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Why we don’t throw paperclips at coworkers is nicely shown in the video "Why you don’t throw paperclips at coworkers". I mean – we know not to do this. See what can happen if you forget about it …
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Let me share another of my own photos here this week, taken during my stay on Majorca last year. Why ? Because again this year I will travel there for another week to go hiking, this time through the entire mountains of the Tramuntana Range from the West to the East, and this time together with my wife who didn’t join me last year but now after I told her how nice Majorca is for hiking she wanna see it as well of course. |
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Source: amazon.com |
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Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is an absurd one.
People who are confident all the time and know an answer to every question and never ever say “I don’t know” or “I am not sure” are suspicious to me. I know, we have been trained to be like this. An IBMer always know an answer to a question, right ? When you give a presentation and someone asks a question, you never ever would say “I don’t know”, even you actually don’t know. Better to give some sort of answer – probably to a question never asked – than not giving any answer at all. |
My favorites for week 20, 2011
May 20, 2011 — amagard
Something to laugh: my favorite comic strip of the week – about what kids care about nowadays
Moderately Confused
Something to watch: my favorite video clip of the week – about modern office spaces
Something to enjoy: my favorite photo on flickr under a Common Creative license – about Mallorca
Something to surprise: my favorite "I really didn’t know this" of the week – about books
Did you know that 
Something to talk about: my favorite quote of the week – about uncertaintyMy favorites for week 19, 2011
May 13, 2011 — amagard|
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You have a fellow worker next to you who always leaves his PC unlocked when leaving his desk ? Here is your opportunity to play a real bad trick on him. Can be done in one minute or so, may be you first try on your own PC. I recommend to let your victim not suffer for too long, he might get crazy about this soon. Get him some help after a few minutes latest, may be a good way to earn a free coffee
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Let me feature one of my own photos here this week from Acadia NP, where my wife and I have been in 1997. Just this week I scanned in more of my slides with my CanoScan 5600F, and here is one: “Frenchman Bay in Acadia NP”. |
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Did you know that
Source: heise online article “Microsoft: Zahl der infizierten Rechner in Deutschland verdoppelt” |
. And whatever you do, never ever mention that you found this in my blog !
My favorites for week 18, 2011
May 6, 2011 — amagard|
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Let me show you some real silly comics this week from B.C. and Garfield which don’t need any further commentary…
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The world is full of funny signs. And funny software error messages of course. Anyway, here is a nice compilation of funny signs in “weird things in the world ”:
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My wife has been there in Lhasa a couple of years ago when she did a great hike from Jiri to the Mount Éverst Base Camp. |
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This morning in my newspaper … Did you know that
Source: “Allgemeine Zeitung for Friday, May 6th, 2011”, survey by Bitkom. Also I am reading on their German web site that 37 % of internet users share their password with someone else. |
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Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.
We could add: … once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is outdated and needs to be replaced. |
My favorites for week 17, 2011
April 29, 2011 — amagard|
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One road to simplification leads through reducing redundancy. Redundant solutions or processes lead to confusion, expensive overhead and loss of productivity. Thus, it is important to not introduce more redundancy in the attempt to reduce it or to “simplify”. Simplification should mean throwing things away instead of adding more. Nicely illustrated in this Dilbert comic strip !
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How small can you make a computer ? Well, this version, nicely presented by John, has a keyboard with just one key. John show us how to use it in this funny video “THE FUTURE TECHNOLOGY!”.
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This impressive photo from NASA shows Egypt in spring, where you can see the green Nile delta and vegetation zone following the river throughout the desert. The photo was taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard the Terra satellite on April 11th. Where the Nile begins to broaden and form the delta, the city of Cairo can be seen as a gray oval smudge. |
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 Something to discover: my favorite bookmark of the week – about a nice little time saver for Lotus Notes |
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Alan Lepofsky must have had a similar thought when he developed the Paste Information Application, a little Lotus Notes database and tool to avoid re-typing the same things again and again, allowing you to paste pre-defined bits of information that you reuse often into Lotus Notes documents and mails with two simple clicks ( one to select that bit from a listbox, one to click OK ). In his blog he nicely describes the application and how to install it, and provides links to download the needed Lotus Notes database. I installed it on my Lotus Notes 8.5.1 client and it works like a charm. |
My favorites for week 16, 2011
April 21, 2011 — amagard|
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Jerry B. aka jbviper1 has a nice collection of snake photos in his photo stream. Look at that beautiful Night Snake. Well, beautiful in some sense; I wouldn’t want to run into it actually, since I am a bit scared of snakes. |
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It is not a bad idea to get in the habit of writing down one’s thoughts. It saves one having to bother anyone else with them.
… unless you write them down in your blog |
My favorites for week 15, 2011
April 15, 2011 — amagard|
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How difficult it has been to send messages across in former times ! Thanks to twitter and other modern social networks and communication tools it is so easy to get everyone informed, isn’t it ?
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 w3schools.com – not to confuse with our internal w3 intranet ! – is a great reference and learning site for creating web sites and all you need to know for this, like HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, SQL and much more. I want to emphasize the Javascript pages, since they always come with a TryIt Editor, like here for example with some sample code for the Javascript slice method. Not only does this deliver nice examples ( I often learn better through examples than through some formal explanations ), it actually would allow you to type in your own Javascript code, click the “Edit and Click Me” button and see the results of your code instantly in the right window frame. Sweet ! |
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| Interested in buses ? Then Steven’s Bus & Coach Photos flickr offering is for you. Thousands of buses of all colors and ages, I can tell you ! Interested in nice, often “improved” photos from the Southwest of USA ? Then visit Pedro Szekely’s photo stream.
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The very first law in advertising is to avoid the concrete promise and cultivate the delightfully vague.
Advertising – I actually hate it and avoid it where I can. With most ads I get the feeling that those who created them must think I am a complete idiot. Thus I like the way Bill Cosby explains what advertising is all about. |
Something to learn: my favorite tip of the week – about Javascript.
My favorites for week 14, 2011
April 8, 2011 — amagard|
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Even when doing lots of sports – I play Badminton or Squash four times a week – sitting for too long is a health risk, as I learned this week through the following two articles:
Thanks, Cody J. Schaff, for blogging about it ! We actually should get up from our chairs every 20 minutes, at least for 20 seconds or so. |
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| How about an amazing card trick this week ? It actually works, as I tried it with my own card deck. Anyone out there who can explain mathematically why this works ? http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/video/x8yxw6?theme=none The Final 3 – Amazing Math Card Trick von mismag822 … Discovered through StumbleUpon |
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| Something to discover: my favorite bookmark of the week – about games and brains |
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 Lifehacker showed us today how to game our brain, how to train special skills through computer games: from better memory, language or typing skills to being better in games or even escaping a burning house. One of my favorites is Simon, a great memory tester for your brain. The author of this game, Paul Neave, has more or those classic arcade games on his web page implemented in flash, like Pacman of course, or Tetris. A SecondLife Version of Simon is located here, by the way. And here is another great web site: pokkisam, a collection of awesome, very creative photos used for commercial advertising. I usually hate commercials, always skip them when watching recorded TV movies or shows, simply because there are too many of those and they attack you everywhere. But I admit: some are very creative and awesome, like the photos you can enjoy on this site. … Discovered through Delicious Random Pick. |
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You are sitting in your crowded cubicle landscape and try to focus on your work while you have to listen to several meetings and phone calls around you ? You have a red sea of unhandled e-mails in front of you and don’t know where to start ? You are rushing from conference call to conference call talking to hundreds of people you don’t know ? |
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Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.
As I mentioned my love-hate relationship to commercials in this blog posting this quote is a nice fit. Isn’t it amazing to see how much is funded through commercials, like free TV shows or internet sites ? Sometimes I wonder about the huge effort to provide these services for free and whether that ever would pay off. I probably underestimate the number of consumers of these services and the amount of profit they generate even only a small subset is actually “caught” by these advertisements. |
The high gas prices are a nice additional motivator to do more walking / running, aren’t they ? At least according to this 
My favorites for week 13, 2011
April 1, 2011 — amagard|
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Things 2.0 are sometimes very different to how they used to be in the good old times, don’t you think ? How do you like this “Moderately Confused” comic strip ?
And since we have April Fool’s day, here is another one from Wizard Of Id:
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Since a new version of Blender has been announced it is may be a good time to look at one of those awesome animation videos created with this software. Watch “Lighthouse” and learn a great message from this film. See for yourself …  http://www.responsibilityproject.com/lib/flash/video-player.swf?videoID=13&location=remote |
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| Something to discover: my favorite bookmark of the week – about Parkopedia |
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 Recommended by Lifehacker today: Parkopedia, a well designed site giving you a great overview and detailed and valuable information like prices and reviews for 15 million parking spaces in 20 countries. I was surprised to see that it covers Mainz, Germany, as well. Whenever you come to Mainz, this is my recommended parking space: Spacious and cheap, my recommended parking place when going downtown. Probably 10 minute walk to Dome and Old Town. |
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Did you know that
Source: bild der wissenschaft 4/2011 |
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Queenstown in New Zealand, where I have been 2 years ago, is a remarkable ski area, as Paul Clark proofs with this dramatic shot. |
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I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.
I think we have the opposite problem today: too many tools to choose from, thus it is difficult to find the hammer for a given nail and thus we often use a different tool to deal with it. |
My favorites for week 12, 2011
March 25, 2011 — amagard|
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Finally it arrived … spring ! Its getting sunny and warm here in Germany already. Let’s start it with fresh energy and motivation. Or better with a nap, like this guy here in B.C. ?
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| Nice video of some funny scenes with animals on Metacafe: “Funny Animals”. | ||||||
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Did you know that
Impressive numbers ! If that trend continues then in 13580 days every person living on the world today will be connected to twitter, that’s around year 2048 then. |
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I featured him in my company blog three years ago with this photo of a Brown Hawker: Nick Ford from Castle Acre, UK. He is still posting nice animal photos under a CC license, here are two of his latest shots:
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 Sounds like a general good recipe for a good life: the art of setting priorities right ! |
My favorites for week 10, 2011
March 11, 2011 — amagard|
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CeBIT, the German IT Trade Show is over. Why do those trade shows make us feel so small, as shown in this Dilbert comic strip ? Let’s get back to reality. Nevertheless, it makes me feel small as well quiet often, working as an underling in a large company where everything is managed centrally, even a small travel budget worth 150 € may be. Weekend is in sight already. Let me feel a bit bigger then …
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| Here is a video coming along with some nice relaxing music and an impressive animation of a huge music instrument playing that music, a “12 Pipe Dream”. If you check out the site Dailymotion, you find there many more similar videos.
http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/video/x8lkd |
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  Like cycling through applications in Windows and other operating systems CTRL+TAB allows you to cycle through your tabs in Firefox. Of course this works as well in Goolge Chrome. And Internet Explorer !And here are two more magic keys: PF8 and PF7 in Windows Command Window: Type in a view letters and then hit PF8 to insert a similar command you typed previously. Or use PF7 to popup a list of commands to select from. |
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Dusky Leaf Monkeys can be found in Malaysia, Myanmar, and Thailand. Thailand seems to be the country where Troup Dresser took this photo. |
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We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.
Inspiration might be a rare thing, thus waiting for it might mean waiting forever. Instead: start doing. And learning. The more you learn and experience, the more food you have for some inspiration to come – sooner or later. |
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Axel MagardDisclaimer: All my postings and comments here represent my very own personal opinion, not the one of my wife, my current employer or anyone or anything else. Got it ? Then read on. Book I currently read:
My bookmarks- wxPython: wx.ListCtrl Tips and Tricks « The Mouse Vs. The Python
- wxWidgets: wxWidgets: wxWindow Class Reference
- shellexecute - How do I execute a program from python? os.system fails due to spaces in path - Stack Overflow
- Mozilla launches Webmaker programme - The H Open Source: News and Features
- Windows XP in update loop - The H Security: News and Features
- Calling a function from a string with the function's name in Python - Stack Overflow
- Do I Really Need to Update My Drivers?
- Google to Warn 500,000+ of DNS Changer Infections — Krebs on Security
- Dropbox Storage Space - Lifehacker Tips Forum
- The Stupid Things You Do on Facebook (and How to Fix Them)
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My Photos
More Photos - What I have found in the wild wild web …
- Stórt og úfið - Big and Rough (von Coldpix) May 24, 2012
- "Life consists not simply in what heredity and environment do to us but in what we make out of what..." May 24, 2012
- (von Colin Hutton Photography) May 23, 2012
- From the Skydeck: The City at Dusk (von ShutterRunner) May 23, 2012
- First Outing. (von cazstar) May 23, 2012
- Canna hear a ribbit? (von Mr. Greenjeans) May 23, 2012
- Welcome to Singapore (von Justin Koning) May 23, 2012
- (via Chicharra | Flickr - Photo Sharing!) May 22, 2012
- Immature Tricolored Herons (von Birdwatcher 1406(Bill Eaton)) May 21, 2012
- Reed Walker (Explore May 19, 2012) (von WanaM3) May 21, 2012
