Who

Geek by heart, computer programmer by education, I consider intellectually rewarding to hack in Lisp and FreeBSD is the OS I'm most comfortable with. I make a living as a freelance IT practitioner in Frankfurt am Main and beyond.

Local Pages

• Various readings and my impressions.
• A few software bits of mine.
• A picture of the best debugger I've ever used.
• A collection of memorable phrases, epigrams, aphorisms, and witty sentences.
• Personal data such as e-mail address and PGP key.
• The famous Real Programmers I used to know and another version from the many available on the Web.
• A picture of me.
• Due to popular demand the How to replace the Date/Time battery on the Canon S40 is back.

Other Places

• UK Software Consultant Nightmare: The IT Recruiting Agents.
• 13 reasons for UML's descent into darkness
• On 2nd Apr 2008 the dreaded OOXML has become an ISO standard.
  Now we are left wondering, not why and how such a brain damage could ever become an international standard, but whether we might need ISO in the first place. Well, it looks to me as if ISO was just a mockery of what it should be. If it's the logic of the market, economic power and, ultimately, bribery to prevail, we don't need an organisation for international standards.
• An open letter on OOXML happenings in India written Prof Deepak B Phatak.
• Confessions of an IT Agent is an article that explains why Douglas Adams would put them on that famous spaceship looking for a new planet.
• Eventually someone who speaks up and tells his opinion about all those wholesome development methodologies that are so dear to pointy-haired bosses.
• The Creation of the UNIX* Operating System
• The Revenge of the Nerds. An article about Lisp, lesser languages, pointy-haired bosses, pointy-headed academics and why you shouldn't stick with the herd.
• Hackers and Painters. Another delightful article by Paul Graham. This one explains more about the actual process of software production than most of the dedicated literature.
• Perl programmer new to functional programming? Unlambda is for you.
• IE for Linux manual page.
• Why Macromedia Flash is considered harmful.
• A curious example of mystification. This interesting page (although a bit harsh) explains why the Reinheitsgebot is just smoke and mirrors.
• The Perils of JavaSchools.
• Aurelio Bignoli, mathematician and software developer.
• What does it take to get a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence? is an article about an hoax that unveiled the true value of certain awards and sheds some light on the supposed respectability of certain specialised press.
• Mark Twain's memorable speech, for those who need to take their mind off the daily bratwurst.
• This web site uses CSS rather extensively and care has been taken to conform it to web standards, so it should look nice on graphic browsers and be readable on text-based ones. If it doesn't render correctly on yours, most likely your browser doesn't support CSS or web standards well. Ditch it and get yourself a decent one.