It’s December 2024. I’m at AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas, coaching speakers on how to communicate effectively with technical audiences. Meanwhile, 9,258 kilometers away in Munich, a room full of homeowners is debating whether my 7.6-kilogram solar panels will blow off my balcony in the wind. This story…
The weather forecast for this weekend doesn’t look too great (at least for where I live in), so why not visit some strange and fun places on the internet?
Here’s something weird I recently found: Wplace. The idea is simple, but powerful: Overlay pixels on top of a world map, then let anybody edit those pixels, one pixel at a time.
The result is fascinating: from simple logos and drawings, through meme imagery and icons to the most complex and artistic pixel drawings. Though the terms of service do forbid the use of bots, I can’t imagine some of the images having really been painted pixel by pixel. There’s a 1 pixel every 30 second throttling, probably to prevent misuse or bots, too.
Some of the stuff is quite breathtaking, some just crude or immature. Kinda like the whole internet.
It reminds me of of the Million Dollar Homepage from 2005, remember?
All I wanted was to press a button and hear SomaFM Groove Salad through my home stereo. 🎵
What I got instead was six weeks of diving into AV receiver telnet commands, Raspberry Pi power mysteries, and NFC webhook proxies. Sometimes I spent an entire week debugging my Home Assistant setup only to discover I’d been using the wrong IP address the whole time 🤦♂️.
But here’s the thing: the journey is the reward. Sure, I could have just lived with telling Alexa to turn on my AV receiver, connect to it over Bluetooth, then asking it to play what I want. But then I wouldn’t have learned how UPNP broadcasts get mangled by WiFi bridge modes, or that a 2.2W Raspberry Pi can teach you more about power supply stability than any electrical engineering textbook.
This is the story of how a simple goal—press button, get music—led me down some of the most beautifully complex rabbit holes I’ve explored in years. And why that complexity is exactly the point. 🐰
What happened was that last weekend, my family and I played Exploding Kittens: Good vs. Evil, which we were recently gifted. What a fun game! A random idea struck me: why not ask Claude to put together a playlist for us?
Hi Claude, we‘re about to play a few rounds of Exploding Kittens (“Good vs. Ev…
Kevin Kelly, co-founder and executive editor of Wired magazine, recently turned 70. Happy Birthday!
His birthday gift to us all is “103 bits of unsolicited advice”. Each one brilliant and full of wisdom. And all are free.
The paradox of “free” is that people tend to not value the “free” things, exactly because it’s free: If it didn’t cost much, it’s probably not worth much.
If somebody took these and added an anecdote or two to each one, plus some background, they could turn this into a bestseller. Probably a series of bestsellers, too.
But here they are, hard-earned lessons for all of us. Free for those who care, and who recognize the value of great advice.
Don’t underestimate “free”. Free can be valuable.
In Summer 2010 I learned about a cool new geeky movie called Iron Sky (no link, ironsky.net no longer exists) that was crowd-funded. I decided to help finance it with a small sum.
Then the second Iron Sky teaser came out and I thought: Wow, this is looking really good! And I invested some more.
In December 2010, I was invited to attend the Iron Sky shootings in Frankfurt together with my brother. This is where we got to meet the crew, the actors, the people behind the movie and other investors. And I thought: Wow, this is not only cool, this is for real! Everybody was 100% determined to make this the coolest movie ever, and everybody put in so much attention to detail, love and true craftmanship that I thought: “Yep, this is going to be a true movie milestone!” And I also got to shoot an interview with the director and the inventor of Iron Sky. This time, my brother and I together invested a bit more to help this baby fly.
Don’t worry, this is not a desperate attempt at SEO for my blog (although I do appreciate your likes, Tweets, RSS subscriptions and other ways you help me reach a wider audience), nor is this my entry into the latest contest of IT BS Bingo.
It just occurred to me yesterday that Big Data is everywhere. Even during your weekend jogging run.
If you’ve been following my blog or the Systemhelden.com podcast for some time, then you probably know that I’m a big fan of and small investor in the movie Iron Sky, a crowd-funded science-fiction comedy about the Nazis who went to the dark side of the moon in 1945 and come back to conquer Earth in 2018.
A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of attending a pre-screening of the movie’s beta version in Helsinki, Finland. What can I say? It exceeded my high expectations!
A deserted street in the docks. The rain is pouring.
A small, old, flower-power style painted Volkswagen van drives by at high speed, then stops below a lifting crane, tires screeching.
The door opens and a woman stumbles out of the vehicle, as if trying to escape. A tall man in uniform catches her violently. Intense exchange of words, probably four-lettered. She hesitates, then follows him back into the van.
“Cut!”
My brother and I are watching from the side of the road. It’s a scene from the upcoming movie Iron Sky (no link, ironsky.net no longer exists), a science-fiction comedy about the Nazis who escaped with UFOs to the dark side of the moon and who come back in 2018 to conquer the earth.
What?
It’s a long, fun story, but you better see it for yourself. Early 2012, that is, when the movie is done.
A guy I know once said: “If you follow the herd, you’ll end up as lunch.” (Actually, he said “Schnitzel”, since he’s German, but you get the idea).
Well, here’s a guide, a manual if you wish, for avoiding the fate of leading a dull, boring and unremarkable life. This is not just a self-help or success guide type of book, it’s much more. It’s a manifesto for personal freedom that can apply to all of us, if we choose to follow it.
In some ways, it’s like the red pill/blue pill thing from The Matrix: Do you want to stay in the normal world, do normal, boring things like getting a job, applying for a mortgage, going on vacation once or twice a year, and feeding the ducks in the park after you retire?
Or do you want to decide for yourself what to do with your life, create your own rules and live your life the way you want?
Every year, on the last Friday of July, Sysadmin Day is celebrated around the world.
You know, the guy (or gal) that makes sure you always receive your emails on time, strips away the spam, cuddles your web server so you can write blog articles, or makes sure the network is always online, so you can read your favorite blogs. Or install new servers and storage so your web experience becomes faster and so your data is never lost.
Sysadmins often have a hard time: Noone calls them to tell them “Thank you for delivering all my emails!” or “Thanks for making sure my data is backed up every day!”. Instead, they only get phonecalls when something goes wrong, or worse yet, some anonymous electronic complaint in some soulless ticketing system.
Therefore, this Friday, the 30th of July, 2010, think about your sysadmin, call her up and say something nice, or consider giving them a gift. Here are some geeky gift ideas for sysadmins to celebrate Sysadmin Day 2010, from low-budget to truely-devoted-appreciation pricing order.
After all, you really don’t want your sysadmin to turn into a grumpy BOFH, do you?
A while ago, we tried defining ebooks, and figure out what they are, and what they aren’t. Now, let’s have a look at some success factors, or barriers, business implications and the (un)necessity of DRM.
Science Fiction stretches our imagination and makes us dream about cool, future, distant worlds and realities. And it’s fun, too.
But Science Fiction also serves an important purpose: It prepares society for the future. What will happen when technology X becomes available? How will our work, social and emotional lives change? What challenges and opportunities will we face, once certain new technologies become available?
There’s also a feedback circle around scientists, engineers and SF writers: Scientists discover new laws of nature, engineers apply them to create new technologies and SF authors show us the possibilities, inspiring the scientists and engineers where to look next, what new principle to explore and which new technologies to make real.
Here are my top 3 Science Fiction, but realistic novels of all time that help us prepare for the future. They are all based on solid futuristic research, still they are mind-boggling and thought-provoking. When you read them, you’ll get a true glimpse of the future - and view the present and the past in a new light.
2010 is going to be the year of the ebook. If it wasn’t obvious before, it became so overnight after Apple entered the ebook reader and distribution market big time.
I’ve been eying ebook and ebook reader developments for some time and decided to become an ebook early adopter: Over the holidays, I bought myself a Sony PRS-600 Ebook Reader (no link, page no longer exists). In this new blogging category, I’ll explore a few aspects of ebooks, formats and the ecosystem while trying to figure out what’s in it for you and me and the geeks in us.
Before we dive into ebook-land, it’s probably useful to figure out what the point of ebooks is in the first place, what we want from them and what we should expect of them. This is useful because today’s consumers, vendors, and the whole industry seem to be distracted by features, hype and old habits, sometimes missing the point.