Apple Store Hamburg Grand Opening
Yesterday, the brand new [Apple Store in Hamburg](http://www.apple.com/de/retail/alstertal/) had its grand opening. I don't know how many people came to be part of this event but there were a lot!
We arrived at about 8am, 2 hours before the store opened its doors for the public. The first guy in the line said that he was waiting since 1am.
Still Alive
It's been almost 2 months since I last wrote something on this blog. Don't worry, I'm still alive. 
The last few weeks I've been busy writing my bachelor's thesis and that's why I had to neglect some things. One of them was keeping this blog updated.
Fortunately, this is over now and I hope to find some more time to write blog posts again.
Germany’s Plan to Implement Internet Filters by Law
There is a nice article written by Johnny Haeusler from [spreeblick.com](http://www.spreeblick.com) about our (Germany's) government's plans to filter the internet using the excuse of fighting against child abuse.
Fighting against child abuse... sounds right, doesn't it? Sure! But just putting stop signs in front of those disgusting webpages (by using DNS redirections) does surely NOT help ANY child. This crime has to be fought against at the roots - the families that abuse their childs. Implementing internet filters by law is a very dangerous plan - and it will (maybe not tomorrow or next year) be used to censor the Internet.
Even if you don't live in Germany, I think it can't hurt to see what's going on right now in the land of poets and "thinkers".
Johnny's [article](http://www.spreeblick.com/2009/05/13/germanys-plan-to-implement-internet-filters-by-law/) is written in english, so please take a few minutes and read it. Thanks!
Nice Augmented Reality Demo
[General Electric](http://www.ge.com) put out a nice [website](http://ge.ecomagination.com/smartgrid/#/augmented_reality) with an impressive [augmented reality](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_reality) demonstration.
The fun part is that you can play around with it yourself - on your computer, within your web browser!
Here is how it works: First, you print out one sheet of paper with a symbol on it. You then start GE's little Flash application which uses your webcam. All this application does so far is to display your picture in the browser. But if you hold that sheet of paper to the webcam the symbol opens and a nice small 3D animated landscape comes out of your paper. You can change the view by changing the perspective to the paper you're holding in your hands.
[Try it out!](http://ge.ecomagination.com/smartgrid/#/augmented_reality) It's awesome!
Warning: Flash 10 is required.
Synchronizing OmniFocus via WebDAV on Gentoo Linux
The biggest new feature in [OmniFocus](http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnifocus) 1.5 will be the possibility to synchronize multiple OmniFocus to one single database.
This is very nice as, I suppose, a lot of people have multiple installations of OmniFocus and keeping all of them up to date is a hassle. Especially now, as OmniFocus is also available for the iPhone a synchronization feature is an absolute must to keep doing GTD "stress-free".
There are several ways to set up the synchronization feature:
* **[MobileMe](http://me.com)** This is probably the most convenient way but it requires you to have a MobileMe account.
* **Bonjour** Synchronizing via Bonjour requires to make one Mac to function as a "database server" (which has to be up and running if you want to sync) and synchronizing is only possible over the local network.
* **Disk** If you have NAS system or a USB hard drive connected to your AirPort you could use this option. But unfortunately the iPhone does not support this way.
* **WebDAV** If you have access to a web server you could use that one as an OmniFocus database server. This way you have access to your tasks from all over the world.
In this tutorial I want to show you how you can configure an apache web server to support WebDAV and what you have to do to make OmniFocus use your very own "cloud".
Git Presentation
A few weeks ago I created a keynote presentation about [Git](http://www.git-scm.com) for my school.
You can download it [here](http://www.stiefels.net/~sst/files/git_presentation.zip). Please note that it is in german but feel free to modify it and use it for your own presentations.
Twitter Account
Joining the trend of twittering I created my own [twitter account](http://twitter.com/simonboots).
Openfire and Net::XMPP
I was writing a perl script the other day which connects to my [Openfire XMPP server](http://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/openfire/index.jsp) and does some stuff (listening for incoming messages, etc.).
When I started my perl script it always failed with the error message:
ERROR: Authorization failed: error - not-authorized
After re-checking the password and username it still didn't want to work.
In the end [I found out](http://www.igniterealtime.org/community/thread/20551) that the the perl [Net::XMPP](http://search.cpan.org/~hacker/Net-XMPP-1.02/lib/Net/XMPP.pm) SASL authorization doesn't want to play with the SASL implementation in Openfire.
Modifying the Protocol.pm of Net::XMPP can help to solve this problem.
Open this file and comment out these lines (at line ~1800):
if($self->{STREAM}->GetStreamFeature($self->GetStreamID(),"xmpp-sasl"))
{
return $self->AuthSASL(%args);
}
After this little tweak Net::XMPP should talk to Openfire without grumbling.
Starcraft and Mac OS X 10.5.3/4
[Starcraft 2](http://starcraft2.com/) has been announced for a while now and as I watched the in-game movies I got the urge to play the good old Starcraft again.
Starcraft is over 10 years old but Blizzard did a good job and released an installer for Mac OS X a long time ago.
The installation did not make any problems but the game didn't start. The app quit itself shortly after I started it.
After looking for a solution for this problem I found out that Apple removed the support for 256 color mode from the nVidia graphics drivers in 10.5.3. (Ok, its 2008 and who really needs a 256 color mode??).
Fortunately there is an easy way to get the [old 10.5.2 graphics drivers back](http://70.181.80.166:82/blog/archives/2008/07/mac-os-10531054-nvidia-256-colors.html).
Starcraft now runs without any problems and looks gorgeous even with only 256 colors.
Trip to Vegas
For the long 4th of July weekend [Thilo](http://www.lemming.name) and I have planned to do a nice little road trip from Cupertino to Las Vegas.
With our rented Pontiac convertible we headed east on Thursday short after noon and of course we hit the first traffic jam just one hour later. Fortunately, that was the only traffic jam on our tour before we arrived in Las Vegas ten hours later.
As we drove through the Death Valley we had about 106°F in the middle of the night and during the day it was hardly possible to walk around in Vegas without a hat, enough water and a strong belief in survival.
Driving through the Strip at night is very impressive and is unimaginable how much money all these swanky hotels and casinos must have been cost.
And indeed, everything is very expensive. If you don't want to live on fast food a lunch or a nice dinner could eat up your budget for the slot machines.
Visiting Las Vegas for three days was great but I wouldn't want to stay there much longer. If you don't have the money for seeing shows or do other fun (and therefore expensive) things you'd probably stay in the hotel or casino (not gambling) for most of the time which becomes pretty boring sooner or later.
Thanks to [Thilo](http://www.lemming.name) for that amazing road trip and an awesome time in Vegas!
[Here](http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrtentacle/sets/72157606065581701/) are a few pictures.
