s happened [...]

Read the full article →

Respect!

24 March 2005

Jeremy Zawodny:

The problem for me, of course, is that the technology has advanced 4-5 years since I swore it off. That’s a lot of time on the web…. “I’m pretty smart, but this shit is hard.”… I think a lot of people who’ve been doing “web stuff” long enough think that web developers are the [...]

Read the full article →

Borders and Tunnels

23 March 2005

Two items from John Robb’s Weblog today: one from the New York Times on an elaborate tunnel discovered at the Mexican border, and another on a citizens’ militia in Arizona to patrol the border.

This is related to Nicole Simon’s indignation at the treatment of legitimate travellers entering the United States. That policy, considering the ease [...]

Read the full article →

I’ll Be The Envy Of The Office…

23 March 2005

in my Bloglines T-Shirt.

And yes, that is a camera growing out of my ear.

Read the full article →

Wonkette Disses Podcasters

23 March 2005

Wonkette: “The One America Committee, John Edwards’s PAC, is venturing out into territory heretofore occupied only by losers with too much time on their hands (which, really, means this sort of makes sense): the Podcast.” (File under “Posted to provoke Nicole“)

Read the full article →

HOWTO: Walk to the shops with more than one small child

22 March 2005

HOWTO: Walk to the shops with more than one small child “8) You should have experienced no more than three screaming fits or paddies by this point. If you have it is best to call it a day and do some internet shopping instead. It will come quicker, believe me.” And we don’t even have [...]

Read the full article →

tvtorrents.de? for kids?

21 March 2005

I’m so 20th century. Is there a torrent site like http://www.btefnet.net/ for German TV? Where I can get children’s programs? I would win a lot of points with Christopher if I could download yesterday’s Sendung Mit Der Maus as easily as I can download The Daily Show.

(Actually, it’s too late to win points with Christopher. [...]

Read the full article →

Unicode Wallpaper

21 March 2005

Unicode wallpaper. No, not for your computer, for your wall, a 6 by 12 ft poster to download and print. (ongoing)

Read the full article →

Stupid Tricks with Active Directory

20 March 2005

Did you know that if you enable interactive login for a particular user in a domain with Active Directory, you then disallow allow logins for all other users in the domain? Including Administrator? For all machines in the domain?

Pardon me, I have to go in and reboot our server in safe mode so I (and [...]

Read the full article →

Someone Had A Grudge

19 March 2005

In Germany politics, it almost seems that nothing happens without first being approved in advanced by a party committee, and it’s almost a relief when something spontaneous and unexpected occurs. The minority Red-Green government in Schleswig-Holstein was signed, sealed, but in the end not delivered. One member of the supposed coalition abstained in four secret [...]

Read the full article →

Freebird!

19 March 2005

Not A Dollarshort: Yelling ‘Freebird!’ In a Crowded Theater. I didn’t know people were still doing this. Do Germans even know what Freebird is? Hell, I’m old enough to remember the original.

Read the full article →

You’re so German!

19 March 2005

FAZ: You’re so German! An expat returns home…

The ultimate culture shock, however, hit me during my first visit to the supermarket. Seconds after entering, I noticed a swarm of shop employees honing in on me like heat-seeking missiles. They began barraging me with ”How are yous.” Rather than jumping for joy at the friendly customer [...]

Read the full article →

My Boss, The Criminal

16 March 2005

I was thinking about going to CeBIT yesterday to meet Nico and Heiko, but I didn’t have a babysitter (or a suit), and besides, I can meet Nico and Heiko in Hamburg anytime I want (at least when I have a babysitter).

Good thing, since on the train back to Hamburg Nico had a small disagreement [...]

Read the full article →

Enterprise: Family

12 March 2005

Is is just me, or is there something (or someone) missing from the Stern cover photo for the article “Enterprise Family: How modern women manage everday life”? This to me sums up everything that’s wrong with the German attitude towards families and children (although I must admit I was so pissed off by the [...]

Read the full article →

Even Dinosaurs Can Lay Eggs

11 March 2005

Loic Le Meur: T-Online Germany launches weblogs on TypePad! Now I know why Heiko’s blog has been so quiet lately.

This is great news for weblogging in Germany, even for those of us who work for the competition. The Telekom may be an IT dinosaur, but T-Online is still the number one ISP in Germany (and [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries