Music

...some random stuff I wanted to blog about for quite some time already:

• *Pearl Jam concert (September 25th@“Wiener Stadthalle”:http://www.stadthalle.com/): I have to admit that I’m not the biggest PJ fan, but since Silvia was nice enough to invite me (thanks by the way!), I went to see one of the best concerts in a long time! The band and the atmosphere was great and I was quite surprised to see the traditionally rather lame crowd in Vienna so excited! (pics@flickr)
• *Internet Explorer on Linux: As we all know, IE sucks donkey balls. But some sites who don’t care about standards – and whose developers definitely should be first against the wall when the revolution comes – only work with Microsoft’s browser. But don’t despair, help is available in form of IEs4Linux, a shellscript which downloads IE and automatically configures Wine for it. Flash 9 is also included and if you really insist on it, you can run 3 different versions of IE at the same time (5, 5.5 and 6), which is pretty handy for web developers. I have IE6 installed on my Kubuntu system for quite a while now, and in the rare cases I really need it, it works like a charm.
• *Pokerstars client on Linux: Most online Poker sites don’t seem to be interested in Linux users, since the clients they offer are mostly only available for Windows. Some of them at least offer Java clients, but with my general dislike for most things Java and my strong preference of Pokerstars over other Poker sites, I gave the client a shot under Wine and was really pleased to find out that it just works™. Of course it would be much nicer to have a native client, but for the time being I’m happy enough with this workaround.
• *UEFA cup Pasching vs. Livorno@Pasching: Went with some other Sportclub fans to see the UEFA cup match Pasching vs. Livorno in Pasching. It was a great day, and I still laugh my ass off when I think about the policemen and -women who found our little group of around 25 people rooting for the away team (as Austrian you were only able to buy tickets for the home sectors) so frightening, that they not only surrounded us for the whole match, but even put on their riot gear. And there I was, thinking every policeman in Austria already knows that we are only dangerous to ourselves.
• *man pages: Read them! You know you should! Even if you believe you know an application. E.g.: “man sshd”, section “AUTHORIZED_KEYS FILE FORMAT”. Or am I really the only person who didn’t know about all the useful options like “from”, “command”, “no-port-forwarding”, “no-pty” etc.?

• *Mac stuff: Here’s some cool widgets and plugins which make the OS X experience even nicer: iTunesShut, VI Input Manager, Application Update Widget (thanks Moose!), AppleScript Shell, Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes
  

Last but not least here are some funny/interesting things I found over the past few weeks:

• Programming Language Inventor or Serial Killer (via metalab-members)
• Robot chicken: Great stop motion animation. Examples: 1, 2, 3 (thanks colo!)
• ELP Laser Turntable: bonki posted this a while back, but I never came around to post it here.
• Bruce Schreier facts: ‘cause Chuck Norris isn’t as cool as Bruce! And as we all know: Bruce Schneier tapdances in Morse Code. (via berq)
• China Makes a Sexy, Slutty Robot: What can I say… (thanks m3)

As I’m listening to a lot of music, I thought it may be a nice idea to periodically post my favourite songs.

#5: Against Me! – “Baby, I’m an Anarchist!”: Taken from their great album “Reinventing Axl Rose”, this song is the quintessence of why Against Me! are one of the greatest bands I’ve ever seen live: energetic and sometimes angry folk punk with great lyrics, that just makes you raise your fists in the air and sing along.

#4: Wolfgang Ambros – “Die Kinettn wo i schlof”: Recently I’ve been listening to a lot of Wolfgang Ambros, and I have to say that the music he recorded during the 1970s and early 1980s is defintely among the best music with German (actually Austrian dialect) lyrics I’ve ever heard. If you like Wolfgang’s music as much as I do, you probably should also check out the DVD Hoffnungslos selbstbewusst.

#3: Gogol Bordello – “Start Wearing Purple”: Once described as “Psychopathic Ukrainian Gypsy immigrant folk punk rock”, one immediately knows why Gogol Bordello and their album “Gipsy Punks” are as great as they are.

#2: Tim Fite – “Away From The Snakes”: Teaching The Indie Kids To Dance Again described this song in the following way: “This is every stereotype of country music you’ve ever heard done right. Music for a whiskey soaked night on the plain with a guitar, drifting to nowhere, but desperate to get away, from cheating wives, lying thieves, and generally being shit on”. Great stuff, you should check out the full album called “Gone Ain’t Gone”!

#1: Ninja High School – “It’s alright to fight”: What can be better than a band that describes its own music as “positive hardcore dance-rap”? Not much, that’s for sure! At least I’m completely hooked on their style and am really waiting for their new album “Young Adults Against Suicide”.

Today is the perfect example of a nice and lazy afternoon, and I just love it! After having a great brunch at HighTea where we had toasties, antipasti, bagles and lots of other really good stuff, I’m just hanging around in front of my PC reading, doing some Gentoo work and generally having a good time. Live can be so easy…

Now let’s see if I have anything interesting to tell you:

As recent surveys have shown I haven’t blogged in over two month. That’s quite a long time even for my standards, and I have no one to blame for this lack of communications besides myself (believe me, I really tried to find a scapegoat).

True, my dear old laptop is still broken, but there’s my trustworthy Athlon 650 desktop that currently serves as my main computer. For all of you who wonder what I’ve been up to lately, here’s a short overview of what I spent my time on over the last few weeks.

Ok, most of the people don’t like getting older. Nonetheless – like everything in life – it has its upsides too. The great Bouncing Souls summed it up very well in their biography:

“Love became something deeper and lasting, parties became gatherings instead of escapes, home became a feeling instead of mortar and wood.“

A remarkably true sentence, that puts getting older in a new perspective. At least for me.

The only thing really remarkable about the last few weeks is my complete and utter lack of motivation. It’s really hard to drag oneself out of bed, when the only things one is able to do afterwards are watching TV and playing video games. At least it’s a good mood for listening to nice music.