Google banned me. It reads “We’re sorry… but we can’t process your request right now. A computer virus or spyware application is sending us automated requests, and it appears that your computer or network has been infected.

First I thought my provider had gotten infected. Then I realized I’ve been running a lyrics tool for 8 hours. It downloads song texts from the net and puts them in my mp3′s, so I can read them in iTunes. It has found 3124 so far, which probably means Google and others got 3124 automated requests from me.

Ah well, almost there. We’ll use that dreadful MSN search for now till we can get unbanned. Sjeesj, the very thought: A Mac virus.

On my way to the train-station, I walk by a small van apparently owned by an employee of an IT firm. On the back, a sticker reads We do IT every day!. This may be the eight IT firm I’ve seen with a similar slogan. Get over it guys, it’s passé. Your professions abbreviation so happens to be the most frequently used and shortest word in the English dictionary. Hire creative people and come up with a slogan.

My Creative Director again stressed he’s willing to hold his hand in the fire for us, if we take ownership of our projects. So I packed a lighter and some gazoline for tomorrow. I’m kidding G

I must have been around 14, when I got fascinated by data compression. These were the days where a PC magazine came with a 1.44Mb floppy, on which all demos and trials were highly compressed. I remember having to type stuff like

c:\pkunzip a:\demos\dtp c:\trial\dtp

to see a fascinating list of commands flash through the screen. All had been doubled, unpacked, demystified. I even liked the later WinZip, where I experimented with disc spanning for large files and password protected archives. I ran back and forth between the computer room and my room in the student house, to go unzip an aquarium screensaver. This was 1996, where you could download a screensaver without getting a free rootkit.

But my heroes were the guys from Aladdin Software, a small Israeli firm who made StuffIt. The very name! It’s not about zipping anymore, which is an empty word, it’s about the connotation-rich stuffing. Then disaster struck: both Apple and Microsoft integrated ZIP compression into their operating system. Who needs StuffIt archives anymore? (Apart from Unix geeks who swear by tar and gzip, or illegal downloaders who think rar is cooler).

Aladdin Software got bought by Alume Systems, who got bought by Smith Micro Software. Poor guys. This nifty little utility has been turned into a freakin’ software suite. Farewell.

The precious time not spend working, I’m eh… working for other people. Hey that’s not true, I also work in my own things. And on my relationship. God I’m tired. I’ll be posting previews of 3D Alien spaceships and flash sail yachts soon, if I remain sane. Yawn. Hey, it works! When you write “yawn”, you yawn! Wicked!