Benzin is basically a very nice interface to find the nearest and cheapest gas stations in Austria.
We used quite some tricks to speed it up and keep the over thousand gas stations browsable in a fast and convenient manner.

We support the following fuel types (in German): Diesel, Biodiesel, Benzin, Super, Super Plus, Super Ultimate and Erdgas.

Checkout our dedicated site at: http://www.benzinapp.at

Lena and me. Esad took photo during our visit at this hotel where he stayed over easter.

In protocol design, perfection has been reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

IMHO this applies to any kind of design…

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!”

W. H. Murray (source) ]]> http://www.schmidp.com/2009/03/03/until-one-is-committed-there-is-hesitancy/feed/ 4 http://www.schmidp.com/2009/02/15/spy-shots-from-my-girlfriend/ http://www.schmidp.com/2009/02/15/spy-shots-from-my-girlfriend/#comments Sun, 15 Feb 2009 15:45:37 +0000 schmidp http://www.schmidp.com/?p=47

“Other design-oriented features include different color choices, one side featuring an E Ink screen, and the addition of a shoulder strap (image).“

Source: Macrumors

The two most popular blogs written in Rails, that I know of, are Typo and Mephisto. I have successfully used Typo for our Plymouth Banjul Rally 2007 blog, but I wanted to give Mephisto a try for schmidp.com.

The other reason for choosing Mephisto this time, is that there was a 7 month gap between the current Typo 4.1 release this month and the 4.0.2 release published in August 2006.

One thing I have learned while using Typo is that if you know Rails, you immediately have an idea about how other Rails projects are structured and you find your way through someone else’s code quite quickly.
If I remember right, it took me about an hour and 2 or 3 lines of code to add the possibility of having different layouts for different pages in Typo.

My first impression on Mephisto is that it’s a little low on features and the Section/Page/Blog concept is a little bit complicated. I haven’t looked at the code yet.

I’ll continue to use Mephisto for now until I have a more complete view on how things work, but I might switch back to Typo and try their new 4.1 release.

If you are looking for my old, Joomla based Blog (with posts mainly about Haiku and the few applications I’ve written for the Symbian UIQ platform), look no further. I haven’t bothered importing the old posts, but I might republish some of the more interesting ones through.

So who am I?

My name is Philipp, I’m 22 years old and I’m studying Computer Science at the Vienna University of Technology.

I like everything that has to do with technology, especially embedded systems, the web, robots and Macs.

I’m currently spending most of my time working on different web projects (mostly Rails) and spinning my head about the idea of starting a company.

So the first thing I really want to post has nothing to do with technology through, it’s a video of me:

The video was taken on a trip to Africa, which I’ve done recently. Find out more at http://www.vienna-banjul.com if you are interested.