renovatio06's blog/

I was just about to write an entry entitled "Root canal without anesthesia" - because life has been feeling that way over the past two weeks - when someone "buzzed" me on the chat and shared this:

Now I'm all giggling and chuckling - and thinking: Someone's really got a lot of spare time on their hands... ;-)

P.S.: I just realized, not everyone might understand the implied joke and fun in this, because it's the author's - very artistic and creative imho - reference to the ATARI- and video-games generation as well as people doing a video technique called stopmotion. If you find yourself going "doh! WTF?!" read up first ;-)

Wow! I just noticed that ipernity introduced a new feature: Different views of your homepage for different audiences, e.g. visitors (public), friends, family & friends and family. I haven't played around with this yet, but I guess the idea is - besides presenting your content in individual styles per audience - to have different default security levels for your content.

This is interesting. In any case: Team ipernity don't rest in giving  us more and more features. In addition to refraining from any restrictions in controlling our content as is now effectively the case with flickr, the set of features is getting richer and richer.

Kudos to "iperniteers"!
 :-)

It's really amazing, amusing, a tad scary and wondrous - all at the same time: Here I am, facing one of the darkest times of my life ever. Literally everything I have been working towards over my past 15-20 years in terms of a professional life is gradually, but rapidly falling apart. My tax declaration for 2006 almost has me go bankrupt and there will be just a tiny, tiny portion of money left to avoid getting evicted from my home. The new contacts I have been working on, seem to function, but aren't enough to support me, meaning the effort-result ratio is not in my favour... or in other terms: The work doesn't pay as much as I would need to cover cost of living. Hence, I've begun reducing expenses to the very basic needs like food, lodging, clothing and I might have to get accustomed to the thought of selling the beloved MINI Cooper - and maybe even do without a car at all for some time. The list of adverse events and developments goes on, but I spare you the details as they might be too boring to hear/read.

So, in going through this process of seeing my old life dissolve into a fading memory (which might equal "progress" when being viewed from a different perspective), I am faced with a number of probing questions, e.g. where are my strongest talents, what is it that really makes me happy, have I ever been happy at all, what is meaningful to me, where do I find faith etc. etc. In other terms: I have to assess my assets and align them with my true needs and goals in life. I guess, it's needless to say that this isn't exactly an easy process to deal with - on the other hand: Probably a very mundane one, which most of us have to face or have faced at some point in their lives. I know for a fact that I've heard of such situations from other people, for the most part instigated by potentially lethal illnesses, loss of a dear person (or even a number of dear persons as I learnt last night), loss of wealth or other life events, which present themselves as wake-up calls.

In my case, I do remember having been in a similar situation for the first time, when I had just left the military and begun an apprenticeship with a company selling music equipment. The apprenticeship didn't last, but I was able to meet people who reaffirmed my assumption that only faith in yourself gets you where you want to be in life - and so I left the company and went after my first dream: To be a full-time, professional musician. My first shot at that didn't yield the anticipated outcome, but at least I was able to support myself. Anyway, let's not look backwards, but into the future: What am I going to do with my life and talents?

While looking at past attempts of answering these questions to myself, the results that came about and how they made me feel, I find myself being not as bold and unintimiated as in earlier years - which doesn't come as too big a surprise as I'm just not 23 anymore and second chances tend to wear out over time. Despite of my uncertainty, my worrying and worries ranging from concern to blunt panic attacks, I was stunned to find this in my mailbox today, which is part of a newsletter I am still subscribed to as one of my measures to plan the migration to Canada. I can't lie: It had a tremendous effect on me and almost got me misty... It seems as if I were attracted to the more artistic aspects of my personality, as I like myself better that way than in the traditional role of a career-oriented person.

But... I've learnt this: It's better to take one's time in making profound and potentially life-altering decisions. So I'll allow myself to let this sink in and sit there for a while before drawing premature conclusions and taking action. Nonetheless: Isn't it interesting how these things come your way...? It seems to prove that there is no such thing as coincidence and a quote from a movie might apply as well: There are no ordinary moments.

I'm off to the IQ test in about 30 minutes as announced here. Why does this mean something to me? Well, first, I have a feeling it could explain a lot of struggling (but not all of it), and second, if I really score higher than 130, it should have a pragmatic quality in terms of better qualifying for student grants, scholarships etc.

I think, I'm beginning to have a new idea as to how I can make more of my (professional) life... Anyways, off for the day or so. See you later.

I'm borrowing a term my landlord at the Bed & Breakfast in Vancouver once used when referring to one of her appartments. I find it appropriate in this situation: We've had precursors of snowfall over the past few weeks and days. Especially yesterday, I could smell the scent of snow in the brisk air coming down from the mountains. I could even see snowcovered mountain peaks through my tele lens. Snowfall started last night, and continued this morning until now at temperatures around 0 Celsius. When looking through the window to the terrace and garden, the view doesn't exactly entice me to go outdoors all that much. I feel like snuggling up inside in my bathrobe over a cup of tee and some chill-out music in the background, while working on stuff. Maybe this is a good time to do the much dreaded system upgrade to Mac OS X 10.5 and backing up and cleaning out my user directory... On a different note, the silence outside brought about by the muting quality of snow seems to be a mirror to how I feel inside: There's been quite some emotional turmoil going on over the past weeks, bearing consequences that make me feel as if I was back to square one in regard to my life. I know, I'm not, but it feels like that. More so, as I find myself wondering again, how I'll manage to cope with requirements associated with supporting myself, financially more than anything. The writing assignments are coming, but I don't get the feeling as if they were a reliable and sufficient source of income and I hope I won't be forced to take on a job in addition to the writing just to cover basic needs. Hiding doesn't solve anything, I'm aware of that, but at this time of the year, that's exactly what I'd like to do: Just hide inside and peek at the world through my computer screen and the living room windows. Have I mentioned, I'm not a winter person any more? Doh...

So I did the much dreaded upgrade from Tiger to Leopard. Much dreaded, because a system upgrade always comes at the expense of numerous backups and a general "spring cleaning" type of perusing data and throwing out the cobwebbs and other stuff that's beyond their expiration date.

The overall amount of time for such activities is usually no less than an entire day, given that I tend to make a mirror image of my entire hard drive before going about the maintenance and cleaning process. All of this naturally to the end of running a clean install on a newly formatted drive and gradually retrieving needed data from the backup.

So, what's new and which features have I been anticipating the most? To me, the main area of improvement I'll be looking into over the next weeks is everything around Mail and iCal, particularly their interaction in terms of project management and personal schedule and staying organized. In that domain, previous versions of Mail and iCal simply sucked beyond bearable and I was forced to resort to Microsoft's Entourage, which I find a lot more cooperative in terms of project management workflow. But given latest improvements in Mail and iCal, the two applications act more like team players and give you an overall feel of being integrated a lot tighter. Particularly adding new todo items from incoming mail as well as data dectectors smoothen the edges around interplay of said apps. Too bad, iCal failed on updating my previous iCal database on first launch, so I was forced to import previously created calendars manually, thus losing their names as well as groups. If you don't know your way around Mac OS X's system structure, you're at loss at this point and will most definitely never get to see important data, e.g. that important business meeting you scheduled for next week, with details on directions, rooms, time, attendees... Not good, but as I know where to look, I was able to retrieve and restore that information. It would haven been easier, if I had backed up my iCal-db using its built-in backup procedure.

On a brighter note: Startup time is simply phenomenal! Shortly after hearing the system startup sound, you are being presented with the new, uncluttered, sleek and even more elegant user interface. Aside from further sweetened eye candy, Leopard feels a lot more responsive than Tiger, especially in managing multiple open windows and applications. Typically, I run five to six apps simultaneusly and Tiger's UI server process had been feeling pretty clumsy towards the end of Tiger's life cycle (10.4.11 was the last upgrade I installed). As I tend to spend most of the day in front of the "box" and with applications tending to eat more memory the longer you work and then eventually beginning to swap out memory contents to hard drive and reading it back in, overall performance didn't do that expression justice any more. So, I am very happy to see overall system performance vastly improved.

Quicklook is quite nice, too, but frankly, I've been doing much of the "first look" idea behind it by simply selecting a given file and bringing up its Information window - for the most part, I get the idea of a file's content by looking at the preview. So this is yet another feature the pragmatic use of which I find debatable in terms of developer expense and time. Similar with Spaces: Yes, agreed, from time to time there's clutter of open windows from working in no less than five apps at the same time - all the time. But the ONE feature, which helps me keep open windows in check is Option-Command-Select, effectively always hiding the previously frontmost app when switching to a new one. What do I need an army of developers for to be working on a feature which has been there all along?

In general I have to admit that in terms of usability and support of a productive workflow, I'm beginning not to see huge advances any more - except for performance, admitted. I'd rather see more diversity in designing my own workflow that helps me be as productive and efficient as possible. And in that regard, I lately find an approach of "this way or no way, stupid!" to take over.

Compared to other system upgrade prices, I'd say 129,- bucks or Euros is o.k. However, I'm missing the killer feature... (Time Machine? Give me a break!)

P.S.: I seem to have overlooked the Bounce-feature in Mail - cool! This way, you "bounce" i.e. return unwanted messages (Junk mail, spam) to their respective senders, thus giving them the impression as if they had hit an incorrect mail address - very cool, actually! Yeah, fight fire with fire! :D

On August 25 this year, I watched a TV documentary on a fate so grim, it makes my own struggles appear as insignificant as a broken shoestring: The conviction of Jens Soering to a double life sentence for murder in the first degree - a crime, he never committed. From reading into the facts all day long today, facts on this incomprehensibly cruel account of events and their ungraspable outcome - and I'm not talking about the crime scene, which can only be described as a slaying spree -, the almost inhuman sacrifice of his life being consciously thrown inside of prison walls with him being left to die there, the hard-headedness of certain parties responsible for handling his trial or defending his case, the series of procedural sloppiness and plain error, the most blatant betrayal by the one person he tried to save from the electric chair and the fact that until today he has been spending more time behind bars than in freedom - the sum total of facts of this tragedy surpasses any other I've ever heard of or read about.

To cut a long story short: Mr. Soering, a German citizen and son of a German diplomat, has been innocently incarcerated for 21 years - that must become apparent to anyone reading the series of events with a clear and unbiased mind. True, he has admitted to the crime - under the false assumption to be enjoying diplomatic immunity and thus being able to save his then girlfriend from the electric chair. He later revoked his confession, but was tried and convicted for first degree murder, nonetheless. I tend to call it a classic "a pawn for a king" case, with him being the pawn and the US penitentiary system in general and the undisputability of Ms. Haysom's reputation and that of her family in particular. But more than anything: I see a clear wish by US officials as well as citizens to hang on to their conviction of the US jurisdiction never failing and never making exceptions for anyone - much less an arrogant, nerdy, snotty know-it-all from a foreign country who has the nerve to nervously laugh in the face of the prosecutor from plain terror and shock over what was going on at that moment in that court-room.

I'm afraid, I can't spare you to read a bit into it for yourselves. More importantly, anyone reading this and anyone with their hearts in the right spot, please take the little effort and time to provide yourself with the full account of things and support Mr. Soering's plea for parole and clemency. I have set up a wordpress blog in order to collect supporting "votes" to this end and then file a formal petition (link removed upon request of Jens' close friends) to the Governor of Virginia. I think there'll be more momentum this way, i.e. if we collected supporting statements first and then sent out a petition every 1,000 "signatures" or so (here effectively being comments). I may be refining the introductory "mission" over the next few days as well as figure out a procedure as to directly sending emails to this blog, thus posting a comment with every email. I know - comment spam might become a problem, but it should be worth it.

I am doing all this, because I'm frankly in shock over the mere fact that things like this go on in our world and that people can actually be that cruel to each other. Please support this. Thanks.

UDPATE: I called Ms. Gail Sterling Marshall as of today, November 29th 2007, 9 am EST to confirm delivery of an email I sent her about a week ago. She confirmed receipt of my message and asked me to give her about a week's time to meet and consult with Jens directly on behalf of our initiative. See - something's happening! Thanks for your support, this is major!