Reuben Honigwachs' Blog

Totem keyboard shortcuts: Useless

2010-01-03T19:00:00.005+01:00

MPlayer is of course the superior movie player on earth, and when you're used to it, everything else seems a bit odd. But the keyboard shortcuts of Totem are simply useless. Check out the README - here the highlight:

Left arrow: Go back 15 seconds
Right arrow: Go forward 60 seconds
Shift+Left arrow: Go back 5 seconds
Shift+Right arrow: Go forward 15 seconds
Ctrl+Left arrow: Go back 3 minutes
Ctrl+Right arrow: Go forward 10 minutes

New feeds for this blog

2009-12-10T00:29:00.000+01:00

I have been asked if there were a distinction in RSS between microblog and blog, since maybe some of you do not want the "what am I having for lunch" stuff. To ease things, I have introduced a new category for the traditional blog and now the following feeds are available:

Blog + Microblog (the old one - so don't worry)
Blog only
Microblog only

Cheers, reuben

The Web Publisher - Preface

2009-11-29T16:02:00.007+01:00

A friend of mine and myself are regular watchers of DP/30. These are great interviews made by David Poland and are part of his blog. The blog itself has been moved and he has made an attempt (actually multiple attempts) to build a separate site around the DP/30 format.

As said, these interviews are very good and highly entertaining. But I always found it hard to follow his content. Videos were sometimes linked, sometimes embedded as Google Video, snippets on YouTube, embedded and downloadable HD .mov.

I love small content providers trying to get their stuff out there. Partly because this is how I believe people will distribute culture in the near future. And partly because these people are currently producing the most essential and influential material available.

I have made a few notes and ran a few tests on different problems David Poland (as an example) is facing as an internet publisher. I hope to interview a few people who may have gathered experience in this field and I am hoping for some meaningful comments. In a series, will consecutively post my personal views on different technical aspects when publishing to the internet. I hope to thereby assist you with some crucial decisions you have to make as a hobbyist or solo publisher.

DRS 2: Jazz Collection

2009-11-22T20:32:00.005+01:00

Yes, you probably noticed: I am running a rigorous IT cleanup this weekend. A lot of evaluations have been dumped and a few have stayed. A lot of Jazz podcasts have come and gone - mostly because they were lacking contentual depth and technical quality. One of them which stayed is the SR DRS podcast "Jazz Collection". Unfortunately it is in (Swiss) German.

Quality stuff! Though, I wonder if there is a bias towards ECM - it doesn't matter anyways: DRS 2: Jazz Collection (Feed)

Killed Twitter and Identi.ca

2009-11-22T18:20:00.007+01:00

Just made a hasty decision to delete my Twitter and Identi.ca account. Was thinking about it for a while, now brought it to action. No biggie.

I evaluated it long enough. I think it can be heavily important to certain people and organisations - but the RSS subscription model fits me more. These systems will only start working for me when they federate through open protocols. Of course, this will happen sometime, but then I won't necessarily need an account at their side and be bound to their software. Identi.ca is trying exactly this with StatusNet (ex Laconica), but are not very successful and sadly unreliable. I personally hope XMPP (XEP0060, Wave) will make the race.

* I will keep following the Identi.ca and Twitter contacts via -guess what- RSS

* If you want to @/RT me, leave me a comment or pingback

* I will microblog through this blog

* If you are interested in interesting things I am willing to share, please feel free to subscribe to http://www.google.com/reader/shared/00177912763171547773

Cheers.

Golf in the Kingdom

2009-06-26T22:05:00.006+02:00

Following the weather forecast for the weekend and looking for some advice in preparation, I stumbled over the nice video How To Play Golf In The Rain by Rickard Strongert. He also suggests reading Michael Murphy's Golf in the Kingdom written in 1972.

Now very curious and impatient for the book to be shipped, I tried to find information on the web regarding the novel. It turns out to be one of most important pieces of golf literature!?

First I found some impressive testimonials and that there is a movie in post production, already. I have very bad experiences with things transgressing the pop culture threshold value, namely a feature film. Still, I continued looking for information.

I found this video of an interview at Charlie Rose from 1998 where he introduces the sequel The Kingdom of Shivas Irons, published 25 years later. Here a similar interview from 2006 in which he makes the same point in more detail, which again contrasts the know-it-all/peak performance approach of sports psychologists like Bob Rotella. He also talks about people interested in the movie rights, but without an idea of realization.

I am really looking forward to read the book. This song somehow felt related ;)

The Wave

2009-05-29T23:02:00.006+02:00

Creepy - my last blog entry has been answered quickly: waveprotocol.org

For now I am just stunned/baffled/startled and only want to reference Peter Saint-Andre's post XMPP: Catch the Wave (Warning, he over-promotes his book - I'm very OK with the post, though)

Also, to not double-info you anymore, I wanted to announce that I'm µ-blogging over at identi.ca/reuben (x-posted to twitter.com/rhonigwachs)

PS: I'm not so sure if that was good branding.

The intertweets

2009-05-03T02:45:00.010+02:00

I have been checking out Lance Armstrong's attempt of a come back. Quite courageous in every sense *lol*. I also stumbled over his twitter account. Although I am not participating, I actually became very fond of it. Twitter has somehow gained a pretty bit of popularity in the sports industry and it's a refreshing source for a sports fan like me. Also since a lot of sports people have ignored blogs, unfortunately.

In general, many are critical about twitter without actually knowing about it very well. I usually recommend the twitter promo video for starters. I love and consume the basic idea, but I am skeptical for another reason.

I know you cannot expect people to actually create a complex decision matrix before diving into a service of this kind. And the simple act of grabbing stuff and fiddling around with it leads to other interesting things. But IMHO current features and developments of these services are not as promising as it were and still is with XMPP aka Jabber.

This open protocol solved a bunch of problems from the nineties, where chat systems were walled up from others, incompatible, and therefore not much fun. Now, you can run your own server for your domain and invite someone from Google, GMX etc. to chat with you. You can use a variety of software.

It's not only chat. The whole thing is intended to be extensible. And next to chat, it nowadays supports nice things like video and audio calls and people use it for all kinds of stuff from machine monitoring to geo-positioning.

Relating to twitter, the most interesting aspect to XMPP is probably pubsub... which I thought would do the trick for all of us. I am very sure a lot of other people are thinking the same way. I just hope some more things like PEP will evolve from this twitter boom - avoiding the word "hype".

While waiting patiently for true signs of a formation of the so called federated and open social network, I'll maybe check out twitter for myself... for now.

Update: It seems I am a little bit late on this. "Microblogging" is the keyword. stpeter.im/?s=microblogging and google.com/search?q=xmpp+microblogging

The Sarah Connor Chronicles

2009-04-11T23:33:00.003+02:00

The season finale of The Sarah Connor Chronicles was quite a bang. Fox is keeping it uncertain whether the show is being canceled, or not... which is quite a bummer. Because I am quite sure the script of the series will kick Terminator Salvation in the balls... eh, being frankly. Yes, also in spite of Christian Bale's lead.

Now, Fox has proven to be quite stupid about canceling good shows. And this has been picked up by numerous Family Guy episodes - Family Guy being a quite successful show which has been canceled twice. WTF!? Something must be seriously wrong with these people.

Anyways. Pizza Hut has a neat promo... or is it?

In addition to the online activities, Pizza Hut is showing its support of the human resistance by giving anyone named Sarah Connor or John Connor a free pizza. On Thursday, May 21, all Sarah Connors or John Connors can head to their local Pizza Hut restaurant to pick up the Salvation special - a free medium one-topping pizza. Just bring your government-issued I.D. to claim your free pizza.

May be it just a pragmatic, metal-like idea of hunting down John and Sarah ;)

Getting 30" running

2009-02-28T22:00:00.002+01:00

Check this out to get Apple Cinema HD 30" running with 2560x1600 and an ATI Radeon:
http://www.math.missouri.edu/~rich/xorg/xorg.conf

Take note of the Screen SubSection.

G'bye Conan

2009-02-22T00:28:00.004+01:00

So, I'm sure a few of you already knew that Conan is ending Late Night with Conan O'Brien after 16 Seasons (anno 1993). Before everything became the internet, I was exposed to the show due to the attempts of NBC to get hold of the European market.

Yesterday, Seinfeld was on the show. I've seen him on several occasions in the past, and it seems to me that he doesn't get a lot of sincere laughs over in the US anymore. I assume it's either the "his highness"-effect that stenches out the conation of the audience to laugh, or maybe his style is simply un-pop, already. I also love Family Guy, but they make use of every opportunity to diss him. And I assume that comedy has to be overly edgy there. I assume over here, too. But I just cannot get enough of the mild and benign ways of Jerry Seinfeld.

Back to Conan. So he's taking over Leno's Tonight show and Jimmy Fallon (WTF!?) is taking over the Late Night. Nothing will be the same again.

I'm looking forward to the last episode.

Newspaper payload

2009-02-05T19:38:00.008+01:00

In regard to my last post, I've become very sensitive to the data volume of day-to-day tasks I took for granted. A friend of mine recommended Firebug for monitoring data volumes in Firefox.

I have to say. This tool with its net monitor is just excellent!

Now - I do not use RSS for regular news. Keeping up with German news by just going through the headlines, without disturbing my RSS subscription list, seemed quite costly to me. Now I have proof. tagesschau.de momentarily consumes 439 KB of my valuable airtime. spiegel.de sums up to 486 KB, right now. This is not acceptable. I am very sorry, I cannot have this. news.google.de is 88 KB at this moment.

Whatever you think of StoryRank: For the front page experience and under my current circumstances, the typical minimalistic approach of Google is just right for me. Just make a contentual comparison of the front pages of all three mentioned above.

Technicalities in South Africa

2009-01-29T16:04:00.008+01:00

I'm on my '08 annual vacation in ZA. After the very pleasant main family event (I was actually here for) is over, I had some time with the computer.

The last time I was here I was using 56k, since you needed a real expensive contract for anything faster. Now I'm using 3G.

It is quite simple: You get to buy a prepaid SIM card (without ID *nice*) for about 2 Rand (15 EUR cent), then you buy airtime at any supermarket or vending machine and load it. You can use the same card (or another) to go online directly. This will cost you a plenty of 2 Rand per MB. But you should rather transfer conventional airtime into "Data Bundles". Then you'll pay 189 Rand (~15 EUR) for 500 MB.

The coverage is marvelous and you can achieve everything through SMS (Balance Check, Data Bundle Purchase, Airtime Purchase etc.). The costs are pretty tacky for South African standards. I'd maybe even say discriminatory, since poorer people are going to use prepaid cards and are going to use their phones for internet access. I knew I would have to cut down on VoIP and video, so the costs seemed quite OK for purposes from my european perspective - at first.

Now, if you're running MS Windows with all the apps you probably need (especially Adobe stuff) and have set everything to the "recommended" update features: Get some tissues... you are going to cry. Because after using up the Data Bundle rate, you automatically switch to the conventional rate!

Do not go online without disabling automatic updates. Seriously.

It seems to me that all applications are built for flat rate operation. And tweaking all of these settings requires a certain amount computer experience. I urge you as a developer: Quit the rubbish. People pay for all the marketing messages and useless updates. I urge you as a Web Designer: Do not use flash, downsize your pictures properly, or go without entirely.

Google for instance senses lower bandwidths and sets the UI to "basic HTML". You will have to do it yourself with 3G ;). Still, the whole Ajax magic is quite fair in terms of data volume.

It's a new morning

2009-01-05T19:43:00.004+01:00

Unfortunately I had to enter the new year by sitting out a nasty bit of sickness. But today I was recompensed with a beautiful coating of white.

In my home town it is very uncommon that we get snow on Christmas, yet, it is almost guaranteed that it will show up in January and February. This might be an unpleasant fact for holiday visitors, but I prefer this sequence. The bright environment lifts your spirits, after overcoming a dark and greyish December.

I wish you all a happy new year!

Contact Details

2008-10-28T13:22:00.005+01:00

E-Mail

reuben@honigwachs.de

XMPP (Jabber)

reuben@honigwachs.de

Your browser/OS does not recognize XMPP-URIs? This is how you can fix it.

I offer both PGP and Off-the-Record Messaging for instant messaging - please see below

PGP Key

pub 1024D/FD8A28FA
Key fingerprint = EB62 1201 39A6 7D8F 68C1 3A16 5378 C36E FD8A 28FA

Download it and additionally verify the Fingerprint personally.

Signed OTR Fingerprint

Read more about Off-the-Record Messaging at Wikipedia.

Phone

+49 176 21941610

+49 69 17536531