Occasional Thoughts

Yesterday I and a couple of colleagues held a couple of Pecha Kucha sessions. Pecha Kucha is a presentation methodology that limits the presentation to 20 slides where the next slide is displayed after 20 seconds automatically. During the preparation and for the presentation session we felt the lack for a decent timer that counts down from 20 to1 for each slide and gives a clearly visible feedback before the time for the current slide ends.

Amazon MP3 downloader for Linux

Since today Amazon has opened its DRM free music store for German users.

Amazon seems to have a heart for Linux users. Have I missed something or is Amazon really the first MP3 music store that offers popular music from the biggest music labels that is DRM free and also accessible to Linux users at the same time?

There are binaries of the Amazon downloader available for  Ubuntu 8.10, Debian 4, Fedora 9 and OpenSUSE 11.0. You can try it with the first free song download: This Much is True from Amy MacDonald.

Oh BTW: This is not an Aprils Fool joke. In case you are disappointed, watch this.

I have a new toy. Last week I bought an iPod touch. My primary use case is remote controlling media in my home. I already have a HTPC in my living room with access to satellite TV, videos, photos and music. However, I always found it stupid to switch on my TV in order to choose music. I checked choices like Squeezebox Duet or the TEAC WAP-4500. Pretty nice toys starting around 250 EURO. But if you already have a PC, the iPod is about 200+ EURO extra. And it's a nice gadget too. So I ordered one and tried to run the free Remote app from Apple.

• What is an engineer?
• What are engineers doing?
• Are engineers different somehow?
• What do engineers carry around?
• What do engineers like?
• How to engineers dress themselve?

The answers are very funny. Have fun...

That's why business critical servers use EEC RAM