I sure am not the first person to link to this video recently and some of you may have seen it already. But it's so cool and well done that I just couldn't resist to put it here too. Enjoy (and spread it -- it's CC licensed after all!)

By the way: The author gets extra credit for not using the bad, bad A-word even once. :)

(via Larry Lessig)

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Today, Wordpress managed to make me cry: I realized that there were 100 comments stuck in the moderation queue and Wordpress had decided not to send me emails about that anymore. I didn't notice, because the comments of the people who most commonly give me feedback did show up on the page immediately, so I just thought I didn't get much feedback :(

Moderation Queue

I moderated all of them through now and I sincerely apologize to everybody who commented and never found their comment online. They weren't lost, just stuck in the queue.

I am going to fix the problem and promise to pay more attention next time! Thanks! :)

P.S.: As a positive side note: Everybody who I just moderated through will not have to wait for moderation the next time anymore, I think.

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Sieht so aus als ob ich heute nur Werbespots blogge. Das hat auch einen Grund, denn am Sonntag fand der alljährliche Super Bowl statt (wen's interessiert: die Indiana Colts haben die Chicago Bears besiegt...), und das wohl beliebteste "Beiwerk" sind die in der Halbzeit ausgestrahlten Werbespots. Ganz nebenbei auch die Spots in den USA, die mit dem größten finanziellen Aufwand hergestellt werden, um ihre Premiere in der Pause des Super Bowl zu haben.

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Ford lässt in seinem neuesten Werbespot sein Auto namens "Edge" auf der "Kante" von Gebäuden herumfahren:

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Letztes Jahr haben die USA einen steuerlichen Anachronismus heimlich, still und leise zu Grabe getragen, und erst weil jetzt alle Amerikaner ihre Steuererklärungen machen, schafft er es ins Fernsehen.

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Wie auch bei meinem englischen Blog waren in letzter Zeit hier einige Kommentare in der Moderationsliste steckengeblieben, die ich heute ausmisten durfte.

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While I was traveling, my mailbox filled up with a few letters, one from the OSU Foundation who I asked to resend their letter because I never received the one they sent me in 2006.

Now I am pretty sure I know why I never got it, because this is how the address part of the letter looks like:

Frederick and Donna

Even if I -- friendly as I am -- ignore the multiple misspellings of my first name and the random middle initial, one question remains: Who is this mysterious Donna Wenzel?

(As a side note I wonder if there is actually an quasi-namesake out there somewhere who they confused me with.)

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Trader Joe's ist in Kalifornien mein absoluter Lieblingsladen: Das ist eine Lebensmittelkette, die Feinkost direkt beim Hersteller einkauft bzw. direkt aus dem Ausland importiert und deswegen extrem feine Köstlichkeiten zu äußerst bezahlbaren Preisen anbietet.

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Diamond Lock, CC licensed on flickr by mfshadowToday I upgraded my blogs to Wordpress 2.1, since I hadn't updated them in a little while and I didn't find the time until today.

While the upgrade worked well (and it apparently comes with quite a few MySQL optimizations and other neat features), I realized that my admin pages which I serve via HTTPS now had a "broken key" symbol: All URLs inside the page source code were unencrypted HTTP now, probably because they are now not build relatively to the page URL anymore. Bad side effect: I couldn't upload any files for blog posts anymore since my login cookie didn't work for HTTP (which is not a bug but a feature, obviously ;)).

At first I tried to change the "wordpress URL" in the options to https://... which worked, but that ended up also serving the CSS files and feeds and such on the public page as HTTPS -- leading to unnecessary stress on my little server and, much worse, to a certificate warning for every one of my users who happens not to have imported the CACert root certificate (which, quite frankly, is almost everyone).

After a little research however I found the Wordpress Secure Admin Plugin which is infinitely easy to install and does exactly what it should: It makes sure all URLs in the admin interface are HTTPSed, re-enabling me to log into my blog encryptedly. It also encrypts the login cookie now, reducing the risk of session hijacking.

Another Wordpress plugin on my "must have" list.

(lock picture source: CC by-nd licensed by mfshadow on flickr)

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Vielleicht (hoffentlich?) gar nicht so absurd und futuristisch, wie es klingt.

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