First of all: I usually don’t read Ebooks - on the on hand I hardly find the time to read ‘real’ books, on the other hand Ebooks usually cost at least some money - and until now I didn’t really care about them and thought that the information provided in Ebooks usually would also be easy to find and therefore easily accessible online somehow somewhere…
The second thing I have to say before I get to the point is, that I am usually quite skeptical about -free- things. The recent WIRED-magazine features an interesting story about FREE-things - how they can be free, and what they actually do ‘cost’… but also before I read that article my point of view was that I can’t really afford most of the -free- things…

Anyways - surprise surprise: I just downloaded my first free ebook from chitika.com - or actually two ebooks for the prize of none:

• the first one is named “Deep Secrets of Successful Blogging”. It’s basically a round-up of the 30-days “Blog Bash” that took place at chitika.com throughout april last year. It features 30 one-page articles about ’successful blogging’ written by 30 (of the most successful) bloggers of the world wide web…

Of course this ebook can not and will not make anybody a successful ‘good’ blogger over night - but at least it provides an interesting insight into some bloggers ideas, strategies, minds…

• once you’re there downloading the one ebook you can just download the other one as well: it is titled “Using Chitika With Google” and shows different strategies of mixing Google Adsense ads for example with Chitika MiniMalls. Again: don’t expect too much from this - but maybe some interesting and/or entertaining tips and tricks and how-tos and so on…

both ebooks can be downloaded completely free of charge from chitika’s blog:
-> www.chitika.com/blog

greetings, t..

PS: you do not need to register for an account at chitika.com to download the free ebooks - but if you want to start using the chitika-ads for your weblogs/websites you may of course register using ‘my’ referral-link:
-> chitika.com/mm_overview.php?refid=tille

for obvious reasons I recently designed/made this “Free Tibet!” blinkie-button:

Free-Tibet!

…please feel free to download the button, and/or to include it into your homepage, website or blog, decorate your FaceBook account or some MySpace page of your choice. On the related blinkie-button-page you will also find some ready made code snippet along with some related links, that will make it very easy to add this button to whatever website of your choice..

Read the rest of this entry »

for almost a week I managed to keep my mouth shut - but after my honest opinion the public “discussion” about Nokia’s decision to shut down its factory in Bochum recently got a bit out of hand. So I finally see myself forced to comment on some of other people’s comments..

..for example Nordrhein-Westfalens minister for economic affairs Christa Thoben (CDU), accusing the finnish mobile phone manufacturer of “subvention tricking” (”Subventions-Tricksereien”) and warned the company of a possible “massive image damage”.
The Prime Minister of Nordrhein-Westfalens Mr. Rüttgers insulted the former beloved investor, den ehemals ach-so-sehr geliebten Investor, employer and tax payer Nokia and called the company a “subvention cicada”!

Read the rest of this entry »

..what if everybody..? ..what if everybody not only used Firefox as a browser - but also combined it with Wladimir Palant’s free advertisement blocking plug-in ‘Adblock Plus’ (www.adblockplus.org)..? ..would there just be less ugly blinking ads on my screen and your monitor and on his and her and their internet browsing experience..? ..or would there be also less motivation for publishers to publish useful information online..? ..would there be less crap online..? ..fewer weblogs..? ..less growth..?
To sum it up: has ‘Adblock Plus’ the potential to bring the Empires of E-Marketing down to their financial knees..? ..might this the end of the free world wide web as we know it..?

At this point I’d like to freely quote from H.P.Baxter’s Scooter’s current hit single:
“The Question is: What is the Question?!”
..or in my words: “The problem is: What is the Problem?!”
Well.. Currently there seems to be a lot of discussion going on about moneteasing äh- monetization - or actually about the possible future problems of making money online by publishing ‘free’ content - which seems to be one of the sole reasons people publish things on the web anyways. Some people seem to be so bitter about this ‘problem’ that they started blocking Firefox - hoping to make Adsense-blocking visitors understand that advertisement is needed to cover the costs of free content.. Others seem to switch to in my opinion even worse/ more ‘evil’ advertisement techniques such as text-ads - text-links that are shown in the middle of a text - leaving the visitors of a website with no choice of ignoring or even blocking the ad since it ‘camouflages’ perfectly well..

Read the rest of this entry »

the title of this post might be a little bit misleading - but it just fits so well to the following little story.. Here we go: About one year a go my most beloved five years old Powerbook broke down - went insane in the main frame - had enough of all the pitty and denied all orders.

What happened..? The motherboard got ‘tired’ or ‘ill’ or actually it just broke. The screen froze in front of my eyes - and after trying a restart it just didn’t start up anymore. That was that.

Of course I was just in the middle of something - so I just had to get a new working station right away - and that’s how I got my new ‘SurfBoard’ I’m sitting at right now: a 15″ MacBook Pro, 2 GHz Intel Core Duo Processor, 1GB Ram etc..

With this new device new problems arose right away: first it was ‘just’ software related problems.. - ..I thought:

My good old software packet ‘Macromedia Studio MX’ was also working partly on the new MacBook, only the most crucial little application ‘Dreamweaver MX’ did not want to cooperate.. - ..and without ‘Dreamweaver’ I can’t really do my daily business..! So I bought ‘Macromedia Studio 8’ right away, about 48 hours after I got my MacBook Pro..

Read the rest of this entry »

I recently received a very nice Email - a visitor of these pages ‘reminded’ me kindly that some of my about 5 years old desktop-wallpaper-pictures were not available in any contemporary screen-resolution.. Back then I just rendered them in these following three different sizes: 1152×768, 1024×768 und 800×600..!!

Anyways - I finally added some pixels here and there and ‘re-rendered’ the three Finland-wallpaper-pictures in ten up-to-date sizes:

PowerBook / MacBook Pro:
1440×900, 1280×854, 1152×768

Monitor / Screen (4×3):
1600×1200, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1024×768

Studio Display (16×9):
1680×1050, 1280×800, 1024×640

..hurray!

And here’s the direct links to the three sets:
1) Finland Helsinki Kontula Summer
2) Finland Helsinki Vallila Summer
3) Finland Helsinki Vallila Winter

..well - greetings, Till..

technorati tags: finland, helsinki, pixel, wallpaper, macbook pro

Sorry, but I just can’t leave the recent public discussion about Nuclear Energy (or maybe Nuclear Power would suit better) uncommented. So here comes my first comment/lament about what I’d like to call ‘Power Lies (and truths (and rumors))’.

First of all, for those who don’t know: I grew up in a rural area in the North of Germany, known for its almost untouched nature, its friendly farmers - and a number of facilities for handling radioactive waste. The whole project is under construction since the 70ies (ongoing), but the first containers named ‘CASTOR’ are already delivered since the mid-90ies.
As long as I can think (literally) I just know that Nucluear Power is not only dangerous, but also simply the wrong way to go.

That said I’ll now come to the first (and actually my favourite) ‘Power Lie’: the Carbon Dioxide Reduction Lie:
Yes, it is true that nuclear power plants can help to reduce the production of carbon dioxide - locally. Once a nuclear power plant is all built and then fed with fuel rods (those nasty parts that radiate very actively and that get so hot that you can boil water with ‘em - which makes a nuclear power plant what it is) a it will basically only emit hot water - and therefore it does not emit carbon dioxide directly.
But until a nuclear power plant is actually built and fed with fuel rods a lot of carbon dioxide is emitted - mostly in the countries where the fuel rods are produced. To compare the actual numbers a so called ‘Life Cycle Analysis’ helps to figure out, what the actual CO2-footprint of a technology is. The exact numbers seem to vary very much though - depending on what is actually compared - and also depending on who actually paid the research.
So.. - ..maybe next time you hear someone saying something like “Nuclear Energy helps reducing carbon dioxide emissions” you can add a little “locally!“.

please feel free to browse on:
-> pictures I took of the third ‘Castor-Transport’ to Gorleben back in 1997 (www.bilderbook.org)
-> Greenpeace’s campain page ‘End the nuclear age’ (www.greenpeace.org)
-> Elena’s Motorcyle Ride through Chernobyl (www.kiddofspeed.com)

I just got over quite an ‘office marathon’: the ‘tax bird’ was humming and I had to get some ‘tax things’ ready..
..and i actually got them ready. Hu!

..usually I enjoy doing some updates after having fought against such a paper monster: I would add a picture album to bilderbook, de-bug a few scripts, look at some log-files.. But this time it was a bit ‘worse’: I dared to do some upgrades instead of just updates: Wordpress, Drupal und Webedition. Hurra!

Datails:

1) moved tillintallin to Wordpress

2) upgrade von livetourdates.org to a more reliable version of Drupal

3) and Webedition… - ..but that’s still work in progress - so I won’t tell any further details on this. Sorry. Maybe only that I just became an official ‘Solution Partner’ for Webedition..:] Hurray.

Well - that’s also my ‘top-three’ list of favourite CMSs.. ‘only’ Typo3, Expression Engine, and.. are missing..

..and additionally I just realized that I actually did manage to also update tillintallin.net! Hurray again!

+Greetz, till..

PS: if anyone wants to upgrade from Drupal 4.5.1 to 4.7.4: please do backup your database first! ..and then the upgrade probably will only work as a two-step upgrade: first upgrade to 4.6.1. and then upgrade to 4.7.4.. otherwise it won’t work. See also: http://drupal.org/node/100430

PS2: and by then I actually also managed to start another blog: mynu.tv ..a blog, that will show some of my ‘watching-habbits’.. - ..which I almost forgot fighting the paper monster..:]

as you might know: the world cup is still on - but only four (European) teams left:

France	Portugal	Italy	Germany

well well well.. - ..we’ll see..:] ..quite soon!

meanwhile you’re of course still warmly invited to download the (free) team shirt icon set and the (free) football field wallpaper and play around with it.. Have your own dream team, recall the latest games, have a tillintallin-team.. and please don’t cry too much, Argentina..:]

And/Or::: go to Henry Karjalainen’s website and get yourself a (free) world cup flash-powered guestbook for your website - featuring all the cute little world cup team shirt icons you might have seen before.. - ..what a blast!!

-> Henry’s Free World Cup Flash-Guestbook

..aaand here’s once again the links to the icon and wallpaper download pages::

->

football world cup team shirt icons

->

football world cup desktop wallpaper

..enjoy!! t..

ps: ps: technorati tags: football, world cup, wallpaper, icons

finally almost everything is uploaded - and seems to work fine both on Macintosh OS and PC-Windows..:]

‘Football World Cup 2006′, now featuring a total of 64 icons, hand knitted in 32×32 pixels, suitable for Mac, PC and www: 60 team shirt icons, one referee shirt, one yellow card, one red card, comin’ along with corresponding 4 different desktop wallpaper pictures (different views of a vector-style football field in nine different sizes) and last but not least a ‘classic design’ football..

->

football world cup team shirt icons

->

football world cup desktop wallpaper

..preview:

please feel free to download and use it for your private purposes: desktop decoration, szenario simulation, homepage illustration, ..whatever..

..enjoy! ..greetz! t..

ps: technorati tags: football, world cup, wallpaper, icons