Hey there! I know, I know… This blog, or rather me on this blog, haven’t been very active – apart from the sidebar with my FriendFeed entries that catches all my activity from all over the web.

I have some ideas to create more howtos or guides like the Amazon EC2 OpenVPN guide. As a matter of fact, I’m currently working on creating an IPsec/L2TP guide for EC2. I have the basics figured out, but now I need to put them all together.
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Nachdem ich zuletzt im vergangenen Jahr über einen Foto-Verleih geschrieben hatte, gibt es den dort erwähnten Verleih-Service von Lens Avenue seit einigen Monaten nicht mehr. Zeit für eine neue Version dieses Artikels.
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Today Data Robotics presented a new device that power users always wanted from the Drobo: a really fast interface to connect the external storage to your workstation. I’m speaking about eSATA which makes the new Drobo S much faster. These higher speeds, that also apply to the Firewire 800 and to a negligible degree to the USB 2.0 interface, also come – according to Data Robotics’ Director of Product Marketing Jim Sherhart – as part of a new processing unit and upgraded memory. The company says the data rates should tick in at about 80 MByte/s for eSATA and 60 MByte/s for Firewire 800 respectively. The Drobo S now also has a 5th hard drive slot. How these speeds will apply to the real world is something only benchmarks will be able to tell.
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Last week was a good week in terms of interesting new iPhone apps: we got Tweetie 2, one of the best Twitter apps out there right now, and Adobe’s own Photoshop.com Mobile. Don’t be fooled by its Photoshop name. It’s by no means a fully equipped image manipulation app. It’s more like a quick way to polish your photos.
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On October 1st Google released Wave to some 100.000 selected beta testers. While I wasn’t lucky enough to get a first row seat, I had the luck to be nominated by Andrew Terry and Kol Tregaskes for an invite. 2-3 days later my nomination by these fine guys came through.
Currently the best way to use Wave is using a regular browser on your computer. In some instances though you might want to use it on the go, say, on an iPhone or iPod touch. There are various claims out there that state it isn’t possible because Google said so on their site when you tried to go there with MobileSafari. It does work though, and it’s not a real secret. Have a look.
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Excuse me for copying this verbatim from Thomas Hawk’s blog, but I couldn’t have said it better.

Over the past few days I’ve been watching the Roman Polanski story unfold. As much as I’ve been repulsed by Polanski’s 1977 rape of a 13-year-old girl, I’ve been absolutely flabbergasted and offended by the list of Hollywood elites and celebrities who have recently signed a petition demanding his release. Posting their names publicly in support of Polanski speaks loudly regarding their own lack of personal ethics and morality. Regardless of their friendships or professional affiliation with Polanski, by supporting him this way they are saying to the world that some of us are above the law. That some of us, due to artistic talent or past tragedy in life, or whatever, ought to somehow get a pass when it comes to the serious crime of raping a young girl.

[..]

I’m just a small time blogger and have nowhere near the voice of Hollywood A Listers like Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, David Lynch and others. But it’s hard for me to just sit by and not react to the brazen, public ethical and moral failure that their signatures on their petition represent. So I’ve decided to create my own petition that people can sign. My petition is one in support of the extradition and criminal prosecution of Polanski.

If you’d like to sign the petition, head over to the post at ThomasHawk.com and leave a comment. Here’s the petition:

PETITION SUPPORTING THE EXTRADITION OF ROMAN POLANSKI

Recently we have learned of the arrest of Director Roman Polanski on a 1978 warrant stemming from his fleeing a sentencing hearing related to a rape he committed of a 13-year old girl in 1977. We are outraged that Polanski has been able to escape justice this long for his crimes and that has been allowed to live as a free man abroad for over three decades. Regardless of one’s artistic achievements, regardless of one’s life tragedies, regardless if someone felt that they could travel legally in a neutral country, regardless of whether or not someone is being honored with a lifetime achievement award at a film festival, the crime of raping a child deserves punishment and the perpetrator of such an act should be brought to justice.

Money or powerful celebrity friends or political influence or artistic accomplishment should not have a bearing on one’s culpability for one’s crimes. All should be considered equal in the light of the law and Polanski should be afforded no special consideration given his status as a celebrity and artist.

As such, the undersigned fully support the extradition of Roman Polanski to the United States where he can finally be properly sentenced for his crimes.

Thank. Goodness. Push mail is now available for Gmail users on phones that support Exchange in some shape or form! It pushes to iPhone, Blackberry, Symbian S60 and Windows Mobile users. Everyone should have seen this coming after they enabled push for calendar and contacts earlier this year.
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Last week, on September 14-15th, our team (Kai and me) was invited to join Seak (@seaking on Twitter) and the Thalys crew to a special event in Paris, France. The Thalys is a highspeed train that connects Cologne and Paris with just a few stops along the way in Aachen, Liege and Brussels. Their goal for December ‘09 is a connection that just takes 3:15 from Cologne Station to Gare du Nord, Paris.
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I’m seeing this problem too often in my replies on Twitter, so I thought I make a little tutorial on “How to reply using twitter.com”
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Since the beginning of last week gamescom is in town. If you follow me on Twitter you’ve seen many updates containing the #gamescom tag. Additionally you can find more of my posts either on Flickr, TwitVid or YouTube. Or just get them all in one place at FriendFeed and follow me there.