Reuben Honigwachs' Blog + Microblog

Wishy-Washy

2010-03-01T14:32:00.001+01:00

First time I tuned into adult contemporary radio in years (I don't care for live radio when driving). It had to be unobtrusive and still drown the noise of the neighboring kindergarten. Listening: Take That - Want You Back For Good.

Panic Attacks Pt. 2

2010-02-28T04:38:00.000+01:00

I reported of people going nuts about the cold weather in Germany in Panic attacks. Well, I went on holiday and after coming back the electronics of my car were malfunctioning and I had to have it towed to the garage.

All About Results

2010-01-16T01:50:00.006+01:00

Ianjamespoulter@AlanFairhurst I choose to use MBs in longer irons because of the results, 2 many people use blades when they shouldnt, all about results

Sorry Poults, as an amateur it is not always about the results. It's actually about enjoying the game. Eh ... yes ... enjoying a set of Mizuno MP 37s for some time now. By "enjoying" meaning some sort of autosuggestion. (And Ian by saying longer meaning shorter)

Expectations of a Sports Fan

2010-01-09T23:59:00.002+01:00

OK, things turned out as expected. Germany is snowed in. I'm enjoying sports on TV and really enjoyed the Hessen-Derby of the Deutsche Bank Skyliners vs. Gießen 46ers with my dad. Then the European Tour and Sunshine Tour co-sanctioned Africa Open, a true feast. Also I am watching the PGA Tour SBS Championship on Kapalua, Hawai'i.

Since the US media, the officials, and the sponsors are _really_ worried about the absence of Tiger Woods and are learning their lesson for the second time (first injury, now adultery), they are trying to "profile" the other remaining players. One of the criticisms is that the most successful players are "running around like robots" and are showing no emotions, unlike Tiger. The whole situation is not so nice for the audience measurement.

Now, obviously the angle of the media is all about stakeholders, the advertisers yada, yada, yada... but I see a valid point made there. Golf is of course all about concentration, but I also thought golf was equally about the life lessons and sportsmanship. Still, very successful players tend to drag their game face off the course to the media. And honestly, a sports fan is all about the extras: The interviews afterwards, the insight into the player's psyche.

I don't expect professional athletes to be comedians or even make a clown of themselves just for good ratings. But if you have made it this far, there is definitely some personality directly related and very relevant to your profession that has to be shown. Why not show it? And I don't mean plotting your private life publicly.

The US media is maybe pushing it a bit hard all of a sudden, but it doesn't seem to hurt. The current SBS Championship leader Lucas Glover was criticized harshly for not showing emotions after his 2009 US Open win. And I have gained the impression opening up is working well for him at the moment. I'm really enjoying his wit and entertaining qualities.

I hope other professional athletes would also get rid of their replaceable and generic vocabulary and provide an interesting conversation once in a while.

PS, absolutely unrelated: Michelle Wie's Blog, which she was successfully rocking anonymously for quite a while.

Panic attacks

2010-01-08T21:45:00.001+01:00

The media and even the government are going mental about the cold weather. I think I'll use it as an excuse for staying in this weekend.

Totem keyboard shortcuts: Useless

2010-01-03T19:00:00.005+01:00

MPlayer is of course the superior movie player on earth, and when you're used to it, everything else seems a bit odd. But the keyboard shortcuts of Totem are simply useless. Check out the README - here the highlight:

Left arrow: Go back 15 seconds
Right arrow: Go forward 60 seconds
Shift+Left arrow: Go back 5 seconds
Shift+Right arrow: Go forward 15 seconds
Ctrl+Left arrow: Go back 3 minutes
Ctrl+Right arrow: Go forward 10 minutes

Branson's House

2010-01-02T00:04:00.001+01:00

Good having different products to choose from:
Branson's House at Google
Branson's House at Microsoft

Zwischen den Jahren

2009-12-31T18:40:00.006+01:00

Fun fact: In Germany the time between christmas and new year's, sometimes referred to as "boxing week", is called zwischen den Jahren (transl. between the years).

Ok, just a quick update: After celebrating christmas with my mom and friends, I went back to work. In the few days off, I basically brought my brain to hibernate by having some drinks with friends, cleaning up my place while listening to a sh*tload of podcasts, doing a bit of XMPP research, watching a few EPL games in 720p (since the Bundesliga is on holidays), a pair of Lakers games, the 1995 US Amateur (Marucci vs. Woods), and the 1998 Johnny Walker Classic.

I hope being rejuvenated and freshly reset for the Gregorian 2010 and wish the same for you guys.

Xmas

2009-12-25T19:31:00.001+01:00

Seemlessly moving from work to xmas celebrations. Happy holidays to all of you!

ZA on film

2009-12-13T00:21:00.005+01:00

South Africa highly represented in mainstream movies these days: District 9, Endgame, Skin , The World Unseen, Invictus, The Bang Bang Club.

Not to mention the large payload of documentaries, including Louis Theroux's arguable visit to Johannesburg.

Get Darker

2009-12-12T13:00:00.001+01:00

Enjoying the Get Darker podcast for the n'th weekend in a row, now. Get addicted: http://rss.getdarker.com/

Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech

2009-12-11T23:22:00.007+01:00

Can someone pls send me a link to the video of the full Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech of Barack Obama? I'm only seeing excerpts and commentaries!?

Update: Lol, last place I looked (and was indexed) http://nobelprize.org/

New feeds for this blog

2009-12-10T00:29:00.000+01:00

I have been asked if there were a distinction in RSS between microblog and blog, since maybe some of you do not want the "what am I having for lunch" stuff. To ease things, I have introduced a new category for the traditional blog and now the following feeds are available:

Blog + Microblog (the old one - so don't worry)
Blog only
Microblog only

Cheers, reuben

All About Steve

2009-12-09T23:48:00.003+01:00

No news: I am also a fan of cheesy comedies. Not all of them, but this one fitted nicely: All About Steve. Enjoyed it.

Going paleo

2009-12-07T21:55:00.006+01:00

Tried going "paleo", today. Feeling good. Was invited to my parents for supper and still could hold it up with some nice chicken, cauliflower, and carrots. But I believe you always feel good when eating "common-healthy". ;)

Don't believe I can really cut milk, bread, and eggs for long, though.

GDNS and net neutrality

2009-12-05T23:16:00.004+01:00

I'm happy to see Google install public DNS. For a long time there has been a lot of loud talk about net neutrality and there have been some amount of political initiatives. But when I personally talk to people (even in IT), they are oddly uninterested in this important topic. Now, it's therefore quite a relief for me to see an actual practical approach to preserve net neutrality.

SGE vs Mainz 05

2009-12-05T21:59:00.003+01:00

Beautiful, beautiful derby between Eintracht Frankfurt and FSV Mainz 05. Huge, hearty effort and well played on both sides. Enjoyed it big time.

Hot Dog of the Week

2009-11-30T20:49:00.003+01:00

Love this: Hot Dog of the Week. Hawk Krall's posters are available, too. I wonder where I can get real, soft hot dog buns round here in Germany. Maybe in some parallel universe I'll try and bake them myself.

The Web Publisher - Preface

2009-11-29T16:02:00.007+01:00

A friend of mine and myself are regular watchers of DP/30. These are great interviews made by David Poland and are part of his blog. The blog itself has been moved and he has made an attempt (actually multiple attempts) to build a separate site around the DP/30 format.

As said, these interviews are very good and highly entertaining. But I always found it hard to follow his content. Videos were sometimes linked, sometimes embedded as Google Video, snippets on YouTube, embedded and downloadable HD .mov.

I love small content providers trying to get their stuff out there. Partly because this is how I believe people will distribute culture in the near future. And partly because these people are currently producing the most essential and influential material available.

I have made a few notes and ran a few tests on different problems David Poland (as an example) is facing as an internet publisher. I hope to interview a few people who may have gathered experience in this field and I am hoping for some meaningful comments. In a series, will consecutively post my personal views on different technical aspects when publishing to the internet. I hope to thereby assist you with some crucial decisions you have to make as a hobbyist or solo publisher.

Omega Mission Hills World Cup II

2009-11-29T11:56:00.005+01:00

Coming from behind, Italy won. What a strong effort by the Molinari brothers. Great course, great competitors with Ireland and Sweden... even South Africa and England catching up towards the end. And I loved the jubilation, too. Hugely deserved, with Edoardo Molinari ending an impeccable season and marking serious claims for the year to come.

Omega Mission Hills World Cup

2009-11-27T07:01:00.005+01:00

McIlroy and McDowell are sick OK. Stenson and Karlsson are well ill. But the Molinari brothers are diseased! Hope they win - it'd be deserved.

Brotherman

2009-11-26T00:24:00.002+01:00

Love the man and his music. But the title and design of this is marvelously ridiculous and endlessly funny at the same time:

http://www.amazon.com/Brotherman-Fatherland-Rahsaan-Roland-Kirk/dp/B000ERU7IY

(Nice, using real URLs again)

DRS 2: Jazz Collection

2009-11-22T20:32:00.005+01:00

Yes, you probably noticed: I am running a rigorous IT cleanup this weekend. A lot of evaluations have been dumped and a few have stayed. A lot of Jazz podcasts have come and gone - mostly because they were lacking contentual depth and technical quality. One of them which stayed is the SR DRS podcast "Jazz Collection". Unfortunately it is in (Swiss) German.

Quality stuff! Though, I wonder if there is a bias towards ECM - it doesn't matter anyways: DRS 2: Jazz Collection (Feed)

Killed Twitter and Identi.ca

2009-11-22T18:20:00.007+01:00

Just made a hasty decision to delete my Twitter and Identi.ca account. Was thinking about it for a while, now brought it to action. No biggie.

I evaluated it long enough. I think it can be heavily important to certain people and organisations - but the RSS subscription model fits me more. These systems will only start working for me when they federate through open protocols. Of course, this will happen sometime, but then I won't necessarily need an account at their side and be bound to their software. Identi.ca is trying exactly this with StatusNet (ex Laconica), but are not very successful and sadly unreliable. I personally hope XMPP (XEP0060, Wave) will make the race.

* I will keep following the Identi.ca and Twitter contacts via -guess what- RSS

* If you want to @/RT me, leave me a comment or pingback

* I will microblog through this blog

* If you are interested in interesting things I am willing to share, please feel free to subscribe to http://www.google.com/reader/shared/00177912763171547773

Cheers.

Golf in the Kingdom

2009-06-26T22:05:00.006+02:00

Following the weather forecast for the weekend and looking for some advice in preparation, I stumbled over the nice video How To Play Golf In The Rain by Rickard Strongert. He also suggests reading Michael Murphy's Golf in the Kingdom written in 1972.

Now very curious and impatient for the book to be shipped, I tried to find information on the web regarding the novel. It turns out to be one of most important pieces of golf literature!?

First I found some impressive testimonials and that there is a movie in post production, already. I have very bad experiences with things transgressing the pop culture threshold value, namely a feature film. Still, I continued looking for information.

I found this video of an interview at Charlie Rose from 1998 where he introduces the sequel The Kingdom of Shivas Irons, published 25 years later. Here a similar interview from 2006 in which he makes the same point in more detail, which again contrasts the know-it-all/peak performance approach of sports psychologists like Bob Rotella. He also talks about people interested in the movie rights, but without an idea of realization.

I am really looking forward to read the book. This song somehow felt related ;)