Wednesday·28·June·2006

Reflections about T-Shirt Slogans //at 09:51 //by abe

from the Wet-me,-I'm-a-t-shirt dept.

During the last days, I saw two people with interesting sayings or slogans on their t-shirts:

At FrOSCon, Petra from Kernel Concepts sold also some t-shirts from the Geekladen collection and so there were people running around with the slogan »Copyright is superstition™« (German: »Copyright ist Aberglaube™«, Picture), on their t-shirt.

First I thought “cool t-shirt” and “yeah, it’s superstitious to believe that copyright is the real solution to everything” and bought one, too. Then I noticed that the slogan “copyright is superstition” could be interpreted in many other ways, e.g. that the existence of “copyright is superstitious”, which is not really what I think about that subject. So what were the t-shirt makers’ intention? To make people think about the subject? To provocate? Or did they just not think long enough about that slogan?

Then yesterday, I saw a girl on the ETH campus wearing a shirt with »I’m smart. That’s why I’m single« written on it. So what do people want to say with this t-shirt? “Don’t date me, I’m smart enough to know that it won’t work”? Or “There are no other smart people out there, I can date”? Or should I read it “Help me, I’m smart, I can’t date”? (And no, I didn’t ask her. ;-)

Filed under: Blogging is futile » English »
Tagged as: ETH Zürich, FrOSCon, Saying, T-Shirt
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Saturday·17·June·2006

WML builds and runs on cygwin //at 01:26 //by abe

from the there-is-no-reason-why-it-shouldn't-work dept.

For a long time the Website Meta Language (WML) did not build on cygwin, but nobody knew why or how to fix it. At the end of last year, the WML maintainer changed to Shlomi Fish and one of his goals was to get WML run under cygwin.

Many probably didn’t expect it to really happen since WML developement has stalled for the last three or four years, but the Subversion 2.0.x maintenance branch of WML now builds and works on Windows under cygwin. This shows that there is really something going on in the WML developement again.

Congrats and thanks to Shlomi!

Filed under: Blogging is futile » English » Computer » Web » WML »
Tagged as: cygwin, Open Source, Subversion, Windows, WML
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Wednesday·14·June·2006

Stadtfuchs //at 01:07 //by abe

Aus der überraschenden Abteilung

Ich war es ja schon aus Rheinhessen gewohnt: In den Rheinauen oder Weinbergen laufen einem immer mal wilde Tiere über den Weg, aber daß diese auch mitten in einem städtischen (aber zugegebenermaßen recht grünen) Wohngebiet begegnen können, das war schon ein nettes Erlebnis.

In der Zwischenzeit bin ich dem scheuen Höngger Stadtfuchs auf meinem abend- bzw. genauer nächtlichen Heimweg schon mehrmals begegnet. Heute ist er sogar kurz vor mir über den Fußweg gehuscht. Im Gegensatz zum Stadtfuchs scheinen sich die hiesigen Stadtkatzen kaum an Fußgängern oder Autos zu stören und bleiben in stoïscher Ruhe auf ihrem Plätzchen sitzen, auch wenn sie merken, daß die Aufmerksamkeit auf sie gerichtet ist.