Keys Corner

The German language is horribly polluted with “denglisch” – English words (some of which aren’t, even if you think they might be, such as “handy” (mobile phone)) every which way you look. You can do your bit to help save the language by enrolling to become “godfather” for a word.

There are (at the time of writing) still some good basic words, such as “der” (the) or “oder” (or) left, and some which I have never in 25 years here heard used in German and which aren’t in my Pons dictionary, such as “donkey” (Esel?). Hmm – perhaps it’s already too late…

The BBC has run a poll on 50 things you should eat before you die. I’ve got nine still to go, mostly from the southern hemisphere, but I have to admit I’ve never tried haggis, which comes from nearer to home.

I must admit that I am not the world’s best speller by a long margin. And English is worse than most other languages, because many words have friends, who sound identical but mean something completely different. For example, bear and bare. And which is that gland, that older men sometimes have problems with – the prostate or the prostrate? If you’re wracking your brains, maybe you need to browse Paul Brians’ Common Errors in English Useage, or perhaps buy a copy.

The cellar is getting full. We have two normal rooms as well the boiler-room, a wash-room and the oil-tank-room in our cellar, it’s getting crowded down there. Ruth has always used the smaller room as sewing room, and the larger room was used as an occasional office (the Windows PC is banished there) and as a drying room for the washing so long as we don’t have visitors.

But several months ago, Ruth started taking courses at the quilt university, which means that it also used as a photo-studio for taking pictures of her work and as an area to lay out and dye cloth. This week, we got a delivery of three large, heavy boxes containing a 3 meter quilting frame and sewing-machine especially for quilting. Today we assembled them (only half-length for the quilting frame), and the cellar got a little more crowded:

The three boxes

Now how are you supposed to do that?

Finished!

Web Developer Extension at work
If you do any website development, then Chris Pererick’s Web Developer Extension can save you a huge amount of time. There is no end to what you can find out about your website with it: highlight selected HTML elements with their names in the document, display the HTML and CSS styles being used, get information about element-nesting, call the various validator services for HTML, CSS etc., disable cookies, java, javascript, and much, much more. Available for Firefox, Flock, Mozilla and Seamonkey on any platform (e.g. Windows, Linux, OS X) these browsers run on.

I wish I had discovered this long ago, it saves so much time debugging errors in my code.

Want to know how to take a first generation iPod apart? Or an XBox? Or several other everyday devices, such as an electric drill?

One place to look is TakeItApart.net, which seems to have only started up in the last month or two and is still in the process of adding to its collection of tips.

Andrew Tanenbaum, Melanie Rieback and Bruno Crispo of The Free University of Amsterdam have demonstrated the feasibiliy of spreading of a computer virus by having RFID tags inject SQL commands into a database, something which until now had been presumed to be impossible. RFID (Radio Frequency ID) tags will probably be increasingly used, not only by supermarkets to track the movement of items in the store and of shipments, but in many other areas – for example to identify the owners of pets and of people crossing international borders (embedded in passports), to route baggage at airports, to check books out of libraries, and for fee collection on roads and when using public transport.

The virus, only 127 bits long, was able demonstrate corrupting data in a database. The researchers described it as a “proof of concept” demonstration showing the need for manufacturers of the tags to develop better security features, before hackers and consumer activists start creating havoc with supply chains, customs databases, airport baggage-hanlding systems and so on.

Read lots more detailed information from the researchers, including their paper (in English or Dutch), here. Well worth reading.

The US army’s image of it’s activities in Iraq is looking even more tarnished than usual this week:

• A British SAS member resigned in protest at the “war of agression” in Iraq, becoming the first member of the SAS to resign and refuse to go into combat on moral grounds. He says he saw “dozens” of illegal acts by US forces while on a 3-month tour of duty in Baghdad.
• Meanwhile, a memo written to Tony Blair in 2003 from John Sawer – Blair’s special envoy to Iraq at the time – has surfaced, which doesn’t mince words describing the situation in Iraq after the US-led invasion- here a few excerpts:

  ...Garner’s outfit, ORHA (Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance), is an unbelievable mess. No leadership, no strategy, no coordination, no structure (my emphasis), and inaccessible to ordinary Iraqis. Bremer’s arrival is not a day too soon. Garner and his top team of 60-year old retired generals are well-meaning, but out of their depth…
  .... A big part of the problem is the US Third Infantry Division. They fought a magnificent war and now just want to go home. Unlike more mobile US units they are sticking to their heavy vehicles and are not inclined to learn new techniques. Our Paras company at the embassy witnessed a US tank respond to (harmless) Kalashnikov fire into the air from a block of residential flats by firing three tank rounds into the building. Stories are numerous of US troops sitting on tanks parked in front of public buildings while looters go about their business behind them. Every civilian who approaches a US checkpoint is treated as a potential suicide bomber. Frankly, the 3rd Inf Div need to go home…

Meanwhile, Bush tries to remain upbeat (at least in public) about the situation in Iraq.

Just in case you hadn’t realised, you should be aware that the International Baccalaureate, which is taken in many countries as an alternative to the local school leaving exam, is “anti-Christian, un-American and Marxist”. So says the board of governors of the Upper St Clair high school in Pittsburgh.

Pass the freedom fries, please!

Title Trader allows users to swap DVDs, books and CDs free of charge. Swappers are rated positve / negative by the other trading partner, so you can get an idea of whether the goods are likely to be shipped punctually and in good condition.

Title Trader provides the service world-wide and entering your items to be swapped is easy – you just enter the ISBN or UPC and the system adds a full description of the item. Users can review the items, similar to the review system in Amazon. There seem to be enough people offering to ship to Germany, and getting to our local library when it’s open is almost impossible if you work, so I might give this a try.