Random thoughts
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Wiener Neustadt is half way from Vienna to Jesolo
No, we didn't get the distances wrong. Granted, Wiener Neustadt is about 60 km from Vienna whereas the distance to Jesolo is 600 km.
We left home in the dusk on July 1 with our van fully loaded, expecting to reach our vacation destination Jesolo by noon. Shortly after we had passed Wiener Neustadt, we noticed strange sounds under the hood, and the engine temperature started to rise quickly. “Stop engine. Oil pressure low.” destroyed our hope to reach at least a service station.
The towing service arrived promptly, we squeezed two child seats and ourselves into the tow truck and still hoped for a quick repair. The mechanic who first inspected our car suspected a more serious problem, and an hour later we had the sad certainty: our VW Sharan had suffered from a broken connecting rod and subsequent damage to the engine at less than 7000 km, “a manufacturing defect”. We would certainly not continue our journey with this car.
We weren't ready to give up, though. After all we had made travel arrangements, and the kids were excited about our first vacation trip abroad. Volkswagen offers a Mobility Guarantee, which sounds like you would retain your mobility when your car breaks down. It includes free roadside assistance and towing, which was indeed helpful, and a replacement vehicle of Volkswagen's choice for three days. Subject to availability, that is. Three days wouldn't helped much anyway but the rental car partner mentioned they had no large vans available for the rest of the year (mind you, this was on July 1!) and actually had no cars available at all, not even for an hour to drive to the airport to pick up another car. As good as the mobility guarantee sounds, it was pretty useless when we needed it.
It's summer time and most car rental companies were short on cars. In the end we managed to arrange for a reasonable large Opel Zaphira with the help of a wonderful agent at weekrent.com and I took the train back to Vienna to get the car. Meanwhile Andrea stayed at the dealership with two tired kids, not a good way to start a holiday.
We left Wiener Neustadt in the afternoon and arrived in Jesolo late at night, tired but glad that we made it after all.
We left home in the dusk on July 1 with our van fully loaded, expecting to reach our vacation destination Jesolo by noon. Shortly after we had passed Wiener Neustadt, we noticed strange sounds under the hood, and the engine temperature started to rise quickly. “Stop engine. Oil pressure low.” destroyed our hope to reach at least a service station.
The towing service arrived promptly, we squeezed two child seats and ourselves into the tow truck and still hoped for a quick repair. The mechanic who first inspected our car suspected a more serious problem, and an hour later we had the sad certainty: our VW Sharan had suffered from a broken connecting rod and subsequent damage to the engine at less than 7000 km, “a manufacturing defect”. We would certainly not continue our journey with this car.We weren't ready to give up, though. After all we had made travel arrangements, and the kids were excited about our first vacation trip abroad. Volkswagen offers a Mobility Guarantee, which sounds like you would retain your mobility when your car breaks down. It includes free roadside assistance and towing, which was indeed helpful, and a replacement vehicle of Volkswagen's choice for three days. Subject to availability, that is. Three days wouldn't helped much anyway but the rental car partner mentioned they had no large vans available for the rest of the year (mind you, this was on July 1!) and actually had no cars available at all, not even for an hour to drive to the airport to pick up another car. As good as the mobility guarantee sounds, it was pretty useless when we needed it.
It's summer time and most car rental companies were short on cars. In the end we managed to arrange for a reasonable large Opel Zaphira with the help of a wonderful agent at weekrent.com and I took the train back to Vienna to get the car. Meanwhile Andrea stayed at the dealership with two tired kids, not a good way to start a holiday.
We left Wiener Neustadt in the afternoon and arrived in Jesolo late at night, tired but glad that we made it after all.
Monday, June 29, 2009
The return of the curvy cucumber
For two decades, the European Union carefully regulated the size and shape of fruit. Often this has been quoted, and rightly so, as an example of the over-regulation by the commission.
Announced in November 2008, the return of the curvy cucumber will become effective on July 1, 2009. Now all those cucumbers and carrots will be “allowed” to grow in all shapes and sizes again (not that they cared too much about EC directives anyway).
Standards usually make life convenient. Just imagine what driving a rental car would be like if manufacturers implemented their own concept of speed and steering controls (too bad that other controls like air condition and radio aren't standardized and often not self-explanatory). Or withdrawing money from the bank without standardized bank cards and ATMs. Or connecting to networks if they weren't all using the same protocols.
Regulating the size and shape of fruit and vegetables, on the other hand, doesn't make life more convenient unless you like to see the cucumbers lined up nicely in the fridge. To me, this is mostly an indication of an unhealthy desire to control everything, including Mother Nature. More than two decades ago, the movement which eventually became the Green party started questioning large technology projects, be it nuclear power plants or ecologically questionable hydropower plants. Many of the environmental and energy related issues still need to be addressed. But, at least we have the curvy cucumber back.
Announced in November 2008, the return of the curvy cucumber will become effective on July 1, 2009. Now all those cucumbers and carrots will be “allowed” to grow in all shapes and sizes again (not that they cared too much about EC directives anyway).
Standards usually make life convenient. Just imagine what driving a rental car would be like if manufacturers implemented their own concept of speed and steering controls (too bad that other controls like air condition and radio aren't standardized and often not self-explanatory). Or withdrawing money from the bank without standardized bank cards and ATMs. Or connecting to networks if they weren't all using the same protocols.
Regulating the size and shape of fruit and vegetables, on the other hand, doesn't make life more convenient unless you like to see the cucumbers lined up nicely in the fridge. To me, this is mostly an indication of an unhealthy desire to control everything, including Mother Nature. More than two decades ago, the movement which eventually became the Green party started questioning large technology projects, be it nuclear power plants or ecologically questionable hydropower plants. Many of the environmental and energy related issues still need to be addressed. But, at least we have the curvy cucumber back.
Labels: business, technology
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Absentee voting and security
The disputed presidential elections in Iran reminded me of an observation a few weeks ago when the European Union held elections for the European Parliament.
Absentee voting, and mail voting in particular, present some interesting security and privacy challenges. For the European election, voters who wanted to cast their vote outside of their electoral district could request absentee ballots to vote in other districts or by mail. In a commendable effort to make voting as convenient as possible, the administration only required name, address and passport number for requesting absentee ballots and delivered them to voters by regular mail, leaving ample room for misuse already.
But I was unpleasantly surprised when I found a sticker(!) on my mailbox indicating that “important electoral mail” had been delivered:
Well intended for sure, but in my opinion the service orientation really went overboard here. With all the trust in the administration, the electoral process and the people in our neighborhood, privacy and security concerns should be considered.
Absentee voting, and mail voting in particular, present some interesting security and privacy challenges. For the European election, voters who wanted to cast their vote outside of their electoral district could request absentee ballots to vote in other districts or by mail. In a commendable effort to make voting as convenient as possible, the administration only required name, address and passport number for requesting absentee ballots and delivered them to voters by regular mail, leaving ample room for misuse already.
But I was unpleasantly surprised when I found a sticker(!) on my mailbox indicating that “important electoral mail” had been delivered:
Well intended for sure, but in my opinion the service orientation really went overboard here. With all the trust in the administration, the electoral process and the people in our neighborhood, privacy and security concerns should be considered.
Disagreeing with Jakob Nielsen on security—Password masking makes logins more secure
When it comes to usability, disagreeing with Jakob Nielsen is usually not an option. After all, he has been called king, czar, guru or Web usability for a reason, and his Alertbox offers invaluable advise most of the time.
Disagreeing with Jakob Nielsen on security is easier, especially when he advocates to remove password masking as a means to improve usability and claims that this doesn't lower security.
While not offering a high degree of protection, the password masking does a pretty good job for most situations. Certainly, a determined and skilled criminal would be able to observe which keys are pressed, or use other attack vectors to intercept my Web interactions. I am often surrounded by trustworthy people who still shouldn't know my passwords, don't care about my passwords and even politely turn their eyes away while I am logging in. Whether showing someone a Website or doing a demo to a larger audience, accessing protected areas of a site in a semi-public environment like a desk-sharing area at work or logging in from a mobile device, those little stars or dots protect my passwords well from becoming exposed.
Security and usability should not be conflicting objectives; in fact usability is an important aspect for any security system, or users will work around usability issues and use it in unintended ways, like copying and pasting passwords from a text file as Nielsen mentions. An extra checkbox to enable password masking just adds complexity to the user interface and may confuse users more than not being able to see their password.
Typing passwords on mobile devices (or foreign keyboards, for that matter) can be challenging. Some smartphones like the iPhone or the Nokia N95 show the letter as typed but then quickly replacing it with an asterisk, which is a reasonable compromise.
Instead of cluttering Web forms with additional checkboxes, web developers should demand that browsers and mobile devices provide an option to remove password masking when desired by the user. This would maintain the current level of security by not exposing the passwords to people looking over users' shoulders and address the usability issue for those who have difficulty typing their password and would benefit from visual feedback.
Until then, use this JavaScript bookmarklet to unmask password fields as needed:
(all on one line, or simply drag the Unmask passwords bookmarklet link to your bookmarks).
PS. More ways to reveal passwords in a controlled manner can be found in Martin Brinkmann's blog post Reveal your saved Passwords in Firefox.
Disagreeing with Jakob Nielsen on security is easier, especially when he advocates to remove password masking as a means to improve usability and claims that this doesn't lower security.
While not offering a high degree of protection, the password masking does a pretty good job for most situations. Certainly, a determined and skilled criminal would be able to observe which keys are pressed, or use other attack vectors to intercept my Web interactions. I am often surrounded by trustworthy people who still shouldn't know my passwords, don't care about my passwords and even politely turn their eyes away while I am logging in. Whether showing someone a Website or doing a demo to a larger audience, accessing protected areas of a site in a semi-public environment like a desk-sharing area at work or logging in from a mobile device, those little stars or dots protect my passwords well from becoming exposed.
Security and usability should not be conflicting objectives; in fact usability is an important aspect for any security system, or users will work around usability issues and use it in unintended ways, like copying and pasting passwords from a text file as Nielsen mentions. An extra checkbox to enable password masking just adds complexity to the user interface and may confuse users more than not being able to see their password.
Typing passwords on mobile devices (or foreign keyboards, for that matter) can be challenging. Some smartphones like the iPhone or the Nokia N95 show the letter as typed but then quickly replacing it with an asterisk, which is a reasonable compromise.
Instead of cluttering Web forms with additional checkboxes, web developers should demand that browsers and mobile devices provide an option to remove password masking when desired by the user. This would maintain the current level of security by not exposing the passwords to people looking over users' shoulders and address the usability issue for those who have difficulty typing their password and would benefit from visual feedback.
Until then, use this JavaScript bookmarklet to unmask password fields as needed:
for(var i=0;(var a=document.getElementsByTagName("input")[i]);i++){
if(a.getAttribute("type").indexOf("password")!=-1){
a.type="text"
}
}
window.focus();
(all on one line, or simply drag the Unmask passwords bookmarklet link to your bookmarks).
PS. More ways to reveal passwords in a controlled manner can be found in Martin Brinkmann's blog post Reveal your saved Passwords in Firefox.
Labels: technology, usability, webdevelopment
Friday, June 5, 2009
World Environmental Day 2009
Just in time for the World Environmental Day 2009, this morning a colleague shared an amazing animation showing air traffic over a 24 hour period:
Every yellow dot represents a flight with at least 250 passengers.
The animation was developed by the ZHAW Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften in cooperation with the Swiss science center Technorama (Larger version of the Air Traffic Worldwide video from ZHAW).
Watching this it becomes clear how even smallest improvements in fuel efficiency, reduction of emissions and optimization of flight patterns reduce the environmental impact (not that flying or most other forms of transportation will ever become eco-friendly). Smart traffic and transportation is also a theme in IBM's Smarter planet initiative.
So what did I do on World Environmental Day 2009? Nothing special, I used public transport as I do whenever possible, looked for local, organically grown food when doing my grocery shopping at the Naschmarkt (although a recent study suggests that shipping fruits and vegetables from warmer countries like Spain may be better environmentally than growing them in greenhouses locally, so much for trying to do the right thing), separated my waste—and calculated my ecological footprint at ecologicalfootprint.com and myfootprint.org, a great reminder how many of us use an above average share of natural resources.
Every yellow dot represents a flight with at least 250 passengers.
The animation was developed by the ZHAW Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften in cooperation with the Swiss science center Technorama (Larger version of the Air Traffic Worldwide video from ZHAW).
Watching this it becomes clear how even smallest improvements in fuel efficiency, reduction of emissions and optimization of flight patterns reduce the environmental impact (not that flying or most other forms of transportation will ever become eco-friendly). Smart traffic and transportation is also a theme in IBM's Smarter planet initiative.
So what did I do on World Environmental Day 2009? Nothing special, I used public transport as I do whenever possible, looked for local, organically grown food when doing my grocery shopping at the Naschmarkt (although a recent study suggests that shipping fruits and vegetables from warmer countries like Spain may be better environmentally than growing them in greenhouses locally, so much for trying to do the right thing), separated my waste—and calculated my ecological footprint at ecologicalfootprint.com and myfootprint.org, a great reminder how many of us use an above average share of natural resources.
Labels: travel
Saturday, May 30, 2009
IE6 DOM weirdness: It was the base and not the comma
I recently hacked a few lines of JavaScript for an online survey. The script looked fairly straightforward and worked well on Firefox in no time.
Fortunately I had just received a new ThinkPad (more about that later) and hadn't upgraded Internet Explorer yet. Testing with IE6, my code failed miserably. Debugging with the indispensable FireBug light tool revealed that a shared library function for accessing meta information didn't return any information. The very same library function was working nicely on the production Web site, though; at least we hadn't heard any complaints, which given the percentage of users accessing our Web site with IE6 was highly unlikely.
Staring at the screen in disbelieve, our resident jQuery guru eventually found the culprit. Unlike with the infamous Undefined is null or not an object problem, it was not an issue with an extra comma this time.
Rather, IE6 seems to get the structure of documents containing a
into this DOM tree:
So the selector which was correctly looking for
Related information:
Fortunately I had just received a new ThinkPad (more about that later) and hadn't upgraded Internet Explorer yet. Testing with IE6, my code failed miserably. Debugging with the indispensable FireBug light tool revealed that a shared library function for accessing meta information didn't return any information. The very same library function was working nicely on the production Web site, though; at least we hadn't heard any complaints, which given the percentage of users accessing our Web site with IE6 was highly unlikely.
Staring at the screen in disbelieve, our resident jQuery guru eventually found the culprit. Unlike with the infamous Undefined is null or not an object problem, it was not an issue with an extra comma this time.
Rather, IE6 seems to get the structure of documents containing a
base tag wrong, making subsequent meta and link elements children of the base element, turning this source
into this DOM tree:
So the selector which was correctly looking for
html > meta would fail in the rare presence of a base tag, such as on a test page created by yours truly. The quick fix was a slightly less efficient selector html meta, and we were once again painfully reminded that IE6 tends to behave differently from current browsers and requires separate testing.Related information:
- Justin Rogers, BASE tag changes in IE 7 with Examples
Labels: javascript, webdevelopment, windows
Monday, April 6, 2009
301 Moved permanently
We are pleased to announce that we finally moved. Our new address: Buchbindergasse 6, A-1130 Wien.
The move went well and almost according to schedule.
We started packing on Tuesday, slowly filling a corner of my apartment with moving boxes. Christian had volunteered to help on Thursday, so we spent most of the day hauling some 30 boxes down three floors from the apartment, stuffing them into the van, driving to the house and unpacking stuff there so we could later reuse the boxes.
After three tours back and forth, wir hatten fertig.
Friday night was the time for the next round of packing boxes, and again we filled the storage space quickly. Amongst the packed stuff were some treasures that had long been lost, including two small booklets which were hidden under a pile of photographs, and a set of wedding pictures which mysteriously showed up behind a teapot!
Saturday was really the big moving day, with more boxes as well as furniture and other heavy stuff. Fortunately we had even more helping hands, and with a convoy of a rental transporter and two additional cars managed to move “everything” in just three more tours.
A big thank you to Christian, Michael and Rainer; you guys were absolutely terrific, and we would have never managed to move in two days without your great help.
We will spend the next few weeks organizing the new home and moving the remaining, less needed stuff that we left in the apartments. The house is currently filled with boxes waiting to be unpacked and things look slightly messy. Nevertheless we enjoyed the first night in our new home, and Elias tiptoeing over to our bedroom and giving us a gentle wakeup the next morning.
Lastly, we had our DSL line installed today; now if only I could find all the cables in one of the boxes…
The move went well and almost according to schedule.
We started packing on Tuesday, slowly filling a corner of my apartment with moving boxes. Christian had volunteered to help on Thursday, so we spent most of the day hauling some 30 boxes down three floors from the apartment, stuffing them into the van, driving to the house and unpacking stuff there so we could later reuse the boxes.
After three tours back and forth, wir hatten fertig.
Friday night was the time for the next round of packing boxes, and again we filled the storage space quickly. Amongst the packed stuff were some treasures that had long been lost, including two small booklets which were hidden under a pile of photographs, and a set of wedding pictures which mysteriously showed up behind a teapot!
Saturday was really the big moving day, with more boxes as well as furniture and other heavy stuff. Fortunately we had even more helping hands, and with a convoy of a rental transporter and two additional cars managed to move “everything” in just three more tours.
A big thank you to Christian, Michael and Rainer; you guys were absolutely terrific, and we would have never managed to move in two days without your great help.
We will spend the next few weeks organizing the new home and moving the remaining, less needed stuff that we left in the apartments. The house is currently filled with boxes waiting to be unpacked and things look slightly messy. Nevertheless we enjoyed the first night in our new home, and Elias tiptoeing over to our bedroom and giving us a gentle wakeup the next morning.
Lastly, we had our DSL line installed today; now if only I could find all the cables in one of the boxes…
Sunday, March 22, 2009
rsync does work with plink
For years rsync from the cygwin distribution and PuTTY's plink program would not work together and fail with
Unable to read from standard input: The handle is invalid.
rsync: read error: Connection reset by peer (104)
I first posted this problem to comp.security.ssh in 2005 but never received a solution, until now.
Frank Behrens published cygnative, a small wrapper program that resolves an incompatibility between cygwin and Win32 native programs. With cygnative, invoking rsync with plink as the remote shell works like a charm:
rsync -ave "cygnative plink -batch" source target
Thank you, Frank!
Unable to read from standard input: The handle is invalid.
rsync: read error: Connection reset by peer (104)
I first posted this problem to comp.security.ssh in 2005 but never received a solution, until now.
Frank Behrens published cygnative, a small wrapper program that resolves an incompatibility between cygwin and Win32 native programs. With cygnative, invoking rsync with plink as the remote shell works like a charm:
rsync -ave "cygnative plink -batch" source target
Thank you, Frank!
Labels: networking, windows
Thursday, March 19, 2009
We are moving
We have finally settled on the moving dates to our new home: April 2 and 4. We plan to move a good portion of the boxes by car on the first day, and get a transporter to move the larger furniture, the remaining boxes, and other stuff on the second day. That leaves one day in between to recover from hauling boxes and furniture down three floors from our apartments, and then up one or two floors in the house.
Help needed!
We greatly appreciate any help you can give us with the move, including packing and unpacking, disassembling and reassembling furniture, moving stuff around, and last but not least looking after the kids (that is, feeding Daniel during the day as needed and keeping an eye on Elias when he returns from kindergarten, or taking him to the nearby playground, weather permitting). Hints and tools for moving are also welcome.
Please kindly let us know if you can help us with the move. Food and drinks will be provided at the house.
(Last updated March 31, 2009)
Help needed!
We greatly appreciate any help you can give us with the move, including packing and unpacking, disassembling and reassembling furniture, moving stuff around, and last but not least looking after the kids (that is, feeding Daniel during the day as needed and keeping an eye on Elias when he returns from kindergarten, or taking him to the nearby playground, weather permitting). Hints and tools for moving are also welcome.
Please kindly let us know if you can help us with the move. Food and drinks will be provided at the house.
(Last updated March 31, 2009)
Monday, February 23, 2009
Amazon.com: User experience delivering value
While shopping on Amazon the other day, I noticed a subtle yet still noticeable hint that I had bought the very same article already in October 2007.
At first glance, the notice would appear to drive customers away from buying; however Amazon.com has a long-standing reputation for innovation in online commerce and good customer service (although I have been less satisfied with their handling of e-mail correspondence lately) so this didn't come as a complete surprise.
Good user experience design is all about delivering value to the customer, and to the business too:
Links:
At first glance, the notice would appear to drive customers away from buying; however Amazon.com has a long-standing reputation for innovation in online commerce and good customer service (although I have been less satisfied with their handling of e-mail correspondence lately) so this didn't come as a complete surprise.
Good user experience design is all about delivering value to the customer, and to the business too:
- The customer may have bought the product earlier and order another copy as a present, which was actually the case for me.
- Some products, such as blank CDs/DVDs, lend themselves to repetitive orders. Knowing that this is the same product ordered before is reassuring to the customer, which means more business with fewer clicks.
- In the unlikely case that a customer accidentally orders the same product twice, chances are that she would return the product for a refund, incurring shipping and handling cost for the business; therefore not shipping the product in the first place is not only the most customer friendly, but also the most cost effective solution.
Links:
Labels: business, ibm, kudos, technology
Apple juice and milk
After cleaning my office chair from milk, the results of Daniel's inverse peristalsis, I wasn't planning to clean the keyboard next. That was before I poured a glass of naturally cloudy apple juice over it. From a quick glance the keyboard looks alright; the keys popped out quite easily, albeit with a crackling sound, and the electronics stayed dray, or so I hope.
I will remind myself that food and typing don't go well together and enjoy the comfort of a clean keyboard for a while before falling back to my bad habits :-)
PS. Speaking of milk, on Saturday night we went to the cinema to see Gus Van Sant's beautiful and highly acclaimed movie Milk on the life of gay rights activist and politician Harvey Milk, portrayed by Sean Penn, who just received an academy award for his performance this weekend.
I will remind myself that food and typing don't go well together and enjoy the comfort of a clean keyboard for a while before falling back to my bad habits :-)
PS. Speaking of milk, on Saturday night we went to the cinema to see Gus Van Sant's beautiful and highly acclaimed movie Milk on the life of gay rights activist and politician Harvey Milk, portrayed by Sean Penn, who just received an academy award for his performance this weekend.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Google: This site may harm your computer
Google generally does a pretty good job warning users about suspicious Web sites assumed to contain malware, but their algorithm seems to have gone overboard now. This morning every search result shows a warning that the site may harm my computer:
Labels: google, technology
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Summer inside, winter outside
We had this winter's first snow today in Vienna (not counting the few snowflakes back in December). Fortunately temperatures are up again after a rather chilly week, and that was not just because Russian gas stopped reaching Europe.
Labels: personal
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Happy New Year 2009
Wish you Happy and Prosperous New Year 2009!
We returned to Vienna tonight from our family tour to Salzburg, Munich, Dornbirn and Salzburg again.
It was good to see our families again, including the first meeting of little Daniel with his great grandmothers. At the same time it feels like we spent most the last 10 days driving (or, getting stuck in traffic jams), so we are glad to be home.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
0101001011101010111
Google search nicely reminded me that digital storage is still all about ones and zeros:
Labels: ibm, technology
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Season's Greetings 2008
Festivus, Kwanza, Christmas, Hanukkah, Solstice, whatever you celebrate at this time of year: Happy holidays and all the best for the new year!
PS. Daniel wasn't unhappy at all with the hat, except of course when we shot the picture.
Labels: personal
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
I know, I know …
Matt Cutts' blog post today—I’ll try to write something soon, but it’s been busy for the last few days—painfully reminded me that I had a few half-finished blog entries waiting to be completed and published. It’s actually been busy for the last few months, so expect some ancient posts to finally appear over the holidays.
Labels: personal
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Jamming at the InnovationJam™ 2008
Want to explore how organizations can transform themselves into truly global enterprises of the future? Ready to collaborate with technology and business thought-leaders?
Join the InnovationJam™ 2008.
Labels: business, innovation, technology
Monday, October 6, 2008
Our first car
Guys like to talk about cars. Ever so often when travelling and meeting colleagues abroad, I would get asked what car I drive, and then the conversation shifted to quality of life and how great living in city where public transport actually works would be. For more than twenty years, the network of buses, trams and the underground served us well and still does.
“So you don't drive?” would often be the next question. I do drive, and have accumulated thousands of kilometres on the road on business and holiday trips, with more than 70 car rentals over the years. I also signed up for car sharing a few years ago and enjoyed the convenience of having access to a wide range of vehicles within walking distance from my home.
In 1993 I rented my first car in Vienna for the relocation from the dorm to my apartment. Moving the few belongings back then took multiple trips, and we spent all day moving boxes.
Most of my initial driving experience, oddly enough, was on the left side of the road. While consolidating our European Web hosting infrastructure in North Harbour, I travelled to the UK frequently. The first time I was scared to death, but driving on the left side turned out to be less challenging than I had expected, with the notable exception of multilane roundabouts which I still find tricky. Only once on a business trip to Mulhaddart near Dublin I got onto the wrong side of the road after exiting a petrol station. Fortunately traffic was low and I realized the mistake and changed lanes when I saw a car approaching on “my” lane.
Driving in Australia in 1998 added another challenge: Driving on the left side of the road was easy, I had enough practice with that, but Australian cars also have the controls for wipers and indicators exchanged. I don't want to know how many times I switched the wipers on when making a turn, on a perfectly sunny day.
Did I mention guys care about cars? In August 1999, when the weather forecast for the UK left little hope for clear sight of the total solar eclipse, our friend and hobby astronomer Gurbir Singh decided to abandon the camping ground in the UK and instead take a flight to Austria. Now we had a reason to get serious about eclipse watching! We agreed to meet in Pinkafeld, I bought a tele lens for my camera and a tripod, made reservations at the high school dorm, and ordered a car from Hertz.
Fortunately their reservation system didn't check for availability. When I arrived at the counter a slightly grouchy clerk told me they had to pick up the car from another location first but they would have a car for me shortly. The side effect was that we got a free upgrade. Gurbir liked the car too and acknowledged that working at IBM seemed to pay off if we could afford the latest Volvo model. I think that he was mildly shocked when I mentioned we had rented and didn't actually own a car.
We had a great day in Pinkafeld, finding a good watching spot, (not) learning to juggle, waiting for the wonder of nature. The eclipse was fascinating; everything seemed so calm and peaceful, even the birds turned silent.
On our tour through the Baltic states, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, in 2002 something was wrong with our car's theft control, and the car would often refuse to start immediately and require a few tries. No big deal, only once when we were waiting in a long line to board a ferry and the car wouldn't start it was slightly embarrassing. Towards the end of our trip, our vehicle was clamped by the police on Neringa for stopping briefly next to the tourist office(!) Too bad I forgot to take a picture of my first and last clamping so far.
It was on our honeymoon trip to Mauritius in 2005 where we got the smallest car ever, which was fine for day trips without luggage and quite convenient on the narrow roads. We also learned the art of bargaining with car rental staff there. On the first rental, we paid the quoted price minus a “special discount”. The next day, we claimed our customer loyalty bonus and got another discount. On the third rental we appealed to the renter's slogan “We try harder” for an even better deal. The savings weren't substantial, but the bargaining was fun. Of course, for less than the cost of the car alone we could have hired a taxi driver to take us around all day long, but we preferred touring the island on our own.
Fast forward to 2008.
This morning I picked up our new car from the dealer. Our first car. From our renting experiences we pretty much knew what we wanted, a large van, removable extra seats, and reasonable fuel efficiency. We had rented a Seat Alhambra last summer for our trip to Vorarlberg and had been pleased with the vehicle. Our choice fell to the comparable Volkswagen Sharan in the BlueMotion version, which has improved fuel efficiency—6 l/100 km, or 39.2 mpg (US)—and reduced emissions.
What happened to the couple that happily lived for many years without owning a car? Getting suitable cars had become increasingly difficult, especially around public holidays. Car sizes vary, and ordering a full-size wagon doesn't guarantee you can easily accommodate all passengers and luggage; we once even had to uninvite a friend who was planning to hitch a ride with us. More than once the clerk at the rental company was trying to please me with an upgrade to a luxury car and was disappointed when I only cared about the size of the trunk. No matter how nice a Mercedes E class may be (and it has a fairly big trunk), when it comes to fitting two child seats, two strollers and a few suitcases, there's nothing like a van.
Also we will soon move to a residential area with more distant grocery stores, less frequent public transport connections, and no car sharing station nearby. While I plan to use public transport often still, the car will be convenient for occasional tours to the shopping mall, picking up construction material and furniture, and the like.
So next time someone asks me the question, I will have a different answer.
“So you don't drive?” would often be the next question. I do drive, and have accumulated thousands of kilometres on the road on business and holiday trips, with more than 70 car rentals over the years. I also signed up for car sharing a few years ago and enjoyed the convenience of having access to a wide range of vehicles within walking distance from my home.
In 1993 I rented my first car in Vienna for the relocation from the dorm to my apartment. Moving the few belongings back then took multiple trips, and we spent all day moving boxes.
Most of my initial driving experience, oddly enough, was on the left side of the road. While consolidating our European Web hosting infrastructure in North Harbour, I travelled to the UK frequently. The first time I was scared to death, but driving on the left side turned out to be less challenging than I had expected, with the notable exception of multilane roundabouts which I still find tricky. Only once on a business trip to Mulhaddart near Dublin I got onto the wrong side of the road after exiting a petrol station. Fortunately traffic was low and I realized the mistake and changed lanes when I saw a car approaching on “my” lane.
Driving in Australia in 1998 added another challenge: Driving on the left side of the road was easy, I had enough practice with that, but Australian cars also have the controls for wipers and indicators exchanged. I don't want to know how many times I switched the wipers on when making a turn, on a perfectly sunny day.
Did I mention guys care about cars? In August 1999, when the weather forecast for the UK left little hope for clear sight of the total solar eclipse, our friend and hobby astronomer Gurbir Singh decided to abandon the camping ground in the UK and instead take a flight to Austria. Now we had a reason to get serious about eclipse watching! We agreed to meet in Pinkafeld, I bought a tele lens for my camera and a tripod, made reservations at the high school dorm, and ordered a car from Hertz.
Fortunately their reservation system didn't check for availability. When I arrived at the counter a slightly grouchy clerk told me they had to pick up the car from another location first but they would have a car for me shortly. The side effect was that we got a free upgrade. Gurbir liked the car too and acknowledged that working at IBM seemed to pay off if we could afford the latest Volvo model. I think that he was mildly shocked when I mentioned we had rented and didn't actually own a car.
We had a great day in Pinkafeld, finding a good watching spot, (not) learning to juggle, waiting for the wonder of nature. The eclipse was fascinating; everything seemed so calm and peaceful, even the birds turned silent.
On our tour through the Baltic states, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, in 2002 something was wrong with our car's theft control, and the car would often refuse to start immediately and require a few tries. No big deal, only once when we were waiting in a long line to board a ferry and the car wouldn't start it was slightly embarrassing. Towards the end of our trip, our vehicle was clamped by the police on Neringa for stopping briefly next to the tourist office(!) Too bad I forgot to take a picture of my first and last clamping so far.
It was on our honeymoon trip to Mauritius in 2005 where we got the smallest car ever, which was fine for day trips without luggage and quite convenient on the narrow roads. We also learned the art of bargaining with car rental staff there. On the first rental, we paid the quoted price minus a “special discount”. The next day, we claimed our customer loyalty bonus and got another discount. On the third rental we appealed to the renter's slogan “We try harder” for an even better deal. The savings weren't substantial, but the bargaining was fun. Of course, for less than the cost of the car alone we could have hired a taxi driver to take us around all day long, but we preferred touring the island on our own.
Fast forward to 2008.
This morning I picked up our new car from the dealer. Our first car. From our renting experiences we pretty much knew what we wanted, a large van, removable extra seats, and reasonable fuel efficiency. We had rented a Seat Alhambra last summer for our trip to Vorarlberg and had been pleased with the vehicle. Our choice fell to the comparable Volkswagen Sharan in the BlueMotion version, which has improved fuel efficiency—6 l/100 km, or 39.2 mpg (US)—and reduced emissions.
What happened to the couple that happily lived for many years without owning a car? Getting suitable cars had become increasingly difficult, especially around public holidays. Car sizes vary, and ordering a full-size wagon doesn't guarantee you can easily accommodate all passengers and luggage; we once even had to uninvite a friend who was planning to hitch a ride with us. More than once the clerk at the rental company was trying to please me with an upgrade to a luxury car and was disappointed when I only cared about the size of the trunk. No matter how nice a Mercedes E class may be (and it has a fairly big trunk), when it comes to fitting two child seats, two strollers and a few suitcases, there's nothing like a van.
Also we will soon move to a residential area with more distant grocery stores, less frequent public transport connections, and no car sharing station nearby. While I plan to use public transport often still, the car will be convenient for occasional tours to the shopping mall, picking up construction material and furniture, and the like.
So next time someone asks me the question, I will have a different answer.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Google Chrome first impressions
Does the world need another Web browser? Probably not, most people are reasonably happy with Firefox (or SeaMonkey), Safari and Internet Explorer, and a wide range of less known specialized browsers.
But then of course it's hard to ignore a new browser when it's launched by Google. Matt Cutts quickly blogged about the Google Chrome announcement and conspiracy theories, and the search engine guessing feature in particular caught my interest.
www.ibm.com has supported OpenSearch for years and it's good to see a browser finally making good use of the OpenSearch description and providing access to custom search engines using keyboard navigation. With the OpenSearch definition for IBM Search enabled, typing ibm.com Green IT selects IBM Search as the preferred engine for that search:
The same can be achieved in Firefox with keywords, albeit not as easily.
Rendering of XML content including RSS news feeds leaves much to be desired. Hopefully Google will add full XML rendering support and integrate a feed reader soon.
Incognito browsing is another neat idea, it won't help much to preserve your privacy but could be useful for testing when you don't want all the test pages to clutter your browser history.
One prerequisite for me using Chrome is support by RoboForm which keeps track of all my accounts and passwords. RoboForm does not work with Safari but hopefully with Chrome being open source will support this browser. Web development tools that work with Chrome will be the other deal breaker.
In the meantime I will continue to experiment with Chrome and see what else Google's latest brainchild has to offer.
But then of course it's hard to ignore a new browser when it's launched by Google. Matt Cutts quickly blogged about the Google Chrome announcement and conspiracy theories, and the search engine guessing feature in particular caught my interest.
www.ibm.com has supported OpenSearch for years and it's good to see a browser finally making good use of the OpenSearch description and providing access to custom search engines using keyboard navigation. With the OpenSearch definition for IBM Search enabled, typing ibm.com Green IT selects IBM Search as the preferred engine for that search:
The same can be achieved in Firefox with keywords, albeit not as easily.
Rendering of XML content including RSS news feeds leaves much to be desired. Hopefully Google will add full XML rendering support and integrate a feed reader soon.
Incognito browsing is another neat idea, it won't help much to preserve your privacy but could be useful for testing when you don't want all the test pages to clutter your browser history.
One prerequisite for me using Chrome is support by RoboForm which keeps track of all my accounts and passwords. RoboForm does not work with Safari but hopefully with Chrome being open source will support this browser. Web development tools that work with Chrome will be the other deal breaker.
In the meantime I will continue to experiment with Chrome and see what else Google's latest brainchild has to offer.
Labels: technology, webdevelopment
Thursday, August 14, 2008
'undefined' is null or not an object
Tracking down a nasty bug in some JavaScript code I wrote has taken me a while. Granted, the actual script was slightly more complex and much longer, and I may be somewhat out of practice too.
This script worked perfectly fine in Firefox, in Seamonkey, even in Opera but failed miserably in Internet Explorer with the not so helpful error message 'undefined' is null or not an object:
Can you see the problem (and why this works in Mozilla)?
This script worked perfectly fine in Firefox, in Seamonkey, even in Opera but failed miserably in Internet Explorer with the not so helpful error message 'undefined' is null or not an object:
var items = [
{id: 'type', condition: !document.referrer},
{id: 'link', condition: !!document.referrer},
];
for (var i=0; i < items.length; i++) {
var item = items[i];
if(typeof(item.condition) == 'undefined' || item.condition) { // Bang!
// do something useful
}
Can you see the problem (and why this works in Mozilla)?
Labels: javascript, webdevelopment
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
House update
Almost two months ago I had mentioned that we were planning to buy a house and had made an offer. The negotiations and the paperwork took a while. We finally agreed on the deal and signed the contract earlier this month, and received the keys yesterday.
Elias was very excited as he moved around the house (he had slept through the two times we had seen the place before) and seems to like it. He quickly made friends with the two children next door, too.
The house was completely renovated not too long ago, so only minor adaptations are required. We plan to furnish the house within a month or two and move in by autumn.
Needless to say that we are very excited and happy about this and looking forward to our new home.
Elias was very excited as he moved around the house (he had slept through the two times we had seen the place before) and seems to like it. He quickly made friends with the two children next door, too.
The house was completely renovated not too long ago, so only minor adaptations are required. We plan to furnish the house within a month or two and move in by autumn.
Needless to say that we are very excited and happy about this and looking forward to our new home.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Microsoft DNS patch KB951748 secures Internet access too well
The latest Microsoft DNS patch improves security too well. The update appears to be incompatible with Check Point's hugely popular ZoneAlarm firewall and possibly other firewall products, and results in complete loss of Internet access.
After a lengthy failed attempt to diagnose a family member's “my Internet no longer works” problem over the phone I saw the BugTraq alert “Microsoft DNS patch KB951748 incompatible with Zonealarm” late at night. Sure enough, uninstalling the update nicely resolved the problem.
The other possible workaround, turning off the firewall completely, would be more risky than living with the spoofing vulnerability until this incompatibilty gets fixed.
After a lengthy failed attempt to diagnose a family member's “my Internet no longer works” problem over the phone I saw the BugTraq alert “Microsoft DNS patch KB951748 incompatible with Zonealarm” late at night. Sure enough, uninstalling the update nicely resolved the problem.
The other possible workaround, turning off the firewall completely, would be more risky than living with the spoofing vulnerability until this incompatibilty gets fixed.
Labels: technology, windows
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
What do all the numbers mean?
Who the heck is Charlie O'Donnell? I don't know, but somehow (more precisely, from Ed Costello's bookmarks on del.icio.us) I stumbled upon his blog post An experiment: Who's really out there and how do you measure influence?
When Feedburner reports 2686 readers, does that mean 2686 folks actually read the blog, or once subscribed to it and never came back? So Charlie is running an experiment to determine who's actually reading, how people find out about the blog etc. and as an aside get really popular. This is social marketing at its best, so let's pass on the word and see just how popular we can get this.
Link to the post: http://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/2008/07/an-experiment-w.html
When Feedburner reports 2686 readers, does that mean 2686 folks actually read the blog, or once subscribed to it and never came back? So Charlie is running an experiment to determine who's actually reading, how people find out about the blog etc. and as an aside get really popular. This is social marketing at its best, so let's pass on the word and see just how popular we can get this.
Link to the post: http://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/2008/07/an-experiment-w.html
Labels: metrics, technology
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Unknown error in XPath
Alright, I do have a reputation for putting Websites to the test, but they seem to break even if when I just innocently try to use them:
I guess this was the perfect greeting card for me, better then the cute dog blowing up a birthday cake which was supposed to show :-)
I guess this was the perfect greeting card for me, better then the cute dog blowing up a birthday cake which was supposed to show :-)
Friday, June 20, 2008
Happy anniversary, Marriott Rewards!
Marriott Rewards celebrates its 25th anniversary. The customer loyalty program was also recognized as the best award program by the Freddie Awards, and in my humble opinion rightly so.
High class properties around the globe, including hotels and extended stay suites, a painless online reservation system that doesn't require me to memorize lengthy membership numbers and company rate codes and loyalty to customers—my points never expired even when I didn't stay with them for a while—make Marriott Rewards a great program.
By contrast, Hilton HHonors not only forfeited my points but also canceled my HHonors account, in line with their terms of use, when I failed to accumulate points while the property I had usually stayed at was closed for renovation. (As a gesture of goodwill they did offer extra points for additional stays to compensate for the loss.)
Most customer loyalty programs are free. One notable exception is the Accor Favorite Guest program, which offers reductions on standard rates, reservation priority, gift vouchers and partner advantages like other programs do, “for only 130 euros per year”.
The quality of the customer loyalty programs may not be the most important factor when choosing accommodation, but a good program certainly helps with the decision where to stay.
High class properties around the globe, including hotels and extended stay suites, a painless online reservation system that doesn't require me to memorize lengthy membership numbers and company rate codes and loyalty to customers—my points never expired even when I didn't stay with them for a while—make Marriott Rewards a great program.
By contrast, Hilton HHonors not only forfeited my points but also canceled my HHonors account, in line with their terms of use, when I failed to accumulate points while the property I had usually stayed at was closed for renovation. (As a gesture of goodwill they did offer extra points for additional stays to compensate for the loss.)
Most customer loyalty programs are free. One notable exception is the Accor Favorite Guest program, which offers reductions on standard rates, reservation priority, gift vouchers and partner advantages like other programs do, “for only 130 euros per year”.
The quality of the customer loyalty programs may not be the most important factor when choosing accommodation, but a good program certainly helps with the decision where to stay.
Firefox 3
The Mozilla project released Firefox 3 on June 17 with an attempt to set the world record in software downloads per day.
While I consider raw traffic numbers only mildly useful and the hunt for traffic records somewhat old-fashioned (when IBM did run the Olympics Websites we would report record traffic numbers, and with the technology available back then the numbers were impressive, but that was in the 1990ies) I gladly did my part to set the world record. I mean, how often do you get a chance to be part of a world record, even if your contribution is only 1/8290545.
I even installed Firefox 3 :-) and for most parts have been satisfied with the result. The only complaint I have is that the installation overwrote the previously installed Firefox 2 despite placing the new version in a different directory, and sure enough some extensions were considered incompatible and therefore disabled.
Multiple Internet Explorer versions can coexist on the same machine thanks to the wonderful Multiple IE installer, can we please get an easy and automated way to run multiple versions of Firefox without fiddling with profiles?
While I consider raw traffic numbers only mildly useful and the hunt for traffic records somewhat old-fashioned (when IBM did run the Olympics Websites we would report record traffic numbers, and with the technology available back then the numbers were impressive, but that was in the 1990ies) I gladly did my part to set the world record. I mean, how often do you get a chance to be part of a world record, even if your contribution is only 1/8290545.
I even installed Firefox 3 :-) and for most parts have been satisfied with the result. The only complaint I have is that the installation overwrote the previously installed Firefox 2 despite placing the new version in a different directory, and sure enough some extensions were considered incompatible and therefore disabled.
Multiple Internet Explorer versions can coexist on the same machine thanks to the wonderful Multiple IE installer, can we please get an easy and automated way to run multiple versions of Firefox without fiddling with profiles?
Labels: technology, webdevelopment, windows
At home with two boys
It is almost a week now that the whole family has been back home, and we are slowly getting into a routine of handling two boys.
After a few days at the AKH Wien, Daniel was transfered back to the birth clinic on Thursday, and we returned home on the weekend.
Daniel is doing great; he mostly sleeps through the day and becomes more demanding at night (so please don't ask if we get much sleep!)
We greatly appreciate all the help we received from friends and family, a big thank you to Helga and Thomas who took care of Elias at 5 a.m. as we went to the clinic, Simone and Michael for having Elias over the weekend and my in-laws for looking after Elias while we were away.
Thanks also for all the kind wishes and greeting cards!
After a few days at the AKH Wien, Daniel was transfered back to the birth clinic on Thursday, and we returned home on the weekend.
Daniel is doing great; he mostly sleeps through the day and becomes more demanding at night (so please don't ask if we get much sleep!)
We greatly appreciate all the help we received from friends and family, a big thank you to Helga and Thomas who took care of Elias at 5 a.m. as we went to the clinic, Simone and Michael for having Elias over the weekend and my in-laws for looking after Elias while we were away.
Thanks also for all the kind wishes and greeting cards!
Monday, June 9, 2008
Daniel Nikolas is here
Our hearts are full of love for Daniel Nikolas. Our boy arrived on Saturday, June 7 2008 at 5:26 a.m., slightly earlier than expected.
Little Daniel is currently at the AKH Wien for medical observation. The whole family is doing well, and Elias is excited about the arrival of "baby Daniel, baby Daniel, baby Daniel". More later, now back to the hospital.
Friday, June 6, 2008
EURO 2008 in Austria and Switzerland about to start
The EURO 2008 will start tomorrow night with the opening matches in Basel and Geneva, followed by matches in Vienna and Klagenfurt on Sunday, not that I am interested in soccer or suddenly became overly patriotic (which probably wouldn't be a good idea based on what I read about our soccer team :-))
The only reason I care really is that our apartments are close to one of the venues, the Ernst Happel stadium, and we expect to see and hear crowds of fans passing by.
One of the positive side effects of the event was an improvement to the already excellent public transport system. The U2 metro line was extended to the stadium and will be extended further in the coming years. The upcoming event certainly added a little pressure to complete the extension on time.
The most notable change, however, has been the plethora of cars decorated with national flags, mostly Austrian, some foreign, and a few mixed. Signs to the stadium and the fan zone in the city center have popped up everywhere over the last few days, all kinds of merchandise are offered (anyone care for a football shaped loaf of EURO 2008 bread?), additional waste bins have been installed, and even the sausage stand around the corner looks much more colorful and inviting than usual.
We had actually planned to leave Vienna for the duration of the event and go on vacation but had to change our plans, more on that later. Let's hope for some exciting matches to please the fans and most importantly for a peaceful event.
To probe further: Official UEFA EURO 2008 Website
The only reason I care really is that our apartments are close to one of the venues, the Ernst Happel stadium, and we expect to see and hear crowds of fans passing by.
One of the positive side effects of the event was an improvement to the already excellent public transport system. The U2 metro line was extended to the stadium and will be extended further in the coming years. The upcoming event certainly added a little pressure to complete the extension on time.
The most notable change, however, has been the plethora of cars decorated with national flags, mostly Austrian, some foreign, and a few mixed. Signs to the stadium and the fan zone in the city center have popped up everywhere over the last few days, all kinds of merchandise are offered (anyone care for a football shaped loaf of EURO 2008 bread?), additional waste bins have been installed, and even the sausage stand around the corner looks much more colorful and inviting than usual.
We had actually planned to leave Vienna for the duration of the event and go on vacation but had to change our plans, more on that later. Let's hope for some exciting matches to please the fans and most importantly for a peaceful event.
To probe further: Official UEFA EURO 2008 Website
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Buying a house
After many years of searching, we may have finally found a new home. It is a detached house in residential area of the 13th district of Vienna, not as close to the city as we currently live but still acceptable. Supermarkets, a playground and tram and bus stops are all within easy walking distance, too.
We did view the house twice and made an offer last week. The owner has accepted in principle, so now we need to work out the contract details. We are very excited about this and will post details and pictures as soon as we close the deal.
We did view the house twice and made an offer last week. The owner has accepted in principle, so now we need to work out the contract details. We are very excited about this and will post details and pictures as soon as we close the deal.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
PowerPoint: No comma, please
A colleague recently showed me a strange problem with Microsoft Office: When inserting a hyperlink in a PowerPoint presentation, one of the available options is linking to another page in the same document:
This seemed to work nicely for most slides but not for the particular slide he was trying to link to, and PowerPoint would not even show a preview in the hyperlink dialog box:
The programmer in me quickly scanned through the slide looking for “suspicious” elements, the only thing that caught my attention though was an innocent looking comma.
Turns out the comma is indeed the culprit, and the bug is well-documented in the Microsoft knowledge base: The hyperlink to a slide does not work when a comma is contained in the title of a slide presentation in PowerPoint.
Removing the comma, placing the hyperlink and then adding the comma back does seem to do the trick. Or, just don't use a comma.
This seemed to work nicely for most slides but not for the particular slide he was trying to link to, and PowerPoint would not even show a preview in the hyperlink dialog box:
The programmer in me quickly scanned through the slide looking for “suspicious” elements, the only thing that caught my attention though was an innocent looking comma.
Turns out the comma is indeed the culprit, and the bug is well-documented in the Microsoft knowledge base: The hyperlink to a slide does not work when a comma is contained in the title of a slide presentation in PowerPoint.
Removing the comma, placing the hyperlink and then adding the comma back does seem to do the trick. Or, just don't use a comma.
Labels: technology, windows
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Usability: When forward goes backward
The IEEE Computer Society recently invited members to participate in a survey. Admittedly, since taking on my current job I have developed a strange desire for taking surveys to see what others are doing and what we could learn from them.
Besides being too long (read: I stopped answering the survey once I figured this would take me longer than I was willing to click through question after question) this particular survey had an interesting usability problem: For some reason, the forward link to move to the next question is on the left, whereas the backward link is on the right:
The designer may have considered reading order or attempted to make the site more accessible by putting the more frequently used option first, which would be commendable, but the result is a poor navigation scheme. I would be curious to know how many respondents get frustrated about this and abandon the survey.
Besides being too long (read: I stopped answering the survey once I figured this would take me longer than I was willing to click through question after question) this particular survey had an interesting usability problem: For some reason, the forward link to move to the next question is on the left, whereas the backward link is on the right:
The designer may have considered reading order or attempted to make the site more accessible by putting the more frequently used option first, which would be commendable, but the result is a poor navigation scheme. I would be curious to know how many respondents get frustrated about this and abandon the survey.
Labels: usability
Friday, April 18, 2008
VPS, PDC, DVB, EPG—Why can VCRs not just work?
Video cassette recorders (VCR) have a long-standing reputation for being difficult to use (searching for VCR and usability returns some 90,000 results on Google).
In the early days setting the timer right may have been challenging, and too often the program would change or fall behind and the tape would contain a different program, or a cut off film. Then came the Video Programming System (VPS) and ShowView, which made programming VCRs easy and greatly increased the likelihood of recording the desired program, and later Programme Delivery Control (PDC).
Everything seemed fine until last year when a decision was made to discontinue analog TV broadcasting in Austria and switching to Digial Video Broadcasting (DVB-T). The television system had maintained backwards compatibility with the great many enhancements over the years, from black-and-white to color, from mono to stereo and dual channel audio. This time, however, new equipment would be needed in the form of DVB-T receivers, and of course that means one for each TV set and recorder.
Our first attempt with a twin receiver bought on EBay was a dismal failure. The device seemed malfunctioning and vendor support was non-existent (more precisely, we were unable to locate the vendor, which seemed to have gone out of business). We happily lived for a few weeks without television.
Eventually we got a nice Sony HXD-870 HD/DVD recorder with built-in DVB-T tuner and at first were quite happy. Setting up the device was easy (except for the fact it did not recognize Austria as a country) and we were back to receiving and recording TV programs.
Although the new recorder supports VPS/PDC it does so only from analog sources, which are no longer available, but not from the digital signal despite the fact that the VPS signal is sent digitally as well. The new Electronic Program Guide (EPG) is convenient, but there is no way to tell the recorder to start when the program starts. Instead you can manually tweak the time range to increase the likelihood of recording the full program.
If that wasn't bad enough already, when we switched to daylight savings time, or summer time as it's called here, the program guide appeared to be off by one hour and so were all recordings. There is a timezone menu but toggling daylight savings time on and off did not seem to make any difference.
The Sony support Website was less than helpful. The only firmware upgrade was for the UK version of the recorder and fixed an unrelated problem that we hadn't encountered.
Fortunately a kind soul owning the same device came to rescue and shared instructions how to overcome this bug by switching to a different time zone and then rebooting the recorder. We have since been running on Helsinki time and had mixed success in recording programs.
With all the advances in technology and three-letter acronym features, we are essentially back to the functionality in the early days of video recording, manually setting times and hoping for the program to stay on schedule.
Why can VCRs not just work?
In the early days setting the timer right may have been challenging, and too often the program would change or fall behind and the tape would contain a different program, or a cut off film. Then came the Video Programming System (VPS) and ShowView, which made programming VCRs easy and greatly increased the likelihood of recording the desired program, and later Programme Delivery Control (PDC).
Everything seemed fine until last year when a decision was made to discontinue analog TV broadcasting in Austria and switching to Digial Video Broadcasting (DVB-T). The television system had maintained backwards compatibility with the great many enhancements over the years, from black-and-white to color, from mono to stereo and dual channel audio. This time, however, new equipment would be needed in the form of DVB-T receivers, and of course that means one for each TV set and recorder.
Our first attempt with a twin receiver bought on EBay was a dismal failure. The device seemed malfunctioning and vendor support was non-existent (more precisely, we were unable to locate the vendor, which seemed to have gone out of business). We happily lived for a few weeks without television.
Eventually we got a nice Sony HXD-870 HD/DVD recorder with built-in DVB-T tuner and at first were quite happy. Setting up the device was easy (except for the fact it did not recognize Austria as a country) and we were back to receiving and recording TV programs.
Although the new recorder supports VPS/PDC it does so only from analog sources, which are no longer available, but not from the digital signal despite the fact that the VPS signal is sent digitally as well. The new Electronic Program Guide (EPG) is convenient, but there is no way to tell the recorder to start when the program starts. Instead you can manually tweak the time range to increase the likelihood of recording the full program.
If that wasn't bad enough already, when we switched to daylight savings time, or summer time as it's called here, the program guide appeared to be off by one hour and so were all recordings. There is a timezone menu but toggling daylight savings time on and off did not seem to make any difference.
The Sony support Website was less than helpful. The only firmware upgrade was for the UK version of the recorder and fixed an unrelated problem that we hadn't encountered.
Fortunately a kind soul owning the same device came to rescue and shared instructions how to overcome this bug by switching to a different time zone and then rebooting the recorder. We have since been running on Helsinki time and had mixed success in recording programs.
With all the advances in technology and three-letter acronym features, we are essentially back to the functionality in the early days of video recording, manually setting times and hoping for the program to stay on schedule.
Why can VCRs not just work?
Labels: technology, usability
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Back from vacation
We just returned from a few relaxing days at Reiter's Burgenlandresort in Bad Tatzmannsdorf.
This is the second time we stayed at this hotel, and we had a great time again. Elias enjoyed the many opportunities for playing, sliding and swimming, and the hotel even offered introductory Tai Chi lessons (as I found out afterwards, a different Tai Chi style from the one we learn, which would explain why moves by the same names would feel different).
This is the second time we stayed at this hotel, and we had a great time again. Elias enjoyed the many opportunities for playing, sliding and swimming, and the hotel even offered introductory Tai Chi lessons (as I found out afterwards, a different Tai Chi style from the one we learn, which would explain why moves by the same names would feel different).
Labels: personal
Monday, March 24, 2008
Goodbye, Indy!
Time has come to say Goodbye to my Silicon Graphics Indy workstation. It has been a difficult relationship for years, and I finally offered my Indy on EBay.
Introduced in 1993, the Indy for a long time was the workstation to have, powerful and good looking, too. When EuNet, PING and Computerwelt offered a fully equipped Indy workstation as the reward for the best Austrian Website, my good friend Peter Wansch and I submitted The WWW Entertainment Package, a collection of classic board games ported to the Web from the like-named OS/2 games package that Peter had developed.
I had just learned the basics of writing CGI scripts and managed to get four games up and running. Although playing games over the Web was kind of slow in the pre-JavaScript, pre-AJAX era the gaming site was very well received and generated both lots of traffic and nice feedback from gamers around the world, too. We asked people to register for free access, we made it easy for them to vote and we spent a considerable amount of time answering e-mails and encouraging games to vote.
To make a long story short, we won. In hindsight, we had a pretty good Website that was actively used and would continue for years, but some other submissions were pretty slick, too. I guess we didn't just win for having the best product, we won because of good marketing.
The news reached me while participating at the WWW3 Conference in Darmstadt and while I had been hoping for this when it happened I could hardly believe it—we did it!
What followed then was a huge disappointment. We learned that we would not receive the machine at the official ceremony at Café Stein but only a few weeks later, and what's worse in a different configuration: The 5 GB harddisk that was originally advertised may seem small today but would have been perfectly adequate back then, what we got instead was a machine with a much smaller harddisk, barely sufficient to hold the base operating system and multimedia tools, and no CD-ROM drive to install software from.
Now the Indy came with great connectivity already, including Ethernet and ISDN ports, only my home office had neither and upgrading the machine with more memory, a larger harddisk and a CD-ROM drive (from Silicon Graphics only, others would not boot!) was too expensive an option. We could have sold the Indy, probably for a good price. Seriously though, if you got an Indy, would you sell it? (Don't answer, please.)
So for many years this marvel of technology has been putting on dust and remained unused. When I booted the Indy today it started up nicely, only issuing one warning message: “WARNING: clock gained 1856 days”
The auction has a few more days to go and already has six bids. It is about time that someone starts using this machine, and time for me to say Goodbye. It has been a difficult relationship, and yet I will miss this electric-blue colored pizza box.
PS. At the age of fifteen the Indy is still a modern computer. For some really old computers, have a look at the Old Computers online museum.
Introduced in 1993, the Indy for a long time was the workstation to have, powerful and good looking, too. When EuNet, PING and Computerwelt offered a fully equipped Indy workstation as the reward for the best Austrian Website, my good friend Peter Wansch and I submitted The WWW Entertainment Package, a collection of classic board games ported to the Web from the like-named OS/2 games package that Peter had developed.
I had just learned the basics of writing CGI scripts and managed to get four games up and running. Although playing games over the Web was kind of slow in the pre-JavaScript, pre-AJAX era the gaming site was very well received and generated both lots of traffic and nice feedback from gamers around the world, too. We asked people to register for free access, we made it easy for them to vote and we spent a considerable amount of time answering e-mails and encouraging games to vote.
To make a long story short, we won. In hindsight, we had a pretty good Website that was actively used and would continue for years, but some other submissions were pretty slick, too. I guess we didn't just win for having the best product, we won because of good marketing.
The news reached me while participating at the WWW3 Conference in Darmstadt and while I had been hoping for this when it happened I could hardly believe it—we did it!
What followed then was a huge disappointment. We learned that we would not receive the machine at the official ceremony at Café Stein but only a few weeks later, and what's worse in a different configuration: The 5 GB harddisk that was originally advertised may seem small today but would have been perfectly adequate back then, what we got instead was a machine with a much smaller harddisk, barely sufficient to hold the base operating system and multimedia tools, and no CD-ROM drive to install software from.
Filesystem Type kbytes use avail %use Mounted on
/dev/root efs 439704 408189 31515 93% /
Now the Indy came with great connectivity already, including Ethernet and ISDN ports, only my home office had neither and upgrading the machine with more memory, a larger harddisk and a CD-ROM drive (from Silicon Graphics only, others would not boot!) was too expensive an option. We could have sold the Indy, probably for a good price. Seriously though, if you got an Indy, would you sell it? (Don't answer, please.)
So for many years this marvel of technology has been putting on dust and remained unused. When I booted the Indy today it started up nicely, only issuing one warning message: “WARNING: clock gained 1856 days”
The auction has a few more days to go and already has six bids. It is about time that someone starts using this machine, and time for me to say Goodbye. It has been a difficult relationship, and yet I will miss this electric-blue colored pizza box.
PS. At the age of fifteen the Indy is still a modern computer. For some really old computers, have a look at the Old Computers online museum.
Labels: personal, technology
Let it snow, let it snow, let is snow
Happy Easter, or whatever you celebrated over the last few days. As reported by Time Magazine Good Friday this year happened to coincide with many holidays of other religions: Purim, Narouz, Eid Milad an Nabi, Small Holi and Magha Puja.
We spent the Holy Week in Salzburg with Andrea's parents and had hoped for some nice warm spring days to go for walks or just hang around on the terrace—not so. With a forecast for cold weather and even snow over the weekend, we saw the traditional Sunday Easter egg hunt at risk and decided to cheat just a little, letting the Easter bunny hide his eggs on Saturday already. Elias was quite happy about this and managed to quickly spot and collect all baskets with eggs, chocolates and yet another picture book.
Moving the egg hunt turned out to be a smart choice. Sunday started out pretty nice as we went to church but then it would snow heavily for hours. Despite the car rental agency giving us an upgrade to a 4 wheel drive we even extended our stay at my in-law's place by another night and only headed back to Vienna today.
Now see what our car looked like in the morning! We had a pleasant drive though, with surprisingly light traffic on the highway.
Labels: personal
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Safely landed
I am in Germany this week for training on e-procurement and business process modeling.
Three colleagues from Bratislava and I made it to the IBM facility in Herrenberg, which wouldn't be noteworthy except that the newspapers had detailed reports about an emergency landing of a Dash 8-Q400 at Vienna airport yesterday, and sure enough our plane was a Dash 8-Q400 too. The board magazine highlighted the benefits of the aircraft, such as lower fuel consumption than jets at relatively high speeds, the ability to take off and land on short runways, propellers which can be repositioned for excellent climb and cruise performance, and noise and vibration reduction for the cabin.
I didn't feel particularly unsafe even after reading the morning news as the many problems reported with this type of aircraft have been mostly related to the landing gear and there haven't been any serious accidents. Sure enough our flight went smoothly and we safely landed in Stuttgart.
Three colleagues from Bratislava and I made it to the IBM facility in Herrenberg, which wouldn't be noteworthy except that the newspapers had detailed reports about an emergency landing of a Dash 8-Q400 at Vienna airport yesterday, and sure enough our plane was a Dash 8-Q400 too. The board magazine highlighted the benefits of the aircraft, such as lower fuel consumption than jets at relatively high speeds, the ability to take off and land on short runways, propellers which can be repositioned for excellent climb and cruise performance, and noise and vibration reduction for the cabin.
I didn't feel particularly unsafe even after reading the morning news as the many problems reported with this type of aircraft have been mostly related to the landing gear and there haven't been any serious accidents. Sure enough our flight went smoothly and we safely landed in Stuttgart.
Labels: travel
Monday, January 21, 2008
No wonder that this world blows itself up
While standing in line at the supermarket today, I overheard a lively discussion between the cashier and a customer who complained about not getting the discount price advertised on the rack.
This supermarket chain runs a fairly elaborate customer loyalty program, with some discounts applying only to members of the program. There used to be some problems in the past with keeping the signs and the computer systems in sync but not this time. There was no technical problem here, just an oversight on the customer's part.
The customer eventually agreed that the discount wasn't applicable, since she was not and did not want to join the customer loyalty program, and decided to return the tomatoes, mumbling something along the lines of "Everything is getting so much more complicated, no wonder that this world blows itself up."
Now I wouldn't consider the customer loyalty program a serious threat to the world, and actually enjoy the benefits offered, although it means knowingly giving up some privacy in exchange for discounts. (I will gladly post my grocery shopping list here too if someone is interested :-))
Scanner cash registers and storing membership information electronically on the ATM card are certainly vast improvements in usability and convenience over the old manual cash registers (I do remember checking my weekly grocery bill for errors back when I was a student, a rather slow process given the long list of just prices, but it was worth the effort more than once) and collecting discount coupons.
Those of us working in a technology industry should remember though that not everyone will want to or have the ability to adopt new technologies, and those who opt out must not be left behind.
Otherwise, this world will blow itself up ...
This supermarket chain runs a fairly elaborate customer loyalty program, with some discounts applying only to members of the program. There used to be some problems in the past with keeping the signs and the computer systems in sync but not this time. There was no technical problem here, just an oversight on the customer's part.
The customer eventually agreed that the discount wasn't applicable, since she was not and did not want to join the customer loyalty program, and decided to return the tomatoes, mumbling something along the lines of "Everything is getting so much more complicated, no wonder that this world blows itself up."
Now I wouldn't consider the customer loyalty program a serious threat to the world, and actually enjoy the benefits offered, although it means knowingly giving up some privacy in exchange for discounts. (I will gladly post my grocery shopping list here too if someone is interested :-))
Scanner cash registers and storing membership information electronically on the ATM card are certainly vast improvements in usability and convenience over the old manual cash registers (I do remember checking my weekly grocery bill for errors back when I was a student, a rather slow process given the long list of just prices, but it was worth the effort more than once) and collecting discount coupons.
Those of us working in a technology industry should remember though that not everyone will want to or have the ability to adopt new technologies, and those who opt out must not be left behind.
Otherwise, this world will blow itself up ...
Labels: technology, usability
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Learning Tai Chi
The well-being team at IBM offers a variety of courses to keep everyone fit and health.
Yesterday morning (at 8 a.m., I am not exactly a morning person so this was the hard part) I had my first Tai Chi lesson. Our teacher, Chung Hsien Jung, has won national and international Tai Chi championships, and more importantly creates a friendly and inviting atmosphere. Watching him perform a sequence of postures and moves is simply impressive and a good motivation to spend an hour or two every week to practice Tai Chi myself (not that I expect to get anywhere close to this level, but that's beside the point).
Tai Chi is based on the theory of the Taoism and the principle of the contrasts of Yin and Yang. The sequences of moves are used for supporting healthiness, relaxation and physical balance. We learn the Chen Style (陳氏), the oldest form of Tai Chi characterized by the combination of slow, supple and fast, powerful movements. To some extent the concepts and the moves reminded me of Jujitsu, which I had practiced many years ago.
The first lesson was fun, so I will be back again next week!
Yesterday morning (at 8 a.m., I am not exactly a morning person so this was the hard part) I had my first Tai Chi lesson. Our teacher, Chung Hsien Jung, has won national and international Tai Chi championships, and more importantly creates a friendly and inviting atmosphere. Watching him perform a sequence of postures and moves is simply impressive and a good motivation to spend an hour or two every week to practice Tai Chi myself (not that I expect to get anywhere close to this level, but that's beside the point).
Tai Chi is based on the theory of the Taoism and the principle of the contrasts of Yin and Yang. The sequences of moves are used for supporting healthiness, relaxation and physical balance. We learn the Chen Style (陳氏), the oldest form of Tai Chi characterized by the combination of slow, supple and fast, powerful movements. To some extent the concepts and the moves reminded me of Jujitsu, which I had practiced many years ago.
The first lesson was fun, so I will be back again next week!
Labels: personal
localhost considered harmful
Tavis Ormandy has posted a potential security exposure with DNS entries for "localhost" in zone files on Bugtraq. While the impact of this exposure seems minimal, I would rather err on the side of caution, and this should be fairly easy to fix.
"localhost" DNS records in a domain should not be confused with the ".localhost" TLD defined in RFC 2606 Reserved Top Level DNS Names, and should be configured on nameservers. I haven't been able to find a requirement in the RFCs to have a "localhost" entry in a domain, nor can I think of a compelling reason for keeping the entry as long as nameservers for a domain are properly configured to handle queries for "localhost.".
RFC 1912 Common DNS Errors explains how to configure the localhost and 0.0.127.in-addr.arpa zones:
and recommends to not define "localhost" with the domain name appended.
Thoughts on removing "localhost" from zones, anyone?
"localhost" DNS records in a domain should not be confused with the ".localhost" TLD defined in RFC 2606 Reserved Top Level DNS Names, and should be configured on nameservers. I haven't been able to find a requirement in the RFCs to have a "localhost" entry in a domain, nor can I think of a compelling reason for keeping the entry as long as nameservers for a domain are properly configured to handle queries for "localhost.".
RFC 1912 Common DNS Errors explains how to configure the localhost and 0.0.127.in-addr.arpa zones:
The "localhost" address is a "special" address which always refers to
the local host. It should contain the following line:
localhost. IN A 127.0.0.1
The "127.0" file should contain the line:
1 PTR localhost.
and recommends to not define "localhost" with the domain name appended.
Thoughts on removing "localhost" from zones, anyone?
Labels: security, technology
Monday, January 14, 2008
Blogger
Choosing a hosted service for blogging was a matter of a few minutes, and it didn't involve working through feature lists and comparison charts.
I started playing with Blogger and within minutes had a basic template and publishing to my Web server working. The template language looked sufficiently flexible, and the backing by search giant Google made this an attractive choice too.
WordPress would have been next on my review list. The hosted options are probably comparable, with WordPress offering some advanced features for a fee. Anita Campbell has published a great article about moving a blog from Blogger to WordPress, citing a number of good reasons why the latter is a much better option, although Blogger was “simple to set up and use”. Good enough for me.
One minor limitation I noticed is that Blogger only creates a single XML feed but no category feeds, which can be created easily using the rich Blogger data API.
The only complaint I have about Blogger is the incorrect rendering of ampersand and angle quotes:
They are represented correctly as entities in the XML feed, but rendered as plain characters in the HTML version. This looks like a bug that should be easy enough to fix.
I started playing with Blogger and within minutes had a basic template and publishing to my Web server working. The template language looked sufficiently flexible, and the backing by search giant Google made this an attractive choice too.
WordPress would have been next on my review list. The hosted options are probably comparable, with WordPress offering some advanced features for a fee. Anita Campbell has published a great article about moving a blog from Blogger to WordPress, citing a number of good reasons why the latter is a much better option, although Blogger was “simple to set up and use”. Good enough for me.
One minor limitation I noticed is that Blogger only creates a single XML feed but no category feeds, which can be created easily using the rich Blogger data API.
The only complaint I have about Blogger is the incorrect rendering of ampersand and angle quotes:
- Ampersand: &
- Angle bracket open: <
- Angle bracket close: >
They are represented correctly as entities in the XML feed, but rendered as plain characters in the HTML version. This looks like a bug that should be easy enough to fix.
Labels: google, technology
Sunday, January 13, 2008
IG-L
When we spent our summer vacation in Sicily in 2004, I often wondered why some road signs in Sicily listed detailed information about the relevant laws and even the specific section and paragraph of the act.
Since 2006, the immission control act Immissionsschutzgesetz-Luft (IG-L) has been enacted in Austria, which allows authorities to impose certain restrictions on production facilities, traffic, and outdoor combustion to reduce immissions when pollution thresholds are exceeded.
The act requires that immission control related speed limit must be signposted with reference to the act. On previous trips between Vienna and Salzburg I had complained about the unnecessary distraction by additional signs; after all I don't usually care why a speed limit has been put in place, although there is evidence that drivers are more likely to adhere to environmentally motivated speed limits (source: Luftreinhalteplan Stuttgart), and lower speeds generally mean lower emissions (source: Land Tirol: Tempo 100).
One set of road signs around Linz looks especially bizarre: a combination of lifting the 100 km/h speed limit and introducing a 100 km/h speed limit for immission control, and vice versa in the opposite direction.
Recently some of the roadsigns were replaced with large over-the-road displays which allow for dynamic speed limits depending on weather conditions, traffic flow and pollution levels, which is goodness. I wonder though how many drivers will have a clue what the big white letters IG-L next to the speed limit signs mean ...
Since 2006, the immission control act Immissionsschutzgesetz-Luft (IG-L) has been enacted in Austria, which allows authorities to impose certain restrictions on production facilities, traffic, and outdoor combustion to reduce immissions when pollution thresholds are exceeded.
The act requires that immission control related speed limit must be signposted with reference to the act. On previous trips between Vienna and Salzburg I had complained about the unnecessary distraction by additional signs; after all I don't usually care why a speed limit has been put in place, although there is evidence that drivers are more likely to adhere to environmentally motivated speed limits (source: Luftreinhalteplan Stuttgart), and lower speeds generally mean lower emissions (source: Land Tirol: Tempo 100).
One set of road signs around Linz looks especially bizarre: a combination of lifting the 100 km/h speed limit and introducing a 100 km/h speed limit for immission control, and vice versa in the opposite direction.
Recently some of the roadsigns were replaced with large over-the-road displays which allow for dynamic speed limits depending on weather conditions, traffic flow and pollution levels, which is goodness. I wonder though how many drivers will have a clue what the big white letters IG-L next to the speed limit signs mean ...
Labels: technology, travel
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Happy New Year 2008
We wish you all a happy, healthy and prosperous new year 2008!
We spent new year's eve with Andrea's parents and friends in Salzburg. The weather was foggy so the fireworks weren't that impressive this year, and we did forgo the midnight waltz on the icy terrace as well.
Today was another lazy day, we listened to the New Year's Concert 2008 under Georges Prêtre while we had breakfast, and Elias became inspired to dance to the music after seeing ballet dancers on TV, which was very, very cute.
We did go for a walk around Aigen in the afternoon and Elias had a chance to see real cows in a stable nearby, he looked quite impressed. This was our last vacation day in Salzburg; tomorrow afternoon we will return to Vienna.
We spent new year's eve with Andrea's parents and friends in Salzburg. The weather was foggy so the fireworks weren't that impressive this year, and we did forgo the midnight waltz on the icy terrace as well.
Today was another lazy day, we listened to the New Year's Concert 2008 under Georges Prêtre while we had breakfast, and Elias became inspired to dance to the music after seeing ballet dancers on TV, which was very, very cute.
We did go for a walk around Aigen in the afternoon and Elias had a chance to see real cows in a stable nearby, he looked quite impressed. This was our last vacation day in Salzburg; tomorrow afternoon we will return to Vienna.
Labels: personal
Monday, December 24, 2007
Season's Greetings
Wishing everyone Merry Christmas, Frohe Weihnachten, Joyeux Noël, Feliz Navidad, Bon Nadal, Glædelig Jul, Prettig Kerstfeest, Hyvaa joulua, Gledelig Jul, Sretan Bozic, Buone Feste Natalizie and wonderful holidays!
Labels: personal
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
I, Blogger
So I have finally started my blog. While the blogosphere continues to grow at an amazing speed, some bloggers of the early days have already switched back to a static homepage they update every now and then, or gone completely offline.
Why now? No particular reason really. I have been playing with the idea of creating a blog and have written up a few blog posts locally without publishing them, just to see how I liked it and what I would have to say. (A few of those early secret blog posts still sit on my hard disk and will eventually show up here retroactively.)
Looking back, I first maintained plogs (for “paper logs”) some 20 years ago when Andrea and I were traveling around in Europe by train. Each of us would write down the experiences of the day, where we went, what we liked and disliked, just about anything that came to mind, in a small booklet. When we were both done with writing, we would read each other's notes, which was great fun.
The intended readership of these plogs was one person. The esteemed readership of this blog may be about the same size currently. By coincidence, Bernhard just started blogging too, so that makes us two late adopters and ensures each of us has at least one reader. Onward.
Next, there was a technology decision to be made: install blogging software or use a hosted service. Ed Costello had shared his experience with getting Movable Type working on pair Networks servers, reading through the steps and given that I wasn't planning to spend more than an hour or two in getting things running I chose to go with a hosted service, Blogger, and have been pretty pleased with it.
Why now? No particular reason really. I have been playing with the idea of creating a blog and have written up a few blog posts locally without publishing them, just to see how I liked it and what I would have to say. (A few of those early secret blog posts still sit on my hard disk and will eventually show up here retroactively.)
Looking back, I first maintained plogs (for “paper logs”) some 20 years ago when Andrea and I were traveling around in Europe by train. Each of us would write down the experiences of the day, where we went, what we liked and disliked, just about anything that came to mind, in a small booklet. When we were both done with writing, we would read each other's notes, which was great fun.
The intended readership of these plogs was one person. The esteemed readership of this blog may be about the same size currently. By coincidence, Bernhard just started blogging too, so that makes us two late adopters and ensures each of us has at least one reader. Onward.
Next, there was a technology decision to be made: install blogging software or use a hosted service. Ed Costello had shared his experience with getting Movable Type working on pair Networks servers, reading through the steps and given that I wasn't planning to spend more than an hour or two in getting things running I chose to go with a hosted service, Blogger, and have been pretty pleased with it.
Labels: personal, technology
Thursday, December 13, 2007
jQuery and Greasemonkey
Now that Fiddler stopped working for me I used Greasemonkey to modify pages on the fly to test some new functionality.
It took me a while to figure out why a global variable which one of the dynamically added scripts created was not visible to my Greasemonkey script. Of course the answer was right there in the Greasemonkey documentation: "As of Greasemonkey 0.6.4, however, user scripts now have their own JavaScript context and execute completely separately from the content document." Fortunately, the document window is also accessible as unsafeWindow, and sure enough that worked.
PS. Michael Baierl pointed out a sample Greasemonkey script to load jQuery before executing functions that depend on jQuery—nice!
It took me a while to figure out why a global variable which one of the dynamically added scripts created was not visible to my Greasemonkey script. Of course the answer was right there in the Greasemonkey documentation: "As of Greasemonkey 0.6.4, however, user scripts now have their own JavaScript context and execute completely separately from the content document." Fortunately, the document window is also accessible as unsafeWindow, and sure enough that worked.
PS. Michael Baierl pointed out a sample Greasemonkey script to load jQuery before executing functions that depend on jQuery—nice!
Labels: javascript, webdevelopment
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Taking Sunday off
Andrea and I took Sunday off this week. Elias stayed with his grandparents at my sister-in-law's place, the first time ever without one of us around at night, and it worked out nicely.
We missed him on the way home already, but waking up at 10:30 a.m. without the usual "Mama, Papa, Frühstück, aussa, rasch" was very enjoyable for a change. The weather wasn't great so we stayed home and spent the day messing around.
Elias had a good time and didn't seem to miss us too much.
We missed him on the way home already, but waking up at 10:30 a.m. without the usual "Mama, Papa, Frühstück, aussa, rasch" was very enjoyable for a change. The weather wasn't great so we stayed home and spent the day messing around.
Elias had a good time and didn't seem to miss us too much.
Labels: personal
Friday, December 7, 2007
The 4-Hour Workweek
An interview "The Business of Life" first triggered my interest in The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferris.
Of course even the author will readily admit that one should "not to take the four hours too literally" and it certainly makes a catchier title than "Save an hour per week for things you like", but then anything that means getting more done with less effort and having more time left for the things you really enjoy is good, right?
Ferris may get some basic facts wrong, as readers noted on amazon.com, but he certainly gets his marketing right. His book must have been featured in about every TV show and newspaper by now, judging from the number of comments and the news coverage since. Some claim this book changed their lives while others feel tricked by the simple, well-known recipes -- not everyone is going to make a living from selling nutritional supplements.
Despite the criticism I ordered my copy last month (so I guess the concept worked!) and also added Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, which received favorable comments that I can relate to.
The books were in the mail today, and I will start reading them over the holidays. They probably won't significantly change my life but they should make light reading over the holidays and nicely complement the fiction books, and they may even give me some useful ideas for New Year's resolutions.
Of course even the author will readily admit that one should "not to take the four hours too literally" and it certainly makes a catchier title than "Save an hour per week for things you like", but then anything that means getting more done with less effort and having more time left for the things you really enjoy is good, right?
Ferris may get some basic facts wrong, as readers noted on amazon.com, but he certainly gets his marketing right. His book must have been featured in about every TV show and newspaper by now, judging from the number of comments and the news coverage since. Some claim this book changed their lives while others feel tricked by the simple, well-known recipes -- not everyone is going to make a living from selling nutritional supplements.
Despite the criticism I ordered my copy last month (so I guess the concept worked!) and also added Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, which received favorable comments that I can relate to.
The books were in the mail today, and I will start reading them over the holidays. They probably won't significantly change my life but they should make light reading over the holidays and nicely complement the fiction books, and they may even give me some useful ideas for New Year's resolutions.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Spam filtering with countries.nerd.dk considered harmful
DNS blacklists (DNSBL) provide information about characteristics and past observations of IP addresses and have been used in filtering spam for more than a decade. In short, a spam filter may check one or more DNSBL services to determine if the network address from where an e-mail is delivered is trustworthy or suspicious.
Besides listing addresses of known spam sources or virus-infected machines, there are lists for criteria such as network type (dial-up/cable/DSL) and configuration issues (open relays, RFC non-compliance).
One of my colleagues recently had e-mail to a client rejected by their mail gateway with the error message "554 Your Host 32.nn.nn.nn was found in the DNS BlackList at uk.countries.nerd.dk."
When he asked for help with this, my first thought was that one of our addresses had, rightly or wrongly, been listed as a spam source. However, after looking around countries.nerd.dk it became clear that the recipient was blocking all mail that appeared to come from certain countries according to the countries.nerd.dk database despite the disclaimer on that Website that "countries.nerd.dk is NOT a list of spammers, it is an IP-to-country DNS mapping service."
What's worse in this case is that the mapping was incorrect: The whole 32/8 netblock is declared to be based in the UK: "32.0.0.0/8 :127.0.0.2:Your IP is in uk, rejected based on geographical location". There may be some UK based addresses in that netblock but others are located in North America and possible other places too, and similar geographic mapping services managed to get the location of the particular mail server (almost) right.
Although many open source and commercial mail filters rely on DNSBLs, there has been valid criticism, and even lawsuits against DNSBL operators. The main concern I have is that administrators may rely on a single DNSBL service to mark messages as spam and reject them without understanding the service's reliability and limitations.
Besides listing addresses of known spam sources or virus-infected machines, there are lists for criteria such as network type (dial-up/cable/DSL) and configuration issues (open relays, RFC non-compliance).
One of my colleagues recently had e-mail to a client rejected by their mail gateway with the error message "554 Your Host 32.nn.nn.nn was found in the DNS BlackList at uk.countries.nerd.dk."
When he asked for help with this, my first thought was that one of our addresses had, rightly or wrongly, been listed as a spam source. However, after looking around countries.nerd.dk it became clear that the recipient was blocking all mail that appeared to come from certain countries according to the countries.nerd.dk database despite the disclaimer on that Website that "countries.nerd.dk is NOT a list of spammers, it is an IP-to-country DNS mapping service."
What's worse in this case is that the mapping was incorrect: The whole 32/8 netblock is declared to be based in the UK: "32.0.0.0/8 :127.0.0.2:Your IP is in uk, rejected based on geographical location". There may be some UK based addresses in that netblock but others are located in North America and possible other places too, and similar geographic mapping services managed to get the location of the particular mail server (almost) right.
Although many open source and commercial mail filters rely on DNSBLs, there has been valid criticism, and even lawsuits against DNSBL operators. The main concern I have is that administrators may rely on a single DNSBL service to mark messages as spam and reject them without understanding the service's reliability and limitations.
Labels: spam, technology
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Phone line working again
Last Wednesday, my home office phone line all of a sudden stopped working. The telecom provider tried to reset devices along the route to my home to no avail, so they promised that someone would look into the problem and call me back within 48 hours (on my other line, of course).
Time went by, and at Friday night nobody had called, and my phone line still was not working, so I called again. After enjoying some 20 minutes of "All service representatives are currently serving other ..." I spoke to someone who admitted that nothing had been done about my problem, and nothing could be done about my problem as it was now out of hours and technical staff would be back on Monday morning, I would get a call.
You probably guessed the response when I called again Monday morning, the problem ticket was still untouched and we scheduled an appointment for an on-site check this morning. My phone line was still dead and my mood had shifted from annoyed to resigned already. Around 2 a.m. in the morning, just about before going to sleep, for some reason I tried one more time and—my phone line was perfectly fine again! (This is like me feeling much better already when I have an appointment scheduled with a doctor, all the symptoms just go away and I question the need to see the doctor. Electronic devices seem to work the same way.)
The one week phone outage had a positive side effect though: Desperately trying to regain the convenience of a desk phone with a headset and a mute button, I successfully connected my mobile phone to my desk phone via Bluetooth. To my great surprise, this works perfectly fine. I can easily accept mobile calls on my desk phone, and choose between land line and mobile phone for outgoing calls ... nice!
Time went by, and at Friday night nobody had called, and my phone line still was not working, so I called again. After enjoying some 20 minutes of "All service representatives are currently serving other ..." I spoke to someone who admitted that nothing had been done about my problem, and nothing could be done about my problem as it was now out of hours and technical staff would be back on Monday morning, I would get a call.
You probably guessed the response when I called again Monday morning, the problem ticket was still untouched and we scheduled an appointment for an on-site check this morning. My phone line was still dead and my mood had shifted from annoyed to resigned already. Around 2 a.m. in the morning, just about before going to sleep, for some reason I tried one more time and—my phone line was perfectly fine again! (This is like me feeling much better already when I have an appointment scheduled with a doctor, all the symptoms just go away and I question the need to see the doctor. Electronic devices seem to work the same way.)
The one week phone outage had a positive side effect though: Desperately trying to regain the convenience of a desk phone with a headset and a mute button, I successfully connected my mobile phone to my desk phone via Bluetooth. To my great surprise, this works perfectly fine. I can easily accept mobile calls on my desk phone, and choose between land line and mobile phone for outgoing calls ... nice!
Labels: technology
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Nostalgia
After several months of battery problems I finally had my Nikon D80 repaired; late autumn seemed like the perfect time, not much outdoor activity and photo shooting opportunities any more, and we had most family visits in October already and I definitely wanted the camera repaired while still covered by warranty. I recently got my camera back with the electrical system repaired, and so far it has been working nicely again.
Today I picked up some photographs which I had taken with my old Minolta Dynax 7xi SLR on November 1, and what can I say, I was very pleased with the results. Not that the D80 is a bad camera, it is an absolutely fantastic piece of technology, fast and easy to use and absolutely suitable for taking great pictures, but there is something about photography the old-fashioned way too besides the differences in resolution, dynamic range, depth of field, etc.
First, with film you don't end up with dozens of very similar pictures because you only take the one or two that look most promising. There are probably as many good pictures in the gigabytes of digital cruft accumulated on my hard drive, only they are harder to find and who really goes through and cleans out all the not-really-that-great-but-still-acceptable pictures taken digitally?
Second, there is the lack of immediate feedback which helps. Yes, that's right. Admittedly, I did miss the nice bright screen showing me what the picture looks like when I shot on film, so I had to make an effort to get everything right instead of going through several iterations, trying to judge picture quality from an LCD screen.
Third, picking up photographs at the store, flipping through prints which bring back recent memories is a ritual I have become so used to after more than two decades of doing it that I do miss it.
(If you want to know more about the technical aspects, Ken Rockwell has written a great article Film vs. Digital explaining pros and cons, with some eye-opening crops of analog and digital photos. Norman Koren has even more technical details in Digital cameras vs. film although the Website has not been updated in years.)
Back in 1998 John Patrick, then IBM's Vice President, Internet technologies, in his keynote speech at the WWW7 conference in Brisbane talked about how Internet technology impacted our lives and would change expectations. If memory serves, one of the examples he mentioned was the 1 hr photo lab and that people would not be willing to wait for a full hour to see pictures, they would want them right away (and students asking for a T1 at work, too).
Less than ten years later, broadband connectivity is widely available and is cheap, or sometimes free, photography is mostly digital and there are few labs offering decent film developing these days.
Neither would I want to go back to 56K dial-up at EUR 30 per month plus charges per minute, nor would I want to pay per picture (prints for a single roll of film cost another EUR 30), nor would I want to miss the convenience of my digital camera, despite my nostalgic, misty-eyed views.
Today I picked up some photographs which I had taken with my old Minolta Dynax 7xi SLR on November 1, and what can I say, I was very pleased with the results. Not that the D80 is a bad camera, it is an absolutely fantastic piece of technology, fast and easy to use and absolutely suitable for taking great pictures, but there is something about photography the old-fashioned way too besides the differences in resolution, dynamic range, depth of field, etc.
First, with film you don't end up with dozens of very similar pictures because you only take the one or two that look most promising. There are probably as many good pictures in the gigabytes of digital cruft accumulated on my hard drive, only they are harder to find and who really goes through and cleans out all the not-really-that-great-but-still-acceptable pictures taken digitally?
Second, there is the lack of immediate feedback which helps. Yes, that's right. Admittedly, I did miss the nice bright screen showing me what the picture looks like when I shot on film, so I had to make an effort to get everything right instead of going through several iterations, trying to judge picture quality from an LCD screen.
Third, picking up photographs at the store, flipping through prints which bring back recent memories is a ritual I have become so used to after more than two decades of doing it that I do miss it.
(If you want to know more about the technical aspects, Ken Rockwell has written a great article Film vs. Digital explaining pros and cons, with some eye-opening crops of analog and digital photos. Norman Koren has even more technical details in Digital cameras vs. film although the Website has not been updated in years.)
Back in 1998 John Patrick, then IBM's Vice President, Internet technologies, in his keynote speech at the WWW7 conference in Brisbane talked about how Internet technology impacted our lives and would change expectations. If memory serves, one of the examples he mentioned was the 1 hr photo lab and that people would not be willing to wait for a full hour to see pictures, they would want them right away (and students asking for a T1 at work, too).
Less than ten years later, broadband connectivity is widely available and is cheap, or sometimes free, photography is mostly digital and there are few labs offering decent film developing these days.
Neither would I want to go back to 56K dial-up at EUR 30 per month plus charges per minute, nor would I want to pay per picture (prints for a single roll of film cost another EUR 30), nor would I want to miss the convenience of my digital camera, despite my nostalgic, misty-eyed views.
Labels: photography, technology
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Rain, rain, rain
So we came to Vorarlberg to see my family and go for walks in the mountains, but with the exception of Monday it has been raining heavily every day. Too bad we didn't get a chance to go for walks, there are some nice and easy walking trails from Dornbirn-Bödele which I walked many times as a kid. At least we managed to spend a few hours outdoors on Monday, walking over to the Hochälpele ski lift (a drag lift so it is not in operating currently :-)) and back to the Meierei, an alpine dairy serving huge cheese boards. Elias had a good time with the cows and calves, he even offered them his bottle of apple juice, and saw (and smelled!) turkey and pigs for the first time.
We spent the rest of the week sleeping, reading, eating and meeting with family. On Tuesday afternoon we met with my mother and grandmother at a café in Dornbirn. The next day we went to see the Inatura exhibition, a kids-friendly museum of nature with stuffed animals you may actually touch, living insects, tunnels to crawl through, beautiful koi carps, and last but not least bouncy bounce. Afterwards we said hello to my other grandmother, Elias was tired from the exhibition and slept through for a while before walking around and opening all cabinet doors within reach, mumbling "no, no" all the time to remind himself that he wasn't supposed to do that.
On Thursday we had lunch with my grandmother again and enjoyed a traditional Riebel, then went for a walk in the city despite the heavy rain and finally went swimming in the Hallenbad Dornbirn, which was recently renovated and looks much nicer compared to when I was a kid. Elias was equally impressed and frightened by the fast water slide ("black hole") and the water fountains in the playground. Andrea and I were mostly impressed that a floor as slippery as this one would ever get approved for an indoor pool area, and indeed we struggled to get back to the changing room without slipping.
We had dinner at our hotel Berghof Fetz every night, and on most days Elias decided he wasn't tired enough or too hunger to go to bed, so he joined us several times, much to the amusement of the staff and other guests who smiled at the appearance of Elias in his pajamas and a sweater. And I finally managed to read Donna Leon's book about Venice and a good part of Thomas Glavinic's "Arbeit der Nacht", which is about a man living in Vienna who wakes up one day only to slowly discover that he seems to be the only living being in the world. The story is simply but quite exciting and the style is unique, fresh, simple, quick, not sure how to best describe it, but at almost four-hundred pages the book does have some lengthly parts too. Still, I am curious to find out what's behind all the occurances throughout the story and will continue reading as time permits.
Now time to pack, tomorrow we will head back to Salzburg for the christening of my niece Theresa.
We spent the rest of the week sleeping, reading, eating and meeting with family. On Tuesday afternoon we met with my mother and grandmother at a café in Dornbirn. The next day we went to see the Inatura exhibition, a kids-friendly museum of nature with stuffed animals you may actually touch, living insects, tunnels to crawl through, beautiful koi carps, and last but not least bouncy bounce. Afterwards we said hello to my other grandmother, Elias was tired from the exhibition and slept through for a while before walking around and opening all cabinet doors within reach, mumbling "no, no" all the time to remind himself that he wasn't supposed to do that.
On Thursday we had lunch with my grandmother again and enjoyed a traditional Riebel, then went for a walk in the city despite the heavy rain and finally went swimming in the Hallenbad Dornbirn, which was recently renovated and looks much nicer compared to when I was a kid. Elias was equally impressed and frightened by the fast water slide ("black hole") and the water fountains in the playground. Andrea and I were mostly impressed that a floor as slippery as this one would ever get approved for an indoor pool area, and indeed we struggled to get back to the changing room without slipping.
We had dinner at our hotel Berghof Fetz every night, and on most days Elias decided he wasn't tired enough or too hunger to go to bed, so he joined us several times, much to the amusement of the staff and other guests who smiled at the appearance of Elias in his pajamas and a sweater. And I finally managed to read Donna Leon's book about Venice and a good part of Thomas Glavinic's "Arbeit der Nacht", which is about a man living in Vienna who wakes up one day only to slowly discover that he seems to be the only living being in the world. The story is simply but quite exciting and the style is unique, fresh, simple, quick, not sure how to best describe it, but at almost four-hundred pages the book does have some lengthly parts too. Still, I am curious to find out what's behind all the occurances throughout the story and will continue reading as time permits.
Now time to pack, tomorrow we will head back to Salzburg for the christening of my niece Theresa.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
PHONETIC.FON
The amazon.de Web site has had a problem which has bothered me for some time: The search field on the homepage rendered at about half the usual height and text appeared invisible or white on white, so it was impossible to see text:
It wasn't that bad, I am a pretty solid typer and got the search terms right without seeing what I was typing, most of the time; still an inconvenience when trying to modify a search term, especially when the site starting redirecting search responses to addresses that no longer contain the search term, but not bad enough to spend time figuring out what was causing this.
Today one of my colleagues mentioned that he had found a solution to the problem: the PHONETIC.FON file seems to be the culprit, and indeed renaming that file has solved the problem nicely:
(A quick search for PHONETIC.FON sure enough turned up a page Why Do My Fonts in Netscape Navigator Look Funny? in the Netscape Unofficial FAQs.)
It wasn't that bad, I am a pretty solid typer and got the search terms right without seeing what I was typing, most of the time; still an inconvenience when trying to modify a search term, especially when the site starting redirecting search responses to addresses that no longer contain the search term, but not bad enough to spend time figuring out what was causing this.
Today one of my colleagues mentioned that he had found a solution to the problem: the PHONETIC.FON file seems to be the culprit, and indeed renaming that file has solved the problem nicely:
(A quick search for PHONETIC.FON sure enough turned up a page Why Do My Fonts in Netscape Navigator Look Funny? in the Netscape Unofficial FAQs.)
Labels: technology, webdevelopment, windows
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Smart advertising
Samsung deserves credit for smart advertising. Countless times I have spent hours at an airport, desperately crowding around the few power sockets in the wall with a bunch of other folks charging their cell phones, laptops and media players. I even got to the point of bringing warning signs to place around the cable since for some reason the chairs were never closer to the power sockets, and sitting on the floor typing for a while made my wrists hurt.
But now relief is here: I am sitting at JFK airport now, as usual traffic on the SPB was light and I am here way too early, but no more sitting on the floor, looking for power. Throughout the terminal, there are Samsung mobile recharge stations, well-designed poles with power sockets and even a small round table to put the power supplies and other equipment on. No more tripping over wires, no more fierce looks when using power for more than a few minutes ... there is plenty of power now, for everyone. The poles are effective for promoting Samsung products too: The latest Samsung mobile products are featured on the poles, at eye height, not just printed ads but real devices behind a glass cover.
When was the last time you saw advertising that was useful and looked that good?
But now relief is here: I am sitting at JFK airport now, as usual traffic on the SPB was light and I am here way too early, but no more sitting on the floor, looking for power. Throughout the terminal, there are Samsung mobile recharge stations, well-designed poles with power sockets and even a small round table to put the power supplies and other equipment on. No more tripping over wires, no more fierce looks when using power for more than a few minutes ... there is plenty of power now, for everyone. The poles are effective for promoting Samsung products too: The latest Samsung mobile products are featured on the poles, at eye height, not just printed ads but real devices behind a glass cover.
When was the last time you saw advertising that was useful and looked that good?
Labels: advertising, innovation, technology, travel
Sunday, July 15, 2007
iPhone update
So after nastiblogging about the iPhone yesterday I managed to get my hands on an iPhone when I was at the Westchester mall yesterday afternoon. What can I say, I still think that the poor battery design, the lack of high-speed Internet connectivity and the limitation to one carrier per country make me think that this isn't a cell phone I would want. But it does feel very, very good. The user interface is amazingly simple and straightforward, no long-winded multilevel menus, no key sequences to remember, the browser works well and rendered www.ibm.com nicely, including the recently added dynamic components. The touchscreen keyboard works pretty well for text thanks to error correction (but otherwise requires some practice and probably even then it won't match the speed of a tactile keyboard).
Labels: technology
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Customer support at its best
Shareware and open source software have been said to lack official support. This may be true for some products but certainly not for my favorite editor, EditPlus, for which personal support by the developer is second to none.
Hats off to Sangil Kim, not only does he write fantastic software and respond to feature requests and (rare) bug reports almost immediately, he is also the most organized person I can think of. When I tried to reinstall EditPlus on my new computer, I managed to locate the original registration email which had the version 1 registration key, but couldn't find the upgrade key; so after searching all places where I typically keep this type of information I sent off an e-mail to the EditPlus support address, and within a few hours received a copy of the original e-mail from 2000(!) that contained my registration key. Thank you!
Hats off to Sangil Kim, not only does he write fantastic software and respond to feature requests and (rare) bug reports almost immediately, he is also the most organized person I can think of. When I tried to reinstall EditPlus on my new computer, I managed to locate the original registration email which had the version 1 registration key, but couldn't find the upgrade key; so after searching all places where I typically keep this type of information I sent off an e-mail to the EditPlus support address, and within a few hours received a copy of the original e-mail from 2000(!) that contained my registration key. Thank you!
Do I want an iPhone?
The New York Times has two entertaining videos by David Pogue about the new iPhone, the pre-release The iPhone Challenge: Keep It Quiet and I want an iPhone.
What is all this hype about? I guess it holds true that good design is still good business, and Apple certainly knows good design, at least when it comes to user interfaces. Not allowing the user to extend the device or even just change the battery may follow the Apple philosophy that users don't need to care what's inside, but requiring customers to send in the phone, wait three business days, pay $85.95 to get the phone "repaired" as Apple calls it and have all your data deleted during that process is not good design.
Dear Apple folks, please try harder!
What is all this hype about? I guess it holds true that good design is still good business, and Apple certainly knows good design, at least when it comes to user interfaces. Not allowing the user to extend the device or even just change the battery may follow the Apple philosophy that users don't need to care what's inside, but requiring customers to send in the phone, wait three business days, pay $85.95 to get the phone "repaired" as Apple calls it and have all your data deleted during that process is not good design.
Dear Apple folks, please try harder!
Labels: technology
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Luncheon at Le Château
After two days of hot and humid weather, the thunderstorm and heavy rain last night had worked miracles and today was a beautiful day, just perfect for a luncheon at Le Château in South Salem, New York, to celebrate the successful launch of our latest Website design and the Virtual Business Center in Second Life.
It was good to meet so many colleagues and friends, including some people who I had worked with for a while but never met in person. We started with drinks and hors d'oeuvres in the garden, followed by short talks by our executives and an awards ceremony before we went on with lunch. Well, actually, since we were running behind, lunch didn't quite start after but during the business session. It was kind of weird to see restaurant staff squeeze through between our executives with soup bowls while they were still handing out awards and congratulating award winners. The lunch was excellent though, and we all had a good time at Le Château.
At night Christian and I met with Margaret at a restaurant in Armonk, Opus 465, for a light dinner and interesting discussions about processes (so yes, we did get some work done and not just eat all day long!)
It was good to meet so many colleagues and friends, including some people who I had worked with for a while but never met in person. We started with drinks and hors d'oeuvres in the garden, followed by short talks by our executives and an awards ceremony before we went on with lunch. Well, actually, since we were running behind, lunch didn't quite start after but during the business session. It was kind of weird to see restaurant staff squeeze through between our executives with soup bowls while they were still handing out awards and congratulating award winners. The lunch was excellent though, and we all had a good time at Le Château.
At night Christian and I met with Margaret at a restaurant in Armonk, Opus 465, for a light dinner and interesting discussions about processes (so yes, we did get some work done and not just eat all day long!)
Labels: travel
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Wabisabilabi
While sitting at Vienna airport and waiting for my flight to New York, a newspaper article about a security startup caught my attention: The Swiss company Wabisabilabi has established a market place for security exposures with the intent to give security experts "fair compensation for their discoveries".
Googling for the easy to remember company name (Vienna airport now has wireless connectivity and unlike other airports this is offered for free, nice!) I stumble across a good number of articles which sound very similar to the press release, I mean, article I just read ... becoming the EBay of zero-day exploits, finally a market place for security issues.
The first two search results are obviously the new site that's going to make the world more secure. Not that they have figured out how to give pages meaningful titles yet:
On to the press release at https://www.wslabi.com/wabisabilabi/news.do -- mistakes happen but finding a typo in the first press release of a company looks odd. Equally odd is their math: "Recently it was reported that although researchers had analyzed a little more than 7,000 publicly disclosed vulnerabilities last year, the number of new vulnerabilities found in code could be as high as 139,362." Exactly 139,362, huh?
Not much information about the company either, looks like a British Limited company although there is no company registration information on the site (or at least I haven't found it). I guess I will sign up anyway and see what they have to offer.
Googling for the easy to remember company name (Vienna airport now has wireless connectivity and unlike other airports this is offered for free, nice!) I stumble across a good number of articles which sound very similar to the press release, I mean, article I just read ... becoming the EBay of zero-day exploits, finally a market place for security issues.
The first two search results are obviously the new site that's going to make the world more secure. Not that they have figured out how to give pages meaningful titles yet:
On to the press release at https://www.wslabi.com/wabisabilabi/news.do -- mistakes happen but finding a typo in the first press release of a company looks odd. Equally odd is their math: "Recently it was reported that although researchers had analyzed a little more than 7,000 publicly disclosed vulnerabilities last year, the number of new vulnerabilities found in code could be as high as 139,362." Exactly 139,362, huh?
Not much information about the company either, looks like a British Limited company although there is no company registration information on the site (or at least I haven't found it). I guess I will sign up anyway and see what they have to offer.
Labels: security, technology
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Google dropped my site
Google's Matt Cutts asked for feedback on the webmaster guidelines and I gladly shared my experience there:
Recently, Google sent me an email entitled "Entfernung Ihrer Webseite sitename aus dem Google Index", notifying me that one of my sites had been dropped from the Google index for violating the content quality guidelines. Now that site certainly deserved to be dropped for various reasons, not the least being that the content was old and not highly relevant and I am quite happy to see that site dropped.
I couldn’t find anything related to the specific issue highlighted. In addition the issue highlighted doesn’t exist (or I don’t understand what it is trying to say, maybe something got lost in the translation since the mail was in German):
Wir haben auf Ihren Seiten insbesondere die Verwendung folgender Techniken festgestellt:
*Seiten wie z. B. example.com, die zu Seiten wie z. B. http://www.example.com/index.htm mit Hilfe eines Redirects weiterleiten, der nicht mit unseren Richtlinien konform ist.
Translation: In particular we have noticed the following techniques on your pages: * Pages such as example.com, which redirect to pages such as http://www.example.com/index.htm using redirects, which is not compliant with our guidelines.
Now since when does Google consider redirects within a site evil? Plus, the referenced domain example.com does not even exist, nor does the homepage redirect either.
I couldn't care less about this particular site. What worries me though is that I haven't been able to identify how the site violates the guidelines, even after reading the guidelines more than once, and chances are that I have used the same techniques on other sites where I do care.
Recently, Google sent me an email entitled "Entfernung Ihrer Webseite sitename aus dem Google Index", notifying me that one of my sites had been dropped from the Google index for violating the content quality guidelines. Now that site certainly deserved to be dropped for various reasons, not the least being that the content was old and not highly relevant and I am quite happy to see that site dropped.
I couldn’t find anything related to the specific issue highlighted. In addition the issue highlighted doesn’t exist (or I don’t understand what it is trying to say, maybe something got lost in the translation since the mail was in German):
Wir haben auf Ihren Seiten insbesondere die Verwendung folgender Techniken festgestellt:
*Seiten wie z. B. example.com, die zu Seiten wie z. B. http://www.example.com/index.htm mit Hilfe eines Redirects weiterleiten, der nicht mit unseren Richtlinien konform ist.
Translation: In particular we have noticed the following techniques on your pages: * Pages such as example.com, which redirect to pages such as http://www.example.com/index.htm using redirects, which is not compliant with our guidelines.
Now since when does Google consider redirects within a site evil? Plus, the referenced domain example.com does not even exist, nor does the homepage redirect either.
I couldn't care less about this particular site. What worries me though is that I haven't been able to identify how the site violates the guidelines, even after reading the guidelines more than once, and chances are that I have used the same techniques on other sites where I do care.
Labels: google