Sebastian’s blog

We all know the famous scene from Frank Miller’s 300 where Leonidas casts the Persian messengers into the pit, shouting “This is Sparta!“.
It has been reproduced ad absurdum into all kinds of image macros and memes.

Now, we all know the movie is not actually close to historic truth.
People who don’t realize this are just idiots.

Or are they?
I recently read a history magazine about ancient Greece (GEO Epoche Griechenland), and guess what I found:

In 492 BC, the first Persian attack failed.
One year after, the Persian king sent diplomats to the Greek cities (”poleis“).
They are to take soil and water as a sign of submission of the Greek people.
Everybody submits.
What does Sparta do? They throw the messengers into a canyon.
But Athens throws them into a well for them to take soil and water by themselves.

So much historic accuracy in one often-copied image macro. Fantastic.

July 23rd, 2008 | Category: Movies & Series | Leave a comment

I will go to Sardinia for 2,5 weeks in August.
I recently changed my bank accounts, and the new one gave me a free Visa card.
All is well for renting a car, right?

Not really.
The Visa cards you get for free from banks are debit cards, usually.
In Germany, they are known as “Direktkarte“.
This means they will charge the bank account immediately after you use the card, instead of giving you credit and sending a bill afterwards.
The problem with these cards is that car lessor will not take them, they only take “real” Visa credit cards.

Bad for me, I needed another card.
I chose the Amazon credit card, which is free in the first year.
Still, I wondered what was the difference.
After all, when I signed for the bank account, I signed that I would be liable for any money taken from the Visa card.

What better to do than ask Visa directly?
They replied within a couple of hours, here’s the full answer:

vielen Dank für Ihre Anfrage bei Visa Europe.

Die folgenden Ausführungen erläutern Ihnen die Unterschiede zwischen Kredit und Debit Karten Transaktionen.

Grundsätzlich können Sie Ihre Debit Karte für alle Transaktionen genau wie eine Kreditkarte benutzen. Allerdings bevorzugen einige Händler - wie etwa Hotels oder Autovermietungen - ausschließlich Kreditkarten, um Hotelzimmer oder Mietwagen zu reservieren, bevor diese Leistungen in Anspruch genommen werden. Nichtsdestotrotz kann eine Debit oder Kreditkarte benutzt werden, um ein Hotel oder einen Mietwagen zu bezahlen.

Der dahinter liegende Grund ist folgender, wenn Sie einen Mietwagen buchen wird der zu erwartende Zahlbetrag vom Händler geschätzt und vorübergehend vom Kartenaussteller auf Ihrem Konto festgehalten, um sicherzustellen, dass genügend Mittel vorhanden sind, wenn die Transaktion beglichen wird.

Manchmal ist der vorgemerkte Betrag höher als der endgültige Zahlbetrag, da die Autovermietung einige Vermutungen über eventuelle Zusatzgebühren anstellen muss, die bei Benutzung des Mietwagens anfallen können.

Dies ist einfacher mit einer Kreditkarte zu bewerkstelligen, da ein Teil des zur Verfügung stehenden Kredits vorübergehend eingefroren werden kann, um die Kosten der Transaktion zu decken. Buchen Sie einen Mietwagen mit einer Debit Karte kann der vorgemerkte Betrag unter Umständen Ihr Konto überziehen, obwohl die eigentliche Transaktion noch gar nicht stattgefunden hat. Schlussendlich, beim Bezahlen der Rechnung, können Sie mit einer anderen Karte bezahlen, als mit derjenigen mit welcher Sie das Auto reserviert haben und diese Karte kann entweder eine Debit oder Kreditkarte sein.

Basically, although it is ensured that the seller/lessor will get his money, they only take credit cards, because they would only block “virtual” money on the credit card.
Charging my debit card would mean I would actually pay the money (and later get it back).

And all this time, I thought Visa stood for “easy payment”.
At least they were able to give a good explanation.

July 23rd, 2008 | Category: Life | Leave a comment

It seems I have not yet blogged about GNOME Do.

GNOME Do is an application like Quicksilver (MacOS X) and GNOME Launch Box.

So, what is it? I always describe it as “command line for the desktop“.
You open Do with a simple keystroke. Then you just type away, and control your system. You can just type application names, and choose to open them. You can type file names, and move/copy/extract them. You can type any text and send it to Twitter or Google or IMDb. You can type an album name, choose a song and immediately add it to your MP3 player queue. And these are just a couple of examples from the vast possibilities in Do with all plugins enabled.

Saying more about it would be a waste of your time. If you are at all interested, you should definitely get it! The last week I have been so amazed by it that I plan to donate 5€ to the Do team for their efforts.

If you are on Ubuntu, don’t bother to install the slightly outdated 0.4 version in the repositories. GNOME Do has a release version repository at http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-core/ubuntu. All the available plugins will be downloaded automatically when you activate them (great feature btw). Unfortunately, the Twitter plugin (which worked in 0.4) doesn’t work in 0.5 for a lot of people (Launchpad Bug 238902).

July 16th, 2008 | Category: Linux | Comments (1)

I had good news today (my diploma thesis is due next Tuesday, so I still got some time), and I wasn’t really in the mood for cooking, so - against all common sense - I walked towards the McDonalds on my way home.

Unfortunately for McD, fortunate for me, there’s a new Italian restaurant right next door. They offered salami pizza and a salad for only 5,50€. I thought “what the hell” and tried it.
The restaurant is called “Trulli”: Google Maps, more data (look for “Trulli”).

The staff was extremely forthcoming and friendly. They took less than 10 minutes for the pizza. It was all made “to go”.

When at home, the pizza was a bit cold, but that’s my problem (15 minutes walk). It was still very well though. Much cheese, good salami, and it was even a big pizza (didn’t really expect that). The salad was okay, I didn’t like the dressing.

At McD, I would’ve paid the same, eaten less and worse. Sometimes it’s a good thing to try something new.

July 15th, 2008 | Category: Food, Life | Leave a comment

Oh wow, I’m close to tears from the laughing.

cracked.com has 6 ways to save gas in your car. And any open-minded person would immediately recognize the scam in each of them, because if things sound too good to be true, they usually are.

• Intake Twister & Tornado Fuel Saver: Mini-tornadoes will improve air-intake.
  Of course, no car company has ever thought about that, that’s why there’s so little technology in cars.
• Bio Petro Improver: A teaspoon of a dubious powder will break up the gas molecules. The video explanation is hilarious.
• Khaos Super Turbo Charger: Want to see your engine choke to death? Air diet for cars. After all, we all know we can squeeze out the same power out of the engine by giving it less, just as it is possible with humans. Right?
• Draft Assisted Forced Stop: Just highly dangerous. Really great way to go Darwin on yourself
• Motoflow Fuel Magnet: A magnet that changes the fuel. Should I even go on?
• Water4gas: Who needs the laws of physics anyway?!

Great laugh. Read it now!

July 15th, 2008 | Category: Life | Comments (1)

And another great video.

Johnny Long is a security expert/hacker. In this video, he explains the skills of no-tech hacking, hacking without any electrionic devices:

• Social engineering
• Lock picking
• Shoulder-surfing
• The most obvious ways to hack somebody’s life/job

Really an interesting view. Sheds new light on the stupidity of people.
And kinda enlightening: I didn’t know you can hack Kensington computer locks with a roll of toilet paper… good thing I never bought one.

(Thx ShadowIce)

July 15th, 2008 | Category: Life | Leave a comment

I just saw an awesome Google Techtalk with Geoffrey Hinton.

Hinton is a professor of machine learning at the University of Toronto.

In his talk, he showed a new type of neural network, which quite impressed me. Instead of only relying on putting data into a neural network and changing parameters here and there, he uses the network to produce data. He calls it “Learning graphics generation before learning image recognition.” The difference between “what the network wants to see” and the actual data is used to change the network’s parameters.

The results are quite awesome. In the end, he needs to restrict the model somewhat, but not drastically. With his model, it’s possible to classify data, or recognize images, without any labelling or tinkering with the network; Unsupervised learning is possible.

If you think about it, it’s pretty much what scientists have found out about the human brain in the last years. Perception is not only what travels through the eyes into the brain, but also very much of how past experiences change our perception (think: prejudice, hallucinations, …).

If you’re in any way into neural networks or machine learning, you should definitely watch the video. Fascinating stuff!

July 14th, 2008 | Category: Software | Leave a comment

Sometimes, I’m a sucker for advertisements.

Recently, I saw the commercial for a new kid’s snack, called “Kinder Joy“.

It looked good and it’s by Ferrero, so it should’t be too bad, right?

Today I bought one for me and my girlfriend.

The Kinder Joy eggs are made up of two half-egg bowls. One bowl contains a chocolate/milk cream with two, kinda Giotto-like chocolate balls. Really tasty and sweet. The other bowl contains a small surprise gift, as in Kinder Überraschung. Oh yes, for the cream there’s a small “spoon” attached, works well. The whole thing kinda tastes like Kinder Überraschung or maybe Kinder Riegel.

Nothing too bad for 65c, but these days I’d rather have only chocolate, no gift to throw away. So, better only buy Kinder Riegel. Less crap, more chocolate.

July 8th, 2008 | Category: Life | Comments (1)

And then there was another release where I wasn’t able to contribute…

Anyway, p300 — a file sharing app by guruz — has its next release out, version 709.

New features:

• Chat
• New artwork
• Several fixes and improvements

Download now!

July 7th, 2008 | Category: Software, p300 | Leave a comment