Yesterday Martin posted a link to a panorama view of the

• A380 Cockpit

As this is already quite impressive there some other panorama views from the interior available

• A380 Interior Views

But I have to admit, that I like the cockpit view most ;-) Allthough there are lots of switches and screens it doesn't seem too complicated to handle once you know a little bit about how to fly jets. That's something you can teach yourself within MS Flight Simulator. Well, at least theoretical and/or simulated.

Sorry, the following is available in german language only.

29.01.2008

Pressemitteilung "Winterhilfe Afghanistan"

 

Im Westen und Norden Afghanistans herrscht seit Wochen einer der kältesten und schneereichsten Winter seit Jahrzehnten. Hundertausende Menschen - vor allem Kinder - sind vom Hunger- und  Kältetod bedroht.

Die Mintrachinger "Kinderhilfe Afghanistan" hat daher eine umfassende Hilfsaktion gestartet.

Afghanische Mitarbeiter der "Kinderhilfe Afghanistan" transportieren seit gestern mit geländegängigen LKW 15 Tonnen Hilfsgüter, insbesondere Nahrungsmittel, Winterbekleidung und festes Schuhwerk für Kinder, Decken und Heizmaterial (Spiritus-Tabletten und -öfen), in die entlegenen Gebiete im Westen und Norden des Landes. Die Aktion wird in den nächsten Wochen fortgeführt.

Dr. Reinhard Erös wird am Wochenende persönlich nach Afghanistan reisen, um die Großaktion vor Ort zu organisieren. Der ehemalige Bundeswehrarzt dankt den Soldaten der Bundeswehr in Mazar-E-Sharif,...

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A little bit late for a lazy friday afternoon in the office, but not too late for the next week

Have you ever played "Rock Paper Scissors" (Schnick-Schnack-Schnuck) ?

Here you will find some professional hints to make sure you will become the champion in your office !

 

VideoJug: How To Win At Rock Paper Scissors

...

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What are we going to do once all existing silicon on the world is already used in our computers ?

Well, one possible solution would be to go back to the good old vaccum tubes. This at least would give us the chance to build our computers by our own again instead of using all this highly integrated stuff. You don't believe it ?

Check out this !

Ok, you're right, one would need silicon for the glass bulb of the vaccum tube as well... But the video is really amazing, isn't it ?

As Morten has moved into the norwegian wilderness (no phone, no dsl, no tv) it is up to me to post his fun-blogs every once in a while...

Well, this is not a fun link but a very nice and informative one: the Sience Education Company.

Here you will find lots of videos with simple but astonishing sience experiments like how to make an emergency glass from a leaf.

From Ian's posting in the forum you might have noticed that Morten and I do not have many hairs populating our fabulous heads. Clearly speaking: we are getting bald !

But we are in good company. Many great men have been or still are bald as well. One of my favourite actors is bald as well, so lets listen to what he is saying about baldness (and he is also able to talk about it in the 24th century):

Patrick Stewart on "Baldness"

The Swyx Forum Team, that is me (Tom) and Morten wishes all of you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Thanks for all your support here in the community and lets make sure it will grow even stronger and larger in 2008 !

Remember ? The other day I linked two videos here in my blog that could lead to the conclusion that education is not one of the strongest attributes of the US. The first video showed a blond girl in a TV show assuming that Europe is a country. The second video showed a guy playing around with statistics on how clever americans are (or not). Well, especially the last one could have been biased as it was just the voice of one strange guy.

So, is it true what he said ? Are americans dumb as hell ?

Americans are NOT stupid

It's amazing, I didn't assumed that "Europe is a country" could get worse... (poor Australians!)

100% ...

This is a strictly mathematical viewpoint... it goes like this: What makes 100%? What does it mean to give MORE than 100%? Ever wondered about those people who say they are giving more than 100%? We have all been to those meetings where someone wants you to give over 100%. How about achieving 103%? What makes up 100% in life?

Here'sa little mathematical formula that might help you answer these questions: If A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z is represented as: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 then H-A-R-D-W-O-R-K 8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98% and K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E 11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96% but A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E 1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100% and

B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T 2+21+12+12+19+8+9+20 = 103% and, look how far ass kissing will take you: A-S-S-K-I-S-S-I-N-G 1+19+19+11+9+19+19+9+14+7 = 127%

So, one can conclude with mathematical certainty that while hard work and knowledge will...

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(Sorry, the following is in german language available only!)

Die Kinderhilfe Afghanistan, welche durch Teile der bisher eingenommenen Sponsoren Gelder durch Swyx Forum unterstützt wird, hat eine Zusammenfassung ihrer Aktivitäten im Jahr 2007 zur Verfügung gestellt:

Jahresrundbrief der Kinderhilfe Afghanistan

... you find this on your desk in the morning: 

Some kind of ignorance of knowledge can't be related to certain countries of the word, allthough it most definately looks like...

But listening to youngsters in a bus or underground (in the USA, in Germany, in the UK, in France, ...) really get's you scared of the upcoming generation and what they will be with the world ! Stupidity is not related to a certain country but is a result of the way we are living today, of the mass media, the gaming industry, MTV, or what ever.

The following is a really nice example. Maybe there are some relations between "not knowing" (not to say "stupidity") and the color of the hair ... 



 

Well, and this a some statistical information on education in the USA. But I am pretty sure this is valid for other countries as well ! 



...

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While reading myself through a couple of articles on the most hip CMS systems I found a very usefull site which compares all currently availalbe systems in a matrix.

This site is maybe also of interest for you, so here is the link:

• The CMS Matrix

(BTW: Swyx Forum uses DotNetNuke as CMS)

Some time ago the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has started to release their lectures/courses to the public as so called OpenCourseWare. The idea behind is to open up the world of today's knowledge to everyone.

There are more than 1800 course available online, many of them translated into other languages or even available as audio/video presentations.

The content of the courses touch a huge variety of topics from Architecture and Planning, Engineering, Health Sciences and Technology, Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, Management and Science (Biology, Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Chemistry, Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Mathematics Physics).

The MIT has also just laucnhed a program to deliver special courses for high school pupils.

If you are interested in any of the above mentioned topics it is worth a look !

MIT OpenCourseWare ...

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After my vacation is over and my evenings and weekends are fully booked my hoster finished setting up the root server for Swyx Forum. Setting up DotNetNuke (incl. database) is up to me, but this will take some time now

Actually there was a reason why I ordered the server one week before my two-weeks vacation...

Anyway, there is a light at the end of the tunnel now

Yesterday I found myself in a time machine boosting me back in time into the year 1991. It was the year where I had to do my 12 month military service at the german navy. I was sonar operator on a so called mine hunter. We searched see mines (ground mines) by using sonar and then used a small remote controlled submarine to dop a bomb directly beside the mine to simply destroy it. In 1990 Sadam Hussein invaded Kuwait and dropped hundreds of mines into the persian gulf as a barrier to make sure no military vessel or oil tanker was able to approach Kuwait. A number of NATO countries as also germany sent their mine seachers / hunters down into the gulf to get rid of these mines. During this time I was stationed on the MHC Koblenz (M1071). So, that was the time where a saw quite a lot from the world ;-) A few years after my military service the german navy replaced to old mine hunter fleet we were stationed on by new high-tech vessels.

One of the ships (MHC Weilheim (M1077))  was handed over...

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Randall has just started his new project Swyx WebCDR.

It is a web based CDR (Call Detail Record) tool. Please take a look onto the project pages for more details.

The current version is written in PHP (Apache Webserver) but we are also looking to provide an ASP (Microsoft IIS Webserver) version. So, if your are willing to help on this, feel free to join the team !

Ok, Morten has promised that I will write about my norwegian experiances, so here they are. At least in terms of "having a traditional norwegian dinner".

Friday night we went out to a quite nice fish restaurant in the newly build shopping and restaurant area Aker Brygge in down town Oslo, directly at the harbour. The name of the restaurant was "Lofoten" which clearly indicated that we were not going to get some nice english style steak (if you don't know about the Lofoten you should read about them here).

As I already promised weeks before to give taditional food a try the waiter didn't provided me with a menu. In fact most of us (we were nine people at all) skipped the part with the menu, except Morten and his wife, the other Morten and Thomas. The fact that both Mortens as real norwegians were not going for the traditional fish should have worried me... Well, to be honest, it did, at least a little bit.

As a starter we got something that is called "rakefisk". Stop, that's not true...

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The weekend is close and therefore it's time for something to smile about

Being David Copperfield isn't that difficult as it seems. Everyone can do such magic things. You, me, eveyone !!!

See for yourself !

Over the last two weeks the down times of Swyx Forum have increased as you might have noticed. Unfortunately it always takes some time to get it up and running again as I do not have direct remote access to the machine to restart the webserver by my own but instead need to ask my hoster to do so.

The reason for these downtimes is, that the web framework Swyx Forum is using (DotNetNuke) is somewhat unstable in virtual environments, which is in fact a problem of asp.net, the web layer of Windows itself. After updating to the new forum version the downtimes have increased dramatically. Obviously this version touches unstable functions of DotNetNuke / asp.net more often than the old one.

But, good new is, HELP IS ON THE WAY !

Swyx Forum will definately move to it's own server machine which brings two major advantages:

more stable environment direct remote access for me and Morten (to be able to react faster on any kind of problem) Further advantages will be of course

...

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Usually the following chain reaction is not possible in online stores, but you never know...

http://producten.hema.nl

"Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman!"

That's the title of a set of books, written by Richard P. Feynman, one of the greatest physicists of our century. Not only was he brilliant in his profession, theoretical physics (which won him the nobel prize), he was also a remarkable lecturer, story teller and finally also bongo player. He died in 1988.

His lectures where crowded with students, everyone wanted to learn from him. He had the ability to explain the most complex relations in simple words giving even "outsiders" of physics a chance to understand what's going on.

His "Feynman Lectures on Physics"  (three volume books on the basics on physics) are still the most popular books for students.

Last year I was happy finding an audio cd collection containing original recordings of his lectures from 1961-63. I was even more happy realizing I was able to follow his explanations

...

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Snowball is a medium sulphur crested Eleanora cockatoo and he loves to dance and sing.

He loves the Back Street Boys. No one taught Snowball to dance... he just heard this song and suddenly felt like dancing. When he's really in the mood, he dances and sings.

And at the end of the performance he takes a bow or two or twenty !!

But see for yourself:

http://birdloversonly.blogspot.com/2007/09/may-i-have-this-dance.html

After Sebastian started his new project Swyx IM on his own pages, the Swyx Forum project pages are availalbe now as well.

Swyx Forum provides community services for the project, mainly the forums. For downloads and issue reporting you will be diverted to Sebastian's own page automatically.

Please let me thank Sebastian for all his efforts (and lots of spare time) he spends on his projects, SwyxIt! Gadget and now Swyx IM as well. I know how busy he is already with his daily job ...

So, if you feel like "wow, that's cool, what can I do to support this project (or others)" don't hesitate to get in touch with us. The more people we have in our project teams the more work can be done and the better the projects will become

Today I am facing several down times 

It seems, that the new forum version causes somehow more problems in the virtual environment than the previous version.

I am already working on a solution to get Swyx Forum on it's own root server which promises much more stability. If this will work out as expacted/wanted, I will be able to move the site in one or two weeks from now (fortunately I have vacation during this time...).

If you feel like wanting to support me on this you can do so by becoming an official sponsor of Swyx Forum. It is just a question of money... (as always). At the moment the costs are not yet secured.

As I am going to update the forum module the following weekend, you won't be able to access it from saturday morning  presumingly until sunday afternoon. All other areas of Swyx Forum (projects, downloads, wiki, a.s.o.) will stay available during this time.

Hi everyone.

Due to a massive hardware failure in the datacenter of my hoster Swyx Forum (and lots of other pages) where down far about half a day. As Murphey tells us: everything that could fail will fail, it took some time to get the datacenter back to life.

Swyx Forum is available now again and I am looking forward to the weekend to update the forum module.

"Far out in the uncharted backwarters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun."

This is the beginning of the first book of the only existing triology consisting of five novels:

Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

If you grew up being somehow connected to technology this is for sure a very well known story for you. In fact I hardly know anyone not knowing it.

The story is from easy to complicated, from funny to bizzare. Over the last 20+ years it became nearly a religion to many people. Of course my bookshelf is the home of five paperbacks as well !

While spending some nice days in Reykjavik for an SwyxECR Developers Training the other day I found a complete...

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Over the last days you might have exerianced this site to be very slow or not responding at all. My hoster just informed me that he had severe trouble with DoS Attacks on lot's of his machines slowing everything down. He told me that he "fixed" this now (I wonder how to fix DoS Attacks anyway... ).

So, if the page is slow please be patient, this is most likely because some stupid guys think they have to do stupid things.

This morning the Swyx Forum web server (i.e. the web application framework) hang and it took some time to get the IIS (web server) restarted. So please accept my apology for this. I will try to make sure that these kind of down times will be prevented in the future.

Is your daily work every day the same ? Did you get tired of it and want to learn and do new things ?

Maybe this one is of inspiration for you:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=p4cP2oy4ebE

BTW: tomorrow is a national holiday in Germany (German Unity Day), so this is nearly like Morten's regular weekend starter blog

The other day a colleague of mine asked my for a favour to write a small function that strips the SIP URI from his caller list and redial list. At home he only uses SIP trunks to the outside world and therefore he always gets the SIP URIs into all lists.

Well, the result is the following piece of code that has to be copied into the gse script's Start block, and later on within the script, somewhere before the Connect To block you need to call the FixSIP function, best suited within a Insert Script Code block.

Feel free to use it where ever you like

 

 

Sub FixSIP()

    Dim sNumber     sNumber = StripNumberFromSipURI(PBXCall.CallingPartyNumber)     PBXCall.CallingPartyNumber = sNumber     PBXCall.PhoneCallListEntry.Number = sNumber

End Sub

 

Function StripNumberFromSipURI(ByVal sURI)

    Dim sReturn     sReturn = sURI ...

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As Morten already has opened the fun section for the upcoming weekend, let's celebrate it !

This is my contribution to it   (Don't miss to watch BOTH movies!)

 





...

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Again I want to inform you about the latest news of the Kinderhilfe Afghanistan (Sorry, but both links are in german language available only).

• Oberpfalznetz - Warnung vor Pulverfass Pakistan
• Mittelbayrische - Die Ansichten eines Unbequemen über Afghanistan

swyx-forum supports the Kinderhilfe Afghanistan. Read more about it here.

This small movie shows what really happend to Darth Vader after his battle star was destroyed by the rebells.

► Episode IV.V

Being already in the mood for some more good one's of Robin Williams I am pretty sure you will enjoy this very special version of "none-weapons-of.mass-destruction". This is definately one of the most brilliant ones !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WL5qMobVS2U

Ever wondered who invented Golf ? This game where a few people with sticks in their hands hit tiny balls and run all the day after their these balls.

Well, my most favorite comedian, Robon Williams, tells the truth about this sport.

Lean back and enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6X04wZpqx3U

Too many DVDs, and CDs and not enough time to rewind? Are your DVDs running a bit too slow? The DVD rewinder is the perfect solution! This novelty rewinder comes with the exclusive Centriptal Velocity Spindle providing the world’s fastest DVD rewind!

The DVD Rewinder is a great gift for the technical savvy, the couch potato, teens with too much time on their hands, and the gadget buff! Novelty for you or gag gift for a friend.

The DVD Rewinder has a great black and fluorescent green color scheme with high tech styling! The DVD Rewinder will spin discs backwards and plays a “rewind” sound. You can also record your own “rewind” sound which provides unending possibilities. For the tech hip, the DVD Rewinder also has an additional MP3 port and plays a separate “rewind” sound. Rewind all types of disc media DVDs, CDs, and Console Games. But not just novelty, the DVD Rewinder has utility. It has a built in compartment that holds a disc cleaner. This compartment can be used to hold the cleaner, loose couch...

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The last weeks and month I'd spent a fair amount of time on a redesign of the Swyx License Database. This weekend I have updated the productive system and am quite pleased with the results.

Two major "faults" had made the database very slow over the last years. As you all know the Swyx licenses are dongled with the hardware of the server machine. So, the first fault was to do all the hardware comparisons needed everytime one wanted to have a look e.g. on a customer. The second fault was introduced when implementing the SUS license management 2 1/2 jears ago. Because of a lack of time I had decided to make (intensive) use of "User Defined Functions" on the MS SQL server. In the beginning everything worked fine, but over the time, with more and more licenses in the database, the UDFs showed their major drawback more and more clearly: they became a performance problem.

So, if you ever have to design a database application, stay with the good old-fashioned Stored Procedures or Views and better do not...

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Friday night I saw the movie Shut Up & Sing (just started here in Germany). A film about the Dixie Chicks, an american country band and in fact the most successfull girl band ever in terms of sold records.

During their Top of the World tour in 2003 the lead singer Natalie Maines said one sentence on a concert in London, between two songs, just meant as a joke. A sentence that changed her life and the life of her sisters. It was the evening before American and British troups invaded Iraq. She said that she's ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas.

While being still on tour this sentence found it's way through the media back to the US with remarkable effects. I am not sure if this is a purely amerian phenomenon, but from my german point of view the reactions all over america are simply unbelievable.

What one will learn from this story is the following:

think...

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Try this !

http://www.isnichwahr.de/r297535-Langeweile-beim-Shoppen.html

Just an idea...

I don't know if this is a pure german phenomenon but have you also ever wondered about all the christmas stuff already in the stores in august ?

Well, now there is an easy and purely logical answer to it. It's given a in short story (unfortunately in german language only - I hope you don't mind).

Richtiges Verhalten am Hindukusch - Wie ein Afghane unter Afghanen

Welche Regeln ein Zivilist befolgen muss, wenn er am Hindukusch unterwegs ist - und wer dort nichts zu suchen hat.
Eine Außenansicht von Reinhard Erös.

Ein Artikel aus der Süddeutschen Zeitung vom 24.07.2007.

BAYERN-Alpha - der Bildungskanal des Bayerischen Fernsehens - berichtet am Donnerstag, 19. Juli 2007, 20.15 Uhr - 21.00 Uhr in der Interview-Sendung "ALPHA-FORUM" über die Arbeit der "Kinderhilfe Afghanistan".

Details: http://www.br-online.de/alpha/forum/

You might have already noticed the new banner link in the right pane of each swyx-forum page. I have decided that a fixed amount of all donations and sponsoring fees will be donated to the German Aid for Afghan Children - GAAC (Kinderhilfe Afghanistan). Why this organisation and not another one ? Well, there are plenty of possibilites to spent money on charity purposes. As I know the work of Mr. Eroes now for more then two years and have always looked out for an opportunity to actively support it, the decision was a quick one.

I am deeply impressed by the work of Mr. Eroes, his overwhelming sense for humatiy and the connected will to put it into action (in medical , humanitarian and political terms).

You can read about Mr. Eroes and the GAAC to get your own picture of it here.

Just received an interesting link to a petition against dubbing of movies and TV shows. The arguments of the people having already signed the list are quite intersting.

• Against dubbing of movies and TV shows
• Gegen Synchronisation in Film und TV

The following is a very interesting article about dubbing in Norway (sorry, this is available in german only):

• „Synchronisieren ist unnorwegisch“ von Arnt Maasø (PDF)

If you need to deal with MS databsases (most likely the MSDE as this is the standard database of SwyxWare) you should definately look for some visual tools instead of trying to learn the osql command line syntax.

Free available 3rd party tools are (just to mention a few of them):

EMS SQL Manager 2005 Lite for SQL ServerUniversal Table Editor Microsoft delivers tools as well. As for SQL Server 2000 there are two quite usefull tools, but they are not free:

MS Enterprise Manager MS Query Analyzer With SQL Server 2005 Microsoft has introduced a new and free management cosole, which is compatible to SQL 2000 / MSDE as well !

Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Express I strongly...

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Release delayed.

Due to the fact that the necessary forum module update hasn't been released yet, the release of swyx-forum will be delayed. The next target date will be 21.05.2007.

Fortunately the Wiki is already available. When using a FireFox browser you might notice a small display bug within the "search" link. This is just a minor bug and will be fixed shortly.

Hi, I just wanted to give everyone an update on the current status of swyx-forum.

The preview phase has started a week ago and I got a lot of positive feedback and favourable opinions. I take this as an affirmation that the idea of swyx-forum is good and that it is needed.

So, what is the current status ?

As already mentioned within the forum I am currently waiting for a new forum module version that fixes some bugs (e.g. search, own avatars) and comes with a number of new features. This new version is mandatory for the release of swyx-forum. I am optimistic that this version will be available until 14.05.2007, the scheduled release date. If not, I am going to postpone the release date.

Additionally the wiki module isn't finished yet. There is currently an old version available and also within a couple of days a new one. If the new version isn't available at the release date, I will start with the old version. I don't take that new version as mandatory for the release.

You might...

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Is this an official Swyx website ?

Most definately: NO ! This is my own private project.

You might know me as a Swyx employee for many many years now, with a number of different responsibilites in the past. It was always and still is my first aim to spread as much knowledge as possible into the "Outside of Swyx" world.

Swyx has it's own policy getting this done, e.g. by reseller trainings, parnter net and a forum available for resellers only, and not forgetting to mention the Swyx Knowledgebase. Swyx as manufacturer has its main target on business and this is done with distributors and resellers. So they spent a huge amount of time, support and other resources to provide the best possible service for this business model.

Unfortunaltey a certain amount of Swyx users is not involved into this model and "knowledge transfer chain".

So, my idea with this community site is to get all threads together, to close all open chain links.

I can't and I won't deliver replies to all support / help requests on this site. Actually I have a job that really keeps me busy and that I enjoy very very much. I hope that it is possible to create a huge community here. A community build from users, resellers, distributors, developers, and all other interested people. A community that helps each other. My aim is to provide everything that's needed for that !

...

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As a good and friendly and nice host I have finally decided to write my own blog here as well.
Hopefully I'll get lot's of other bloggers gathered together here as well.

You will see from the blog list in the left pane that there are not only individuals writing blogs here (currently just me), but also projects (currently ECR :: Call Queue - Blog). Those last blogs are directly connected to a project on this site and are maintained by the project team leader. They are used to tell the community about the ongoing of a project.

So, lets wait and see how the blogs get flooded by the time :-)