ingokeck blog

Adios Safari. Bienvenido Firefox.

ingokeck@ingokeck.de — 2008-02-01T10:40:35+01:00

There was a time when Safari was the fastest and the best webbrowser on the mac. It was my default browser for more than 3 years. But one thing has changed it all:

Flash.

It started small, like only one annoying flash applet on webpages that I used to read. It wasn't doing much that could not be achieved with animated gif or png. Apart from eating like 100 times the CPU power.
It did not worry me that much, I could set most of them to "hidden" with my user stylesheet in Safari. I did not notice that people all around me started cutting down the number of open pages in their browsers to only one, so that their computer did not slow down to a crawl.
But now the times have changed. Webdesigner startet using not only more and more flash-applets per page, they also started hiding them in the code, making it hard to filter them by CSS. The last drop was the switch to javascript based flash inclusion to bypass the filtering on the side of the user.
Within the last three months using Safari on my Mac has turned into a nightmare of slowliness. I could not switch of Javascript because I need it, and I could not switch of Flash because I also need it. Safari does not let me filter flash. What could I do?

Switch to Firefox. Install the Flashblock-addon. And there is no step three.

Buy an Expert

ingokeck@ingokeck.de — 2007-08-01T18:05:02+02:00

The german newspaper "Spiegel" writes in Deutsche Manager fallen bei Finanzinvestoren durch (losly translate-able as "german managers having a hard time with their investors"):
"Mit Praxiserfahrung meinen die Investoren jedoch nicht die Kenntnis der Branche, sondern ein generelles Verständnis der Abläufe in Unternehmen. Sie verstehen darunter auch nicht Expertenwissen, denn das, so argumentieren die Befragten, könne man im Markt 'billig einkaufen'."
("By practical knowledge the investors do not mean the knowledge of the field of the company but a general understanding of the operations within companies. Also they do not mean expertise, because that can be bought cheaply on the market")
Ignoring the fact that it is almost best not to believe anything written in the german press (speaking of this, where are the articles about companies moules in german ministeries?) this is still very interesting.
If I do not have expertise on the field of the company, how can I decide wether the cheap expert has sound knowledge of the field or wether he is just giving the impression that he has it?
It is difficult and time-consuming to gain expertise. If the expert is really cheap he simply can not be very good (or the market has gone insane). But the price alone is no good indicator either. A expensive fraudster will appear better than a expensive expert because he will gain more money and can put the saved work in better advertising.
Some examples:
Web-Designer: Since the web has gone mainstream, self called experts keep on telling that the consumers like hugh colourful websites full of flash. The reality is quite different: of all search engines only the most minimalistic Google prevailed. And thinking about auction websites, today there is only the in comparison more minimalistic left: Ebay.
Apple: Since Steve Jobs returned to the company the tide has changed and Apple gains more and more money. The company is known for the ease-of-use of their products and people in marketing all around the world are wondering how a product that has less features and a higher price can gain the highest market share in a consumer market. Obviously Jobs has the expertise to "buy" the best expert. Speaking of buy - the experts are not bought at Apple. They are contracted workers.

Barcelona

ingokeck@ingokeck.de — 2007-07-18T16:28:53+02:00

If you life in Barcelona you quickly notice that Barcelona is a very special city. In Barcelona everything is special.
The aquarium for example. 15.50 EUR for a, well ok, it is big, shark basin, some very small fish tanks and a big gift shop (that you can enter without paying). In caixa's science museum you can see much more and the basic entrance of 3 EUR is surprisingly cheap (but you have to pay extra for almost everything you want to see).
Or the poble español (spanish village). 7.50 EUR to enter a shopping mall that is built like some houses in spanish cities. Don't expect something like a museum.
Finally, Night Life! Want to spend some hundreds of euros in one night? No problem in the center or on the beach, in the clubs and the discotheques. But yet close to the centre, in the Eixample, you may run into problems because the bars there close at 10 o' clock and thats it. Well, Barcelona is not Spain. Try not to forget it.
All in all, everything in Barcelona is special. Because it is in Barcelona.
PS: And don't get me started on the things they call "Tapas" here.

Softwarewechsel

ingokeck@ingokeck.de — 2007-06-29T16:58:22+02:00

I just switched my blog software - from Wordpress to rapidweaver. Why? Because I am going to switch my whole website to Rapidweaver. One of the reasons is that Wordpress does not handle multi-language websites (or can be it does but I wasn't able to find it. Anyway, if there is no simple way I don't want to try the hard way.)
And I have learned another thing: To take your data with out does not work. As usual, you can get data imported but not exported. It seems that Rapidweaver is not any better but at least I can write in more than one language (and I need that to practice). And the website is now static - there is no point in putting anything in a dynamic data base if nothing is going to change.

Dicke Kinder

ingokeck@ingokeck.de — 2007-03-29T16:51:21+02:00

Was in der ganzen Radhelm-Debatte gerne vergessen wird ist dass das Fahrrad das Hauptverkehrsmittel für Kinder und Jugendliche ist. Als solches erweitert es nicht nur den Bewegungsraum beträchtlich, sondern sorgt noch dazu für regelmäßige Bewegung - was nicht ganz unwichtig ist denkt man an Wohlstandskrankheit Nr. 1 bei uns.
Nachdem Radhelme ja als Haupteffekt haben, den Leuten das Radfahren zu verleiden (siehe Radhelmpflichten - Fakten, Zahlen und Konsequenzen) ist das ebenfalls ein deutlicher Punkt sich gegen Radhelme und die Werbung dafür auszusprechen. Gegenargument ist regelmäßig dass die Kinder dann ja vielleicht auf andere Art Sport treiben. Pues, puede ser que no:
In Active Transportation to School Over 2 Years in Relation to Weight Status and Physical Activity untersuchten Dori E. Rosenberg*, James F. Sallis, Terry L. Conway, Kelli L. Cain und Thomas L. McKenzie Schulkinder in den USA und fanden heraus dass die “nicht-Dicken” zu Fuß oder mit dem Rad in der Schule kommen, die “Dicken” aber gerade nicht. Nicht verwunderlich, wenn man bedenkt dass das Radfahren auf den Alltagswegen in der Regel nicht als Sport gesehen wird.