Blog

  • Manga Guide Complete Set | No Starch Press

    Manga Guide Complete Set | No Starch Press

    The parcel from the U.S. just arrived. Customs not involved. Why is that? But it’s great. So how will I get the books to their audience? And who is going to be the audience? Just son#1? OMG! Poor boy!

    Any idea?

    These are the topics:

    • databases
    • calculus
    • molecular biology
    • physics
    • electricity
    • statistics

    Apparently some of them got translated to some indigenous languages like German – have a look here!

  • what about a “.org” domain and a wiki?

    I actually think, the issue is very serious and very urgent.

    I kept thinking about a way of how to join efforts.
    Maybe setting up a wiki on a domain at “.org” is the right thing.
    I started enquiries and activities into that direction.

    I still need your advise and your comments, and I seriously welcome and appreciate your support.

    One thing is very true: buzzwords shouldn’t be used in this context, because they are far too loud and appeal in an improper way. But of course, it’s far too intriguing to use them. So we must take care.

    I asked around at my web space provider (a non profit organization in the research support area), if anybody there would like to support this effort on an hourly basis. Waiting for their feedback.

  • software staff meetings and a few crucial questions

    These questions actually come from “The Software Developer’s Career Handbook” (“Being Geek”) by Michael Lopp. Beware: not every yes is a good yes.

    • Is there an agenda?
    • Is it followed?
    • Is random debate encouraged?
    • Can debate occur without involving the manager?
    • Is debate limited to a specific time?
    • Is the time allotted for the meeting always filled?
    • Can it go over?
    • Does it always go over?
    • Is it a fun meeting?

    Well, I have the book in front of me, and I know, what Michael Lopp thinks are positive yes-s, he calls them organic. If I look back at one particular bank project during the last couple of years, the manager utterly failed in terms of this check.The manager let aggressive Geek style team members bash others, because they dared to prolong the staff meeting, and because these other teem members asked questions, that the first ones already got dealt with in a 1:1 outside the staff meeting.

  • suffering from e-mails getting bounced because of some RBL listed SMTP server

    My domains are hosted by United-Domains.de, my mail box and web space are hosted by another provider.
    Provider#2 uses an RBL list, which has a “bad reputation entry” concerning the SMTP server of provider#1.
    This is how I finally understood my situation today, after having suffered from e-mails getting bounced for quite a couple of months. What a luck, provider#2’s hotline isn’t any expensive at all.

    I had a calm and relaxed conversation with the highly experienced supporter at the other end, and he explained me how to remove the RBL checking for my e-mail addresses. He warned me to do so, because that would increase the amount of SPAM arriving at my account, but I praised their SPAM detection and flagging of the e-mail headers and also my own procmail rules.

    Now, I am very positive, my suffering found an end.

  • FRITZ!Box 7390 “looses” substantial amounts of time during 24 hours

    My 7390’s firmware version is this: 84.04.85-18065.

    There are other issues with the 7390 as well, but it’s a solid piece of router / wifi access point / pbx / dect access point / … – I do love my 7390, and I don’t want to swap it for anything else.

    I didn’t experience those firewall attacks again, that I mentioned earlier.

    But the box rebooted all off a sudden recently w/o leaving any reasonable or informative message.

    Update re lost time:
    Changing the NTP server (e.g. to 2.de.pool.ntp.org) seems to help.

    Update 2011-01-05 re lost time:
    No, changing the NTP server did not really help at all. I am losing about half an hour quite often. The NTP server is now again set to de.pool.ntp.org.
    Manually re-connecting the Internet connection under Internet / Online-Monitor helps, if you want to get the time corrected instantly.
    But I don’t want to imagine, I oversleep a train connection, because my FRITZ!Box initiated alarms on the phones do not occur at the right time.

  • “drag and drop” and the cmd-key

    My Situation: 2 finders open, one pointing to a local disk, the other to a remote disk.


    If you drag (using the cmd-key) exactly one file from that “local finder” to the “remote finder”, the meaning of the operation is “move”.

    If you drag (using the cmd-key) more than one file from that “local finder” to the “remote finder”, the meaning of the operation is “copy”.




    How do I achieve a “move” for more than one file?


    Update 2011-07-23
    Starting with Lion you also achieve moving more than one file like that.