Oh noes, I iz tagged! So here are seven things you probably did not (want to) know about me:

• I first had access to a computer when I was 8 or 9 years old - I visited my mom in her office and as she had to stay a bit longer so she sat me on a computer so I could play a game. I just remember it was something with penguins, but I do not remember of what type the computer was, but most likely it was a Robotron.


• Interestingly it was my mom again that really brought me into computers. In 1991 she bought a PC for home use so she could do some homework. Turned out she gave up on this half a year later, but my dad started to create a database about all music CDs he possessed, and I started into games (SimCity). Funnily my father still has this database (and the music CDs of course, but just many more of them) and it is still the same technology as in 1991 - dbase III+.


• Eleven years ago co-founded a new political party called "future! - die jugendpartei" and later became their chairman for half a year before I left the party.


• For nearly 8 years I was active in the german micronation scene, where I founded two different countries, created the first working economy simulation (kind of, it only featured money and money transfers, but it was a huge step), and programmed and administrated the first big german micronation portal (not online anymore). And all this with PHP (version 4 back then). Most of the stuff I did was just to have a little useful something to programm, not because I wanted to have this. However, I never want look at this code again, it is what you write when you are new to programming and with nearly no knowledge about good object oriented programming.


• I love model railways and I still have the plan to build my own installation some day.


• It took me six years to convert all my CDs to MP3. Not because of the sheer amount but because I was lazy, did not have enough storage space or because I simply did not have time.


• Since five years I have the idea of creating a small PHP app where I can manage my MP3 collection with, importing all the data with a script which reads the data from the MP3 id tags. Until now it never got any further, I did not even search if such an application already exists...

And now to seven victims I tag with this spam:

• Alex for being the nice chap he really is


• Michael because it is still sad he left us


• Stephan for being my boss


• Nico Steiner because "Wenn's keiner kann muss Steiner ran"


• Thoughtcatcher for sitting in front of me every day in office


• Björn for having some nice chats at PHP World Kongress


• Wildcard! Comment below to get tagged for free!

These are the rules apparently:

Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog. Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some weird. Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

In diesen Zeiten haben wir immer mehr mit Spam zu kämpfen, und er wird mehr und mehr zum täglichen Ärgernis. Offenbar haben das mittlerweile auch die Spammer erkannt und Gegenmaßnahmen eingeleitet, damit sich die Bespammten™ nicht allzu sehr ärgern. Gerade eben habe ich vier Kommentare aus dem Stubblog gelöscht, die sich als Witz tarnten. Glücklicherweise hat unser Spamschutz die Kommentare auf Moderation gesetzt, weil sie zu viele Links enthielten. Zum Thema haben sie natürlich auch nicht gepasst. Und um die Spammer zu ärgern, werde ich nachfolgend die Witze veröffentlichen, ganz ohne Spam. Allerdings nur drei, denn einer war doppelt - ein wenig mehr Mühe hätten sich die Spammer schon geben können.

Gestern Abend habe ich auf bugs.php.net einen Bug mit einer frisch eingerichteten E-Mail-Adresse eröffnet. Heute morgen hatte ich auf dieser Adresse bereits den ersten Spam. Man ist in solchen Momenten in Versuchung, für Spammer die Todesstrafe zu fordern.