While preparing some things for this year's Burningman festival , I stumbled upon this amazing page of bullshit science toys which I, would I have the money, without exception all buy immediately.

http://amasci.com/amateur/toys1.html

What brought me there? I was Googling for "Disgustoscope Burningman" to see if anyone has thought about this before. I will probably do this... a cheap installation I could bring. Of course, a disgustoscope only shows what you bring in, so it would be ideal for Burningman.

Together with Ingrid, we were tinkering in the living room . I am quite proud of the result, behold what I now call the "cocktail curtain":


Finished yesterday, it consists of a bulk of LED chains, wood, color, and string curtains. All parts were on supersale, so we came out on a budget and on one week work.

Ein glitch in der i18n von Google Calendar :-)

Ich würde nicht ablehnen sagen, sondern "schließen". Ist wohl auf English "dismiss" gewesen.

Auf Arte gibts nächste Woche, am 18.5. um 20:35, einen Film zum Thema "Bienensterben".


"Wenn die Bienen verschwinden, hat der Mensch nur noch vier Jahre zu leben; keine Bienen mehr, keine Pflanzen, keine Tiere, keine Menschen mehr." angeblich von Albert Einstein, aber wer weiß.

Jedenfalls ist bewiesen, dass Menschen durch Pestizide und eingeschleppte Milben den Bienenvölkern zusetzen. Es wird sich sicher in den nächsten Jahren eine bio-technische Lösung zu dem Bienen-Problem finden und die Landwirtschaftsindustrie wird kurz aufatmen und dann unkontrolliert weiter Gewinne maximieren. Bis zur nächsten Krise. Turbo!

Unabhängig von den nützlichen Honiginsekten hat der Club Of Rome schon 1972 in "The Limits to Growth" gesagt, das fortlaufendes, unkontrolliertes Wachstum in einem begrenzten System zum Tod führt. Wir machen permanent Hacks um die Profite weiter zu maximieren. Ein "Hack" ist Technikersprache für eine Zweckentfremdung, oder eine "Abkürzung". Die "saubere" Lösung wäre eine nachhaltige und einfachere, aber aufwändig zu bauendere. Ein Hack setzt ein Pflaster auf die Wunde, und weiter gehts. Etwa die Mixtur aus Genmanipulierten Pflanzen+Pestiziden+Monokultur ist zwar kosteneffizient, erfordert aber immer mehr und mehr technische Hacks.

Ich bin der Meinung: wir biegen die Biosphäre des Planeten, sie wird brechen. Darum mein einfacher Schluss: Zurück zur Natur, keine Hacks mehr, lieber natürliche Prozesse verbessern.

Im alten Testament hat Gott Israel einfache aber nachhaltige Regeln gegeben: Im Sabbatjahr werden Äcker nach sechs Jahren bewirtschaftung ein Jahr ruhend gelassen. Genauso könnten wir heute ein siebtel von Mitteleuropa einfach verwildern lassen um Artenvielfalt und Reservate zu schaffen. Tun wir aber nicht, Europa ist komplett Kulturlandschaft, selbst in Österreichischen Nationalparks werden Bäume gefällt und Tiere geschossen, das heißt dann aber in Newspeak "Wildtiermanagement". Also nicht unkontrolliert ("natürlich") sondern vom Mensch nach gutdünken gesteuert.
Nebenbei angemerkt: im biblischen Sabbatjahr werden auch nach sieben Jahren alle Schulden getilgt. Auf unser (auf Schulden aufbauendes) Geldsystem umgemünzt, würde das bedeuten, dass alle sieben Jahre die Karten neu verteilt werden. Mich würde bereits eine Tobin Tax einiges an Steuern sparen, die wir wildgewordenen Bankern zahlen.

Meiner Meinung nach ist unkontrolliertes Wachstum das Grundproblem hier: wenn wir als Menschen die Möglichkeit haben uns beliebig fortzupflanzen, können wir uns bald nur noch mit der Wissens- und Kapitalintensiven Landwirtschaftlichen Industrie ernähren (man kann 10 Milliarden Menschen nur durch Industrialisierte Landwirtschaft ernähren). Wenn wir weiter wachsen wird, wegen dem Platzmangel, es auch nicht mehr möglich sein, "alternative Bauernhöfe" wirtschaftlich gewinnbringend zu betreiben (gute Frage - sind Bio-Bauernhöfe heute wirklich gewinnbringend?).

Ok, das Wachstum könnte nun, Dank Bienensterben, in 4 Jahren ein schnelles Ende nehmen. Ich hoffe Jesus kommt vorher zurück.

Today we bought a HP Photosmart C4780 printer, the best deal in ages. It has scan, print, wifi, and it connects itself to our network - for only 80 EUR! Charm. Part of the software installation is a trial for Adobe Photoshop Elements. In my endless path to enlightment of "being a bozo customer" I of course clicked "yes, I want to try that 30 day trial". As part of being a CEO of a web startup, I need to learn how professional marketing is done and this bundling deal sounds like a good marketing plan - I just bought a printer, and using Gimp for the rest of my life will cripple me mentally anyway, so why not try Photoshop Elements.

WARNING: the rest of this article contains words such as FUCK, SCREW, SHIT. This is because I am really disappointed now. If you are offended by this, go see kittens. If you are from Adobe and wonder why I am so negative, please reconsider how conversion funnels and conversion goals work for normal companies (well, companies which are not gigantic) and that I expect as customers that your trial version really drags me in and not shoots me out. Or go one reading this really long rant & bug report.

So, back to the trial. I click "yes, hit me with your trial".
First fuckup: they embedded the internet explorer ActiveX control into a much too small window, so the page at Adobe looks like 1995 scrollbars, and these fuckers did change the properties of the win32 window to "no resize, NAHAAAAA, you have to scroll around dumbass user, we will not give you the "full size" button. I am a ubercool haxor and know how to do borderless non-resizable window and I work for Adobe/HP/bigenterprise so user, you suffer now by scrolling around". Ok, I admit, you dear funny developer lover of scrollbars, you are right to screw me and having me to scroll. I didn't scroll in the web since 1995, but ok.



But anyway, I am a bozo customer, and you can't stop me now, so I press that "get the free trial" button next to the "buy product now for $80".
Path to enlightment, here I come. I am a trial user, I want to be entertained, give it to me...!
Then I am greeted with the worst thing you can do to a trial customer: register before download.



WTF? I was just convinced to do a 30 day trial. I have bought a printer. I didn't want to trial this PS elements thingy. I just clicked this button casually. Actually I wanted to go to bed, its late. Or I want to get a beer from the fridge. But no, you fuckers really think someone will now enter his email address etc... OK, NEXT REASON TO LEAVE THE CONVERSION FUNNEL: I WILL NOT REGISTER. I WANT TO DOWNLOAD. NOT REGISTER ARGH!!!. Anyway, my path to bozodom, the numbed customer is steep and high, and I register. I even use my real email address, because I still love you, Adobe.

Then - WTF? I press the download button, a popup window comes, but IT CLOSES. In lightning speed. Without a notice. Nothing happens. If I were the normal bozo customers I would go whining away now, probably printing some pictures of happy puppies and kittens on my new HP printer and immediately forget about that bad bad Adobe website that just disappeared after I filled their long, long registration form. WTF? But not me, I am bozo on way to enlightment. Down the conversion funnel, it can only be a click away to make me a happy trial user. By fumbling around in the Internet Explorer Active X control (the old trick: right mouse click, page info, copy url, open in IE) I am able to open the same page in Internet Explorer. Horray!
I click download again and then - BOOOOM - it wants to fucking INSTALL AN ACTIVE X DOWNLOAD MANAGER (to further run anything they want on my machine?). And thats it.



WHAT THE FUCK!!!!??? Did nobody never quality-assure this "get a free trial" window?? I am a normal bozo user. I did not change the Internet explorer Settings. The free trial window could have never worked on my machine because the Internet Explorer ActiveX control of course did NOT allow any 3rd party download manager activeX to be executed. Of course not, and that is good. So I was never ever able to download this trial with the default path - clicking through this "get the trial" window that was shipped. On CD. To millions of people. Great. The only way I found out that the ActiveX download manager is the problem was by cleverly right-clicking on the ActiveX and finding the link to the real page and copy-pasting it into Internet Explorer and ... ARGH!

Ok Adobe, I give up. I can't really click an ActiveX download manager, this is against even my bozo-path-to-enlightment faith here. Not even the dumbest bozo should click "yes" on ActiveX controls. Please give me the HTTP link to the trial for download. I have to leave the path of enlightment and refuse to go any further down this screwed up conversion funnel of the Adobe Photoshop Elements trial download.

To sum, up the things that make me whine are:

• scrollbars in a windows
• complete fail of activex control with security - making free trial impossibel for me within the shipped trial application
• kind-of-fail by not providing a HTTP download link on the trial page on the normal download page
• why do I have to register to trial? you want to convert me, so please make it easy
• extra: only a company able to send this thing to millions of people can go with a "magical 5" 0.00001% conversion rate of "user clicks trial on printer marketing campaign->buys product"

ah, good, now I feel better. Rant over. Thanks internet. I go watch kittens now. Maybe I print some kittens on my new Awesome HP Photosmart C4780, best deal in ages!

In February 2010, I wanted to get rid of a stack of CDs I will never listen to again. Such precious music as "The Eraser" by Thom Yorke. I don't listen to it anymore, and will probably never, but I don't bother putting them on ebay or on a fleamarket. So, CD and Book reselling services come to the rescue.

I checked out a few, such as www.seller.at and www.momox.de and collected some articles and links about CD selling in Germany and Austria on delicious. After reading some good reviews about Momox, and checking that they pay "ok" for the stuff, I sent a pack of 14 CDs worth eur 16,43 (accordingt to them) to Momox, and - alas - some days later the 16,43 plus some money for sending them via post landed on my bank account.

So, I can recommend momox!

http://www.momox.de/

A month ago, stressed at CeBIT, in a small break of flowing through lolcatspace, I ordered two excellent Glennz.com TShirts:


http://store.glennz.com/directline.html

and


http://store.glennz.com/goforlaunch.html

There was a minor problem with shipment, but Glennz answered to my customer request and handled it excellently - I can only recommend this shop! and their shirts. Good nerdware.

As mostly no one of you may know, gnowsis.com is moving out of our offices in two days, because inits.at, our incubation company, is moving to nicer offices, and so are we.

But that is not why this blog post: its instead about "I am legend - the Yoghurt". As we are moving, the refrigerator of the startup companies also has to be emptied. And as in any shared kitchen (as in shared appartments), this means legendary food items coming to light. And here, startups have to leave after 18 months, so we have a lot of history in this fridge. I will not talk about the obviously molding italian pasta in glasses from 2008 or the piccolo champagne bottle I just nicked (it has "Smart" written on it and is dated 2004, but sparkling wine can't go bad I guess, so probably thanks to the smarties, har har). But instead I will talk of the untouchable "I am legend - the Yoghurt".

Of course, as old Burning-Man-use-what-you-find enthousiast, I was cherry-picking through the leftovers to find some stash for myself. After picking up an excellent Red Bull Can which was already glued to the shelf by dried-up-whatever-liquid (and expired in 2009, so safe for me to enjoy) and behind glasses from 2006, there I found it: "I am legend".



A Yoghurt saying it went bad in Dezember, but I don't know which year. Here is a picture of its heavily dented top, which I leave for someone else to pierce.

btw: our new address will be: Bürocenter Wienzeile
Graumanngasse 7, Stiege B, Stock 5, Tür 5
A-1150 Wien, Österreich. Thats here:
View Larger Map

Nachdem wir kräftig auf der CeBIT gerockt haben, grüße von dem besten Kumpel mit dem man trinken kann: Mec Allemand.



Mec Allemand ist der brillen-nerd-pop-indiehouse shit der stunde .. footage online!

http://mecallemand.de/videos/



Wenn wir genug fans in Wien zusammenbekommen, kommen die Jungs zu uns. Also, brav Videos gucken und twittern was die finger hergeben.

The german city "Mannheim" is suing the twitter user "Mannheim", a guy living and working in Mannheim. CAN YOU HAZ TWITTER?

read the original post:

Mark has now received a letter via registered mail from the City of Mannheim, which says that he must sign the letter and give up the Twitter account, or suffer the full force of a city’s legal team as they try to drag our a**es through the courts.

In my opinion, the city of Mannheim can fuck off. If they forget to register their own name on twitter, they are clearly years behind. And they will always be too late in all the good services, so if they start doing this with Twitter, where will it end? The german legislation allows you to sue for DOMAIN names, which is kind-of-ok, but with web 2.0 accounts? Anyway, I am with the small David here against Goliath.