Also, I moved my videos on YouTube to a new channel which is under my proper name and email address now. Check out the brand new showreel playlist!

The links in the menu on the top right have also been updated

To all you rippers out there: Please don’t cut the credits!

It may save you a meg or two, but kindly remember the people who put their heart and soul into bringing it to you to re-encode in the first place. I for one love as many people as possible watching my stuff, and I don’t have a problem you ripping, please kindly leave us the one or two minutes at the end of every piece we do to remember us by.

All images are copyright © Twitter.com. I list them here for your convenience only!

Twitter 404 File Not Found Error:
[photopress:404.jpg,full,left]

Twitter 403 Permission Denied Error:
[photopress:403.jpg,full,left]

Twitter 500 Server Error:
[photopress:500.jpg,full,left]

Twitter Maintenance Message:
[photopress:maintenance.gif,full,left]

That’s all I’ve found so far. Let me know if you find any more

BTW. I’m a twitterer too now. Why not follow me around a bit?

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The future really is bright, if not with a slight orange glow. Want to play the latest game? Watch the latest movie? Listen to the coolest tracks? But are too fat to nip down to the shops? Fear not, just download it straight to your computer and save more than calories! But then there’s the catch…

All but a very few of those brave new online download retailers offer their goods to non-USA citizens. iTunes music store being one thorn in my eye. But there are others. Check out the all new BitTorrent.com site, now with fancy music and video downloads. But it’s for USA folk only

I understand it’s because of rights issues and licensing. To be honest I think it’s because US companies simply don’t care too much for markets outside their homeland. To be fair, there are new download services – like musicload.de in Germany for example – outside the US of A but they only carry crappy old content and it always lacks the original language or quality.

While we are on the topic of downloading legal content (for a change), what’s up with the whole numbers anyway? AACS used stupid software to protect their goods, serves them right. It’s comparable to a careless shop owner who sleeps at his desk only to discover people freeloading on his merchandise, and complaining about it. How do you want to sue over 700,000 16 year old PFY’s across the world?

Until those large corporations realize that they are about 100 years behind the times and that we live in a truly global village, i doubt that people will stop damaging their bottom lines (no pun intended).

When I was little I instinctively knew what I had to do and whether it was right or wrong. Even growing into adulthood I kept this child-like attitude and naiveté, and it was good because although it got me into a lot of trouble it made me go further then I normally would have. Be free to dream and just go on trying to live that dream.

Then something changed. I could bore you with details but the back-story shall be reserved for those who venture into my path

Reading Anmol’s post changed something small and although I could feel the tickles, I didn’t know what would happen. While surfing, looking for certain pictures to entertain a slow weekday evening, I came across something that turned out to be something more than I bargained for.

That’s when I found Toxy (aka Val) a model, artist and entrepreneur from Canada. She’s a character, a “type” of person that interests me because she’s doing something I’m not but aspire to do. She’s living her dreams. She’s re-creating the images in her head with the help of her photographer and videographer friends like Imunme.

The best word I find to describe her art is “noire”. Like film noire or those really dark and artsy horror / splatter films (think Sin City or Dark City, Pi, …). Nothing too abstract but playing on the borderline. Pushing it a little further, sometimes perhaps crossing it. The emotion the light and images produce have touched another trigger in me. Made me remember that I actually love this stuff and aspire to turn those fantastic themes in my head into something I can communicate to others.

Here I am, typing away at 3am on a Friday night after spending the last three hours watching “heroes“! It’s another trigger. Not that I want to be heroic, in fact I hardly know how to spell that. But it’s sci-fi’esque, comic art with a touch of this “noire”. Call me unhappy, frustrated or bitter. But I really think this big camera sitting on my floor should be put to better use than filming ice hockey and motor racing (albeit much enjoyed).

Am I feeling stuck in a (day) job that doesn’t make me go anywhere?
Yes

Am I unhappy being in a place surrounded by people and a culture I cannot relate to?
Yes

Am I sad for having lost¹ someone who I called the love of my life?
You bet

Can you relate to this?

I think it’s time for me to stop playing all those “movies” in my head and get the hell out there and start living my life again! So who wants to come creating with me?

BTW Jens called after a long time again. Another button pressed and in due time… . I wonder what will happen next.

1 – No, she’s not dead! We just mutually agreed that long distance doesn’t work for us…
Photo copyrighted by Imunme / Toxy

1. Top 10 Lists

   Let’s face it, the only reason for putting up Top 10 lists is to drive quick traffic to your blog. Why? Because you are lazy and cannot concentrate for more than a short sound bite. In fact, i shall make this into a podcast for the activity handicapped

2. Cool Pictures / Videos

   “Oh no! Seen this thing? It’s sooo fracking cool. Digg me now.” C’on peeps. Enough already. There’s a gazillion things out there and if even the most basic deformation of a potato or Dorito crisp send shivers of excitement down your spine, you should have yourself locked in a nice comfy room with no windows and lot’s of cushions. Stepping outside your door might kill you with excitement. Be forewarned.

3. Social Networking Sites

   Whether it’s plain-old I’mSpaced or Ringed-in, what’s the point of a thousand sites trying to network everyone? The features are the same: spam farms for 10 year olds. IMHO they should all be bought by Google today and made into something useful. Everyone could have a proper website and .. oh wait!

4. PFYs discovering life outside their 10sqft dorm room

   As shocking as it may be to under-educated poor North American teenagers, but there’s a whole planet out there (/me points to behind west and east coasts)! America is not representative of people on this world, neither do they horde all the gold or have discovered law making. Here’s a shocker for you:

   North America was re-populated a few hundred years ago by outcasts adventurers from Europe (just off the east coast) and enterprising young men and women from the far east (that’s actually just west off LA). As a bonus I throw in the fact that they weren’t even the first people to live on the great plains – there were people there before them. They were called native North Americans.

5. USA World Domination

   Kinda goes with the previous rant entry. What’s up with people always trying to conquer the world? Can’t we just learn from all the failed attempts before and abandon the idea altogether? Who is next? I ponder Antartica hasn’t had a go yet.. .

6. Political Commentary

   I love the fact that the Internet is so free anyone can say anything these days! Meaningful or otherwise (the latter mostly), everyone feels they should have a go at politics. Just a shame nobody votes anymore.. .

7. Death, Destruction and Hype

   That one is actually quite disgusting. Whenever people die, get maimed or manage their 10th head-shot in a row there’s the obligatory media hype. Big, bold headlines, supported by a strap line so OTT everyone is scared instantly into voting to give up their freedom to secure it. Makes no sense. People see reports of mass murder in a far flung place, send aid Dollars and vote on new legislation making sure that those poor people will still have something to suffer from in case of the next L!VE Aid concert.

8. How to design a website

   I think everyone knows how to do a website today. Or let me put this in another way, they should. The web has been here for a long time now and all the website designing tools make it virtually impossible for people to venture off the path of good taste. Whenever you give people advice, they listen, nod a lot and then go off to do the exact opposite anyway. If someone tells me they’ve designed their own site I always ask two things:

   a) How long did it take you, and
   b) Was it any fun

   Because if it took them less than a couple of hours, chances are they have no idea why they are having a site anyway. Also, if it was fun it sure as heck couldn’t have been done professionally, right?

9. Rapid (Rabbit) Web2.0 Trashlications

   “Uhh, look it goes zoom zoom!” Yeah, but no – why? Visual interface effects are there for one reason, and one reason only: to aid the user.

   Everyone seems to be able to get their next killer app out of the door before even the basic concept is finalised. Let alone planned out and thought through. Yes, I agree that it is great to put ideas into working prototypes – but please not forget all those failed and over-venture-capitalised enterprises of the late 90′s. There’s a reason why so few are still around: they actually sat down and thought about whether that half-arsed idea they had last night down the pub would actually work.

10. Plagiarism 2.0 – Content-theft driven websites via RSS

    RSS feeds are a wicked tool. No, really RSS feeds are a thing of evil. Everytime someone sits down and writes / designs / creates something and publishes it through an XML data exchange file, ten scammers get made. Now it’s real easy to create wholesome portal websites with someone else’s content. Just register a domain and parse what ever feeds apply, slap some ads on it and bang: a free golden goose! Time to buckle down those feeds.. .

If you’ve read thus far and have no idea how you got here, I suggest PANIC! So digg me while you do.. .

“So long and thanks for all the fish.“

read more | digg story

read more | digg story

read more | digg story

read more | digg story

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PHP and MySQL and most open or closed sourced projects based on it suck!

Some don’t, most seem to just like most of the over-hyped web X.0 enabled malware. Now please don’t get me wrong, I love open source and if I had enough money I’d happily pay for clean code, but most stuff I have to come across is just rubbish.

PHP isn’t really a programming language for starters and MySQL is unreliable and unsuitable for anything larger than a personal blogging site. The alternatives are there but since I’m not a proper hacker (not good with languages you see…) I can only but rely on other peoples work. And that in particular sucks. All I want is for a piece of software to do as I tell it and while RAD (rapid application development) may be nice it’s mostly overrated and primarily suitable for biz-type devs that want to impress their bosses.

I am still looking for something nice and lean, clean even. I don’t want to spend time worrying more about how to secure the latest phpbb version from script kiddies nor do I want to chroot every website on my server.

OK, enough of the ranting. I have a few ideas for a simple and universal CMS… . OMG! I’ve heard this so many times and SourceForge is full of abandoned projects like it. But I will do it, at least all the planning, front end and documentation (three of the most important things – to users anyway – I might add).

Some basics then:

- It’s not PHP / MySQL
- It should be Perl, XML and (perhaps) Berkeley DB
- It’s not cool AJAX web2.0
- It will be usesable usability (who needs those transition fX anyway?)
- It will be extendible through a simple modular structure and go whereever one needs it to go
- It will be as secure as can be by integrating existing security features of the server and programming language
- It will be very simple and logical without lacking ability
- It will be easy to write a god darn theme for the thing without having to touch the code base!
- It will, therefore, know the difference between content and design.
- It won’t require a dual CPU to run and neither will it require permissions it shouldn’t have
- It won’t be a framework
- It won’t be 100MB when untarred

Actually I might pull this off with a little help from Ralf & Co. since my job requires just such a vapourware dream-come-true system.

Oh well I better had gotten on with it then…

To cut a long, boring story short Ralf *farted* in the channel and our unsuspecting newbie wondered what “fart” would mean… . Sebastian suggested it meant “file ain’t real true”.

[15:06] StarGate: *fart*
[15:07] joerg: fart?
[15:08] joerg: was das für ein ausdruck (ed: what does that mean?)
[15:08] sewi: File ain’t real true

I of course suggested Googling for it, a la: define: fart and came up with a winner:

The FART (Ferrovie Autolinee Regionali Ticinesi – Regional Bus and Rail Company of Canton Ticino) provides the urban and suburban bus network of

Locarno, Switzerland, cable cars between Verdasio and Rasa, and between Intragna – Pila – Costa, and the Centovalli Railway which connects the Gotthard trans-Alpine rail route at Locarno with the Simplon trans-Alpine route at Domodossola, Italy. …
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FART

ROFL!

BTW Searching for the definition in German is even funnnier because there’s only one entry… .

I’ve spent Saturday to manually copy the posts from my old blog to the new one and am now working on a proper theme I expect everything to be back to normal by the end of the month, including the new design. Meanwhile, feel free to browse, register and leave comments. BTW you can only comment as a registered user! This includes the guestbook and is simply to prevent comment spamming. Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you. I will try to make it worth your while by adding extra bonuses for registered users soon.

Before I forget to mention it, Lydia has got a brand new blog too where she will be publishing poetry, short stories and other ramblings. I’ve spent most of my weekend getting her site to look alright although there is still some touching up to do here and there.

Good news everyone…

Finally got around to structure segebrecht.com a little better and now put up a “portal” page in the main web root to link to Lydia’s new web log, my site and Stefan and Silke’s home page.

The latter site doesn’t feature that much really, but since it’s family… With two young kids, a recent house move (again) and a new job (again), there really isn’t that much time.

Lydia now has her own Blog as promised by me a while ago and all that’s left to do is teach her how to use it