Here they are:



"America? It looks like its full of Austria" - this captures the Austrian spirit quite well.

Zweintopf - I love these guys
http://www.zweintopf.net/Main/AustriaForAmerica

They used sheep to draw their company logo into grass (guided by electric fences)
http://www.sheep-ink.com/

Ingrid gave me the great Tevion IWR 394 as a christmas present.


We named it "Adam", our iPod is called Eve, so they are a good pair.
Adam has UKW FM radio, playback of mp3s on USB drives, internet radio (the first station I listened to is, of course, slay radio), management of favorite radio stations via the wifiradio-frontier.com webservice, Wifi connectivity, LAN RJ45 connectivity, playback of your own media collection using microsoft windows media player 11 media sharing, and he also has an alarm clock.

See it in action:


now the problem is of course: how can Adam playback my iTunes library from my Apple iBook G4 "Eden"? I have a backup of this iTunes library on my linux home server "Franse" - so hosting some magic server on Linux should do it, right? right.

My device is a Tevion IWR 394. I can't find anything about it in the interwebs (crazy?! nobody bought this before?), so it is probably a branding of an asian white-label product. The menu shows a software "ir-mmi.arts.ven6-jupiter6.1_V1.5.6.21635-1A19". It connects like a baby to a breast when using UPnP and my Windows XP laptop. FM/UKW radio, usb, also work easily.

Background: accoring to microsoft help of windows media player 11, the following ports should be opened to have media streaming working:
1900 UDP, 2869 TCP, 10243 TCP, 10280-10284 UDP. There is a wikipedia page on the Media_Transfer_Protocol which is to connect your media library to your USB device. For network media streaming, UPnP_AV_MediaServers seem to be the right place. There is a upnp server comparison table on wikipedia also.

My own requirements:

• host a lot of mp3s from my iTunes collection (ideally, also host my DRM protected itunes files, but thats probably impossible)
• be piss-easy to install on a headless ubuntu
• import my iTunes playlists and song ratings

How they meet this:

• xbmc is installable, and it can do a lot more on the playback side which I don't need for a headless box
• brisa sounds hard to install and more a framework than an app
• coherence sounds ok, but is a python easy_install
• x360mediaserve has no proper sf.net homepage
• fuppes looks fine but a bit dead. it has no ubuntu package mentioned on its homepage
• MediaTomb is in ubuntu universal and has a headless option. fine. also there is loads of "this rules upnp on ubuntu" feedback
• mythtv supports all I need and someone hacked an iTunes xml library-to-mythtv-playlist converter script. but its not headless.
• ps3 media server is said to have itunes playlist support, but its missing a clear "headless" installation

ok, having found mediatomb as my "easy way to go", I try
sudo apt-get install mediatomb-daemon
fine! I see it installs it as daemon on rc2.d also, so it will start on system boot.
The various install instructions (ubuntu, official) go on:
sudo nano /etc/mediatomb/config.xml
hm, seems I don't have to change anything in config.xml, that looks fine as it is. The password and username, ok.
I go to my server using
http://franse:49152/
(franse is my server name. it won't work at your place)
Ok, I see a very minimal user interface, fine. Somehow I find the folder I want to share and click "+", it starts indexing. That makes the mediatomb process jump to 80% cpu time on "top" for some 10:50 minutes. good.

But - most amazing - the files show up on my Tevion IWR 394. Life is good!

It does not read/interpret my itunes playlists, though. Googling for itunes playlists in mediatomb does show an empty graveyard. Ok, but its possible to convert an "iTunes Music Library.xml" to several .m3u files using itunesexport, a java tool (here java bytes me again). Sadly, the ericaugherty sf version causes an out-of-memory even with -Xmx300m, so thats a bit annoying. There are zillions of shabby scripts out there to do it, but most don't work, maybe this one does, as the author says. It does! But it needs some tweaking for folder names, which is done using the "-d" parameter. So the command is something like this (note the trailing shlash at -d) which I put into updateplaylists.sh
#!/bin/bash
python /home/leobard/local/bin/itunes2m3u.py -d "/home/media/music/iTunes/iTunes Music/" /home/media/music/iTunes/iTunes\ Music\ Library.xml


(at this moment, my newly discovered and totally weird emap.fm internet radio station plays the amazingly happy disturbing song "It's so chic to be pregnant on christmas", greetings to the pregnant-women-we-know B+S)

It seems importing m3u playlists into mediatomb is not out of the box. It goes something like this:

• check the playlists are allright. do they point to the right path? are the characeters fine? do the directories exist?
• in my case, the playlists are in /home/media/music/playlists folder and contain lines that look something like this: /home/media/music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Christoph & Lollo/Schispringerlieder/04 Mika, Du Saufkopf, Hast Du Wieder Verloren_.mp3 - that means, absolute paths do work fine for me
• I import the playlist using the explicit "+" button for the filesystem folder in MediaTomb. Other things didn't seem to work, especially the autoscan did not work.
• I thought about script the adding of the playlists by using the mediatomb --add command ... but that is not optimal. It starts a server and adds the file, but the server is not shut down. Not ideal for a command line thing.

So to sum up: it would be good to have a DAAPD and upnp server in one, which could read iTunes playlists. BUT I am equally happy with my Tevion IWR 394 "Adam" and mediatomb.

You read wikipedia? You think it should be there for your children to read and learn about the world? Then donate. No excuses, this is fecking important.

I just gave 75 eur
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:ContributionHistory?offset=1261000310#383322

quoting a good ol rocknroll wisdom:
"...to see my smiling face on the cover of my wikipedia page..."

An excellent blog post and interview over at boingboing about virtual girlfriends.

the game has got all men need: holding hands, kissing, telling "i love you" - on nintendo ds via mic and touchscreen. The article says the game is successfull because men are simple.

Yesterday night I participated at http://journeyvienna.at/. "Journey to the end of the night. Join us for a free street game of epic proportion; a pursuit across Vienna in multiple parts." Basically, its a game of "tag" done in the whole city of Vienna, spreading over many square kilometers and a rough distance of 10km and more. Its fun, its geek, its exercise, its social.

I wondered if I should participate because it started at 18:30 and I just arrived on 16:05 on Vienna International Airport coming from Thessaloniki from a meeting of organik-project.eu ad: organik is drupal+semantics for SMEs to help knowledge management, it pays my bills. So, when exiting the airplane I checked with some people I know if anyone else participates and Marius Kintel did, so I decided to go. First reason: exercise! I haven't been running or sweating for a week, so any reason to exercise is a good one for a geek like me.

I guess a lot of photos will pop up today, I made a view and I made some "live action" videos for you to enjoy. Below also a video of the award ceremony. To better show what happened, I tracked my route with walkjogrun.net/

My Journey: btw: when I usually speak of "war stories" (term I will use below) I mean the term in the meaning used in project management, when people talk about experiences, but here it also works well


(original walkjogrun.net track)

Arrived late at 19:00 at Werkzeugh where a big crowd already gathered. I guess you will get pictures of that soon. Didn't see Marius, but I didn't want to run alone, so I asked Richard if I can join his party. He introduced me to his group of 5 people, including Tim: an Australian living in Germany who just arrived for a weekend in Vienna and was invited to run by his friends - excellent. Spotting Marius, I chatted with him and was impressed by his geek preparations. He already scheduled all public transport on his iPhone and had a backpack of equipment with him, I thought my chances to win are higher with him, so I asked him and Daniel if I could join. So we began...

Fin announced the rules and started the game - off we went in south direction Zentagasse. Took a tram (together with 2 other runners with whom Marius, Daniel and I shared a small softdrink I brought - team! :-). Exited the tram directly in the safe zone at checkpoint 1. Prayed for my sins at checkpoint 1 (that was the task), then back to the tram. Chaser! Because we were sure to still be in the safe-zone on Paulanergasse, we discussed him away from us (ha, arguments can safe you, the pen is stronger than the chaser, etc.). Still, we wanted to cross the street to get on the tram again, and the tram station was not safezone. So while standing next to the baffled chaser who was occupied thinking about life, Marius, Daniel and I slowly moved towards tram station, when the tram arrived in the station and had doors open, we hit the tires and ran. The chaser suddenly realized his dumbfoddledy and was behind us, we split and entered the tram from three entries - safe zone on the tram. phew, nobody lost. Ok, getting off tram and to 13a to get to Südbahnhof. We planned to cross the park cleverly but got lost, and the cell-based tracking of Marius iPhone was not precise enough to tell us the truth of our fate. Although we used every bush and moved very indian-rogue-style, we ended up Arsenalstrasse again. Shit, ok, but instead of following original plan of "through the shadows of the park", we gave it a try and went down arsenalstrasse. Spotting some chasers, we went into the park again and went from bush to bush. Nearly in the safe-zone, we were walking behind someone who seemed to be a runner - but he didn't move as suspiciously as a runner (looking back every 10 secs, being nervous, etc) and we noticed too late when he turned around and chased us. I crossed the street, Marius and Daniel and I split, and I was on safe-zone at Arsenal, Checkpoint 2. Marius got cought here, which was his team sacrifice to make our team win at the end (see video below :-). I did not find checkpoint 2 and ran around arsenal uselessly but surely scared one guy walking his dog when I was hiding in the bushes. Found checkpoint 2, danced there, and met Tim again (whom I didn't recognize now as someone I knew already) and met Wolfgang. I asked Tim if I could join him, but his plan didn't sound convincing. Wolfgang's plan sounded much better - taking long extra walks to avoid chasers at all. Ok, so we went SOUTH-EAST of checkpoint 2, which took us really far down.
As far as this rotten fence in the middle of some military compounds, probably 800m south of checkpoint 2 (crazy).




We had to run south of the complex there and ended up on Landstrasser Gürtel and then went up Landstrasse Hauptstrasse. Our plan was to enter checkpoint 3 from the east side, through Barichgasse. We jogged the whole part up to Eslarngasse and once we saw the Juchgasse, we knew we were in chaser-area again. Everything went well according to plan, the park was safe-zone and we had to find "a LAZOR", I guess correctly that someone would have setup the lazor-bike and would lasertag on one of the ww2 bunkers in the park. Right, on the west side of the park we found a lot of chasers lasertagging.



Excellent, Wolfgang and I tagged and went on. None of the chasers followed us (ha!) and we ran into a group of 5-10 blue ones who said that the way we came in is safe - ok! So we exited through Barichgasse, but on Landstrasse Hauptstrasse a chaser was on us. We accidentially split and I ran down Messenhausergasse, following our plan of "run along the danube and then come to checkpoint 4 via Radetzkyplatz". I was alone, here is the moment on video:


And I took a wrong street and ended up at Siemens (oh shoots), but used the moment to call my wife Ingrid to say "everything is fine, it rocks". I stuck to Wolfang and my plan, running along danube, and expected to find him. But he was already ahead of me, as I later learned. I didn't want to go up Radetzkyplatz, as I didn't know the area too well. Wolfgang knew it and would have known some shortcuts. But I know the area around Strandbar Hermann good, so I went there to get up to Vordere Zollamtstrasse at the Strandbar ramp. That was really awful - going alone up there, sure to face a few chasers. No one in sight, I crossed the street, 50m to safe zone... chaser behind me! running... chasers in front of me (in the safe zone) ... running, avoiding the front chasers just out of instinct, falling into bushes, tagged, but on Zollamstrasse, which is safe zone and they accepted this. Ok, didn't find checkpoint 4 on the front, went around the building with two chasers who also looked for the checkpoint (this is so fun, that you can talk and socialize with chasers while in safe zones). At checkpoint 4 I met Wolfgang again! He was already finished safing the nucleus, so I asked him to wait for me which was fine with him. Here is the task "free nuclear science":


Wolfgang and I went with a bigger group who wanted to take the tram. Wolfgang said he knew a shortcut through the buildings and across the bridge, which would bring us cross the 200 meter to the "ring" safe-zone. As we didn't know how the "getting the tram" plan of the bigger group would go, we split from them and went across the bridge to ring. We met chasers at the ring, inside safe-zone, they asked us where to find runners (ha-never). We also met runners who asked for a safe passage and we passed on the route we took, which was probably not safe anymore. On ring we were safe, so we wanted to run along. Instead of running all, I suggested to jump one station on U4 to Schottenring, fine.



Entering and exiting the station is not-safe, so we were careful and stood guard while waiting for the tram, also we picked the waggon which would be right in the middle at the "stairs" exit so we would have three ways to run if trouble came - which did not. Anyway, the preparations are all the fun. Back on ring, we met Tim, who was a yellow "respawned" runner and I recognized him from checkpoint 2 and we asked him to join us. He recognized me also, he was with the group I initially joined but left for Marius. So, regroup of this team in the middle of the night. At checkpoint 5 we were sure to die, as we have been warned of many chasers south of it. We came in north, Neutorgasse, it was fine. Of course, every pedestrian, every couple, every guy-walking-dog peacefully could be a chaser, so it was tense... :-)

btw, you see guys-walking-dogs everywhere on the streets around game-time. If they were safe-zones, the game would be easy :-)

Checkpoint 5 was fun, we were greeted with the task to improve a theater play. The girl said she prepared some roles for us, one was "Astronaut", and I immediately said: then the others have to be Captain and Dolphin - which was true. I guess right - it was from mp3experiment two. I was the Captain, Tim the lovesick Dolphin, Wolfgang the astronaut. I centered my play around "searching for love" and we had a dance at the end, Disney would be proud of us. I want to see the video!

We went back the way we came, no chasers but again tense, and decided to stick together. Tim said it was his first time in Vienna and he had no clue about the city and show the instructions to strangers to find his way, awesome that he made it so far! He is really motivated. We met some chasers sitting on a tramstation on Ring, but that was safezone. Phew. Took the tram to Rathaus, walked next to metalab (whew, I thought we will meet some chasers there, just BECAUSE, but we were lucky) and into the backstreets to Lange-Gasse. Our plan was to approach checkpoint 6 from West, Burggasse, as this is opposite of the obvious entrance. We planned our entry to checkpoint 6 on my Nokia E70 with google maps (ah, E70 rocks (careful-explicit language behind that link)).

No chasers, but still used our proven approach: "gentlemen, it is an honor to know you. This could be the last time we see each other alive, if we have to run, run towards the safe-zone, good luck".

Inside safe-zone, we learned that 6 blues arrived before us (amazing!) but were drinking and partying with a wedding that was in the pub that was the checkpoint. We drank some shots and decided to win the game now and party later at the final checkpoint (you know, don't eath the marshmellow yet, our parents gave us the right values...:-).

Ok, Museumsquartier would be tough because that was the final point and chasers would be everywhere. Tim, Wolfgang and I decided to approach the back-entry at Breite Gasse through narrow side-streets and, if things go wrong, run south to Mariahilfer street to take the entry there. No chasers, we smoothly went throught the back-entry. Safe-Zone! Finished! To have a clear winner, I said to Tim and Wolfgang that we should stop and run down the stairs to the Electric Avenue, who is there first is the winner. We did so, I was first, but at Raum D where the finishing line was actually upstairs in the Quintessenz office, so I entered this after Wolfgang, who knew. We were happy! As we did the whole thing together and we also did the last sprint ex-equo, we said we were there at the same time, thanks to Wolfgang! We arrived at 23:08 (my watch).
Tim was also good in the field of respawned runners.

Here is the war stories Wolgang exchanged with his buddies:



I also exchanged war stories with Marius:



Fin came late to give the awards ceremony and Chris asked me to do the bar of Quintessenz for a moment, so I had a reason to drink - I would miss the last bus anyway, so I could also have a longer party now. We got our prices, gave our talks, had a lot of fun.

JourneyVienna - final price celebration from leobard on Vimeo.

Thanks to the organizers!!! you rock, and I hope you had as much fun as we did.

At the ceremony I met Christian "Twistie", a guy with whom I studied and whom I didn't see for years, so we had many things to talk about and catch up on things happening in our lives, like, for example, the vineyard church I would usually be at on sunday mornings when not blogging about jtteotn, or his work of improving the java jit-compiler. Wih his friend Geri we hang out at Cantina until 3am, and met Sophie and Susanne, who also raced, they were on the table next to us. Sophie made the winning shoe I and Wolfgang got.

(As childish as I am - I am very happy about keeping the shoe for us and will expose it at the www.gnowsis.com offices, Wolfgang was fine with our price being on exposé there).

a scam that has appeared some years ago and that is interestingly still alive - russian girlfriends.

they send a nice story and pictures of nice blond women. So please upload the pictures and stories to flickr and collect them here:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/mynewrussiangirlfriend/



I started with Maria, the new russia girlfriend of a blogger who documented the whole exchange.

Roman Polanski was arrested for child molesting, he was on charge for that for years and avoided going to the USA because of the prosecution.

There was public outcry over his arrestment, which of course interfers with a lot of his movies and art going on and some people working for him will lose money and jobs and good press if he goes to jail. Anyway, this is one side - the other was him raping a child, which interferred a lot with this one life.

Two links:

• Thoughts for Polanski apologists, by another woman raped at 13. - the article on the excellent blog boingboing which pointed me to the very uncanny side of this case
• the transcripts from the actual rape as on court (allegedly, you never know, maybe this is a fake, don't trust the internet) - uncanny ... creepy ...

may be needful for you in discussions on the topic

Giving praise to the Nokia E70 must never stop. Since it appeared on this planet in May 2006, it is the killer of all. As thebestpageintheuniverse says: "Your iPhone is a piece of shit and so is your face" compared to my E70, which could probably even revive Michael Jackson.

Here the grafik stolen from bestpage:


What I achieved today reaches a solid 1000 on my personal geekness scale. I bought joikuspot which is a - legen-waitforit-dary WIFI HOTSPOT for symbian os. Yes, it uses the builtin Wifi functionality of the E70 (rocking, eh? wifi in your phone 2006!) as a hotspot instead of a client. To be precise, as a wifi p2p connection.

Alas, I am now sitting with my Apple laptop here, my phone next to me and enjoying a zeroconf-like connection to the internet. No bloody bluetooth, no labyrinthesk setup of modem over bluetooth over serial over your grandmas bra. Just plain old "wifi network name, WEP key, GO". That includes you, my friend. next time you drop by and need web with your laptop but don't have one ready, I am there for you.

OMG OMG. I mean, the last years, all these days when we did street art and mobile clubbings, permanent breakfasts, etc - now with that access point - multiple people can upload shit to the web in parallel. everywhere. This was what I always wanted: a small battery powered device you put into a room, press a button, say "this room now got internet, welcome to the future". With no bloody WIFI UMTS usb dongle. Next thing, they will implement beaming for the E70.

Ok, but the reason for my enthousiasm is, that next, I am going to buy the amnazing http://www.eye.fi/. That is, a whopping SD card with Wifi client - get the picture? Take a picture, press "protect" on the cam, the SD card uses TCP/IP to connect to a service at eye.fi, which then uploads the pic directly from the fat32 filesystem of your camera to flickr. awesomeness, here I come...

Die Clubveranstalter meines Vertrauens, frohlocker.de, haben einen neuen mix gekocht. Frisch am start auf der Frohlocker homepage "Floorrocker"

http://frohlocker.de/Floorrocker.htm



Schon runtergezogen, versüßt mir das Arbeitsklima hier.

Ich bin auch tiefst berührt über meinen verfrühten Tod in Kaiserslautern, der von den Frohlockoren beklagt wurde:
Btw. ein leidiges Ding wäre da noch. Unser hochgeschätzter Discotiger und FrohlockerSuperfotograf, Freund und Ehemann, also nicht unserer aber einer der reizenden Ingrid, aslo nicht einer sondern der, einzige, versteht sich, ist verschieden. Aus Lautern verschieden. Lebendig begraben in der Tristess, Melancholie und bisweilen der Inzest verschrieenen Stadt Wien. Aber wir werden sein Andenken in Ehren halten und Ihn sooft es geht dort besuchen, um ordenlich clubben zu gehen!
danke leo für die lustige Zeit mit Dir, auf Wiedersehen, küss die Hoand!
Oh mei, oh mei, ihr habt ja leider mit allem Recht. Wäre ich doch nie weggegangen :-(. Die Party ist vorerst aus, die Sperrstunde hat angefangen. Jetzt wird geschafft und dick das Business gemacht, "go to work" ist das Motto des Tages und "we make money, not art". Aber holt mich mal raus, kommt vorbei und zeigt mir wieder das Clubben!
Wünsche euch Gottes fetten Segen und die frohlockersten Parties der Welt, euer, euch liebender, Partytiger.

I bought a FALK navigation system, the M8 2nd edition. The thing as such is excellent! It is very easy to use, has a good navigation, fits nicely into the car, excellent hardware.

My problems started with the software. They suggest you to also buy a map update to get updated maps every few months.

Done that, downloaded the new maps. To get the maps from the PC to the Navigation System, you need to install their "Falk Navi-Manager". I wonder why, the bloody thing has a mini sd card reader and it could just read the maps from this. Anyway, installing the Navi-Manager includes installing the Microsoft ActiveSync client. Done that.

Now wanting to synchronize, on connecting, an ActiveSync problem pops up:
"cannot verify the version of activesync on your device. A program such as a firewall may be blocking a port ActiveSync uses to connect to the device, or you may need to upgrade to a more recent version of ActiveSync on the PC."

• search for falk online support
• They have an falk online forum for support, which is useless because it does not allow you to post questions. Why the FUCK do you make a forum when I can't post questions??? Better take the whole thing offline, if its just read-only thing labeled "forum". I mean, if customers want to ask questions in a private forum which is controlled by you, and they can't where will they ask questions? Right, on the web.
• I Called the hotline. The hotline is nice and professional and they walk you to the typical steps of "turn off firewall", "turn off virus scanner", try reinstalling X, ...
• Someone from customer service said "ok, that may be because ActiveSync needs some port that is blocked. I had the same problem with another customer today and that guy found out. I can't help you. Ask microsoft."
• Ok, then I ask for the microsoft support number. They say: go to the microsoft homepage. Did that and looked for the German Microsoft online help on ActiveSync, which is "not found", 404. ARGH. FUCKKKKK
• Ok, reinstalled ActiveSync to v4.5 (was there already). did not help
• Bugged the support hotline, begging for favors, they offered that I can send the thing in and they do the update. Thats cool.

Lesson learned: The telephone support was good and they offered to help me as far as they could ("ok, then send us the thing .... grml...")

But if you fucking want to sell navis, you better NOT the fuck use ActiveSync as your technical base but provide something that works out of the box on all machines. And on MacOs. And on Linux. Something like USB, something like my Digital Camera does: plain simple USB drives. And you better provide your customers a real online forum or they will need to find help on the web, publicly sharing their agony of having wasted a lot of money in a piece of hardware that is obsoleted in a year without updates which are blocked because of Microsoft ActiveSync being a mess with fucking "go to hell" error messages.

Next thing I will try: get a new computer and update the navi there, if that does not work - send the thing to falk.

Argh, I hate computers. Thats why I bought this hardware the first place...