Archive for the ‘tech’ Category
Thursday, July 10th, 2003
Yesterday I finished fiddling with the HTML and CSS code of my web pages. *sigh*
You probably won’t notice any differences, but everything is much better now. ;-) The blog displays exactly as it should in a ton of different browsers: Internet Explorer 5.0 on Win98, 6.0 on WinXP, 5.23 on MacOS X, several different Mozilla/Firebird/Camino builds on different platforms, Opera 6.02, and Safari (which uses a tweaked version of the rendering engine of Konqueror on Linux). Only the trusty iCab has it’s usual problems with the correct rendering of pretty basic CSS code. But the page still works nicely even in iCab.
The code for my other pages has undergone some optimizations too. It might now be rendering a tad bit faster. It has also been revised to be even more accessible to handicapped people, and people with text browsers or slow connections. Hopefully this also has a positive impact on my google ranking, because I am now using the appropriate tags wherever possible (i.e. I am formatting the contents list using list tags, I am formatting my contact information using the address tag etc.)
Tags: blog, browser, Camino, Google, HTML, iCab, Internet Explorer
Posted in tech | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 8th, 2003
Hey Ho! After some more experimenting with the way blosxom works, I finally came up with a tuned version that validates both as HTML and as CSS. As you know, I never ever want to brag, but this is quite a feat!
There is only one small caveat: Some of the entries in this blog contain special characters, which I didn’t encode properly during the beginning of my blogging life. I won’t change these; they will eventually vanish as I will write more entries. If I would change them now, they would all have a changed date and accordingly appear under today’s heading. We don’t want this. No. Just enjoy the new Valid HTML and Valid CSS logos in the column to the right.
Tags: HTML
Posted in tech | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 8th, 2003
The city of Neverwinter is in great peril. And only Timo and I can save it. There is a big obstacle blocking our way to the rescue, though. It is called lame progress in porting NWN to the Mac. Bioware, the producer of this and related Games taking place in the Forgotten Realms of AD&D, seems to be almost ready with the game, things are obviously delayed by the publishing house, MacSoft. Get your act together, so that Timo and I can save those poor people from dying! Slaughter some monsters!
Up until the great day when I will find the game box in my mail, I have to bridge time and space by relying on the computer hardware accessible here in Darmstadt, using a … windows … machine. That’s how hard it is.
Tags: apple, fantasy, games
Posted in tech | 2 Comments »
Monday, July 7th, 2003
Since I implemented the comment function in this blog I have been unhappy with it’s layout. Today I dug a little deeper into the way the comment stuff works (the “writeback plugin”). Interpreting the bones and shards that I found in the hole that i dug, I was able to generate a new, hopefully more pleasing layout for you. Any feedback or comments? ;-)
Tags: blog, comment
Posted in tech | No Comments »
Thursday, June 26th, 2003
Mist. Es ist schon wieder passiert. Der wohl häufigste und nervigste Fehler beim Verschicken von Mails: ich habe vergessen, das Attachment anzuhängen…
Übrigens: wenn Ihr diese Seite Bookmarken wollt, müsst Ihr ganz einfach Strg+D (bei Windows) oder Apfel+D (beim Mac OS) drücken. (Linuxer wissen wie’s geht.)
Tags: e-mail
Posted in tech, Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, June 25th, 2003
Yesterday Apple presented new stuff. I would definitely like to have one of the new G5 machines, but I surely won’t have the money. Panther is a different thing – I’m looking forward to Panther (Mac OS X 10.3) very much, I only fear that it won’t run too well on my old iBook and the Pismo that I have. The Panther release might be time for getting the 900Mhz G3 processor update for the Pismo.
But I do want to write about another thing Apple published yesterday: iChat AV, the new version of Apple’s chat program. Kerstin and I installed it and it works beautifully. I am very impressed. It is full duplex (i.e. both people can talk and listen at the same time), and the sound quality is very good. There are only a few dropouts now and then, but we might get that optimized sooner or later. It’s gorgeous. Our phone bill is quite likely to shrink by a certain amount.
The only problem I had was with my overly restrictive firewall setting and with getting the audio in to the G4 at home, but after some cooperative hacking of the firewall (thanks Kerstin!) and some plugging in and out of cables and devices (thanks Chr!) everything is vanilla.
Tags: chat, iBook, Pismo
Posted in tech | No Comments »
Saturday, June 21st, 2003
This is just to try if I am granted access to these selected pages by virtue of the password I was generously given on another occasion.
IT WORKED!!! But now duty in the form of the tedious job of appartment-hunting calls. See ya later, as the Aussie likes to put it (even when the chances of seeing again later come close to being zero).
Tags: blog
Posted in tech | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 11th, 2003
The trip to Buchholz, the wedding, and the transition back to Berlin got me out of my slowly-establishing-itself routine. So I spent most of the day on the balcony, reading c’t and Le monde diplomatique and surfing the web. I wanted to go play some basketball, alas, there were too many people, and not enough power in yours truly to start playing with them. My stamina is still just above bare minimum and I would certainly have exhausted myself to such a level that I wouldn’t be of much use during the next days. Instead, I am now blogging and listening to one of iTunes internet radio stations (some blues hosted by the ParaDynamic Roadhouse). Later I will probably make use of the fact that today is “Kinotag” and go watch Rabbit-Proof Fence together with Kerstin. Read my report tomorrow!
By the way, what do you think about the most recent addition to this blog? It’s called “ozean’s digest” and can be found in the left column.>
Tags: balcony, berlin, Buchholz, c't, Le monde diplomatique, music, travel
Posted in berlin, tech | No Comments »
Monday, June 9th, 2003
In Buchholz I only have access to a feeble V.90 modem connection, and I was pretty busy before and after the wedding party so I didn’t manage to write anything during the last two days. :-( The wedding was a success and it was extraordinarily nice to see so many of my good old friends. During the party (which went on until five a.m.) I had some time to get myself updated about what’s going on in their lives. The size of the dancing crowd was only moderate (especially in contrast to the bar crowd) but it was a pretty decent dancing crowd!
After some heavy thunderstorms yesterday the air did cool down a bit. Now, the temperature is perfect. I might even leave our apartment and play some basketball later. Until then I will keep researching for ways to get my reference database (Endnote) linked into some more German libraries. To get this worked out, I’ll probably have to ask some of the knowledgeable people at the Max-Planck-Institute‘s Library.
I am still looking for a working link to the icons plugin. As soon as it is installed, we’ll have nice slashdot-style icons on this page. Other than that, I am probably going to update the left column and the link section of this page today. Look out for new stuff!>
Tags: berlin, blog, Endnote, library, weather
Posted in berlin, social science, tech | No Comments »
Sunday, June 1st, 2003
I would be quite surprised if I write as frequently as I do now. There seems to be quite a lot of news in my life these days, many things happing that could find their way into the blog. Events which I enjoy reflecting upon and which I enjoy putting into words.
One of the major reasons for this is: ich habe die Muße dafür (I do have the leisure to do this). The apartment in Griesheim is still quite empty and not in “easy living condition”, there are not too many things that could distract me here (my PowerBook is not that much of a gaming machine, there is no TV available, I am broke, our workroom in the Kraftwerk is not at all crowded), and I am not yet under too much pressure regarding the work on my dissertation. Also, writing this blog is something new and inspiring; I am excited about the possibilities of this medium – at the same time I am somewhat unclear about the ways in which I want to use it:
Who is going to read this blog? Will it be friends that I already know, will it be strangers, will it be other bloggers? How many people will be interested in the posts on sociological issues and on my dissertation project? I’ll probably start the PR process next week. Sending out an e-mail to people I know so that they know about this blog and, if they like it, visit it more or less regularly and perhaps even post comments here.
Another big question: should I really write this blog in English? I am quite sure that I want to write the sociological stuff in English, because I am probably going to write my dissertation in English anyway. It will at the very least be a good exercise to write in English. But then again, German speaking folks might not be comfortable enough with the Enlish language and perhaps refrain from reading this blog if I only write in English. Of course, most of the people I know are German. Perhaps I’ll do a poll from time to time. I think that I will write some entries in German from time to time; depending on mood and subject.
Tags: blog, dissertation, language
Posted in social science, tech, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Thursday, May 29th, 2003
During the next days I will start to migrate my project description from my “offical style” self description page (check it out) to this blog.
This will hopefully enable me to put regular updates about the progress of my dissertation on this page. Then YOU can comment it.
Tags: blog, comment
Posted in tech | No Comments »
Thursday, May 29th, 2003
I now have a working comments system installed – you are all welcome to comment on anything I write here.
Tags: blog, comment
Posted in tech | No Comments »
Thursday, May 29th, 2003
Well, well, setting up this blog thing was quite easy. It only took me an hour or two to figure out the customizations, and get the wiki-style plugin (wikieditish) to work. But now everything is up and running. Amazing. I guess I will be tweaking some of the blog settings pretty soon nonetheless ;)
Tags: blog
Posted in tech | No Comments »
New comments layout.
Monday, July 7th, 2003Since I implemented the comment function in this blog I have been unhappy with it’s layout. Today I dug a little deeper into the way the comment stuff works (the “writeback plugin”). Interpreting the bones and shards that I found in the hole that i dug, I was able to generate a new, hopefully more pleasing layout for you. Any feedback or comments? ;-)
Tags: blog, comment
Posted in tech | No Comments »