Archive 11/2005

Being simply too lazy to install the interpreter and opening an editor is no excuse anymore. On http://tryruby.hobix.com/ you can now try Ruby in an interactive online tutorial that guides you through some of features of this language starting with some basic string manipulation (like reversing a string), over list generation and manipulation (sorting). Currently the tutorial closes with a short introduction in blocks and hashes but to quote the author...

Well, I naturally mean this in the most positive way possible Seems like there are already quite a few packages on the official release servers and also the release notes can already be accessed. It really seems like the big day will be today

Today I've found a quite simple way of killing a running Mac system Actually it doesn't really do anything all that great but simply prevents the whole system from working without a nice hard-reboot If you have the system firewall deactivated, never add a ipfw rule that denies connections via loopback (or to 127.0.0.0/8, am not sure here). I had the system firewall accidentally disabled and then ran one of my scripts to set some quite restrictive drop rules after the the initial rules normally set by the system firewall. Since these rules where missing now, I couldn't open any new windows, terminals, etc. Not even going to the standby mode worked anymore

I'm currently in a small dillema: There are -- as on every platform -- quite many webbrowsers available for MacOS X to choose from. First I started playing with Safari since it's preinstalled and looks quite decent. Then I used Camino for about 4 days nearly exclusively. And now I'm back with good old Firefox

Well, to make a small understatement: It's but on really rare occations that I buy software. Normally all I need can be done with free and opensource software. I think the last time I bought a software was somewhen in 1999, since then I used Linux and FOSS for everything from writing letters to managing my photos to browsing the web.

Nope, I'm not writing about my last lunch at MacD today, but more about these 2 little boxes that finally arrived today Finally, after nearly 3 weeks But everything seems to work so far, but I haven't tested everything yet. Since I'm completely new to MacOS and Apple stuff in general there is much to explore. After being able to connect to my NFS server within 2 hours and getting online wihin another hour I think I'm passed the biggest obstacles.

One may think about Amazon whatever pleases but they sometimes really simply know what has to be done and also exactly the right time for doing it. Seems like they are currently contacting customers who bought one of the XCP-enhanced Sony CDs and offers them refundation for returning it (unopened or opened!). While Sony's currently AFAIK only recalling unsold copies of the malware-including CDs Amazon shows in my eyes the appropriate degree of customer service ... and I don't mean appropriate for Amazon since it should be Sony's job to do this and not the resellers.

For the last couple of months I've been playing around with some ideas on how to make a really light and simple theme. Well, and here you can see the result of it At least the header part is heavily inspired by the chameleon-theme that is bundled with Drupal, which I really like. Its simplicity and lean way really amazed me.

Just about 2 months ago, to be precise on its release date, I bought a Sony PSP with Wipeout Pure since I thought back then that it's simply the superior handheld gaming device. Since that date basically not a single really good game was released. Ok, maybe Burnout Legends although it was at least for me quite disappointing. Up to this point I've never seen a game with that many bugs and glitches in it. From broken physics to crashbugs, I had everything. There was also simply nothing really new in it since most of the tracks were simply ported from Burnout 3.

Seems like Microsoft has found a solution for the emulation problem of old Xbox games. According the futurezone.at you have to install software emulators on your Xbox360's harddisk for each and every old Xbox game. Congratulations to MS to have found the cheapest solution for this problem. This also means that every game will have to have its own emulator developed ... which is IMO quite unlikely since producing games is expensive and publishers will probably invest more into the development of new games which they can sell at a higher price. I also somehow doubt that Microsoft will develop emulators for any games but their very own ones.