this weekend, australia’s EPA (environment protection agency) will sink an old warship off the coast of maroochydore-mooloolaba*
* i had to use this city somewhere in the text ;-)

the ship is planned to be sinking at -26.616666,153.168833 [G], and will then slowly be colonized and transformed into an artificial reef.
other than that (or: because of that), it’s expected to become a great diving site (it’s open for diving on monday already!) and attract divers from all over the world.
to protect the new biotope, they’re creating a conservation park in the area around it.

wow – maroochydore-mooloolaba seems to have a nice private harbor [G]!

 
more information: sink the brisbane

 
a pro-reef measure that seems even more …bizzare: in 2001, an artificial reef was installed at the gold coast, australia. they decided to use car tires, which turned out to be perfect living spaces for fish and reef critter.
the whole story: narrowneck – australia’s first fully man made surf reef

car tires have actually been used for artificial reef creation since about 1970. the obvious downside: fixation of the early ones is getting old and brittle, and separated car tires started washing up on the beaches…

today’s quote would have to be this one, verbalized by albert einstein:

it is unbelievable how much the people of my borg (~high-school) class have changed since graduation.

today, after learning some …interesting news, i came to think about the time that we all sat there in one class. and i noticed that this precious batch of memories is only 2,5 years old!
of course, if someone had told us about our future back then, no one would have believed a bit.

so now, having repressed most of the (few) bad reminders from the past, i can’t help but reminisce about the great times we had in borg: the school trips, the boring lessons, the fun&creative breaks (including rumba-queues throughout the whole building), even the “whole class vs. teacher” arguments…
back then, we were constantly told how nice school is compared to real life, but we didn’t buy it. that’s probably just something you have to experience for yourself to really understand it.

 
people my age are making decisions FOR LIFE now. they get ahead, go places, and sometimes take routes that nobody could have predicted.
it’s almost as if we’re they’re grown-ups now.

this impression is intensified by a new “meeting people”-phase: i’m constantly running into old acquaintances and colleagues that i haven’t met in a long time. looks like this is a cyclic phenomenon…

there’s so much to tell once you run into somebody, and (for me) there’s a profoundly good feeling coming along. even if it’s just saying “hi!” and doing some 30 seconds of smalltalk…

 
i guess the world really doesn’t stop turning if you’re not around…

 
[lyrics quote of the moment]

riverdance – the countless cathleen (instrumental)

without any kind of active notification (sure, you’ll find a message on some forum if you search the web), my webspace provider turned off register_globals in PHP today.
the effect on my website: everything but the blog was practically inoperable.

if this happens to you, here’s a short-run solution: insert the following code-snippet at the very beginning of the concerning files:

<?php
   if(!empty($_GET)) extract($_GET);
   if(!empty($_POST)) extract($_POST);
?>

this also works with $_SERVER, and it should be working with $_COOKIE as well (but i haven’t tested that yet)…

 
it’s only a temporary solution, though, because it bypasses the effects of register_globals being turned off, for that specific file:
 
with register_globals turned ON, all the variables that are transmitted to the server (get, post, cookie, mainly) can just be used just by the name they were entered.
if you access a php-page and enter “?s=text” after the filename (=sending a get-variable “s” with the value being “text”), for example, you can use “$s” rightaway in the script.

because there have been security concerns, you now have to first assign the query’s variable to the variable in the script, limiting the input to get-queries (in this example):

$s = $_GET['s'];

speaking of purpose, this is a bad example. but regarding cookies i seems more reasonable – until shortly, it was possible to just simulate a cookie by sending the needed variables in a get-request…

[die deutsche version dieses eintrags ist weiter unten]

as stated in my previous posts containing (time-lapse) videos, i’m using the open source codec mpeg4/xvid to compress the files.
my search for a “universal codec” that just works (and doesn’t need extra installation of files etc.) AND is free to use wasn’t very successful yet, so i’m sticking with xvid for now. (however, any advice will be appreciated!) [more...]

toni’s out of town over the weekend, so he asked me to watch over his two foundlings.
it’s really fascinating work to do – the baby-bat gets a mix of prepared powdered milk, fennel tea and vitamins, which is fed through a tiny pipette.
the serotine bat, which is about 4 weeks old now, already gets maggots.

 
side notes:

• many bat species’ faces strongly resemble a dog’s face. but their head-scratching technique (with the back feet) just seems like it’s copied 1:1!
• as soon as you remove the pipette from the baby-bat, it starts searching around for teats and will try to “bite” anything (the skin between my fingers, for example). it’s really active too, always climbing around in its cuddly home (or on my hands, when i’m trying to feed it).
• today (saturday), the common pipistrelle’s right ear “unfolded”. the left one is still rumpled…

sunday went by pretty fast, and before i knew, they were gone again. and although i didn’t get much sleep (again/still), it was a great experience…

 
[view photos: foster bats]

i tried to take some videos as well:

[view video: feeding a serotine bat*]
[view video: serotine bat scratching]
* by the way: i got the escaping maggot, in case you’re wondering

the .avi-files are encoded in mpeg4/xvid again, since i haven’t been able to find a “universal codec” that’s free and as space-saving…
[video help]

just in case someone else is annoyed at the inverted comma ‘ looking like a ‘ or ’, and the quote signs “ being bent to “ and ” in wordpress 1.2*…

the “replace”-commands are located in the file wp-includes/functions-formatting.php.
the html-entities to replace are: ‘ , ’ , “ and ”
be sure to add slashes where necessary, so you don’t screw up the code.

* yeah, still using version 1.2. it would currently take too much time to apply my layout to a wordpress theme…

[lyrics quote of the moment]
oh look now,
there you go with hope again!
dashboard confessional – carve your heart out yourself