Chiperoni ku Basel

Author: nchenga

  • At BlogCampSwitzerland

    Listening to a talk on “Getting Blogs Done” and eating chocolate.

    The talk’s about applying “Getting Things Done” concepts to blogging. Getting kind of boring. I guess, I’m not really into GTD.

    I enjoyed Patrick Zoll’s talk on Corporate Podcasting.

    Looking forward to Sarah’s talk on the blogs and politics.

    Enjoying Krusenstern on writing better blog texts.

    Some text snippets at: http://twitter.com/nchenga

    Some Flickr snaps at:

    IMG_1783.JPG

    corporate podcasting

    IMG_1786.JPG

    IMG_1789.JPG

    IMG_1785

    IMG_1784

    Good food = good conference ? The catering service tuck-tuck.ch deserves a special mention.

  • In case you didn’t know

  • Silicon Valley Lifecycles

    Stumbled across this:
    ‘Un-sexy is good business,’ and other rules from Scott Rafer

  • BlogCampSwitzerland on Saturday

    I’m de-lurking on Saturday….

    Hope to see you at the BlogCampSwitzerland

  • APN

    Today’s attempt to use the USB modem GlobeTrotter Connect with my MacBook failed. I had the right PIN and the right software. But couldn’t connect.
    The preferences revealed a dialog box with input fields for an APN, a username and a password. I checked the help. There was no explanation what APN stands for… and whether it’s required or not.
    And I was offline so i couldn’t search either.

    Aaargh.

    APN stands for Access Point Name.

    The user manual can be downloaded here.

    But I don’t know if that’s the missing puzzle piece I need to connect. Or if it’s optional.

  • The Nutella Alternatives Group at Flickr

    Yay, the Nutella Alternatives group is growing (world dominion imminent…).

    Recent additions include:

    pseudo Nutella

    Duo spread

    The question

    Why spend so many hours and bytes on Nutella and derivatives?
    It’s a web differentiator! And when people wander thru the shopping aisles with their phone cams they need a purpose.

    The Flickr group lists all the details:
    http://www.flickr.com/groups/nutellaalternative/

    Childhood memories

    As regular readers of Chiperoni know, the author grew up under African skies. Nutella and all subsitutes thereof were unknown. A friendly soul somewhere in Germany sent a package containing a small bucket in brown plastic of Nutella-like bread spread.

    At school my Nutella sandwich was commented with a universal “Yuck“. South Africans, Brits, Zimbabweans, Indians, North Americans and Malawians didn’t even try it.

    More for us and some classmates from the Netherlands.

    I -in turn- never really acquired a taste for Marmite.

  • Weekend snaps

    turn this lever here

    a couple of water drops catch a ride

  • Ant hill phone booth

    Remember I wrote about the villagers in northern Malawi that climb an ant hill to get GSM reception?

    Looks like Soyapi saved the newspaper article and passed it on to Mike:

    Ant hill phone booth

    (Insert comment on power of blogging, impossible is nothing, etc.)

  • 120 registered nurses leave Malawi per year

    Article on the continuing brain drain in the health sector of Malawi.

    Some excerpts:

    Official figures show around 120 registered nurses have migrated to Britain and the United States alone every year in the last decade with the health ministry unable to even begin to match the wages on offer abroad.

    Malawi currently has only 56.4 nurses and two doctors for every 100,000 potential patients.

    “We have only 3,000 nurses on register for a population of 12 million (…)”

    A junior doctor now earns 450 dollars, while a senior nurse goes home with 300 dollars.

  • open source morality


    The benevolent dictator model

    This article has been linked to from lots of WordPress sites, but I was just struck by the use of language… software is getting more religious and political comparisons.

  • crumbled

    Here’s a simple and rustique family recipe to make crumble:

    Cover the bottom of a heat-resistant dish with slices of fruit such as apples, pears, or plums.

    Stir up some crumbles for the topping (you can use the same recipe for the topping as in Streuselkuchen, but i’d leave out the cinnamon and use brown sugar instead)

    Add nuts and put into the oven for about 40 to 45 minutes until slightly brown.

    zwetschgen

    zwetschgen

    ze result before baking

  • Draft status

    Fun event:

    Finish your %#&*@ blog posts. at Citizen Space (Thursday, October 18, 2007)

    I’ve started deleting blog post drafts, that have been lingering in draft status for over a year…

  • Like this

    website, especially the little icons…

  • weekend snaps

    IMG_1566.JPG

    Hier nur Plastik-Müll

    IMG_1521.JPG

  • Weekend Thoughts

    I just installed GIMPshop on my (no longer new) MacBook. And the interface looks a lot simpler.

    And I received a Skitch invite. I don’t like the pink heart icon much. Kitsch.
    But I somehow managed to get past that and watch the introductory video (!). The features look very useful. It offers a direct upload to Flickr. Looks like a good tool for quick screenshots. OS X’s Grab only offers TIFF, which isn’t recognized by the Flickr Uploadr for some reason or other. And which means opening GIMP or GraphicConverter or Preview. 20 clicks more.

    BTW, I’m sitting in a train to northern Germany and there are quite a number of free seats for a Friday evening… (and a power plug right next to me: hope it works). I guess, the strike warnings caused a lot of people to reschedule.

    (Insert pause to take a snapshot of setting sun near Karlsruhe, will be uploaded when I find adequate WiFi access)

    Quite a few regional trains have been cancelled. The official reason given via the pa is “wegen Notfall” (Translation: cos of an emergency).
    Why not say strike? Emergency sounds like accident or natural catastrophe (can’t spell, too much German on my brain).

    Wondering out loud:
    Would the new PR approach be more direct and advise the German railway company to use the word “strike” or would it find a roundabout way to describe the situation?

    (I forgot to take “The New PR” book with me.)

    (I like the size of my 13″ MacBook. Just right for travelling.)

    Anyway, “the new PR” book has got me thinking a lot more about buyer personas.

    Who am I writing my marketing collateral, company blog posts, and technology announcements for? What kind of things are they interested in? How does a buyer persona search for a new service provider? Keeping your target audience in mind while writing is nothing new. Buyer personas, though, are on a more detailled level, describing a character and a typical work/leisure setting.

    And it also reminded me of Bogo’s talk at the STC Transalpine conf in Zurich last April. He stressed the importance of agreeing on personas to develop adequate tech. documentation and user interfaces.

    I signed up for Redbubble.com a couple of days ago. It offers a service to upload, sell and print artwork via the web all-in-one. Payment is transferred by Paypal or cheque. There’s a minimum price for the printing and production costs. And you as the seller of the artwork can decide on the markup (i.e. your gain/income/profit). I stumbled across this service via Ozczecho’s Flickr profile. My first impression of Redbubble.com is very positive and IMHO this could develop into a viable Flickr and Etsy alternative.

    Still on my list of fun to dos:
    Buy a DSLR
    Set up an Ubuntu laptop
    Learn more Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts (zoom in and out with command + option and ^ or ‘)
    Install WordPress 2.3
    Try out Pixelmator
    Write a book (LOL)
    Go on vacation

    Disclaimer: at times Chiperoni.ch is my personal online thinktank and my half-geek playground.

  • Introducing social software into corporations

    for future reference:
    An adoption strategy for social software in enterprise.

    Though the first comment makes me wonder a bit… why would you force somebody to go to a wiki to get a text. Surely using a tool is about making things easier.

  • Light blue

    This week’s favorite link:

    Hellblau

    Interestingly the English equivalent is much shorter.

  • Bah bah black sheep

    I’m thinking of getting this

  • Weekend ahead

    Autumn-like weather and a bad cold, but it’s still a Friday! And just for the record, I don’t mind fast forwarding to spring.

    More search phrases – but not really a surprise to me given the quality of content here at Chiperoni.ch 😉 :

    • Dilbert project tracking – points to an old blog post on pre-emptive planning. I guess the Dilbert comes from the blogroll link pointing to the corresponding blog.
    • And a search for something like marketing mix nutella will inevitably lead to this page, cos of my numerous marketing text snippets and my amazing collection of Nutella alternatives.

    Thank you, Google for brightening up my day!

  • Search phrases

    Dear regular readers of Chiperoni.ch,

    On Sunday I continued reading the “New PR” book and i’ve got 3 pages of wild notes waiting to be blogged… but I’m too tired for PR just now. Oh no, i hope it’s not blogging fatigue 😉

    Search phrases that led people to my blog today:

    • i want to listen to capital fm malawi – Well, here’s the link to my blog entry on Capital FM’s daily internet show. I listened to today’s version about the increase in fuel prices. Apparently MW minibus fares are increasing by 20%.
    • 2007 pictures blantyre malawi africa – Best place to view lots of Malawi pics is the Malawi Flickr group.
    • hiking basel mountain – Sorry, no mountains in Basel. Unless you’re from northern Germany, then Chrischona might qualify. But the Jura and the Alps are close enough and extremely beautiful. Here are all of my posts labeled hiking.

    Other half-geek news:

    I’ve been reading about the new Canon 40D.

    And if I ever run out of things to do, there’s a new version of WordPress to install and explore…

  • My kind of blue



  • Reflection

    Today’s fave…

  • z’Basel am Rhy

    Today’s favorite find!

  • Different

    Stumbled across this 5 mins ago:
    group94

  • Motion sickness

    Text snippet:
    Interestingly, susceptibility to motion sickness increases with fitness.