InVisible Blog » Ramblings

Can I crash you?

jcf — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 06:48:27 +0000

Can I crash is a list of bloggers giving room to fellow bloggers when traveling. Initiated by Henriette Weber Andersen. Cool idea. I have added Zurich, Switzerland, when will you add your place?

Technorati Tags: blog, crash, travel

Learning SQL

jcf — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 11:59:37 +0000

Yep, I can manage the occasional SELECT * FROM some_table; and even one or two constructs more. But I haven’t had a formal education in SQL (me being a Lotus Notes guy. (“Redundancy is good”).

The GalaxQL program is a wonderful introduction to SQL and covers quite a bit more than just the WHERE statement. It’s fun, it’s visual, it’s free and it runs on Windows, Mac and Linux.

Go get it, if you need a brush up on SQL.

Technorati Tags: sql

Moving the blog to WordPress?

jcf — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 21:24:24 +0000

Even though you haven’t seen me post on this blog recently, I have been busy deleting comment spam all the time. My MoveableType installation is pretty old, and the SpamFiltering solution is quite old too. Everything runs on a creaky server out of my office. Also I’m not to fond of fiddling with the layout of the blog (although web visitors might have noticed some changes) because it means I have to republish the complete site.

So I have been thinking about moving to a new blog system. While I have some experience with TextPattern and Typo, I would like to try out WordPress too.

My main interest is to keep the permalinks to the 450+ articles I have written in the past and secondly to make my life administering this blog easier. Also I want to drop categories and move towards a tag-based organization of my content. I haven’t yet looked at WordPress in detail to see if I can keep the permalinks, but this is something that went onto my todo-list as of 30 seconds ago. Anyone out there know the answer?

Technorati Tags: blog, typo, wordpress

Swiss SkypeIn number

jcf — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 15:03:11 +0000

Now that Skype allows for swiss SkypeIn numbers, I have added one. You can call me on : +41 44 586 91 30.

Technorati Tags: business, phone, skype

Del.icio.us PlayTagger

jcf — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 09:17:25 +0000

A tiny Javascript include allows you to play mp3 files directly on your website and to tag the file on del.icio.us.

Nice, simple, practical.

Technorati Tags: delicious, music, mp3

Real Viagra Spam

jcf — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 17:18:06 +0000

It’s not enough that our mailboxes are overflowing with Viagra spam. Now Pfizer has started this add campaing in Zurich:

Somebody please tell them the wrong’s of their ways

Technorati Tags: advertising, viagra, spam

Tweakfest – no infrastructure

jcf — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 11:33:53 +0000

Tweakfest takes places in “Museum für Gestaltung” in Zurich. Interestingly enough, at a conference that is about “visions of the digital lifestyle”, there is neither electricity for the audience, nor wireless LAN. So there won’t be a backchannel, collaborative note-taking, heckling, background checking of the speakers or all the other fun stuff that would be possible.

Could it be, that “reality of modern conferences” haven’t arrived in Zurich yet?

Update: Just before I left, there was a WLAN available. Unfortunately, it seemed that it did not allow connections to the internet. Maybe tomorrow will be better

Technorati Tags: tweakfest05

Going to Tweakfest

jcf — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 08:11:04 +0000

Today, Tweakfest starts in Zurich. It’s a conference about “visions of digital lifestyle”. The program reads like a mixture of really boring (“Die Kreativwirtschaft als strategischer Erfolgsfaktor”) to the political interesting (“Totale Überwachung: im Namen der Sicherheit?” – featuring Matthias Leisi on the panel ) to the one I’m looking forward to (“From Science Fiction to Science Facts” by Bruce Sterling ) and then a lot of other presentations that might or might not be of interest ( the new digital home, future of the mobile phone, dancing robots, etc, etc)

Technorati Tags: tweakfest05

Lift Off

jcf — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 20:48:36 +0000

Laurent Haug of ballpark.ch is organizing a conference called Lift06 in Genva in the beginning of February.

The roster of speakers looks promising, the price (CHF 295) looks right and Geneva is only a train ride away.

I think I’ll be there (Laurent still needs a Ruby on Rails demo)

Technorati Tags: conference, lift06, refactoring, geneva, ballpark

What has happened to FolderShare?

jcf — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 09:13:01 +0000

After a couple of weeks of having FolderShare installed on a variety of Windows and Macintosh Computers, I decided to upgrade to the paid, professional version of their service. Foldershare allows you to keep multiple folders in sync across multiple computers. It works beautifully and flawless.

Today I wanted to put it on my Mac Mini which I got back from repairs (it’s harddisk had died) to sync back files from my Mac Laptop.

Imagine my surprise when I came to the download page and the Mac version was gone. And there’s more that’s gone:

The users forum. The blog. No trace of any kind of explanation. The system requirements show FolderShare only working on Windows systems. The FAQ has no entries on the missing Mac stuff.

All the things that made ByteTaxi, Inc, the makes of FolderShare seem like a trustable resource (forum, blog) have been removed.

Anyone out there know what’s going on?

Update (2005-11-04): FolderShare has been bought by Microsoft. Here’s the reply I got from them:

Due to our recent acquisition by Microsoft, our Mac version is
currently unavailable. We plan to have it back up this weekend.
Check the site on Monday and the download should be available.

And their service has become free. Looks like I just burned $100. Oh well. Maybe it’s time for an alternative?

Technorati Tags: business, foldershare, mac, zappata