"In the current terms of service, Twitpic reserves the right to reuse the images that users publish via the service." - and even commercially, and TwitPic has already secured the partner with WENN. via Twitter-Bilder: Verwirrung um Twitpic - Golem.de. This is therefore another service that is better not to use, as of course the creator of the images does not receive any money for the use.
Linkblog - 27.4.2011 - 11.5.2011
RaptorDB sounds quite interesting, a classic Key/Value-Store for .NET that is based on MurMurHash and is especially designed for performance and storage stability. Could be quite useful for one purpose or another, especially since it also works cleanly with threading.
App Engine Go Overview. Honestly, I would find it more exciting if Google would move away from outdated Python 2.5. But well, instead of Python 2.7 or a JVM language, you can now program the AppEngine with Go. At the same time, however, prices and conditions have changed, so it would probably be better to first check whether it is worth it at all. Because you can also use Go just as well on your own root server ...
Metaowl is life!. Wow, just realized that on June 16th, it's the 6th birthday of the Meta Owl! By now, almost 8700 posts have been collected. And in the meantime, the automatic caching of the posts has paid off, because one or the other blog (for example, my old muensterland.org address has been gone for a while) has disappeared, but the content (at least the texts) is still accessible. The whole thing has even survived several server moves unscathed.
Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Skype for Nearly $8 Billion - WSJ.com. Ugh. Skype is already quite a mess (unfortunately a necessary mess for me), but if Microsoft now "improves" it, it's going to be quite funny ...
The Ark In Space: Manul – the Cat that Time Forgot. An early type of cat, essentially unchanged for millions of years. So something like a living fossil in plush.
bconstantin / django_polymorphic. Why am I only finding this now? This is a very nice thing for Django projects with inherited models - as soon as you make accesses to a common model class, you only get instances of the common model class with Django - but with Django-Polymorphic you get instances of the concrete subclasses. In principle, this makes the ORM more of an object database. However, this might come at the expense of performance, as more SQL queries are generated.
obensonne / hg-autosync. An extension for Mercurial that implements automatic syncs between working directories via a central repository. Can be executed manually as a command or in daemon mode (then it simply runs cyclically at intervals). This way you can do something like a controlled Dropbox - only the included files are synchronized. I would prefer a combination of inotify and xmpp Notify instead of the interval solution - this way the daemon would not constantly start up. But something like this could perhaps even be built from it. Update there is already such a thing.
Kirk Tuck: Approval. Tacit Approval. Implied Approval and "Street Photography.". There's also something that always makes me think: how to deal with street photography? It doesn't happen to me very often - I usually don't photograph people (or only as a side note), but part of it is also simply because it makes me uncomfortable to just photograph someone. It's just not really my thing.
Mixing it up: when F# meets C#. As you never program in a closed room, the connections between languages are quite important - and especially on platforms like .NET and JVM. The mappings of F# data types to C# data types and the use of these look quite interesting. Using C# data from F# is trivial, but the other way around there are some peculiarities. A similar situation exists with Scala and Java.
philikon / weaveclient-chromium. Hmm, a Mozilla Sync client as an extension for Chrome. Unfortunately, there is nowhere properly indicated how to install it and some comments on the net suggest that it probably does not run stably with newer versions. But maybe still take a look if I find some spare time. With this I could then, for example, connect Chrome on Mac or Linux with Firefox Mobile on Android. Since on Android the normal browser can't even sync with Google's own desktop browser (which is really embarrassing), this might be something.
birkenfeld / karnickel. Quite a weird thing: Macros at AST level for Python. However, in a form that rather reminds of C macros - so simple expression macros (and quite limited block macros). Above all, you get all the nasty problems of such an unhygienic macro system - like name conflicts between macro-local variables and outer variables. It's also rather just proof that it works and what you can do with the AST module delivered with Python.
dyoo/moby-scheme. Another interesting thing for Android: a PLT Scheme (i.e., Racket) dialect and a suitable toolchain to run applications created from Racket Advanced Student Language + World Primitives (ASL is already quite an extensive Scheme dialect in Racket and the World Primitives are for reactive programming in Scheme) in JavaScript and then bundle them into Android applications. So programming Android phones in a reactive Scheme dialect. Or even shorter: parentheses for Android.
Baarle-Hertog. I think I just have to go there because it's so weird. A place that is partly in Belgium and the Netherlands. Sounds a bit like "The City and the City" by China Mieville.
Blurb Plug-In For Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 | Blurb. Wow, that sounds really good - the books are priced as a real alternative to those from iPhoto and the available options sound good too - and even the shipping costs are not really problematic with normal Priority-Mail. I really need to check it out, because at the moment I always have to push my photos through iPhoto. Additionally, Blurb also allows you to sell photo books online (if it should not only be private books).
Computer Science and Biology Come Together to Make Tree Identification a Snap. For those who don't know what kind of tree is in their garden, or who, when they finally see the tree for the forest, want to know what they ran into.
Acta: Lobbyists want to prevent the ECJ from examining Acta. Where would we end up if we dared to check the rights extortionists and their machinations, or have courts examine the cleverly crafted contracts. Especially when experts are already saying that it does not comply with EU law in essential points.
Uni Bayreuth: Guttenberg deliberately deceived. Now it's official. It's all just plagiarized. However, it is strange that in such a debacle, the two people who reviewed this so-called "dissertation" are not scrutinized more closely. After all, how can a doctoral advisor and a second reviewer review a dissertation without reading it? Or should they have actually read the thing but not noticed that nothing particularly impressive was in it or that it was all just copied?
Ralf Jäger: SPD Interior Minister wants "carefree" data retention. Why do we even need the Union if a red-green government can be so crazy as to want data retention?
icylisper.in - jark. Hmm, yet another of many solutions for Clojure that enables simplified deployment of Clojure scripts, complete with persistent VM and #! support. Somehow, there seem to be quite a few of these lately.
Pygame Subset for Android. Wow - there is a PyGame subset for Android. Usage is a bit clunky because there is no IDE - you have to place the files on the SD card (hmm - a Nexus S doesn't have an SD card, where does that go there?) and edit them otherwise.
android-scripting - Scripting Layer for Android brings scripting languages to Android.. Interesting project with which you can run various scripting languages on Android phones. Support for Shell, Python, Perl, Ruby, Lua, TCL and JavaScript is already included. For me, Python is of course particularly interesting. Especially because the Android API is made available - you can thus directly interactively or scripted play around with the things.
PayPal Money Module « Snoopy Pfeffer’s Blog. The original article in which Snoopy describes a bit more about the extensions to Adam Frisby's DTL PayPal Money Module. Not up to date regarding installation, but the features still fit.
SnoopyPfeffer/Mod-PayPal - GitHub. I should take a closer look at this, as it allows you to use PayPal as a money module in OpenSim. It might be interesting if I ever want to revive and share my OpenSim projects again. It is based on OpenSim 0.7.1, so I can only try it out when the new Diva D2 is released (which is already in the works).
Tagbar, the Vim class browser. Seems to be a bit of a souped-up Taglist for VIM. Provides hierarchical views of defined classes, methods, and functions in a project.
ifttt / About ifttt. Sounds interesting: a simple event-action mechanism on the web that can connect various channels (Facebook, Twitter, Email, and so on) with actions - for example, create a tweet when someone tags you in a picture on Facebook or something like that. Although you probably have to provide your login details for some services, which you shouldn't necessarily do for every service ... (still in beta, access only by invitation) - a few more details about the motivation and the ideas behind it on the IfThisThenThat blog.
Scala 2.9.0 RC3 | The Scala Programming Language. Hmm, especially the parallel collections sound interesting - so to speak map/reduce for multicore on local data structures.
jQuery: » jQuery 1.6 Released. Regarding jQuery - a new version has been released. I personally find this .attr vs. .prop change somewhat unpleasant - it could bite me in a few places where I work directly with input fields (various widget code in a rather heavy Django application). Of course, it's great that it gets faster - faster is almost always good.
jgrowl. Definitely check it out, because our hand-knitted notifications are just not as nice and stable. jGrowl makes a much better impression, and as a jQuery plugin, it should also not collide with our jQuery codebase.
the m8 metadata project. Information about the EXIF metadata in Leica M8 image files. Very interesting, especially because of the information about the estimated aperture - the M8 has the mysterious blue dot for this, which is used to determine the ambient light and then, by comparing it with the TTL measurement, an approximate aperture is derived. I had already wondered why in Lightroom my pictures had meaningful aperture values ...
inotify - get your file system supervised. Bookmarked for later - a daemon that automatically triggers scripts on file events. This could be used to implement automatic image imports via upload from Dropbox, for example.
Ettenheim: Awarding of the Small Art Prize: Georg Schramm causes a scandal in the Europa-Park. Well, Georg Schramm is just a cabaret artist with guts and not such a softie like the gentlemen and ladies in the Europa-Park would probably have preferred. But as they say: those who can't handle the heat shouldn't be in the kitchen. You don't invite Georg Schramm for friendly, nice words. He is the personification of anger. And as such, he speaks for many (and I am one of them).
UNO III Streetbike at Firebox.com. Transformers are here! We live in the future! I already have trouble imagining sitting on a motorized two-wheeler, so I'd rather say thank you and pass on such a vehicle - but it looks cool.
Nubrella.com. Ok, looks weird, but could be really interesting for some situations. As often as I've seen people in Münster riding bikes with umbrellas in the wind, something like this would actually improve traffic safety.
PyPy Status Blog: PyPy 1.5 Released: Catching Up. Yay! PyPy is now on par with CPython 2.7! And again a few additional performance improvements. Moreover, the interface for CPython extension modules (i.e. those not written in Python) has been improved, first successes are Tkinter and IDLE.
spock - The Chicken Scheme wiki. If Dylan doesn't fit on JavaScript, how about Scheme? What's interesting here is the connection to Chicken Scheme - Chicken Scheme is one of the more interesting Scheme implementations in recent times that specifically focuses on integration into normal system environments (FFI and easy linking with C libraries), so this also lets us expect a bit from Spock in terms of JavaScript. And the documented functions already look quite good - not just a toy implementation, but apparently already a lot of functionality.
ralph. And if JavaScript under Flusspferd becomes too stupid for someone, they can simply install Ralph and then have a Dylan-like Lisp that compiles its function definitions to JavaScript. For whatever reason one would want that, maybe just because it's possible.
Flusspferd - CommonJS platform | Javascript bindings for C++. For those who want to play with JavaScript completely outside the client world, Flusspferd might be interesting. It is a REPL for JavaScript and various JavaScript libraries (which are oriented towards CommonJS).
PDP-11 emulator. In JavaScript. Runs Unix System 6. Yes, just like that, with disk access and all the well-known programs from back then. Because there aren't enough strange things already.
Paper Airplanes HQ. Paper airplanes. That's all.
kiorky/spynner. Wow, that sounds really interesting - a programmatic (i.e., without a user interface) web browser based on QtWebkit as a Python extension. The advantage? Since a full web engine is underneath, you can use all the features of the web browser - for example, client-side JavaScript and all the other things used in web applications. This could be very interesting for automated testing of web applications - or for scraping more complex websites.
IgniteInteractiveStudio/SLSharp. Net - Write GLSL Shaders in C#, the IL code is then automatically loaded onto the GPU. High-Performance-Computing anyone?
IronScheme. Interesting - a Scheme for .NET. And unlike some dead projects I found, something seems to be happening here. Ok, I probably tend more towards IronPython, F# or if it's supposed to be Lisp, Clojure for .NET (there are now quite up-to-date binary packages to try out, unfortunately probably only Windows, at least it spits out errors under Mono).
F Sharp Programming - Wikibooks, open books for an open world. Seems to be a quite nice basic overview of F# - so especially for those who don't already have prior experience (e.g. from OCAML).
Tomtom apologizes for sharing data with radar traps. It's all quite funny in a way. On the one hand, the naivety of a data provider ("hey, they won't just use my data for something that might be embarrassing for us"), and on the other hand, the innovativeness of a government. (It is still unknown at this hour whether "experts" will run amok again and urge buyers of TomTom devices to sue the manufacturer or the Dutch state.)
Apple Q&A on Location Data. Will the experts who made some rather obscure claims now correct their statements? Or will there now be a great, embarrassing silence? Alternatively, I also have a nice conspiracy theory ready, that always works on the Internet.
Home - Redline Smalltalk - Smalltalk for the Java Virtual Machine.. Not very far yet, but could become interesting at some point - and as an old Smalltalk fan, I naturally have to make a blog mark here.
Comics by Nick St. John. That's what it says. Just take a look. Simply and simply drawn, but in a peculiar way appealing to me (especially "How I Came to Work at the Wendy's").
Download Adobe Lens Profile Creator Preview - Adobe Labs. At the bottom of the page are download links. Once the mentioned Profile Creator, with which you can create your own profiles for cameras and lenses. But almost even more interesting is a Profile Downloader - with this you can download profiles from other Lightroom users. This can be useful if there is no profile from Adobe for your own combination yet. I also need to check if there is already a profile for the Zeiss C-Biogon (although it hardly needs one, it behaves so kindly when used).
Geotagging: Fotospot makes digital cameras GPS-capable. Rube Goldberg Geotagging. Honestly, people, if you actually need to carry around a local WLAN with a server to geotag your photos, then it doesn't matter if the server is shoved into the hot shoe of your camera - that's just silly. Just buy a camera that has on-board geotagging. Or a simple tip: with the iPhone and the built-in camera app (because of the metadata) just take a photo at every location, and then later transfer the geodata from these images to the others - there's already finished software for various systems that does this.