web 2.0

Happy with WordPress.

I’m rather happy with the current path the WP community is following – notable cool things in the upcoming months will include

  • create your own post types from within the admin panel (#9674 (Better support for custom post types) – WordPress Trac)
  • BuddyPress will become a feature for standard WP.org installations
  • Custom taxonomies are becoming progressively easier to implement
  • It’s getting progressively easy to work with custom fields.
  • There are two WP Google Summer of Code projects dealing with AJAX inline reordering of pages on the manage post screens.

That said, I’m not sure I really need the media handling improvements now the focus of the WP 2.9 development. But I think it’s a generally a good thing. Now if they only allow easy flickr integration or API searching of pictures from the edit screens and improve the internal linking features, I’d have a hard time to find a lot of thigs I still don’t like about WordPress…

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Allgemein

Niggemeier dekonstruiert Gorny.

Großes Kino: Stefan Niggemeier dekonstruiert Dieter Gorny. Und den Rest der Branche. Das krasse ist ja, da ändert sich nix, weil sich da nix ändern muß, solange diejenigen, auf die die Lobbyarbeit zielt, keinen blassen Schimmer von der Ökonomie des geistigen Eigentums in einer vernetzten Welt haben, und die, die die Lobbyarbeit betreiben, immer noch glauben, daß sie deswegen das Netz doch noch zu “Music On Demand” (anyone remember?) umbauen können.

http://www.stefan-niggemeier.de/blog/understanding-dieter/

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music, songs, songwriting

Santa’s Fantasy. 2008.

Merry Christmas everyone. It’s been a while since I last presented a song here. I wrote the original version of “Santa’s Fantasy” in Sydney, Australia, in December 2007 as “theme song” for the christmas party I attended. It was thus first performed live about 365 ago depending on your time zone…

Almost one year on I decided to partially rewrite the song as a little Christmas present for my Australian friends. What you can listen to here is the result of the effort. I’m quite happy with it.

Many thanks to my sister, who sang the backing vocals and Sebastian Linke, who’s, as so often, the mastermind behind the drum arrangement. As usual, it’s a mostly VST based demo in 160kbps mp3 format. Enjoy!

“Santa’s Fantasy”
(c) 2007-2008 Tobias Schwarz

When Santa was a little boy
He was a problem child
His parents were quite worried
‘Cos he was way to wild
When he grew up and went to school
And learned the family trade
It took a few nights on the booze
When he found out his fate

To put on weight grow facial hair
stay celibate to his despair
And fake smile for all his life

He hates his job he tried to quit
He hates the reindeers but loves the whip
And every year he’s gotta spread joy
But Santa’s just a dirty old boy
He’s bringing joy not to the nice
But the naughty in disguise
The game is on under the tree
If you are Santa’s fantasy.

Year after year he sits and sulks
And keeps on watching porn
He tried his best to like job
But in the end he’s torn
He wants to go out on the town
Meet girls and have some fun
But he will only see the world
For his (special) delivery runs

He’s stuffing socks and quite a heap
but has to work while others sleep
so no one can see Santa weep.

Chorus

But he still has a fantasy
A naughty girl who likes
A big guy wearing Santa clothes
Without a change, for life.

Chorus x2

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Bürgerrechte, Datenschutz, German Politics, politics, privacy

Informationskontrolle

Ich erinnere mich,  daß ich es etwas kontraintuitiv fand, als ich im Skript zu einer Vorlesung über Organisation und Informationstechnologie die Aussage fand, daß Technologien, die Freiheit schaffen können, genauso zu ihrer Abschaffung eingesetzt werden können. Das war natürlich ein paar Jahre vor einem, hoffentlich nicht freudschen, Versprecher des Bundesinnenministers bei seiner Rede auf den 3. Berliner Medientagen.

“…und inzwischen eröffnen nun Computer und Internet ganz neue Austausch- und Informationskontrolle, äh, kanäle über die Grenzen hinweg.”

Hat tip Fefe. Und bei Youtube gibt es einen Ausschnitt aus der Phönix-Übertragung der Rede mit Bild, Ton, und anschwellendem Gelächter im Publikum.

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Bürgerrechte, Datenschutz, German Politics, politics, privacy

mini-he

Dieter Wiefelspütz, innenpolitischer Sprecher der SPD und einer der Hauptverhandlungspartner von Innenminister Wolfgang Schäuble in Bezug auf das nun wohl an einer fehlenden Mehrheit im Bundesrat scheiternde neue BKA-Gesetz hat laut der Süddeutschen zu Wolfang Schäubles Vorschlag, doch einfach die Abstimmungsregeln im Bundesrat zu ändern, wenn das gewünschte Ergebnis nicht zustande kommt, folgendes bemerkt –

SPD-Innenexperte Dieter Wiefelspütz erklärte dagegen, er könne sich mit dem Vorschlag “inhaltlich durchaus anfreunden”, kritisierte aber den Zeitpunkt der Veröffentlichung. “Wenn er aus tagesaktuellen Erwägungen gemacht wird, merkt jeder die Absicht dahinter”, sagte er Spiegel Online.

Nicht, daß noch irgendwer “die Absicht dahinter” erkennt…

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politics, US Politics

America Votes. I Watch.

No live blogging tonight, as I’ll be attending an election night party organised by the American studies department at Johannes-Gutenberg Universität. My personal guess is that Obama will win, but not by a margin as big as predicted lately. In the end, I suppose John McCain will be happy it’s over and he’ll once again be allowed to speak freely. After all, he’s a bit of a tragic figure whose campaign demonstrated that someone who, in a long political career, has made a lot of bold choices, has to fight more to keep his part of the electorate together than to reach out to the marginal voters. And he was continually fighting against the sitting President.

I’m happy that it seems likely Senator Obama will be the next President. But I would have liked to see a better campaign, one that would have not only pitted “the same” against “change” but actually defined those concepts with a little more detail. It’s now up to the next President elect to do that.

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