About the site and me

I'm Gregor, and I welcome you to my web site. I hope you'll have some fun while you're arround.

For the most part, I share my programming adventures here - chiefly .NET nowadays, add some classic VB, COM, and web stuff. My site is a private, non-commercial one (hey, don't nail me down on it). Feel free to ask any questions, I'll try and respond when I find the time. If you have any corrections to the code I have here, please tell me about it anyway.

There are also materials originating from my having studied some law at Universität Passau (Germany); you might find it interesting if you're a student enrolled in a course that focuses on English or Spanish Law (known as "FFA", "subject-specific foreign language eduction") at said faculty.

Otherwise, this site offers Javascript "web applications". Check out the dice game, for example.

Mastering the site

Note: on the sidebar, you'll find a link to the frameset version of this site. There is additional information for the frameset version available.

A note for international users

This site was originally a German-language site. I am gradually translating all contents into English to accommondate international users. However, this might take some time, so expect to find a few pages written in Deutsch.

The site's design principles

Note: things are changing. I'm moving away from the complex design of the page, though it's hard to give it up. So now there are two versions of the site (frames and non-frames).

My moving away from scripts and frames is only partially for browser market share, technical or usability reasons. The main point is to keep things simple.

Here's some background on what has inspired the traditional, scripted frameset version of the site:

I like the frameset design (it's a real time/bandwidth saver when used properly, it allows keeping client side state, and it eases eases navigation). Speaking of navigation, I am not a big fan of cross hyperlinking. It is a big maintanance headache if the pages are tightly coupled, so I rather separate the nav logic entirely, i.e., displaying a menu in a frame. As for the menu, you need Javascript enabled in order to use it. There's only one copy of the nav data in a .js file, and that is it. The message here is that I aim to separate structural/navigational information, content, and presentation details, but doing so in a client-centric fashion.

I realize that many sites have both their navigation and presentation logic at the server, getting the underlying data from a database, but I'm not convinced by these pseudo-dynamic designs that only generate a disproportionate amount of network traffic. At my site, you get all the navigation/structural/search data when you first point your browser to it, loading all the site information, the images, the search script, and other gadgets. Then, when you load another page, it's mainly text you're getting, and it's guaranteed that you don't load the same information twice.

On a different note, some of my pages are very long. I've heard about recommendations to keep pages short, shorten paragraphs to three sentences max, and in general mimick the style of the yellow press. Judge for yourself, but I think the internet's advantages have not the least to do with succumbing to the lowest common intellectual denominator. I think textuality is good, even though the site might give a different impression at first.

A Legal notice

All right, here's the law:

• Contents: If you want to use anything from my site (code, binaries, articles), go ahead! You may also pass things on to other people (in whatever form - source or binary), but you're kindly asked to inform them that it's really my stuff (provide my URL). If you build software applications from the code or binaries found at this site, also provide a notice to your customers etc. that says you used my stuff (appropriately reflecting to which extent the application is based on my work, of course).
• You're also welcome to link my site. This does not apply if the linking site contains material that is contemptious of human life, civil liberties, or is otherwise politically extrem, endorses violence, is connected to authoritarian, totalitarian, or otherwise illiberal goverments, or is of religious or pornographical nature. I reserve the right to make my own judgment on whether these charactistics apply to a site, without giving prejudice to any legal opinions.
• Origin of quotes (in the top frame) claimed to be "Unknown": This means that the author of a quote is unknown to me. I do not claim that a quotes's author is unknown to everybody (which is impossible: at least the author knows himself! To address the latter, I could of course write something like "Unknown to everyone except Mr. X" ["Mr. X" being the quotes's author], but then again, I could refer to the author by name in the first place. Amazing.).
• I am not a fan of "emoticons" (or their silly pseudo-XML equivalents popular in tech newsgroup posts), so for the purpose of coming to terms with some portions the site, it certainly helps to have a life. Likewise I do not go berserk with providing contextual information for quotes (in the top frame), so if a quote sounds outright ridicolous, it might just be, for example, irony.
• My links to other sites: I can not control the contents or design of other sites that I link to, and therefore refuse to accept responsibily for them. As this is intended to be a private, non-profit site, I am making no representations about copyrights possibly held in names or symbols that either I use in my links (or accompanying texts) or that the target site features. If you find a link to a site whose owner is in trouble for real or alleged infringement of intellectual property, please direct your mind to neutralize the effect that my "using" the allegedly copyrighted material has on it (maybe get a brain wash at Bautzen); if you don't understand what I'm talking about, you don't know about the position German courts take in these matters.
• Liability: Yes, but to show due diligence, I hereby give notice that I have no money to sue me for. Anyway, did you expect a lengthy text here? The kind that an American lawyer (no offense) would produce? Look: this site can be accessed from anywhere in the world. How could I draft a disclaimer that's upheld in any court, according to whatever rules of material law, applicable by whatever rules of conflict? See, where I come from, for example, a typical "anything whatsoever" clause might face a though time in a court; heck, even Microsoft's sorry attempts at porting Washington-state-law-inspired disclaimers to other legal systems could be defied by many ham-and-eggers. So let's say I make no warranties about the code I post, the binaries you can download, or anything else that comes out of my big mouth (put to text, of course). It's all "free", so have reasonable expectations.

I'm glad you're still with me.

Anything else?

If you have a question, don't hesitate to contact me.