This summer Paul Graham wrote in length about him owning too much stuff. I don’t agree with all of his arguments and I certainly don’t intend to move from my current way of living to the Steve Jobs style, but at least Graham’s bits inspired me to make a list of junk things that I own but don’t use. Most of it are gadgets, electronic devices and other misc tech stuff that I stopped using for one reason or another.
I’m not yet sure how I will get rid of them (eBay, local Internet-based garage sale, giving away for free, disposing them through city cleaning) but in any case I’m looking forward to the time when the stuff is not there anymore just for the sake of it.
If you know me and think you might need some of my fall-out, get in touch.
Friday, December 28, 2007, 11:35
Until today my little currency converter did not keep historic datasets of the rates it was using for calculations. Instead it threw away the previous data when it fetched an update from ECB. I changed this today by adding a little database mojo in the background.
Let’s see if this turns out to be useful in a few months from now. Having some numbers to crunch on won’t hurt in either case.
Saturday, December 22, 2007, 12:04
The jacket I wrote about last week has been sold. The guy who won the auction intends to give it away as a Christmas present, but at the time of writing this, he either hasn’t transferred the money or it has not been processed by the banks yet. I feel sorry for him because he won’t get the jacket in time for Christmas eve, but at the same time I won’t send him the jacket without having the money on my account first. Oh well, Christmas Sentimentality.
Saturday, December 22, 2007, 9:26
Not wanting to sound like a wisenheimer, but how comes that these days no other site except twitter.com has to shut down full 12 hours for maintenance? Oh well.
Friday, December 14, 2007, 20:31
I put up an item for sale on eBay yesterday. No bids so far, but two people already asked for buying the jacket directly. I don’t regularly sell stuff on eBay, so I’m wondering if this happens commonly? I can think of a number of reasons why people do this, but none really convince me this is a good strategy.
Friday, December 14, 2007, 10:31
I’m so addicted to this. I aced through levels 1-9, but 10 turned out to be really hard.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007, 20:57
Since roughly the end of October, a book by Tobias Schlitt and Kore Nordmann about the eZ Components PHP framework is being shipped. I was honored when Tobias asked me several months ago if I not only wanted to be their technical reviewer but could also write a foreword for them. I’m so glad he asked.
Doing book reviews (I’ve done several before) is first and foremost more work than one might think. Second it is a very fulfilling work because one knows that it results in something that can be seen on shelves in stores and that people actually spend money on. (The same applies for Diet Coke, but let’s ignore this for now.) And finally, seeing ones name listed on page 4 of a book right next to the author(s), the editor and misc. other imprint information makes up a great ego boost. Hope my readers forgive me for this little personality cult …
In addition to this I had a blast writing the two and a half pages long foreword and I’m proud that Tobias and Kore asked me for this. On several occasions during the review process I had problems keeping up with their ambitious schedule because I was busy with other things, and sometimes I felt bad for being so picky about this and that in several chapters. But much to my surprise the authors and their editor Stephan Mattescheck didn’t seem to mind at all about this. Lucky me.
Long story short, if you understand German and want to dive into the world of the eZ Components, I suggest you pick up the book before it’s too late. If German isn’t your lingua franca, don’t give up: I have heard that there may be an English version of the book sooner or later.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007, 5:00
