Richard Hemmer

For those of you new to this publishing outlet, there is a category which I have dubbed DBMA, Death by Martini Abroad. It’s my attempt at creating the impression that my life does not evolve around the same square kilometer here in Vienna (it actually does). So, here we are. Another installment of DBMA, and again, one from the fair city of London, UK.

I went there for work, but of course visited my delightful sister as well, who, with an uncanny sense for what constitutes deliciousness in the eyes of this glutton, led me to a few interesting eateries.

Let’s start with that ham sandwich at Homemade, a small café in East Dulwich, where ham is cut in exactly the kind of way I prefer (and the way most Brits do, too): big, fat chunks.

It’s a nice place, not exactly expensive, and it does actually taste quite homemade (their bread is most agreeable). If you want to read a more thorough and undoubtedly more eloquent review of the place, have a look at this article on Eats Dulwich (ha, clever!)

Next up was Ping Pong in Soho, an in my eyes rather oddly named, upscale chain of Chinese restaurants. According to some sources on the internet, their service is rather shit, but that wasn’t the impression I had. Except, maybe for the fact that they accidentally served seafood in a vegetarian Dim Sum. Ooops. Fortunately, my sister, who is of the vegetarian conviction, is not so in any religious way. But it’s a mistake which would have others scream in outrage and possibly sue Ping Pong’s pants off (my sister did neither, even though I’d have enjoyed the spectacle of the first scenario, I think). Anyway, to drink I had a Goji berry drink, which was filled to the brim with vitamins, fruit and mint. I think. It also looked pretty.

I’m still not sure what Goji berries are, and whether what swam on top actually was them or maybe just something that fell off a tray. It did however taste most exotic and delicious.

For food we had a selection of their dim sum. I am no big expert on dim sum, but I liked what I had. There was one with big leafs wrapped around it, which I tried to eat just like that, thinking they couldn’t possibly expect me to unwrap this with sticks.

Turns out they did. I kept trying to remove the stringy bits of leaf for the better part of an hour. Next time I’ll know.  The place is not exactly inexpensive, but it won’t ruin you either if you go there from time to time. Which I think you should, especially if you’re not a vegetarian.

I also had a large bowl of fruit at Le Pain Quotidien at the Southbank Centre. I opted against their ham&eggs, because I remembered from my last visit that their ham was a bit too salty. And I think I had had my fair share of ham on that trip already.

On my way out of London I dined at Giraffe, right inside Heathrow’s Terminal 1. I don’t usually like to have sit-down dinners at airports, but I was sort of coerced into it by fellow travellers. What a happy coincidence that was, because the Grilled Minute Rump Steak Sandwich I had was really quite excellent. I still don’t like sit-down dinners at airports, but I definitely like the Giraffe. Maybe they do take-aways too.

Finally, I also included in above gallery an image of a scotch egg. Because I just love this perverse but utterly succulent combination of meat, bread-crumbs and egg. No visit to the the Isle is complete without having at least one. If you ever find a place in Vienna that sells them, do tell me.

This is goulash, a dish devised by hungry shepherds somewhere on the lush pastures of the Magyar countryside. It’s delicious beef and onions, stewed for multiple hours, seasoned with a plethora of spices so numerous, my fingers tire from thinking about that number alone. Hence, you’ll have to find out yourself. Like here.

The version displayed above was prepared by my lovely girlfriend and more succulent than any goulash I ever tried my sloppy hands on.

I might have to work on my self-marketing skills.

So today my mother was in town. What sounds like the beginning of a particularly creepy combination of film noir and Psycho-related fare, is actually just an ordinary introduction to explain why I went to Café Raimund in the outer fringes of Vienna’s posh 1st district. It’s right opposite the Volkstheater, which the cultur vultures among you might know.

Even though I’ve already spent a considerable part of my precious life in Vienna, it was the first time I went there today. After tonight, I don’t know why, because Café Raimund is a most charming part of Viennese culture. With a wide and spacious non-smoker’s section and a small but cozy smoker’s section it’s the ideal melting pot for all sorts of individuals.

“Say, Richard, what about their menu? Does it comprise of typical Austrian fare but also Italian cuisine, complete with sort of shoddy English translations?”, you might ask. “Why yes, it does!”, I’d answer, mildly surprised by your sense of clairvoyance.

True to myself I had a pork schnitzel, with molten cheese on top, in gravy. With potatoes. It was most delicious. Despite the fact that we were sitting in said cozy smoker’s section, and people all around us were enjoying their tobacco products. Because you know what? I don’t care. I like my food any which way, and some smoke has never turned me off of good food. And if it turns you off, don’t sit in the smoker’s section. Just saying.

Anyway, go there, populate that place, because in addition to being Viennese to the core, the waiters and waitresses are most courteous and deserve big tips and a good life.

I’ve written about how to make the best pork roast ever on here before. I’d be mental to try to rival my own writing, so I won’t put up yet another recipe. I’ll just leave you with an image of the pork roast I had last Saturday. It’s without the crunchy stuff on top, but it comes complete with carrots and potatoes. What else would you need?

I must admit, my contributions to above masterpiece were minimal. And by minimal I mean I looked at the raw meat and deemed it roast-worthy. The rest was done by my parents, who for some inexplicable reason have made it their life-habit to feed my hungry gullet. If you find above roast looks delicious, tell me in the comments and I’ll forward it on to them. The more elaborate your praise is, the happier they will be. So don’t be stingy with those words, ok?

Usually I’m too much of a self-centered bastard to write about anything else than myself and what I ate, but sometimes I soften up and tell you about things like Gojee. The website with the funny name does similar things I do here: post pictures and recipes, but in a strikingly beautiful manner. Which, by the way, does two things for me: make me jealous and hungry. An interesting combination, let me tell you that.

Anyway, go check it out. For additional pleasure I’ve added an image of traditional Austrian dumpling-like things which I’ll be writing about in the near future.

View Video

44 days, 11 countries and loads of food.
Read more about the project here.

I know, I know, it’s quite a headline, but what can I say? It’s actually about both of these things. First, there’s Zum Recnizek, a traditional Viennese restaurant deep inside the 9th district. Second, there’s their menu, which is small, but contains just the right things. You get your Schnitzel, your Zwiebelrostbraten and of course blood sausage (which is what you’re seeing above).

They are unlike any variations of blood sausage I’ve had before. The fact that they are battered allows the filling to be much juicier than these kinds of disks usually are. Cutting into one of these and seeing the bright red filling is something I’ll probably be dreaming of for the next couple of weeks. In a good way, that is.

The atmosphere I’d call Viennese-spartan: plated glass, light wooden ceilings and a waiter who at first glance seems to exude arrogance (which, usually, is in fact arrogance, but in that case it was probably just the knowledge that the place rocks).

They’re not exactly pricey, but for special dishes like the original Wiener Schnitzel off of a piece of calf, you’ll easily part with 18 of your hard-earned Euros. Just saying.

The waiter turned out to be very attentive and due to the rather early hour, the chef even found the time to leave his kitchen to enquire whether we enjoyed what he had prepared (we did).

If you’re in the business of showing strangers around the city, do them a favour and show them Zum Reznicek. They’ll like it. Oh, and if you’re afraid of cigarette smoke: they do have a large non-smoking area.

Before I go on about my latest foray into delicious restaurant cuisine, I must admit that even though announced in my latest blogpost, I didn’t make it to the Biocamp. Sickness (which somewhat still has its grip on me) had me reschedule from tasting all sorts of fantastic organic (ok, and listening to people talk about it) to spending the day in bed instead (relying on a diet that consisted mainly of camomile tea). From what I heard, fun was had nevertheless, even without my presence. But, enough of that, let’s move on.

Last Friday I was on a business trip that took me to Belgrade (listen to me, writing about “being on a business trip” as if it’s the most ordinary thing in the world). As business trips have it, we also had lunch, and landed in an interesting restaurant on Belgrades Beogradska named “The Corner Restaurant” (before you ask, yes, it’s actually a corner restaurant).

The interior was decked out mostly in black and even though it suggested upscale, the people were friendly and the place cozy. The best of both worlds!

Anyway, I opted for something that on the English menu was named “Little Gourmet’s Dish”, which was a gross understatement, since it wasn’t exactly little:

What you see above are perfectly roasted potatoes with a smattering of rosemary. The meat was ground up pork fillet mixed with little pieces of bacon (what’s not to like about meat with meat?), then thoroughly seared. In addition, they served goat’s cheese, which blended surprisingly well with the meat.

If I hadn’t been half sick then already, I’d surely managed to eat it all, but I was forced to give away a sizable piece of that delicious meat and leave some of those scrumptious potatoes behind.

Now, I’d like to supply you with an address of the place, but I must admit, I forget to jot the exact address down (Google Maps, usually an infallible helper in these cases, isn’t doing any good here either). All I know is that it’s in Beogradska road in Belgrade. You’ll just have to ask your way through. It’ll be worth it!

Edit: Thanks to Stefan, here is an address, complete with pictures of the place.

By the way, I have yet to figure out why the cow on their menu has “whatever” written on its body.

Bio-Camp sounds like a facility for ultra-violent perps sometime in the near future, but in reality it’s a barcamp-like event that’s gonna go down on the 18th of June here in Austria [German language link].

It’s organized by an Austrian producer of organic food and will take place at an organic farmer’s farm an hour outside of Vienna. They were gracious enough to invite me, I guess because they came to the conclusion that anyone who’s using the word “death” in his foodblog’s name shouldn’t be messed with. Any which way, I’m going and I’m looking forward to it! There’s no definite schedule (it is after all supposed to be like a barcamp), but I suspect there will be a lot of talk about food. In which case I also hope there’ll BE a lot of food, which in turn I will consume and photograph, the result of which I will then present to you, my loyal readership.

By the way, the image is their invitation. It’s a basked with all sorts of organically grown herbs (for the cooking, mind you).

Being the cosmopolitan man about town that I am, I went to London to check out a few places to eat. That’s not entirely true, and by “not entirely true” I mean not true at all, but at this very juncture of this very post, I will take the liberty to neglect this fact. Anyway, I did spend some time in London and there I visited Carnaby Burger with my sister, who as always proved to be a fantastic host for my ventures into the depths of culinary London.

Carnaby Burger is located in those very depths; Soho, to be precise. It’s a tough place to find a decent place to eat there on a Saturday, not because there’s a lack of those, but because all and sundry is having the same idea. So we were lucky to stumble upon a free table outside of Carnaby Burger. I had never before heard of Carnaby Burger, as I didn’t of most of the other places we walked past, but the word “burger” and the fact that some very satisfied looking patrons were leaving just as we walked past, I thought it wouldn’t be too risky to order us some good old-fashioned burgers.

So we did just that. Now, my sister, by some ill-fate, had recently decided to only grace her body with non-meat meals for the time being, so it was on me alone to taste one of Carnaby Burger’s real beef burgers. I opted for the bacon and cheese burger, which sounded delicious to me, mainly because its name included the words “bacon”, “cheese” and “burger”. And I mean seriously, who – my sister excluded of course – could resist the lure of these words?

So, this is what I got:

As you can see, it’s a burger with beef, cheese and bacon. The bacon was fat and juicy, which I must say I liked quite a bit. The beef patty was not as medium as I had ordered it, but I let it slide. Why? Because it still tasted delicious and people who complain about the way their beef is cooked are small-minded idiots. Which I am not. But I digress.

The bun was a ciabatta-like affair, which I, as a non-purist, didn’t mind. It was a bit on the dry side, so some more of those condiments would have been nice. I’m not complaining. Just saying, ok?

All in all Carnaby Burger held everything they promised and more (disclaimer: they didn’ really promise anything), and if you ever happen to stumble by their place sometime, do have one of their burgers, then tell me about it. Or better, fly me in and feed it to me.

It’s the end of the year and for everyone who is publishing something, either for fame, fortune or simply as a pastime (much like knitting only with words and less needles), that’s a welcome time to fill those publishing slots with “best of” lists. It’s an easy way out of a total lack of inspiration, and since I’m as hard to inspire as the next guy, I find this practice quite agreeable.

Anyway, I was asked to contribute my top five Interweb services by the fine people at German tech blog netzwertig.com for one of their end-of-year surveys (the result of which can be seen here, in German). So I decided to let you know what I chose and why, mainly because I think it’s information so pressing, I shouldn’t withhold it from you, and also because I haven’t posted anything here for ages and that simply kills my Google ranking. So, without further ado, here’s my choices, in no particular order:

• Google Music: You heard that right. It’s Google’s Music service, which in its current iteration is basically an online repository for the music you own, allowing you to stream it to your computer or onto your Android device. It’s something I’ve used pretty much every day for the last couple of months and even with the advent of much-hyped Spotify, I will keep doing just that. Mainly because I don’t like Spotify for the obvious reason of more or less coercing people into sharing EVERY SINGLE SONG to Facebook. What a bore! Facebook sharing is so 2010.
• Remember the Milk: 2011 saw me return to Remember the Milk as my number 1 todo-list app. I’d used it for a while a couple of years back, but soon came to hate its lack of simplicity. Fast forward a couple of years and scores of simple todo-list apps and there I am: my life has become sufficiently complex to warrant a complex todo-list app. And I also quite liked the introduction of their very polished Android app. To make sure I keep using it, I decided to become a paying customer. It’s what I call the lazyman’s tax.
• Evernote: Ah yes, Evernote. The good old Evernote, which I came to hate for a while back in 2010, mainly because they so steadfastly refused (and still do) to create a Linux version of their desktop app. In the meantime, Nevernote, an open source version available for Linux, has been released and I realized that I don’t in fact need a desktop version after all. Today, Evernote is where I unload all the stories, recipes, articles, notes and whatever busy and important people like me need to unload into a second brain on a daily basis (speaking of second brain, there used to be a rather interesting service named Second Brain, which covered a lot of Evernote’s ground. Unfortunately, 2011 also saw the shuttering of that service, due to lack of funds).
• Dropbox: There’s no real way around Dropbox. It’s just too good and soon it will be so ubiquitous, people will hate it but still use it, mainly because everyone does (in case you’re not into subtleties, I’m referring to Facebook here). They introduced Dropbox for Teams this year, which is a great way to share space for a rather reasonable price. I received 20TB of free storage for writing that last sentence (disclaimer: that was a joke, I did not receive 20TB of space for writing this sentence – in fact, I rarely accept anything besides cash).
• Angry Birds: It’s a game, it’s addictive, it helps my understanding of physics. And that is all I will say in this matter.

And that is it. You can now return to your reading of the Top-100-HuffPo-Link-Bait-Articles of 2011. Or some such thing. Lady Gaga. Naked. Bieber. Twilight.

RSS, former love-child and poster technology of the social web, is something of an enigma. For some, it’s the second coming of Christ: versatile, indispensable and it can turn one a fish and two loafs of bread into a feast that will feed a million people (disclaimer: that last point is rampant conjecture and might actually not be true). For many others, though, it’s a technology that’s so utterly uninteresting and unattractive, they’d be glad to see it disappear in the depths of that pool where great but unattractive technology disappears to die a slow and painfully ignored death. I’ll just call that the ”Not as shiny as Apple”-pool. In that vain, every year there’s renewed discussion whether RSS is dead or not and it never leads anywhere.

The motivation of the latter is clear: Twitter, Facebook and a myriad of other social networks have replaced personal curating. Nowadays, friends and contacts decide what’s worth a read, while, ideally, you can lean back and enjoy. It’s an interesting, albeit heavily flawed concept (more about why I think it’s flawed either in this article, or sometime later. It kinda depends on how much I still care when I’m done writing that other stuff you see below).

Anyway: Google Reader, after the demise of Bloglines and just about any other full-featured RSS-reader probably the last beacon of original RSS-feed love out there, recently received an update which was meant to streamline it with many other Google products. The update is mainly a facelift, adapting it to the no-nonsense, loads of whitespace, more icons, less text design of recent Google products (closely modeled on Google’s new Google+, that social network that’s a lot like Twitter and a bit like Facebook but pretending to be neither).

In addition to that facelift, they also removed its social elements, that is seeing what people you added within Google Reader shared, and the ability to share your stuff with others in return. Instead, they added a big and shiny +1 button underneath every item, allowing you to send stuff to your Google+ profile.

Basically, Google  turned their reader into another content provider for their fledgling social network, removing what they regard as cruft and detrimental to their goal of reaching world dominance. And by world dominance I mean social network dominance (I’m not THAT paranoid).

There’s a small but outspoken minority of Google Reader sharing fans and they are pissed off (as is, according to TechCrunch, all of Iran). Google doesn’t care and I don’t think they should. You see, Google Reader is, first and foremost, a feedreader. You feed it with feeds, it slices, dices and does its thing and what it spits out is what you consume. I remember quite clearly when after their second iteration (the first one was a dud and everyone simply KNEW that Google’s Reader would fail against the mighty Bloglines), that they introduced social elements. And back then, everyone either balked or was foaming at the changes (there was actually not a single person on earth who liked them from the start – I know this for a fact). Fast forward a year or two, and lo and behold, people actually liked the social elements. Fast forward another few years and people are foaming at the mouth for removing those features.

My point, for all you tl;dr people out there: Google Reader is now what it used to be initially: a tool to read your feeds. If you want, you can share articles to your peeps on Google+. And that, my friends, is that.

PS: So no, I don’t feel like elaborating on the flawed concept of the recommendation system. Fear not, I might have time on my hands sometime in the next few months to actually write something up.

Well, hello there, faithful readers. It has been a while since I published anything on here and the sole reason simply was that there was fuck all to write about. Seriously, I truly think the last thing worthy to grace these walls was that post on my new Android HTC Desire. But, dire times have come to an end, because today I’m going to tell you all about Jetpack.

What is it? It’s a plugin that will supercharge your WordPress installation. Now, I’m not talking about your WordPress.com account, because that one is hosted and if you’re using it, you’ll already be using the goodness that comes with Jetpack. No, I’m talking about your self-hosted WordPress.org installations. While these provide the freedom to do whatever you want with your blogging CMS, they lack the constant updates to its functionality. Sure, there are new versions once in a while, but you won’t wake up one day, wondering why the shizzle your blogging system is suddenly sporting a Gravatar hover card (which is something that appears when you hover over the names of people who have commented and who happen to have an account with Gravatar). And in case you missed it, that is just one of the features of Jetpack. Because Jetpack is, in case you missed that too, a plugin that contains a slew of features that replace a few plugins you might have had to install separately.

These include, but are not limited to, a sharing feature, which lets you add Facebook, Twitter and whatnot sharing buttons to your posts. A URL-shortening plugin, which automatically shortens the URLs of your blogposts to a wp.me-URL. A stats feature, which replaces the old wp-stats plugin. And last but not least “After the deadline”, which is a plugin most helpful to slobs like me who couldn’t be arsed to spell-check their articles, let alone check them on stylistic and grammatical errors. That plugin will do all that for you.

So go ahead, check out Jetpack, have fun and most importantly, don’t forget that while blogging may be fun, there’s a whole world out there where the fact that you’ve had over a thousand page-views today doesn’t mean jack-shit.

As an avid reader of this blog you might have noticed that, contrary to many others of what I like to call my tech blog writing buddies, I am not too fond of Apple products. Now, I am by no means totally against them, hell, I even own an iPod Touch. But I have always seen it as not much more than a rather slick mp3 player which incidentally also allows me to access the Internets once in a while or play that one or other game. I was never really tempted to upgrade this to an iPhone, let alone become so entranced with Apple that I would gladly pay for their albeit slickly designed, overpriced and ultimately underfeatured computer products.

Lately though, I have felt the need to upgrade my mobile phone to something more full-featured. With me using an operating system (Linux) that Apple can’t or won’t support, an iPhone was out of the question (among other issues like Apple’s iron fist when it comes to what shall and what shall not be run on their devices). So instead, I opted for the HTC Desire, an Android powered phone. As luck would have it, I quickly found a carrier that sells it, ordered the beast and a week later my trembling hands were unboxing.

In case you think me calling that device a beast was just a playful way of trying to spruce up my writing, you were only half right. That thing really is a beast. With a 1GHz processor it’s way faster than any other smartphone on the market right now. Which reminds me that not so long ago (approximately 10 years) I was still using a computer that had a mere 300MHz. Yes, you read that right. Today? I’m using a mobile phone that has thrice the power. Hail to the processor gods!

Anyway, as I mentioned above, the Desire runs on Android, Google’s own mobile operating system. There’s a marketplace very similar to the Apple appstore which at the time of this writing holds roughly 40,000 applications. Which is about 39,950 more than I will ever need. But people like choices, and I guess that’s what Android is all about. If you want, you can replace every application on your phone with applications from the market and guess what? Neither Google nor HTC will care. And they won’t even revoke your warranty either.

There’s one problem I have with the Desire and that, of course, is its battery life. If you use all the stuff smartphones are famous for, you know, like surfing, taking pictures, sending emails, watching videos, listening to music and such, the HTC’s battery will crap out after approximately three hours. You can of course use the resources sensibly, in which case I’ve heard people mention battery times up to three days. Be that as it may, I am still wondering what the battery industry is doing all day long. I mean, it’s not as if they didn’t have time work on the durability of batteries for the last fucking century.

At last, you might be wondering what the headline is all about. Basically, I just wanted to lure you in. I don’t think there’ll ever be a smartphone to rule us all. Because there are more important things in life than gadgets. Like drinking, food and daytime television.

In tune with my method of forming headlines that distract from my writing’s lack of any real substance or originality, I’ve managed to summarize the whole point of this posting in a mere eight words. But for the sake of you taking the time to actually clicking through to my site, I’ll elaborate just that tiny bit more to make it worth your while.

Now, the fabled GDrive has been around for quite some time now (check out this news timeline for the last couple of years), albeit only in the wet dreams of tech-journos and bloggers. With companies providing online storage sprouting like the proverbial mushroom from the vast expanses of our dear Internet, everyone expected Google to come out with a solution as well. Which, considering they own roughly 90% of all active serverspace currently in existence, wouldn’t be too surprising a move (about that percentage: this is something I just made up, but feel free to quote me!).

Anyway, Google was largely unimpressed with everyone and their grandma pestering them to offer that kind of service already, but a couple of days ago, in a nonchalant move mirroring the actual impact of their announcement, the GDrive was introduced. Only that it’s not called that and that it adds another dimension to the term “underwhelming”.

Why? Well, here’s what it does. Basically, it’s an extension of Google Docs, the online document collaboration tool offered by Google for everyone with a Google account. Until now, the only files you could upload to Google Docs were those that are, well, some sort of document. As the more detailed announcement on the Google Docs blog says , they will start rolling out the ability to upload any kind of file (provided it’s not larger than 250mb), up to a limit of 1GB, with the option of buying more GB for a certain amount of money.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I like it. It’s nice to be able to upload all sorts of shit and have it lounging about in my Google Docs window. It’s just, this isn’t anything they couldn’t have done 2 years ago. Actually, it isn’t anything anyone could’ve done 2 years ago with a bit of server space and some spare time on their hands. And yes, I do get the whole sharing idea, which, as we’re being told 24/7 by anyone who thinks you’re listening, is pivotal to the way the Internets work today. But hey, I’ve known of services that let you upload files and share them for, well, ages.

Which ones, you might ask? Well, there’s box.net, which has been around since the Nixon administration (I think), which does a fantastic job, has a great API and is overall one of the best online storage solutions ever. And then of course there’s everybody’s new darling Dropbox. Which, I might add, truly is one sexy little service (and with sexy I really mean useful, I just thought it might sounds sexier to call something sexy instead of useful – for reasons you might want to file under “trying to attract new audiences by using the word sexy”). Dropbox not only lets you upload files, it also offers to sync them to all your computers and portable devices.

Now, let’s return just real quick to that carefully crafted headline you’ve been subjected to at the start of this lengthy beast of an article. Ever since Google has proved to be not only good at search but also good at throwing money and manpower at anything they think might be a good addition to their services (everything), little startups have had it rough. After spending years developing a service and establishing and maintaining a user base, Google could simply step in, decide they want the same thing and suddenly your business model of charging users for what Google offers for free would seem a bit off.

With the GDrive though, Dropbox, Box.net and their myriad of colleagues have lucked out. Because even though the GDrive might be an interesting enhancement to Googel Docs, it’s nowhere near anything current online storage services offer, meaning that whoever runs Dropbox, etc., can now finally get some sleep again.

But the best thing about it all? People will now finally shut up about the GDrive.

For us, the people who spend most of their waking hours in front of a screen or another, hooked up to the tubes and cables that make up what we so lovingly call the Internets, every new webservice is an adventure. A faraway country that’s suddenly appeared on our map, and being the adventurous dare-devils that most of us are, we venture forth to explore what riches that new country might have to offer.

Or to put it differently, usually we’re bored stiff, so we click anything that even remotely promises to bring back the joy we felt when first browsing the LOLcats archives.

So, along comes formspring.me, which I first spotted in some of my Twitter-followers’ streams. Basically, it’s a website that lets people ask people questions. Yes, that’s it. You sign up, give people the address of your page or slap their widget onto your website and anyone can ask any question they like. Even anonymously! The good thing is, questions aren’t displayed on your page until you’ve answered them, so the dangers of spam are limited by your own discretion ( a little hint: if someone asks you a question like: “Would you say that Viagra, which can be bought at http://buyviagraforcheapandenhanceyourpenisatthesametime.co.ru.cn, is the best product in the world?”, then no, they are not really interested in your expertise).

Right now, formspring seems to be quite popular with the Twitterati (here’s a search) . Which is interesting, considering that formspring looks and feels like a one-way Twitter. Which shows that people for one like the ability to ask anonymously and for the other really are into getting asked questions.

Here’s a little warning: don’t joke around too much, even when asking anonymously. People might not think of funny the way you do. Trust me.

Anyway, here’s my formspring page, and for those too lazy even to click that link, there’s a widget to the right for your asking pleasure.

Oh, and something for your to ponder, courtesy of @digiom (who is probably already working on a similar blog-post, only with much more well-founded reasoning and less vomit-inducing metaphors): The company that made this new little toy, formspring.com, has a tagline that says:

“The smart way to collect and manage data.”

Go on, ponder.

So Amazon has announced the availability of their e-book reader Kindle for, among other countries, Germany and Austria. The reader may be pre-ordered on Amazon.com, and will be shipped after October 19th. Costs? About 190€.

It’s good news for anyone who likes to read and especially good news for anyone who likes to read and be able to automatically download new books for a cheaper price than their physical brethren.

It’s bad news though for everyone who doesn’t feel too comfortable with the possibility of a company barging into your home and removing a previous purchase without warning (but with putting the purchase price back into your purse). Sound extremely weird and paranoid? Well, it’s not, because that’s exactly what happened a few months back.

Apparently a company had offered books on the Kindle marketplace for which it, as it turned out later, didn’t have the rights. So when Amazon discovered that tricky situation, they snuck into the Kindles of the people who had already bought the books and removed them. To add irony to injury, the books were “Animal Farm” and “1984″ by George Orwell.

And even though Amazon promised to not remove books in the future without warning, I’m a far too suspicious mind to really believe that. Because as long as they can, they probably will.

According to research I stumbled upon a while back (and which I’m now too lazy to actually look up, so you’ll just have to take my word for it), the Twitter web interface is still the number one place for people to update their Twitter account. Which to me was quite surprising, considering that the Twitter web interface doesn’t even automatically reload your Twitter stream, doesn’t have built in anything and lacks just about everything other clients have. In a nutshell.

To remedy that situation, Brizzly has stepped in. Basically, it’s a web client for Twitter, the difference is that it includes most of the features the clients we grew to love have had for a while (like TweetDeck). Which features, you might ask? Well, since last week, Brizzly automatically updates your Twitter stream, meaning you won’t have to click refresh in order to see new tweets from your followers. But that’s just the beginning, folks!

Brizzly also automatically displays pictures, videos and full URLs included in tweets, removing the ever so dangerous necessity to click into unknown territory via shortened URLs. And for those who are already absolutely overwhelmed by the number of messages their myriads of followers are shooting into the twittersphere, Brizzly has a grouping feature, which, I must say, really is handy as hell.

Good old Brizzer, as I already lovingly call it,  also includes a rather nifty sidebar tool for direct messages and also displays the newest Twitter trending topics in said sidebar.

To top it all off, Brizzly also supports several users, so if you’ve got a, say, private and corporate account, you can add them both and smoothly switch between the two. Just make sure you don’t confuse them, because, well, you wouldn’t want to tell your company’s followers every detail about your last bowel movement, would you? Come to think of it, I guess your private followers wouldn’t mind being spared that info as well. So please, do keep that to yourself, will you?

Anyway, Brizzly might not be the first alternative web-based Twitter client (there’s Ginx, which has been around for a while but is more bare bones than Brizzly), but it definitely is the most feature-rich. I do have to concede though that the overall design isn’t really that easy on the eye, but I’d rather put function before form, in that case.

Oh, and in case you’ve not clicked over to Brizzly yet, I might have to mention that it’s still in private beta. So if you want to get in right now, leave a comment detailing why you think I’m probably the most talented tech-writer in the long history of tech-writerdom, and I’ll send an invite your way. Good luck!

Tupalo.com, the Vienna-based service for what’s cool around your neighborhood, yesterday announced a partnership with Herold, the Austrian service for business listings.

It’s a great move for the little company and I’m really happy for them.

And while I don’t believe in things like good and evil, I do have a bit of a queasy feeling when it comes to Herold. Not so long ago, they were getting a thorough beating when they announced the availability of a CD-ROM that contained the data of more than 4 million private people. While it’s legal, people were and still are up in arms about it. Which I totally understand.

Now, while I do believe Mike from Tupalo when he announces on their blog that they “will still continue as the lightweight, independent company we’ve always been”, I wonder whether people will still feel the same way, now that a company with such a backstory is part of the game.

I’m convinced that from a business perspective, the partnership between Tupalo and Herold was one of the best things that could have happened to them. Whether it’ll put off users concerned about their private data and how it’ll be treated, remains to be seen.

Last.fm today announced that they will be charging users from outside the US, UK and Germany 3 € per month if they want to keep using the last.fm radio. From their blog:

There will be a 30 track free trial, and we hope this will convince people to subscribe and keep listening to the radio. Everything else on Last.fm (scrobbling, recommendations, charts, biographies, events, videos etc.) will remain free in all countries, like it is now.

Now, I don’t believe that everything on the Interwebs should be for free. I’ve actually been a last.fm subscriber for quite a while, and I didn’t mind then that the service they provided for me was in fact inferior to what they provided in the above mentioned three countries.

But now, I feel a bit screwed over. I’m angry, but not at last.fm (well, there is a bit of rage there, but that’s purely emotional, not rational). I’m sure that the people who are put on the frontline, the ones that have to put up with the anger now unloading on them via their blog’s comments, are not the ones making decisions like these. They just want a great product and they want everyone to enjoy what they built.

Which used to be a viable idea on the Internet. You know, when it was still possible for everyone all over the world to enjoy what someone from a totally different place had decided to put online. Nowadays? Not so much. With all that bullshit about licensing deals, great services like last.fm, Pandora or even Youtube are going down the fucking drain because some suits think they need to squeeze every possible penny out of the rights they acquired in a world long gone and unfit for today’s technical advances.

It’s a shit world.

It’s that time of the year again. You know, that time where lists of what was great, what was awful, what was insignificant, what was most pressing during the last year are published.

I’m not  a fan of this, as I’m generally not a fan of compartmentalizing what we here on earth call our existence. For the simple reason that what we enjoy here, on earth, is too much of an arbitrary thing. We have years, which help us create some sort of order when it comes to ending, say, a fiscal year, but these years don’t really say anything about the way we live and the way we are.

Sure, the last year saw catastrophic things, but it also saw great things. It saw hundreds of thousands of people dying, but it also saw hundreds of thousands of people surviving. It was a year – strictly speaking – like any other.

For most people, it’ll be the end of a bunch of months which culminate in one that sees Christmas and ultimately a bunch of fireworks, champagne and some resolutions which will fade as quickly as they have come into existence.

In the end, it all boils down to this: You should worry about the very small and the very big stuff. The small stuff, like what you’re going to have for dinner, is what keeps you happy. The big stuff, like whether we’re really the only planet with life in the whole of the vastness of the universe, is what keeps your mind open. Everything in between is really quite irrelevant.

So if, during the course of that next year, you feel like you’re having a bad day, think about dinner or the vastness of the universe and it’ll all be alright. I promise.

When a few months back I first saw the trailer for Tree of Life, I thought something along the lines of: “If that film is only half as good as the trailer, it must be fucking fantastic!”. If my life was a screenplay, you could file that as foreshadowing in the first act.

I was fortunate enough to get tickets to the premiere here in Austria a few days ago and I was expecting, well, a lot. And as great expectations go, they are bound to go unfulfilled (here’s some more, less subtle, foreshadowing for you). Now, it would have been easy for the film to please me, because I really wanted to like it. I’d been going on and on about the film, in conversations with other people and on my other blog. I’d read about what some reviewers had called the very spiritual aspect of the film, and even though I’m not exactly spiritual, let alone religious, I thought that I could let that slide for the sake of the complete package.

As it turned out, I couldn’t.

The film starts off great, with nuanced performances and beautiful camerawork and even though there was a lengthy piece of creation footage which felt a bit like a high budget version of a National Geographic documentary, I was still sure I could really like that film. But then came the whispering. THE WHISPERING! Off screen voices just kept rambling on and on about nature and grace and every pretentious notion pertaining to these concepts you could think of. And directly addressing the “Lord” too. Which, I thought, was probably just part of the concept. Surely, the nature part, the science of things (and stuff) would get some more weight in the course of the film too. Well, it didn’t. And I’m still mad at every reviewer out there who didn’t pounce on the fact that this is ultimately an extremely and utterly Christian film.

Not just the open verbal references to God, but also the iconography that dominated throughout the film. I don’t want to spoil anything here, but hell, can you really get any more blatantly Christian than portraying the female protagonist as some sort of Mary mother of God?

Now, not everything was bad, and that’s the real shame here. Actually, a lot of things were brilliant. There were great observations of family dynamics, fantastic images and sometimes awe-inspiring work done with the music, but it was all ruined by a sophomoric approach to religion, spirituality and death.

Terrence Malick knows how to make good films, but with Tree of Life, he didn’t give us one film, he gave us two: one about a family in the 50s, which by all accounts would have been a touching piece, and another about spirituality and creation which should have been scrapped and shown in mega-churches all over the US instead. I’m sure that would have been a great success.

I am not much of a sun-person. Actually, that’s not true anymore. I used to be wary of the sun, mainly because its main purpose seemed to me to send glares into my flat which would then put a glare on my monitor, making it a fucking nuisance to use my computer.

I’ve since learned two things:

• One: Drapes are a great thing. The can make sure, none of those rays reach your computer screen.
• Two: The sun is a magnificent thing, mainly because it’s providing us with the light and warmth we need and because it’s a testament to the fact that we are all made of star-stuff

Now, I know how esoteric that sounds, and all I can say is: it’s not esoteric, it’s science. It’s fucking science! Who taught me that? Well, Carl Sagan of course.

I’ve always held an interest in science, albeit in a superficial way, one that doesn’t demand long hours in labs. And, I’d heard about Carl Sagan before, but it was mostly confined to comment sections of Reddit or some other place where people with brains that don’t match their occupation tend to hang out.

Recently, or rather a couple of months back, I ordered Cosmos, the science-series with Carl Sagan, mainly because I’d read so many good things about it. And they were all right. Cosmos is by far the most intelligent, insightful, reflected and interesting show on science I’ve ever had the pleasure to watch. And even though I know that there’s a shitload of people involved in writing a series like that, it is mainly due to Carl Sagan. That man simply knew his stuff but also knew how to convey it.

And just like that, he managed to instill in me an appreciation of the sun like I’d never experienced before. When earlier I was annoyed by too much brightness, today, when I look at the sun, I can’t help but think of how Carl Sagan described where we came from, what we are and where we are (probably) going.

It’s a shame the man died as young as he did, because I think we’d have good use for a Carl Sagan nowadays to remind us of the bigotry and pseudo-science that still dominates public discourse.

Here’s to Carl Sagan and the sun.

I recently, by sheer accident and luck, stumbled upon Sean Costello, a blues-guitarist/singer-songwriter. His performances are so vibrant and heartfelt, I could weep everytime I see them. Well, not weep. But at least move my foot or tap a finger on my desk. There’s a pretty big archive of his fantastic life-performances on YouTube. For example, here he is performing the Otis Rush classic Double Trouble:

Unfortunately, he died two years ago at the age of 28. After researching him a bit, I found that film-maker Sarah Baker is currently in the pre-production of a documentary about Sean Costello and the life of musicians today (Facebook Page). From the blurb:

For Costello, the blues was indeed a calling, and he played it against considerable odds. Using Costello as a protagonist, BLUES MAN explores the livelihoods of modern musicians. How do they survive? How do they get gigs, tours, and radio airplay? What role did Sean play in the development of his own career?

It sounds like a wildly interesting and ambitious project which can be supported via Kickstarter. Please do pledge some money for the project, because I definitely want to see this film someday.

Until the film is out, here’s more from YouTube:

I finally got around to seeing “The Social Network”, a movie about – but only loosely based on – the actual inception of facebook.com. You know, that website you use to stalk people. I am not much of a movie critic, and even though introductory phrases like these should be enough to refrain from actually reviewing a film, I still feel I should mention a few things I liked and didn’t like about the film.

First of all, David Fincher simply is one of the best directors around. Second, Trent Reznor just knows how to write music. Third, the combination of both can be found throughout the movie, but the most poignant one is the scene of the rowing competition. It was actually the first time I’ve seen a scene shot in tilt-shift in a mainstream film (for the record, I haven’t seen one yet in an indie film either). Anyway, if you still don’t know whether to watch the film, do go and see it, just for that one scene (it’s roughly two minutes, but well worth it).

Now, for the rest. Without a doubt, Sorkin, who wrote the screenplay, did a masterful job. There was nary a boring scene throughout the whole film, and considering that the whole thing is, well, about a website, that is quite a feat. As for stereotypes and clichés: yes, they’re all there. Most women portrayed are either demure, slutty or bossy. With a focus on slutty. I guess this simply comes with letting a middle-aged man write a film about college, young people and power (literary similarities are plentiful, go and have a look at Tom Wolfe and his “Charlotte Simmons”). So no, the film will never win a feminist’s award.

Apart from that, there’s the question of historical accuracy. For someone who has read Marshall Kirkpatrick’s “The Facebook Effect”, it soon becomes clear that a lot has been dramatized for the big screen. Fortunately, I already expected as much. Because, well, if it had been entirely accurate, the film would have been an absolute and utter bore.

Which leads me to my final point: “The Social Network” is in fact quite entertaining. Even though you might be wondering at the end what exactly it was you’d just been sitting through, when you think back, a good time was had.

In the end, it’s a film about a guy who’s shrewd, quite brilliant and mildly autistic, who gets sued by a bunch of people for being just that. Managing to make a feature film out of these elements without boring the shit out of everyone and their grandma simply is something to be admired.

Oh, and as much as it pains me to say so, Justin Timberlake is a solid actor.

Here’s to wisdom. Because, you know, I once heard that these outlets we call blogs were once supposed to give us the freedom to voice whatever wisdom we’d saw fit to impart on the masses. So here I am, again, to impart wisdom.

First of all: if you like smoking, don’t quit it (unless for monetary reasons, that is). I know, it’s an unpopular thing to say, and most general surgeons of the world would want my head for even implying that there’s anything even remotely beneficial about the blue stuff, but well, it’s true. If you like smoking, do it.

Second: eat what you like. If you dig fast food, eat it. If you like steaks charred to the black and blue state, eat those fuckers. If cakes are your poison, by all means, have at them. Top them off with some frosting, chocolate sauce and unicorn tears. It’ll be great!

I could go on, but I guess it’s rather clear what I’m going at. In case it’s not to you, let me spell it out:

Life is not a miracle, it’s a coincidence. The fact that we’re able to bash each others heads in over disputes regarding imaginary beings while at the same time creating pieces of art that manage to rock our world shows what freaks of nature we are.

There is no fate. Every constraint we feel has been put upon us by the respective society we live in. We might be able to escape said constraints, if we so wish, but most of us won’t. Don’t worry about it, though, ’cause at least now you know where you stand.

Respect life, but don’t take it seriously. Simply enjoy yourself and make sure everyone around you does the same. There will be nobody to judge you once it’s all over.

Because you know, in the end, there’s just one thing – the end.

And yes, that’s a pretty bad-ass ending.

And there we are. In one gentle but swift move autumn has swooped in and replaced what we like to call summer. It’s not even September and people are already feeling properly dressed wearing scarfs, coats and whatnot. Well, I don’t mind. You see, I like me a weather which dictates not what I should remove from my body but rather what I should add to my body to keep me from freezing to death. It’s just so much more comfortable.

I think that’s why I like places like Sweden that much. Even in mid-August, there’s nothing wrong with wearing hooded sweaters and long trousers. And hell, the people are friendly too. Returning to Vienna after spending some time in Sweden is like returning to the place where people go after they’ve used up all their compassion, optimism and good humour. The best you can do in Vienna is getting a waiter who realizes how fucked up his performance of being a grumpy old asshole is and has to grin in the course of it.

Anyway, my intention is not to make you feel all gloomy so here’s another breathtaking picture to marvel at. Enjoy.

My girlfriend and I spent the last week in Sweden, and since you’re an avid reader of this blog, you’ll have realized that I seem to go there often. Well, it’s a beautiful country and I get to see my sister, her husband and the two delightful Half-Swedes they produced. So that’s that.

I’m not yet in the physical condition to write long blog-posts, mainly due to what some of you might refer to as a cold, others as a reason to make people feel sorry for me. Any which way, I still want to update this very blog, only to prove that Twitter has not yet turned every blog into a wasteland of old musings longer than 140 characters.

So there, I’ll just post one of the numerous pictures I took, so you can admire my ability of using nice filters for my cell-phone camera while also wondering where that unlimited source of cockiness lies of which I make so ample use. Enjoy!

Well, hello, dear and faithful readers. If you’re as avid a reader of this very weblog as I think you are, you might remember that I was the co-author of a fiction weblog turned solid, physical book a few years back. Which, by the way, is still available and great fun to read. So go ahead and buy that.

But here’s the thing. Horst, mastermind of that last project, has just released a new book. It’s called “Dinge, die ich vom Nachtfernsehen gelernt habe: Things I learned from watching TV after midnight” and features an assortment of images taken off of after-midnight TV, accompanied by texts. And apart from the fact that the images are quite captivating, there’s also a text of mine written especially for this volume. It features my ability to fall asleep during TV and is great fun to read. And it’s in German, proving that my German is almost as much fun to read as my English.

So please, do check it out and don’t hesitate to buy and spread the word to whomever you might know. I assure you, the more people have this book at home, the better this wretched world we live in will turn out to be.

I’m a lucky bastard. I really am. I do, for example, have friends who think of me when they have spare tickets to events. Like a couple of weeks ago when I was treated to a concert of Them Crooked Vultures. Or, well, yesterday, when a good friend of mine had a spare ticket for the Vienna Lifeball. And not just a simple ticket (which still goes for 150€) but a VIP ticket with free food, drink and an actual table to sit at and watch people.

In case you’re not familiar with the Lifeball, it’s a charity event that started out as a small AIDS awareness party and today is probably the one party in Vienna, or Austria really, that most people who are into parties would love to attend. Well, here’s the official website, they do a much better job explaining what it’s all about.

Anyway, I got that ticket and I must admit, I’m probably the least deserving person to do so. First of all, lots of people dress up for this event. And I don’t mean dress up by wearing a suit. I mean dress up by thinking up a bizarre, fantastically outrageous costume, working on it for weeks and then spending hours to get it to sit perfectly. Me? I don’t like dress-up.

Second, I’m not one for huge parties. I like sitting down, sipping on my beer, smoking a cigarette and being my misanthropic self.

The good thing is, I’m also a fantastic freeloader. If it’s free, I’ll take it. You should see all the crap I got at home, only because someone told me it’s free. Ok, so that’s not entirely true. Most of the crap I own I actually bought. But that’s for another time.

Well, so I went there, and yes, it was actually quite fun. Unfortunately, the opening ceremony, which is always quite impressive, had to be discontinued due to a massive rainstorm. Fortunately, there was still time enough for me to get exceptionally wet.

The rest of the evening and night was filled with delicious food, loads and loads of crazily creative costumes, even more photographers taking pictures of said costumes and the feeling that this was the party of a lifetime. Well, not really. But there was music and there were people gyrating to that, so I guess it was quite alright.

All in all, it was a memorable night, not least because I’ve never seen so many virtually naked people in Vienna’s city hall.

By the way, there are always people lamenting how the Lifeball has deteriorated to a mere large-scale party, isn’t about the fight against AIDS anymore and is selling out by having ads all over the place, yadda, yadda, yadda. Well, if you’re one of those, fuck off. I’m pretty sure AIDS won’t be cured by your bitching either.

For all the others, here’s a link to the slideshow of the rest of the pictures I took.

And for fuck’s sake, use rubbers.