IT
Piraten nahmen Gebäude in Frankfurt unter Beschuss
Die Piratenpartei Frankfurt hat gestern die Stadt mit ihren Photonenkanonen unter Beschuss genommen. Als Sympathisant erfüllt mich dies natürlich mit klammheimlicher Freude.
Moved from Torrentflux-b4rt to wtorrent
…and the installation was a major pain in the ass.
So if you plan to install wtorrent, the following pages will help you a lot:
http://robert.penz.name/82/howto-install-rtorrent-and-wtorrent-within-an-ubuntu-hardy-ve/
– the included init script seems to have kind of a bug though, failed to detect the session path with me every time, fixed it by hard-coding the session path into the script (Mr. Quick-and-Dirty is my second name).
http://www.wtorrent-project.org/trac/wiki/wTorrentInstall
- the wtorrent installation instructions (not particularily helpful though)
http://filesharefreak.com/tutorials/how-to-svn-rtorrent-wtorrent-rtorrent-webui/
- Another installation guide
http://flipsidereality.com/blog/linux/rtorrent-with-wtorrent-on-debian-etch-complete-howto/
- Complete Guide if you plan to install it on a brand new box (etch installation instructions included)
So, now it’s time for some testing & fine-tuning 
Pretty neat: Orange smart-SIM
As you may know or not know, I am an orange-user and have the (in)famous iphone-plan (which means they rob me blind 40€ every month). In this package, 3GB of data transfer are included every month. Of course, i used very little of it up to now because i could only use it on the iPhone and the lack of a tethering app for the very same.
Now, my new precious (Lenovo x200) has a nifty built-in 3G wireless card, which will accept a SIM-card of any provider.
There must be a possibility in there, i thought. And i was right. You can purchase an upgrade called Smart-SIM, which is readily available at about every orange store. The costs for it are moderate: 15€ for the 2 SIM cards, and a 5€ monthly fee on top of your former monthly fee (if you ask me, 40 or 45€ doesn’t matter anymore).
With this option, I’m able to leave the second SIM card in my laptop all the time. If i go online, it uses my 3GB data plan. While online with the laptop via UMTS/HSDPA, i can still answer calls and recieve SMS on my cellphone. Nice!
To sum up: If you happen to HAVE an iphone-plan with included data transfer, don’t hesitate to order a smart SIM if you have a data modem (if you don’t have one, there is a bunch of them available on ebay for cheap). It costs little (about 2 beers a month) and has great benefits if you are on the road with your laptop.
And even IF a tethering app will appear sometime: A dedicated modem will always be the cleaner, more reliable solution.
XML-RPC rocks
Ur genial: mit XML-RPC kann man über ein Custom-API Einträge auf WordPress-Blogs erstellen (in diesem Fall von einem iPhone-App aus) bloggen. Die Kamera wird hierbei auch unterstützt.
Apropos: ich schau grad Tatort!
iPhone home-user synchronisation plan
As most of you will already know, i own an iphone.
As a chaotic person, i had no syncing going on on any of my data, which was quite an advantage because i could make a fresh start with the new device.
Unfortunately, Apple fails miserably at adding decent synchronisation options to iTunes, which led me to the choice of either installing Outlook or using google.
For a starter, i decided to go for a synchronised calendar. Next epic fail, sponsored by Apple: iTunes won’t sync its calendar to anything except Outlook (fail!). Of course, leaving Thunderbird for Outlook was not an Option, so i decided to dump iPhones built-in calendar for a google-calendar Bookmark on my home screen, which works great (google built some neat iPhone-optimizations into it). On my desktop PC, i sync the online calendar to Thunderbird with the “Provider for Google Calendar” add-on.
So, the next task would be RSS-Feeds – an easy one since i have been using Google Reader for a long time – just drop the link on the Phones home screen and i’m done (no, i don’t like google, but it’s simply my favourite rss-reader).
Next Task would be Contacts, and since i don’t have any nifty groupware server to sync to, i will have to do it the google way (yes, they have a decent contact tool) again – iTunes failed on me the first time, trying to delete any contacts on the phone (thank god there was a confirmation message) – but i found a workaround and now it syncs the contacts nicely.
Of course, i pull those contacts down to Thunderbird with a add-on – Zindus. Works!
This is far from perfect – but it is free, works with a single iTunes sync and up to now hassle-free.
IMO it’s sufficient for the average user, and can even stand comparision with paid services.
The only real downside is Googles’ privacy policy, but i think privacy is always a problem when you want to sync your stuff online – especially if you want to do so for free.
Links:
Provider for Google Calendar
Zindus
Any suggestions, comments or questions? Don’t hesitate to contact me.
Migration auf WordPress
Habe mich heute aus verschiedenen Gründen entschieden, mein Blog auf WordPress 2.0 umzustellen.
Das alte Zeug hab ich bei der Gelegenheit gleich entsorgt – who cares.
Is this awesome?
Y/N?
