After using it for quite a while, I got bored with the old look of my blog and so I started to update it today. Here’s a quick rundown of things that changed:

• Added various links: I’ve updated the sidebar to include links to my MySpace profile (resistance really is futile) and my SuprGlu site (making it easier for you stalkers). I’ve also readded the links to my profiles on 43 Things and 43 Plazes, so it’s a happy day for all you buzzword loving Web 2.0 fans out there.


• Advanced syndication: I got rid of my blog’s own syndication features in favor of FeedBurner. Why? Because it offers really cool stuff like “SmartFeeds” which create the right RSS/Atom feeds for the reader you use on the fly, “link slicing” (a daily entry of links I add to my del.icio.us account gets generated and added to the feed) and the possibility to subscribe to this blog via email. If you are among my true fans who have subscribed to this site long ago don’t despair, I’m 301 redirecting most of the old syndication links to FeedBurner (the RSS 0.91 feed is used to push data to FeedBurner).


• More syndication features: I’ve signed up for Talkr so you lazy folks have the chance to get this site as a Podcast, without me having to go through the hassle of actually recording one. Nifty, eh? Besides that I get US$ 7 for everyone who signs up to Talkr for at least 30 days, and since Christmas is near that just sounds like the perfect opportunity to make yours truly happy, doesn’t it? ;) Apart from the Podcast goodness there’s now also a convenient link to add this site to your Technorati favorites with just a single click of your mouse, which means lazyness finally is no longer an excuse for not doing so.


• Sidebar reorganization: Dropped some plugins, added, rearranged and reconfigured some others.

As you can see I’ve also changed the theme from my tweaked version of “Joshua” to the Serendipity port of “Modern World”. I like the overall look of the theme quite a lot, but there are various changes I want to apply to the CSS as soon as I can be bothered to do so. Until now I’ve only changed some of the colors, but once I’m done it would be pretty cool if this site wouldn’t only look good, but also validate as XHMTL. I’m also in need of a logo sized 220×128 pixels, so if you’re feeling creative and want to surprise me, send your work of art to my Gmail address. Once I finally take over leadership of the world, I’m sure you’ll be pretty happy to say “I did the logo for this guy’s website”.

Sweetmorn, The Aftermath 24, 3172 YOLD

Since I started my new job this January, I more or less stopped doing any sports, which had the usual consequences of fitness— && weight++. I’ve wanted to change this for quite a while now and since my local Taekwondo school – which by the way is conviniently located half-way between my apartment and the office – currently has a special offer (two private introductory lessons plus the dobok for 25 Euro) I decided to give it a go. The first intro lesson today was pretty cool and the second will be this Wednesday. After this I’ll get my white belt and will formally start training in the beginner’s class.

Update:
Had my second private lesson on Wednesday and really liked it too, so I signed up for the school and will try to train 2-3 times a week from now on. Since there are 13(!) training sessions per week I can choose from, I should be able to squeeze them in even in rather busy weeks.

Setting Orange, The Aftermath 18, 3172 YOLD

…some random stuff I wanted to blog about for quite some time already:

• Pearl Jam concert (September 25th@Wiener Stadthalle): I have to admit that I’m not the biggest PJ fan, but since Silvia was nice enough to invite me (thanks by the way!), I went to see one of the best concerts in a long time! The band and the atmosphere was great and I was quite surprised to see the traditionally rather lame crowd in Vienna so excited! (pics@flickr)
• Internet Explorer on Linux: As we all know, IE sucks donkey balls. But some sites who don’t care about standards – and whose developers definitely should be first against the wall when the revolution comes – only work with Microsoft’s browser. But don’t despair, help is available in form of IEs4Linux, a shellscript which downloads IE and automatically configures Wine for it. Flash 9 is also included and if you really insist on it, you can run 3 different versions of IE at the same time (5, 5.5 and 6), which is pretty handy for web developers. I have IE6 installed on my Kubuntu system for quite a while now, and in the rare cases I really need it, it works like a charm.
• Pokerstars client on Linux: Most online Poker sites don’t seem to be interested in Linux users, since the clients they offer are mostly only available for Windows. Some of them at least offer Java clients, but with my general dislike for most things Java and my strong preference of Pokerstars over other Poker sites, I gave the client a shot under Wine and was really pleased to find out that it just works™. Of course it would be much nicer to have a native client, but for the time being I’m happy enough with this workaround.
• UEFA cup Pasching vs. Livorno@Pasching: Went with some other Sportclub fans to see the UEFA cup match Pasching vs. Livorno in Pasching. It was a great day, and I still laugh my ass off when I think about the policemen and -women who found our little group of around 25 people rooting for the away team (as Austrian you were only able to buy tickets for the home sectors) so frightening, that they not only surrounded us for the whole match, but even put on their riot gear. And there I was, thinking every policeman in Austria already knows that we are only dangerous to ourselves. ;)
• man pages: Read them! You know you should! Even if you believe you know an application. E.g.: “man sshd”, section “AUTHORIZED_KEYS FILE FORMAT”. Or am I really the only person who didn’t know about all the useful options like “from”, “command”, “no-port-forwarding”, “no-pty” etc.?
  
  
• Mac stuff: Here’s some cool widgets and plugins which make the OS X experience even nicer: iTunesShut, VI Input Manager, Application Update Widget (thanks Moose!), AppleScript Shell, Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes

Last but not least here are some funny/interesting things I found over the past few weeks:

• Programming Language Inventor or Serial Killer (via metalab-members)
• Robot chicken: Great stop motion animation. Examples: 1, 2, 3 (thanks colo!)
• ELP Laser Turntable: bonki posted this a while back, but I never came around to post it here.
• Bruce Schreier facts: ‘cause Chuck Norris isn’t as cool as Bruce! And as we all know: Bruce Schneier tapdances in Morse Code. (via berq)
• China Makes a Sexy, Slutty Robot: What can I say… (thanks m3)

Prickle-Prickle, The Aftermath 17, 3172 YOLD

Because of me visiting some friends in China (Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing to be a little more specific) from October 5th to 25th, this site hasn’t seen any recent updates. Of course I do have a lot to tell about the trip, and there’s a plethora of other stuff I want to blog about since about late September. But this won’t happen today, since it’s Sunday and I’m even more lazy than usual. I still use jet lag as an excuse, but in fact that’s a blatant lie.

Since waking up at noon all I did was eating, watching 4 episodes of Family Guy, a few South Park specials like Park Wars, Fatrix and other stuff, as well as writing some mails and chatting with friends. Oh, I also watched the newest Happyslip videos on YouTube and they are funny as always.

Later tonight I’ll watch a few more episodes of season 4 of The Sopranos before playing a tournament or two on True Swing Golf (I bought both the DVD box and the game on Friday).

Bottom line: being lazy and adding some random noise to the blogosphere was just what I needed today, so you’ll have to wait a little longer for the other stuff to finally appear on this site.

Oh, and before I forget it, starting from December I’ll only work 25h/week so I can finally pick up my studies again. Besides that I hope that spending less time at this forsaken place called office will significantly better my mood, otherwise I might as well get myself an Alcoholics Anonymous subscription sooner than later… ;)

Boomtime, The Aftermath 10, 3172 YOLD

Over the last few weeks the ongoing struggle between good (aka going out to party) and evil (aka work) has led to a severe lack of sleep and a general feeling of exhaustion. That’s why yesterday evening I only had some running sushi with friends and a few beers afterwards, before returning home before midnight. But instead of going to bed immediately, I made the fatal mistake of visiting YouTube to watch the videos Lotussteve, m3 and Red have recommended. Here are some of my favorites, thanks guys!

• Live Super Mario Bros. – A bunch of high school students doing a rendition of Super Mario Bros. Great stuff and very funny.


• The Internet Is A Series of Tubes – The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart explains how the internet works. You shouldn’t miss that one!


• New Super Mario Bros. Final Castle 105 seconds World Record – Amazing!


• PS3 vs. Wii – I’m intending to buy a Wii anyway, but this video is just hilarious.


• Almost – Cheese & Crackers – Coolest miniramp skate session ever. Read my lips: EVER!

When I finished watching the stuff my friends had recommended, I started browsing around the site and found the following gem I immediately subscribed to:

Happy Slip Productions – A Filipina actress who is doing some seriously funny stuff.

After I freed myself from the black hole that YouTube is for one’s free time, I decided to finally watch Elephants Dream, an animated movie realized entirely with free software, which I downloaded a few weeks ago but never had time to watch before. It’s really great and of course CC licensed.

Boomtime, Bureaucracy 48, 3172 YOLD

After running a Tor server for more than half a year already and having donated some money to support Tor’s development, I was looking for new ways to help out the project. That’s why I decided to set up a mirror, which can be reached here (dist/ mirror). The initial sync is still running, but the site should be fully functional soon. Once this is finished, I’ll also try to set up another mirror on the Vienna based server hosting this domain.

Boomtime, Bureaucracy 48, 3172 YOLD

Since I was pretty busy with personal stuff during the last few days, I hadn’t noticed that two days ago German authorities started confiscating Tor middleman servers. That changed when earlier today I received an email from the owner of a confiscated system, who wants to get in touch with other Tor admins, in order to start a kind of “Knowledge Base” for people who were affected by the recent confiscations or who (still) want to set up their own Tor server. Since I’m also running such a baby (which never was an exit node though) on a virtual server in Germany, I’m of course interested in this recent development, so I want to share the informative links provided in his mail with you.

Articles/postings about the confiscations:
Anonymisierungsserver bei Razzia beschlagnahmt (German)
Staatsanwaltschaft beschlagnahmt Anonymisierungs-Server (German)
Erfolgreicher Schlag gegen die Privatsphäre (German)
Wie man die Anonymisierung kriminalisiert (German)
Re: confiscating middleman-tor-nodes 1, 2 & 3 (English)
Staatsanwaltschaft geht gegen Tor-Server vor (German)

General info on Tor/anonymity:
TOR web site (English, German and more)
Wikipedia article on Tor (English, German)
Sicher und anonym im Internet mit Proxys (German)
Onion Routing und Tor (German)
TheOnionRouter/OperationalSecurity (English)

Tor network overview:
Tor Network Status
Current Tor routers

Don’t get me wrong, child pornography is one of the worst crimes I can think of, and I wish the German authorities all the best in finding the people they are after. I do however feel that the route taken here wasn’t ideal, as it may well lead to a negative perception of Tor in the general public.

That’s why I’ve tripled the total amount of traffic Tor is allowed to serve on my system and donated some money to the project. I would advise you to do the same! Besides that I also encourage you to use Tor and promote it to other people, because anonymity is something that can’t be gained, only lost.

Pungenday, Bureaucracy 34, 3172 YOLD

Source: http://xkcd.com/c55.html

Setting Orange, Bureaucracy 26, 3172 YOLD

Yesterday I spent a great evening playing Texas Hold’em with some friends. Sure, I’ve lost some money, but it wasn’t much and I was prepared for that anyway. I could have stopped after I won some nice pots, but netting a profit definitly didn’t seem to be on my agenda yesterday. Instead I thought a lot about the game and came to conclude the following.

• Relax and look forward, things will get a lot easier that way.

• Most things in life depend on luck. However, it’s up to you how you deal with it.

• Don’t get cocky if you’re succesful, otherwise you’ll most probably fall hard.

• Being unpredictable really may pay off in tense situations.

• You have to take risks if you want to win big. And you’ll never really feel the rush of winning if you didn’t take the risk to lose in the first place.

• You don’t really have to be good. The others just need to believe you are.

• Money attracts more money. Gambling is easy if loosing doesn’t hurt.

I had a lot more of this, but I guess by now you get what I’m aiming at: Better to have loved and lost, than never loved at all. Am I still talking about Poker? I guess so.

Setting Orange, Bureaucracy 16, 3172 YOLD

As my PR manager told me, large numbers of fans have already complained about the recent lack of updates. Since I’m only my reader’s humble servant, I of course have to comply with this wishes, so here are the long awaited news about yours truly:

Gentoo:
After being a Gentoo developer for 2 years, I finally decided to leave the project. Since I haven’t really been active for the past 4 month anyway for several reasons (e.g. work), this was long overdue anyway. I’ve met a lot of nice and interesting people in the Gentoo community and working with you guys has really been a pleasure! Thanks for that, I really appreciate what I have learned from all of you during that time!

Mac:
Today I’ve joined the team of Open.Source.Mac and have already published my first little article on the site. Enjoy!

Personal:
On the 2nd of August I celebrated my 27th birthday at Xeno. A lot of friends showed up, whereas certain people decided to get drunk somewhere else and then blamed innocent squirrels for their not showing up. It was a cool evening which I really enjoyed, but working on the next day didn’t exactly qualify as a good cure against the headaches…

Capitalism:
I have to admit that I love portable consoles, especially when they are as sexy as the black Nintendo DS Lite I bought three weeks ago. So far I own Advance Wars: Dual Strike, Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day, Feel The Magic XY/XX and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. All of them are really great and I can hardly wait until my copy of Mario Kart DS finally arrives.

I also got myself a nice M9 DX enclosure with a 250GB Samsung HD as a backup disk for the Mac Mini. Overall it’s pretty neat, although it could match the color of the Mini a little better.

Misc
Found an article about Habbo Hotel on the Pardus forums and just had to try it out. Like the author of the article I most likely won’t visit the site again, but I had a lot of fun during the hour I spent there.

teemow recently blogged about BumpTop, a new take at the desktop metaphor we all grew used to. The video is quite impressive and I’d really like to try out such an interface myself, as I’m interested in how well it works for everyday usage.

Prickle-Prickle, Bureaucracy 5, 3172 YOLD