Ambient Techno is my Friend.

Bye Bye Harddisk, Hello Glasses

Some significant, some nice, and some more or less annoying changes in the life of...

First of all, so everyone at least sees it: I'm probably not going to be online much the next few days or maybe even weeks. You're able to guess why if you read the title or the rest of this piece of internet content.

Yesterday I've been visiting an optician, because I need a visual test to get my drivers licence. Oh well, Sitting in front of bad monitors for a few years did no good: -0.5 on the right, -1.0 on the left (I noticed I see worse on the right though, there are some more values on the right, but I don't understand them).

So when I'm getting back here (from Austria to Germany), not exactly sure when that is, I'll get my first pair of glasses in my life. A wish of my childhood becomes true - I always wanted some, but I never got them because I saw too good. I wanted some that look similiar to Philipp's (sorry, haven't got any good examples of them), but they didn't have them so I took what I found looked best.

What's for sure is, I'm not the kind of person that looks better with glasses (at least according to my perception of beauty).

I'm 100% sure that my use of monitors caused this, so I wonder if I can get it away again, train my eyes, you know. Does anyone know more about that? Anyway, not sure how I'll use the glasses, if I'll wear them all the time or if I'll just use them to drive a car. I don't really have problems at the moment.

The other change would be... my laptop harddisk is finally at the point where it's unable to run an operating system properly. I hope I can get my data of to an external harddisk though. I should've used it less... Not even sure if I should use my Ubuntu live CD.

Apart from that, i updated some CSS to make my implementation of the Ubuntu skin work better with more fonts and more browsers. It's crazy code.

Rewriting the Ubuntu Skin for Plone with best practices

Ubuntu has updated its website, i did the "same" but better *nudge*.

When i noticed Ubuntu, a really neat Linux distribution with promissing goals, uses Plone for its website, i was kind of happy to see it being accepted by big FOSS project, as most of the time such projects choose a PHP-based solution. It was fun to see that they even have a Planet inside Plone, something that i haven't stumbled upon yet.

I missed the announcement of the skin competition, i would've made an entry and would've implemented it. But all i noticed is, nice, they changed their design, looks much better now than just a recoloured default Plone instance (although when i saw the competition, i thought they could've made a better choice). But i had a look at the source and was disappointed - they did what we (the Plone UI team, or okay, half of it, so actually just my company, Netalley Networks, meh) fought against for quite some time: they customised the templates a lot to achieve visual results that differ from the default design. I knew that what was presented is easily doable with the default markup, with just a few small forward-compatible template changes, by using some CSS.

As attacking the authors or complaining on IRC channels would have zero effect (i got to know, i usually do exactly that), i spent a bit of my time with working on a best practice skin for them. Somewhat of a showcase, drive by annoyance that i don't know many people that use Plones UI features nicely. Of course i hope that the Ubuntu website team/people will put it online when it's tested enough to be usable in production. But why is this one better than what they already have? Let me explain why i think it'd be a good idea:

The main reason is forward compatibility. Customising Plones templates can have extremly bad effects when upgrading to a new version - the whole portal can break and you have to put a lot of work in to re-customise the skin to make it work as it did before. Thats a waste of time, because Plone is designed to be quite flexible without any template-changes, due to teh powah fo CSS (did i really write that?). To be able to enjoy new features and bugfixes with minor effort is the goal.

Still, we need some template changes. Plone isn't likely to change their slot and template names anytime soon, the major compatibility break has been done with 2.0, so we're able to approach the whole issue that way:

1. For parts we want to remove, we make a template that uses the ID and macro name. E.g: Make a template named global_searchbox and fill it with a macro definition that doesn't leave anything in the code:

   <span metal:define-macro="quick_search" tal:omit-tag="" />

   Now it's removed without modifying the main_template.

   We do the same to the templates global_skinswitcher, global_pathbar, colophon

2. We care about accessibility so we put the portal-siteactions where they belong in the structure: below the title (or logo, depending on your ability to see). So we're taking the template global_siteactions and do what we've done to the searchbox on top. But we still want to use this code, thats why we're taking it and call it ubuntu_siteactions. Also copy the content of global_logo and name the template ubuntu_title. Now we put this into the global_logo:

   <tal:block metal:define-macro="portal_logo">
   <h1 metal:use-macro="here/ubuntu_title/macros/portal_title">Ubuntu</h1>
   <div metal:use-macro="here/ubuntu_siteactions/macros/site_actions">
       Site-wide actions (Contact, Sitemap, Help, Style Switcher etc)
   </div>
   </tal:block>

   Why are we doing this?

   1. We'll be able to cut and paste the contents of the updated/bugfixed templates in question into the ones from our Ubuntu specific skin, yet we're retaining the structure we decided on.
   2. The version currently used by Ubuntu is using a siteactions-like element, with | delimited items. It's really a list, but not marked up as such, so we can use the original (or well, ubuntu_siteactions).

3. As the siteactions do the work of that the personalbar usually does, we should only show it when one is logged in. Again we take the contents of global_personalbar and put it into ubuntu_personalbar to put the following part of code into the global_personalbar:

   <div metal:define-macro="personal_bar"
        tal:condition="not: isAnon"
        tal:omit-tag="">
   <div metal:use-macro="here/ubuntu_personalbar/macros/personal_bar" />
   </div>

   The only reason i can come up for that is, i think it looks and feels saner.

I haven't duplicated or cleaned up the second navigation and news portlet, i just put an excerpt of the current website output into a template to use it. Going to plonify that later. There are a few issues left out: the font size is slightly bigger, and that influences the margins and paddings, which are therefore slightly too big. Mac IE shows the title over the logo, but it's not too bad.

Oh and i used Koke's bullet, because i think he's right about throwing the one from Plone out.

You can check it out from my Netalley Networks playground repository (note: don't forget to read the README.txt), and actually enjoy it on the testing site.

It'd be kind of you, whoever you are, to send me a screenshot (or just leave a comment) noting your platform and browser version (it doesn't matter if it's distorted or looks fine, every screenshot and comment makes me feel better).

I hope thats all.

Can somebody please get me down from here?

Changing plans on staying, flats flats moving moving and stuck somewhere near heaven (the bad way).

So i'm not going to the 2nd day of the Donaufestival :(. On the upside: i'm getting my drivers licence soon. overall, thats probably better.

(If you're interested in buying my ticket, contact me - and sure you'll get a it a little cheaper.)

I've finally decided to keep my family out of my decisions and all that jazz. All in all, forcing anything doesn't work, hence i'm trying to let everything flow into eachother so everyone is happy happy happy (Friede, Freude, Eierkuchen).

Karin has found a flat (and flatmates). I'm happy for her, but actually there's more about this. Call it jealousy if you want, i don't see it as that though, but i wasn't overly happy (and actually i'm still not) when i heard about it. Disturbed describes what i felt like better. I'm not sure where this is coming from, it's probably because we were planning this. I'm trying not to make a big deal about it though.

(Yes, you probably noticed, thats a quite personal thing, isn't it? It's not to be interpreted as whining, it's a reflection of my current thoughts. Hehe, this note makes it seem more awkward than it is.)

Toms recently relaunched blog sadly doesn't explode from activity - more the opposite - maybe i have to lick him some more.

Ha! Finally! Yesterday during lunch my phone rang. I cut together my own ringtones, some of them are pretty extreme. The whole table was looking at me with a What the fu^H^Hhell?! face because of my Datach'i — Ed's Head ringtone (sample from planet-µ)

Today was an, err, pretty exciting day. We (my father, his wife, my siblings, me) were at a Climbing forest. Imagine some trees beside the road and a lake, with some ropes made of steel between them - looked pretty boring. The first parcour was pretty straight forward, the second one made my hard pound a little fast a couple of times. But of course i had to take the parcour with the label Risk:

Thats just the start - there are heights up to 10 meter - all wobbly. Damn. They had to get me down from there - i couldn't hold the rope anymore, and almost fell off (which wouldn't have hurt me at all, but you know, all the things going on in your head). I was all shaking because i was so exhausted when i was on the ground again. At least i can say i tried to push my limits ;). Lukas and Selina obviously enjoyed it:

Don't worry, i don't expect any of you to read it all.

Almost a week

I'm now a citizen of two countries, and i'm doing better than the last few days. (And Burger King has incredibly fatty fishburgers.)

On the building lot of my fathers house.

This is where i sit most of my online time, the office of my fathers secretairy (or something) Katrin. She's quite nice i can even show her my worst music :)

I'm officially a citizen of germany now. (I wonder how my tax life will change?!) So i have the form for the drivers licence - there's a few things left to get. Obviously things are getting on pretty slow, i mean, it's almost a week that i'm here and i haven't even filled out the form yet. This probably means i'm not going to be able to see Prefuse 73 and Xiu Xiu at the Donaufestival. Or maybe i am, who knows, i will see tomorrow. I'm hoping i can even get to see Alec Empire, Chicks on Speed and Mieskuoro Huutajat the day before.

Playing with my siblings is... exhausting, but fun. Both are as forgetful and easy distractable like me. And my brother insists on me being the best computer-game player on earth (i wish...).

There are a lot more photos available in my gallery, some are quite fun, some need description first to unfold their wittiness.

I got Ubuntu to run but not how i wanted to so at the moment no praising photo. I'm sure at some point this will come at some point though. (By the way, their website is based on Plone, but their skin isn't so nice, markup wise. Going to propose a skin built on best practices. More about this later.)

I finally finished my Siesia LF sketches, they make much more sense now. I'm only waiting for the ability to scan them (photographing them didn't work too well). The whole layout is built on importance and effect, e.g. if you log in, the whole portal changes according to your permissions, so the user tools (or user bar as some would call it) are located at the very top - they affect everything. One thing that's left out are the colours: i want to get more activity in there, a newly set up site shouldn't look like it's dead.

I got to explain Netalley Networks to my fathers wife Petra (yes, my larynx is better - did you know that there's Bepanthen as lozenges?). For the first time it worked quite well, i think when we set up the new Isia based site i'll have my explaining skills at a level where others understand what i mean :D

And a little announcement: expect the first tech/work only entries in the next few days. It's getting time to open up.

I really can't make up a good catchy title, i'm sorry

A lot of changes, and sometimes even none. When i'm in germany my life goes 'meeeeep meeeeeeep oh meeeeeeeeep'.

Ah yeah, Germany. I think it will never change much here. I'm eating my bread with honey, the food during the day from the cafeteria tastes rather not so good, and everyone keeps making the same jokes. An here unnamed person asks me if i have any pretty girls on the laptop, and when i say Not the ones you're looking for. he tells me to download some, because they're fun. Another unnamed person said i should go to the coiffeur (note: not many people here seem to like my hair).

My laptops harddrive seems to be dying again, so i'm downloading an Ubuntu live cd to make sure it's not dying before i can backup my important data. So currently everything i have open is the text editor, the cd download and #netalley.

I'm not even sure my camera or bluetooth (which i use to get the phone photos on a computer) will work with the live cd, so it could be that i'm not posting any photos from my trip before i'm home. If it works i'll praise Ubuntu with a nice photo of me using it.

Yesterday my larynx started hurting a little again, even though i didn't talk much or loud (for those who don't know, i had laryngitis and couldn't speak for a while). I try to see it as a lesson, not to confront everybody with an opinion they can't handle (i had a very redundant argument about education two days ago - i think Ryan put it quite well: Learning is important. I'm not sure that education is.), instead i'm trying to listen and handle their opinion without saying anything (which is sometimes very hard). Swallowing hurts, and i'm coughing from time to time too.

My NetMD walkman (damn you Sony, for not having support for anything else than Windows) is going nuts lately as well. It hangs randomly and switches next track/previous track buttons.

Is it me or am i moaning quite much today? All in all it's not so bad, all fixable :). Oh and get A Happy Medium, it's nice and cheering up.

Mamma Mia Mamma Mia, Mamma Mia Let Me Go

This weeks Noisecamp rocked, and not only music wise.

Haha, the rhiz was amazingly styled. Some military web in front of the stage and at the sides, and a pentagonally shaped silver screen for visuals. Felt a little bit like cyberpunk, quite cool.

Eat Dead Gore!, one half of 1Bomb>1Target (gotta love that visual use of characters) , was first, as always, quite nice, not too much mess and 100% power from the first second. I love his hair and beard.

Rotator was wearing a golden mask that reminded us of... whats the awkwardly moving robot from Star Wars called? Not R2D2. The other. Was quite nice, better at the end, the crowd wasn't very enthusiastic though, i think he said we should make some noise, but hey, motivating austrians? Yeah, right. Note to all musicians playing here: we're shy, unless you're very well known.

Drop the Lime started with a really cool song that he rapped/sung/whatever to, which really surprised me. This may sound weird now, but i wish he would've done more monotonous beats (he did, in a longer version of Do It Now Kill which is the only song i know from him because of the Wasted compilation). Quite alright.

Sickboy ruled the evening for the majority of the crowd. I really liked how he sometimes sung along with his samples to suddenly create some feedback by "throwing" the microphone to his monitor. Windows crashed too and we got a really loud "Welcome" sound.

I took just a few awkward blurred photos in case anyone cares. I need a better camera. Much better. Please donate!

Wien to Nürnburg to Hof to Reichenbach to Zwickau

Too late, no presents, no idea if on the right train ... at least power sockets are available.

11:30 am

I missed my train, hooray. Apparently i can't count anymore, and that caused me to go 30 minutes after i planned to go.

Waiting isn't so much fun.

3:42 pm

I haven't eaten much yet, two cheese-sandwiches, and nothing to drink so far. At least i have power sockets in here, that actually work (even if not all the time).

My siblings have birthday, i miss my train and probably won't see them before tomorrow, i haven't been able to get something for them - remorse...

I've been working a little on Siesia LF. There's a lot of work that needs to be done. Currently assambling an UI for Zope 3 proves rather hard. Even parts that should be easy to integrate, like Dublin Core, is currently not so easy to use.

One guy in my room is listening to some really bad cheap techno/trance/whatever. I'm thinking about unplugging my earplugs to play some Tschabos. It just got worse, really dull. Should we start a battle? Ah no, i stick to Dälek.

4:33 pm

One woman leaves, but we get a guy, and he has a laptop. I tell him the power sockets are a bit flakey, but it's not too extreme. He goes with battery anyway. He hasn't got wifi, which is a bit sad, i'd like to have shared some files. i even had an ad-hoc network setup all the time, and as far as i can tell, noone connected. Maybe i should used GPRS and written FREE INTERNET on the door.

Created myself a alarm playlist, full of songs that will kick you out of bed when played loud. I'll get a little iTunes script that chooses a random song from a playlist and then use that with iCal to wake me up. Excerpt:

• Autechre - Gantz Graf
• Seelsorger - Zorn 2000
• Hellfish - Toilet Wars
• Tschabos - Gabba

6:12 pm

Again someone with a laptop beside me, and no he hasn't got wifi either. He uses some Microsoft programms i've never seen to make webpages. Too bad i didn't see what it's called... Anyone knows if there's anything new in that section of Microsofts software development?

People seem to look at my legs and smile, i don't know why, i haven't noticed anything amusing there.

I have no idea if i'm on the right train. The announcements are incredibly hard to understand, it actually feels as if i'm in england again and i haven't gotten used to the accent yet.

8:07 pm ... no 8:12 pm

I just switched trains while starting to write. At least now i know i'm on the right one. I think i now know why people where smiling. Everyone wears jackets, sweaters and long pants - i'm in short pants, and i have a long-sleeved shirt on. I also saw some snow. Errrr...

This one is probably the most comfortable train from the whole trip. Sadly, no power sockets.

Bleh.

Oh i got something to drink. I'm quite hungry though and the food on the train is too expensive.

Thinking about Isia and Siesia a lot, specifically the "apply view on object" part which tries to solve the "special view applied by a user"-problem - creating a new object type just to get a new view (example: very simple photoalbum), or putting a pagetemplate in the folder is not acceptable (for the future). I think Joe and me still don't understand eachother at that point, i'm still very sceptical about letting a normal user play with pagelets themselves. I think it would need too much effort to explain to, for example, my father (who would have a use for it).

And now i'm getting back to UI sketching - what i have so far is too cluttered, but has some good ideas. I hope i can get it done while i'm in germany. 10 minutes to Zwickau! I guess that means i have to hurry.

There

I blog a lot, huh? Wassilij is my hero for the day, without him, i wouldn't be in Oberlungwitz at the moment, because i wouldn't have known which trains i have to take. Thanks boy!

Where i reside - comfortable enough!

Weather isn't what the majority would call nice, i like it though.

Born Under a Bad Star

Admitting that i desire more and more fucked up music, or as others would put it, beautiful music.

Fuck me. No, please. Yesterday i finally got my copy of Rossz Csillag Alatt Született (includes samples), which has become one of my most favourite albums. I know, about everyone knows about that already - i don't give a damn. More people should enjoy this fantastic piece! It makes me want to strangle all definitions of music. Yet all i can say is: Aaron Funk somehow managed it to go nuts with overwhelming beauty. Go listen to the samples, even if you don't like electronic music. It's not what you usually hear from your techno-worshipping friends, as it makes heavy use of orchestral arrangements.

Isn't this the old Sigur Rós font used for the Venetian Snares writing?

Austria is blessed with the Donaufestival where he will be playing on the same day as Chris Clark and Amon Tobin. I'm still not sure if we should get the "Mr. Funk, please play us some pigeons", "Aaron, for today i'm your pigeon" or "Senetian please sign my guts!" t-shirt(s) done.

Apart from that, i'm going to tonights Noisecamp at the rhiz where Sickboy and a few other brrz brrz musicians will play. Germany is on the list for tomorrow, i hope i'll make some more photos than last time.

Proof of austrian blob existance or Hunted by logic

Connecting austrian behaviour in waiting lines with description logic.

Yesterday after i visited my friend Bernhard (who has sadly no homepage or blog that i could link), who gave me A Lifetime of Temporary Relief - 10 Years of B-Sides & Rarities by Low (great stuff, really, i'm thinking about writing about it later), i stopped at the McDonalds near the Stephansplatz.

No real queue, a familiar feeling, that was even written about a few days ago. Although i come across proper waiting lines once in a while, i never saw one there. This time it was kind of weird. People were standing next to eachother at the front. Uh...

Kids photographed with a crappy phone camera.

More kids.

And another crappy photo.

Guess how many check-out points (oh damn was that the right use of the term?) were open. Two. Even worse, all these people were gone within 30 seconds. Blobs? Efficient? But wait, i've promised you description logic. After looking over this strangely shaped group, thinking about where the hell i'm going to wait, one good looking cashier (what a waste) asked me if i could come to the very right so she could serve me.

• Cashier: Do you have 20 cent coins? I'd even get you 20 cents off if you had some.
• Michael: Quite a lot, and i even wanted to pay with them anyway!
• Cashier: Aww, thanks.
• Michael: Always glad to be of service *grins*
• Cashier: That should be my line, hehe.
• Michael: But couldn't you call that a bidirectional service? *grins even more*
• Cashier: If i knew what that meant *smiles*

In the end all i'm trying to do is post photos on my blog. Bear with me please.

I Like to Move It Move It

I've been planning to move out for quite some time now. Let's hope i get it done, like the blog.

I'm living at home, currently i don't have a job that pays, i'm basically living off my mothers money. Despite that some people would see the situation i'm in as something they'd like to have, it's not good.

A year ago me and Karin planned sharing an appartment (we even had a public wiki), as she was moving to Vienna to study journalism, but the sharing-a-flat part obviously didn't work.

This time i'm trying to get it done with Philipp. "The last person i'd want to live with is Philipp." — Me, about a half year ago ... Oooh the irony. But you have to admit, i had serious reasons. Today, i visited him again, and he has cleaned up, sure it's of course not perfect, but a lot better. And i know, even though i'm not the cleanest person myself, i'm getting annoyed with the items that should be in the dustbin, but lie around me instead, at least once a month, and thats exactly when i'm going to kick his butt to clean up as well ;).

I'm getting a little short of time though, if i want to do civil services in october, at the earliest. I can't decide on that anyway, all i'm able to is beg to give me the job i want, and hope (hooray Austria). I have to have my own flat before july, otherwise i'm not getting support for the rent. Additionally, i only need to somehow manage to get my mother to get my grandmother to give me the money that she saved for important parts of my life (by the way, thanks Oma) and in the next two months i should be getting my drivers license in germany (when i'm visiting my father who by the way got the third place at the Lavantal Rallye in Carinthia - congrats!).

Clearly some interesting months ahead.

S-S-S-S-S-Starting (yes, really, it's not April 1st yet)

My blog, which i prefer to call "journal" for mostly phonetic reasons, is finally going online.

Everyone, celebrate my announcement! You may now notice, the old plan to use zine as URI is withdrawn - face it, it's an ugly name.

No wait, i actually wanted to bring something interesting in the first entry.

Maybe a little past and surroundings to why this is up now?

I've been talking about creating a blog for quite some time now, that being about two years. Software wise, i've worked a little on SimpleBlog and Quills, which are both based on Plone, to fit my needs. Ultimately i wasn't able to get where i wanted to be, and as i'm very picky about what i use, i just sulked and wasted time. This time it's real, despite not being finished (at all).

I actually wanted to get together a group of people (a few of them are Karin, Maecks and Markus) that share a system, with their own design and all, yet all available on one frontpage (kind of like a groupblog), but like most my own projects that involve more people than me, it didn't get to be reality.

I've been jealous of my friends blogs, at least some of them. I'd like to see more activity though. And i'd like to see more people in my environment blogging, also about their personal lives, because i want to know whats going on. I hardly know what they're upto at the moment.

This leads me to a question: do you know how painful it is if you feel you have a lot to say but you "can't"? I've got an uncountable number of notes for entries in the notebooks (made of paper) i've used over the years, from music to art to Vienna to work and not to forget, fun with code. I'll probably catch up a little, mainly because this still floats somewhere in the neverending space located in my head.

Oh yeah, something that i've been already asked a few times before i even went live: so why do i write in english? It may sound strange but i have the feeling that i'm far better at expressing myself properly in english. Apart from that, some of my friends and parts of my audience (hopefully it'll appear at some point...), aren't capable of understanding much or any german. However, some content will be written in german, but a rather small portion, and i'll probably provide a translation as well.

Have i forgotten anything? Hmm, i don't think so. Man. I'm here now. So far i've only written a few entries (2 or 4) for the Viennese Metroblog.

But now i've got my own! So i need a cliché line:

WOO! YAY MY BLOG IS UP!