Recently I was on the way to a friend in South Tyrol (Italy) where I passed the Alps with beautiful sunshine in Autumn. I got my Panasonic Lumix G2 with me and so I already took some pictures on the way because the landscape looked so wonderful.

Visible changes are for example the move to wordpress.com instead of using my own webspace at godaddy.com. Why? Because your own webspace, especially when running scripts (PHP) and databases (which was required to run my wordpress blogs), always needs attention and has to be updated very often to prevent any security flaws. That’s annoying and really not necessary today. Today you can store everything in the “clouds” which are service providers for almost every type of content, and many of those are even free!

But of course, I had to give up some things: everything from the past that was all stored on my webspace, including old pictures, homepages, and many many sound files. But, well, it’s the “past”, isn’t it? It’s time to let go.

If I want to share photos or other files I use dropbox.com today, and the free service already provides enough space for me. Because, to be honest, if you share any pictures, they’re from the latest event only, and they don’t have to remain available online forever. And if I want to have something remaining in a public gallery there’s still flickr.com or picasa.google.com.

And all the audio files I kept on my server (mostly recordings from doing webradio shows or any music mixes I made), well, who accessed them today? Nobody. Even not me, because I forgot about them. And for me, it’s absolutely enough to have them stored at home. (And if I want I can make them accessible from my computer at home…)

So, what’s left? There’s just this blog here, happyradio.de, and my podcast (now at siggitalker.wordpress.com).

And behind the curtains, I also managed to find time to organize my music and photo libraries at home (and to consolidate several libraries from across several hard disks – well, that was a hell of work…).

I can tell you: It feels good!
(Sometimes changes are just good.)

It just needed this kind of reminder of my account at this social bookmarking provider delicious.com, although I stopped using it already a while ago. At first, it looked very useful, because I could have all my bookmarks stored in the “cloud” accessible from any browser at any place or computer. But it didn’t work that seamlessly as it sounds, and on the other hand I don’t have the need to share my bookmarks with the public.

And moreover, I started to put every kind of link in my personal web “board” with some notes along about why and how (especially “how useful”). That is something really missing with social bookmarks: I need more than just a link and probably a short description, I need a context for links and some more space for corresponding notes.

So, as you already may have guessed, I also quitted that service. Don’t need it.

So, now finally, I made the step I always wanted to: I stopped using it, although more and more people around me start using it more and more. We were able to communicate perfectly before Facebook, so why aren’t we now? What about good old fashioned email?

Ok, it’s true, that it’s easier to reach many people at once when you post something on Facebook, instead of looking for all the email addresses of them. But here’s also the disadvantage (which is maybe different with me compared to many other Facebook users): I didn’t post that many things on Facebook because everyone who’s a “friend” of me would read it, and I almost never have a (private!) message that is intended for “everyone” who knows me.

That is different with really public messages like e.g. these blog entries or other things that everyone should be able to read and know, so there’s no sense in limiting it to my friends. This brings me to the conclusion how I now managed to quit Facebook while still being able to post micro messages to the public: by using Twitter instead!

And so, not only because of this change, but at least triggered by it, I also did the totally overdue update of the content on these pages here, especially correcting (or removing) links and changing the link to my new podcast: siggi-talker.de. (But sorry, the photo section currently still stays empty because I don’t find time for that project…)

Well, I hope that with everyone of my real friends I stay in contact anyway, and with everyone else I guess it’s not so important. And I also hope that every kind of invitation that’s really intended to reach me will also reach me without being on Facebook.

Neu hinzugekommen zur Media Blogroll ist das von mir kürzlich wieder entdeckte Satelliten-Medienmagazin Dr.Dish-TV (in Augsburg bei meinen Eltern haben wir Satelliten-Empfang, ich in München dagegen leider nur Kabel…). Und just in diesen Tagen wurde aus dem einst nur gelegentlich sendenden Programm (ich bin immer nur durch Zufall darauf gestoßen, da ich nicht durchblickte, wann jeweils die Sendung statt fand…) ein volles 24-Stunden-Programm. Aber auch die Webseiten bieten ein sehr schönes Videoarchiv. Darunter auch ein Beitrag zur neuen ‘cinemizer plus’ 3D-tauglichen Videobrille für iPod/iPhone, welche ich zufälligerweise letzten Samstag im Saturn entdeckte und dort ausprobieren konnte. Ich fand das schon irgendwie faszinierend.

Vor allem finde ich’s ja generell immer sehr faszinierend, wie doch so viel ‘Science Fiction’ so nach und nach in unsere Realität Einzug hält, ohne dass man es so richtig mitbekommt…

Ein weiterer neuer Link in der Media Blogroll ist Retro TV, eine WebShow mit Henning und Paddy über alte TV-Serien und Sendungen. Sehr empfehlenswert für alle, die so ein wenig nostalgisch veranlagt sind, wie ich…

Und zu guter Letzt gibt’s noch einen Link zu Radio Bavaria International, ein Südtiroler Privatradio-Pionier, der jetzt als Webradio wieder ein wenig aktiv geworden ist und das ich durch Zufall auf meinem Internetradio-Radiowecker entdeckt habe.

I once tried a separate blog about technology and how it’s changing the world constantly. However, a blog like that requires a lot of time, and what’s more frustrating: I would know so many things that I would like to write about and to share with the public, but it’s always on my mind when not being able to write it down, when there’s no time for it, or when I’m far away from any computer. And then when I am in a situation where I could attend to the blog I don’t feel any motivation to do it any more…

Today, I prefer to spend my leisure time not so much at the computer than how it was when I was younger…

And then, there’s also this good question which a good friend of mine recently asked: who’s gonna read all that stuff? I don’t think a personal blog on a personal homepage without a specific topic is much of interest to an open audience. And my friends get updated directly – I prefer real communications with people.

Anyway, for personal blogging there’s Facebook today. All your ‘friends’ get your new entries, without having to drop by and to look at your homepage, or to subscribe to the feed with a rss reader.

So based on all that thoughts, the conclusion about how to handle this blog here is: I don’t have the time to maintain a personal blog with regular updates about my life. Therefor I finally decided to only update this blog when there are some changes made to these pages, e.g. adding new links or changing/updating any pages.

Of course this entry here is the exception to that new rule

I guess there still will be enough entries… although the frequency of updates may be very low.

Ich habe nun hier in den Link Sektionen (Audio Links, Media Blogroll) auch unter anderem einige Homepages meiner abonnierten Video- und Audio-Podcasts hinzugefügt (ausserdem auch ein paar Links zu guten Webradios etc.).

Seit einigen Jahren bereits höre ich so einige Audio-Podcasts (inzwischen sind es schon fast 20 verschiedene – die noch aktiv sind, denn wenn man die inaktiven mitrechnen würde, dann wären es noch viel mehr…). Zum Anhören komme ich allerdings lediglich, wenn ich unterwegs bin, d.h. z.B. auf meinem kurzen Weg zur Arbeit (den ich aktuell zu Fuß zurücklege und da geht das dann eher, als wenn ich, wie im Sommer dann wieder, mit dem Fahrrad fahre!), oder aber in der U-Bahn oder wenn ich dann doch auch mal mit dem Auto unterwegs bin (z.B. von München nach Augsburg).

Was und wieviel ich dann in welcher Zeit anhöre, ist dabei sehr unterschiedlich, so dass ich manchmal mehr und manchmal fast überhaupt nicht zum Podcast-Hören komme.

Als Abspielgerät dient mein iPhone der ersten Generation, mit welchem ich nach wie vor vollkommen zufrieden bin, auch ohne UMTS und GPS. (Dieser kleine Einschub hier erinnert mich daran, dass ich auch mal eine Seite über meine verwendete Technik hier einrichten wollte…)

Im Gegensatz dazu nutze ich die Video-Podcasts eigentlich fast ausschließlich zu Hause und zwar als TV-Ersatz, denn das Fernsehprogramm kann man ja heutzutage eigentlich nicht mehr ertragen. Die Video-Podcasts bestehen jedoch dennoch hauptsächlich aus Teilen von TV-Produktionen, aber eben in schönen kleinen Episoden, und ich kann sie mir anschauen, wann es mir passt!

Als Abspielgerät dient hier entweder mein MacBook Pro, das dann auf dem Esstisch steht, während ich nebenher z.B. esse, oder mein Mac Mini, der an meinen HD-Fernseher angeschlossen mir ermöglicht, vom Sofa aus das ganze wie Fernsehen zu genießen. (Auch hierzu dann mehr auf der neuen Seite zu meinem generellen technischen Setup!)

Ich wünsche viel Spaß beim Durchstöbern meiner Linksammlung.

On Flickr you’ll find some pics of my two cute little cats called Lucky and Cindy.
They’re now already a little bit older, but nevertheless the cats are almost the same, and as beauty and lovely as ever.

The most impressive picture I got from my first trip to the United States in 2002 where we’ve traveled around California and further to Las Vegas and Grand Canyon/Arizona is the following, which of course is from hiking at the Grand Canyon.

I hope you like the new design and also the content. And yes, and it’s still almost everything in English, because I know some friends that understand English better than German, and there’s also some information here that should be comprehensible by an international audience.