citizen428.blog()

This evening I found some time to work on my blog again, so here’s a quick rundown of things that changed:

• *Share and save: After reading the templates used by Serendipity to get a hang of Smarty, I’ve edited entries.tpl to include a mailto link to share entries, as well as the possibility to digg posts or add them to del.icio.us. There ya go, Web 2.0 lovers.
• *Feed love: Syndication rocks, especially when using Feedburner which offers great features like the Link Splicer which automatically creates this “Links for the day” entries out of my del.icio.us bookmarks. But since I also got an account on SuprGlu, I’ve decided to additionally provide you with the citizen428stalker feed, which additionally contains my flickr photos, my Plazes traze, info from 43 Things and 43 Places and much more. So if you’re up for the whole citizen428 package, you might want to give this new feed a try.

I haven’t come around to do any more CSS changes yet, but that’s next on my list.

Prickle-Prickle, The Aftermath 52, 3172 YOLD

After using it for quite a while, I got bored with the old look of my blog and so I started to update it today. Here’s a quick rundown of things that changed:

• *Added various links: I’ve updated the sidebar to include links to my MySpace profile (resistance really is futile) and my SuprGlu site (making it easier for you stalkers). I’ve also readded the links to my profiles on 43 Things and 43 Plazes, so it’s a happy day for all you buzzword loving Web 2.0 fans out there.


• *Advanced syndication: I got rid of my blog’s own syndication features in favor of FeedBurner. Why? Because it offers really cool stuff like “SmartFeeds” which create the right RSS/Atom feeds for the reader you use on the fly, “link slicing” (a daily entry of links I add to my del.icio.us account gets generated and added to the feed) and the possibility to subscribe to this blog via email. If you are among my true fans who have subscribed to this site long ago don’t despair, I’m 301 redirecting most of the old syndication links to FeedBurner (the RSS 0.91 feed is used to push data to FeedBurner).


• *More syndication features: I’ve signed up for Talkr so you lazy folks have the chance to get this site as a Podcast, without me having to go through the hassle of actually recording one. Nifty, eh? Besides that I get US$ 7 for everyone who signs up to Talkr for at least 30 days, and since Christmas is near that just sounds like the perfect opportunity to make yours truly happy, doesn’t it? Apart from the Podcast goodness there’s now also a convenient link to add this site to your Technorati favorites with just a single click of your mouse, which means lazyness finally is no longer an excuse for not doing so.


• *Sidebar reorganization: Dropped some plugins, added, rearranged and reconfigured some others.

As you can see I’ve also changed the theme from my tweaked version of “Joshua” to the Serendipity port of “Modern World”. I like the overall look of the theme quite a lot, but there are various changes I want to apply to the CSS as soon as I can be bothered to do so. Until now I’ve only changed some of the colors, but once I’m done it would be pretty cool if this site wouldn’t only look good, but also validate as XHMTL. I’m also in need of a logo sized 220×128 pixels, so if you’re feeling creative and want to surprise me, send your work of art to my Gmail address. Once I finally take over leadership of the world, I’m sure you’ll be pretty happy to say “I did the logo for this guy’s website”.

Sweetmorn, The Aftermath 24, 3172 YOLD

...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 my PR manager told me, large numbers of fans have already complained about the recent lack of updates. Since I’m only my reader’s humble servant, I of course have to comply with this wishes, so here are the long awaited news about yours truly:

Gentoo:
After being a Gentoo developer for 2 years, I finally decided to leave the project. Since I haven’t really been active for the past 4 month anyway for several reasons (e.g. work), this was long overdue anyway. I’ve met a lot of nice and interesting people in the Gentoo community and working with you guys has really been a pleasure! Thanks for that, I really appreciate what I have learned from all of you during that time!

Mac:
Today I’ve joined the team of Open.Source.Mac and have already published my first little article on the site. Enjoy!

Personal:
On the 2nd of August I celebrated my 27th birthday at Xeno. A lot of friends showed up, whereas certain people decided to get drunk somewhere else and then blamed innocent squirrels for their not showing up. It was a cool evening which I really enjoyed, but working on the next day didn’t exactly qualify as a good cure against the headaches…

Capitalism:
I have to admit that I love portable consoles, especially when they are as sexy as the black Nintendo DS Lite I bought three weeks ago. So far I own Advance Wars: Dual Strike, Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day, Feel The Magic XY/XX and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. All of them are really great and I can hardly wait until my copy of Mario Kart DS finally arrives.

I also got myself a nice M9 DX enclosure with a 250GB Samsung HD as a backup disk for the Mac Mini. Overall it’s pretty neat, although it could match the color of the Mini a little better.

Misc
Found an article about Habbo Hotel on the Pardus forums and just had to try it out. Like the author of the article I most likely won’t visit the site again, but I had a lot of fun during the hour I spent there.

teemow recently blogged about BumpTop, a new take at the desktop metaphor we all grew used to. The video is quite impressive and I’d really like to try out such an interface myself, as I’m interested in how well it works for everyday usage.

Prickle-Prickle, Bureaucracy 5, 3172 YOLD

I just noticed that I haven’t blogged much lately, so the least I can do is put together one of my random link dumps for you:

Tech Stuff:

• FLPR:
  Sure, LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) has proven itself to be a pretty neat platform for web development. However, there are people who disagree with one or more of the choices implied by the acronym, and yours truly is one of them. If you want to learn a little more about alternative technologies head over to FLPR to read up on web development with FreeBSD, lighttpd, PostgreSQL and Ruby on Rails.
• Speaking the Lingo:
  A nice presentation on creating domain specific languages with Ruby
• Why Good Programmer’s Are Lazy and Dumb:
  Ok, almost everybody already knows that good programmers exactly know when to be lazy and dumb, but the article is still a good read for poor folks like me who are lazy and dumb without being overly good programmers…

Fun:

• Semapedia:
  Hyperlinking Wikipedia articles in meatspace is what this cool project is doing. Interesting stuff, as soon as time permits I’ll have to play around with this a little more!
• What’s My Pirate Name?:
  Everyone should have his own pirate name…
• ColdPizza:
  A nice parody of Coldplay’s recent DRM-EULA.
  

Boomtime, Chaos 22, 3172 YOLD

I haven’t blogged for quite some time now, so I decided I could at least entertain you with one of my semi-regular link dumps until I’m motivated enough to write a proper entry again…

Ruby

RadRails: From a rather recent mail on ruby-talk I learned about RadRails, an IDE for (who would’ve guessd) Ruby on Rails which was built using the Eclipse RCP. Unfortunately I didn’t have too much time to play with it yet, but so far it seems to be quite nice and if you’re into Rails you maybe should have a look at this project.

eigenclass: Recently RedHanded kept talking about Mauricio Fernandez’ new blog called “eigenclass”, which talks about a lot of really interesting and advanced Ruby stuff. Definitely an interesting read for every serious Ruby programmer and everyone who wants to become one.

try ruby!: As I found out on poignant-stiffs why is at it again, which means there’s something cool coming up. Despite not involving cartoon foxes or chunky bacon, try ruby is still a really neat project, giving you the opportunity to interactively test Ruby from within your web browser. There’s also a little tutorial, so this site may very well become the first stop to send Nubies to…

Disobey

The Hacktivist: Instead of summing up what the Hacktivist is all about, I’ll just give you the self-description of the project: “The Hacktivist is dedicated to examining the theory and practice of hacktivism and electronic civil disobedience while contributing to the evolution of hacktivism by promoting constructive debate, effective direct action, and creative solutions to complex problems in order to facilitate positive change.“ – Involve yourself!

The World’s Most Populated Countries: Sometimes a new look on things helps changing your perspective in a positive way. That’s why it’s important to take a minute or two to think about this map of the Earth, where all the countries got resized in relation to their population.

Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster: This comes from an open letter to the Kansas school board: “ I am writing you with much concern after having read of your hearing to decide whether the alternative theory of Intelligent Design should be taught along with the theory of Evolution. [...] Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him“. Ramen!

Relax

Unintentionally sexual comic book covers: Part 1: If you know The Best Page In The Universe you either love or hate Maddox. No matter to which group you belong, check out this collection of unintentionally sexual comic book covers and have a good laugh! (via hoodwink.d onslaught)

The Website Development Process: Learn everything important there is to know about the process of developing a professional website from platic figurines. (via BoingBoing)

Squidoo: The developers of Squidoo thought that “Everyone’s an expert on something”, so they decided to give all of us the opportunity to share our knowledge in the form of “lenses”. For all of you who are to lazy to look at the FAQ to find out what a lense is, here’s the answer: “ A lens is one person’s (lensmaster’s) view on a topic he cares about. More specifically, a lens is a single web page filled with information and links that point to other web pages, to continually updated RSS feeds, or to relevant advertising. It’s a place to start, not finish. “. Interesting concept, and there are some pretty cool lenses already. (via teemow).

Setting Orange, The Aftermath 53, 3171 YOLD

You have nil shillings. You are a simple cleric, you have 10 more shillings to earn before you have proven your xpath/regexen charming skills on par with the druids. A real druid will check your work and pay you soon enough. – http://hoodwink.d/

But I’ve been working hard and tried to prove these druids that my xpath and regex skills are up to their standards. I have hopefully earned my first shilling and I’ve earned it with my very own site! So you hoodwinkers out there, feel free to leave your winks instead of regular comments from now on!

And don’t be afraid when you have nfc what I’m talking about, this link explains it all, so open your eyes and feel around…

Pungenday, The Aftermath 41, 3171 YOLD

I have to admit that I was really sceptical when this whole blogging thing started a few years back, mostly because I had the feeling that this will only add to all the noise that already makes finding information on the web harder than it needs to be. However, as time moved on and the blogging scene developed, I really came to appreciate this form of communication. Blogs are not only a great way to keep people updated on what you’re currently up to (or to stalk other people for that matter), comments and the possibility of trackbacks also provide great facilities for interesting discussions with a wide variety of people and their differing opinions, especially when aggregators like Technorati and Planet come into play…

Why am I writing this today? Well, not long ago I’ve blogged about my favourite music and mentioned the band “Ninja High School”. And then yesterday I get an email from band member Gregory Collins, telling me that he appreciates I’ve been writing about them and that they are big Linux geeks themselves. Or do you remember that blog where I was really surprised that jabber4r got resurrected? Jabber’s very own “patron saint” Peter Saint-Andre chipped in to tell me about netxmpp-ruby. And then there is all this other valuable input by people like RL friend Martin ‘m3’ Leyrer or Gentoo Universe reader George Prowse, whom I’ve never met in person but who seems to have taken a certain interest in what I’m writing.

And that’s exactly why I just love having a blog that gets aggregated by Planet Gentoo and Gentoo Universe: it gives my random musings a greater audience, which quite often leads to interesting comments or trackbacks I wouldn’t haven gotten otherwise. So thanks to everyone who made this possible, and even more thanks to all the people who care enough to read what I write and help me learn about other views and perspectives by posting comments!

Yeah, time for another random link dump. I’d bet you’ve been waiting for that, haven’t you?

• blog.red667.org: My friend Red started blogging, so I thought I’ll put some pressure on him by giving his site some exposure. Now he just has to write more…
• bonki’s blog: bonki started blogging too, and he definitely should post more often. Entertain me you punk!
• The Ministry of Silly Walks: And now for something completely different…
• An interview with the makers of NYC2123: Not too long ago I’ve blogged about this new cool, free online cyberpunk comic called NYC2123. Here’s an interesting interview with its creators, which at least is something too read until the next episode comes out. (via NYC2123 blog)
• Sewing, a Flickr photoset on sewing: Yes, sewing. Geek sewing! How about a Space Invaders quilt? Or would you prefer Tetris? (via BoingBoing)
• Red Cell: I’ve already blogged about Pardus before, but during the last few month I got pretty addicted to that game, so I ended up doing a website for the alliance I’m in. And yes, I would have other things to do, thanks for asking…

DomeBlog:
Blogging after Katrina.

Winston’s Lego Computer:
Lego rocks! (via parasew)

Banshee:
Music management and playback for GNOME.

Griffith:
A movie collection manager.

(THE OTHER) TOP 10 MOST RIDICULOUS BLACK METAL PICS OF ALL TIME

Stockstock Film Festival:
Stockstock is a film festival consisting of short films made entirely from stock footage. We select a limited amount of stock footage and give it to you, your job is to make it into some kind of short video presentation.

h a l f b a k e r y:
A communal database of original, fictitious inventions, edited by its users.

Ok, I’ve done it again. Another redesign. Guilty as charged. This is the forth layout since I started this blog and the third in the last 3 weeks. Here’s a little recap of all the designs:

• MT – Trendy*: A nice design by Sebastian Bergmann, but after a while it just got on my nerves too much and I can’t even say why.

Kubrick 1.2.6 port*: After I got tired of my initial layout, I switched over to the Kubrick port done by Tom Sommer. I still think that Kubrick actually is a rather nice layout, but so do lots of other people, which is the reason you can see this theme everywhere…

Blogger-Tabacco*: Done by Frédéric Wenzel, I tweaked the CSS a little to get the background image to the right and was pretty happy with the look. But after a really short period I realized that although I liked the colors and all, the design wasn’t “me” somehow…

The current design: initially based on the template “Joshua” by Hendrik Scholz, I’ve changed the CSS quite a lot already. Not only did I create my own banner graphic using Fyre, I also tweaked the colors to my liking and completely redid the sidebar as I didn’t like the one “Joshua” had to offer. There will be some more minor adjustments to the CSS, but otherwise, this is it, the new look of citizen428.net!

Please post any comments, desing proposals etc. that you might have as a comment, thanks!

As you can see, I’ve once again changed the template I’m using for my blog. As I’ve told you before the Kubrick port was only a temporary solution, but it got on my nerves faster than I expected. There are just too many sites using it…

I now use a style called “Blogger-Tabacco” by Frédéric Wenzel, which I think looks pretty cool. I’ve changed the CSS to better suit my taste though: the image initially was on the left, but I thought this interferes too much with the main content. I therefore put it on the right and switched it horizontally. After this I had to move the header a little, otherwise the top left corner would have been way too empty.

Now I’m pretty happy with the new look, although there are still a few more tweaks I want to apply to the stylesheet. I guess this template will stay a little longer than the last one, but who knows what mood I’m in next week…

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and welcome to another issue of “citizen428’s random tidbits”!

Some days ago I’ve watched a really great documentary called Skinhead Attitude by Daniel Schweizer. I especially recommend this movie to all people who merely associate Skinheads with stupid right-wing Boneheads, and know nothing about the history of the movement which already lasts for more than 40 years.

Skinhead Attitude outlines 40 years of the skinhead movement, from its origins in Jamaica to its current manifestation in present day Britain. By following Karole, a modern skinhead girl with a traditional and anti-racist attitude, the film powerfully draws a portrait of an often maligned group. Concentrating on the left-wing rather than the usual right-wing extremists who are often so readily associated with skinheads, the film describes the transformation and radicalisation of this subculture of youth. Including interviews and music from Bad Manners, Sham 69 and The Oppressed, Skinhead Attitude is a revealing and comprehensive look at a misinterpreted and misunderstood subculture. (Link).

As Ska music is one of the cornerstones of Skinhead culture, this movie also sports a pretty cool soundtrack and has some nice live sequences of bands like Bad Manners, The Oppressed or Los Fastidios. Finally here’s some suggested reading for people who want to know more about this fascinating subculture: Wikipedia:Skinhead, Wikipedia:Ska, Wikipedia:Oi!, Wikipedia:SHARP, Wikipedia:Anti-Fascist Action, No Retreat: The Secret War Between Britain’s Anti-Fascists and the Far Right (we’ve met co-author Steve Titzey at this year’s Mondiali Anti Razzisti in Montecchio).

After coming back from What The Hack I was full of energy and new ideas, so I decided to redesign my blog a little.

As you can see I haven’t only updated to the newest version of Serendipity, but I’ve also switched to the Kubrick template that so many people seem to hate. I really couldn’t care less, because I’m going to adapt the CSS to my own liking pretty soon. Up until then you theoretically could bitch about this boring design, but I think the template provides a clear and reasonably stylish look so I won’t listen to you.

What else is new? I’ve moved all the plugins to the right column and rearranged them a little, added a plugin to show some of my del.icio.us links as well as another one for random quotes, and reformatted most of the old entries because I got rid of a certain markup plugin that got on my nerves too much. There’s been some other minor tweaks like finally incorporating a Technorati ping, but finding those is left as an exercise to the reader…

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