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'Flick-werk zusammengestückelte Arbeit; stümperhafte Arbeit, Pfuscherei; Sy Flickschusterei
(Wahrig - Deutsches Wörterbuch)
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Friday, June 20, 2003
Lisbeth
Today is the day of Lisbeth's defense. If you take some time out during the day to cross unused fingers, she'll be a phd by the end of the day.
I like the concept of defense, standing up before an audience, presenting findings from your dissertations and answering questions about it. It's better than what I had to do: oral exams about subjects I hadn't studied in years and would never even teach again, even if I'd stayed at the university.
I don't like the expression, though. Defense. Puts the defendand into the defensive from the beginning. Of course you'd worry about something like that. Can't call it laudation, because that's for someone else to deliver. But why not, simply, presentation. Or enunciation. Debut/ coming out. Dissertation shower.
Whatever you call it, Lisbeth, I know you'll do great!
00:50 PM
12"
Three weeks ago, I was so excited about my new 12" G4 Powerbook.
But even while I installed it, I noticed something was wrong. Whenever there was supposed to be a system-sound, there was a small popping sound instead, then the PB would freeze for a couple of seconds, then the expected system-sound, then business as usual. I ran First Aid. Nothing. I tried reinstalling the system and all software step by step to see if there was an incompatibility. Nope. I CD-booted and ran the hardware-check - which was pretty pointless because hardware-check doesn't cover the internal sound system (which is not documented too well in the first place).
I called the shop who agreed I had a serious hardware-problem there, but, no, they couldn't do an on-site replacement as Apple always insists on trying repairs on very new models first. It'd take a week. I told them I'd be dead after a week without a computer. They told me to return the PB (phone-order, two weeks unconditional return), they'd refund the money. And then I should just order another one. The good part: Between ordering the first one and ordering the second one, prices had dropped 15% ...
The bad part: the new one has a popping noise ...
First stage: denial. But just before I freaked after all, I took an hour out for research this morning and found this and a couple of comments in the apple.com forum. Obviously, the new G4 PBs have a battery issue. They don't load to 100% (btw don't try recalibrating, which sucks battery-life, 99% is normal for a fully loaded PB these days; no fixings on the horizon; check Apple support, though). Allegedly, batteries never make the promised 5 hours either. Plus, and here's the relevant point: the PBs put the sound system to sleep whenever they can to save power. You can adjust sleep-times for the screen and harddrive, but not the sound. 30 secs of silence and it's gone. A system sound wakes it up again, it makes a small popping noise, takes a couple of seconds to wake up complete and then plays the sound that woke it. The only workaround right now is to leave the PB plugged in and working under max. power at all times.
Annoying, but not deadly. But really bloody annoying.
00:40 PM
Kissing Jessica Stein
KJS (which, for some reason, was released in Germany as Kissing Jessica) is a cute and funny movie, too. It's laudable because it takes a subject (love-affair between two women) which would have been problem-film-material ten years ago and turns it into an easy commedy. But it lacks the outrageous wit (and self-irony) of Bar Girls, the occasional eroticism of When Night is Falling and the girls-from-your-school charm of the protagonists of Fucking Amal.
00:10 PM
Thursday, June 19, 2003
Bend It Like Beckham
BILB (which, for some reason, was released in Germany as *Kick* It Like Beckham) is a cute movie about becoming oneself against the plans and desires of family and friends. It also avoids and easy-to-step-into trap: The two (female) protagonists do not become lovers. It is good to portrait strong girls to love girls. But it's also good to have strong role models for girls who like boys or cannot be bothered one way or the other just now.
One might argue that the luke-warm love-affair between Jess and her coach and the ensuing fight between Jess and Jules was superfluous, too, and that we get to see enough girls fighting over boys alreay. But the whole movies hinges on love and relationships, on the choice of suitable partners as seperating element between ethnicities and religions - but also as the parent-generation's preoccupation that strikes the girls as not "such a big deal".
The motto of BILB is "Who wants to cook Aloo Gobi when you can bend a ball like Beckham?" - but it should be "Who wants to bother about clothes that attract the right kind of boys/ marry the right king of man when you can bend a ball like Beckham". The girls can take on their football scholarship exactly because (unlike their mothers) they do not define themselves via they boys they can get. The various love-entanglements are necessary in order to underline this point. In the end, the girls set off for America together and Jess is easily distracted Jo's urgent question at the parting, whether there is something between them when, finally, she catches a glimpse of Beckham himself.
11:50 PM
Tuesday, June 17, 2003
fluid
Frank makes es case for liquid or fluid website-design. He's right - a website is not printed page and if you try to control the layout as if it was, it'll always be at the cost other benefits of the medium. Like accessibility - you need a flexible design to accomodate e.g. larger fonts. Build pages that adapt to the user's screen-size and resolution.
However, fluid pages often do without fixed-width content. Many movable-type blogs with CCS-layouts I see these days have this problem. Display them on a 19" screen with a 1200 resolution and a paragraph will turn into a line. Increase the size of the screen font and a line consists of two or three words - or there'll be horizontal scrolling. All variants are hard on users who rely on their eyesight to grasp the content on a page. So you'd need paragraph-widths that adapt to font-size.
11:55 PM
Wow
Asya Schween - MyOwnSelf
03:15 PM
Sunday, June 15, 2003
Achievement
Yesterday, German TV channel Pro 7 aired the final episode of the not quite last season of Dawson's Creek. Towards the end of the episode, Audrey, who decides to miss her plane in order to give Pacey another chance and drive down to California with him, says to Pacey: "Promise to stop for the World's Largest Ball Of Yarn." And in the dubbed version, she said: "Versprich mir, am World's Largest Ball Of Yarn anzuhalten."
Ta-da! World-premiere! A German dubbing retains an original phrase. That's a first. Till this day, they've translated *everything*. Obviously, there's an agreement of media-translators to purge German publications from foreign language terms. Perhaps German audiences are incapable of understanding even an American TV-drama unless every single word is in their mother tongue. Duh. Which trend results in big ha-ha's of TVdom like "Schmalzkringel" for "doughnuts" and "Küchlein" for "Muffins" in the Simpsons - although said bakes are called "Doughnut" (or sometimes "Dunoughts") and "Muffins" in the shops. The translation of Terry Jones' Douglas Adams' Startship Titanic dedicates a whole page to explaining why they call the original bots Boter ("bots" comes form "robots" which are "Roboter" in German ...). Duh.
10:45 PM
Cheat
The Deutsche Bahn (German Rail) installed a new price-system last year. The advertising campaign highlights on massive savings, but the bottom-line is that whoever stubbornly continues to view the Bahn as everyday, flexible public transport, i.e. goes to the station, buys a ticket and hops on a train, has to face increased prices without better services. Those who want to benefit from the reductions have to fulfill ridiculous conditions like book 7 days in advance, book a return ticket, book seats for both trips, include a Saturday night.
There's only a limited contingent for bargain prices, too, which forces travellers to book even more in advance. Good-bye flexible transport. Good-bye affordable ticket. This way, the Bahn will never be an alternative to individual transportation, i.e. the car. Not to mention raising their inccome per available seat and see profitability before the centurey is out.
Last night, I tried to book a bargain ticket for next Sat. However, the booking system was down for maintenance till after midnight. Strangely, the system was well capable of showing me the new, higher price after midnight (7-day-period expired). Of course, that's a way of keeping as many people as possible away from the reduced prices and forcing them to pay more. Perhaps management hopes to improve the margins this way?
10:30 PM
Tuesday, June 03, 2003
Baghdad
TEKKA issue 2 is out, featuring Mark Stephen Meadow's account of his visit to Basra and Baghdad. It's a gripping narrative of personal experience with great pictures, but above all it's a meditation on power and inforamtion.
"But culture can be changed faster than you might think. The easy way to do it is to cauterize a country's brain. Burn the administration and institutions that preserve the memory, and you have an infantile nation, ready for your new education."
The US troups follow this logic when they aid looters in libraries, museums, ministries all over Iraq - excluding the Ministry of Energy.
Meadows admints or claims a healthy distrust of the media, esp. US media, esp. re: the War in Iraq. But what he hears from his new friends in Basra and Baghdad changes his mind about the war.
"The only change was the source of my information. I started feeling as if my opinions were simply what I had been told, even though I had paid money and risked my life to get into the middle of The Reality and see for myself."
The irony is, that for the reader, this account turns into just another media(ted) opinions. As credible or not as any other non-embedded news-source. Meadows would say, go see for yourself and shape your opinion! Maybe that would change my mind about the war. But maybe if enough people were going places to see for themselves, the war would not have been neccessary in the first place (or, at least, not possible).
By the by, Meadows also proves the existence of Salaam Pax (or, as Mark would point out, someone who has access to Salaam Pax's weblog) and Jill declares the "is he real"-discussion finally over.
09:15 PM
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