Avatar finale

After waiting a long time, there are finally new Episodes of Avatar out. And the finale of the Avatar-show! I don't know if that month-long delay was planned or the result of the writer's guild strike, but I'm glad the show came to a conflusion now. And I liked the ending. Nothing too surprising, but definitely a worthy ending to that amazing show!

I wonder if there will be more episodes coming out - or spinoffs, but I hope they won't get too greedy and keep bringing out new episodes in the future. The show was nice the way they did it, and the story was designed well. It's always best to stop when you're ontop... but it's also hardest.

BIG Pizzas!

My pizza before I ate it. Look at the fork and knife for a size comparism!

Florian eating his big pizza. I thought of getting alittle more of the scenery in the picture for a size comparism

Dominik's Pizza - with fried egg

iGotItBack!

I actually got my iPhone back today! Yay! Or to be more exact: I got a replacement, since the other one had a hardware-defect. I thought so already, since I doubted they would actually bother trying to repair something that delicate. Much cheaper to send out a new one instead. The display works fine now and I really hope it'll stay like that. Next up I will be buying a few things for the iPhone: a docking-station (if it's actually available now) and a protective coating of some sort for the display. If the display actually works now, the last thing I would want is that the display itself would get scratched or damaged physically from the outside. I'm not too careful with my electronic gadgets and I know I'll carry the iPhone around alot. My old phone didn't get a single scratch during the last 1 1/2 years of intense use, but I fear Murphy's Law too much to try the same stunt with my iPhone.

One big question remains: To jailbreak or not to jailbreak? Those who know me can probably imagine I'm always curious and I love open, free software. But I have to admit that for now, I have all the functionality and applications that I need atm... and after this last incident, I rather not void my warranty...

iAmSurprised

Ok, after being quite annoyed and restless yesterday, I feel the better today. Reason: My provider actually did surprise me positively! This morning I got an SMS notifying me that my iPhone repair is completed and that they sent it back to me.  So it seems like hopefully by tomorrow, I'll have my iPhone back. Now I just hope the problem is actually fixed.

there's always something

Ok, today was the day when I was official supposed to get my defect iPhone replaced. To not much of a surprise, I didn't get it. After all the bad news concerning the availability-problems everywhere due to the huge demand, I am really worried by now that I might not be able to get an iPhone anytime soon. One news-entry even stated that it might take as long as october (!) until new iPhones are available again.

The biggest problem for me is not to be without my iPhone, but rather that I simply don't know when I'll get it at all! It really makes me nervous and very impatient. I feel helpless, and hoping day by day won't do any good...

The thing that annoys me most about this is that I actually was just fast enough to get an iPhone! The day it came out I was in the store and lucky enough to get their last one! I even signed a new contract with a different provider for it and that even though my old contract still has to run out. I was willing to pay extra to have the iPhone as soon as possible, and now if I have bad luck, I might not even have one until my old contract ran out anyway! What a waste of money, time and nerves...

Tomorrow if I don't get my promised iPhone, I'll pay my provider a visit and ask for the status of the repair/replacement. I fear I already know what they will tell me: "sorry, but we can't say for sure when there will be any new iPhones available". Which sucks worse in my case, since I already had one and now I have to wait neverthless! If a possible new customer interested in the iPhone comes to the store and hears these news, he/she will decide to simply wait... but I already got the contract now but no phone! What a stupid situation! Couldn't have been plotted any meaner! Someone up there must not like me... there's always something not working right away with the things I get. Something is always wrong or needs tweaking and takes time for me to set up correctly and to bugfix. But hardware-errors like the one of my iPhone are out of my powers.

I got one last hope though: Since my old iPhone did work ok and just had an annoying display-error that definitely should be fixed, I could still ask to have it back until they have replacement devices available. It's not that unreasonable for me to ask for that, since the only reason I got the contract was to use it with an iPhone... and not to be without one for like 3 months! I might aswell retreat from the new contract again and re-apply once new iPhones are available again. Will save me money... money I'm not willing to pay if I don't get anything from it!

iWait?

Today I stumbled over slightly discouraging news online: The new iPhone is completely sold out in Germany and Apple doesn't know how to supply more devices right now. Not great news for me, since I fear the date that I got told for receiving the replacement for my defect iPhone might not be too realistic. Upcoming monday, I was told. I can just hope that since the device was sent back to Apple, it will be handled with increased priority - and that Apple has some devices held back for issues like that. I'm already preparing to post a rant next week, but I'll wait for now - maybe I will get positively surprised.

iPhone - iHadBadLuck

Ok, after all the hype about the new iPhone 3G coming out, I gave in to the temptation last weekend and got one of the new iPhones myself. Even the 16G version. Well, the choice was easy since it was the very last one they had in the store at the time I got there. Was a quite impulsive decision from my side, but after chatting with a friend who got the 8G version and geeking out about it, I wanted one too.



First Impression

I have to say I'm impressed by the device. It's definitely well-done, looks stylish and has a usability that I've never seen before! The new GPS and UMTS support surely is a plus, and with the right mobile contract, I can actually get online and check e-mail, chat and surf the web pretty much everywhere I am... and with the iPhone, surfing on a mobile phone is actually working and fun!

The iPod itself is nice too. I don't wanna go too much into the features and what I thought of them, let me just say that I was very happy and pleased with the device and it's features. I'm having my difficulties trying to get myself acquainted to the iTunes-Software - that you sadly are forced to use if you wanna do anything with your iPhone. But I can live with that.


First Problem

It all could've been perfect. I could still sit here writing this happily with my iPhone next to me, listening to music. But sadly, I had back luck: On the same day I got the iPhone, it started showing bright spots/areas on the left side of the display. Wasn't that noticeable in the beginning but it kept getting worse - up to a point where it really annoyed me. So I returned the faulty device today. So until the device is sent back to Apple and I get a replacement from them next week, I will have to live without an iPhone - kinda disappointing. The fact that according to the T-Mobile employee, I am the very first customer they know with this specific problem doesn't really cheer me up either. At least they were really nice in the store and took the device back without any discussion and were really helpful. I just hope they will work as reliable getting my replacement - and that that one will be flawless... at least for the upcoming 2 years that I have warranty for it.

I don't regret my decision to get the new iPhone at all. I really like it and I think it has the potential to become a steady "companion" that I will always carry with me, and I will finally have everything I need with me: cellphone, music-player, web-browser, e-mail client, IM and even games and a few other gimmicks.

So even though I categorized this under "rants", I am not in a bad, "ranting" mood. I'm looking forward to getting a perfectly working device very soon. If I won't, THEN you will definitely read the one or the other rant here.

FOMP 2008

Tonight we went to the "FOMP" festival. It's an open-air hosted by - amongst others - a friend of mine. It started like 3 year ago as a bday-party of a few ppl and ended up as an official open-air festival a year later.This year, my friend wasn't the main person responsible but he still helped out alot. We know that the festival tends to have bad timing with the weather, even though it's held in the middle of the summertime. And we weren't disappointed this year. The first day we went there thinking we better take our chance to go there before the bad weather arrives on the next day, but the rain was faster and caught up on us - just in time we got there, the rain started. It was really heavy rain and wind but thankfully, it didn't last too long so the rest of the festival was still great. And I like having cooler air instead of the weather being too hot. I always am in favor for cool weather. And again, I ended up being one of the few people wearing a t-shirt in the very end while everyone else put on a pullover or a jacket.... something isn't right with me. I guess I'm simply my father's son.

Getting my server to boot from a Live-CD again

It's become one of my most said things when it comes to computers: "Why can't things simply work?"

Indeed, I always seem to stumble over things when working with comps that don't seem to function the way they should - or I as a user simply would expect them to. Yes, I'm a geek and I can work it out usually or find a workaround, but I often think "why the heck do I have to do this in the first place?"

Same today. I wanted to clone one of my old harddisks. Since it contained a Linux-installation, I figured I'd simply use the good old dd to copy the whole disk content. I wanted to use the new harddisk as a replacement for the old one, so it would come in handy to copy the MBR and the partition table aswell that way. I was even lucky: I found a disk with exactly the same amount of space and the same drive geometry as my old one. That's definitely not a given fact, but I was happy and it felt like a cheap and easy thing to do. Of course I can't do it while the Linux system itself uses the disk, so I planned to boot up whatever Live-system I have laying around while having the 2 harddisks connected and I'll be all set. I planned to use my good old external USB DVD-burner as a the boot-drive.

But for some strange reason, my system didn't want to boot the CD. Everyone that I tried stopped and the ISOLINUX loader showed me an "image checksum error". I've used the exact same CDs/DVDs before, so I knew it was no problem of the discs themselves. I figured it must be something with the way the BIOS tries to interpret and access the discs. But again, it was strange since I used the exact same optical drive to actually install the current system...

Well, after some trying around with different BIOS-settings - without success - I started to narrow it down. How to do that best? well, as usual: disconnect and turn off everything you don't really need, see if it works then, and then start reconnecting things one by one until it doesn't work again. And to my surprise, it turned out that the new harddrive was causing problems! I have no idea why, but as long as it was connected while the system was booting up, it messed up with the ISOLINUX loader of the Live-CDs somehow. So since it's a USB harddrive, I simply left it unplugged while booting and added it later when the system was up.

So again, I had to fumble around and try stuff and figure out what the problem was and look up message-boards and knowledge-bases online... people wonder why I know so much about these things. It's easy: because all that stuff has happened to me before!

Now after the copying is done and my system up again, I'll have to investigate a far more time-consuming problem: rare, occasional disconnects of one other USB-harddrive. Seems like a Linux-kernel thing or maybe a problem or incompatibility with the hardware - either of the drive or of the board-chipset.... the usual stuff, I'm off to consult more knowledge-bases online...

Mass data storage - for the content industry after all?

I'm actually surprised this is my first post about this topic: freedom, security, data-mining, content-industry... summed up: privacy

I have my own opinion about all these things and I'm very liberal, if not even left concerning those. I do believe in the right for pricavy and informational self-determination of the individual. I think noone - not the government, the police and certainly not the content-industry should have the right to invade my privacy and spy on me without reasonable suspicion. I don't think the government or any affiliates should be allowed to preemtively collect sensible-information like fingerprints or DNA-data of innocent citizens. Not for the purposes of crime-prevention, nor anything else - and definitely not for "protection against terrorism".

That said, I guess my attitude towards things like mass-surveillance or fingerprints are more than clear. It's not surprising that I got furious when I read the following article (sorry, german only): http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/28/28146/1.html

Not too long ago, the german parliament passed a bill that now requires the ISPs to keep data about all internet-traffic stored and available for 6 months! The critics were silenced with the usual "this will help the police and the crime-rate will go down and ... it will help against terrorism!". Always a nice argumentation: make the ones being against the law responsible for murder, child-rape and terrorist-attacks. The doubts and worries of the people who also see the drawbacks of such mass-surveillance, like the commissioner for privacy protection, Peter Schaar, were dismissed with arguments like "the access to this data will be highly restricted and only possible with jurisdictional approval through a court-order, so the possibility for abuse will be minimal".

Why to have such mass data mining and storage of all internet-traffic anyway? Good question. I know the EU requires countries to have these methods in effect, and I honestly am not well-informed enough to really know why the EU wants that - I have my theories but I don't wanna sound too paranoid.

I know one big lobby though that has always had a big interest in that data: The content industry. They were the ones to cry out the loudest that it's so difficult to retrieve the connection information from the providers in order to identify and sue people illegally sharing copyright-protected material. Back then, the providers only had to keep the data for 24 hours - so the content industry had to be quick to address the ISP to hold the data longer, since it might be evidence. Now, they can look at it much more relaxed. But there's still one problem: In order to get insight into these data-files, they have to address the jurisdictional system and prove that there was indeed an illegal act. While proving that (or at least stating it in a way to make it sound believable enough for a court) is not that difficult, it certainly takes time and involves alot of additional effort from the prosecution... especially when you think about how many many mass-complaints are filed by the content-industry these days.

And that's where the article I linked to comes in... something noone could've thought of is actually happening now: the attorneys are completely overloaded. The jurisdiction simply can't handle all the cases. And so the attorney generals thought of a solution: "Why not simply give the content industry direct access to the data instead? That would take the work off the jurisdiction."

... so we actually arrived where the Content Industry wanted to be at all along. They will be able to approach the ISPs directly and simply start suing whoever they like, based on the information found in the data recorded by the ISPs. Without having to consult a court, without having an initial suspicion, without evidence.

And it might not end there. Who knows what's next? Maybe they can soon access the data without having to address the ISPs? Maybe other groups of interest might want to have similar access aswell? Why not? It's all about keeping us safe and secure, isn't it? And if you don't have anything to hide, then you have nothing to fear, right?

image taken from and © www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de

Trip to Holland

This weekend Armin, Jan and me went to Holland to visit the birthday-party of a Daan, a friend from our good old Everquest-times. He turned 30 and his gf Marianne planned a surprise party and asked us to come. So we did. Was quite a bit of a hassle for just a bit over one day we had to stay there, but it was alot of fun and I really am glad we went.  Great people, alot of food and alcohol, just not too much of sleep but I didn't think I'd get that much anyway :)

Oh, only drawback was that Germany lost the finals of the European Soccer Championship.