back online (again)

As you may or may not have noticed, my site was down for quite some time. This is because I moved to a new place where the portforwarding is not a generous as where I used to live. I may or may not explain this in detail in the future, but for we’re all happy that my site is back up, albeit not on the good old Mac mini anymore ^^

back online

My page is back online after it was down for quite some time.

As you might know, this website resides on a Mac mini at my home and runs WordPress. Internet outages are not the problem, but rather the aging Mac mini, or more specifically the hard drive that’s in it. Recently, it decided to just show me a blank grey screen after powering on. I thought the hard drive had died, but wanted to make absolutely sure that exactly that and nothing else is the case. I asked my good friend Oliver if he had a FireWire cable to spare so I could boot the Mac mini in Target Disk Mode and find out whether this was really the end. Luckily, it wasn’t, and it booted right back up as if nothing ever happened. Maybe giving the hard drive a break was enough to let it “catch a breath”.

But I know my hardware too good to let it fool me. I’ve seen hard drives die, than resurrect only to die again. Things inevitably break, that’s how the world works. But with hard drives, they tend to break when they’re not spinning, at least in my experience. So my solution is to never shut down the Mac mini ever again and hope for the best. The end will come sooner or later, but I am going to squeeze every last bit of usefulness out of this brave Mac mini and its hard drive as long as I can.

A long overdue update

I’ve been using the «twentyeleven» wordpress theme for quite a while now, and as the name suggests, 2011 has long passed. The site deserves a new theme! After about an hour (!) of looking through many themes available on wordpress.org, I finally stumbled upon a theme that not only looks good but also is simple and undestracting yet functional. Jeez, I’m starting to sound like Johny Ive in those Apple promo videos.

So anyway, here it is: the Full Frame theme! You’re looking at it now. Check out wordpress.org/themes/full-frame.

I have to say though, my main motivation to update my site was the fact that I plan to use it as polling tool to decide which show we should watch in an English class I’m teaching. Gotta look respectable when showing your students your homepage!

Goodbye TUAW and Joystiq

I regret to inform you that two of my favorite news sites, TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog) and Joystiq, are shutting down. Thanks for nothing, AOL.

But you know what they say: change is good. Having mentioned that, I’m glad to see at least Joystiq live on in some sort of way at engadget.com/gaming.

I still had so many TUAW and Joystiq posts to show you. I’ve been stacking them in my bookmarks but never got around to link them here and write down some of my thoughts along with them. Now, with both sites vanishing, I don’t know how long their old posts will stay up. I feel like suddenly time is running out. That’s why I will dump all links to those posts I still wanted to direct your attention to here and maybe write something about them later.

It’s an odd thought that anything on the internet could vanish at all. We take it for granted that sites will exist forever and ever, but all it takes is a corporation to decide to shut down a website or a server. Hopefully though, we will always have archive.org and its WayBackMachine. In fact, I just tried it and both the TUAW and Joystiq websites are well preserved. Good job!

Anyway, check out all these interesting tidbits. I tried to group them more or less topically and list them more or less chronologically.

TUAW

Why 9:41 AM is always the time displayed on iPhones and iPads
Why is time on Apple Watch promotional ads set to 10:09?

LaCie XtremKey USB 3.0: the flash drive you want for the zombie apocalypse

iPhone 5s fingerprint sensor gets completely misunderstood

Go, You Chicken Fat, Go!: The story of the Youth Fitness Song

Legendary ad man Lee Clow talks about Steve Jobs’ love of branding and more
Steve Jobs sobbed in the wake of Antennagate
Video: Every Steve Jobs “boom” in under four minutes
Funny moments with Steve Jobs

Jony Ive talks about the link between design and engineering, the need for failure, and more

This Apple 3.0 poster is a must-have for every Apple fan

Apps teachers use to tame the classroom and teach their students
Educational bloggers chime in with their favorite back-to-school apps
Best educational apps for middle schoolers
Best educational apps for high school students

How to make OS X Mavericks re-run the Setup Assistant

Joystiq

Speedrunners make Super Mario World reprogram itself to play Pong, Snake

Sonic the Hedgehog box art illustrator Greg Martin passes away

Travel to the Nebula of NES Games in this handy chart

‘Project Unity’ is 15 fully-functional consoles in one giant box
RetroN 5 and the uncomfortable tension between old and new
All-in-one retrogaming console RetroN 5 now available for pre-order
RetroN 5 retro console delayed to December 10
RetroArch authors: RetroN 5’s emulators, code violate licenses

Study: Dance games help bladder control, urinary incontinence

PBS’ Game/Show asks, ‘What is a Gamer?’
Co-Opinion: How sporty are eSports?
Capcom officially uploads I Am Street Fighter documentary to YouTube
Editor’s Note: We Are Always Fighting
StarCraft 2 and the quest for the highest APM

What happened to all of the women coders in 1984
Nightline investigates GamerGate, online harassment

Reviewing a Classic: Back to the Future

Hey everyone, as part of my studies at university I was tasked with writing a short review about a movie of my choice. I decided to choose a classic that I believe everyone should have watched at least once: Back to the Future. Hoping that you will like it as much as my tutor did – the review and the movie – I am sharing it with you right here. Enjoy!

Back to the Future is the first of three action packed science-fiction comedies about Marty McFly and his time travels. The story begins in 1985 where his friend Doctor Emmet Brown (aka ‘Doc’) invents a time machine in form of a DeLorean sports car. Marty is accidentally sent to the year 1955 where he seeks the help of Doc’s younger counterpart to find an energy source to power the DeLorean and get back to the present (or from Doc’s point of view, the future, hence the title). However, things get complicated as Marty runs into his young mother who falls in love with him. Now he has to find his young father, who is a complete loser that his mother isn’t attracted to at all, and make them fall in love with each other, otherwise he will never be born and simply fade away.

Back to the Future is not the best movie in the world but probably the one with the highest ‘re-watch’ value I have ever encountered. The characters are well thought out, and the comedic situations they are put in as well as their reactions to it are guaranteed to make you laugh if not at least chuckle and smile. Together with the captivating musical score and a compelling story, this movie will glue you to your seats every time.

If you want the comedy of ‘Forrest Gump’ with less drama combined with the action of ‘Indiana Jones’ and an added element of ‘The Time Machine’, Back to the Future is for you. And even if you are not into any of these things, I recommend giving it a try and watching it anyway.

My favourite little thing about OS X Mavericks

Screen Shot sleepimageMy favourite little thing about OS X Mavericks is the fact that the sleepimage file in private/var/vm is no longer the size of your complete physical RAM anymore! It’s much smaller, like only the active part or a compressed version or something. My sleepimage used to be 8 GB, now it’s only 1.1 GB! For someone like me who is always running low on hard drive space, this is a big relief!

RealLife Comics

I have long enjoyed the webcomic RealLife. The first strip was published on November 15, 1999 and Greg Dean, the author, has been putting out new strips ever since. Though I didn’t start reading the comic until around 2003, I have read every strip. The majority made me laugh, some just made me smile, but some were so hilarious that I decided to bookmark them. And instead of keeping those bookmarks to myself, I will share my favorite RealLife Comic strips with you.

I did not embed all strips directly into this post, because A) that would take up too much space and B) I want to give reallifecomics.com some traffic (and kudos!)

On the topic of nerdiness
Geek Olympics (October 03, 2000)
Can’t Hit Macs (November 27, 2000) (the one you see above)
L33tness (February 22, 2001)
All Your Base (April 13, 2001)
Network Cable (April 19, 2001)
Over-clocked Hamster (April 30, 2002)
Xtreme Spam Deleting (January 21, 2004)
Service Pack 2 (August 13, 2004)

On the topic of games and LAN-parties
UT 2003 (September 19, 2002)
Redeemer (January 10, 2003)
What’s Unreal Tournament? (February 04, 2003)
Counter-Strike (May 24, 2004)

On the topic of food & drinks
Damn (December 29, 2000)
Water. Astounding. (May 20, 2002)
I Won’t Believe That’s Butter! (February 19, 2002)

On the topic of interesting facts
At The Movie Theatre (May 10, 2002)
Human Reaction #243 (January 08, 2003)

On the topic of plain silliness
Weather Phenomenon (February 21, 2001)
The Muffin (December 06, 2001)
End Freeway (June 11, 2002)
Fuego! (February 27, 2004)

I know, these are all pretty old, but the new ones are good, too, I promise! Here’s an example:
Episode VII (October 31, 2012)
Tell me which ones you like best in the comments!

And I thought strafe-jumping was leet

If you enjoy mastering a videogame to the degree of knowing and abusing every glitch and mechanical anomaly (e.g. strafe-jumping in Quake), or if you’re just plain nuts, you will enjoy this video:


Item abuse 2 TAS in 7:37.83

They make these things tool-assisted for a reason. o_O 

Do you have any other similarly crazy videos? Share in the comments! Or just go to tasvideos.org and pick your favourite.