fake's blog

I am a pretty happy user of a freetz'd AVM Fritz! Box 7140 for a while now, the only thing bugging me was the lack of an address book import built into the box. i tried messing around with the /var/flash/phonebook file, but for some reason my xml files kept being rejected. ultimately, i found a utility called "Fritz!box Monitor" or short FBM, which is supplied by AVM. It can import CSV files in a certain (pretty weird) format, so i re-wrote my xml-generator to print out that format instead. FBM's a windows program of course, so fire up your parallels/fusion/qemu/whatever. You have to edit fritzboxmonitor.ini in it's program directory before using this, and set the key ExportAll to 1. I also set the AutoSpeedDial entry to 0 because i don't use speed dialing and thus the csv exporter doesn't support it. The exporter is written in python, i used this script as a basis. It's an ugly quick hack, so bear with me. It should work with mac os x 10.5.5 stock python, probably earlier, too. You can find the exporter script here. i also came up with a version that exports to a windows-addressbook-reimportable format; i use it to push my contacts to a siemens gigaset sl56 bluetooth enabled dect phone, which only supports a windows program as source either. that version is here.

Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy and Firefly, has done it again - go watch the 3-part musical "Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog" while it lasts! The 3 acts will show up starting yesterday, 1 episode every 2 days (if i got it right), and they will disappear on July 20th. Still not convinced? Nathan Fillion is in it, too, so it' kinda bound to have some guts! ;-) There is also a "Master plan". Boy, i like the sound of that!