Simon’s Weblog

As you know, I’m an advanced internet user and I also shop some times over the net.
As you know too, there are several possibilities to go online shopping:
The online shop and online auctions. Both have assets and drawbacks.
The day before yesterday, a friend of mine called me to ask if I had an account on Ricardo.
“Yes” I answered, and with these words I knew, that the next days shall be exciting.

So, she needs a slatted frame for her new bed. Okay, normally I buy such things in a furniture store, but why not.
After searching, we spent 1 holy frank And as you know further, auctions like that raise in the last minutes.

So, my job was to watch this auction every hour. And with every browser refresh the eagerness grew up and my adrenalin gage jumped into the nirvana.

Now he have “1 Std. 32 Min. 10 Sek.” before the end and it’s price is still 1 holy frank What an ennoying auction.
But let’s wait to the really last minutes…

I’ll keep you informed. Cheers.

[Update 07:52pm]
Nothing happened!!

[Update 08:16pm]
Booooring…

[Update Sunday 08:32am]
Shit, I forgot to update this post For your information: I’ve got the auction, no one has give another bid….
Annoying.

written by simcen

Hi People

I’m sorry to inform you, that I changed my blog software.
For reading it changed nothing, but if you use my rss feed, you have to update the location.
Old feed url: http://blog.simeli.org/atom.xml
New url: http://blog.simeli.org/feed/

As you can see, I installed Wordpress.
Reason is, that movable type is an overkill for my use and Wordpress comes with some features which I couldn’t find in Movable Type.

So, go on reading and have a nice day

written by simcen

Just found on YouTube.
What an impressive song!

Simon and Garfunkel - The Sound of Silence.View this entry to read the whole song text.
Continue reading »

written by simcen

Nearly the whole weekend I was concerned with water and its world under.
It begans with my second dive (currently I’m in the SSI Open Water Diver course) in a private pool near Worb. In a maximum depth of 4 meters, I learned basic things like getting back the diving regulator or how to flush water out of the mask and how to breathe with the backup regulator of my buddy.
It was pretty funny to learn these things and get the feeling of hovering in the water. Temperature of water was 27°C

Then yesterday evening, a friend of mine (Angelie, Happy Birthday again!! *kiss* ) celebrated her 19th birthday in the Art Café. Especial as other saturdays, there was the “Purple Night” party label, who always have other themes. Yesterday they took “Deep Blue Sea” - next thing with water related to me ;). Funny was that all accessories were spent by the Dive Center Köniz where I do my dive course. Compliments to the Art Café Crew, it looked very lovely!

Now today was the highlight of this weekend and a highlight for many years too, I think. I went first time diving in open water, exactly in the Thunersee near Oberhofen. Water was about 14 degrees and we had taken a really nice day to go diving, only little clouds appeared.
We’ve done two dives, one with a maximum depth of 8 meters and the second one in about 12 meters both for more than 30 minutes. Sight was surprisingly almost perfect! Thanks to skooba for guiding and training me!!
Yeah, my first two dives in my SSI Total Dive Log

written by simcen

The weekend before last, my parents went to a celebration of a friend of them.
On this celebration, they had a dress code and a theme who decided the look of the tables and other decoration.
So my parents had to search for a traditional swiss costume and they got one.
Look at this picture (click to enlarge):

Just pretty - isn’t it?

written by simcen

Hello World! I just discovered how to connect to the internet with my pocketpc (got Windows Mobile 5 installed).
My workstation is an IBM T42 (thanks for not having blowing-up batteries ) with an integrated bluetooth module.
Actually, I work with kubuntu 6.06.

First you need the core bluetooth packages for communicating with your bluetooth device:

$ apt-get install bluez-utils bluez-pin

After that, enable pand to start at boot:

$ vi /etc/default/bluez-utils

Change the lines below:

PAND_ENABLED=1
PAND_OPTIONS="--listen --role NAP"

To enable pin exchange, you need to give a 4-digit number:

$ vi /etc/bluetooth/pin
1234

Now when you connect with your device to your nap (Network Access Point, in my case the t42),
pand executes the dev-up script. It also creates a network interface (bnep0) for network access to the
device.
This is practical, so can add a little script to enable ip-forwarding:

Create the directory and add the script:

$ mkdir /etc/bluetooth/pan

$ vi /etc/bluetooth/pan/dev-up

The ip address in the script below is for our small network between the nap and the device.
Just give an address which is non-routable.
Remember: The subnetmask on your device has to accord to the one on your nap.
Code:

#!/bin/sh
logger -t pand "Bluetooth device discovered. Device addr: $2"modprobe ipt_MASQUERADE
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE

logger -t pand "Activated POSTROUTING and MASQUERADE for eth0"

ifconfig bnep0 192.168.100.1

logger -t pand "Started bnep0. pand ready for communication."

Add execute-flag to the dev-up script:

$ chmod +x /etc/bluetooth/pan/dev-up

Now we need a little tool for dns forwarding:

$ apt-get install dnsmasq

Now just restart the bluetooth services on your nap:

$ /etc/init.d/bluez-utils restart

From this point, the server or laptop or whatever is open for pan-challenge.
We only have to configure the network interface on the pocketpc:

- IP Address: 192.168.100.2
- SubnetMask: 255.255.255.0
- Gateway: 192.168.100.1
- DNS-Server: 192.168.100.1

Now enable bluetooth on the device and open a new partnership with the nap.
Use the pin, which you gave in /etc/bluetooth/pin.

Yeah, you got it. If everything works as designed, you’re online now.
Feel free to ask questions as a comment to this blog entry.

PS: All above is written by me, so there is no copyright on it
But, if you like to publish the same tutorial, please inform me with a simple mail!
Thanks

More information at:
- Bluetooth Profiles
- NAT

written by simcen

Yes it’s true. My blog has a new feature, “Lightbox” for displaying images:

Lightbox JS is a simple, unobtrusive script used to overlay images on the current page. It’s a snap to setup and works on all modern browsers.

The installation was really easy.
1. Download Lightbox JS v2.02 (lightbox2.02.zip) from
http://www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox2/
2. Unpack it and then upload all files
3. Include lightbox.css in your index template:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/lightbox.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />

4. Add prototype.js, scriptaculous.js and lightbox.js in your index template:

<script type="text/javascript" src="js/prototype.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/scriptaculous.js?load=effects"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/lightbox.js"></script>

5. Tag your image links with rel=”lightbox”
6. Finished.

Here is a small example:

[update 19.10.2006 08:50]
Updatet to version 2.02 and adapted the small howto

written by simcen

Do you know these days, when you stand up in the morning and you go to work as usual. You work hard and concentrated but in the evening, you try to find what you have done.
I hate them.

First, I overslept. At 7:15am, Kaspar knocked me up. Our carpool seems to work. Shit.
So I set the alarm to 7:30am. “Free…. everyone be free… everyone be free tonigt” - What?! Oh, my phone is ringing again. This time it’s the alarm…
Trying wake up, I went to our flat. Damn, my brother closed the door and I don’t have any keys.
I tried to catch my brother, but he was already gone so that I had to get our secret key in my pyjama. A neighbour looked really amazing when I came down in the pyjama
After that I had only 15 minutes for taking a shower and running to the train station.

Arrived at office, no one noticed I’m late. Nice one. Wrote down.
And everything seemed to be normal…

The whole day I was working for a documentation and had to research some special things, another meeting stressed me between writing and now we have 5:17pm and what do I have?
Two simple, naked pages with one single drawing.

I’m frustrated.

written by simcen

Hey, do we have to become scared about blowing-up batteries?

First, big airlines ban drinks and juices from planes because of someones suspicion, that you can blow up one with a small amount of liquids. There again, perfumes are allowed in our carry-on baggage, same as little cosmetics (Source: n-tv.de).
That’s funny: You can always look pretty and smell romantic, but you have to stay thirsty. Thanks dear women!

Newest case in the long history of banning articles from planes: Notebook Batteries. Not yet, but experts are scared about big amounts in bodies of jumbo jets.
Actually, it’s possible that batteries begin to burn (or even blow up?) suddenly.

Therefore, Sony and some redistributors are recalling their notebooks in huge masses.
Alltogether about 8 billion pieces are affected of this misery.

Lenovo expects their financial impact of the recall “minimal” because Sony is supporting affected resellers financially. What about Sony?

By googling about this issue, I found a funny cartoon. Just have a look at this:

(Source: “Is this offensive or funny?“)

Concluding, it nothing else remains to be done as whishing you successfully working with your notebook…Get me out of here!!!

written by simcen

Hehe, *rolling on the floor laughing*…

There was Michael Mittermeier on TV and he performed his new show named “Paranoid”.
He told about Alien Pornos, Western and some other stuff.
If you have the chance to watch him, do it! It was really amusing!

Cheers

written by simcen