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Just a quick reminder that the Apple event is on this evening at 6pm (Ireland)/7pm (Germany). Apple is expected to introduce the "iPad", a new tablet device, iPhone OS 4.0 and iLife 2010. As always, the closer we get to the keynote, the more legitimate rumors are popping up, with a very convincing photo of the iPad in a lab (no, not an elevator) surfacing today.

In any case, I will be leaving work a bit earlier today, and if any of you geeks want to join me in following the ticker and later on the video stream, please give me a shout!

Hope to see many of you tonight!

I remember very well reading in computer magazine about the latest game with amazing graphics, extreme humour and brutality: "Duke Nukem 3D". Then, a couple of months later I had that game on my computer - with the aid of a class mate who was one of the first lucky guys to own a cd burner. And it really rocked! Not only the single player mode was fun with all that monsters and prostitutes... we had the best gaming nights with the multiplayer mode! OK, the aiming wasn't really realistic, you basically only had to get the horizontal direction right. But maps were cool - one had even a moving subway. And the main character Duke was soo cool - not to mention his sayings. You didn't have to speak English very well to realize that...

This was about 12 years ago.

When Google launched its search engine four years ago in China, and bowed down to Chinese authorities who required Google to censor their search results, I was hugely disappointed. I had always been a strong proponent of Google's "don't be evil" motto, and even more so, having worked there for a short time, I firmly believed that Google management actually took their motto seriously. But then, after the entry to the Chinese market, my long discussions with friends and colleagues, trying to convince them Google was indeed not evil, became much more difficult and I seemed to lose quite some credibility. The promise that Google would only remain in China if progress was made on the freedom of speech issues seemed like a poor excuse to harness the lucrative business opportunities gained by entering the world's fastest growing internet nation.

Today, all that has changed. Read on to find out why I believe the recent developments are so important to China's future.

As 2009 concludes we look back at a year - and a decade - with mixed feelings. With the economic downturn it seemed the world turned a bit slower than usual, and "progress" would hardly be a fitting attribute of the past year. But now it is time to wake up from your economic slumber as the year 2010 has a lot to offer. So before you get the champagne ready and have your toast (along with the resolutions you won't keep), let's make sure we all know what great things are heading our way in 2010. In the following article I have put together some of the things that I am most looking forward to. After reading this I hope that you too will be excited about the year that lies ahead. Of course, leave anything I may have missed in the comments.

Do you ever write documents that contain code snippets? Do you ever include code in your presentations? If yes, you probably know how nice it would be if the code was actually syntax highlighted to make it more readable. With the context dependent services in Snow Leopard, I will show you how to add a service that will allow you to syntax highlight code in almost any application. By right-clicking on any selected text, you will be able to select the syntax highlighting service in the context menu, which will add that extra bit of color to your code.

A few days ago a colleague of mine was shocked to see that his MacBook Pro no longer booted correctly. He called me over to his desk to show me the hopeless situation: Just as the MacBook seemed to boot, it shut back down. It reminded me of the situation I had experienced a few months earlier when my iMac showed no reaction to pressing the power button whatsoever - as if it was not plugged in. A similar thing happened to my Netgear router, which did not seem to switch on when plugged in. Luckily the solution to all of these problems is simple, yet not widely known.

So if you have an electronic device that seems to be misbehaving (and you have ruled out that it is a software problem), follow these simple steps:

1. Unplug the device (remove any other cables plugged into the device as well).
2. Hold down the power button (or on routers the "reset" button) for at least 10 seconds.
3. Plug the device back in.
4. Voila! You're good to go!

By holding down the power button you are basically causing the power controller to reset. This may vary on some devices, so Google is your friend.

People who read this blog (if they exist), may know that I am a big fan of the Trackmania games. These are racing games, where you need to complete tracks in a given amount of time. You can play against the clock or online against anybody who is part of the huge Trackmania community. On top of that, you can create your own tracks and race against your buddies. In this entry I will show all intel Mac users how to get the awesome Trackmania Nations Forever running on their machines. Best of all, getting this game up and running won't cost you a dime! (In all fairness though, it may cost you some time, depending on the installation and how addicted you will get once you have the game installed).

Right, I know I haven't been blogging in a long while, and that now that I am blogging I should probably tell you about Dublin. Well, so that I don't look like a complete geek (as if I could give you any other impression), Dublin is nice, rainy, has Guinness and lots of people with strange names.

Much nicer of a place however is Beer Island, which I have been telling many of my colleagues about, and who are very eager to see it. (Also, some are skeptical it actually exists). So if you'd like to see proof that Beer Island exists, please read on!

In a previous post, I talked about how to use D-Bus to get information about network status changes. Now, since I have been using a private VPN with my Ubuntu as a client, I came across another scenario, where a script using D-Bus could help: The VPN works fine, but sometimes just disconnects. It does not happen very often, but when it happens, it is annoying and I'd like to see it reconnecting automatically. Moreover I'd like to stay in the VPN whenever I have a network connection available. Unfortunately, I didn't found any option within the NetworkManager to manage this. I ended up in writing this script which can be invoked like autovpn <VPN_NAME>, where <VPN_NAME> is the name of the VPN which is displayed in the NetworkManager under VPNConnections. You can even run it automatically on system startup by placing it in "Startup Applications". It does two things:

It tries to connect the VPN whenever it detects an active internet connection.

It tries to reconnect the VPN, whenever it disconnects unintentionally. The number of attempts is limited to 5 and there is artificial delay of 5 seconds between attempts.

This is probably the best live piano interpretation of a video game, that I have ever come across. Sure brings back a lot of memories...