Yesterday I read about an "involuntary web service" by google that lets you create rounded corners on the fly, such as this one:

A very neat and nice way to create rounded corners without spending too much time with the Gimp or so. (That's probably why Google did it in the first place).

Another neat web service came to my mind later that day. It does not exist yet but I would love to find that somewhere:

A mirror effect like this one used by Apple in iTunes (underneath the actual photo). As far as I know for Mac OSX programmers there is an API that does that and therefore this effect is extensively used in some OSX applications.

That would indeed come in quite handy at times and I imagine it would look quite nice in people's blogs. Another idea would be the auto-generation of drop shadows for images.

Does anyone volunteer to write a script? :)

Read more…

Google gratuliert dem Maler Edvard Munch zu seinem 143. Geburtstag, mit einem, wie ich finde, sehr gelungenen Sonder-Logo:

Read more…

Wieder einmal haben die Politiker nun über Rauchverbote verhandelt, und wieder einmal ist (fast) nichts dabei herausgekommen. Zwar wird man nun demnächst hochoffiziell in öffentlichen Einrichtungen nicht mehr rauchen dürfen, nur ist das sowieso schon nirgendwo mehr erlaubt. Oder kennen Sie zum Beispiel eine Bibliothek oder ein Amt, in dem Sie unbehelligt eine Zigarette anzünden dürften? Ich nicht.

Read more…

Oh nein, wie konnte das der Weltpresse entgehen?

Read more…

Wo ist eigentlich der Unterschied zwischen Wii und Playstation 3? Naja, seht selbst...:

Read more…

At last month's Firefox Summit, everybody got a nice name tag on a lanyard to carry around their neck. That was extremely useful, especially since people frequently put their real name as well as their IRC nick on there.

This is how it looked like (involuntary model: Mike Shaver):

After the summit, though, the name tags and lanyards went into everybody's bottom drawer. Well, everybody's but mine :)

I removed the name tag from the lanyard and connected a key ring to it, turning it into the coolest keychain ever:

Read more…

Skurril, skurril: Wie ich heute morgen im Internet lese, hat ein Indianerstamm aus Florida für fast eine Milliarde Dollar die britische Restaurantkette Hard Rock Cafe gekauft.

Read more…

Yesterday I had to debug a Mac OSX program and therefore I had to learn about how Mac Universal Binaries work.

Universal Binaries contain (most of the time) PowerPC code and Intel x86 code as well. While they could easily also feature code for other architectures, like your toaster or microwave, it usually looks somewhat like this: [Header|PowerPC|Intel]. The operating system decides which code it needs and executes the part of the file suitable for its architecture.

Now in order to see what kind of binary information is "sandwiched" in the file, there is a header, very nicely described in the Mac OS X ABI Mach-O File Format Reference.

It starts off with a "magical number", that funnily reads 0xCAFEBABE in hexadecimal. -- Cafe babe? Yup.

Looks like the programmers had some fun coming up with a readable magic number. :)

For a more in-depth explanation of how universal binaries look like, I recommend this blog post.

(thanks to the t-shirt model ;) )

Read more…

Die BBC-Webseite hat im Moment ein paar Sonderseiten mit dem Titel "Generation Next: Wie unter-18jährige die Welt sehen".

Read more…

Wie wir ja alle wissen, soll man keine harten Gegenstände in den Mixer werfen. Manche geben sogar schon den Geist auf, wenn man sich erdreistet, "crushed ice" zu machen.

Read more…