“om nom nom”

A new year started and it’s time once again for the best wished to all readers of this weblog.

Source: http://www.kirstenpfad.de/2010/01/03/happy-new-year/

…

…

…

Wir wünschen frohe Weihnachten und einen guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr 2010.

I am managing my appointments using Outlook on windows and iCal on OS X. Since I am not using any Exchange service right now I was happy to find out that Outlook offers a functionality to export a local calendar automatically to an iCalendar compatible ICS file. Great feature but it lacks some things I desperately need.

Since I am managing my private and my business appointments in the same calendar, differentiating just by categories, I had a hard time configuring outlook to export a) an ics file containing all business appointments and b) an ics file containing all private appointments. It’s not possible to make the story short.

So I fired up Visual Studio as usual and wrote my own filter tool. I shall call it “iCalFilter”. It’s name is as simple as it’s functionality and code. I am releasing it under BSD license including the sources so everyone can use and modify it.

It’s a command line tool which should compile on Microsoft .NET and Mono. It takes several command line parameters like:

1. Input-File
2. Output-File
3. “include” or “exclude” –> this determines if the following categories are included or excluded in the output file
4. a list of categories separated by spaces
5. an optional parameter “-remove-description” which, if entered, removes all descriptions from events and alarms

Easy, eh?!

Grab the Source and Binary here: http://dropbox.schrankmonster.de/dropped/iCalFilter01.zip

Wir sind dieses Jahr nicht direkt auf dem Kürbisfest, das ja heute stattfindet, sondern bei der Kürbisnacht gewesen. Da kann man entspannter Kürbisse kaufen und kommt mit den “Kürbisbauern” auch leichter ins Gespräch um nach Rezepten oder dem Verwendungszweck der einzelnen Kürbisse zu fragen.

Es gab wieder unzählige Kürbisse in zahlreichen Farben und Formen:

Das ist doch mal eine Idee für den nächsten Weihnachtsbaum

Da kann ich nur zustimmen !!!

Source: dreikiel.de

So here we are on a new blog engine. It took me the better part of two days to do the Migration of 2,869 posts and 2,732 comments, a lot of pictures and movie files.

I will write an article on this but for now only two captures images from the migration:

yeah PHP rocks!

 
had to do some regex action to do the url rewrites

So it’s been some days with the new Mediacenter Setup. And all I can say is: Oh boy that is some serious cool setup. I wouldn’t want to chance anything beside adding a new Sound System (>5.1 FTW!).

The Display itself is thinner than thought:

I strongly recommend the Mac + Plex + Full HD display setup. Even if you don’t get any HD content from your cable provider you can live-stream or download HD content through the different provider plugins inside Plex. The plugin infrastructure with the built-in “App Store” is just great.

Since Plex is a XBMC based Mediacenter software you have tons of information scrapers regarding series and movies. So you’re eventually huge collection gets indexed and presented in a way you would not get from any other Mediacenter. You get pictures, movie posters, descriptions and many more just by automatic indexing your collection.

MST3k FTW!

Needless to say that HD content is something different. I only had some HD content on normal computer displays in the last years – having it now huge and sharp is different – better.

BTW: It’s on the floor right now because my wife couldn’t decide until now which tv-stand would suffice…

Source 1: http://av.samsung.de/produkte/detail2_main.aspx?guid=b6c1306c-f57d-4ce7-a944-56cc7346ed2e
Source 2: http://www.apple.com/macmini/
Source 3: http://plexapp.com/

Welcome our newest member of the team:

Sternotherus odoratus

More of him/her on www.dreikiel.de in the future.

We still seeking for a name for him/her – since we do not know right now if it’s a male or female it would be great to have a gender-neutral name.

Ich fahre ja seit 2000 privat diesen wunderschönen SEAT Arosa. Nun ist das Auto Ende 1999 gebaut und damit auch nichtmehr das jüngste – eine kleine Excel Tabelle hat aufgezeigt dass das Auto de-facto durch die verschiedenen Durchsichten und Reparaturen mehr als zweimal komplett bezahlt wurde. Auch machte sich ein verstärkter Öl-Durst in den letzten Monaten eher unangenehm bemerkbar – unter anderem bekam ich erstmals die “nicht genug Öl”-Lampe zu sehen.

Das Auto meiner Frau ist da noch viel schlimmer dran gewesen – als Baujahr 1997 und mit dem Geburtsfehler “Opel” ist es ein Wunder dass es überhaupt bis ins Jahr 2008 durchgehalten hat. Nicht ohne Blessuren: die gesamte Elektrik tut mehr oder weniger das was sie will, die Rad lager hören sich an als wären ein paar Stahlkugeln in einer Waschmaschine unterwegs und die Lenkung an sich zieht so böse nach rechts dass man sozusagen die ganze Zeit nach Links lenken muss um geradeaus zu fahren. Und da ist dieser Geburtsfehler: Die Hütte rostet dass man glaubt das wäre ein Hochseeschiff ohne Lackierung. Nun ja.

Den Opel haben wir schon frühzeitig in 2008 dem Gebrauchtwagenmarkt zugeführt und auch – wie ich finde (meine Frau ist da etwas anderer Meinung) – reichlich Geld dafür bekommen. Für den SEAT Arosa haben wir uns ein anderes, endgültigeres Schicksal ausgedacht:

Im November 2008 klapperten wir die verschiedenen Autohändler in der Umgebung ab – all die üblichen Verdächtigen mussten befragt, begutachtet, bewertet und letztlich ausgewählt werden. Prinzipiell stellte sich die Frage: Ein Japaner oder ein deutsches Fabrikat?

Wir hatten einen Honda Civic im Auge – aber aufgrund glanzvoller Ignoranz der Händler und dem doch extrem schlechten Preis-Leistungsverhältnis haben wir uns schon frühzeitig entschieden: ein deutsches Auto soll es sein. Genauer gesagt ein BMW.

Die ersten Erfahrungen mit dem ortsansässigen BMW Händler haben dann auch recht schnell Herz und Brieftasche geöffnet. Schon nach dem ersten Besuch war die Probefahrt klar gemacht – wir hatten uns nämlich recht schnell auf einen “Einser” eingeschossen. Den gab es in der richtigen Größe und viel wichtiger: Mit der gewünschten Gadget-Dichte.

Am 08.11.2008 ging es also mit einem blauen 3 türigem 1er in den Thüringer Wald – gerade noch rechtzeitig vorm ersten großen Schnee. Wir haben natürlich die Gelegenheit für ein paar Fotos genutzt:

Die Kaufentscheidung war getroffen – nun ging es an die Planung. Der BMW Konfigurator ist da ein ganz nettes Spielzeug, wenngleich ich mir da noch die ein oder andere Verbesserung gewünscht hätte. Über Weihnachten und im Januar wurde das Wunschauto konfiguriert und dann am 13. Januar mit der Hoffnung dass der Winter ein Herz mit uns haben möge gleich mit Sommerreifen auf den baldmöglichsten Termin bestellt. Abholen wollten wir das Auto nicht beim Händler sondern direkt in München in der BMW Welt.

Den Termin bekamen wir ein paar Tage später vom immer noch sehr zuvorkommenden, engagierten und überaus netten Händler – ja das ist nicht übertrieben, der Mann ist auf jede unserer Fragen eingegangen und hat sich speziell beim Rätsel-Thema “iPod-Integration” extra nochmal kundig gemacht.

Nun ging die wirklich anstrengende Phase des Projekts “BMW kaufen” los: das Warten.

Da trudelten dann im Wochen-Rhythmus die Bestätigungen, die finalen Rechnungen und so wichtige Dinge wie Kennzeichen-Tragetaschen und Informationsmaterial zur Abholung ein. Alles in allem hat das die Vorfreude natürlich enorm gesteigert.

Am 12. März war es dann soweit. Unser BMW war gebaut, poliert und fertig zur Abholung. Wir sind an dem Tag extra früh aus dem Bett da die Abholung selbst auf 14:20 Uhr angesetzt war. Das ist natürlich reichlich spät wenn man hinterher noch eine BMW Stammwerksführung machen will. Deshalb haben wir die Werksführung vor die Auslieferung gezogen und mussten so recht früh (4 Uhr, urks!) raus und nach München. Wir waren rechtzeitig da und natürlich war wie erwartet ein wirklich schöner Tag für uns vorbereitet worden. Der Empfang, die Werksführung, die BMW Welt selbst, die Präsentation unseres Autos – da fällt einem nur ein “WOW!” ein.

die Abholer-Premium-Lounge

die “BMW Welt”

die Treppe für die Abholenden – da geht man
gaaaaaanz langsam runter

Auf den Bildern ist ja auch diese Treppe zu sehen – da geht man nach dem Fahrzeug-Briefing – also dem Teil wo dem Abholer sein neues Auto in Theorie und Simulations-Praxis erklärt wird – gaaaanz gaaaanz langsam hinunter. Um dann direkt vor seinem Neuwagen zu stehen. Und ganz ehrlich, bei der ganzen Show ist das schon ein erinnerungswürdiger Moment wenn das Auto dann endlich vor einem auftaucht.

Außen weiß und innen ganz in schwarz.

Endlich war das Warten vorbei! Wir haben uns dann direkt auf die Sommer-Socken gemacht. Die Fahrt versprach nämlich spannend, oder doch zumindest interessant zu werden: Schneeregen und Nebel war angesagt. Das kam dann auch, war aber nicht die Spur eines Problems – schön langsam und sicher sind wir nach einem ewig langen Tag wieder zuhause angekommen. Die Nacht war dann aber auch nicht besonders lang – denn nur zwei Tage später sind wir umgezogen. Ja da ist sozusagen die “Coole Sache Nummer 2”. Den Bericht gibts dann aber in einem anderen Artikel.

It’s time for a review of last years numbers regarding the schrankmonster website empire. I did not write that much – and I could clearly see that reflected in the monthly statistics. Nevertheless I am quite impressed what numbers where reached in the end:

the year 2008 in numbers:

• 1.671.932.652 kbytes ~ 1.6 Tbytes of Traffic served to the visitors
• 6.393.160 unique visits (532.763 on average per month)
• 17.716.918 unique pages delivered
• 63.656.905 hits overall (5.304.742 on average per month)

Sounds like a lot of work for one machine. In 2008 there were 3 machines that hosted schrankmonster and the sites around schrankmonster. I think schrankmonster now finally arrived on a machine where it can grow in the future. (I think the new machine will handle peaks like the famous “iTunes for Windows Mobile” articles easily)

Finally a DSLR landed at our premises: the Canon EOS 450D is as of now in our toy park – perfectly timed for the holidays and christmas.

(made with the “old” SX100 IS)

This week I ordered a new machine for all the websites which are now consolidated on one machine. I might have broken the previous subversion server logins for now – but this will be fixed in the next days or so.

So if you’re seeing this post you’re already on the new machine.

Halloween is due in a few weeks and we had the time to cut our Jack-o-Lanterns today. After buying them last weekend at the “Kürbisfest Alterndorf” (see pictures of this at my wifes site) we decided to do 3 different ones this year.

So… here are the three Jack-o-Lanterns of this year:

and in the dark at the house entrance:

Source: Kürbisfest Altendorf at dreikiel.de

I just updated the blog software on schrankmonster / technology-ninja to a more current version hopefully resulting in faster page loading times and less cpu usage on my webserver.

If you experience any problem from now on, please talk to me – comment this article.

I just found that Mozilla Firefox plugin that allows me to blog from the Mac (which still lacks a great and compatible blog-tool for this site).

If you can read this text AND if you can see the picture – everything worked fine.

Uuups! It seems as if I missed a domain name while I was moving this website to a new machine.

All people who accessed this site from the domains *.technology-ninja.com have seen just a “Bad request” error message in the last week. Damn it!

It’s been fixed – sorry ppl.

Since the good old mac mini is gone and a new mac arrived – and since I moved to a new place I think it’s time to share my current desktop with you:

If you want to know how it looked in the old place an 9 months ago take a look at the fourth part of this series.

Source: the perfect working environment part 4

yeah. first holidays for 3 years. see you soon.

Vegetarier die Fisch essen sind mir suspekt. Womit entschuldigen die den Ausrutscher hin zum Tiermord?

Here we go again. It’s a bit late this year since we started January 15th last year but late than never!

Beim Aufräumen kamen mal wieder einige interessante Sachen zum Vorschein:

26.11.1942, kurz nachdem die Sowjets die 6.Armee in Stalingrad einschlossen (hier natürlich nicht so dargestellt)

19.11.1976, Honecker auf Staatsbesuch in Guinea-Bissau

10.11.1989, die erste Wende-BILD

12.11.1989, die erste Wende-BILD am Sonntag

Ein Nachtrag zum Fernsehprogramm von 1989:

Damals liefen noch keine Talkshows, aber dafür die Lindenstraße um 18.40 Uhr, Transformers im Nachmittagsprogramm und Apocalypse Now am Abend. Aber ansonsten hat sich seitdem nicht viel geändert.

Jens Heymann

So here’s the problem I had: There is an Exchange 2007 server I am forced to use for some of my daily work and that’s where the problems start: Due to the work of some evil geniuses there’s a load of user and security policies associated with that server. That’s not a problem per se: It’s just that things like “forward all mails to this account” don’t work. You have to use Outlook Web Access or the heavyweight Outlook to get to your mails… Till today I had an Outlook 2007 running on my private IMAP mailserver machine just for the purpose of downloading all the mail from the Exchange server to the local harddisk. I had setup a client-rule to copy all the mail to my IMAP server but despite the fact Outlook is running on the exact same machine as the IMAP server it just did not work for more than 1-20 messages… connections were lost and stuff screwed up. So I had to move all the messages manually (Select-All -> Drag-n-Drop onto the IMAP folder inside Outlook) which took me quite some time each month.

Two days ago I read an article where namenlos wrote about his journey with his employers Exchange server. He wrote a Python script that did the job for Exchange 2003 by using the WebDAV features. These features unfortunatly are deprecated in the current 2007 release of Exchange. So I decided to write a tool in C# that does the trick and uses the brand-spanking new Exchange 2007 Web Service.

The Exchange 2007 SDK is a wasteland to say the least when it comes to documentation. It took me some time and a good search engine to get to something useful out of it. But I think it’s worth the pain: When you got over the first annoying steps you’ll just like me will start to love the possibilities this Web Services give you.

In my case I am using the webservices to do these things:

1. allocate my inbox and obtain a listing of messageIDs
2. get the complete messages out of my inbox
3. reformat the messages and send them via smtp to my own mail server

What I’ve written is not feature complete (as in: no attachements, …) but it’s a great and working start and does the 3 point-trick from above quite well. I will refine the code and add the missing features (e.g. attachements and stuff) in the future… or maybe you are faster than me. In that case it would be well appreciated if you send me your code/a link to the code (find my email in the sourcefile…)

get the code here. (90 kbytes)

Source 1: http://blog.slash-me.net/archives/235-fetchmail-fuer-MS-Exchange.html
Source 2: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa562613.aspx
Source 3: http://www.schrankmonster.de/content/binary/Exchange2IMAP.zip

Since my girlfriend has a turtle website she often stumbles upon turtle related websites… just like this one:

Source 1: http://www.lostgarden.com/turtle_main.htm
Source 2: http://blueturtles.schrankmonster.de

This is just one of the 40 bottles now in my possession. They’ll probably will last just a few weeks but this time somethings different!

Thanks to the heroic work of some there’s now a distributor in Ilmenau for Club-Mate. That makes is a whole lot easier to get the beloved stuff.

I finally made it!

I tried for more than 2 years to get this done: A new design and layout for this website. And now it’s finally done!

I hope you enjoy the new colors and elements like the nice tagcloud there. Feel free to tell me what you think!

Well some of you may be interested in how many other people are visiting schrankmonster. Well it’s more than a year since I last did an article about the official schrankmonster statistics. One year is about time to take another look on where we got in this year:

As you may see there’s a huge jump from January to February 2007 which can be explained by the introduction of the XBOX 360 Achievement Generator. But even without this new service you can see a huge increase in visits and hits. Now if there would be more comments

Oh dear, that stinks! Someone must have left some things on the cooker… damn you!

I officially declare the strawberry season started:

Because the small aquarium was free we decided to buy a siamese fighting fish. So let me introduce “Boris”:

So far he seems to be okay and healthy after the transport… to get updated information in the future just take a look at blueturtles or if you want some info about the species right now, take a look here.

For me YAPS becomes more and more the vcr application I was always searching for. I’ve fixed a lot of bugs since the last article about YAPS and added a lot of features. It did not crash for about a month on my production system and the daily build access seems to work better than I thought it would (since it’s only a quick .cmd script).

Since the settings page is quite hard to implement I started with some other things that lead their way to get the settings page done – one of which is the dynamic template keyword feature where you can add options to .html pages which can be used in the page itself. (documentation to be written).

The settings page should be ready within this week hopefully as all the needed parts are coming together right now (like those options and stuff).

What I want from you:

1. Feedback! – Keep the feedback coming. It’s good to hear from people using this software. It’s even better to hear feature wishes.
2. HELP! – If you are a HTML guru, graphic artist, .net coder or TVR car dealer, then write a comment, leave your contact data and you’re in the team. I need help in every mentioned way and in some not mentioned…hrm…

Here’s the changelog since the last version I wrote about…oh..we do have a build version now…it’s 1.0.30 for the Processor and 1.0.2474.1263 for the application as I am writing this.

10.10.2006

• added the %settings_*% keywords to the TemplateProcessor
• changed the MapNames Class to ChannelMapper
• added ChannelAddress Settings, Settingsfile
• added %buildversion% template keyword
• added Misc Settings and Channel Adress Mapping Settings Icon
• added Misc and Channel Settings to the Settings HTML Page
• some cosmetic changes to index.html and the LoadSettings console output
• added automatic categories to the To-Be-Recorded Listing

09.10.2006

• changed the HTTP Servers file buffer size to 20480 bytes; increased the HTTP performance by factor 4
• changed the Multicast Cached Reader/Writer buffer size to 150 RTP packets per client-loop-run

07.10.2006

• implemented AddSearchTerm and DelSearchTerm functionality
• added editcategory_step4.html for Searchterm deletion (changing that in future versions!!!)
• added AutomaticCategoriesForRecording functionality to the CategoryProcessor
• added Category Listing to the RecordedListing Template Processor
• added RenderOneLine Method to the RecordedListing Template Processor
• added CategoryFilter functionality, just click on the category in the Recorded Listing to filter
• added SortAscending/SortDescending Keywords to recordings.html handling – you can now switch between those sorting schemes; default is Descending
• added Querystring.cs
• known bug -> when CategoryFilter is active SortAscending/SortDescending wouldn’t work; currently fixing

03.10.2006

• fixed a bug in the http method calling tree

29.09.2006

• fixed a bug in the Managerecording-Deleterecording methods
• changed the RemoveRecordingFile Forwarder to the /recordings.html instead of the last page in browser history
• fixed a bug in the ForwardToPage method
• updated the TV Browser Capture Plugin Configuration (/Documentation and Misc/TV Browser Capture Plugin)
• added settings page
• added settings_categories page
• added settings category and addcategory icons
• changed Design Vector file format to CorelDraw! X3
• added Category Adding functionality
• added Category deleting functionality
• added Searchterm adding functionality (partly)

28.09.2006

• added the deleterecording functionality for managerecordings (delete recording without knowing the ID)
• changes to the Category data structure
• added category.cs to the repository
• added CategoryProcessor
• added AddCategory HTML Page
• added EditCategory HTML Pages
• added Category listing Template Processor
• added ForwardToLastPage HTTP Response
• added ForwardToPage HTTP Response

21.09.2006

• changed the Settings data structures
• fixed a spelling error in the DoneRecordings table
• added category listing to the RecordedListing table
• added channel image for german br
• added several category management specific changes

Dailybuild (Microsoft.NET): http://www.slow-backward.de/yaps_daily_build.zip
Dailysource: http://www.slow-backward.de/yaps_daily_source.zip

While cleaning my keyboards the idea came up to actually use dvorak keyboard layout I wrote about more than a year ago.

After creating the “dovrak german type 2″ keyboard layout file with Ukelele I am now slowly learning the new layout… quite hard after more than 16 years on QWERTZ/QWERTY…

Well… both Apple Keyboards are now dvorak-layouted… looks a bit strange when you’re only known to QWERTZ/QWERTY

If you like you can download the OS X keyboard layout here.

Source 1: dvorak article(german)
Source 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Key…
Source 3: Ukelele
Source 4: btk_Dvorak.zip (3,21 KB)

I just configured the build system to generate daily builds straight of the subversion repository. You can grab the daily build archive here.

Dailybuild (Microsoft.NET): http://www.slow-backward.de/yaps_daily_build.zip

Dailybuild (MONO): working on that

Dailysource: http://www.slow-backward.de/yaps_daily_source.zip

The changelog since I wrote the last YAPS news:

04.09.2006

• fixed a PlayCount bug
• removed unnecessary files for Daily Build support

03.09.2006

• changed all text messages and web-templates to english
• added correct mimetype handling to the http server
• fixed a bug in the 404 error handling when a file was not found
• aded a verbose mode to the ConsoleOutputLogger – disabled by default; only logging to console html page
• fixed a bug that caused a complete crash when a wrong/unknown adress/channel was requested for streaming
• added more error handling to the http server (streaming and vcr)
• added license.txt (BSD license)
• added Settings Loading and Saving (to be extended…)

01.09.2006

• fixed a bug in the Usage_Bar HTML Template Processor that could cause a lockup in the HTML page rendering process
• fixed a bug in the HTTP Server error handling that caused “Saving Settings” everytime a 404 occured…
• added a startup check to the VCRScheduler that sets unfinished recordings after a YAPS restart to done

You can find the changelog in the daily build archive “Documentation and Misc” folder. Also a build logfile and svn checkout logfile can be found in the “logs” folder.

In the next days I am going to implement the Settings System and GUI.

Tell us what you are YAPS using for, which features are great, which ones not, which ones do you you need in the future? What would make YAPS a great tool for you?

Since my girlfriend had a spare aquarium to offer we decided to put one into my residence (yeah!)… What fish species to take wasn’t a real question: they should taste great when eaten by a turtle… And since the species Poecilia reticulata aka Guppy is quite reproductive and is known to taste great (Wilma knows best) it is the species of choice.

First the basics: Testing the water.

Everything looks fine…so.. here’s the final tank:

Now, does this look good or not? I worked the whole day on the graphics…hopefully everyone will like it

Oh that one was fun … Despite the fact that it rained this whole day it was serious fun watching the knights fight…

Source: http://www.schloss-thurn.de/

Finally a Sushi restaurant opened near my place…it looks kinda shaken, but it was really good:

Yes I am alive… I took some days off so here we are back in business. There will be some articles about the things I did the last days…and of course as usual: many pictures.

I start the series with the visit to the Zoo of Erfurt:

Of course I made some panoramic views:

this and the next one show the enclosure where the turtles and the cows live

the monkeys live here…(no island)

Here are the three movies I made:

and here we are back again, reorganising the desktop:

if you want to see how it looked a month ago…see part 3

I do like two car manufacturers (well, their cars to be precise) more than all the others. One of them is Mercedes-Benz and the other is…TVR. Yes, the brits.

They make great looking powerful sports cars and I hope one day one will be mine They are quite affordable compared to other supercars – for example you can get a brand new TVR Sagaris (4l V6) for 80k EURO…a pre owned 2004 Cerbera (4.5l V8) comes for about 48k EURO…did I mention they do not come below 380 bhp and weigh as much as two packs of chewing gum? (I’ll have to pay royalties to Jeremy Clarkson for that…damn!).

The fact is that the Cerbera has gone out of official production in 2004. But now TVR is auctioning the last made Cerbera on the Internet:

Yes, you can get that brand new, pepper white, 420 bhp supercar…just sign up and bid…well if you have the money (which I don’t)…

Beside the Cerbera I fell in love with the Sagaris…look how gorgeous it is:

raaawwrrr!!

I just found the sagaris video:

If you want to buy me one…contact me

Source 1: http://www.thelastcerbera.com/
Source 2: http://www.tvr.co.uk/overview_sagaris.php