Author: Robert Lohr

Software Developer, Technology Enthusiast, Sports Enthusiast, Metalhead

WorkTracker v1.2.2 Released

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It has been around three months since the last release, June 22nd to be exact. Since then I have made some small changes along the way, but didn’t publish them because they haven’t been in the shape that I wanted them to be for a release, but still good and helpful enough for me to use them on a daily basis. The biggest new feature is an editor. Second comes the translation and around them gather a few improvements regarding usability.

Visit the GitHub page to download the latest version.Read More »

Windows Phone: 3 Months Later

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What started out as a reasonable decision at the beginning of 2014 now reached its climax with the Surface Pro 3: switching away from Apple, in every regard, and move to the Microsoft platform. First the PC, then the phone and lastly the tablet. Since having a Windows based PC is nothing unusual (although I might be one of the few that actually came to like Windows 8 – just as I was one of the few that liked Vista over XP; what does that say about me?) and the Surface is still too new to write about it in any meaningful way, that only leaves us with the phone.
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C# LINQ Performance vs. Iteration

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It’s been a while since I have written something related to programming. Time to remedy that.

Just recently my interest for the C# language rose again and to get back up to speed with the fundamentals I swallowed all videos of an absolute beginners guide on Microsoft Virtual Academy. Something that has been touched briefly was LINQ and my initial thought was: how’s the performance of that compared to how I would usually write it in C++ – where my expertise is?

Mind you, I’m not comparing C# vs C++, but merely LINQ vs. old-school iteration. Let’s go and find out.
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The Most Powerful First Song of an Album (Pt. 2)

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In the first „The Most Powerful First Song of an Album“ I stopped after five tracks, just because I had already written a lot of words. But it also made sense from the perspective of how many items I actually have on my list. If it all works out (read: this post will be quite long as well) then there will be another post with the last five tracks.

So, let’s continue with the next five songs, shall we?Read More »

The Most Powerful First Song of an Album (Pt. 1)

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It’s about time to get back to some music. This time though, I’m not writing a review of an album but I rather picked the first song of several albums I own, based on the premise that it is one hell of an opener to the record.

I developed the idea over quite a long time span, initiated by a few songs that are on the list and a few that are not, simply because they’re not the first track of the album. There are some songs that are so stunning that you can’t stop hitting replay once they’re over. They are just mind-blowing, either by very intelligent arrangements, melodies and outstanding individual performances or very simple, primal brute force. This is about those kind of songs.
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Camera Shootout: Nokia Lumia 925 vs iPhone 4s vs. Galaxy S2 (Switch From iOS Pt. 3)

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Apart from being a phone, the second most important feature of a smartphone for me is the camera. As I have written previously, the most time I had spent on researching available phones went into reading camera reviews. Since I was committed to about 80% to the Nokia Lumia 925 I was most interested on how this phone compared to my then current iPhone 4S. Unfortunately there haven’t been any reviews comparing those two devices. Most of them used the iPhone 5 or 5s as an opponent, which already had a better camera than my highly praised 4s.

Until now!
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Switching From iOS to Windows Phone (Pt. 1)

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As I have already mentioned in a previous post (8th paragraph), the Windows Phone platform had me hooked since day one. There was something to it that made it more interesting than iOS or Android. However, at that time the competition had been more mature – not only the OS but also the devices – and therefore I chose a Samsung (from now on called Copyshop) Galaxy S2 as my first smartphone. Android seemed the best fit back then (around 3 years ago), simply because of all the possibilities this platform offered on a technical level (I’m a programmer, that’s how I think). As it turned out, I basically used none of those things I found so interesting (like widgets) but rather tried to get a vanilla Android experience without the Copyshop bloatware – not to mention regular software updates.

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WorkTracker, a Little Open Source Tool

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Up until my last post I was working on a little tool that helps me track the time of all (or just one) the different tasks at work. Since the work intensity went down it opened up time (yay!) for some personal stuff. We’re required to record our everyday labor and sometimes it became quite complicated to calculate how much time was spent on a single task, especially when the day didn’t start at 08:00 o’clock but some randome time earlier and ended at some random time.

Introducing: WorkTrackerRead More »

The Bumpy Road to PC 5.1 Surround Sound

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When building the PC for gaming on the TV one thing I had in mind was leveraging the already existing 5.1 sound system. After the move from the TV screen back to a desktop monitor I thought my headphones would suffice for the time spent playing games. At first that assumption turned out to be true, however, not only did I use the headphones for gaming but also when watching TV shows. In the evening, after work, I wanted to enjoy the audio but had no interest in disturbing my neighbors. After a while this led to the headphones becoming quite uncomfortable for all those hours wearing them, especially during the weekend gaming session when having them on the head for several hours.

So, what does a tech-nerd do about that? Buy himself a dedicated sound system for the PC, he does!

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Mysterious Case of iPod Shuffle Always Shuffling

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Just recently I experienced something odd. My good old iPod Shuffle seemed to ignore the “play in order” setting on the device and instead elected to do as the name implies and shuffle the songs.
What preceded that sudden change of behavior was a failed attempt to sync with iTunes that actually turned into restoring the firmware of the device. For whatever reason, iTunes detected a problem and its only solution was to wipe the iPod. So I did that and afterwards I had that shuffling play-in-order mode.
What actually happened is that with the restore of the firmware the default sorting of tracks on the device changed to be by their track-id. That means it sounded random to me but was in order for the Pod-thing. To solve my problem I opened the “What’s on my iPod” screen and clicked on the “Name” column to sort by artist name.

I “saved” this setting by syncing and then I was done.

Thoughts about SteamOS and Steam Machine

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Valve just recently anounced its plans about a SteamOS based gaming machine and its own controller. As I’ve been through this experience of a gaming computer in the living room this year, I thought I might add my two cents on that.

The idea itself is compelling, sitting on the couch and gaming on the big screen is very appealing. Especially, considering that this is where the powerful sound system is connected to. This had been one of the driving forces behind my decision to try it out.

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Review – Iced Earth (Dystopia)

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Iced Earth – Dystopia
Released 2011
(Power / Thrash Metal)

Iced Earth is a band with a lot of history: Founded as Purgatory in 1984 and then renamed to Iced Earth, 11 albums (excluding the Live albums) and six different vocalists (counting Matt Barlow twice). Dystopia is the debut of the sixth named Stu Block after Matt Barlow unfortunately retired a second time. How does the Canadian fare following the footsteps of his predecessor and the legacy he left behind? The other question is: how’s the music now, after the two Something wicked-storyline concept albums Framing armageddon and The crucible of man, which, in their own right, have been good, but different and somehow like a musical, figuratively.
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