General

By total coincidence I stumbled upon a really interesting alternative to LaTeX2html, the program that we learned to love and hate when we wanted to put our LaTeX documents online in an HTML version. The alternative is called HeVeA, is written in OCAML, and generates (IMHO) better HTML than LaTeX2html does. When you call hevea, it will generate a single HTML file. You can then split this HTML file using the tool hacha, and it will generate a TOC and several HTML files similar to LaTeX2html. And: it is extremely fast. A downside: it doesn't work with LaTeX files that use powersem (which I use to generate my slides for presentations).

As a few of my readers probably know, I own a VAXstation 4000 m90, and instead of having it stand around and catch dust, I would like to have a shelter for it, with power, net and a public IP address, where it could run uninterrupted. So I would be really happy if someone could provide me with such a place. What do you get in return? An account on one of the fastest [[VAX|VAXen]] ever built.

I just found Apout, which is described as a "user-level simulator for UNIX a.out binaries". I had to try it immediately, and while the code needed some manual patching to get it compiled on Linux, Apout works like a charm. While Unix V7's /bin/sh shows some bug, all the stuff in /usr/games seems to work. And the great advantage compared to e.g. SIMH is that Apout doesn't hog the CPU.

Don't drink Mate at 10pm unless you want to go to bed around 3:30am and wake up at 7:30am.

Martin Piskernig pointed me to http://www.todesstrafe-fuer-kinderschaender.de/ (death penalty for child molesters). In the beginning, it looks like a site of some freaks with distorted ethics. But when you look closer, you will find many hints that this website is clearly controlled by Neonazis or at least by somebody in the german nationalistic atmosphere. First of all, a quote on the frontpage that is obviously taken out of context. And then the guestbook, which contains basically only references to Neonazi stuff, e.g. one person calling himself "Achtundachzig" (88), a code well-known and often-used in the relevant circles, standing for "Heil Hitler", another one linking to oi-forum.de (Oi is a style of music that mostly corresponds with Nazi skinhead culture). Oh, BTW: the guestbook is being censored. Who would have thought that?



At a side note, the frontpage mentions that the website has been attacked by "hackers". If this is true, then this was at least hacktivism for a good cause...

Today I finally got back my iBook. It's been on service for almost 5 weeks due to the infamous Logic board error. So letting that repair was for free. Expect some updates regarding my gallery in the next few hours/days.

Today I woke up very early (4:30am). And what do you do when you wake up early? Watch TV. And what type of program is in the early morning? Right, TV shopping. Today, they sold an operating system called "Zeta". Well, what is Zeta? It is a BeOS successor developed by YellowTAB. The TV shopping show was really funny, because they praised Zeta as some kind of ultimate relief for all computer users, "so easy to use", "with so many applications", "you can play videos and music", blablabla. When one of the presentators explained that it contains "a complete development environment", and didn't even know how to pronounce "development", I knew that he has absolutely no clue what he's talking about.



But what I did find interesting was the drag'n'drop stuff they showed. They showed some spreadsheet application (they called it "excel table", of course there's no Excel port for Zeta), and dragged some picture into it. Then they set it transparent, and put it into the background. That was quite impressive. But still, I wouldn't buy it, as EUR 99,95 are pretty expensive for Zeta Release Candidate 3 (the CD they showed in the camera said "Zeta RC3").

Yesterday I started learning Spanish, using the book "Spanisch lernen in 30 Tagen" by Langenscheidt (does anybody remind this of "Brain surgery in 20 easy steps"? . I already completed the first lection, and so far, it's not yet difficult. But today I encountered one big issue when trying to write Spanish text with a German keyboard layout: some characters such as Ñ, ñ, ¡ or ¿ can't be typed on a German keyboard layout. That's why I created a custom keyboard layout using the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator (as you can see, I'm currently bound to Windows :-/), so that ñ can be typed using AltGr-n, Ñ can be typed using AltGr-Shift-n, ¡ can be typed using AltGr-Shift-1 (i.e. AltGr-!) and ¿ can be typed using AltGr-Shift-ß (i.e. AltGr-?). If you're also in desparate need of this keyboard layout, you can find the msi installer for Windows here. And below you can see a screenshot of the keyboard layout.

So, I'm back from Anif, at least for this week. Tomorrow I'm going to take the train to Vienna, to visit the last day of the Linuxwochen there. I will do my last lecture there (well, the last one for this Linuxwochen season).


Anyway, Anif is a really small town with really nothing (or almost nothing) inside and around. I lived in a small hotel, which was quite OK (I especially enjoyed the breakfast, fresh croissants are a really nice thing in the morning). And the minibar was included, that means I didn't have to pay anything extra.


At Sony, where I work, there's a really nice kitchen, with great food for only little money (e.g. today two big pieces of fried Leberkäse with french fries and a small salad for EUR 2,76). And today, I used the chance to buy some stuff in a Sony-DADC-internal store where they sell the stuff they produce to all the employees for really nice prices. I, for one, bought a Pearl Jam live CD (actually 3 CDs) for as much as EUR 3,60 (price at Amazon: EUR 16,99), and a colleague bought some really new computer game for Playstation 2 (quote: "that game is already published?!") for as much as EUR 17 (price at Amazon: EUR 39,99). That is really neat, and I'm looking forward to the next Friday, where I will hopefully have more money with me.


Besides eating and shopping at Sony, I didn't really do a lot, except for going to a meeting, installing lots of required software, receiving a Sony Ericsson P800 for my future work there, and - of course - surfing on the web.

In the next few weeks this weblog won't get filled too often, because beginning with tomorrow, I'm going to live (during the week) and work in Anif, Salzburg. At work, I was chosen as software developer to take part in a project for Sony NetServices, doing some work on some mobile client applications running on Symbian OS.

According to Al Jazeera, the last spanish troops left Iraq. This is definitely good news, and I hope, all the other countries will follow Spain's example, until Iraq is solely a US-american (and British) problem that these two countries have to solve by themselves.

Today, I was invited to a little Sangria party. First, we had self-made Tortilla (which has basically nothing to do with what most people image what Tortilla is), then we were drinking Becherovka (not really much), and finally, we tried some of the self-made sangria. There were about 8 to 9 liters left, but we didn't really a lot (I had probably about 1 to 1.5 liters), but it was tasty, and much better than the usual Sangria you get to buy in super markets or in bars.

This time it went really quick -- not more than maybe 10, 20 seconds. So far, I took one of those Xefo painkillers, and I'm totally pain-free. Unfortunately, everything went so quick that I couldn't take any pictures. Oh, well...

Today I have my second visit at the dentist for removing another wisdom tooth, and this time I try to take a picture of the wisdom tooth after it was removed. Photos will follow (hopefully).

I finally found the time to upload all the pictures that I took during my trip to Graz and the time there. You can have a look at it here.