tvc15

Message To Bob

The Moog company has found a way to pay tribute to Bob Moog, who passed away last year. Their new synth Little Phatty displays these words in it´s menu. No confirmation has been given yet if the pricey bit of hardware (around 1500 $) includes a reasonable sum given to charity or can- cer research with each sale...

Tax The Tax

Wouldn´t it be possible to come up with a taxes tax? I mean the more tax ones pays, the greater this additional tax would be. So if someone has around 50 percent income tax, why not charge an extra 10 percent for this tax of all taxes? It could lift people with a mere 12 percent income tax up to a decent 15 percent one! Some sort of legal super tax the whole country could benefit from. Interesting conversa- tions could arise, e.g. when the 19 percent VAT in Germany next year would be boosted by 2.5 percent super tax, tax of all taxes. Will I get elected any time soon?

Twenty Years Ago

Looking at this picture from 1986 again I thought about the conceptions we had at that time about living twenty years in the future. Quite clearly the vision of updating a blog daily that would avaiable to nearly every location on the globe was not part of my ideas. Nor saying good bye to my beloved record shops but carrying 5000 songs around in a sort of neo-walkman each day. Nor could I figure out investing a couple of thousand Euros in a mining fund, which goes down 500 quid during a handful of days. Placing some investments on underated companies in 1986 and waiting for a cash-in at the end of the century would have been something though... And yes, not to forget registering the word Google as a trademark!

The Basic Backup Question

The very basic question one should answer after having in- stalled a backup software is: does it restore properly? This might sound very obvious, but DO TEST it even when feeling safe with your tried and tested backup software. Because when I wanted to run the software I successfully made backups with for the last two years on my new system, it did not run properly. It just corrupted the system and THAT WAS IT. Blame it on the RAID, blame it on the new program version, blame it on whatever reason. Basicly all images I had created during the last week were in vain. So DO CHECK, will you!

Venus In Furs

Found on the web today:

The real reason NASA is covering up life on venus is that it knows that Venus is populated only by beautiful women who, by necessity, would be lesbians capable of repro- duction. Knowledge of this would greatly reduce the po- pularity of the current government in the USA which garners much of its support on its anti gay policies.

The mere thought of all those beautiful women soaping each other in the shower would be enough to turn most males in the USA to support gays and thus the current government would lose some of its support base and stand to lose the next election.

This is the REAL reason NASA was instructed by the white house to keep the existence of Venusian women secret.

However, there are rumours that Victoria's Secrets as well as the california porn industry may join forces to lobby the government to not only admit to the females on venus, but also strike a free trade deal with Venus to allow Victoria's Secret to penetrate a huge female market, and for the porn industry to source great new actresses for its movies.

Just imagine the titles such as "Debbie does Venus". And if NASA gets royalties from those movies, as well as revenues from transporting tons of Victoria's Secret lingerie to Ve- nus, its budgets would be sufficient to fund its other endea- vours.

Gotcha Gocta

Read today that the third-largest waterfall of the world has just been filmed for the very first time in history. Gocta in Peru pours water down over 770 metres and has been some sort of mystic place for ages. It is said that soon the region will soon see roads being build to carry tourists to the site, 700 kilometres away from Lima. But don´t expect myself bringing photographs from there any time soon...

UFO Landing Site

Even more unreal (how can something look "even more unreal" anyway?) the Rotana Beach Hotel in Abu Dhabi looked at night. The tower features something that looks like a helipad or some Arabian UFO landing site, which shines like a crown during the nighttime. So to answer all questions upfront: no, we didn´t spot any aliens in there, but we haven´t been to the tower suites!

The Secret Life Of Arabia

The secret life of Arabia
Secret secrets never seen
Secret secrets ever green

I was running at the speed of life
Through morning's thoughts and fantasies
Then I saw your eyes at the cross fades
Secret secrets never seen
Secret secrets ever green

The secret life of Arabia
Never here never seen
Secret life ever green

The secret life of Arabia
You must see the movie the sand in my eyes
I walk through a desert song when the heroine dies

To make it less "secret", more photos from the United Arab Emirates are up now.

Glories Catalanes

Somewhere in the system is still some sort of Sasser worm left, while all the others have been cleared. Hope to catch this fish later tonight...

Anyway, all posts will have to be postponed until Monday, as we are off to Barcelona tomorrow, celebrating Antonias birthday. James Holden and Tiefschwarz will provide the entertainment on Friday night, dunno where we will end up Saturday/Sunday.

Still Bugged

Some malware is really nasty... Wonder if installing SP2 and all avaiable updates from a secure source will close all back- doors and get rid of the scum on my new system!

Trojans And Things

Looks like the system catched some trojans, viruses or other nasty things before the Windows updates and security patches were completed. So coming home today my ISP had shut my access down. After downloading a handful of removal tools the system now seems to be clean and the connection is running again.

That means the pictures I wanted to up today are not yet ready. So if you don´t see any news here, I have been cut off again and send to a prison... Or I am fleeing to the city of Barcelona, where - believe it or not - the weather too is far from good. Something surely is wrong with the weather this year!

Architecture V UAE

The United Arab Emirates Abu Dhabi and Dubai share a passion for shiny surfaces on tall buildings it seems. In the setting sun the structures look best, as you can check here. Running around between the skyscrapers in February one wonders how the streets between the buildings will be boiling in August.

FEAR

System up and running, installed a game and now I´ve got F.E.A.R.!

Thank You Asus...NOT!

The new machine did arrive yesterday and needs to be set up. Perhaps it might save a few souls to remark one does need an old fashioned floppy disk containing drivers if you want to install a RAID System under XP. Picture this: your old computer is away and the company providing the new motherboard wants to save 5 cent or something by NOT including a floppy disk containing drivers (as does Asus).

They do think one can extract the drivers onto a floppy from the CD with the other motherboard programs. But how to extract it from the disk without an installed system? Or how to install XP with no RAID drivers? Maybe Vista will need a Competition Pro joystick connected via a firewire port before it starts installing...

As Unreal As It Looks

While waiting for my new computer to surface I transferred the pictures from the UAE trip from the camera. This shot of Abu Dhabi at sunset is a teaser for the pictures to come. I gave it a little digital treatment but already the original photo has unreal qualities. Could be this city is quite unreal itself. This one was taken from a cafe at top of the Marina Mall, facing the city and the world largest flag pole in front.

Don´t Be Tempted

Don´t click this link!

Clare Grogan

Something really strange happened this morning: I googled the alleged email address of Clare Grogan. This must be fake. I don´t believe this is real.

The HEADCRASH...

...did still not happen, but the system is slow as a snail, whenever the HDs are accessed. Did hear something about data corruption in certain RAID setups? I do not want to repeat this on the new system...

Dual Core

A dual core processor seems to be over sized, but I could not help but ordering one. Plus the big graphics card, plus two gigs of RAM. And two RAIDed HDs of 200 MB each. Not to forget the "quite a nice motherboard", as the guy in the shop remarked. But for the very first time in history I´ve opted for an Athlon and not an Intel processor. What a major change! But I´ll the the old keyboard and mouse - promised!

Shutdown

Back from Abu Dhabi one of the HDs of my computer seems to be leaving the planet soon. Somehow the keyboard is no  longer recognised, booting takes ages. All data has been saved to external disks, awaiting the HD to crash. So this looks like a perfect excuse to buy a new rig and start from scratch...

But it means the pictures from Abu Dhabi and Dubai are here but might not be upped for a while. What a shame!