Torsten Curdt’s weblog

Already quite a while ago I contributed to a short paper for the University of Barcelona. They were using javaflow for mobile agent systems. Unfortunately we did not get a full acceptance for a conference. As the two other authors left University shortly after, the paper never got published. We figured it would still be good to make it available to the public and hereby release it under the creative commons licences. I am sure parts will end up in the javaflow documentation. If you are interested in the internals of javaflow it might give you a good introduction.

Yesterday we did another closed beta release of “The Venice Project” client. So we are at version 0.7 now. At the moment I don’t have a windows system available for testing myself but from the number of commits I can say – a lot of bugs have been fixed. In order for this whole venture to succeed we really need to deliver a perfect user experience on top of this great platform. I hope we soon can get some feedback from a broader audience. For now we ask the current beta tester to let us know…

• Whether you think the GUI is intuitive or not
• What additional features you would find useful
• How you like the video quality
• What content you think is missing
• And of course whether it just works for you

I am sure we will send out some more invites soon. So be quick and sign up as a beta tester.

Tool – a band that has never been something for all the pop-minded people. A mixture of hard rock sounds, a composition of audio samples, extraordinary vocals and a rhythm beyond the usual 4/4 beat builds a wall of sounds which has nothing to compare. Progressive contrasts of anger and sensibility shape the picture of a band that has always wanted to be seen as art-ists. Perfectionists that usually never show. Rare interviews. No band members to be seen in their videos. Somehow dark and surreal they create a visual audio sensory theater. Too bad this band name is already taken – it would have been a perfect fit.

I have seen them before. In Fresno, California in 1996 and in Berlin a couple of years ago. Both times with quite good openers. “Melvins” and “Eagles of Death Metal” if I recall correctly. This time it was “Mastodon”. Well, let’s put it that way – enough time to join the queue for a beer.

The show itself was slightly unexpected. No doubt about it – it was a great concert. But I don’t think they lived/played up to their standards. It was just not perfect. (No wonder – darn complex and complicated songs!) And while other bands usually just let go and go for the fun of it – they kept trying. On my side this was perceived a little stiff for a concert. No encore at the end was probably just the last bit to prove this. Just not good enough for the usual stamp “Tool – two thumbs up!”.

It was another show that proved Maynard (vocals), Danny (drums), Adam (guitar) and Justin (bass guitar) to be just awesome musicians. At least for Danny I can say he is also a cool guy (I met him in Fresno at a music store) …hope they don’t get sucked into the mainstream. The Porsche Arena in Stuttgart was already quite a big venue.

Anyway – they are always worth a visit. At least one thumb up.

…was at least one of the reasons I came back from Australia. It’s a great opportunity and honor to be invited to work with so may great minds on something that could really could bring some big changes to the world …at least in terms how media will be consumed. The concept is great, the technologies used are exciting and although many people are speculating The Venice Project is not like any its so called competitors. The Venice Project is not about finding and watching some crappy little videos on a web page where the vast amount of junk drowns the few good picks. TVP is not about illegally sharing or finding you favorite movies and series …it is about being being able to watch them just every time you want – whenever you want. Legally! In amazing quality! With lots of extras!

The “super secret project” is not so secret anymore. Beta access is still restricted but feel free to line up here. At the moment the client is only available for windows but mac and linux are supposed to follow soon.

Seems like Robert my friendly ex-neighbor* picked up the torch to provide unofficial thunderbird builds with the “famous” addressbook patch applied. I am glad my efforts are helping to provide what people obviously are craving for.

On the other hand if you look at the history of this patch it basically tells you a very sad story. Having such an important patch sitting there for years and now seeing user building there own distributions …for me this sounds like “we don’t care about our users” and does not fit the nice image that the big brother firefox has. Being involved in several open source projects myself I do know …you sometimes just don’t have time to apply that bloody patch – but for this one it is becoming ridiculous.

* Well, Melbourne wasn’t that far from Christchurch …you get used to distances down there ;-)