The teaser is here. And it is amazing.

I am less excited than I was when I saw The Phantom Menace trailer for the first time – once burnt by midichlorians, it is hard to love again. 

But this looks really good  and – oh c’mon, I’m gonna say it: I’ve got a good feeling about this.

Update 30/11/2014:
And of course – George Lucas has now done a Special Edition. Because this was his original vision for the teaser all along, but he had to wait two days until technology caught up.

Just watched “Interstellar”, the new movie by Christopher Nolan. There’s been already a lot of discussion on the Internets, so I have been very curious.

I thought it was amazing!

A few thoughts (and spoilers) after the break:

more →

An alien world from farther away than we can imagine. We just touched it.

Science, bitches.

P.S.
Had to add this image as well – just to get an idea, how big this thing is.

P.P.S.

And as usual, xkcd nails it:

I have bought a new blogging app – again. Will I ever learn? Stay tuned!

The always awesome Shawn Blanc mentioned a new app called Desk on his blog, that was sponsoring his site  this week. I was curious and went to check it out.

Now this looked intriguing.

I spent the last two days trying to learn more about the software. First, I found the really beautifully designed website ( I mean, seriously – it’s all parallax scrolling and transparence, and gorgeous imagery – really beautiful!) and watched the obligatory “Cute Girl In A Coffeeshop™ using our software”-video, that literally all trendy, hip, upcoming, environmently conscious and biodegradable software has to have these days. (I mean, seriously – did you notice? “Cute Girl In A Coffeeshop™” videos are literally everywhere!)

The “Cute Girl In A Coffeeshop™ using our software”-video was very charming, and struck the right chords with me. I then had a look at the developers blog, who seemed like a really nice and genuine guy, who came across as really passionate about writing and design, and had put a lot of thought into his app.

I then checked out the app on the Mac Appstore, and it was £20.

Now, I am all for compensating software developers for their work, and if their software is worth its money, it deserves a justified price. But £20 are not an impulse buy. Handing out £20 – especially after I just had bought another blogging app just a few weeks ago – was not something I was going to do without making sure I had a good idea what I was buying.

This is where things became a bit difficult – there was no trial version, and apart from the aforementioned “Cute Girl In A Coffeeshop™ using our software”-video, there was no actual way to see, what the app looks like in actual usage. The screenshots on the Mac Appstore where just showing some shiny, trendy corners and edges, but I did not feel they gave me any actual useful information about how to use the app. Instead, we had even a picture of the app developer, wishing me a lot of enjoyment with his app (and I did not really mind – as I said, the guy seemed very genuine and likeable, and it was a nice, personal touch.)

So, off to Google we went.

The app just got published a week ago, so of course there was not much information available – but I got a lot of hits for desks. Finally, I did find a report by an alpha tester on one site – and that was exactly what I had been looking for. He talked about his experience using the app, showed some actual screen shots, and more or less confirmed my initial impression, which I had got from reading the official website.

So I mulled things over for another day, although I already knew that I would get it, and then I bought the app when I returned from work this evening.

And this is my first blog post using Desk.

There was a bit of a “I did a huge mistake”-moment, when the app would not connect with my website and was asking for some obscure xmlhpc.php-thingie – I had to go the (very clear) help file, which explained that I did not need to know xmlhpcwhatever, and it took another moment of senility, until I realised that in all the excitement, I had put in the wrong site.

And now I am finding my way around. I think, I really like the design: it’s essentially just a blank screen, waiting to be filled with words. There are a few bumps and a few features I am missing (a sharesheet extension or safari extension would be neat, so I can easily add content while browsing), but writing itself is really pleasurable.

Will this make me blog more? It’s hard to say. As a wise man once said:

Sometimes you need to change the tool, sometimes you need to change the tool who uses it.

(I came up with this myself. I did a pun. I was punny. Whee!)

Anyway, how can you not like a software, that does this:

Major Changes to Doctor Doom in “Fantastic Four” Reboot:

“He’s Victor Domashev, not Victor Von Doom in our story,” Kebbel said. “And I’m sure I’ll be sent to jail for telling you that… I’m a programmer; very anti-social programmer. And on blogging sites I’m ‘Doom.'”

“Victor Domashev.” “Victor Van Damme.”

As the real Dr. Doom would say: “BAH!”

If you hate everything that is great about comic books, why are you even doing a comic book movie?

And while I’m still waiting for Yosemite to finally turn up on the Mac App Store – I mean, hello? -, there’s already John Siracusa’s iconic Mac OS X 10.10 review on Ars Technica.

Very busy at present, but I am looking forward to cuddle up with a cup of coffee, and just enjoy reading this. These are the times when being a nerd is just the best!

So, Apple just introduced the all new iPad Air 2 (Gosh, what a mouthful of a name!).

I am still on the iPad 3 – the very first iPad with Retina, that a rapid six months later got replaced by the iPad 4, and has universally been described as way too slow to do Retina in the first place. So I have been looking forward to replace my iPad for a while now, and I am ready to pull the trigger. And the new iPad is an incredible improvement to my current one in almost every way – not least, we finally get 128 GB of storage. I have managed to fill up every iDevice I ever owned to the seams, so more storage is always welcome.

But – Apple always, always, seems to make one tiny little unexpected change or omission, which takes me completely off-guard, and throws me from my already locked in and ready to purchase stance back into doubt and hesitation: The new iPad Air 2 does not have a rotation lock switch.

What the heck, Apple?!

I can already put together the justification for this – they wanted to make it as thin as possible, and rotation lock can be done by software. Well, I use the physical rotation lock on my iPad all the time, and I never use that stupid control center, which keeps getting in the way. So I am not happy about this. It seems like a very arbitrary und unnecessary design decision.

A similar thing happened with the Mac mini – I waited ages to buy my very first one in order to use it as a TV multimedia computer, and had everything set up to and ready to go – and then the new Mac mini finally comes out and does not have a DVD drive. I had to think about it for a long time, and then still went ahead and bought it – but I also had to get a Bluray player as well. Everything works fine now, but things would have been simply more convenient with a DVD drive. (It is even more annoying as there would have been more than enough space inside the Mac mini for a DVD drive – they just chose not to. Probably to sell more iTunes movies. Hmph!)

Okay then. We know how this wil play out. I shall think about this, having been cast back into doubt and hesitation after practically having my wallet out already – and then I will end up buying the new iPad anyway, and accept that Apple always knows best.

Hmph!

So I got myself a new blogging app called Blogo, and this is my first post with it.

Let’s see if this will now start a new blogging renaissance, and revive this criminally neglected blog.

Well, posting seems easy enough, and it also seems easy to insert images and links from other websites, as it has a Safari-extension – but it does not show images in the editor window, only a place holder – not quite sure why.

Oh well…

Dead Poets’ Society spoke so much to me, when I was a teenager, trying to figure out the world. And Robin Williams brought an amazing character to life, telling us things we all need to know.

Rest in peace, oh Captain my Captain.

If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel – A tediously accurate map of the solar system.

This is mind blowing. We are surrounded by vast, vast emptiness with specks of dust far and in-between.