Zum vierten mal heute durch den Sicherheitscheck zu gehen, ist immer noch kein Grund zu lachen. In meinem eigenen Interesse (sorry, leicht verwackelt):
Gute Nachrichten
"Gute Nachrichten", sagt die Dame an der Sprechanlage, "Ihr Flugzeug ist zwar nicht reparierbar, aber wir holen Ihnen ein Neues."
Essensmarken
Ein Gutes hat die Verzögerung mit dem Flugzeug dann schon: Die Essensmarken (3 x 6 US-Dollar) die man bekommt.
Auch ein Flugzeug braucht mal einen Reboot
Heute morgen um 5:30 aufgestanden zu sein hat sich, natürlich, als ziemlich nutzlos herausgestellt. Denn kaum waren die Passagiere bereit zum Abflug, entschied sich das Flugzeug, dann doch lieber einen Defekt zu haben, statt ohne Beschwerden loszufliegen. Der "Computer" habe ein "kleines Problem" und man wolle ihn jetzt "neu starten", sagten die Piloten. Nicht nur der heimische Windows-PC muss also offenbar ständigmanchmal neu gestartet werden, um wieder zum Mitspielen überredet werden zu können.
Offensichtlich?
Heute habe ich Sloppy Joes gegessen und als ich auf die Packung Sesam-Hamburger-Buns sah, las ich die Aufschrift:
Wonderful AJAX Office Tools
Ajax 13, a very young startup from San Diego, has developed an impressive collection of very, very sweet AJAX Office applications:
There are a write app as well as a spreadsheet tool which, if they want it to be successful, will surely have to try hard competing with Google's recently "hyped" Docs & Spreadsheets.
However in addition to that they also have a presentation tool (ajaxPresents) that -- judging from my first impression -- looks and feels pretty much like the big standalone applications, Powerpoint and OpenOffice. It can also export and import these two file formats, which makes it a brilliant tool to edit presentation slides on a computer where you happen not to have an office suite installed.
But there are even two more on the list: A drawing tool called ajaxSketch (conveniently exportable to SVG) and an online MP3 player called ajaxTunes (if I see it right, it's Flash, not AJAX, but ah well).
All in all this seems to be a very interesting company to keep an eye on; and I would not be surprised if they made it on the list of Google acquisitions some time soon -- just like Upstartle, the company which produced the tool Writely, now part of the aforementioned Google Docs & Spreadsheets.
Google Code: Wiki and Download Features
Yesterday the Google Code project hosting was updated for the first time (as far as I can tell) after its release in July 2006. Two of the major "flaws" in Google's simplistic approach to Open Source project hosting have been fixed:
- We were unable to provide downloads of binary releases and similar
- Projects could not have a documentation webpage or similar
These two issues made Google Code hosting -- while being a nice, new thing -- overall inferior to the well-established services of sourceforge. And while Google made clear they didn't "want to hurt SourceForge", an important decision a young Open Source project faces when it starts is where to put the code and what is best for the project.
Not having any website or possibility to download a precompiled package is not one of the best things for projects, for sure.
With the new features, Google Code has become a real alternative to SourceForge and I imagine in the time to come, Google's code hosting will steadily grow and get more projects that did not go there before for lack of these features.
A nice thing to mention about the Google Code hosting Wiki is that it apparently keeps its version history in SVN. So going back in time when checking out the source tree will also give you the Wiki status at that point in time. Very neat, if you ask me.
Adding downloads, however, sounds to me like a no-brainer and I am confused why they didn't have this feature from the beginning. Allegedly, project owners helped themselves by just uploading the release files to the SVN source tree and pointing their download links directly to the HTTP interface of the SVN server. Not too surprising -- and that can put quite some load on a repository server. This "feature" is therefore not so much a new invention as it is closing a hole that shouldn't have been there in the first place.
In any case I am eager to see how the open source community (and sourceforge) react.
Wiirscheinlichkeiten
Bei amazon.com hat man gegenwärtig die Möglichkeit, zum Kauf einer Nintendo Wii ausgelost zu werden. Sprich: Man meldet sich an, und wenn man gezogen wird, bekommt man die beliebte Spielekonsole zum Listenpreis von 250 US-Dollar statt um die 600 auf Ebay.
Tötungspause
Nachdem kürzlich ein verurteilter Straftäter in Florida mit der Giftspritze hingerichtet werden sollte, das aber dummerweise (und ganz anders als geplant) ziemlich qualvoll vonstatten ging, hat der Gouverneur des Staates Florida, Präsidentenbruder "Jeb" Bush, die Vollstreckung der Todesstrafe vorerst ausgesetzt.
Wo ist Fred?
Wo ist eigentlich Fred?