All is gone. Everything we uploaded in these last three years: thousands of photos and many videos…. all gone. That’s something not everyone could do. And definately not as fast as me. To efficiently delete these amounts of data you need a proper internet connection and the right tools ! Heh.

But as I’m not really new in this arena I don’t get a stroke but keep quite calm and start searching through the backups of our blog. But not ! Funny enought it’s exactly that ONE folder that somehow is not included in the nightly backup routine. Heh. So the only option that is left: To restore everything manually. Up until mid 2012 this is an easy task as I did a complete backup of the whole site when we were in Moorea. The rest I have to extract from a PDF export I once did in Brisbane. And the final posts I restore manually.

Two days later our site and all our pictures are online again. And now I’m finally starting on a long overdue update. There was quite some things happening during these last weeks, believe me !

I wish, I could tell some amazing stories of the lonesome sailor in Domrep but actually I’m quite bored and feel lonely. As said before, there isn’t much to do in Bayahibe. I’m cleaning the ship, got two gigantic bags with laundry to the shore and now I’m in the net, trying to get an old website of a friend to work.

At least for now. You can find the little country-flags on the upper right corner. Use the red-white-red one for German (Austrian ;-) language. If you’re able to decipher, you’ll find that the German posts tend to be longer and with a little less typos. I also cannot promise to write in two languages for now and forever… As long as we’re connected to the intarwebs, that’s no problem and just takes time. But once we’re out on the great blue yonder, our only means of communication is Email and from there on the posts will only be in one language. Or maybe we’ll switch and use German for every odd and english for the even dates ? We’ll see. I just wanted to tell…

Here’s a pic of our new gadget. Our old-school telephone is just for size comparision. Go to lunatronic to get your own antenna.

So I coupled my trusty handheld SW radio with my MacBook using a 3.5mm ‘headphone’ cable. The software I was using/testing was: CocoaModem 2.0, Fldigi 3.2 and MultiMode Cocoa. After fiddling around with the receiver (using mode: USB) I finally received a faint signal. But that was enough to pull that first weather fax from Northwood, UK !

It’s actually quite amazing that one can receive quite precious data using only standard components and free software – without internet, telephone, WiFi… Well. It was only a test for getting used with the software. The final setup will hopefully consist of a proper tranceiver and a dedicated small Netbook or Laptop with all software installed and configured. Unfortunately the ONLY piece of software that doesn’t exist on Linux or Mac is the SailMail program for sending/receiving emails via SSB. But maybe I can find a solution for that, too.

And one other thing that really confuses me about that last wiki-leak: The whole world seems to be discussing Julian Assange’s problems with two swedish girls and whether it is good/bad/illegal/whatever that wikileaks does… When will people start discussing the CONTENT of the leak ?

I’ve just donated 50€ to wikileaks.org ! Go, Julian Assange, go !!

Update 4.12.2010, 15:15h:

Wikileaks.org is offline – the webspace at amazon is cancelled, the Website in Switzerland wikileaks.ch is partly inaccessible… What’s next ? An US drone bombing the suspected H.Q. of wikileaks ?

Here another excellent article – from Reporters without borders !!

Update 4.12.2010, 22:37h:

Very interesting story on Slashdot about the shutdown of wikileak’s PayPal Account
The story comes with plenty of very insightful comments. Here’s a good one:

Re:Rather symbolic isn’t it? (Score:5, Insightful)
by lexidation (1825996) writes: Alter Relationship   on 04.12.2010 18:21 (#34444302)

I spent ten years of my life as a “real” journalist in several major US media markets. The primary difference between the news “we” presented and what’s being presented via Wikileaks is precisely that Wikileaks allows more or less unfiltered access to the source material. Ask yourself: do you really want someone else selecting what’s fit for you to read? Trust me, having unfettered access to original sources, so that you can independently develop your own take on what’s happening, is infinitely better for you — and better for society — than having the news dished out to you by a “professional” like me in my former incarnation.

What’s happening to Wikileaks is astounding and should be scaring the living shit out of each and every one of you. They have been transformed into a “criminal” organization in the eyes of many members of the public and many members of the mainstream media inside of a week. From the beside-the-point rape case involving Julian Assange to the loss of hosting, DNS services and, now, the possibility to gain funding. That’s how easy it was to get the job done.

I’ve been an observer of political life, professional and otherwise, for more than forty years. Never have I seen an assault on free speech like this one. It doesn’t matter what your personal view is on the wisdom of exposing the day-to-day minutiae of realpolitik. Free speech — and your right as citizens to live under an open government — are under attack. I can only hope people will speak up to defend them.

This also works for the RSS-Feeds. Example in German.

What else is new ? Well, I’ve decided to switch back to english. Most of our readers actually are not native german speakers, so be happy that now you too can decipher our gibberish.

The Gallery (up above, see ‘pictures’) can now only be accessed by registered users. We will keep posting selected pictures to the blog, but the bigger portion is for friends and followers only.

Other enhancements (booklist, shiptrak, position alerts, …) are still to come, stay tuned…

OpenCPN 2.2 Beta fuer Mac auf der deutschen Seite von openCPN runterladen. – Zu finden unter Beta-/Testversionen. Der Download funktioniert ueber Mac’s Mobile Me. Hier muss man mit Passwort einloggen (findet man auch auf der download-Seite, oben). Danach den Ordner OpenCPN Beta…mpkg auswaehlen und den ‘Download-Pfeil’ am oberen Fensterrand anklicken. Nun wird ein .zip Archiv erstellt, das anschliessend am eigenen Rechner gespeichert werden kann. Das .zip Archiv zuerst auspacken (Doppelklick) und anschliessend openCPN installieren (Doppelklick).

Nun zum komplizierten Teil:

Leider fehlen noch zwei Bibliotheken, ohne die das OpenCPN nicht laeuft. Diese erhaelt man ueber MacPorts. Dieses also runterladen und installieren.

Leider ist OpenCPN als i386 Applikation kompiliert, weshalb die MacPorts-config angepasst werden muss:

Die Folgenden Kommandos fuehrt man in einem Terminal-Fenster aus:

edit /opt/local/etc/macports/macports.conf
Nach build_arch suchen, und die Zeile wie folgt anpassen:
build_arch            i386

Danach die Datei speichern, hierzu ist das Admin-Passwort notwendig !

Nun die erforderlichen Bibliotheken installieren (dies dauert ein paar Minuten !). Und nicht wundern, auch diese Kommandos benoetigen das admin-Passwort ! Beim der ersten Verwendung von sudo wird auch noch zusaetzlich eine Warnmeldung ausgegeben.

sudo port -v selfupdate
sudo port install libpng tiff

Nun noch einen Link anlegen, damit OpenCPN die Bibliotheken auch findet:

sudo ln -s /opt/local/lib /usr/local/lib

Das Terminal-Fenster kann nun geschlossen werden.

OpenCPN starten und freuen ! – Ueber Erfahrungsberichte oder Verbesserungswuensche freut sich der Ersteller des Paketes ! Seine Email-Adresse ist in der Datei Liesmich.txt zu finden, diese befindet sich gleich neben dem openCPN download, am selben Server.

Und wenn ich noch rechtzeitig eine Antwort von Mike aus Neuseeland bekomme, dann schaffe ich es evtl. auch unsere Position via ShipTrak bekannt zu geben. Das waere natuerlich nett.

Ach ja  – und moeglich wird das Ganze durch den SPOT satellite messenger. Das Geraet werde ich dann nach dem Toern vorstellen – wenn es sich bewaehrt hat.

See for your self:

Check it out: SinaKatharina

Original stuff from Ben Claassen III

• Do something with comments (letters section – in the same edition: better than in the real newspaper)
• TV-Program: source: digg or youtube
• Gossip
• Music (tonspion or other site with mp3s found free on the net)
• Editorial (sources, stats, subscribers, etc.)
• Sports ? Nah.
• Cartoon, Sudoku, Crossword
• Customization by user
• ???
• Profit !!!

Alternate titles ? Anyone ?

“Seriously, why would you want to buy a Mac if you can have Ubuntu, apart from Adobe/Macromedia products?”

Oh, I don’t know, Apple products? Ableton products? Native Instruments products? Steinberg products? Propellorhead products? Corel products? Quartz? Colour matching built right into the drawing engine? A whole slew of audio, video, modeling, graphics, typesetting and printing (as in not your rgb inkjet) and media applications?

“UI looks as funky (if not funkier), more available software, albeit most of it is OSS or free.”

“Looks”. Heh. It’s never been about how the UI looks. The UI is more or less the same as it’s been since System 7. It’s about how the UI _works_, it’s about how the UI acts and feels, it’s about integration, simplicity and slickness. It’s about doing what it does and doing it responsively with a minimal resources. I’ll guarantee you that KDE won’t be nearly responsive on a 233 G3 w/ 192mb ran as Tiger was. Only people who don’t actually use Macs figure that it’s how the UI looks. (and I’ll concede, I think Enlightenment 17, and certain KDE setups are allot prettier, but neither works as NextStep did, and OS X does.) These are the same people who pitch compiz as the greatest thing since the colour monitor, sure it looks pretty, but it in no way boosts functionality, and all it exists for is to look pretty. And lets not forget the CLI, all the power under the hood of a full-out POSIX compliant BSD core, and weather or not you ever actually use the command shell is entirely a matter of preference and choice, and that’s how it *should* be.

“more available software, albeit most of it is OSS or free.”

Again, it’s fairly clear you’ve never actually used a Mac. Fink (apt for Darwin), and DarwinPorts offer the free software. What, you thought the POSIX compliant, BSD core was for show? Ad don’t forget all the wonderful non-free software availible for the platform. How’s that for choice, you get your pick from the best of both worlds.

“The only good thing about Macs is the look of the case, and even THAT is a matter of taste.”

SGI cases were prettier, but I digress. If all you’re doing is checking emails, word processing and some dev work, Ubuntu is fine. But once you get to any level of _serious_ creative work, Macintosh is the only viable option left with the demise of Irix. And let’s not forget the bit about everything working with minimal hassle on the Mac. Ever tried using a graphics tablet as your core pointer in Ubuntu? Or using a KAOS pad? Or just about any higher end, vaguely exotic multimedia hardware, for that matter? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Just as an FWI, I’ve used various Unices for the past 15 years (Irix, Solaris, AIX, Free/Open BSD, Interix, Linux, and Darwin/OSX) Linux for close to 10. But there’s this way of thinking tat doesn’t seem to be too common these days, “using the best tool for the job”. Linux has it’s uses, serious creative work isn’t one of them. It may be good enough for what YOU do, but don’t assume that everyone else’s needs match your own. And for fuck’s sake, if you’re going to criticize something, use it first. You read like one of those pointless Linux distro reviews that bases the whole thing on the install sequence, then offers a generic gnome screenshot, and somehow thinks there’s anything even remotely useful in the article.

Etwas zu klein geraten, die embedded Gallery, was ?

Dann muss wohl diese Spalte etwas breiter gemacht werden.  — Aber heute nicht mehr.

Ein grosser Tag fuer alle freien Standards ! Und ab wann unterstuetzt eigentlich Apple’s Pages endlich ODF ? Oder hat Jobs Angst, dass dann BillG boese wird ?