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I've always...

... known that the pursuit of excellence ist a lethal habit

Sometimes you feel like

Saturday, 13. September 2008, 08:57:12

a certain friend of yours has warned you about what is happening right now...

Well, I am still using MS Windows XP although a friend of mine has raised his finger quite often to tell me about the disadvantages and dangers coming along with my choice...
I should have known better then to ignore his warning - now it is too late...


Some Trojans have compromitted my system unknown and unmentioned by my antivirus...
You feel quite safe when your antivirus updates every single day and you are sitting behind a nice firewall - well until some big wooden horse is standing in front of you, grinning...

Now I have to go through the trouble to find a method to get rid of them (best choice probably would be to set it all new up)...


1 Comment

500 €?!

Saturday, 21. June 2008, 22:07:35

Most of the german readers will know what I have in mind when I write about 500 €.
500 € is the charge/fee a german student has to pay additonally for each term (for the third time when I'm not mistaken).
Well, why should I bother? In other countries the charges are much higher...Yes they are - but in most countries theere is a much better developed system of different scholarships...The best known scholarship from "Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes" covers about one percent of the german students (in numbers: 1%).
I have read countless articles about this issue and found some very interesting points to the discussion...
  1. taxes are paid - but why do we have to pay the additional charges which should be covered by taxes already?
  2. 500 € for each term - the sum they get seems to be impressive but is nothing compared to the sum they have to spend already - just peanuts
  3. a small part of the 500 € is used to assure that the charges are "sozialverträglich"
  4. you don't have to pay the charges in every "Bundesland" but a few unlucky people (like myself) could not choose their university (the so called "ZVS" plays an important role...)

Just a few to make you think about this... Education should be affordable for every one - in Germany it is not. So much for the so called "civilized western world".
Think about the unlucky people out there who don't have parents to pay for them. For 9 terms ( four and a half year) of studying you have to get together a minimum of 500 € (if you have to pay for your insurance etc.) per month for a living and additionally 9 times 500 €(31.500 € in total) for the charges. Oh and I forgot to tell you about the books you have to buy and the charges for the administration...Thats the sum you have to pay back when you have your diploma - ex interest.

Well as you can see I'm fed up. Not just because of the charges but because nobody seems to care. I'm a bit fed up with the german administration and it's methods to raise new charges and taxes. Shouldn't they represent the people and their interests? If they really do represent the interest of the german people - well, lets hope thats not the case....


1 Comment

Taking apart an Amilo A 1630

Monday, 26. May 2008, 17:42:15

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Some of my readers know - I once owned an Amilo A 1630 and desperately tried to get Ubuntu to work with it... Well I succeeded but soon after my succes I fried the gpu...
No post message, no beep no nothing - just the fan running.
Well since repairing it is out of question (about 400 € for spare parts?!?!) I decided to buy myself a new notebook...But what to do with the old one?

I decided to take it apart - at least the cpu, ram and harddrive are still working...
No problems to get those parts...the LCD-Display should be ok and what about the keyboard the wireless-lan and the modem?
So I went through with it and took it apart...While doing so I found the reason why it is not working any more...melten chipset (backside of the mainboard) at least I'm sure of it now - no more guessing.

But what to do with the LCD? I'm searching desperately for a method to make it usable with a normal PC or any other device capable of using such a thing..

About the panel:
Samsung LTN154X1
Delta 76V0A Inverter



There has to be a way to make it usable via HDMI or DVI...If you know about a way please let me know :wink:
And if you have a use for the other parts
Wireless Lan Card (Realtek), CPU (AMD Athlon 64 3200+), 2xRAM (Infineon 512 MB DDR 333 CL 2,5 / PC 2700S), the mouse device, the battery (Model 258XX0, Amilo) let me know :wink:

3 Comments

Searching for my name ;)

Sunday, 25. May 2008, 20:05:22

1 Comment

Addon

Thursday, 24. April 2008, 20:05:03

Weakening memory - frail like glass
Speaking the truth or just a guess?
A dream to be seen at the cost of a life
Of a city dancing on the edge of a knife

2 Comments

In the Country of Lost Things

Sunday, 20. April 2008, 10:43:07

A few days ago I finnished reading "The Country of Last Things" written by Paul Auster.
I spent more then the usual amount of time reading this book (about 190 pages) because it was surprisingly difficult to read...
But lets get to the details:

A City where nothing remains - nothing. You can take nothing for granted, every aspect of the city changing so fast you can never be sure what is awaiting you when you turn around the next corner - except death. So much for the city itself - a living breathing structure crumbling into oblivion,like everything in the city itself.

But somehow I really was fascinated by this city- I don't know if you've ever seen "I am legend". The story itself did not impress me but the scenery was brilliant. A vast city, a monument of our civiliziation, deserted.
But the city in Paul Austers novel is not deserted. In this city everything, everyone is struggling against the curse of oblivion.
And the pictures he has drawn by writing about this city are quite impressive. I've found myself wandering through this city and beeing fascinated by the vivid image I could create of it.

That one goes to Paul Auster, he really got me :wink:

Well actually there is more behind it, I forgot to tell you about the story of Anna Blume but I don't want to give it all to you...

So maybe one or another was caught by my "review" and is going to read the novel or already has read it.
If so please be sure to leave behind your comment, I'd appreciate it.

3 Comments

Cleaning off the dust of time...

Saturday, 16. February 2008, 11:08:42

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I decided to remove most of my old entries to get rid of all the more or less meaningless things I've written in the last few years.

To start anew :wink: At least to write about more interesting stuff and to constribute my part to my beloved opera-community.

As a beginning I'd like to present you
Clint Mansell
and the nice functions of last.fm (last.fm)

What wiki says about Clint Mansell:
Clint Mansell (born Clinton Darryl Mansell, 7 January 1963, in Coventry, England) is a Golden Globe nominated musician and composer, and former lead singer and guitarist of Pop Will Eat Itself.


I'm more interested in his career as an composer...

How I came arcoss Clint Mansell
Well, as a matter of fact my notebook is becoming a little bit outdated and my hard-drive seems to become smaller and smaller... (You should have told me that about 10 years ago...60 GB - it was a dream...) As a consequence I removed all unneccessary data (like music) and use it only in university or when I spend some time at home...
But I like my music and because I don't like to listen to stupid pop-songs I don't have a radio anymore...
About a year ago a friend told me about last.fm. You listen to your music and you "scrobble" the titles you are listening to. last.fm generates a playlist, a toplist, a radio-station with the information and with the right equipment (last.fm plugins for all popular media-players, a computer and a fitting internet connection) you can listen to those stations from everywhere in the world...

What wiki says about last.fm:
Wikepedia about last.fm

It includes a station playing the titles your neighbours (people with nearly the same taste in music)
are listening to, so you come across lots of new stuff...
Well and while listening to this station I came across Clint Mansell...

I like instrumental music - as a matter of fact I don't really hear what people are singing. The vocalist is more like an instrument - and well he is an composer for film music, mostly instrumental music.

I like it :wink:

If you want to listen to his music I suggest you try last.fm or youtube :wink: Just search for Clint Mansell - you'll find it.
Similar artists (according to last.fm): Yann Tiersen (composer of the Amélie soundtrack), Howard Leslie Shore, Danny Elfman...


1 Comment

Something to think about..

Wednesday, 26. September 2007, 13:36:01

here

4 Comments

Ubuntu part II - How to get RTL8187 to work?!

Saturday, 22. September 2007, 10:23:31

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At the moment I'm experiencing some difficulties configuring my wireless lan and my fluxbox...

About my wireless lan:
Actually it's the same problem I experienced when I was configuring Ubuntu for my notebook, I cannot use WPA TSK encryption which sucks...Why is it such a big problem to get this stupid Realtek cards working properly? I really start to hate Realtek wireless lan solutions and next time I'll be sure not to buy any wirless solution involved with Realtek...At least not until I'm sure that it will work properly with Ubuntu...
I found some drivers and tried to follow the steps described in many bulletin boards and the readme to install them. (You can find them here) but until now I wasn't able to compile them properly...
I'll be sure to let you know if I'll be able to solve this problem.

About my fluxbox:
Well shouldn't be such a big problem, at least I could use the normal fluxbox version (which works just fine) instead of the svn version.. But I really wanted to see the fenzy transparency...

Well that is all about my progress configuring my Ubuntu :wink:

Don't forget about the demo in Berlin, starting at 14:30 :wink: Until now I haven't seen any response in the media (newspapers, television)...so I'll be sure to watch the news this evening :wink:





5 Comments

Back to Ubuntu

Wednesday, 19. September 2007, 12:17:49

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Finally I've installed Ubuntu on my desktop computer running parallel to my Windows. Actually a friend told me to install Solaris but after I had seen the registration form I refused to give away such sensitive data. So I decided to try Ubuntu once more (which is already running on my notebook). My first task was to buy a new hard-drive because all my current hard-drives are used by my other OS (Windows). Wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. So if you want to buy a new hard-drive never try to buy it here. I'm not that stupid (nearly one hundred € for a regular 250GB SATA hard-drive). Right next to it was an external SATA hard-drive from TrekStor with 500GB storage for only 119 €...
Well so I turned my back to this stupid store and went to a little shop called computerhaus Würzburg where I found what I was searching for. A cheap regular SATA hard-drive.

Next step: installing ubuntu.
After installing the new hard-drive (and cleaning up the fans which were covered in dust) I tried to install ubuntu.
Of course my first trial failed. Somehow Ubuntu had problems detecting my hard-drives due to my raid controller settings.
failed to set xfermode (err-mast=0x40)

The problem was quickly solved after consulting a few bulletin boards.
Just use "other boot options" (F6) and add the line irqpoll. After that I had no problems installing ubuntu.

The next step is to configure ubuntu for my needs.
If there will be any more problems (and if I will be able to solve them) I'll write more about it soon.



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