barely fatal

I decided not to wash my bike, instead I put on new brakes and a functional headlight, for the sake of humankind. Installing the brakes is a simple task, fine-tuning them not so much, so it took me longer than expected. Most importantly, my bike’s braking distance is now down to impressive if-you-dare-to-try two meters, whereas formerly it was more like 20 meters (the use of anchors aka my feet and grapplers aka my hands included). And to have lights on your bike is utterly important in Germany, too. ‘Cause if you cycle round in the dark with your lights off (or non-functional, for that matter), you have to fear the wrath of the elderly who instantly shout “Lights on!” once you get into viewing distance (I always wonder how they do it, if they can’t see me with no lights on, anyway). Now my bike is so totally secure, that I’ll probably be run over by a bus on Monday the second I leave the basement.

I have two more sites for the Worth Browsing links category. Especially the first one had me reading articles for two hours straight. Enjoy.

The Daily WTF @ http://thedailywtf.com. A site which documents the crazy world we call the IT industry.

Do Not Reply @ http://www.donotreply.com. Ever got an email from @donotreply.com … and replied to it? No? Well, some guys have.

Well, I’m back from my holidays in Bremen. Had a great time, very relaxing, too. I took a few nice photos, but I need more training with my new camera still. And a tripod, I think.

I updated the blog’s theme, too. Not that I did much, but with the latest update customizing the theme has become a lot easier. Since I hardly ever use the tags properly I decided to drop the tag cloud. Maybe I’ll find the time to re-tag posts some day.

Wow, what a week. Ãœber-busy, I didn’t even find the time to read my favourite web comics. Now I’m on holidays – and I’ll enjoy it as hard as I can.

I started by watching Transformers. The special effects are incredible. And the first hour of the movie is really cool, immersive and interesting. Then everything goes down. I can’t really complain about the lack of credibility in a movie which features giant robots from space fighting each other – but still: They fight for an enormous cube which is actually quite small, they act and talk like teenagers, the nerdy hero gets the smoking hot girl although he never really stops being nerdy. I never watched the cartoon, so I also can’t complain about the robot’s silly names and voices. Well, there’s still the first hour, so not all is lost.

Aeon Flux is somewhat controversial, most people don’t seem to like it that much. I do. It’s so stylish and fresh – or so I thought until I recognized one of the futuristic buildings is a sports hall in Berlin. All the other buildings really exist, too, in Berlin. If you know the places, the movie loses credibility. Nonetheless, the story is okay, the action well-made, the costumes are great. It’s a solid sci-fi flick with a few new touches. Again, I have never seen the cartoon, so I can’t say how close it comes to the original.

Why Sins Of A Solar Empire is great although the graphics are simple, the gameplay isn’t very deep and the downloader sucks: Stardock release patches on a regular basis and listen to the fans. Only after getting the third patch done, they started working on a demo. They promise to deliver more patches once the demo is out. And all that when the game was very playable in the RTM version. The community already started working on mods; there are new planet types, balance mods, gameplay mods, capital ship mods, and many more to come. Sweet!

Some Shadows from the squad went to a Codemasters event in the UK where Jumpgate Evolution was presented for the first time ever. They brought back some cool videos which really make me want to play the baby! Now I only need a beta key … at least the guys who went got keys, so they can tell the rest of us what it’s going to be like. Only as far as the NDA allows it, of course…