Summer broke loose, again. And while it’s a little too hot during the day (I have a hard time getting used to the heat if I’m not given more than four days of it in a row), I just love the nights. Sitting outside at 4:30 in shirt and shorts, drinking beer and babblig about this and that and all the rest while the sun rearms for another assault.. on to the news and random facts..

• Been to the Melt! Festival and while being not quite what I expected I had a great time. We missed everything on Friday for rain, beer and stuff came in our way, but we caught a glimpse of 13 & God and the whole show of The Faint vs. Bright Eyes on Saturday. I feel like a fscking groupie having seen them three times in three weeks (June 24th, Ulm, Juli 6th, Karlsruhe, Juli 16th, Gräfenhainichen). Well, I guess there’re things worse that this. Anyhow, there was lots of ‘electro’ which, at least for me being unconditioned for that genre, did actually sound like plain stupid techno. Something for everyone I guess.
• Speaking of worse things, punknews.org writes that Karate broke up. I only know this band for about two months now and also only their selftitled album, but I really like it. Well, at least there are a few more albums to discover.
• I’m just going to get my new ID and passport from the town hall, be right back. re. Well, that was a two km walk and I’m soaked, like totally. Wayyyy toooo hooooot, I’m melting. Blub. Or not. Very pretty girl handed me over my new papers, San Francisco, here I come. At least if I get it managed to look for a flight anytime soon.
• Got myself a towel for I’m dripping all over the place. Urgs.
• /. writes about the world’s smallest MP3 player. Well, probably not too handy to carry a cube around in your pocket, this might hurt. And no ogg. Sebastian got himself a Shuffle (de) and seems to be pleased. Well, this might get boring but somehow I don’t get tired saying that: no ogg. iRiver to the rescue: The T-Series. With or w/o battery, small size, light-weight and, you guess it, ogg-support. I probably will get one of those.
• A friend just messaged me that my copy of Dance Of Death arrived, great. Exciting hours with SA Pendergast to come.
• Under no circumstances must MMORPGs be installed during summer. I’ve been reading a lot of Penny Arcade and combined with the bad weather the last few days (weeks?) it created an urge to play something. I had a still sealed box of EverQuest 2 lying around that I got from my brother a few months back. I tried the demo Trial Of The Isle which lets you play seven days and up to level 6 and you guess it, it got me. I even went to my local hardware dealer today and got myself a memory update for my XPC (2x512MB). Great. I’m sooo weak. Oh, and I had to reanimate my wintendo installation. Pretty lame, huh?
• Penny Arcade brings me to more WebComic recommendations: The obligatory Questionable Content and it’s little sidekick indietits, best punk-webcomic, Nothing Nice To Say (make sure to read Mich’s comments, there are some pretty interesting thoughts every now and then), Punks And Nerds (OK, Bruceman is pretty lame but they’ll get over it, hopefully..) and …hey suburbia! (which is not reachable right now).
• And last but not least: after decades of die-hard training sessions, strict diet, tons of proteins, steroids and testosterone injections, I can finally do five push-ups while doing a handstand (which is, not a real one but with my feet leaned to a wall *cough*). I did it and so can you: Build it and they will come. Err, guess I screwed that one up, must be the steroids, gotta go..

Just read on digg that LG readies iPod shuffle clone. And a appealing one. OK, the shuffle still looks better but like I said before, design definitely _is_ Apple’s cup of tea, so no need to argue here, but: ogg-support.. hell, not even QuickTime and therefore iTunes offer support for ogg vorbis encoded files, the QuickTime OGG Component isn’t compatible with QT7 and downgrading to QT6 isn’t possible on Tiger. Nice done.

cryforhelp: ISN’T THERE A FEASIBLE AUDIO PLAYER FOR OS X?!?!

Anyway, I considered getting one of those small mp3-, ermm, ogg-, well, let’s say multi-codec-flash-sticks, for my IHP-120 is a little bit too heavy and bulky for some occasions. Until now, the shuffle was my favorite design-wise, while iRiver’s flash-players have been when it came to functionality.. let’s see when this LG thingy will hit the market and reviews spread the web..

*update*
Just downloading the iTunes 4.9 update and what’s new? Podcasting. Great. Ah, to hell with it. I guess I boot into my Linux-installation on my PowerBook and enjoy some hours of extensive amarok usage.

In case you have an ext2/3 formated partition you have to access from OS X, don’t upgrade to 10.4, yet. ext2fsx v1.3 isn’t compatible to Tiger and the cat just won’t show the appropriate partitions. Well, I had to fill every single free MB on my desktop, the powerbook, my mp3-player and some old harddrives nearly forgotten in some corner, to empty my external, 250GB capacity, ext3 formatted storage device, for I needed to change the filesystem. Linux seems to support HFS+ way better than OS X supports Linux’ filesystems and therefore I’m probably better off with OS X’ native fs. I am just in the process of refilling that thing again.

Errrr, that have been some bytes being pushed around here using all available interfaces and devices: Wi-Fi, twisted pair, USB, FireWire, 2.5″ HDD to standard IDE converter, DVD-Writer and I don’t know what else. Guess the only devices I didn’t use are my Digicam, my 128MB flash-stick and various devices usually hanging out in my kitchen. If my band would be a little bit broader I even might have considered uploading that stuff.. wasn’t there a saying involving backups, uploading to FTP and real men?

Haven’t even had too much time to play around with Tiger. Besides the obvious, Mail’s extended IMAP functionality and iChat’s Jabber-support come to mind.

Regarding the new LCD, it’s just amazing. While the picture of my old Dell 1800FP is also great, this definitely is a new definition of desktop workspace. Two minor drawbacks, though: For one the display seems to stress the powerbook pretty much for the fan is spinning all the time when connected. Addressing all those threemillionthreehundredandfourthousand pixels appears to be hard job to do. At least the powerbook can handle the 1920×1200 resolution. On my desktop, it doesn’t seem to be that smooth. On a glance, neither my FX5200 nor my FX5900XT have been able to drive the display correctly. Haven’t looked into it, yet, but according to a friend that might be a real problem for he also isn’t able to run the display with full res using DVI with his FX5200 and web searches are bringing up tons of of issues regarding that topic..

really:

• Grabbed my copy of Mac OS X 10.4 from the local mac-shop
• Got a second skin for my powerbook at the same store
• Finally received my Dell 2405FPW 24″ LCD (review). This thing is so huge and actually I really haven’t wasted a thought about where to place it, yet. Well, I guess I can figure that one out.

Let’s see, where to start..?

There has been quite some feedback on the First impressions OS X made, more to find on OS news. Fish to some of those there, it’s even free! Speaking of which, it’s all about choice, isn’t it?

Anyhow, I’m crawling through the suggestions and hints just now. Thanks! Audio Recorder just seems to be what I’ve been looking for. Audacity is a bit oversized and the others only record to somewhat obscure formats. Well, my application needs are probably satisfied by now..

And speaking about GNU/Linux and broadcum, err com, I also have a D-Link DWL-122 stick (Prism2) here, should work just fine. 11mbits, though. Petition, anyone?

I’ve also been recommended MarsEdit over ecto. I’m writing this entry using MarsEdit but I’m just much more comfortable with ecto. There’s no simple switching between WYSIWYG and html, spell-checking doesn’t seem to work properly and formating is much more easier using ecto. Eventually I copy & pasted this into ecto

Thanks again for all the comments, I really appreciate it.