Raimi war hier

Auweia, was fuer eine aufregende Zeit. Habe gar keine, das hier alles festzuhalten, muss ich nachholen. Vor allem die Fotos vom Karate-Lehrgang in Korsika. (Den eigentlich Knueller kennt Ihr ja schon, wenn Ihr mich kennt).

Jetzt ist aber erstmal Fantasy Filmfest (diesmal ohne Links) und ich plane, folgendes zu sehen:

• 16.8. (KultBr) 21:45 The Banquet
• 17.8. (CineXX) 23:45 Shadowboxer
• 18.8. [Mutti besuchen]
• 19.8. (CineXX) 17:00 The Snake
• 20.8. (KultBr) 21:45 Get Shorty
• 21.8. (KultBr) 21:45 La Antena
• 22.8. (KultBr) 19:30 The Lookout ODER 21:45 I'm a Cyborg, but that's OK

Stay tuned...

Ganz grosses Kino.

Jumping and throwing a frisbee in the sand. Horribly energy inefficient, but a lot of fun. Note to self: Consider playing Ultimate Frisbee.

PS: Thanks to Timo for this photo.

Wie man effektiv Globalisierung verhindert. Ich bestelle eine kleine Sammlung T-Shirts im Ausverkauf von Threadless. Sehr schoener Laden, hoffentlich clont den mal einer in Deutschland, moeglichst mit aehnlich hochwertigen Motiven.

Weil das Paket komisch aussieht (12 Shirts in einen ca. A4-Umschlag (vermutlich vakuum-)gestopft), klebt der Zoll in Frankfurt/Main das gruene Ding "Selbstverzollung" drauf. Damit bin ich Schmuggler wohl ertappt und muss zum "Zollamt Post", dessen Lage man von meinem Heim aus nur als "am A... ndereren Ende der Stadt" bezeichnen kann. Der Flyer sagt, ich soll eine deutsche Rechnung mitbringen, vermutlich damit der Wert taxiert werden kann. Was er nicht sagt, ist, dass ich auch Zeit mitbringen soll - zu den sehr amtsdeutschen Oeffnungszeiten.

Also frueh hingurken (das Amt schliesst kurz nach der Mittagspause), die richtige leere Stelle am ca. 15m langen Tisch finden ("Anmeldung") und auf den einzigen Beamten warten, der sich ausgiebig mit dem Kunden vor mir beschaeftigt. Zettel abgeben, Platz nehmen. Nach 5 Minuten aufgerufen werden, Paket aufreissen, Inhalt erklaeren, englische E-Mail vorzeigen. Der Beamte fuellt 15 (!) Minuten lang angestrengt ein Formular aus (ich darf nochmal Platz nehmen), bemueht sogar ein Buch. Sein Rechner zeigt die ganze Zeit den Bildschirmschoner.

Mein Formular wird zur Kasse gegeben, ich warte tapfer 5 Minuten, frage dann doch mal nach, ob ich nicht vergessen wurde... "Ich rufe Sie auf, wenn ich was habe". Werde nach 2 Minuten aufgerufen und darf in Bar bezahlen: 12% Zoll fuer Textilwaren, 19% Maerchensteuer. Das ganze auf 152 Dollar Warenwert. Dass der Warenwert nur 120 Dollar und der Rest Porto/Verpackung sind, scheint sowenig eine Rolle zu spielen, wie dass der Kauf getaetigt wurde, als noch die Steuer von 16% galt. Nach etwas mehr als 30 Minuten verlasse ich das Gebaeude, sicher, dass ich nicht nochmal dahin will. Nicht daran denken, wie es dort abgeht, wenn Publikumsverkehr herrschen wuerde.

Auffaellig ist, dass die Rentenkonvergenz aller ersichtlichen Zollbeamten deutlich zu sehen war. Irgendwie hatte ich das Gefuehl, dass das Amt geschlossen wird, sobald der/die/das letzte Beamte nicht mehr im Staatsdienst ist.

Das laesst mich hoffen, denn vielleicht wuerde dann der im Bild hervorgehobene Aufkleber seiner Bestimmung zugefuehrt werden. Ein (halb)automatisches Zollsystem wuerde einen Barcode draufkleben, der dafuer sorgt, dass der Postbote Zoll und Steuern einzieht. Das waere toll, denn so koennte jedes Paket verzollt/besteuert werden und nicht nur die, die bei einer Stichprobe auffallen. Die gestiegenen Einnahmen wuerden dann den Dienst der Post finanzieren. (Waere die Post noch staatlich, waere die letzte Ueberlegung nicht noetig.)

Bis dahin: Nur in kleinen Dosen im Ausland bestellen und nach Moeglichkeit in unauffaelligen Paketen versenden lassen. Oder eben nur noch in der EU bestellen, auch keine so schlechte Sache. Aber warum macht hier keiner so schoene Shirts?!

Unglaublich.

I have to update my reference. Video 1 is now connected to the old VCR and Video 2 is the TV card (mostly because the buttons on the remote are labeled accordingly). The self-learning/programmable remote control of the AVR is great but lacks support for the old VCR. Bummer.

Interestingly the composite connector of the AVR-235 doesnt work with the signal from the VCR's SCART cable. With a simple converter-plug to S-Video it works on the other hand. Strange. While the TV card is connected with S-Video itself to the AVR I have to select "Composite1" as the video source (or otherwise only black and white video is shown). All this analog technique is very strange.

Anyway, why connect an old VCR? Someone gave me a VHS tape with Steven Spielberg's Duel (1971). Definitly worth to watch for various reasons.

Oh, I replaced the front sattelite speakers with my old Grundig HiFi Box 5500 speakers. Their larger volume is better suited for music playback. The HKTS speakers are not very well fit for that. Seems audio people in the internet are right after all :) Perhaps I should replace the other sattelites as well and only keep the HKTS' impressive sub.

Boring, aint it...

Finally, I've managed to make a dream come true for me. I invested some money I saved in a home cinema system by Harman/Kardon. It's based on the AVR-235 A/V-Receiver which puts noise with up to 50W to 7.1 speakers. I use only 5 speakers and the giant subwoofer of the HKTS 7 set. Content is delivered by a DVD-47 also by HK (which other company uses this acronym? Dont even think about it).

Hooking up the AVR is pretty flexible so I need this spot as a reference for my configuration:

• The DVD player is connected with S-Video, Optical 2 and Coax 1. I use optical, usaully - just bough the coax cable accidentally.
• My SB Live is connected with analog 5.1 to the only analog input called 6/8 channel direct. This allows multichannel output from the computer but disables any DSP processing in the AVR.
• The on-board sound card is connected to Optical 1 but not configured and untested. Will be interesting.
• The TV card is both connected to line-in of the SB and to Video 1 of the AVR. This allows for Dolby decoding of TV audio and provides emergency TV audio in "computer mode".
• The video output of the AVR is is connected via S-Video with the TV card. To watch a DVD the xawtv input source has to point there and the AVR has to be set to DVD. Note: Do not confuse with TV mode where the video signal is not passed through the AVR so the OSD doesnt work there.
• I should hook up the old VCR to Video 2 for the fun of it and perhaps some other audio-capable devices (Apple SE, Sun Sparc) to Video 3 and 4. Let's see...

The sound quality is great. My ears aren't used to anything but this is the best audio equipment I ever had. And it looks cool, too.

A note to the music industry: Mark my words: I will _never_ buy a SACD or DVD audio. This is really too bad, because I have all these great audio devices that use lossless digital connections. But for some reason the DVD player is only allowed to playback SACD/DVDA (which is multi-channel capable) via a lossy analog cable. As far as I understand it, this is a restriction specifically wished for my "content providers" (or those who call themselves that). Now, this wouldnt be more than an inconvenience with some proper cabling, but there is only one 6/8 channel input - and I need that one for my primary entertainment device (which accidentally is controlled by me).

Hm, seems as Debian Etch is converging towards being stable some key magic is to be applied again. Symptom on apt-get update:

W: There are no public key available for the following key IDs:
A70DAF536070D3A1
W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems

Now, as this message explains a proper way of obtaining this key (which seems to be the etch release key) is:

apt-get install debian-archive-keyring/unstable

or when you are using sid (or whysoever):

apt-get install debian-archive-keyring

And that's it. Let's see if I remember that next year :)

PS: I had to move the MySQL database(s) away from the hard disc, too. Turns out that the InnoDB backend writes something every hour and a half or something, even when the application is idle (some kind of check- or savepoint, I guess).

There are still some unaccounted spin-ups that are hard to track down. To get to the bottom of those one requires some tool that can tell when the discs turned on. Together with the respective timestamps a pattern should show. Does anyone have an idea? Perhaps there is a SMART attribute indicating something related to motor movement (I know there is a spin-up time that probably changes a little everytime the disc turns on).

PPS: When I described the hardware of the machine, I forgot to mention something rather annoying: It runs out of random bits. The symptom is a blocking /dev/random device (which produces good random bits) which in turn makes exim block for long amounts of time when delivering mail with SMTP/TLS. Test your entropy:

 cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail

It usually shows values between 3000 and 4000 but on blackbox it frequently goes down to 0. The reason seems to be that the entropy is largely derived from hardware interrupt timings but leaving out sources that might be controlled from the outside (NICs, they say). This excludes most of the IRQ sources on this host (the HDDs are intentionally left idle most of the time).

The workaround is to make the applications use /dev/urandom (which produces pseudo-randomnes). This is actually bad but the only usable solution. I do the switch globally with a symlink which sometimes is reset by a Debian update.

Oh boy. This morning I was struck by this bug - an update of mozilla-thunderbird killed my mail program. Turns out that the debian package thunderbird is no more, it's called icedove now. Why, oh why? Apparently Debian is not allowed to use Mozilla trademarks for their version of Seamonkey, Firefox, Thunderbird (and whatnot).

While this is legally "understandable" it's bad to install different packages now because of some dispute about a logo copyright. So just as a reminder to myself: Thunderbird is icedove, Mozilla is Gnuzilla and Firefox is IceWeasel. I hope those programs keep their files in my home directory in the old locations.

/me shakes his head and goes back to work.