do-nothing-saturday

We went into the City and accidently bumped into the “Free Parade”. Compared to the old days, when it was called “Free Republic Parade” this event was very sad sight.
Although the weather was fine, there were less than 1000 people attending (a few more posters and a bit of press coverage would have helped a lot) and the music was worse too. For a random tourist it was difficult to find out what it was all about as one had to use a magnifier to spot the political statements (and stuff like “für leiwand gegen oarsch” does not count as a statement).
Or maybe i am just getting old and become a Stenzel-voter. We spent the rest of the Saturday hanging out a Kaffeehaus instead.

small world

Vienna has over a million inhabitants plus tourists. I guess, that i only know at max 0.2% of its population by name. When i moved here from a small town, where everyone knew everyone, i guessed, that it would be quite unlikely to meet someone i know accidently at a neutral place and that i could travel around in the city easy without being recognized.
But i regulary bump into someone on the subway, which is most of the time a pleasant surprise to me. Yesterday it was my former flatmate Raed, which i had lost contact several years ago.
So if you see me somewhere in the city nose-picking or doing other silly things, just say hello to surprise me :-).

MT phishing attempt

Today in my inbox, a new kind of phishing mail:

Movable Type Newsletter
========================
Get the fix for MT's built-in anti-spam plugin.
Check out our post to get the details:
http://cts.vresp.com/c/?SixApart/683d839cb2/c349cbc97b/5a31576924

And i thought everyone was using WordPress, s9y etc.

without a Laptop

My G4 iBook is currently broken. On poweron the fan is running at full speed, and not even the openfirmware sound can be heard.
It looks like a wellknown bug of the logic board, because sometimes i can get it to boot, if i put pressure on the parts left of the touchpad.
Corey Arnold has a detailed description how to “fix” it, but it looks like i have to look at a new model soon :-(.

Citybike distances

Spring has arrived in Vienna and i already used the citybikes several time.
According to the Citybike Website i currently need 14 minutes to get from Alser Strasse to Spittelau (subway U6 needs 6 minutes) and 14.5 minutes to get from Alser Strasse to Museumsplatz (Tram 43 + U2 is not faster than 14 minutes).
Now lets see if i can improve my time in the next weeks.

The real Wow effect

Today i thought it would be cool to stream the TV signal from the Minimac to the Laptop, when i want to watch TV in bed (yes i am currently a bit ill), instead of switching the USB stick and readjusting the antenna etc.
So googling for a streamsolution, downloading CyTV and thanks to Bonjour it just works, Wow! I was laughing a lot, because the first thing i received was a Microsoft Vista advertisment.
Now i really doubt it will be that easy with Microsoft products.

FM Radio in Vienna

While Googling for DVB-T (which recently started in Vienna) i found also this list of FM stations which broadcast around Vienna. Of course most are only available with special antennas.
When i was a teenager i sometimes liked to listen to obscure radio stations. My highlights at that time were “BFBS” (only on good weather conditions i could receive their Bremen FM signal) and Atlantic 252 a Music station on LW.
But when i moved to Austria there was FM4, so not much need for different stations. When Blumenau or Hermes are violating my ears i usually either switch to Orange 94.0 or NRJ.
Now i wonder what other stations are worth listening too. I know Fun Radio on 94.3 has sometimes good music (Yeah i should really learn a bit slovakian…) but i have no idea about the Czech or Hungarian stations that i should be able to receive without too much trouble. Any recommendations?

WLAN keys in the Apple keychain

Recently i had to change my WLAN key. Since then my Apple laptop refused to automatically joined the network, although the key was saved in the keychain.
Today i found the cause. If a network with the same SSID but a different key is already saved in the System keychain, Apple stores the key in the users keychain without prompting to replace the existing key in the system chain. And it looks like the system keychain has higher priority so it always tried to join with the old key. Argh.