http://log.does-not-exist.org/ Thomas Roessler's notes on geek life in Luxembourg -- and less virtual topics.]]> en-us roessler@does-not-exist.org Sat, 23 Feb 2008 10:24:26 +0000 http://log.does-not-exist.org/archives/2008/02/23/2168_enough_with_the_mac_blogging_already.html ... but before we return topics here to more productive things, let's note that Apple's support has so far been rather more impressive than IBM's: After exchanging some e-mails with their service provider here in Luxembourg and a phone call... http://log.does-not-exist.org/archives/2008/02/17/2167_time_machine_desiderata.html Apart of the wireless and case problems, I'm actually a reasonably happy Mac user -- which is, indeed, somewhat surprising after 10 years of Linux on the desktop. Among the things I like a lot with MacOS 10.5 (Leopard) is... http://log.does-not-exist.org/archives/2008/02/15/2166_macbook_distractions.html I had ranted before about the occasional trouble that I'm experiencing with the MacBook's wireless card. The symptoms continue to occur: Typically at home (when the machine is in the same place and sits on my desk for extended amounts... http://log.does-not-exist.org/archives/2008/02/03/2165_geocaching_waypoints_for_n95_and_friends.html I've gotten a bit curious about geocaching. However, being the lazy type, there is no way that I'll enter all these waypoints manually on a mobile phone keyboard. Therefore, here's an XSLT sheet to convert geocaching LOC files to Nokia... http://log.does-not-exist.org/archives/2008/01/23/2164_macbook_wireless_woes.html It seems like the combination of a somewhat dated Linksys WRT54G and the MacBook wasn't made in heaven. Every once in a while, I find something like this in my laptop's log files: Jan 23 11:04:27 iCoaster kernel[0]: ath_reset: unable... http://log.does-not-exist.org/archives/2008/01/17/2163_waiting_for_the_treo_replacement.html I've been a happy user of my Palm Treo 650 for quite a while, but -- let's face it -- it's starting to be old. Too bad that there doesn't seem to be a device out there that has quite... http://log.does-not-exist.org/archives/2008/01/06/2162_robert_harris_the_ghost.html Robert Harris' "Ghost" reminded me a lot of the anonymously published "Primary Colors", at least during the first few chapters: Where Primary Colors is obviously a roman a clef about the Clintons, the Ghost as obviously deals with the Blairs.... http://log.does-not-exist.org/archives/2008/01/05/2161_from_schengen_to_berlin.html My colleagues Ivan Hermann and Richard Ishida are sharing some experiences from the "old time", when traveling into (and out of) Hungary meant crossing borders and facing guard dogs and Kalashnikovs. Hungary is now a Schengen state, which means that... http://log.does-not-exist.org/archives/2008/01/04/2154_jack_goldsmith_the_terror_presidency.html Lessig's blog entry about Jack Goldsmith's "Terror Presidency" made me curious enough to get and read the book. Goldsmith - a staunch conservative, who ultimately believes that most of the things that the Bush government actually does are right and... http://log.does-not-exist.org/archives/2007/12/28/2160_when_widgets_go_bad.html My lightning talk from 24c3 this morning, on youtube:... http://log.does-not-exist.org/archives/2007/12/19/2159_more_on_widgets_when_one_email_is_enough_to_break_a_system.html Excuse the widget blogging hiatus, please; I held back on this one till Google had rolled out a fix. Our topic today, then, is the Gmail dashboard widget -- a handy dashboard frontend to Google Mail. As so many other... http://log.does-not-exist.org/archives/2007/12/11/2158_copyright_takes_down_the_bubble.html The Richter Scales' here comes another bubble was a fun video and an excellent mash-up -- while it lasted: What was the video's page on Youtube is now a notice that "This video is no longer available due to a... http://log.does-not-exist.org/archives/2007/12/08/2157_more_on_widgets_exploring_the_network.html In my last musings about widget security, I was very brief about the Flickr Interestingness and Hockey widgets. After all, they both just provide the AllowNetworkAccess capability. I had overlooked that there is a shared cookie store on the Mac,... http://log.does-not-exist.org/archives/2007/12/04/2156_show_me_a_jsonbased_widget.html ... and I show you an unguarded eval(). Today's examples: The Facebook Widget accesses about a dozen facebook APIs through JSON. It's based on the facebook JS Library. And guess what the parseJSON routine in that library really is? This... http://log.does-not-exist.org/archives/2007/12/03/2155_json_eval_owning_the_dashboard.html Twitter has been all the rage for a while; I'll admit that I've been a late adopter (I've had an account since yesterday). It seems useful as a quick news agregator (with feeds like the NY Times and Heise) --...