Back from Berlinux 2005 //at 02:27 //by abe

I was at Berlinux 2005 this weekend and though the very chaotic — because understaffed — organisation it was interesting and also funny.

Thursday I arrived around 20:15 in Berlin, met Klaus Knopper and others at the train station, headed to Sven Guckes’ appartment for dropping all my luggage, then going back to meet with Klaus and the others for a theremin concert with Dorit Chrysler. No wonder that it sounded sometimes like one of my favourite musicians, Jean Michel Jarre, since — according to the Wikipedia theremin article — he also plays this instrument.

On Friday I held my talk about WML in front of a — for that topic — surprisingly high number of auditors (around 30, maybe 35). In comparision to my WML talk at OscomTag 2005 all people who asked questions had understood about what the talk was, so the questions were most time interesting and justified. As usual I held the talk using Lynx with LSS support (picture by Sven Guckes) on my nine year old Pentium 1 ThinkPad bijou running Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 aka Woody.

Before and after the talk I helped out at Werner Heuser’s xtops booth (another picture by Sven) and the booth of the Debian Project (yet another picture by Sven :-) directly beside Frank Ronneburg’s Debian powered model railway. (picture by you-know-who ;-) In the evening I was at the social event, hanging around with alphascorpii, Tolimar and Joey and being surprised that Joey studies biology — as I did as minor to computer science.

On Saturday I was on alphascorpii’s talk about why being a BOFH is not funny, hung around at the same booths as the day before, fixed the X configuration on my laptop after hints on a unknown Debian booth visitor. Before the exhibition closed I heard a very interesting talk about web accessibility held by Sebastian who is blind himself. Although or maybe because I’m interested in that subject, the talk opened my eyes regarding two things: First »Captchas are evil« and »Blind HTML tables aren’t as evil as all the priests of web accessibility are always preaching«. They are easier than frames for blinds and seem to have only little disadvantages against a CSS based layout for blinds nowadays if used the right way. Oh, and btw. — nested tables are still evil. :-)

Saturday evening I had dinner together with Stefan Gerdelbracht, Frank Hofmann, Klaus Knopper and Manfred Krejcik. Later Thomas Winde joined us. It was very interesting evening, especially talking with Klaus and Manfred.

On Sunday, after having brunch with Stefan and Manfred, we met with Sven (who was our host at Berlin, thanks again!) and shortly after that, Stefan left for visiting some other friends in Berlin. Sven, Manfred and I visited C-Base where Sven stumbled over a sound editing seminar while Manfred was preparing his zipFM show for Monday which mainly consisted of an interview with Klaus. After that we headed to a small but fine birthday party of a friend of Sven and were back home around 2:30.

My train left Monday morning at 8:56 and I was at home around 14:30. And on Friday I’ll go to Dresden for the Linux-Info-Tag by train just to go back to Berlin afterwards, where I meet my parents for a two week baltic sea holiday in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania near Rügen. But due to the Systems fair at Munich and autumn holidays I have to stay at work this week.

And yes, I wrote this and the other postings posted today offline, so they’re dated quite close together. :-)

Theory Girl //at 01:55 //by abe

“Theory Girl” is a cover of “Uptown Girl” by Billy Joel played by The CSE Band (you can also get the MP3 on their website) with insightful, computer science related lyrics. They also have some other nice CS related parodies like “Mr Grad TA Man” (“Mr. Tambourine Man”) and “The End Of Grad School” (“Sound of Silence”).

Now playing: The CSE Band — Theory Girl

Tell me which music you like and I tell who you are //at 01:55 //by abe

The German science news site Wissenschaft.de is reporting that your music taste is very closely related to your personality and that it’s easier to judge people by the music they hear than by seeing pictures or videos of them. Source is a scientific study by Dr. Samuel Gosling and Peter Rentfrow from The University of Texas at Austin.

Man, that would give an interesting quiz meme on the Planets! ;-)

I wonder, how my usually negative or decade-based definition of my music taste is that way analysable: I like nearly every music from the ’60s to the ’90s except hip-hop, rap and techno. :-)

Now playing: Jethro Tull — Something’s On The Move

Die CDU schreckt im Wahlkampf auch nicht vor Urheberrechtsverletzungen zurück //at 01:43 //by abe

War zwar schon letzte Woche, aber ich hab’s trotzdem erst heute über de.alt.netdigest mitbekommen: Die CDU bedient sich ja seit einiger des 73er Rolling Stones Hit “Angie” zu Werbezwecken. Anscheinend allerdings ohne die entsprechenden Rechte dazu zu haben. Sowohl die eurpäische Vertretung der Stones als auch eine Sprecherin der Stones erklärte, die Stones hätten keinerlei Zustimmung dazu erteilt. Die CDU verweist dagegen auf die GEMA, mit der sie das Problem im Vorab “geklärt” hätte. Die GEMA aber widerum läßt nur das verlauten, was auch zu erwarten war: Sie können dazu gar keine Erlaubnis geben und sie hätten der CDU dies sowie daß sie sich an die Rechteinhaber persönlich wenden müßten, auch “klargemacht”.

Wie war das nochmal mit “Hart aber gerecht”?

Nur leider scheint’s sowohl die europäische Verwertungsgesellschaft als auch den Stones selbst nicht allzu sehr zu jucken, d.h. sie werden keine Klage anstreben, womit die CDU im Gegensatz zum gemeinen Raubkopierer ungehindert weiter Songs spielen darf, bei dem komischerweise grade mal der Titel zu Wahlkampf paßt: “Angie, Angie! With no loving in our souls and no money in our coats, you can’t say we’re satisfied…”

Erst die Bewohner der neuen Bundesländer als Kälber und Idioten beschimpfen, und dann fröhlich gegen Urheberrechte verstoßen. Hoffen wir mal, daß die Union die nächsten Wochen so weiter macht, sonst sehe ich schwarz mit dieser Republik.

Now playing: Herbert Grönemeyer — Mit Gott

Endlich wieder mal in Ruhe im McDoof Mittagfuttern gehen können //at 01:41 //by abe

SpOn: MTV und Viva wollen zukünftig zwischen 16 und 24 Uhr keine Klingeltonwerbung mehr bringen.

Gefunden via nodomain.cc und schön durch den Kakao gezogen von Isotopp.