Today I looked at this blog's usage statistics and as it turns out, a whopping 54 percent of my visitors use Firefox, followed by Internet Explorer, then Safari, Opera, Chrome.

It's interesting to see how much difference the "clientele" of a page makes for its statistics. The overall market share of Firefox has topped 20% a few months ago, but since this blog has a lot of tech content, a higher number of Firefox users is probably not surprising.

By the way, almost 80% of my Firefox visitors surf with Firefox 3.0.5, followed by only 5% of 2.0.0.20 users and a long tail of various other, outdated, browser versions.

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I am unsure what happened, but today my BBC News RSS feed seems to be showing when an abstract was updated by the authors after its initial release.

While I have not found anything too exciting or revealing among the affected posts, it is interesting to see how the journalists refine their work to make it both concise and informative. In this case, Obama's "middle east envoy"'s name apparently went away in favor of "friendship with the muslim world", and the authors realized that more than one country has a "president".

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Aus einem Interview des Generalsekretärs des Zentralrats der Juden in Deutschland, Stephan Kramer, mit dem Tagesspiegel:

"[Wir haben festgestellt], dass während des Gaza-Krieges die Zahl der Hass-Mails an den Zentralrat um 40 Prozent auf 200 bis 300 pro Woche zugenommen hat."

200-300 Hass-Mails pro Woche? Also man kann ja über die Politik des Staates Israel denken was man möchte -- aber den Vertretungen jüdischer Gemeinden in Deutschland Hass-Mails zu schreiben, noch dazu viele hundert, das ist schon erbärmlich.

Sachen gibts.

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Recently, I got the following fortune cookie. How "nice"!

I find it highly ironic and amusing that a fortune cookie--of all things man-made, yes, the same kind of fortune cookie that has been "sticking its nose" in other people's business ever since its inception--dumps its opinion about talking of things you don't understand on me.

But I guess it's better than this one of unknown origin (which has been floating around on the internet for about a million years and is most likely photoshopped):

(Yeah, I played with iPhoto there to give the photo up there the look it has now -- a simple pic looked too boring.)

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Moderne Mobiltelefone haben ja nun mehr oder minder intelligente Systeme der Worterkennung, die einem beim Schreiben von Nachrichten einiges an Tipparbeit ersparen können. Leider funktioniert das aber manchmal nicht so, wie der Benutzer sich das wünscht: Beim iPhone, beispielsweise, diskutiert das große weite Internet über Möglichkeiten, ihm beliebte amerikanische Schimpfworte beizubringen, die von den Apple-Programmierern aus amerikanisch-puritanischer Scham (und wohl zur Vermeidung peinlicher Situationen) nicht hinzugefügt wurden.

Aber auch die Nachricht, die ich vorhin -- nicht von einem iPhone -- erhielt, entsprach nicht ganz dem Gewünschten:

Er: So, 10 Euro beim Dönern verloren. Zeit fürs Bett. Ich: Dönern? Er: Pokern, nicht Dönern. Danke, T9 :) Ich: Haha, das blogge ich...

Und so habe ich heute gelernt, dass "dönern" und "pokern" auf dem Telefon auf denselben Tasten liegen. Was für eine Tätigkeit allerdings das Verb "dönern" beschreiben mag, dass man dabei Geld verlieren kann, habe ich noch nicht abschließend klären können.

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Germany has predicted that its economy will shrink by 2.25% in 2009, which would be its worst performance in the post-World War II era.

BBC: German economy faces gloomy 2009

"Great" timing for me to start my first full-time job ever sigh -- on the upside, though, it can only get better from here ;)

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Computers are, as we all know, there to do jobs us humans just can't be bothered with, such as thinking, or noticing the obvious. I am therefore glad that the travel website Orbitz reminded me today that my air travel itinerary contains (gasp!) flights.

Thanks, Orbitz. If it wasn't for this friendly heads-up of yours, I would have almost accidentally walked.

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Flash mob enthusiasts will not like seeing it commercialized, but nonetheless this is just way too great not to share it:

Seriously, this must be the first good commercial German phone company Telekom has ever made. Good job!

(via killefit)

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Oh, what would we do without the Internet? Here's a funny how-to video on how to give a great man-to-man hug.

General Etiquette:How To Give A Great Man To Man Hug

Admit it, you were always wondering how to do that right, but never dared to ask ;)

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The Pittsburgh Steelers will play the Baltimore Ravens tomorrow -- and apparently they have quite an interesting rivalry going on. But don't we all want to see the Steelers play in the Superbowl?

In preparation for the game, my grocery store at the corner sold Steelers stuff today. Incidentally, soon I'll move back home from Pittsburgh, so what better time to buy a little souvenir than now. I wanted to buy a Terrible Towel ever since I first saw it in one of the bars in Oakland. So I got one -- Here it is!

They also had Steelers-themed food on sale, such as this cake:

I know, I know, this is a very, very hideous cake. I took a photo though because I got a kick out of it saying "Stillers (sic) Fever". The local Pittsburgh accent has indeed a tendency to take long "i"s short. Examples? Well: Steelers/Stillers, of course, but also Bloomfield/Bloomfill'd, feel/fill and others. The first time I stumbled across this was when I watched TV and they mentioned the "Still City". That's not a nice nickname, I thought?... It took me a while to realize they were actually talking about the "Steel City": Pittsburgh.

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