hashbangchris

I store most of my documentation on my iDisk, syncronized to 3 Macs, partially copied to an iPad and an iPhone. This month I had to work at a customers site where the open WLAN to use with my MacBookPro is VERY unreliable, it has about 20% packet-loss from time to time.

So my iDisk is syncing constantly, failling, being in an unresponsive state and I end up with 3 images in "previous iDisks", having no clue which files made their way into the apple cloud. Bad Steve.

The OpenVPN connection over UDP to the mothership however works fine, even if a little slowly sometimes because of the network connection. And git and subversion over VPN work fine, too.

So my new years resolution is:

to FINALLY GETTING RID OF MOBILE ME and save money by this.

I will syncronize files using git, calendars using calendar server and maybe addresses using some card-dav server i have yet no idea of.

However, I'm considering whether I really need the colocated server I own or if using my DSL uplink would be sufficient, too.

Yesterday was my boyfriend's birthday which in general would be a nice event. Unfortunately it began with having to euthanize our cat Chaos because of kidney failure. A very common but sad end for a cat of 18 years.
We didn't sleep much that night as Chaos was allowed to stay in our bed, becoming weaker rapidly.
His companion (they didn't really like each other, but) Anarchy spent the next night calling for him so we didn't sleep much, either.

Chaos had a good, long life, it ended on my laps.
My desk will be very empty and my keyboard cold, I miss my furry mental symbiont.

you can't make up things like these...

I'm about to leave for 3 weeks of motorcycling now, beginning with transporting my motorbike to Munich on the Autoreisezug.
Anarchy peed in my bag because he was locked in the room for the night, so the washing machine is running again and I hope that I will manage to be at the train in time.
Since I got my iPad yesterday I did spend most of my time playing with it.
Though the device is fine (they brought back the idea of the Newton but.) I did not find an application that allows tunneling of RDP through SSH, and did not get the camera adaptor yet, so I still have to pack my MacBook for admin-stuff.
I'll try to spend the week in Hungary without it, though.

 

Have been to Ultravox concert with feorag at Zeche Bochum. Usually Ultravox is not too much of my kind of music but starting with "dancing with tears in my eyes" they had enough distorted guitars to make me happy. All the songs I recognized sounded a lot more interesting performed live on stage than on the old albums.

Because of not being a fan maxed out emotionally by the music I had the time to watch the audience, take pictures of them and parasite on their joy. Very interesting, though in the end Ultravox succeeded in distracting me from my studies.

We briefly met some people of the Ultravox-Forum after the show, they had a big thank you banner. Amongst them was a girl who smiled constantly, all evening log. I guess the emotional maximum of fun you can get from a concert is about exactly what she got.

Note to self: Sort pictures, put them online, soon.

One very very annoying thing: Flashes and focus-lights of digital cameras. To me using a flash (or a focus-light) on a person is the definition of being rude. And technically - if you need to use the flash from a distance (or even from close up) your pictures will suck anyways. So please, as a general rule, turn off the fscking flash and focus-light. Take a pile of pictures, delete most of them afterwards and capture the mood of the event, even if not perfectly lighted or in focus... FLASH == RUDE.

Dear Iceland,

We said "send CASH".

Yours sincerely,
United Kingdom

[...]

Dear United Kingdom,

You should have stopped to consider that there is no letter "C" in the Icelandic alphabet  before issuing your demand.

(by Beryllium Sphere(tm) (193358))

[hashbangchris is amused, sitting on the floor of an overcrowded ICE-train for about 2 hours]

 I didn't get my usual (as in "since october")  room 404 this week as it hadn't been cleaned thoroughly.

They gave me 301 instead.

I guess that's where I'll have to stay for the rest of the project :-(