back from berlin, i am. "wie stehen die akazien?" i was asked by elke (on the right, but not at razorfish – not anymore...). "alles bonanza" i replied.

vienna sucked after i returned from london. today it sucked again. reason: there is nothing like dr seltsam's frühschoppen (the salbader crew live and in touch) in vienna. well, berlin is bigger. more choices. in vienna you only have one. you do not have mcdonald's and burger king, you only have mcdonald's. and there's only orf. and orf only. and everybody is reading kronenzeitung, everything unusual is a scandal or an event (and has to be related to art then).

after two days i will have gotten used to it again.

i am glad, though, that i could leave behind the 19th floor (it sounds more promising than it is in reality)...

the best lingo programmer in the whole universe aka ullala finished her latest project: opsys – the game produced by [hyper]media (greece).

"oh, cyprus is really a very sunny, nice place. i loved the weather, and enjoyed the hotel's swimming pool very much. the only thing that turned out to be wrong was, that the job could not be done relaxed within 1 or 2 weeks." – ullala exploring the sunny side of timeplans

gosh! dack's cell phone theater rocks: knocking heads off a stick figure really knocks me off my feet.

"i'm not much into sumo or sailor moon, but i'm a huge fan of whatever this is." – misterpants on sumo sailor moon

p3k in heavy rotation: yesterday in munich, tomorrow in berlin – will be back on monday (and then moving into a hotel because my flat will be renovated). i heard some other people would be in berlin, too?

the german zdnet coverage of the "nielsen-norman-group user experience world tour 2000" is not really worth to read (but i needed a catch link). jakob nielsen does his job well. a fundamentalist who divides the net world in (at least) two parts but gives impact and impulse on the thoughts of both. that's ok. it's just so wrong to only listen to him (not to mention that undeliberate belief is generally total nonsense). in fact, he is the frontman of that touring usability supergroup vaccinated with the idea of p!o!p!ular culture. but it were bruce tognazzini and brenda laurel who made my day. while nielsen is pretty vague in his predictions and play with numbers and percentages (hell knows how he elaborated them), the other two give rather a deep insight into how to let users develop a personal relationship with a website and its transmedial derivations (laurel) or illustrate the steps of making a website fail completely (tog in a gorgeous, entertaining performance). oy, i remain pretty vague here as well... think it still needs some time to work out all the hints i got yesterday.

for all those people who did not receive their advent calendar with yummy choccolatte inside, here's the ultimate surrogate: the ever-sensational sensomatic advent_ures 2000. thanks pimi & flo!

whoa, it's almost a little scary to think about meeting those pop stars of usability... (or is this a group photo of the "honky tonk angels" shortly before their reunion appearance at the "golden nugget"?)

...and i really liked the idea of the cuecat! well, at least if it was built into a mouse or even better a wireless device. however, its manufacturer is acting stupid with such a good idea: salon has a story about how akward it is to work with cuecat. and on slashdot users report how they got into trouble with digital:convergence tinkering with the pussy hardware.

descriptions of the different barcode types in english und auf deutsch. here's p3k in code-128 made with dlsoft barcode maker.

recently, german hip-hop band die fantastischen vier released their mtv unplugged album. as christmas present mtv will broadcast the director's cut of their performance in the balver cave. smudo got some pictures of the rehearsel.

those memories can't wait: eight years ago, just at the beginning of their steep career, the german answer on the furious five gave an interview to a bunch of teenagers who maintained a li'l news magazine at the local youth club in a small village quite close to the homebase of the fantastic four. the mag was called "arnold" just like that styrian, uhm, "actor" and the premises of the club were almost too small for the suddenly successful act and its screaming girly admirers...

if i remember it right, it was smudo who designed the cover of that "arnold" issue: we asked him to draw his version of mr universum.

and.y, another member of the former "terminal team", leads way back into time with a "fanta 4 history" including some snippets of the early works of "cool cat" (aka smudo), "big boss" (and.y), thomas d and "king burger b" (deejot hausmarke). makes me curious about what became of that guy called "chicken mc d", who joined the team for two weeks but then left for good... yet another tragedy of fame on denial?