To wikrastinate

Means: to spend hours on some wiki (tvtropes, for example), opening hundreds of new tabs in the browser while reading through articles and clicking on every link that sounds interesting.

Geek, Nerd, etc.

Since it popped up in a discussion recently, I'd like to point out my personal view on the Geek vs. Nerd topic:

A Geek is a person who is fascinated by technical stuff - computers, mathematics, physics, chemistry, electronics, you-name-it. Still, a Geek is able to participate in hour-long conversations (even with the other sex) without including any of these favourite topics. You may want to see thinkgeek.com to get an impression.

A Nerd on the other hand is inept of any kind of social life, conversation, or contact with members of the other sex. While still maintaining the interest in above-mentioned topics, s/he often does not excel at them either. A collection of Nerd thoughts can be found at bash.org - you have been warned.

Computational Knowledge

Wolfram Alpha is online. I put it to a test:

It is still calculating...

CFOUTPUT

Struggling between "oh! so cool!" and "oh! what a load of *$%&" with CF in its latest Version 8, and MySql in its pretty-old-but-still-neat Version 3.X - that's how work should be, no? Being a smart-ass piece of software, CF doesn't allow empty strings as query parameters for a non-null field, even though MySql answers according to your expectations. D'oh, I have to become smarter!

Recommendations

What does the Amazon recommendation system think of a person who read Timothy Leary and Terry Pratchett?

Symbian and Google Calendar

Finally I found it - synchronizing my E61i with Google Calendar, through a little free (for private use, and one calendar only) tool called GooSync. And I must say, good job! I love it!

Do you wash your car?

You will probably answer "yes, once in a while" or something alike - and even if you just take it to the nearest gas station and put it in automatic car wash, you still spend time, money and energy in keeping your car neat, clean and ready-to-use.

Why don't you do the same with your computer?

Updating virus signatures, checking for updates, de-installing unused software, tidying up your harddisk... of course, it is time consuming, but the more time you spend in front of your PC, the more you have to put an effort in keeping it up-to-date and tidy. If you aren't lucky enough to have an IT department at your hands who do the job for you, you'll have to do it yourself - just as you spend time and energy cleaning your car (and hey, don't tell me "I can't do it, I'm not into IT" - most probably, you aren't a mechanic, either!), you have to spend time and energy maintaining an operable personal computer.

So, stop complaining, and take it into your own hands.... it's easy, and you will be delighted how good a nice, tidy PC feels at your fingertips.

Sennheiser CX400

After hard-testing my original iPod headphones (they didn't survive my foot stepping on them), it was time to find something new to plug my ears deaf to the outside world with.
Doing some research, I came up with Sennheiser's CX400 [german] which obviously was a good decision on my side. Ebay sold them for around 40 Euros, only 10 more than the "entry" model CX300.

Technical data can be found on the website, just let me tell you that by simply choosing the right headphones, volume level never was a problem with my iPod again... what is equally impressive is how well Sennheiser thought about acoustic design - perfect protection from outside noise, a very short cable with an optional extension, and no stupid (and quality-decreasing) gimmicks like in-cable volume control or bloated phones that you cannot sleep on....

So, if you are searching for an improvement over your iPod-headphones in quality, volume level, comfort, and usability - you should definitely give this one a try.