::People of the sun::

The beauty of summertime…

Dream from last night: “For some strange and to me unknown reason I had to move out of my house and was in search for a shared apartment. I took a good look through the papers and found an offer that sounded rather good. I called them, we had a chat and they agreed to send some pics which looked fantastic too. The decision was made, I took the apartment, apparently without every actually being there. Everything seemed to be alright in the first place so I decided I’ll be all good then. When I finally arrived everything felt strange although the house was pretty nice. I rang the bell. A nice old chap opened the door and let me in. We had a short chat and he showed me the room where to my surprise a big party was going on. Everyone seemed to be around 16-18 years old and as far as I was concerned there was no place on earth where I wanted to be less than in that room. Suddenly a young guy approached me and said he was Blablabla and that he was so exited we are living together now, in the same room. I turned around and directly left.”

I woke up with a big question mark floating over my head.

“I have not, in the 23 years that I have been in the uniformed services of the United States of America, ever violated an order. Not one.”

Oliver North

I’m back from Berlin and, as always, it’s so good to be back. I can’t exactly tell why but for some strange I’m very happy leaving that beautiful city after a certain time.

Anyway, thanks for the lovely weekend, I’ll be back anyway. ;-)

I recently deleted my Facebook account. From now on you might have to poke me in real life. Yeah.

I will be in the Netherlands over the weekend and encourage you to do the same.

We’ll catch up and have a beer or two.

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Sound of the day: … – …

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Sound of the day: Prodigy – Warrior’s Dance

“If you don’t mind, I’m gonna pass out.”

Sam

Since a lot of government officials in Germany are lately demanding random laws we like to step in and help those nutters with more random and idiotic ideas, for security reasons:

- Labeling of every citizen for quick identification
- Registration of websites only after approval by the officials
- Controling and documenting of all electronic communication
- Introduction of  ”Online Drivers License” that needs to be renewed every year
- Abolishing of money
- Installation of cameras in every home
- Introduction of curfew after 10 o’clock for everyone except those who earn >100.000 €/year
- Development of Matrix for easy “citizen-handling-purposes”

I recently figured out I love the chaos of bad weather. I always thought I was more the kind of good weather guy but I guess I was wrong. For some reason rain, storm and possible destruction makes me rather happy. Strange.

I started to hate Linux pretty much directly after I tried to get it working on my new personal computer, back in 1999. The idea of having a somehow ‘free’ operating system  seems to be extremely tempting. The only problem was Linux just not being ready and/or usable  on desktop computers at all. I spent my entire Christmas holidays playing around with Suse Linux 6.something to get the video card working but finally decided it’s just not worth trying to get it running any further. Since that day I was secretly obsessed  with the idea of one day running Linux on my main computer in the far, far future. After several attempts every once in a while and lots of setbacks Linux finally found its way on all of my servers. That still was not what I’m looking for since most of that machines were headless console only boxes so I kept trying. Over the last 10 years or so Linux changed a lot, some distributions came to life and other vanished. One annoying fact over that “I-kept-trying” period was that almost every distribution had fundamental differences like different location of config files or even different names of those. Debian always seemed to have a more stable and consistent approach than for instance Suse. On the other hand Suse has been more user friendly which Debian lacked. Around the year 2005 I  figured out that my need of fiddling around with config files in a desktop environment tended against zero. What I really wanted was a System that directly worked out of the box and let me pretty much just do most of the things I used to do in my Windows environment. I kept trying different distribution and even became a fan of CentOS on my headless boxes but still failed to replace my Windows since sometimes even simple thing were just not working properly while testing Linux.

Long story cut short: I recently gave it another try with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and was extremely surprised! It is actually usable.  It also replaced my beloved Windows 7 on my main workstation very quickly. A lot of things are of course really different and I like to share some thoughts and tricks with you since I still like the idea of a free and open operating system.

Stay tuned.

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Sound of the day: Art vs Science – Parlez-Vous Francais?

While realizing this year is pretty much half over we decided it’s time to do something different soon and explore another country. Reg is right now sorting out possibilities of getting a sponsorship deal and I’m trying to figure out which country I’d like to see most. We are not exactly sure where we are heading but we do know we will leave in October for about 5-6 months and either go see Africa or the south of France. Yeah.

We will keep you updated.

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Sound of the day: rage against the machine - Clear the lane

Keeping it real…

Where were you last night…?

I’m feeling lucky.

“Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Buecher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen”

Heinrich Heine

Thoughts are crossing my mind and I’ve got the feeling the world is going nuts. Question of the day: Will it affect me?

Mmh, I guess I’ll never know. It seems to depend on what I’m looking or searching for in life. The concept of total happiness doesn’t totally work out but all in all I couldn’t care too much. There is always something that saves my day and makes me extremely happy, again and again. Maybe I’m just simple minded…simple minded and very happy with how thing are and how things might turn out.

Remember: The glass is brimful! And, you decide whether you want to drink it or not.

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Sound of the day: Supergrass – Rush Hour Soul

Seems to be the perfect plan.

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Sound of the day: The White Stripes – Hypnotize

Never, ever stop fighting for your beliefs! Fight for your rights. Fight for more beer. Fight for the society of bird lovers. Fight, just for the sake of it. Fight till you drop. You’ll get up eventually. Fight for things you ever wanted to be in place. Fight for your right to fight. Fight for nothing. Fight windmills. Fight the war. Fight idiots. Fight religions. Fight stupidity. Fight your own restraint. Fight for beaches wherever you want them to be.  Fight till you are happy with what you have achieved. Fight for yourself. 

You pick your weapons. Or don’t.

Fight! Fight, but fight fair.

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Sound of the day: Pennywise – Fight till you die

Remember: It was a damn good time when you can’t stop thinking of it.

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Sound of the day: Youth Brigade – I hate my life

We hang in there!

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Sound of the day: The Hives – Here we go again

It could have been you…

…or me.

Over the last few weeks I was pretty close to edge. I had that strange feeling I needed a change and probably a new car. So I took a good look at the Net, visited a few dealers, took test-drives and enjoyed the probably near-future feeling of driving a new shiny vehicle. It didn’t last long.

That feeling faded away, as fast as it appeared. See, I just couldn’t do it. It would have been betrayal of a good friend, someone I know for a pretty long time. My car has character, is a very friendly soul and only 25 years old. How could I leave her? Impossible!

Man, I just couldn’t break her heart and exchange her for someone younger. I couldn’t.

Just for the stats: 380.000 k’s of pure lust, joy and fantastic entertainment.

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Sound of the day: Spiritual Beggars – Angel Of Betrayal

Being awesome is easy.

Just be.

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Sound of the day: Bad Religion – Damned To Be Free