They read my blog and they hate me

Basic things you should know about Esperanto (should you?):

1. All nouns end in "o"; (amiko – friend, arbo – tree, birdo – bird, domo – house, hundo – dog, kato – cat, libro – book, strato – street, urbo – city, viro – man)
2. The plural of a noun is formed by adding a "j"; (domoj -> houses, hundoj -> dogs)
3. If a noun is the object of a sentence, add an "n"; (La birdo malamas la katon -> The bird hates the cat, La viro amas la hundon -> the man loves the dog)
4. Adjectives end with an "a"; (longa -> long, seka -> dry ,nova -> new)
5. Prefixes: mal-* -> the opposite (longa -> long, malonga -> short; amas -> love, malamas -> hate). There are other ones too.
6. Suffixes: *-eto -> small (knabo -> boy, knabeto -> little boy, domo -> house, dometo -> cottage)
7. Verb forms: Infinitives end in i. In the present tense, verbs always end in AS, in the past in IS, and in the future in OS. There are no irregular verbs! (esti = to be, mi estas -> I am, vi estas -> you are, mi estis -> I was, vi estis -> you were, mi estos -> I will be, vi estos -> you will be)
8. Other verb forms: -us -> contidional ( estus -> would be ) , -u -> command form (estu silenta -> be quiet!)
9. Adjectives become adverbs when you use the E ending instead. (silente -> silently, facile -> easily)
   
10. Numbers:
    
    
    
    
    • nul zero
    • unu one
    • du two
    • tri three
    • kvar four
    • kvin five
    • ses six
    • sep seven
    • ok eight
    • na√Ö¬≠ nine

    The Esperanto word for ‘10' is dek. You can combine dek with other numbers…

    • dek unu (11)
    • dek na√Ö¬≠ (19)

    To create numbers up to ninety, put the number before dek.

    • dudek (20)
    • tridek (30)
    • okdek (80)
    • na√Ö¬≠dek (90)

    Now you can count up to 99…

    • dudek kvar (24)
    • okdek unu (81)
    • na√Ö¬≠dek na√Ö¬≠ (99)
    • 
      

taken from the quick and dirty esperanto guide and lernu.net

Just bought a new app for 1,59 Euros. It basically allows you easy access to the tracing functionality of a bunch of package delivery providers.

Visit the official page or go to the appstore

Pretty self-explanatory :)

SUPPORTED SERVICES INCLUDE:

• Adobe.com (US and Canada)
• Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.co.jp, Amazon.de, Amazon.at, and Amazon.fr
• Apple.com (including all international stores)
• Aramex
• Canada Post (Postes Canada)
• DHL (US and Germany)
• DPD
• FedEx (FexEx SmartPost is not currently supported)
• GLS Germany
• Google Checkout
• Japan Post (EMS, Yu-Pack, Registered Mail, and Morning 10 Overnight Mail)
• Nintendo (US and Canada)
• Parcelforce
• Purolator
• Royal Mail
• Poste Italiane (Paccocelere1, Paccocelere3, Postacelere1, PaccocelereMaxi, and PaccocelereInternazionale)
• Posten (Norway)
• Posten (Sweden)
• TNT
• UPS and UPS Mail Innovations
• USPS (United States Postal Service)

I recently ordered a dell laptop. I'm still waiting and the current estimated shipping date is the 02.10.08 (originally it was the 23.09.2008).

When I ordered, there were some "this could take a few weeks"; warnings for other items, but not for my laptop. The current problem seems to be the 6 cell battery which can lead to production times of up to 8 weeks.

I called Dell 3 times until I reached a guy called "Dusan"; who does at great job at customer support. I told him that I don't really like the fact that Dell pushes the production date and that I'd rather have a 9 cell battery in my laptop and having it ship earlier.

Short story:

• He sent me a new offer


• +100 GB HDD (—> 500 in total)


• 9 Cell battery instead of 6 cells


• -Adobe Photoshop light whatever edition (as if I care…)


• Same price


• "Bei R√ºckbest√§tigung Ihrer Bestellung heute, 19.09.2008 sollte Ihre Bestellung sp√§testens bei Ihnen eintreffen am: 06.10.2008";

So appartenly I get more for the same price if I wait a 4 days longer… (and that's usually pretty "far fetched"; when Dell doesn't run into supply problems).

In other news: there are NO notebooks whatsoever that offer a good CPU, a decent (>WXGA) resolution and the other stuff for even CLOSE to the price

As Dell seems to take it's time, I'm on the look for other possible notebooks in the meantime. (From what I've seen, I'm pretty sure I'll take the Dell…)

Any of you know a notebook that has:

1. Core 2 Duo T9*** Series (—> >=2,5 GHz, 6MB cache)
2. WSXGA or WUXGA (—> Display > 1280×800)
3. NOT an Intel GMA GPU
4. not more than 1150 Euos

None of those is negotiable! ;)

Any ideas?

Apparently, that's what I'll be doing the upcoming semester:

• Internet Next Generation (6ECTS) (Referat)


• Mediensicherheit und Digital Rights Management (6ETCS) (Klausur, 60 min)


• Praktikum Applikationssicherheit (3 ECTS) (?"LA";?)


• Verhandlungstechnik (3 ECTS) (Referat)


• Generatives Computing (3 ECTS) (?"PA";?)


• Markup-Language und Anwendungen (6 ECTS) (?"PA";?)

and either

• Praktikum Simulationstechnik (3 ECTS) (?"PA";?) (Collides with Markup-Language…)

OR

• Unternehmenskommunikation (4 ECTS) (?HA 4 Wo, RE?)

—> 30 / 31 ECTS

Sometimes, you just want to read the important stuff on a page. Here's a JavaScript sniplet that will do this for you:

Zap images

Drag it to your bookmarks and click on it whenever you want to hide all the pictures on the current page you're visiting.

Here's the source:

[sourcecode language=jscript]javascript:(function(){var imgs=document.getElementsByTagName(‘img');var imgArr=[];for(var i=0;i<imgs.length;i++){imgArr.push(imgs[i]);} for(i= 0;i<imgArr.length;i++){var txt=document.createTextNode(imgArr[i].alt);imgArr[i].parentNode.replaceChild(txt,imgArr[i]);}})();[/sourcecode]

UPDATE: Kai√Ǭ†showed a shorter version of the code in the comments, so I updated the post… the current code is the new hotness

Just a small rant.I hate it when a service:

1. restricts the MAXIMUM length of a password (FUCKING HASH IT! Use SHA-1 and it will always be 160 bit in the end)
2. restricts the characters I can use (how hard can using UTF8 and properly escaping strings be… just HASH IT and you'll end up with something even a crappy app can work with)
3. sends my password in cleartext when I'm recovering it (FUCKING HASH IT!)

and an interesting idea (does anybody do this?):


4. it would be nice to use javascript and hash the password on my pc…

Sometimes it's good to be able to code :)
This ruby script checks the "when are we going to ship your laptop"; part of the Dell Homepage (Germany) for changes and notifies you via jabber when a change occured.
No exception handling —> if anything breaks, it's gone :P

require ‘rubygems'

require ‘open-uri'

require ‘hpricot'

require ‘xmpp4r'





#CONFIG

bestellnummer = "123456789";

kundennummer = "DE1234567";

bot_jabberid = "[email protected]";

bot_jabberpass = "secret_bot_password";

user_jabberid = "[email protected]";

#END OF CONFIG




myurl = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/order/emea/OrderStatus.aspx?c=de&l=de&s=gen&on=#{bestellnummer}&cn=#{kundennummer}";

current_status = ""

while true




doc = Hpricot(open(myurl))
(doc/"a";).each do |a|
if a.to_s.include?("order_status";)
if current_status != a.inner_text
puts "checking: NEW STATUS: " + a.inner_text
client = Jabber::Client.new(Jabber::JID.new(bot_jabberid + "/dellbot";))
client.connect
puts "jabber: connected";
client.auth(bot_jabberpass)
puts "jabber: authenticated";
presence = Jabber::Presence.new
presence.set_show(:chat)
presence.set_status(‘notifying')
presence.set_priority(-1) #we don't want to be top priority… the message might get to the bot
client.send(presence)
puts "jabber: set presence";
sleep 1
msg = Jabber::Message::new(user_jabberid, "Dell Status changed!\nNew Status: #{a.inner_text}";)
msg.type=:chat
client.send(msg)
puts "jabber: sent message";
client.close!
puts "jabber: disconnected";




ok, we sent that notification, so we can change our current status




current_status = a.inner_text
else
puts "checking: nothing new to see here, keep going!";
end
end
end
sleep 600




end

Some copy pasta from the newsletter:

50 GB Free Personal Backups

As previously written about, your web space is only intended for your websites andnot for personal backups. Now every customer is offered 50 GB of storage for backups. The only caveat is, it will be hosted on a separate server, under a separate user account and DreamHost will not backup your backups. If 50 GB is not enough for you, extra space is only $0.10/month per GB.