just to let you know

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• Shame of the nation: German right-wing parties gain ground in east german elections.

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• First photos of packaging and interior of the new iMac G5.

faulty MS IE rendering leads to crashing & freezing

I am very glad about Eric Meyer's post regarding freezes on MS IE / Win due to a problem with the rendering engine. Strangely enough, I had similar problem, but only very recently. Changing the floating of some divs sorted it. It actually lead me to believe that the problem could be due to SP2 upgrades, but the PC I use at home for website checks under Windows hasn't been patched yet (and by the recent comments I've read about it I might very well leave it at that). This still leaves the theoretical aspect of a virus - ach, we might never find out.

Excellent detective work by the guru himself - as usual.

Deutsche Welle now boasts Klingon

Deutsche Welle, the german radio world service, has always been -despite its german roots- reknowned for their good sense of humour. In the past, for example, they presented us the Germanizer, an online test to become german instantly.

This time, the broadcaster reaches out to the 'stars far, far away' by offering Klingon as another official language that's offered on their website.

Firefox 1.0 Preview

I've had a play with the latest Firefox 1.0 preview release and must say that my first impressions are very convincing. I spent some time playing with the RSS button, which I find very nifty. I now have a RSS bookmark on my bookmark tab to go directly to my favourite feeds.

Firefox certainly has the power to grab some market share off the huge MS IE chunk.

mooh, mäh, täterätätä

Now that I have become a prolific reader of toddler and baby books, I must admit that the difference in the spelling of pet noises puzzles me. While german dogs articulate themselves using "Wau-Wau" (which is also the name a baby usually gives a dog before it is able to say "Hund"), english dogs are stubbornly insisting on"Woof-Woof"ing away. English sheep make "Baaaa", while german ones simply "Määäh" away to their heart's content.

However, I have to admit that ducks ("Quack!") are far more language conform and our bilingual household appreciates this very much.

And finally, I simply cannot understand pig noises - I mean have you ever heard a pig making "Oink-Oink" ? Me neither, but I wonder what french dogs sound like...

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• a German who didn't fancy going to work was found by the police hiding in this wardrobe.
• According to a Forsa opinion poll, 20% of all Germans want to have the wall back.

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• England keeper David James seems to struggle with more than catching balls - in a BBC report he says:

  "We were comfortable. The free-kick should not have changed the game but the equaliser cost us three points."

  Sorry, David, but a draw against Austria still leaves your team with 1 point, so how can you lose 3 ?
• The world's first Internet cafe celebrates its 10th birthday.
• The British public has decided: Beaker & Honeydew are the best screen scientists ever.

creating my own ringtones

I read a post from a guy the other day who said that all he uses GarageBand for is to create his own ringtones.

"Of course", I thought - "why didn't I think of this earlier?". Wanna hear my first attempts? I actually think that the track names I chose are more hip than the tracks themselves.

Soleil d'Aix, Thought I Heard You or Decker's Revenge. All tunes are in .mp3 format and obviously require a phone that can play those - like my SE P900.

The Hamburg cell

Almost 3 years to day, this film documentary was a terrible look back to the events of 9/11 and their plotting which originated in Hamburg. I found The Hamburg Cell not too doomy and gloomy and thought that - considering feelings are still fairly fresh and imminent - the issue was handled with the necessary repect and dignity.