Bits and bobs by Ingo Schommer

Inception dream levels explained in flowchart

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 01:28:20 +1200

Inception dream levels explained in flowchart:

You knew this was coming. I’d call spoiler alert for those who haven’t seen Inception yet, but honestly, this flowchart from graphic designer Sean Mort will just confuse you anyways. If,…

PostgreSQL Performance Tips - GMOD

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:16:31 +1200

PostgreSQL Performance Tips - GMOD

5-Minute Introduction to PostgreSQL Performance

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:16:31 +1200

5-Minute Introduction to PostgreSQL Performance

The Case for Git Rebase

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 11:45:24 +1200

The Case for Git Rebase

Gapminder World

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 15:03:13 +1200

Gapminder World

A New Home

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 09:10:00 +1200

My Mephisto powered blog has been criminally neglected, and hence self-destroyed (at least that’s how I like to think about it). I’ve finally admitted that despite being a web-dev, I don’t have enough time to devote to the technical aspects of my own blog. The consequence: I’ve moved to a hosted service, Tumblr. Soon you’ll find the old content here, hopefully including the old permalinks.

‘Apple of My Eye’

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 01:36:25 +1200

‘Apple of My Eye’:

Short film by Michael Koerbel, shot and edited entirely on an iPhone 4. Someone apparently forgot to send him the memo that iOS devices are only for consumption, not creation.

★

Raaaandom!

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 07:16:00 +1300

Randomness #1: Turns out we were (involuntarily) following the traces of Sigourney Weaver last weekend, who happened to be at the Mighty Mighty and “Lanes”-bowling wednesday and thursday (we went friday and saturday) – see article in the Dominion Post. From now on, I’ll stalk celebrities with web 2.0 power: The local mapping service “Zoomin” actually has a Wellington Celeb Vista group which maps celebrity sightings haha.

Randomness #2: I could’ve sworn I’ve seen Reiner, an ex-workmate from german Scholz & Volkmer the other day at J.J.Murphy’s in Wellington. Haven’t seen him in three years, and wasn’t entirely sure it was him, him being uncommonly bearded and slightly broader face. So I walked past after an brief irritated look. Afterwards I looked him up on various social networks, no mention of Wellington-travel etc. Now I just got an email from another ex-workmate Diana, apparently she has seen him down south on the Abel Tasman track as well – what the… The world is surely a small place.

Hills, maps, sun & coffee

Sun, 25 Nov 2007 10:59:00 +1300

A quick uncoherent summary of what I’m up to down under: Last week I met Diana, an ex-workmate from good ol’ Scholz & Volkmer. She’s travelling through Ozzie and NZ with her friend Madleen, and had a two-day stop in Wellington. We didn’t manage to meet for over two years, so found it quite funny to sip a coffee on the other end of the globe :)

Concerning work, I’m pretty much fulltime managing and developing for an US-based client doing a Google maps mashup, helping to get the awesome Silverstripe 2.2 release out of the door, and coordinating translators for localization of the interface. I’m also having a closer look at agile development, a methodology which helps us to deliver great projects – and is exactly the stuff that would’ve been helpful to learn during my studies hehe.

Today I’ve had a bike trip to the Wellington Wind Turbine, which towers in the “hinterland” of Wellington. It took some sweat getting up there, and I’ll definetly won’t feel my legs tomorrow, but it was well worth the effort: A stunning 360 degree view of the harbor area, surrounding bays and even the Marlborough Sounds (northern tip of the south island). Check out the panorama-shot (requires Apple Quicktime)

More photos

Sign language for beginners

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 09:02:00 +1300

One of the few practical side-effects about New Zealand being on the other end of the world is that you inevitably cross a whole lot of countries on your way. This meant that an “around-the-world” flight with several stopovers was only slightly more expensive than going to Wellington non-stop (1650€ vs 1400€). So there I was, virtually pointing the finger at my spinning globe in Google Earth, looking for interesting stopovers. Although I’m a bit sceptical about high-densitiy areas, the decision fell on Japan – in specific, Osaka. With a whopping 19mio people living in the greater area, this should prove some drastic change from my 750 souls hometown.

I flew into Kansai Aiport, which is essentially a gigantic artificial island 50km away from the city. First task there: Getting paper-money from my visa. Now, you have to know that I’m bad at maths. I love my calculator-widget. Well, the currency-conversion from euros is pretty strange (1:160), so I horribily miscalculated how much money I would need for my two days stopover. I’ve changed over 1000€, about ten times of what I actually needed – and will probably loose a good chunk just changing back to dollars. Kids, learning maths can really pay sometimes! ;)

This shouldn’t be the last miscalculation for the day: I was being thrown in exactly the opposite day/night-cycle, so ended up sleeping 16h straight from midday till the next morning. After rigorously studying the subway-plan (thankfully with english translations!), I’ve endeavoured into the city. In Osaka you have to look closely to find anything that qualifies for old history, its mostly concrete and advertisements – quite different from my last city visit to Berlin, where you have historical sites all over the place. Tucked away between highways and skyscrapers you’ll find the impenetrable Osaka Castle – a fortress built to withstand every invasion, with massive 20m stone-walls and several defensive rings.

I found it interesting that you can find lots of references to Japans “golden ages” in the middle of the last millenium, but will rarely come across a mention of the second world war. You certainly would expect some information in the Osaka Museum of History, a skyscraper with 9 floors space. The only reference I could find was a map of the fire-bombings by the US in 1945, accompanied with about three sentences of indecipherable kanji (english translations at tourist attractions are a bit sparse) (turns out there’s a Peace Centre tucked away somewhere). Second day was dedicated to the more modern aspects of japanese lifestyle: eating and gadget-hunting! Both not an easy task if you don’t understand the most basic descriptions in kanji (the japanese character-set). I’ve made it a bit of a hobby to guess what products are advertised on the subway billboards (shows you how much graphic design is still dependent on context/textual information). For eating, it really helped that most restaurants have a (scaringly lifelike) plastic-representation of all meals in a showcase – its just a matter of pointing at the right stuff.

So after two days of pretty mild culture-clashes and lots of new impressions, I was finding myself back on the airport (with 1.7km the longest terminal on the planet). Now, after mostly being the only non-Japanese person wherever I went (Japan only has 2% foreigners) halfway across both my known ends of the world, I didn’t particularly watch out for a lot of familiar faces. You can imagine my surprise when I met Conor in my boarding-lounge (he’s been a client of Silverstripe and we quickly made friends). Actually he was on the same plane, sitting two rows in front of me on the same seat-position – what are the odds?! (being a math-looser, I won’t be able to give you an accurate answer to this…). After another 12h of flight I was finally back in New Zealand last Saturday, and basically went right back to my “old life” (welcome drinks on the weekends, starting work on Mondays). All feeling a bit like a strange deja-vú at the moment, but I’m really enjoying to be back!

More Photos on flickr

I'm about to produce 9t of CO2 emissions

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 16:01:00 +1300

Leaving Germany next week for more exciting work at Silverstripe in New Zealand, I’m researching about my travel. With Web 2.0 and buzzword power of course.

At first i tried a web-app for planning my itinary: just send your flight-confirmation-emails to tripit, and they provide you with a nice printable travel-plan (with weather/maps/directions etc.). Unfortunately it didn’t accept the format of my booking agency, so no dice here (manual entry is way too tedious). Very handy tool for US-based travellers though!

Then I looked up info about my 2-day stopover in Osaka/Japan on Wikitravel – an incredibly useful resource, one of the best use-cases of a wiki that i’ve seen so far. Seatguru provided me with a nice schematic view of the A340-600 that I’ll be taking there, showing bad seatings and wing-positions.

I had a discussion with my family the other day, about me being so eco-friendly by not commuting by car down in Wellington. They argued that I produce my year’s worth of carbon-emissions just by taking the plane down to NZ – which I couldn’t believe. Turns out it is true: The TerraPass website calculated that I spend 8,958t of CO~2~ on my 92,538km travel (roundtrip with several stopovers). I first thought this was the total emissions for all 340 passengers, but heck no, thats only my little contribution. The specifications for an A340-600 show that it can take up to 200,000 litres of fuel (how on earth does that thing even take off?!).

I could go carbon neutral by donating around $65 to planting new trees, according to TerraPass. Thats quite a bit of money, especially if you think how much good this amount could do in charity. I’m thinking about factoring it into the travel expenses though (which everybody should be forced to do anyway – see the Ökosteuer (economic tax) in Germany).

In Germany, lots of people even do short flights to Paris/Mailand/Stockholm for shopping costing €10 (made possible by cheapo airlines and EU-subventions). Definetly puts some perspective on being so “global”, and travelling across the world. Another argument for telecommuting/teleconferencing…

The €2 Laptop Stand

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 18:14:00 +1300

Update (04/10/2007): This article has been lifehacked. Thanks for all your comments!

Being a programmer, I crouch in front of computers a lot – obviously you want to avoid being a cripple with 30 and get an ergonomic workplace. Usually this means having a separately adjustable keyboard and screen in addition to my Macbook Pro. Currently i don’t have this luxury, so I came up with a really simple laptop stand to rise the screen-height and have a more relaxed wrist position.

This has been done before (a lot). Some of them are just clumsy, look bad, or can’t be applied to Apple laptops because of the limited bending-angle of their screens. I’m suprised nobody looked at the obvious, and constructed a stand from a ring-binder. Its very cheap, easy to build, portable, and in addition contains most of the clutter i need on my desk (post-its, pen, my two external drives). You can even bundle any cables through the metal hole present in most binders. And most important: It perfectly fits the color of my laptop! *g

What you need

A stable ring binder, optimally with the latch not sticking out of the top to prevent scratches
40cm aluminium rail (0.5mm thick, 1.5cm depth/height), normally used for securing edges, its available in every utility store
40×1cm felt or fabric, to prevent scratches
Double-sided adhesive tape
Two small metal clamps, normally used for securing letters
Optional: Some black anti-slide mat to cover the ring binder

Instructions

Cut the aluminium rail to the length of the ring binder with a metal saw
Round the cutting edges
Place adhesive tape on one inner side of the rail
Drill two holes towards the sides big enough to hold the metal clamps
Fit rail to one edge of the ring binder
Drill holes through the binder as well, and secure them with the metal clamps
Fit the strip of felt on the other inner side of the rail (which will hold the laptop)
Secure the sides of the clamps facing the laptop-bottom with tape to avoid scratches

Warning

If your laptop-bottom tends to heat up with high CPU-usage, a paper-based ring binder might pose a fire hazard. Consider using an aluminium binder, leave some room for ventilation, or cut venting-holes into the binder top.

Pictures

JQuery columnizeList Plugin

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 01:40:00 +1200

I’ve spent a rainy german saturday hacking away on my dusty ol’ website. Because of the current layout without sidebars, I had to find an unobtrusive place for meta-information like tags or archive-links. Those chunks of information can grow quite large, so i decided to expand into length rather than height and go multi-column for longer lists. Before I fully understood the stony way that lay before me, I’ve found an article on “A List Apart”-magazine outlining different ways to tackle this problem. Because of lacking support for true multi-columns we have to resort to some slightly hacky CSS, either floating or applying negative margins.

My solution works with negative margins, but automatically applied through a JQuery-plugin (see example below). It seems to be rather stable across browsers, but has the usual quirks of using CSS for something its not intended to perform - make sure to read about the CSS-limitations of this method over at “A List Apart”. By the way, you can see this plugin in action through the “archive”-area at the top of this website

Features

Styling of ordered/unordered lists
Configurable column-count and width
Resize-friendly em-based sizing
Easy restoring to “non-column” layout
Automatic adjustment on DOM-modification of the list (Firefox only)
Requirements: JQuery 1.2 (download)
Browser-Compatibility: Firefox 1.5+, IE6+, Safari 2

Usage

Just apply to any group of DOM-elements gathered by the amazing JQuery-selectors. The provided arguments are optional (these are the default values).

$('#demolist').columnizeList({cols:3,width:13,unit:'em'});

Example

float / unfloat (Lame! List-ordering is messed up)
columnizeList() / uncolumnizeList() (The real deal)

harold (3550)
horatio (1320)
hitler (1120)
henry (784)
hector (358)
haploid (315)
hopping (50)
herbert mulroney (44)
hopscotching (29)
hominibus (19)
honkey (19)
hermoine (18)
hieronymus (13)
halliburton (12)
hummer (10)
harlod (10)
heironymious (9)
hemorrhoids (7)
hammersack (6)

Just in case you’re wondering: The demo-list consists of the most common fillers for the phrase “Jesus H Christ” ;-)

Sourcecode

/**
 * Copyright (c) 2007 Ingo Schommer (www.chillu.com)
 * Licensed under the MIT License:
 * http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php
 * 
 * Splits a /-list into equal-sized columns.
 * 
 * Requirements: 
 * 
 * All list-elements need to have the same height.
 * List has to be blocklevel
 * 
 * 
 * Caution: margin-top/margin-left on  are overridden.
 * Doesn't react to changes to the DOM, you need to call the function
 * manually afterwards.
 * 
 * @see http://www.alistapart.com/articles/multicolumnlists
 */
jQuery.fn.columnizeList = function(settings){
    settings = jQuery.extend({
        cols: 3,
        width: '13',
        unit: 'em'
    }, settings);

    var prevColNum = 0;
    var size = $('li',this).size();
    var computedColHeight = 0;
    var baseFontSize = parseFloat($(this).css('font-size'));
    $('li',this).each(function(i) {
        var currentColNum = Math.floor(((i)/size) * settings.cols);
        $(this).css('margin-left',(currentColNum*settings.width)+''+settings.unit);
        if(prevColNum != currentColNum) {
            $(this).css('margin-top','-'+(computedColHeight/baseFontSize)+'em');
            computedColHeight = $(this).height();
        } else {
            $(this).css('margin-top','0');
            computedColHeight += $(this).height();
        }
        prevColNum = currentColNum;
    });

    this.css('height',(size/settings.cols)*(parseFloat($('li:first',this).height())/baseFontSize)+'em');
    this.after('');

    var onchange = function(e) {
        if(!e.originalTarget || e.originalTarget.tagName != 'LI') return true;
        var scope = this; // caution: closure
        setTimeout(function() {$(scope).columnizeList(settings);}, 50);
    };

    this.one('DOMNodeInserted',onchange);
    this.one('DOMNodeRemoved',onchange);

    return this;
};

jQuery.fn.uncolumnizeList = function(){
    $('li',this).each(function(i) {
        if(!$(this).attr('style')) return;
        $(this).attr(www.chillu.com)
 * Licensed under the MIT License:
 * http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php
 * 
 * Splits a /-list into equal-sized columns.
 * 
 * Requirements: 
 * 
 * All list-elements need to have the same height.
 * List has to be blocklevel
 * 
 * 
 * Caution: margin-top/margin-left on  are overridden.
 * Doesn't react to changes to the DOM, you need to call the function
 * manually afterwards.
 * 
 * @see http://www.alistapart.com/articles/multicolumnlists
 */
jQuery.fn.columnizeList = function(settings){
    settings = jQuery.extend({
        cols: 3,
        width: '13',
        unit: 'em'
    }, settings);

    var prevColNum = 0;
    var size = $('li',this).size();
    var computedColHeight = 0;
    var baseFontSize = parseFloat($(this).css('font-size'));
    $('li',this).each(function(i) {
        var currentColNum = Math.floor(((i)/size) * settings.cols);
        $(this).css('margin-left',(currentColNum*settings.width)+''+settings.unit);
        if(prevColNum != currentColNum) {
            $(this).css('margin-top','-'+(computedColHeight/baseFontSize)+'em');
            computedColHeight = $(this).height();
        } else {
            $(this).css('margin-top','0');
            computedColHeight += $(this).height();
        }
        prevColNum = currentColNum;
    });

    this.css('height',(size/settings.cols)*(parseFloat($('li:first',this).height())/baseFontSize)+'em');
    this.after('');

    var onchange = function(e) {
        if(!e.originalTarget || e.originalTarget.tagName != 'LI') return true;
        var scope = this; // caution: closure
        setTimeout(function() {$(scope).columnizeList(settings);}, 50);
    };

    this.one('DOMNodeInserted',onchange);
    this.one('DOMNodeRemoved',onchange);

    return this;
};

jQuery.fn.uncolumnizeList = function(){
    $('li',this).each(function(i) {
        if(!$(this).attr('style')) return;
        $(this).attr('style', 
            $(this).attr('style')
            .replace(/margin\-left[^,]*/g,'')
            .replace(/margin\-top[^,]*/g,'')
        );
    });
    $('ul',this).each(function(i) {
        if(!$(this).attr('style')) return;
        $(this).attr('style', 
            $(this).attr('style')
            .replace(/[^-]height[^,]*/g,'')
        );
    });
    $(this).height('auto');
    this.unbind('DOMNodeInserted');
    this.unbind('DOMNodeRemoved');

    return this;
}

Outage - Teh PAIN!

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 00:28:00 +1200

Well, switching my blog to Mephisto was one thing, but taming a fastcgi-server on my shared-hosting-provider Site5 is a completely different story. Being the usual geek, I’ve applied way too much technology to a simple problem: Capistrano promises a solid automated deployment process, and is often used for Rails-based apps. Very interesting concept, and for more scientific than practical reasons I’ve spend nearly two days configuring this tool for chillu.com. Well, i’ve ended up 90% done, and an embarassing downtime while debugging fastcgi and mysterious rails-logs – sorry for that!

Running around naked

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 10:16:00 +1200

Remember the CSS Naked Day? I’m joining in a bit off schedule, and for slightly different reasons: After a bit of finetuning in March, I’m going style-naked as a way to force myself into an iterative redesign. Plans are to “publish early and often” and use chillu.com for fast prototyping in CSS, so expect some inconsistencies over the next weeks. I’ll document the process as its coming along, and looking forward to your feedback (yes, I’ve resurrected the commenting-system!).

Behind the scenes, I’ve switched from Typo3 /Timtab to Mephisto – and from PHP to Ruby on Rails. Typo3 has served me well for the time being, and enabled me to develop custom solutions like the portfolio-area. It just wasn’t very strong on ease-of-use, templating, and simply not the right choice to satisfy the needs of a simple blog. chillu.com has always been my playground for new technology, so with the switch I’m hoping to spend more time experimenting with a solid framework and some frontend-goodies. Silverstripe (my employer) also builds an open-source blog-module, which came close second. My main objective for the switch was extending my knowledge, and I’m programming PHP/Silverstripe quite a lot anyway. I’m already missing the extensibility of the Silverstripe framework, but having fun times learning a new system instead – it’s a tradeoff.

Going naked also emphasises the most important thing in any blog: content! With less interface and configuration getting in my way, I hope to spend more time actually producing meaningful content, with proper markup and semantics. Mephisto also brought some new goodies out of the box, namely: Tags, search and comments with textile markup. Yay!

Disneyland with death penalty

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 10:08:00 +1200

On the way back to Germany I had a little “asia-preview” by staying in Singapore for two nights. As so often, the internet was very useful for figuring out to do in this timespan, and so I followed a wiki-based itinary from wikitravel.
Day 1 was dedicated to shopping on Orchard Street, a 2km-street with at least a dozen multi-storey shopping malls – it actually took me the better part of the day to walk through it. As I couldn’t think of any electronics I could buy cheaper there, I got through it without spending much (apart from an awesome robopet for my godson). I saw at huge armada of electronic-shops on the way, selling everything from cellphone-covers over phonecards to digicams – sometimes as many as five on a single mall-floor. Interesting sidenote: Lots of asians switch to badass digital SLRs, with 600mm-lenses, external flash and all the shebang (I’m getting rid of mine, because its just too bulky to carry around).
So my first impression of the city wasn’t too overwhelming, with lots of concrete and in-your-face capitalism (“world’s only shopping mall with a seat in the United Nations”). Although it’s a very safe city, I feld kinda awkward being in a place where a death penalty is executed every six days in average (way more than in China), on relatively low charges as trafficking 500g of marihuana.
After an exhausting afternoon with unbearable humidity I was ready to sample some Singaporean food – and tried the highly recommended “black pepper crab”. It was quite a fight between us two, with pityful waiters bringing me more napkins because my hands were nearly black with soy sauce – fun times!
Day 2 proved to be more cultural and interesting: Chinatown with its innumerous booths selling random stuff, and a very crowded Little India – I must have seen the whole male indian population of Singapore chatting on the space of three blocks, without any apparent reason for gathering. Had an in-depth personal introduction into the art of Japanese tea-brewing (at Tea Chapter), a very formalized process with lots of utilities. Today my culinary choices were “tea eggs” and shark fins – couldn’t get me to try the fishhead curry.
I really wanted to try asian pastry as well, but couldn’t go near any bakery – because they mostly sell some weird fruit called “durian” there, with a sweet smell unbearable for most europeans. The smell is so bad that its actually forbidden to bring the fruit on the subway haha.
The public transport in Singapore is awesome, with modern stations, prepaid ticket-cards and a well-planned network its super-easy to get around in the city.
So overall Singapore left a pretty mixed picture, no place I would want to live (especially because of the authoritarian regime) – but definetly worth a two-day stop.
Good read on Singapore in Wired Magazine: “Disneyland with Death Penalty” Some photos on flickr

Terra Australis Incognita

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 21:09:00 +1200

Time flies, especially with a fun job in an awesome city on the other end of the globe. So the expiry of my Work&Travel visa advanced quickly, and the inevitable flight back to Germany proved a good opportunity for a holiday. I always wondered why people would live in such a crazy continent as Australia, so the goal was obvious – three weeks of sun, beaches and dangerous animals on the east coast. I left Wellington on a sunny winter day, still a bit hung-over from my farewell-party, trying to decide if I’m sad about leaving or looking forward to the way ahead. My first impression of Sydney was their massive two-level subways – with hinged backseats that can change orientation to form group seating. Inventive bunch, those Australians! For its stretch of over 1500 square kilometers including suburbs, the inner city is quite walkable – I love to explore cities on foot, and find all those random places that you would miss on a subway- or bustour. For example, I wouldn’t have ended up in the viewing-booth backyard of an “adult shop” while looking for a second-hand bookshop (which closed down in the meantime, but still had its advertisement up…). I had my “Wow, I’m actually in Sydney!”-moment when arriving at the harbourfront with the gravity-defying Sydney Opera House. My trusty “Lonely Planet”-guide informed me that it was built back in the 60s, for ten times the original estimate – glad this doesn’t just happen to software projects hehe. Next stop for the hungry traveller was Chinatown – if you like asian food, thats the place to be (a third of Sydneysiders are born overseas, lots of asian influences). Sydney was surprisingly cold and rainy (so much about sunny Australia and windy Wellington! *g*), so I started figuring out my further trip and booking stuff (very “un-german” not to have this sorted already, as my kiwi-mates would say). I “fast-forwarded” the route between Sydney and Brisbane to flee from the cold south. Traveling in Australia usually means crossing the equivalent of a medium-sized european country towards the next city – while the east-coast looks quite compact on a map, I actually did over 3000km of bus-travel – so going to Brisbane meant a 15h tour. On the way I’ve seen a couple dozen “roadkills” – actually I’ve seen more dead than live kangaroos here (an inevitable thing with roughly 60 million of them throughout the continent). From Brisbane onwards I enjoyed the usual mix of beaches and island-trips (with way too little time for beach bumming!). I’ve had a look where my former flatmates Sepp and Eva did their study abroad near Surfers Paradise (lucky bastards! *g), in the aptly dubbed “Miami of Australia”. East-coast Australia feels a lot more american than british, with climatized shopping-malls, oversized roads and highrise beach-resorts. To sample a bit less “califoria-style” Australia, we deviated into the outback and stayed a night on the Krombit Cattle Farm, complete with whip-cracking, lasso-throwing and riding the electric bull (a mere 12 seconds before my nuts where crushed and I fell off) – fun times! I was pretty occupied searching the dust for anything dangerous, of which the Australians have quite an assortment – any living thing here seems set to shorten your life in a grueling and painful way. I mean heck, even birds try to kill you here by slashing open your chest. Teacup-sized jellyfish have enough poison to kill a roomful of people, and spiders get big enough to catch small birds. Ah, and the usual sharks and crocodiles, which kinda take the fun out of swimming and living near water. Having said that, Australians are pretty relaxed about any immanent death-threats – and I’ve seen very few dangerous animals that weren’t caged. Even when doing my diving certificate on the Great Barrier Reef, the only thing remotely concerning was a small stingray. Before I really knew it, I found myself on a plane to Singapore, contemplating about this strange continent. Australians are a fascinating bunch with a great attitude, and manage to squeeze out a lot of lifestyle from this barren land. Definetly going back there, mate! :) Some Photos on flickr

Tasty flowers

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 23:03:00 +1300

After all the talk about “the real life” on my blog, it is clearly time for a geeky post ;) Today I’m moving another part of my digital life online: Bookmarks. I’m probably a bit late to the party here, but I evaluated the options for quite a while. I wasn’t too impressed with the feature-set and user interface of deli.cio.us (besides the fact that I can never remember where to put those damn dots…). The release of ma.gnolia was more exciting, providing ratings, private bookmarks, nice typography and more social features. I’m totally digging (no pun intended) the concept of tagging, and have been pretty busy converting my “web 1.0”-hierarchy to sensible tags – take a look. Apple, can you please give me a filesystem that natively supports tags? (and I’m not talking about those stinkin’ smart folders, which are basically fake filesystem-searches). Two reasons why it took me so long to make the switch are speed and integration: Magnolia was painfully slow when it was released in 2006. And I was under the impression that the process of creating a new bookmark online wasn’t unobtrusive enough to actually be useable. Thanks to Safari, I call the ma.gnolia-bookmarklet by simply pressing Apple+1 now, easy as pie. These days, I’m always wondering what I get back for putting stuff on the interwebs. One of the biggest advantages for being active on last.fm is that you get music recommendations based on your input. It would be great to have these fuzzy recommendations for all kinds of services, say “People who read this feed are also interested in” or “People with similar bookmarks”.

Wodyauptu

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 11:01:00 +1300

… eine typische Kiwi-Begrüßung, heißt in etwa “Wie gehts, was machst du so?” (“What are you up to?”) – und genau das will ich heute mal bloggen, es gibt genug zu erzählen.

Ich hab endlich meinen Arsch hochgekriegt und bin aus meinem öden Einzelzimmer in eine WG gezogen. Mein “mate” Ben geht für ein paar Monate nach Deutschland, und was läge da näher als sein Zimmer an nen Deutschen nachzuvermieten? Außerdem wohnen hier noch zwei Jungs von SilverStripe, passt also wunderbar. Und das beste: Normales Internet! (UMTS sucks…).

An dieser Stelle vielleicht mal eine kleine Exkursion in neuseeländischen Häuserbau: Im Gegensatz zu massiven deutschen Privat-Festungen kommen mir hier die meisten Häuser wie Pappschachteln vor. Einfach verglaste Fenster, stromfressende Heizstrahler für jedes Zimmer, und Pappwände. Letzteres kann ich noch verstehen, da einem in dem erdbebengeplagten Wellington nicht so leicht “die Decke auf den Kopf fällt”. Trotzdem ist es es schon merkwürdig, wenn mein Vormieter Ben ein Loch in die AUSSENWAND seines Zimmers treten kann – kein Scheiß! Dafür sind hier fast alle Häuser aus Platzmangel an Berghängen gebaut und haben eine phantastische Aussicht auf die zahlreichen Buchten von Wellington. Mein Zimmer hat einen Balkon mit 180° Panorama auf die Lyall Bay, wo mir schon morgens die Sonne entgegenblinzelt und ich die Flugzeuge auf Augenhöhe am nahen Flughafen anfliegen sehen kann.

Das dumme an Berglage und Panorama ist, dass zwischen meiner Arbeitsstelle und WG ca. 250 Höhenmeter liegen, die es jeden Tag zu bezwingen gilt. Die WG-Kollegen machen das mit dem Fahrrad, entweder halsbrecherischer Downhill durch die Büsche, oder die engen Vorort-Straßen runterschlängeln/hochkriechen. Ist mir im Moment beides zu extrem, daher beschränke ich mich auf eine Kombination von Fußarbeit und Busfahren. Meistens komme ich abends nach acht nach Hause, und werde nach dem anstrengenden Bergmarsch auf den Mount Victoria mit einem schönen Sonnenuntergang belohnt.

Leider muss ich schon wieder umziehen (dumme Verkettung von Mißverständnissen…), und so hab ich die letzten Tage auf trademe.co.nz (dem neuseeländischen Ebay) nach WG-Angeboten gelauert. Ab Februar wohne ich zusammen mit einem Design-Studenten-Paar in einer schnuckeligen zweistöckigen Bude in der Innenstadt (Vivian St., der kleinen “Rotlicht”-Straße von Wellington). Also ein kleines neues Kapitel für mich, mal sehen wie’s läuft. In puncto Ausblick muss ich leider Abstriche machen, außer ein paar Zimmerpflanzen und einer Hauswand ist da nicht viel.

So genug mit Wohnungsdetails gelangweilt, sonst geht hier nicht viel – Arbeit ist immer noch super-interessant (kann mir garnicht vorstellen wieder mit einem prozeduralen System wie Typo3 zu arbeiten…), der Sommer ist endlich da, was will man mehr! Die Mittagspause können wir endlich mal ohne Pullover draußen verbringen, entweder auf dem bisschen Grün am Courtenay Place, oder direkt am Hafen (heute waren wir Tretboot fahren g).

"Sommerurlaub" im Herr-der-Ringe-Land

Sun, 07 Jan 2007 00:42:00 +1300

Weihnachtszeit ist Familienzeit – sogar für temporäre Auswanderer wie mich: Meine Eltern und meine kleine Schwester Karolin haben Geschenke und Sonnenbrille eingepackt, um mich für einen kurzen Sommerurlaub auf der Südhalbkugel zu besuchen – vielen Dank fürs Vorbeikommen!

Erste Erkenntnis: Wellington ist über die Feiertage eine Geisterstadt, wir haben am ersten Weihnachtsfeiertag genau ein offenes Restaurant in der kompletten Innenstadt gefunden (die meisten sind geschlossen, um sich vor den horrenden Feiertagsgehältern zu drücken, und Kiwis kochen über Weihnachten anscheinend lieber selbst). Weihnachtsstimmung wollte ohne Glühwein, Weihnachtsmärkte und Schneedecke sowieso nicht aufkommen, auch wenn sich das neuseeländische Wetter sehr angestrengt hat: Dezember 2006 war mit durchschnittlich 12°C der kälteste Sommermonat seit Beginn der Aufzeichnungen, und damit garnicht soviel wärmer als der verspätete Winter in good ol’ Germany. Da denkt sich der Mitteleuropäer doch “Ab in den Süden” … nur leider ist auf der Südhalbkugel ja alles andersrum, und auf der Südinsel von Neuseeland ist es eher noch kälter.

Also Schwimmsachen wieder eingemottet, und Kamera rausgeholt – zu sehen gibts nämlich trotzdem genug: Schon auf der Überfahrt mit der Fähre sind wir von Orcas begleitet worden. Die Südinsel ist dünn besiedelt, und die Hauptattraktion ist die abwechslungsreiche Landschaft (wo sonst findet man Gletscher, Palmenstrände, Pinguine und Schafe im Umkreis von ein paar Kilometern?). Mit einem Mietauto haben wir dann an der Küstenlinie entlang die Insel umrundet, so lange uns keine Regenwälder oder Bergmassive ins Inland verschlagen haben – satte 2000km Linksverkehr.

Irgendwann sind wir dann in Queenstown gelandet – eine der bekanntesten Orte der Südinsel. Mit viersteliger Einwohnerzahl eher Bergdorf als Stadt. dafür ist das ganze Gebiet eine einzige große Buchungsagentur für Freizeitsportarten (hier wurde in den 80er Jahren Bungy erfunden). Und so versperren unzählige Paraglider, Hubschrauber und Speedboats die eigentlich atemberaubende Aussicht. Wir hatten uns für einen Skydive aus 12.000ft entschieden (sogar mein Dad wollte springen!), der aber leider wiederholt abgesagt wurde wegen Bewölkung – verdammt! Queenstown war auch unsere Ausgangsstation für den Milford Sound, ein absolutes Highlight der Tour – erinnert ihr euch noch an die riesigen Steinstatuen (“Argonauten”) aus dem ersten Herr der Ringe-Teil? Alles im “Fjordland” um Milford Sound gedreht worden. Mit diesen Bildern im Kopf kann man sich gut vorstellen, wie imposant dieses Flußtal ist. Insgesamt mussten wir zehn Stunden Busfahrt durch Niemandsland mit dichtem Regenwald und kurvigen Bergschluchten überstehen, für eine zweistündige Bootsfahrt Richtung Meer, vorbei an Wasserfällen, Seelöwen und Delfinen. Komischerweise hatten wir genau hier herrlichsten Sonnenschein, bei über 250 Regentagen und bis zu 10m Niederschlag im Jahr.

Generel kommt man an “Lord of the Rings”-Spuren kaum vorbei auf der Südinsel: In Nelson sind wir zufällig auf den Goldschmied gestoßen, der die Ringe für den besagten Film angefertigt hat. Auf Nachfrage haben wir dann auch verschiedene Prototypen gezeigt bekommen, einer davon mit 20cm Durchmesser für Detailaufnahmen (aber leider kein massives Gold, hehe). Außerdem haben wir das Tal von Rangitikei River (“Anduin”) gesehen, durch dass Liv Tyler den verletzten Frodo vor den Ringgeistern gerettet hat – heute wird in der Gegend Bungy gesprungen ;)

Nach ein paar weiteren Stationen auf unserer Insel-Umrundung (kurze Zusammenfassung: Christchurch – “very british”, Dunedin – “big and bulky”, Nelson – “guter Wein”) sind wir dann wieder am Ausgangspunkt angelagt und durch die Cook Straße zurück in ein sonniges Wellington geschippert. Lustigerweise haben wir dort dann das erste Mal am Strand gelegen (direkt in der Innenstadt an “Oriental Bay”).

Alles in allem ein schöner Urlaub ohne Familienkrach, und eine doch sehr andere Art Weihnachten zu verbringen. Die Südinsel mehr als nur Schafe zu bieten (obwohl es schwierig ist, ein Landschaftsfoto ohne Schafe zu machen). Achja, Fotos.