That was a hard day yesterday. I woke up in the morning to find out that the server my blog is on is down.

I talked to a friend of mine that also has his servers hosted at Hetzner and got the information that the provider wrote an e-mail some days ago that they will add UPS to the server room and that the admins have to stop their machines due to a power down caused by the change.

I am not the admin of the server but a friend of me that left to Turkmekistan (I hope that it is written that way) last weekend. So I did not have that information.

After calling my friend and getting username and password of the Hetzner robot I called the technician of our provider. He checked our machine and realized that the hardware was broken and he will change it. It took some minutes and he called back saying that the hardware is changed but that rock is not finding the network card.

I booted to the rescue system and took a lot of time to check what was wrong and recompile the kernel with tulip drivers that were missing.

After a reboot (my adrenaline was at 150% during the reboot (we do not have an automatic reset only a manual that takes a lot of time to be triggered) (we need a hardware reset to start the rescue system)) everything was back to normal.

That was the story of pallas aka www.esden.net … the pure adrenaline 😉

The day before yesterday I have bought a Sitecom USB to Serial cable (UC-104). The common problem with such cables is that there are no drivers from the producer for Mac OS X. The good thing is that most of these cables use a Prolific chip. Prolific is offering a driver for cables based on their chip on their site.

When I connected the Sitecom cable “About this Mac” reported that it is a Prolific but the driver did not load. I figured out that it is the Vendor Id and Product Id that were not matching.

I had to edit /System/Library/Extentions/ProlificUsbSerial.kext/Info.plist and change the vendor and product Id’s apropriately. (You can do that with every cable that has a prolific chip in it)

And after that I had to run kextload /System/Library/Extentions/ProlificUsbSerial.kext . And imagine what was the biggest problem I had. Yes exactly that I forgot to run kextload >_<

But now it works and through my post it is hopefully helpfull for someone that googles for this cable and mac 😉

(if it was usefull for you write a comment! I will be very happy about it 😉 )

Looking through pages writing about the OLED Keyboard I have found something very nice.

I have seen something made by some students at MIT before but this one is a commercial pendant to it. An interactive blinking floor and wall. It was made by Lightspacecorp and you can see some videos here.

I really have to admit that it is a nice thing something in the style of the lighting dancefloors known from the 80’s disco. I really would like to see that in some club nearby so I could dance my ass off on it 😉

Good news everyone!

From the new FAQ on the Optimus keyboard homepage:

It’s in initial stage of production

We hope it will be released in 2006

It will cost less than a good mobile phone

It will be real

It will be OS-independent (at least it can work in some default state with any OS)

It will support any language or layout

Each key could be programmed to produce any sequence

It will be an open-source keyboard, SDK will be available

Some day it will be split (‘ergonomic’)

It will most likely use OLED technology (e-paper is sooo slow)

It will feature a key-saver

Keys will use animation when needed

I snipped out some uninteresting stuff (see their page if you still want to read them).

The most important thing is that it will get real! Weehoo! I have to save money to buy it in 2006 😉
The open source thing is also veeery nice 😉 The other things too. 😉

I am already looking forward to that shiny lightning keyboard!!!

Fascinating! Through Slashdot in this article I have found the keyboard of my dreams!

In every key there is an oled display that shows the current function this key has. I was thinking about something like that some time ago. I should have patented it :/

I only hope that some day someone will produce such a keyboard!

Some days before I wrote about how important Unittesting is and thanks to Uwe’s Blog i got another proof.

That reminds me of writing the diff code for Diagnostics. The tests were fundamental in gaining a bit of trust in the quality of the code I have written. They triggered one bug after another… that was already in the code that I based mine on (the original code had no Unittesting or anything in the style). I only can shake my head about people not realizing how important that is.

Apropos that some days ago I told someone about Unittesting his response was really ridiculous: “writing that tests is real bloat I really do not have time to run the tests after changing one line code”. Read the article then you will understand why you will _take_ the time to run the tests! 😉

Ich bin gestern durch Slashdot auf einen super geilen iPod mod gestossen. Der Wood mod. Das tollste daran ist das es mit der Hand gemacht wurde. Eine tolle Arbeit muss ich sagen.

Es gibt aber trotzdem paar Sachen anzustreichen. Ich finde dadurch das es so dick lackiert ist sieht es zumindest auf den Photos wie aus Plastik aus. Obwohl wenn ich mir vorstelle wie es in Wirklichkeit aussehen kann denke ich das es schon in Ordnung ist.

Zweitens ist die Verdeckung vom Clickwheel so ausgebaeult. ich finde da haette man die Teile so anpassen sollen das es eine glatte Ebene ergibt so wie es bei dem Orginal iPod der fall ist. Denn so verleiht es einen klobigen Look und bricht mit der Sauberkeit des Orginaldesigns. Finde es aber ok das das Clickwheel aus einem anderen Holz ist als das Frontpannel. Das sieht ganz gut aus.

Alles im ganzen eine ueberwaeltigende Arbeit wie man es an den unzaehligen “Wow” und “Wooot” Kommentaren erkennen kann.

Da kommen schon gleich weitere Ideen wie man THC vielleicht Designen koennte 😉

Da ich momentan mein komplettes Webseiten Verzeichnis umraeume und neu strukturier bin ich auf was etwas was ich mal geschriben habe geschrieben habe.

Ein Vorschlag wie es aussehen koennte wenn man das Universum rebooten wuerde. Ihr koennt es euch hier durchlesen.

Wenn jemand von euch Verbesserungsvorschlaege hat darf sie logischerweise mitteilen. 😉