Blog, Projects, Random Stuff

Wer kein RSS mag, kann meinen Blog ja eigentlich schon immer auch per Mail abonnieren -  nur dass der Mailversand seit einigen Monaten kaputt war.

Zudem hatte ich mich eigentlich dran gewöhnt, bei neuen Kommentaren zu meinen Posts per Mail benachrichtigt zu werden. Auch das klappte offenbar nicht mehr.

Beide Probleme sollten jetzt gelöst sein. Indem ich dies schreibe, teste ich zugleich auch, ob es wirklich geht. Falls nicht, wird es ja eh keiner merken, dass es hier steht…

PS: Das Problem war, dass mein neuer Server nicht als eigenständiger Mailversender konfiguriert ist, und die Standard-mail-Funtion von PHP nur mit SMTP ohne Authentifizierung funktioniert. Einen derart unsicheren Service nutze ich natürlich nicht. Es war gar nicht so einfach, eine Lösung dafür zu finden, aber hier gibt es eine, die innerhalb von WordPress funktionieren sollte.

Lang war’s ruhig in diesem Blog. Wie der vorherige Post vom 14. April 2011 sagt:

“If you read this text, then you’ve already been served by my new server. (…) However, I suspect that the transition might have led to a few minor problems.”

Die Transition der Webseite von einem Server auf eine andere war aber wohl das kleinere Problemchen.

And if you read this text, you’ve been served by my new self

Ich selbst habe nämlich auch eine Transition hinter mir, von Brian nach Lena, von Mann zu Frau. Read more

If you read this text, then you’ve already been served by my new server. The times of slow downloads and endless response times are finally over. However, I suspect that the transition might have led to a few minor problems. If you find any errors on my site (especially broken links and missing images), please drop me a line.

…and so is my blog.

(I know that “out of order” applies to technical stuff, an normally one would say “I’m currently too busy”. But depending on how busy you are, there isn’t a clear distinction anyway)

It might seem as if my blog was dead even before it started living. But rest assured, this is just a temporal break. Currently, my studies and other affairs are so demanding, that blogging just doesn’t fit in. It was even hard to find a moment to post this post, which just emphasizes its message. But as I think that having time for blogging is a crucial right of any human being, I’m constantly trying to change my life in a way that will give me that time back (and time for other things, of course).

There are so many things to say, mostly unwritten but well thought about, so that in the not-so-distant future, when I’ll have the necessary time, there’s no risk of running out of ideas. To make the waiting worthwhile, I’ll present a (not even complete) List of topics that I want to cover soon:

• What does it take to be an inventor?
• Tin-openers as a model for software tools
• When the food is smiling at you
• Is portability a means to an end, or an end in itself?
• Is OpenStreetMaps an every-day-alternative to e.g. Google Maps?
• How everybody can contribute to OpenStreetMap without even leaving his home.
• Make simple things simple, or: the theory of computational complexity applied to human beings (for both computer-related and real-world tasks)
• How it feels to fail at the most simple tasks
• The problem of fuzzy groups in social interaction and web administration
• The pros and cons of tuition fees (Studiengebühren)

I can’t guarantee that each topic will be covered, or that I will manage to do this any time soon, but if some of this sounds interesting to you, you should consider coming back or subscribing to my RSS feed.

PS: One note on the choice of language: This will be an english blog. But if I have something of interest only to a limited, german-only audience, I fall back to using german. If you’re an english speaker, you probably don’t miss anything.