personal weblog of Leo Sauermann
as old Chuck-Norris-Jokes fan and true follower (I even have the book on display in our toilet) I am happy that finally the positive effect of Chuck Norris can be scientifically measured:
Chuck Norris improves iPhone4 reception! Click on HD and fullscreen to see:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOqx7HCwZI8
Weird errors when copying files? Do svn commits not work anymore? “Unable to move file”? I am using Windows 7 and NTFS, and my filesystem is quite weird. I copied my files from another windows machine using cygwin and rsync and this (-a) tried to preserve as much security details as possible. In the end, it fucked up my NTFS permissions in most folders with permissions for some {9898234234-234234234-23423432} users or “none”.
Anyway, there are plenty of ways how you can fuck up Windows file permissions. All I wished was my folders to NOT have any permissions BUT the inherited permissions from the parent folder. Btw, this is where ext2 really sucks for me, that you can’t have inheritance in the user:group and access rights. I often wished that when setting up shared folders for samba. I wanted to reset the permissions to the default access rights any folder in my Windows documents directory has. Looking at the zillions-of-popup-windows-on-top-of-each-other-unintuitive-user-interface to change file permissions, I googled for help. And, luckily, found the command line to reset windows NTFS file permissions of a folder to that of the parent folder:
icacls your_bad_folder /reset /t
use this command inside the parent-folder, the your_bad_folder is the folder giving you trouble.
Last week a mail came through the NEPOMUK mailinglist, positive feedback. I am happy to copy it here – because it programmers like the KDE guys appreciate positive feedback, usually only angry people bother writing mails:
I’ve been playing around with Nepomuk and his cousins since the early
days. Posted to forums about setting up virtuoso when it was
introduced. I just wanted to make everything KDE to work properly; it
wasn’t like there was an major, urgent need for search.
Today I went looking for a file using search in Dolphin. Things have
come a long way with search. Fast and accurate. I found what I was
looking for with ease.
Thank you all so much for what you’ve contributed.
(p.s.: I don’t copy the name of the submitter, as I don’t know if he would appreciate it. If you are curious, check the mail archives)
Live Matrix, What’s When on the Web
It’s a tv guide for the Web. Neat. If you want to replace the telly with shows to watch on the web, this is the way to get to know what is running tonight. In their own words:
Live Matrix is the first guide to live and upcoming scheduled events on the Web. We link you to anything that has a start time and can be attended online: audio and video webcasts, live chats, limited-time sales and auctions, conferences, product launches, games and contests, events in virtual worlds, and much more.
Live Matrix was created by Nova Spivack and Sanjay Reddy. I recently met Nova in San Francisco shortly before beta launch and it didn’t take long to convince me that LiveMatrix is great. I will watch it tonight.
In a recent newsletter, they shared details how to import data into Live Matrix. There is the old-school web form, CSV uploads, and – alas – a way to specify feed URLs to be crawled by Live Matrix.
Read the LM_Event_Providers_White_Paper.pdf for the XML format specification.
as an old RDF/XML guy, I cannot hesitate to comment on the chosen XML format by livematrix:
<events>
<event>
<link><![CDATA[http://google.com]]></link>
<title><![CDATA[title]]></title>
<start_date>2010-01-01 15:20</start_date>
<!– Leo misses a “T” between date and time. –>
<duration>1:30</duration>
<end_date>2010-01-01 19:30</end_date>
<description><![CDATA[this is the description]]></description>
<time_zone>GMT-9</time_zone>
So they “nearly” reused a standard (ISO dates, RDF, Atom) but like Facebook chose to “simplify” it. Alas, I would say “as long as you give a sample to copy/paste, you can include as many xml:ns declarations as you want in the top” but it seems this view is not shared with everyone.
In the document they say that they also support ATOM and RSS, so I guess if you already have an RDF or other stream with live data on the web, Live Matrix will be happy to include it.
At Gnowsis, we are looking for a new name for our personal semantic assistant. Currently we call it Cluug, but now it´s your turn to make it better!
Here it is:
http://cluug.uservoice.com/forums/77753-naming-competition
of course, you can also vote on facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/gnowsis/105426213178?v=app_46468144668
Do you spend a lot of time reading email? Google priority inbox is there to help. It sorts your email inbox into “important” and “everything else” based on old messages.
Here is a lifehacker article on it.
Thx to Rick Boardman for telling me.
Like four years ago, on the 8th August 2006, I ask the question:
Ok, who from the Semantic Web guys and girls is going to Burning Man this year?
I am too busy preparing my art project “God Sees” to do all the semantic web querying – last time Dan Brickley connected me to Tom Longson. This resulted in this photo
and a fucking awesome video where we explain semantic web to Mad Max (watch or skip to the end!):
and greetings to Dan Brickley:
this time I await more answers! Semantic Web and Burning Man have grown.
You go to Burning Man?
please contact me via Facebook or my email adresses,
Btw: We have 2 beds in our RV for rent. Its a fair deal sharing costs, but you may need to adjust your travel plans. If you want cosy RV space, contact me.
You are not going to Burning Man but now you want? Do it. Don’t move it to next year (although, 3 weeks before the event, thats usually too late to organize everything, but anyway, next year you may be dead and talking to your maker – if that happens – only Jesus can save you – so- logic or not – be there once in your life).
This is gonna be great, I know it will, as I was there 2006 (click for one line report) and 2008 on Nowhere in Spain. I love you all!
While preparing some things for this year’s Burningman festival , I stumbled upon this amazing page of bullshit science toys which I, would I have the money, without exception all buy immediately.
http://amasci.com/amateur/toys1.html
What brought me there? I was Googling for “Disgustoscope Burningman” to see if anyone has thought about this before. I will probably do this… a cheap installation I could bring. Of course, a disgustoscope only shows what you bring in, so it would be ideal for Burningman.
Together with Ingrid, we were tinkering in the living room . I am quite proud of the result, behold what I now call the “cocktail curtain”:
Finished yesterday, it consists of a bulk of LED chains, wood, color, and string curtains. All parts were on supersale, so we came out on a budget and on one week work.
The news is full of reports on 19 people who died yesterday at Loveparade in Duisburg. It is sad. I am feeling sad about it.
I specially feel sad when I look at this picture I shot on 4th December 1999 at the Air&Style contest on Bergisel:
For us, this picture was a glance around closing time of the party down to the exit on the lower left. Bernhard, Kathrina and I decided “lets go to the upper exit, too many people down there”. When we drove away in the car, after 30 minutes on the road, we heard on the radio that 5 people were trampled dead on that exit. We were shocked, sad, and very sad.
When seeing a big messy crowd and there is the light feeling of “lets wait a minute until there are less people”, don’t take it lightly. I pray now.