Spätestens nach der jüngsten Datenpanne bei SchülerVz, dem kleinen Bruder von StudiVz, war klar, dass man im Hause StudiVz seit Jahren nichts zum Thema Datenschutz gelernt hat — allen Versprechen zum Trotz.

Es wurde also allerhöchste Zeit, meinen schon lange brach liegenden Account dort endlich zu löschen. Zwar hatte ich dort von Anfang an außer dem Allermindesten keine persönlichen Daten hinterlegt — aber selbst diese Daten sind im Hause “Vz” offenbar nicht sicher.

In diesem Sinne, liebes StudiVz, auf nimmer Wiedersehen!

Instigated by Twitter’s fail whale, more and more Web 2.0 companies feel the necessity to add a fail-pet to their “OMG” error pages.

I’ve been loosely collecting those before, so my friend Tobi was so nice to send this one from Facebook over:

I think it’s from an app and not Facebook itself, but I may be wrong. Anyhow, apparently their hampster made a boo boo. That’s more information than I needed, but at least it eases the pain of the failed application. And that’s gotta count for something, right?

Da hat der niederländische Journalist Rob Savelberg die neu-und-alt-Kanzlerin Merkel aber ganz schön aus dem Konzept gebracht:

Natürlich ist das löblich, löblich, dass Merkel ihrem zukünftigen Kabinett voll und ganz vertraut. Hunderttausend deutsche Mark zu vergessen, kann schließlich jedem einmal passieren. Andererseits entbehrt es nicht einiger Ironie, dass ausgerechnet der scheinbar unter selektiver Amnesie in Finanzfragen leidende Schäuble zum Finanzminister ernannt wurde. Bleibt nur zu hoffen, dass er bei den Finanzen von 83 Millionen Deutschen nicht ab und an mal eine Milliarde vergisst. Und falls doch, müssen wir ihm eben noch ein bisschen mehr Vertrauensvorschuss gewähren — schließlich hat sich Schäuble schon als Innenminister wichtige Vertrauenspunkte im Kampf gegen den Bürger gesichert, und mit seiner süßen Schäublone für immer einen Platz in unseren Herzen gewonnen.

PS: Cui fidem, fidem, heißt “Vertrauen, wem Vertrauen gebührt”.

For work, I often develop on a remote Linux box that I SSH into. Now, as a web developer, one of the big advantages of interpreted languages is that there are no big compile steps to wait for.

One of the big disadvantages is that nothing exciting is happening when you take a break (no sword fights, for example). The screen is just sitting there. Unfortunately, OpenSSH servers in their default settings take this silence as a perfect excuse to cut the cord after 5 minutes.

If that happens a lot during the day, this can be pretty annoying! But fear not, dear reader. On a Redhat-like system, you want to edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config and add the following line (note: only the second line is needed, read below):

TCPKeepAlive yes
ClientAliveInterval 60

Restart the SSH server, and it shall henceforth not punish you for prolonged periods of silence anymore.

Update: Two of my readers pointed out interesting things. First, Sancus mentioned that TCPKeepAlive is different from ClientAliveInterval and serves a different purpose. To avoid your connection dropping, the latter is likely to be the better option.

Jeff says, if you set this in the ~/.ssh/config file on your client, you’ll achieve the same effect without the need to modify the server settings:

Host *
ServerAliveInterval 300

This is obviously a highly charming alternative because more often than not, you are won’t have (write) access to your server’s sshd_config.

It’s been awhile since I last had to announce planned maintenance here, so here we go:

My current domain service provider closes down its consumer services at the end of the year, prompting me to transfer all the domains that I own (including fredericiana.com) to a different service provider. I have chosen domainfactory, a well-established player in the market that I read good reviews about.

Please bear with me while the transfer is in progress and the name servers are being switched over. It should soon be smooth sailing again. But, if problems persist, as always, just shoot me an email.

Thanks!

Update: I am glad to report my domains have all been transferred properly and everything should be back to normal now.

Lots has happened since the last time I posted — I got married, for example. Once the professional photographer gets back to us with the pictures, I might even share some

Today, however, I am able to introduce someone else to you, dear readers: Meet Lizzy!

Lizzy is a mixed breed, part (Miniature) Schnauzer, part unknown. The young lady is about 1 year and 3 months old, and Tara and I got her from an animal protection association, where she was dropped off by a family that suddenly decided they didn’t want a dog anymore… She is very well behaved, hardly ever barks, and after a few moments of shyness, loves just about anyone she meets.

Tara and I are very happy to have adopted her and are gladly sharing our apartment now