My name is Frank Puhlmann and I live in the beautiful city of Potsdam, Germany. A walk over the street brings me to the Studio Babelsberg, where once famous movies like Fritz Langs Metropolis have been produced. Some minutes longer, and a thereby a walk straight through Berlin, take me to my work, the Hasso-Plattner-Institute.
I'm currently employed in a german research project called PESOA, which tries to integrate things called software product lines and process-orientation. While I'm there I'm also focusing on researching some stuff like dynamic, interoperational workflow by the use of some highly interesting algebra called the pi-calculus. If that's not enough, I also prepare lectures and supervise seminars and practices. You'll certainly read more about that in the future.
As this blog is subtitled "tech, work, life, and all the rest", I'll try to keep this order. However, that doesn't mean it's the order of the world they I personally have. But still, tech is a very important thing in my life. I've been hanging on computer keyboards since I was twelve, luckily starting with a Commodore 64 (Yes, that was that kind of computer where you could dump the memory instead of using a search function). Afterward, I've came a long way about every Windows version that was somehow useable (for me it was 3.1) as well as OS/2, Linux, and a short try out of BeOS. However, this winter I switched to what I think is the coolest Unix on earth - MacOS X. Whenever I tried to use Linux seriously, it started out to be the ultimate "frickelware", where just even my hardware was not directly supported. By the way, not to mention some two, or three year old programs which simple won't run without recompiling them (if that were this easy). Luckily, I've ordered a Mac mini (you remember, BYODKM) as a birthday present for myself, and sometimes after a 12" PowerBook, which I also use at work (BYOL - means Bring Your Own Laptop). Now I'm one of those Mac fanatics, even if they announced the switch to Intel (Thanks again to Hagen). So, this is what this blog will mostly be all about: computers and other tech related stuff; things I've experienced, or researched, as well as some rare reviews on music and movies. If I get my digi-cam ready before something interesting happens, I'll also post it here.
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( 3 / 74 )Today I've tried a nice little feature of my PowerBook: SMS. The Sudden Motion Sensor detects the physical orientation of the device. Originally build into the Book for detecting sudden motions, as when it's abruptly going down, and quickly parking the heads of the hard drive, some guy has figured out other nice uses.
One nice feature is to rotate the windows, so that they are always aligned with the horizon. If that's not enaugh, in combination with "the physical orientation of the PowerBook, the amount of resources consumed by the application, and how much the user is using the application", the orientations of all windows can change in realtime... might be a bit tricky to use that thing.
Beside some app that visualizes the current orientation of the Book in a window, there is also a human interface device driver. The Book's orientation can now be used to move the mouse pointer or simulate key strokes. A quite interesting app to test it with is Neverball. In Neverball you direct a ball by changing the orientation of the underlying floor while collecting coins and at the same time try to keep the ball inside the borders. Also quite tricky, especially as the sensor has a low granularity. Reminds me of playing Moto Cross Madness with my Sidewinder Freestyle Pro (now already good old times).
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( 3.2 / 73 )Welcome everybody to my very first weblog. I'm happy to see it working. Just to have some face behind this blog, I inserted a picture of me and my wife here.
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