Happy New Year

Monday : 31 Dec '07 - 23:59 | damen default No comments yet |

We packed the Sekt and other stuff and will head for a new years party with some collegues of mine, so to all of you

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

Het moet nu niet gekker worden!!!

Monday : 31 Dec '07 - 18:13 | damen default No comments yet |

Blasphemy !!!

Dit even lezen en je bent het met me eens, grmbl grom grom!!

Cabaret

Monday : 31 Dec '07 - 12:56 | damen default No comments yet |

I just discovered this site of the Dutch broadcasting group VARA with tons of Dutch Cabaret

I just love the internet

Ik heb echt zin in Oud en Nieuw

Sunday : 30 Dec '07 - 08:40 | damen default Only one comment |

Brrrrr

Sunday : 30 Dec '07 - 08:22 | damen default No comments yet |

Ok, as I wrote we were diving yesterday and this time the water temperature was even less then last time (4 degrees compared to 5 degrees last time). Luckily I was very well prepared this time, because I got myself a high tech odlo underwear which ensured that I kept warm. We also had some warm snacks (Knackwurtchen) and Glühwein afterwards, so the cold was not the biggest problem.

Below some impressions of the last dive:

Last dive of the year

Saturday : 29 Dec '07 - 09:09 | damen default No comments yet |

Today we will go diving again, this time the motto is "Altjahrstauchen", translated this means Old Years dive... So it is the last dive of 2007, the outside temperature is currently a nice -5 degrees Celcius and the expected water temperature will be between 4 and 5 degrees Celcius :D Now that's fun!

Such a last dive of the year is a good point to step back and have a look what has been accomplished this diving year:

• The first dive of the year was on the 1st of April together with Lars Bock in our local lake, the Steinbergersee
  
• After that I've done 42 dives this year, compared to 2006 (30 dives) quite well. But then again, if I look at 2005 (65 dives) it is not that much. So this is a good time to decide to do more diving in 2008
  
• Special diving occasions this year were my first dives with a dry suit, which I bought in February. Furthermore we had one diving course for CMAS *, did a Night Dive Course (ok, only one participant).
  
• Dive trips: One long weekend in Austria, diving instruction for CMAS * course, one whole week diving different lakes in Austria and one trip to Thailand with three days of diving.
  
• Special things seen: Mantas, Leopard Shark, Sea Turtle, Stone Fish, Box Fish, Big School of sweet water fish in Grundlsee
  

Sigh, it was a nice diving year. Now the next year will be even more exiting as I try do get my next diving instructors license (VDST TL **, CMAS Moniteur **).

But now focus, because we are diving again

Switching the time format

Thursday : 27 Dec '07 - 08:52 | damen default No comments yet |

When switching back to XP I found out that the time format in Outlook was still the 12h format (showing AM/PM). As I find this quite annoying I changed it back to the 24h format. For this you need to change the system format, as Outlook does not have its own format but takes it from the OS:

1. In Control PanelClick Regional and Language Options.
   
2. Click Customize.
   
3. Click the Time tab.
   
4. Do one of the following:
   - Change Time format to HH:mm:ss for a 24-hour clock.
   - Change Time format to hh:mm:ss tt for a 12-hour clock.
   

Back to XP

Thursday : 27 Dec '07 - 08:49 | damen default No comments yet |

Even though Windows VISTA has a very high WAF factor I finally did switch back to Windows XP as Vista just cannot deliver the performance I need on my computer to work in a kind of appropriate way. Some day I will get myself an ultimate developer rig and it will all be not problem anymore, but so far I have to control myself

So this week it was luckily in the middle of the holiday season that I could change back to XP, and I had to install and configure all my stuff again. Just for reminders a short list of stuff I need on my PC:

This is the software which is (gonna be) installed, please note that it is still the Windows Vista list, I have to change it to XP again:

• Nvidia 8400 GS drivers
  
• Microsoft Live Messenger (and turn off the nagging messenger today popup)
  
• Microsoft Silverlight Alpha
  
• Daemon Tools
  
• Firefox
  
• Driver for Genius Videocam Messenger
  
• avast! Antivirus Home edition
  
• Mozy client for online backup
  
• Putty SSH client
  
• Adobe Acrobat Reader 8.1
  
• Apple Quicktime with iTunes
  
• Driver for Epson CX3600 - Scanner
  
• WinSCP - Secure copy using ssh encryption
  
• Microsoft Virtual PC 2007
  
• OpenOffice.ORG
  
• Suunto Dive Manager
  
• Screenshot capture tool - Screenshot Captor
  
• Microsoft Cleartype Tuning Tool
  
• Microsoft Alt-Tab Replacement
  

TODO:

• WinRar (todo)
  
• Photoshop CS3
  
• Mp3Tag, very comfortable mp3 editor
  
• Diving Log 4.0, perfect dive software

Gruße aus Museum der Kommunikation

Wednesday : 26 Dec '07 - 16:17 | damen default No comments yet |

I'm currently in the Museum for communication here in Nuernberg, after we visited the German Railway museum (JT!). Also quite interesting, they show the fast evolvement of communication from simple postal to internet.

Our Christmans Tree is there

Friday : 21 Dec '07 - 10:24 | damen default Only one comment |

Diving in Germany - brrrrr

Sunday : 16 Dec '07 - 16:44 | damen default No comments yet |

Today Klaus and I drove down to the Steinbergersee for Adventstauchen. Unfortunately we were the only ones of our diving club to go diving, but at least we went It was a beautiful cold day with air temperature of minus 2 degrees Celsius (about 28 degrees Fahrenheit) and the water was a nice 5 degrees. We went down nice and slowly along side the Rutsche until we reached the bottom platform around 30 meters. A bit further (at 38 meters) we turned left and continues at 270 degrees towards the Pumpenhaus.

Amazingly we say 2 fish around 25 meters, at this depth we have never seen fish before in the Steinbergersee ! Also there was a lot of green there, so this is good news for the lake as it is a clear indicator that it is getting better every year.

Just to compare, the dive before and this dive. A nice 24 degrees temperature difference!

Alcohol

Tuesday : 11 Dec '07 - 09:48 | damen default three comments, already |

Neue Züricher Zeitung vom 23.08.2007
Die 0,5 Promille- Grenze wird in der Schweiz wieder aufgehoben.
Ab dem 1.Juni 07 beträgt für Autofahrer der zulässige Alkoholgrenzwert
wieder 0.8 Promille. Wie eine gesamtschweizerische Studie der ETH Zürich ergeben
hat, hat die Unfallhäufigkeit seit Einführung der 0,5 %o-Grenze stark
zugenommen.
Auffällig sei, dass speziell zur späten Stunde und an Wochenenden,
die mittel- bis schweren Unfälle eine noch nie dagewesene Zahl erreichten.
Abklärungen der Polizei haben ergeben, dass die Ursache darin liege,
dass seit dem 1. Januar die Männer nicht mehr alkoholisiert heimfahren,
sondern sich von ihren Frauen abholen lassen.

Linux Media Center

Sunday : 09 Dec '07 - 21:49 | damen default No comments yet |

Today I got my LinuxMCE (Linux Media Center) working correctly. It is quite nice, I just installed the live CD of Ubuntu Linux and from there the LinuxMCE and was guided through the whole process by wizards (yes I know, sounds more like Windows approach).

It automatically recognized my Nvidia FX5200 video card and even the video out worked out of the box. So now I got all my music and videos on my linux machine, which is just an old PC with a big hard disk, sitting under my TV.

The goal is still to have a full blown automation landscape, with stuff like a home server etc, but for now this is quite ok

Some LinuxMCE / MediaCenter Links

• http://www.linuxmce.com/
• http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1814896,00.asp
• http://smart-home-blog.com/

 

Some Home Server Links:

•  http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/
  winfamily/windowshomeserver/default.mspx
• http://blogs.technet.com/homeserver/
• http://www.home-server-blog.de/
• Review HP MediaSmart Home Server by Scott Hanselman
• Power Consumption of the HP MediaSmart Home Server by Scott Hanselman

Windows Live Writer

Saturday : 08 Dec '07 - 11:12 | damen default No comments yet |

Today I installed the windows live writer, a tool of the Microsoft Windows Live applications which allows to write posts for blogs with a desktop application.

It was actually fairly easy to get it to work with Pivot, this is already the first post with it after only 5 minutes of setup and configuration

Update: All quite nice, but the important things somehow do not work so well. I cannot change already posted entries, if I change them in the live writer and post them somehow the website is not updated. Seems that there is some work needed to get this thing hooked up correct to the pivot blog.

Sonderkurs "Adventstauchen"

Thursday : 06 Dec '07 - 21:26 | damen default Only one comment |

I just finished playing with photoshop and creating the SK Adventstauchen sticker, for a diving event I'm organizing for the 16th of December.... it was really fun making it:

Windows Live Writer for Pivot

Thursday : 06 Dec '07 - 08:25 | damen default No comments yet |

Today I installed the windows live writer, a tool of the Microsoft Windows Live applications which allows to write posts for blogs with a desktop application.

It was actually fairly easy to get it to work with Pivot, this is already the first post with it after only 5 minutes of setup and configuration

Now it is time to see how well this will work in practice, because I make use of some of the pivot special features and those are probably not really incorporated here. But we'll see.