Wechslstrom/Gleichstrom

What's Bavaria's favorite rock band? Easy (ok that's Franconia's favorite to be precise, and yet this involves one person only i must say)...

A look at Wikipedia yields this:

AC/DC (g'sprocha Äissi-Dissi) is da Nåm vo ana australisch'n Hard-Rock- und Blues-Rock- Band, de wo ende 1973 vo de schottisch'n Briada Angus Young und Malcom Young g'rindt woan is. AC/DC is oana vo di bekanntesten Vertreter aus derer Musikrichtung.

Zu die bekonntestn Liada ghern:

• Highway to Hell
• You Shook Me All Night Long
• Hells Bells
• TNT
• Back in Black

Außadem werd mit AC (alternating current) der Wechslstrom b'zeichnet, DC (vo direct current) wiedarum hoast Gleichstrom.

Dea Ausdruck "AC/DC" is in Australien aa no a Slang-B'zeichnung fia Menna, de so und so kenna, oiso sowoi mit Madln ois aa mit Buam (bisexuell). Des hat freile am Anfang vo dera Bänd zu a baar Schbekulationen üwa de Polung vo de oanzelna Musika g'füaht. A Coming-Out hat's awa ned gem.

Even scarier, if possible, is this sample of one of the band's concert in the far future, i.e. when they are really, REALLY old (like, not now, as they're still less than 60 (on average) so far)...

How to insert a stupid mp3 in there? Hum.

Computing predictions gone wrong

Forget "there is a need for about 5 computers in this world", or "640k should be enough for everyone". There's video evidence of another cool wrong quote!

Apple switches to truthful advertizing

Maybe they really do understand what kind of products they make!

Thanks to the french daily wtf (ftw).

movie: cannibal girls (1973)

Why didn't that idea catch on?

scientific career paths: cab driver

At some point, a scientist will or will not get money for pursuing his research. This may lead to either earning a nobel prize, or becoming a cab driver. To be honest, I am not completely sure who is better off here.

the job application letter

french comic style. Click for enlargement (I guess).

Samsung dvd writer for the eeet

Introducing the samsung super writemaster se-s204, costing 60 euro at mediamarkt, and about as big as heavy as the eee 701. A very dark plastic box. I actually wanted the sleek LG from a previous post, but the thing is either sold out, or twice the price of this samsung. The LG would have been fully USB-powered, which can be either practical or unusable, we will never know. The samsung at least comes with a sold power brick that raises confidence. Good point: the power brick is connected by cords to the drive and the wall outlet, so no huge thing blocking neighbouring wall outlets.



It also comes with a stand to put the thing on its side. This is for people that have the ability not to knock over stuff and have no cats.

It burns stuff with the usual tools, get cdtools from the debian repository. reminder:

http://linuxreviews.org/howtos/cdrecording/#toc10

giving the device name is not really necessary.

lightscribe works!:

get drivers from hp
http://www.lightscribe.com/downloadsection/linux/index.aspx

there is also a very dumb labeler, plus an sdk for the people that like to do things by themselves.

Instead I got the lacie program to do pictures. This requires doing the conversion of the lacie rpms to .debs. I used the --script option, you never now what it might be good for.

Burn the image using sudo 4L-gui




Now play music, as usual not with amarok because it plays with frequent hick-ups when you are also doing other stuff.

get setcd to set the speed to 1 for cds and dvds without hearing the cd spin like mad

setcd -x 1

run mplayer with cache to make it go smooth

mplayer -cache 1000 cdda:// /dev/cdroms/

don't forget to unset the cd speed later on (or just replug the cd drive?).

more cd copying tips

Müller Milch special: Chai

With the infamous Müller Milch for only 49 Cents at Rewe, I had to get one. Unfortunately, the Chocolate one was taken. Alternatives were melon-mango (!) or the ones I don't drink.




Danger! Never did this before with Müller milch: pored it into a glass to check the color. The color turned out to be a bit nondescript brownish. It could also have been the niocciola-nuss, or the pistache taste. In fact, it is probably just caramel-syrup, as the package confirms.




It smells like some of these Christmas spices, my guess is cardamom. According to the package, there is tea-extract inside, containing spices, tea, and citrus-grass. The spices I found, I will just have to take their word for the rest.

"Fazit": All in all quite drinkable if you like cardamom, good for winter, but I guess it has the potential to be boring after a while (probably that's why it's a limited edition).

localizing debian

A friend of mine had a problem with his too well localized debian, as it vomits out Dutch warning messages, which makes it impossible to understand what is going on or Google them. (even when you're Dutch)

On the Debian reference: tuning a Debian system website:

1) Run: dpkg-reconfigure locales

Add the locales of your choice, or even all locales!

2) Change your personal locale to one of the in step 1 installed locales:

For example by adding to your $HOME/.profile:

LC_MESSAGES="de_DE.UTF-8"

and/or

LC_ALL="de_DE.UTF-8"

and/or

LANG="de_DE.UTF-8"

Fiddle around with all the locale options until you found the combination that suits you.

# LC_ALL="en_GB.UTF-8" cat foo
cat: foo: No such file or directory

# LC_ALL="de_DE.UTF-8" cat foo
cat: foo: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden

# LC_ALL="sv_SE.UTF-8" cat foo
cat: foo: Filen eller katalogen finns inte

# LC_ALL="fr_FR.UTF-8" cat foo
cat: foo: Aucun fichier ou répertoire de ce type

# LC_ALL="es_ES.UTF-8" cat foo
cat: foo: No existe el fichero o el directorio

# LC_ALL="nl_NL.UTF-8" cat foo
cat: foo: Onbekend bestand of map