Category: kikuism

immer weitermachen

Ich habe dieser Tage eine alte Aufzeichnung einer Lesung von Walter Kempowski im Radio gehört, der ja vor kurzem nach langer Krankheit verstorben ist.

Ebenso wie Kemposwki, verstarb dieses Jahr auch mein Vater im Januar, kurze Zeit später der von mir sehr geschätzte Journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski – und jetzt vor kurzem leider auch Hans Otte, der hier in Bremen lange Jahre beim Sender Radio Bremen tätig war, und (nicht nur) dort ganz maßgeblich für ein neues Klangerlebnis gesorgt hatte.

Trotz dieser traurigen Botschaften war 2007 für mich aber auch ein sehr erfolgreiches Jahr, in dem ich viele neue interessante Menschen kennengelernt habe und jetzt einer Tätigkeit nachgehe, die meinem Profil weitgehend entspricht und den Freiraum bietet, den ich mir immer gewünscht habe.

Insofern bin ich gespannt auf das kommende Jahr und freue mich ob der Dinge, die da noch auf mich warten.

Ich wünsche Euch allen ein erfolgreiches und glückliches neues Jahr 2008!

übers Bloggen

Einer der Umstände, die mich manchmal vom Bloggen bzw. Ausfüllen dieser Website mit Inhalten abhalten, ist die Auswahl der Sprache. Weniger ob Deutsch oder Englisch, als vielmehr die Frage nach dem Schreibstil.

Sicherlich kann man anonym bloggen und dann Dinge aufschreiben, die Andere gerne lesen, Reiseberichte verfassen, übers Kochen schreiben oder neues Technikspielzeug. Darum geht es mir aber gar nicht. Dieses Blog entstand ja im Sommer 2005 aus der Not heraus, dass ich mich bei Neon angemeldet hatte und den Moderatoren dort meine Texte für eine Veröffentlichung als Artikel nicht gut genug waren. Ohne Angabe von Gründen. Wohl nicht hip genug. Oder so. Daraufhin beschloss ich, mein eigenes blog aufzumachen – auch weil mich Cedric dazu ermutigt hatte – und bin damit seitdem auch recht glücklich.
Ich blogge hauptsächlich a) auf Englisch, obwohl ich manchmal lieber auf Deutsch schreiben würde, einzig auch nur um bestimmte Dinge anders – nicht besser – ausdrücken zu wollen und b) weil ich ein sog. “Bridgeblogger” bin, manchmal zumindest, der durch das Berichten über die lokale Situation das Ausland informieren möchte.
Vor allem aber versuche ich dabei c) nicht nur eine bestimmte Seite an mir zu bedienen, sondern mehrere Ebenen wiederzugeben. Ich bin ja nicht NUR so wie das dem Leser zwischen den Zeilen hindurchschimmern mag. Was ich hier schreibe muss ja nicht vollkommen meine Persönlichkeit wiedergeben. Deswegen habe ich auch irgendwann persönlichere Dinge gebloggt, weil ich mich für eine breite Palette an Themen interessieren und auch begeistern kann.

“Ich hätte gar nicht so viel zu schreiben oder den Drang, mich anderen mitzuteilen” – solche Sprüche hört man als Blogger oft. Glücklicherweise hat sich das in den letzten zwei Jahren bißchen relativiert, und ich glaube viele dieser Aussagen sind nicht richtig, da es meiner Meinung nach viele anonyme Blogger gibt, die nach außen hin dieses low profile bewahren möchten, um dann aber insgeheim irgendwo über ihre Erfahrungen zu bloggen. Wäre mal ne interessante Studie: wieviele anonyme Blogger gibt es?

Nein, nein, es geht nicht um die öffentliche Tagebuchfunktion. Nächste Woche Dienstag haben wir in der Firma die offene Web 2.0 Gesprächsrunde, die Christian mit moderieren wird, und es werden dann sicherlich nur die Inetaffinen Gestalten auftauchen, diejenigen also, die mit dem Begriff Web 2.0 auch wirklich aktive Inhalte verbinden können und den Sinn und Zweck verstanden haben. Ich freue mich schon sehr darauf und finde es großartig, das Christian hier so missionarisch unterwegs ist!
Meine Arbeitskollegin frug mich letztens, wer das alles lesen soll. Weiß ich doch nicht! Ich hab ihr dann aber den Link mit der öffentlichen Besucherstatistik zu diesem Blog geschickt, was die Frage einigemaßen beantworten sollte.
Für mich sind Blogs also nicht nur persönliche Tagebücher im Internet, sondern vor allem Publikationswerkzeuge, um Inhalte schnell und einfach einer breiten Masse im Internet präsentieren zu können.
Sobald sich mobiles Bloggen vom Handy aus durchsetzen wird (Stichwort: Googles offenes Handybetriebssystem, das diese Dienste mit Sicherheit verschmelzen wird), wird man auch nicht mehr unterscheiden wollen zwischen reinen Blogs und moderierten Webpräsentationen. Alles verschmilzt online zu einem großen Pool an Daten, everything is miscellaneous, ist auffindbar, wird über feeds dem interessierten Leser direkt in den Feedreader befördert, nach Inhalten sortiert, jeder Nutzer ist wie bei den P2P filesharing Diensten auch automatisch Bereitsteller von Inhalten (zB durch Kommentare)…kurz: das Web lebt vom Mitmachen und Verwenden von Informationen.

Die Zweifler werden sich ob des Hypes sicherlich immer noch fragend am Kopf kratzen und ihren old-school-Status unterstreichen wollen. Sollen sie ruhig. Die Verwendung von Blogs oder sozialen Lesezeichendiensten wie del.icio.us (die qualifizierte, von Menschen vorselektierte Inhalte festhalten) sind für mich aber der Beweis dafür, dass diese Dezentralität des Netzes die Gegenwart darstellt.

So, und an dieser Stelle würde ich jetzt gerne auf den Schreibstil eingehen, alleine: es gibt keinen eindeutigen JKE-Schreibstil und außerdem muss ich jetzt grad schnell los und meine Wäsche zum Waschsalon tragen. Have a nice weekend!

the luggage story

There are a million subjects one could blog about – and while I prefer those that add a value in some way or another, I sometimes get carried away to turn this page into a tumbleblog.

Social networking services like Twitter, Facebook or even the commented links on Delicious often help to substitute these tumbleblog-tendencies in me, but there’s this question I’ve asked myself lately which just requires some feedback:

What’s the best baggage (luggage, case, travel bag)?

Yeah, what kind of travel bag(s) are you using for your travels? Non-wheeled luggage? Wheeled luggage? 2-wheeled? 4-wheeled? Backpacks? Duffels? wheeled duffels? Sports Bags? Trolleys? Spinners?….aiii – the classification in itself is confusing to a point where you just end up thinking: no way, maaaan, anything spacious will do.

Well, does it?

Now, let me pls rule out that I am by no means going to use those *insert politically incorrect term here* bags for my luggage. At least not for my next flight! :-)

Having said that, let me tell you about my Koffer-history. I grew up on using 4-wheeled upright Samsonite lightweight suitcases. My father for some reason one day decided to go for more durable cases, and back then during the early 1970s, he decided to switch from old-fashioned, fibreglass 1960s styled cases to modern Samsonite suitcases.
These Samsonites used to be nice up until the early 1990s when more and more people started travelling and suddenly even the local supermarkets starting selling decent trolley systems. And while my old Samsonite actually weighs around 6kg alone when empty (!), it weighs around 30kg when filled with normal clothes. And hey! I am tall. Tall people have bigger clothes = need for space = *should* be allocated a higher luggage weight quota. Reaching those 20kgs is a pain whenever I pack my stuff together for a longer journey, and while I often end up having around 23kgs, I am always extremly annoyed about the fact that the box actually consumes a 1/4 of the allocated weight quota.

Clearly, something needs to be done about this.

Way back in 1997, I spent my first salary on a 2-wheeled Eastpak Warehouse travel bag like the one below.

eastpak warehouse

This bag is just awesome as it offers a volume of 140 liters at a decent size of 84x45x38 cm. Yes, 38 cm width which means you can comfortably pull this bag on a narrow train aisle.
The downside of course is that there’s a chaos in this bag (you can actually just throw everything in it and move on) and that the pulling-mechanism is somewhat annoying. If you’re 6ft4 tall, all you want is long enough luggage so that you don’t have to dislocate your shoulder whenever you want to reach for your luggage. And: this is Germany. We do have a lot of US-American brands on our market here, but there are many more interesting products from the States which aren’t available here. The backpack for my 15,4″ notebook actually is a High Sierra model I was given by a friend last year who bought it in the States. Imagine I had checked ALL available laptop backpacks on sale in Germany, and none of them was good enough. Again, if you’re a tall person, finding the right luggage that uses the space provided by a longer back may sometimes be a tedious taks.

Back to my bag which has been used intensively since 1997: Just the other day while flying to Sweden, I saw this older US-American couple in front of me who were apparently touring Europe and who had very nice trolleys. This trolley technology is just perfect, and when you look at how the market for travel accessories developed over the recent years, you’ll see that more and more shops are offering those trolleys in different sizes, shapes, materials and weights.

So I started my search with the typical “what if I had enough money” question so see what’s the best product out there – and then move on to a more affordable solution.

rimowa salsa

These RIMOWA trolleys, either made out of aluminium or polycarbonate are sexy indeed, but while the alumium ones only look good (and still weigh almost as much as their fibreglass counterparts from Samsonite, Delsey & Co), the polycarbonate ones are a wobbly affair. I just don’t trust their stability as I’ve seen quite a few “refurbished” polycarbonate RIMOWAs for sale on ebay that all had the same problem: a broken corner. Quality? Well, RIMOWA gives a 30year guarantee on their products – which explains why you would spend at leat EUR 270,- on a 82l suitcase which just weighs 3,5 kgs. Nice gear, but not for me.

So I continued my search and came across this model by Eastpak (huuuh! again?) which basically looks like my older Eastpak bag with the difference that it’s a little bit smaller (105l vs 140l) and comes with a few smart details such as the trolley function and separated compartments:

gudenkauf 20101003-600
Eastpak Godfather L, 78x40x30cm, 105l, 3.8kg 4,8 kg! It’s 4,8 kg instead of 3,8kg as declared on Eastpak’s website & the flyers/badges that came shipped with this bag.

Is this my next bag for the coming years? Will my 3-weeks-luggage fit into this system and be my ultimate travel gear which I can pull from here around the rest of the world? That is: travelling for me includes everything from a comfy taxi ride, small aisles in trains, careless luggage handlers at airports to carrying this bag through never-ending stair cases and having it on my laps for a 5h ride in an over-crowded matatu. And then of course there’s this hotel across town, which means I’ll have to pull this baby through the neighborhood on never-ending streets with questionable sidewalks…

Obviously, trying to find the perfect equipment for a mixture of all those tasks is worth blogging – and a perfect distraction from other, much more important tasks that I am good at procrastinating (and which have kept me away from blogging lately, damn it..).

So what does your luggage look like? Any feedback is appreciated! :-)

my 15 minutes review of the N95

Obviously, there’s no real substitute to a laptop computer.

There are those phones that come with a working QWERTY keyboard, and others that do not but offer the connectivity to a bluetooth keyboard instead (such as the SU-8W). Such a phone with a way too small keyboardpad is my Nokia N95. “It’s what computers have become”, as Nokia advertises it.

b141581.jpg

Only: you can get a full size laptop computer for the same amount you’d have to cough up for a Nokia N95. In other words: for an amount of around EUR 600,-, this phone has to be really good. But it isn’t.

It primarily is a phone, and as such it does it’s job quite well. The interesting, multi-tasking operating system Symbian S60, 3rd (feature pack1) does a remarkable job, and it is while working with this phone that you realize how this little gadget actually works. Much like an iPhone, I suppose, that also offers an interesting GUI which takes time to load – and sometimes hangs itself up due to a system-hiccup. A reboot as the interim solution, or the flashing of the internal firmware does the job. Frankly said, with banana software that ripes with the customer and short product cycles, I never expected anything else but exactly this behaviour. Another drawback besides of the ever draining battery (this has improved over the time now and I’ve managed to keep it running on one battery charge with normal usage for something like 48 hours – which would include lots of SMS and listening to music) is the narrow keypad, which makes entering text a pain in the…fingers (the multimedia buttons, actually, not so much the 0-9, *# keypad). The delete (“C”) button on the lower right of the front buttons is just next to the so-called “multimedia button”, meaning that I sometimes accidentally hit the multimedia button, and I have to switch back to the draft folder within the SMS menue where the started sms was – fortunately – saved automatically. Also, the other multimedia buttons on top when you slide down the front part are just useless. I hardly ever use them!

Now, those are the bad sides of the phone. And there have been numerous reviews on this phone during the past 2-3 months, a huge fan base around the world that diligently describes every new trouvaille, so nothing, really nothing is unmentioned. As for the Nokia N95 vs. the Apple iPhone – I am 100% d’accord with Steve Litchfield: the iPhone is 5 years ahead, but it lacks a LOT of features even average, mass-market phones such as the Nokia 6230i or the SonyEricsson W810i already have.

Which gets us to the hightligts. I initially decided for this phone coz I started using the mp3 player that came shipped with my previous Nokia 6230i. The phone had been “pimped” with a 2GB multimedia memory card (MMC) and thus had some “issues”: a) indexing took ages whenever the player was started afresh (after rebooting, as the index list wasn’t saved for whatever reasons) and b) it sometimes just rebooted out of the blue. So the idea was born that I would need to invest into a new phone. I wanted to get a phone with a working mp3 player, a decent internet browsing facility (~ screen size) and, most importantly, a good camera. The Nokia N95 has all this!

And this btw is also why I didn’t go for a Nokia E61i or the brand-new E90 communicator, both from Nokia (the E61i is very tempting indeed, only that it doesn’t have such a nice cam). The N95 DOES have a great cam (for a phone, that is!), it has EVERY possible communication interface there is: USB, IR, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPRS, EDGE, WCDMA (UMTS 3), HSDPA (3.5G), a reliable mp3 player that remembers where I stopped the last time, even after rebooting the phone in between (nice) and the ability to record videos in near DVD quality (with a mono microphone though, which is kinda sad compared to the stereo mic on the N93).

So the point is: the N95 is a multimedia phone, and as such it does a great job.

And then of course there’s the e-mailing thing. I know there are other phones that do this job much better, even those with a push client etc (Blackberry & Co.), but for my private & “always-on-the-road”-needs, the internal e-mail client just works.

screenshot0005.jpg screenshot0006.jpg

Heck, it even allows me to attach photos, video, audio files or other content!
Well…I guess some of these HTC PDAs running on Windows Mobile 5.x /6.x aren’t bad either (i hear you, Aegeus :-) and I should give them a try next time.

I switched back from using GMail to (the German freemail provider) Web.de which offers IMAP. This constellation is more reliable than GMail and even GoogleMail’s GMail dedicated java applet something hangs. For quicky checking my e-mail on the road, this is the quickest solution. Me I like… :-)

Oh, and btw: I didn’t pay anything for the phone so far, as I got it subsidized with two contracts – which are supposed to generate revenue for the network provider and pay up the subsidization. There’s a montly base fee, but apart from that, nothing else unless you use the two SIM cards. Well, I won’t.

p.s.: how could I forget to mention the awesome GPS inside the phone? You know what they are saying about men and how they never ask for any directions once they’re lost?… so this little add-on is just sweet! :-)

encode, expose, discover

Among all the many smart ideas the N95 comes with, a rather unimportant little application caught my attention: the mobile code reader .
And according to Nokia’s BetaLabs, mobile codes are supposed to be “encoded, exposed and discovered”. This Symbian S60freak (the operating system on which this phone’s firmware is based) actually gives us a 10-point manifesto on why Barcode will rule the world (one day).

So I gave it a try and came up with a short but still meaningful phrase that I encoded, printed on paper and cut in small pieces. After a loooong day in the office, decorating the environment with secret messages for those Amélie-characters out there who still have an interest for the small things surrounding us, especially in urban areas, is just a perfect little amusement.

12072007049

I wonder if anyone manages to decode this. :-)

The-Oh-I-Forgot-To-Mention-This-Last-Night-Update:
This of course doesn’t only work with the N95 – yani this time around Nokia decided to implement it into the standard software package that comes shipped with you N93 or N95. There are a few free barcode readers available on the net and the best reader seems to be the Kaywa Reader, which is already compatible with selected Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and SonyEricsson phones. If there’s a GPRS or 3G conection available on your phone (~ if you can access a website through your phone), make sure to type in the http://reader.kaywa.com/ address and select a phone (or one which seems to be similar) to download a copy of the reader.

Oh, and while I am already at it anyways: a Nokia is a Nokia, and this N95 with its silver frame strongly reminds me of the year 1999 (2000) when the Nokia 7110 came out. Somehow strikes me that both phones are riding on the same wave in terms of a) a similar slider mechanism, b) similar haptics (~ the silver frame surrounding the screen) and c) a way too narrow and small keypad that doesn’t provide enough space for the user’s thumb.

And while going through that list of supported phones, I just can’t hide the feeling that some SonyEricsson phones are actually way much better than Nokias. Except for the keypad of course. In one of those typical comparisons, Nokia phones are like buying a VW Passat, while a SonyEricsson is like getting a Toyota Avensis. Lots of extras with the latter – you normally have to pay for extra (hence the name) with a Passat. Maybe one day I should try those SonyEricsson phones. Only maybe.

Freiburg & Acermania

My good old friend A.-M. invited me to Freiburg over the weekend, as we had to celebrate her 30th birthday. Yeah! We know each other since 17 years now, and have become really good friends some years ago. She actually is the one who “allowed” me to refurbish her bathroom – a story I blogged two years ago, and which was of particular interest to me, since I had never done that before and, having an interest for such technical issues, getting more experience by simply doing it was a great idea!

Fellow blogger Afromusing already asked for some pics, as she highlighted that Freiburg is “the model town in energy sustainability”. As I just went there for two days for a party, I didn’t take this opportunity for any sightseeing. However, Freiburg is known to be the sunniest city in Germany, and with modern districts like Vauban, lots of cyclists and other green stuff, one soon understands the sustainability approach the citizens have come up with in the past.

07-07a-006

On to something completely different: A.-M.’s “dead” Acer TravelMate 290 notebook. One day it just stopped working and refused to restart. Pressing the power button resulted in a 2 seconds activity of the fan, a few LEDs blinking – and a blank screen. Nothing else.

As A.-M. needed a working notebook, she eventually decided to settle for a new machine and stored this one in the closet. Mzeecedric actually passed by her place the other day and helped her securing all data from the old HDD (thx, bro!). She even took the old computer to a “PC guy” at her company, who quickly advised her to buy a new computer (through his channels, of course) as he couldn’t fix this one.

Now, dear Afromusing, this is why I didn’t take any pictures of the city. Upon arrival, I imediately pulled out my Leatherman and took the old laptop apart. Is this a typical nerd geek habit? :-)

Dismantling it of course didn’t bring about any change, as I had anticipated that some cleaning with Isopropanol and fixing any loose & dry contacts would awake this machine again. Nothing happened though – after reassembling the laptop, it still refused to awake from the dead.

This morning then, I had a chance to quickly google for some keywords and one user forum suggested to try the “15 seconds trick”, which is done by removing the battery and the external power supply and pressing the power button for 15 seconds, thereby discharging all condensers on the mainboard. As I had instinctively tried that before, the machine still didn’t show any life signals. Again, a dark screen and 2-5 seconds of blinking LEDs.

Most users would give up at this stage, I guess, and since the warranty on this 3years old laptop had already expired, a sale on Ebay seemed to be the most plausible further procedure. Unless of course I would try another “trick” I had read on another user forum: there is a very tiny “jumper” (J1) on the mainboard, just underneath the RAM compartment, which actually isn’t a real jumper as we know it from desktop computers, but instead just some blank soldering points that need to be bypassed for a few seconds. This – and that’s the initial reason why the machine refused to start – resets the BIOS. After doing that, the laptop started again and loaded the operating system as if it had never been half dead.

Computers…

So in case you’re the owner of an ACER TravelMate of the 290 series, or having similar problems with another notebook, make sure to actually google for some solutions, as this Acer TM 290, for instance, is said to be having these kind of problems: a hanging BIOS that fails to reset itself whenever the battery is run down to a very low level. Anyone with a decent srewdriver can do this, and it sometimes helpes to avoid expensive expenditures…

my contribution to the iPhone hype

Someone pls put a 5mpx cam + decent Xenon flash on the iPhone – and I will sell my WinXP notebook, move to the USA and become one of those Apple disciples.

The iPhone keyboard alone is reason enough for me to sit here and sigh in astonishment.

Nevertheless, I will not wait for the 2nd generation to come out, but instead go and buy that other gadgetimoja that goes by the name of Nokia N95. Because – contrary to the full price others have to pay for a new phone – we over here in Germany are able to sign for two phone line contracts for about 10,- EUR/month each (for 24 month) and get a subsidized phone for free. The only “problem” is that most users feel a bit uncomfy about the fact that they are actually having 2 inactive phone lines / SIM cards waiting in the drawer on which they are sometimes even having free airtime & sms packages bundled with…

[update]:

…but the battery life of the iPhone making calls wasn’t great; we measured it at 4 hours and 3 minutes in our first test and 5 hours and 1 minute in our second….(…)…. is significantly shorter than the LG Prada and the N95. …(…)…. For most users (such as commuters), we’d reccomend that you charge it every day. (source)

Now that’s the same thing others have said about the N95 before….however – just as everyone will be quite aware that any such gadget won’t have great battery runtimes with all these gizmos onboard – the N95 at least has an exchangeable battery. And a better camera with video recording. And GPS. And no stupid network limitations.
And… :-)