Every Christmas, the British TV station Channel 4 broadcasts their ‘Alternative Christmas Message‘, as an alternative to the Queens Christmas Message on BBC. According to Channel 4, the aim is to show an alternative Weltanschauung, itself a bit of a sacriledge in times where having the correct world-view apparently is becoming more important again.

This year, the Iranian president Ahmadinedschad was given the chance to deliver a speech, with such prominent precursors in this duty as Jesse Jackson, Marge Simpson and Jamie Oliver. More than once, the choice of the speaker alone leads to quite a bit of turmoil, so it didn’t take much at Channel 4 to figure out the Iranian evildoer would get them quite a nice bit of attention. Now, considering quota is what they make their money with, I think that’s fair enough.

Personally, I’d much rather hear what an apparently mad leader struggling to get his hands on an atomic bomb says what he thinks the next year holds, than listening to an old multi-billionaire aristocratic snatch lady that never had to care about money, telling me her view about the world financial crisis.

Plus, I think Ahmadinedschad definately has a world-view quite different from if not all, than at least a good quantity of the viewers of Channel 4  or Britain in general. So, the opportunity itself was exciting enough: would the Iranian president promise us the salvation from the global dominance of evil in the disguise of money, greed, military dominance and political ignorance, something I would be looking forward to myself?

Would he blandly threaten the world with annihilation, or just Israel? Or would he take the chance to put his former ravings about the purging of the state of Israel or the US into perspective? Whichever perspective this might be? Personally I though there was a chance for that, but I wouldn’t have put a lot of money on it.  Alles lesen »

Die internsive Auseinandersetzung mit mir selbst, meinem Wollen und Können, sowie meine Geduld bei der Jobsuche haben sich schliesslich bewährt: auf dem Weg zur Arbeit habe ich letzte Woche meinen Traumjob endlich gefunden: Schenkel Vermessungen. Auch wenn ich bis vor kurzem nicht einmal wusste, dass es diesen Beruf gibt: ich bin trotz Cellulite fest davon überzeugt, dass ich hier meine Kenntnisse auf den Gebieten der Geographie, Biologie und Modellierung (sic!) optimal einbringen kann. Jetzt heisst es nur noch eine freie Stelle finden…

Mein Lieblings-Türke in der Josefstrasse hat offenbar eine neue Werbeoffensive zur Acquise von Laufkundschaft lanciert. Auf dem Aufsteller vor dem Dönerladen ist jetzt folgendes zu lesen:

Tages Menü:  Hey Guckst du rein wen dir nicht gäfelt Guckst du Weiter

Das ist konsequent und zeigt, dass der Imbissbetreiber von der Qualität seines Essens (zu Recht!) und des Ladenambientes (naja) überzeugt ist. Ich werde der Aufforderung demnächst Folge leisten, schon allein weil mich beim Lesen der Botschaft im Lan-Slang ein merkwürdiges Heimweh nach der Frankfurter Zeil erfasst hat. Wenn ich also das nächste Mal den Laden betrete muss Murat hinter der Theke nur noch fragen “Eh, was guckstu?” um mein Glück perfekt zu machen.

Ok. I don’t hate Apple. I just don’t want to buy it. I like the design, I like the simplicity, I like the functionality and the innovations. I don’t like the hype around the brand so much, but that is not reason enough not to buy a MacBook or an iPhone. What I really don’t like is the way Apple takes the piss out of you and tries to sell it back to you for gold.

Here’s the latest bit. My girlfried likes Apple. She has an iMac, and an iPod nano, and now a MacBook. I told her I won’t be able to support her with her computer woes if she uses a Mac, and she agreed, but hell I could have known I have to do it anyway. Reluctantly, but hey.

So. The new MacBook. Actually the old one, as we bought it right before the new ones come out. We ordered it together with a DVI adapter for that mini, non-standard graphics output port they feature. Well,  the adapter we ordered was the one that popped up when we put the MacBook into the basket at the online apple store. Which was the one we got, too. Only that was a Mikro-DVI-to-DVI Adapter, which only the MacBook Air uses. And no, since we deliberately ordered and opened it (after 2 weeks when we intended to use it, only to find out we couldn’t), Apple would not take it back. That’s the first screw you experience: if you chose to avoid using standards as much as possible, at least give them distinguishable names and work over you online store!

So we sold the wrong adapter for about 50 cents at ebay and bought a new Mini-DVI-to-DVI adapter. Remember, that’s 30 SFR (or US$)  each over here. When it got here, it looked fine and off it went with a DVI-to-VGA adapter we had lying around to head for a presentation to give. Alas, the DVI-to-VGA adapter would not fit, and hence the projector could not be connected!

Why? Because the Apple DVI adapter is not an integrated DVI adapter (DVI-I) but only DVI-D, which means it only replicates the digital signal and has no jack for the analogue connectors that VGA uses. Hence no adapter fits. Took us a while to find out. Now, of course, you can buy a Mini-DVI-to-VGA adapter for another 30 CHF, because yes, the Mini-DVI port has the analogue signal. So why not replicate all the signals in the DVI adapter as everyone else does?

Quote the apple store customer mucker supporter:

“It obviously is much better to only transmit the signals to be used for the adapter, for DVI that means the digital signal.”

Silently adding:

“Because this way we make sure that not even our adapters will work with anything non-apple and you will have to buy even more of our crap.”

And you know what? They can do it because you all yell “Yay! A customised adapter for every need, all apple-white (or black now) and expensive! Let me buy it!”

Another reason never ever to buy an iPhone. Or an iPod. Or a Macbook. It was close. But I made it. Screw apple. Maybe I do hate them.