ekr-home

New mail address

2006-11-26T13:27:00.000+01:00

Since 1995, I used to have a domain to myself (pluto.camelot.de) and received all mails targetet at (anything)@pluto.camelot.de. Back in those days, spam was not a problem, and I used the address freely in public places. This was all nice and well, until the spammers popped up.

The statistics of my spam filter POPFile look like this, counting since 2003:

Messages classified: 345,768
Spam: 333,997 (96.59%)
Non spam: 11,717 (3.38%)
Unclassified: 54 (0.01%)
Classification errors: 292 (103 false spams which were really ham)

So, that's roughly 110.000 spam mails per year, 10.000 per month, 300 per day. The spam filter does a beautiful job with it, so I don't notice the amount of mail at all.

But enough is enough. I'm switching to new mail addresses (some more private, some rather public, other ones for forums etc.). If you don't kow any more private address from me, then use web@ekr-home.de. This address will work until it is overly spammed again, and then I'll switch again more regularly. This is also a little experiment to see how long it takes from this address being publicated here until the spam comes in.

I also found the following services helpful to avoid spam or the need to hand out your mail addresses:

Spamgourmet - the best of them, unfortunately under DDoS by spammers since months, and now unusable.
Mailinator - random mail addresses without any accounts.
Spammotel - similar to Spamgourmet, but requires to log in and click somewhere before you get a new address... didn't really use it much.

I'll try to work without them for the time being, and hope that Spamgourmet gets onto its feet again.

About time

2006-08-30T22:04:00.000+02:00

>> Over a month... time to update!

Well, what's time (and again) anyway? Time is relative, especially dinner time.

But closely related, what's space? Lots of things are going on there behind the scenes.

There's one book which explains the string theory approach to space and time: The Elegant Universe (Brian Greene). It's well worth the trouble, in my opinion. If you liked good old Einstein with his thoughts experiment, then Greene is more cutting edge (and includes the most important points about Einsteins relativity theories as well, for the same price).

I don't pretend to mathematically understand everything Greene writes, but I don't think that's necessary at all, as his book is intended for the general public, not for mathematicians. There are no formulas in there, but he does a good job explaining the concepts. A big point of his book is a meta-explanation of the state of the science that works on string theory - being that the mathematicians out there don't really understand the theory either, yet. But it's still very fascinating.

Go get it, and broaden your view of the universe. And then explain to your friends what a 11-dimensional Calabi-Yau space looks like. :)

Kaltenberg 2006

2006-07-23T22:37:00.000+02:00

Here are my images from the Kaltenberger Ritterturnier 2006 (site is in german; the english version is here, but it seems to be broken).

Kaltenberg is a small village west of Munich; they have the "Kaltenberg Knights Tournament" each year. It is - to my knowledge - the largest commercial medieval knight tournament in Germany. It is always very noisy and colourful, with all kinds of things to see and do (and buy). It's not authentic, but who cares.

It is also known for being the event where the band Corvus Corax plays on each day (Wikipedia on Corvus Corax). Corvus Corax happens to be the most famous - to my knowledge - medieval band in Germany. :)

Optics

2006-05-30T18:53:00.000+02:00

Specifically for Mr. Calderone, a link to a beautiful site:

http://www.atoptics.co.uk/

It explains a lot of athmospheric and optic phenomena, including nice pictures. Including Rays&Shadows, Water Droplets, Rainbows, Ice Halos, and the High Athmosphere.

Also, for more like these, check out http://www.polarimage.fi/.

Last but not least, I used to visit http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ daily. It has a single new astronomical picture for each day, with a short description and loads of links to in-depth information.

A different kind of Chaos / Mailinator

2006-03-28T10:19:00.000+02:00

This blog is more and more turning out to be my personal bookmark site...

A different kind of Chaos is a nice blog from the guy who made the Mailinator, a service that lets you use fake anti-spam mail addresses without signing up (and even without creating the address before you use it).

He has some relatively long - for a blog, anyway - articles about software development in a business context, and brings up interesting topics with a little bit of humour.

Edit: www.spamgourmet.com is similar in that it offers on-the-spot generation of accounts, but it also has a login, so you are sure to get the mails yourself; and it forwards incoming mail. Altogether a better solution for most things, then.

Socar Myles

2006-03-12T22:33:00.000+01:00

Finally, something worthwhile to post again... found the artist Socar Myles by accident - she likes rats and zombies, so check her out.

Elfwood gallery

Socar Myles' website

Some videos...

2006-03-05T01:59:00.000+01:00

The good, the (not so) bad, and the quite ugly... oh, and the downright absurd. Take your pick: 1 2 3 4

Sudokus

2006-03-05T01:35:00.000+01:00

Recently started to do Sudokus while driving to work... see www.websudoku.com or any other site for more information.

Great fun!

Pandora

2006-01-01T16:58:00.000+01:00

A nice service which goes on to explore music for you: www.pandora.com. What to say, it works.

Images

2005-11-13T23:13:00.001+01:00

Just a little test - does that images stuff of blogger.com work? :-) It's from a nice little outdoor park around here.

There you go! At least Leyna+Derko should be happy now!

Oh, and while I'm at it: I recently switched to Picasa2, give it a try if you have lots of photos, and if you like google software.

New HOWTOs

2005-04-26T19:43:00.000+02:00

Two new HOWTOs: HOWTO: Setup a server using KNOPPIX and HOWTO: Use an AVM Fritz!Card USB v2.1 in Debian.

Feedback page

2005-04-24T16:18:00.000+02:00

Added a feedback page.

Nice web radio

2005-04-23T23:52:00.000+02:00

Celtic Grove

Earth

2005-03-19T00:09:00.000+01:00

Ever wanted to play astronaut? Take a look at Earth.

[Edit] This pales a bit against Google Earth.

Palm / Fitaly

2005-03-17T22:41:00.000+01:00

There's a very nice tool for the Palm OS (and many other systems) called the FITALY keyboard. That's FITALY like in QWERTY. It's a whole new key arrangement specially made for systems like a Palm Pilot where you enter characters using a single finger or pen.

It is very intuitive, has a few very nice features, and it's free too. Check it out at http://www.fitaly.com/index.htm.

(Update) After 1.5 months of usage, writing on the FITALY keyboard is as fast or sometimes faster than on the QWERTY. The pen travels less, the hand stays in the same spot almost all the time. Very nice.

HOWTO enhance KNOPPIX

2005-03-12T20:02:00.000+01:00

The HOWTO: Create a KNOPPIX CD with your own startup script has been added.

The Fallen Realm

2005-02-20T12:23:00.000+01:00

The source code as well as the original web pages of "The Fallen Realm" have been added here - check the Open Source section.

Aliens

2005-02-04T21:48:00.000+01:00

If you are convinced that there are aliens out there, try http://alphabet.tmema.org/ and make up a truetype font so you can send them some letters...

Cars and terrorism

2005-01-29T13:35:00.000+01:00

There is a new video clip, probably for advertisement, which spawned a bit of discussion in some places, and even made it to the news, when VW (German car company) sued the makers of the video.

Short story: Terrorist enters a VW Polo, drives to a cafe, and sets off a bomb... with a surprising twist.

What's interesting is the reason for suing. You can read details and further links at a topic on www.orf.at (in German, sorry). The gist is that the clip is, according to VW, "inhuman and criminal" - and probably slander against VW.

Of course, IMO, the suing itself is not the problem; the problem is that other people could sue VW if VW didn't sue first. So a company practically has to sue to avoid being sued themselves (by "human rights" activists or other people who don't think the spot is very funny).

Now... is making fun of terrorism "inhuman"? Are some kinds of black humour too black? Should ads which contain ill people, old people, unlucky people also be removed, because real ill, old, unlucky people would think they are being made fun of? Would everything be OK if the terrorist would wear a mask, so you wouldn't think he came from a certain place?

I guess everyone has to find his own opinion there, but I prefer to laugh at terrorists instead of fearing them. And, besides, I'd rather have ads like this which are a bit on the far side, instead of the usual kind of ad which are totally boring and braindead.

[Edit 03/2005]Here's another clip with a car and something else...

[Edit 03/2005]Fun, the movie has disappeared from the last link I knew of... but this site seems to be looking for new sources for the movie, and it can be downloaded from there.

Fun stuff

2005-01-23T01:00:00.000+01:00

Some may remember the Badger badger badger flash movie... there is more. Check out an advent calendar by the same guy. Some of the items are a bit weird, but some are quite funny (I like days 21 and 24 best).

Of course, most people will neither know the first movie, nor get the joke. :)

Here we go...

2004-12-06T22:29:00.000+01:00

The first few pages of the website are finally set up after the domain was around for a few months. Comments are, as usual, welcome, although I guess there is not much here to comment on, except some egocentric stuff. :-)