The next week or better days will be really exiting. As a contributor to the Mozilla project I was invited to join the Firefox Summit 2008 in Whistler, BC, Canada. Thanks for getting the chance! It’s deeply grateful. I’ll enjoy the days in listening to talks, having discussions with other community members and employees of Mozilla and just be able to see each one in real life (Steven, this time it will really happen!).

Together with Abdulkadir Topal, who co-ordinates the German translation of Firefox and helped me a lot with the website translation, we will reach Vancouver this Thursday evening. So we have 3 days to explore Vancouver and the area around. There is still a plan of things to do but its not final. So if anyone is interested to join us, you are welcome. Just ping me in IRC or add a comment here. Otherwise see you on Monday!

Some days ago I found this really interesting site. Until today it wasn’t possible to compose music by using wav files. Instead you have to use the midi format which emulates (todays nearly perfect) the real sound of the given instrument. But now that’s history! Grab a wav file, select the appropriate instrument, voice, or sound track and move its notes up or down. Damn, is that easy going. I’m fascinated about how that is working. Take a look at the video to also get banned.

The release of the Celemony plugin v2 is set to autumn 2008. So let’s have a great summer and wait for this wonderful piece of software.

What an amazing weekend! Reminisce about the last two years this one was definitely the greatest one at FOSDEM. The main reason why I joined again was Mozilla. And due to there aren’t so many choices to get the opportunity to meet Mozillians, I cannot cancel such an appointment. I met a lot of interesting and crazy people, listened to mostly all talks inside the Mozilla devroom (also known as sauna) and had pulsating and valuable conversations. Mostly I enjoyed to finally met Seth Bindernagel and David Tenser. Both guys working for the Mozilla Corporation and doing (like many others) a really great job. And that’s the reason why Mozilla gets so popular and can celebrate its 10th anniversary this year. Thanks to the organization team of Mozilla-Europe we had an incredible evening in the bowling centre. Sadly I didn’t made any pictures this year. But that’s not as bad because there are still hundreds of them available.

To be a bit more concrete about the topics I had at FOSDEM and work that I’ve taken with me, I will give a short overview:

1. Some weeks ago during a QA session on IRC, Marcia Knous asked me if I would be pleased when Mozilla would support my work. I was happy to hear that because I don’t have the perfect equipment to build my own debug builds under each operating system. This is bad when triaging crasher bugs which only happen under a special OS. Now everything goes really fast. Three days later I got a message from Seth Bindernagel who leads the community-giving program. After some conversations there was made the decision that I will get a new Mac Mini and the appropriate OS licenses. Finally we met each other at FOSDEM and discussed if I would fit into the Community Loan Program. But due to I don’t have a real plan of things I want to do - QA work is really widespread - we dismissed that option. Meanwhile I got the Mac Mini from my local Apple salesman and I will start to set it up within the next days. Hopefully I’ll get some help.
2. Over the last month I heard about SUMO several times. But I hadn’t the change to gain insight into this project. So I was totally uninformed on Friday evening when I was introduced to David Tenser, the smart and blond Swedish guy behind this project. To make matters worse his first question was about the German translation. I had to acknowledge my ignorance. But during his talk on Saturday I get more and more informed about the background. In co-operation with Abdulkadir Topal we will try to find some reliable localizers who are engaged to help translating the Firefox 3 help into German. We plan to do some posts to our German newsgroups and forums. Lets see if we are successful.
3. On Friday I also had the chance to talk with Chris Hofmann about the translation of the Firefox privacy policy into German. Due to the legal text no-one wanted to do that in the past. Now we will give it a try and do our best to create a good first translation. But the final review will be done by a lawyer so we don’t have to know everything in detail. That’s really helpful! Thanks Chris.
4. Stanisław Małolepszy and Seth Bindernagel did a great job in analyzing the latest community surveys. Hopefully we can get some data to be able to have a detail view onto the community in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. It looked like we are really a bit behind and not so enthusiastic like the Spanish folks…

Finally I have a lot of things to do right now and will give several status updates over the next weeks.

Who doesn’t know such a situation. It’s a wonderful day outside and you grab the camera to do some nice landscape shots. You are fascinated by the nature that you forget the time. It’s getting darker outside and now you realize that you have forgotten the tripod. So what are you doing now? It’s just simple. Watch the video and you will see how you can build your own stabilizer with easiness.

$1 Image Stabilizer For Any Camera - Lose The Tripod - The most popular videos are a click away

A more advanced version can be found on concept-club.de. But there are still some things which could be enhanced, e.g. a variable cord length so you also take a photo while crouching. I believe that I’ll have something to think about in the near future…

Seen today on kwerfeldein.de.

Nowadays I ask myself once again if we will get a strong winter with snow in Karlsruhe this year. Sadly I don’t really think so. If I take a look into the garden I can always see snowdrops flourish. We had too much sunny days in the last weeks. Same for today with about 10 degrees outside. It’s really hard to stay at home when sunbeams wake you up in the morning. Thats why I decided to enjoy this wonderful day and to have a first ride with my new racing bike, which I bought from my bike dealer last December.

For myself a long term wish comes true and I’m really happy to own a racing bike from Cannondale now even when it’s second hand. It’s a R800 Sport and was produced in 2003. The frame is made of Aluminum and it is damn lightweight against my other bike (F600 SL). You can really feel the ease while riding and reaching 40 km/h isn’t a problem. The only trouble I had is holding this speed.

I think it’s time to start this year’s training. Woohoo, it’s so cool…

Mmh schade, hatte nichts dabei. Mit was hättet denn Ihr diesen hungrigen Weidezaun gefüttert?

Update: Kann es sein, dass das Wort König nicht mehr draufgepasst hat? Denn das Füttern eines Zaunkönigs auf der Elektroweide könnt ich mir eher vorstellen…

Wer ist denn bitte schön ExtraArt? Nun, vor drei Stunden hätte ich auch noch keine Antwort auf diese Frage geben können. Jetzt bin ich jedoch von dem Können dieser beiden Künstler begeistert. Bernd Schwarte und Fabian Flender, die hinter ExtraArt stecken, begeisterten beim diesjährigen Tempelfest das gesamte Publikum - egal ob jung oder alt, keiner konnte die eigenen Augen von der Bühne losreißen. Eine Mischung aus Clownerie, irrwitziger Akrobatik und Jonglage gemischt mit abstrusen Mimiken sorgten für ständige Lachsalven. Kein Wunder, dass ihr dargebotenes, diesmal 1,5-stündiges Programm so im Nu vorbei war. Ich bin gepannt und hoffe, dass sie wieder einmal in der Nähe sind. Zu Euch kann ich nur sagen, dreht den Beiden nicht den Rücken zu, sondern genießt das Programm. Ein kurzes Video gibt es übrigends in ihrer Galerie.

Dass die Telekommunikationsbranche in den letzten Jahren im starken Wandel ist, hat wohl jeder mitbekommen. Die Preise purzeln immer weiter. Doch jetzt soll das Telefonieren für Umme in viele Länder der Welt möglich sein? Egal ob nach Spanien, USA oder Australien? Wer es nicht glauben will, sollte die Website von VoIPCheap besuchen. Beim ersten “Billiganbieter” für VoIP-Telefonate aus Großbritannien erhält man einfach so pro Woche maximal 300 Minuten, die in vorgegebene Länder vertelefoniert werden können und alles ohne einen Cent zu bezahlen. Die Anmeldung erfolgt über eine eigens bereitgestellte VoIP-Software, die anschließend gleich wieder deinstalliert werden kann. Telefoniert wird über einen eigenen VoIP-Client bzw. direkt über die Website.

Wer den Dienst zuerst gern testen möchte, muss auf der Website beide Nummern eingeben und einfach den Hörer abheben! Leider wird das Gespräch nach 5 Minuten getrennt, was aber für eine erste Hörprobe reichen sollte.

Dass Bad Wimpfen nicht nur für ältere Menschen als Kurort interessant ist, sondern auch für alle, die historische Städte, Burgen und Fachwerkhäuser lieben, sollen die folgenden Bilder in der Galerie zeigen. Speziell Fotografen sollten wohl einen ganzen Tag einplanen, denn an jeder Ecke wird man von wunderbaren Aussichten aufgehalten. Aber schaut selbst…

Wie in den vergangenen Jahren fand auch 2006 das Brettener Peter-und-Paul-Fest am ersten Wochenende im Juli statt. Daran konnte selbst die Fußball-WM nichts ändern. Es gab ein vielfältiges Programm für die Großen und Kleinen unter uns. Der lange Festumzug am Sonntag zog dabei sicherlich jeden Besucher in den Bann und auch die verschiedensten Handwerker in den Ständen zeigten ihre Zunft auf beeindruckende Weise. Impressionen vom Sonntag sind in meiner Galerie zum Peter-und-Paul-Fest zu finden.