Windows Vista Speech Recognition vs. Human

The machine wins - always.

Gates vs. Jobs

iPhone - the gadget you need

Funny (in German) - 'Kein Ostdeutsch'

Dorothy's Birthday

It was Dorothy's Birthday this weekend. Here some pic's.

Male Restroom Etiquette

Participant of Sex Dolls Rafting Tournament Disqualified For Sexual Abuse of Apparatus

Ha! Participant of Sex Dolls Rafting Tournament Disqualified For Sexual Abuse of Apparatus

Shopping

Driftwood

This rather expensive piece of driftwood wound up on ski beach after the skipper almost flipped it sideways and got thrown out of the boat. The boat stayed in gear on high idle throttle, made it all the way around the ski-beach island without hitting a thing, and wound up stuck in the tules, motors still running, but no real damage.
For the skipper, thats the day one should start buying all the lottery tickets one can find.

Reno Balloon Race

5 years ago

A couple tapes the events of 5 years ago, 500 yard away from the WTC, in their apartment.

In addition, here is probably the best transcript of what was going on at NORAD that day, in Vanity Fair of all places.

Edit:
And a very detailed timeline

Football World Cup

The FIA has done its utmost to keep leaked coverage of the Football (Soccer) World Cup under control. Seems the BBC has coverage on the web, but only for folks from the Island. There is evidently mobile coverage from t-mobile, but only in Germany. China to the rescue: Search for 'TVUPlayer' on the web, download and install, double-click on ESPN2, enjoy!
If there is any problems, here is a FAQ for trouble-shooting.
Update #1
The TVUPlayer seems to rebroadcast its stream on http://localhost:8901, so if you want to record a game -- by using the VLC player -- point the VLC input at the url above.

Rest in Peace, Janice

Tonight, my Mother-in-Law died. This is a sad, very sad day. Rest in Peace, Janice, you have it better now.

Beer Commercial

YouTube is a site I find myself spending more and more time on. Funny commercial with a twist at the end (Miller should try brewing good beer one of these days too).
(Click on the 'play' button (|>) for the video to start.)

Cruzin Cooler

The newest contraptions to get yourself into trouble with are the "cruzin coolers" as pictured on the side and below. They're either powered by a electric or gas motor, and come with one (1) 'get-out-of-jail-free' card. Check out the CruzinCooler web site for details, they are a heck alot of fun (pics taken at the Discovery Bay boat show).

Discovery Bay Boat Show

We had the Discovery Bay Boat Show this weekend. Highlites: the CruzenCoolers , Monster Trucks along with a 59' Marquis and a 52' Sea Ray. Click an image on the right to see the rest.

St. Francis Yacht Club

It has been almost a month, but back in April, we spend a weekend at the St. Francis Yacht Club's Tinsley Island, courtesy of the Discovery Bay Yacht Club. Our neighbours Jon and Jan provided the catering and food for this event. Here are some of the pictures.

Bavarians vs. Professionals

Nice one, David!

        ^
        | 
       play

Escher’s Waterfall

Illusions...



(Gotta hit the play (|>) button to see it).

WRC and F1

In case you're looking for torrents for the first 3 World Rally Championship (WRC) rounds this year, here is Monte Carlo, Sweden and Mexico.
In case you need torrents for the first F1 race this season in Bahrain, here is the practice session, the qualifying and the race.
Update #1:
There is a torrent for the Malaysian F1 GP here, the coverage of the practice session is here
Update #2
If Round 4 of the WRC Rally Championship (Catalunya, Spain) is of interest to you, here are the torrents for day 1, day 2 and for day 3.
Update #3
Here is round 6 of the WRC in Argentina. Day 1 is here, day 2 is here, and day 3 is here.
Update #4
Round 5 of Formula 1, the GP of Europe at the Nuerburgring in Germany can be found here.
Update #5
There is a awesome website that keeps track of all the torents for the interesting motorsport events: go check out motorsport-torrents.info.

St. Patricks Day

St. Patricks Day for the 'Delta Folks In The Know'™ will happen at the former sugar barge, now Paradise Bar & Grill in Bethel Island. The plan is to putter up there Friday afternoon -- either early or later depending on the speed of your boat -- and to get there by 6:00PM. As it happens, this also conicides with the reopening of this venerable California Delta venue under new ownership. All we have to do is to make them feel welcome and trash the place so there is no excuse not to remodel to the new DiscoBay standards after we're done with it.
Update:
So, even though the paradise bar's web site says that they're opening Saturday the 18th, there is a preopening St. Patrick's day bash on the 17th. Which means (the way this looks) that we're gonna be out there all weekend.
Update #2:
Here are the pics I took that weekend. Leave me a comment below or email me if you got pics, and would like to post them here (That primarily means Dave, I guess).

Mike Fraga

Discovery Bay where I live has quite a selection of fun people and characters. One of them is our Car-Loan King Mike Fraga. He just forwarded me his latest masterpiece in advertising, which should be Academy Award-nominated shortly. I'd say Mike should just drop the whole car-selling stuff and start a comedy club (with the girls, of course). I'd be the first one at the door.

FON

Finally got a confirmation for my FON preconfigured router offered at the 'first 3000' rate of 25 bucks. It's been 3 weeks that I had signed up for it, and I almost thought that the company had gone up in smoke already -- which would have been a real bummer since the concept behind FON is rather unique. But it seems they're just a tad overwhelmed by the demand that was created after their investment announcement. The confirmation mail says to wait another 2-3 weeks for the preconfigured WiFi AP to actually get shipped here.
My thing to do is to convince Steve and Ken to install those things around their restaurants in the Delta. Wireless boating on the Delta -- here we come.

Yet another way

to look at crappy web pages. Click here to come back(works only in IE?) after following the link above.

Madonna & GorillaZ @ Grammy awards

I guess mainstream media got ahold mash-up's: it made the Grammy's in the form of a Gorillaz vs. Madonna mash. The Gorillaz are a completely 'virtual' band, Madonna is real (well, mostly). Not that I'm a big Madonna fan, but the Gorillaz part rocks (here is the 'Gorillaz: Feel Good, Inc.' and the'Clint Eastwood live' videos).
Some new influx for the stale state of affairs in the music industry -- but as usual they're too stupid to realize whats happening. The video of the Grammy performance is from YouTube (the high-res version of the video above).

Wired News: 2005 Foot-in-Mouth Awards

Wired News: 2005 Foot-in-Mouth Awards

My other live

I started documenting Java(tm) in the RT/embedded world as I have seen it since 1999. I should have started this a long time ago, but its better now than never. Here is News for Embeded Java and Java in Real-Time Control!

Why Macs Suck

Funny Character!

Super Bowl Ads

The most important thing the Superbowl has to offer are the Super Bowl Commercials (simple minds like me watch the Super Bowl not for the game, but for the ads). In retrospect, they weren't too great besides the Fedex commercial.
By the way, who won the game?

Hentschel Mobile

So, I made me a cute little page for my cell phone (Opera Mini together with Google Mobile is just too cool to pass up). One nifty feature is the tide predictor for the California Delta, should make boating this summer a tad easier -- all you Delta Captains out there: no more excuses to get stuck at low tide and miss a party, go hit http://m.hentschel.net with your cell phone and check it out. (BTW: here is a nice little boating-how-to).

Beachparty in Vilsbiburg...

... with pictures in the 'Vilsbiburger Zeitung'.
Notable pics:

No. 58: Klaudia and Manuela

No. 101: Villa Hans and Peter

Mobile blog update...

This message and the picture below came off my cellphone...

(The pic was taken New Years in Monterey)

Software spec's for the Raz V3X...

are at the Motocoder site.
The handset appears to be pretty cool -- its got stereo sound and two cameras built in. Currently it sells for the price of a laptop...

J2ME Bluetooth Mobile

Hola, a site for J2ME Bluetooth here. One of these days I really want to get around to hacking up a BT keyboard...

spiegel.de: Winter im Erzgebirge

There is an article (in the German Spiegel Online) about the Erzgebirge area were I'm from and I grew up. The article mentions the town Annaberg. (I was born there...

It's time to bite the bullet...

Since I immensely enjoy other peoples blogs - like Jamie's Zawinski's - or the blog of Salam Pax straight out of the hell that Bagdad was at the time, I came to the conclusion to throw my paperweight into it and create one as well.

Hello World! on this fashionable Blogger thing. Here is my picture blog since 1998.