Kid is a rather interesting Python library that implements a template engine with a focus on well-formed XML. The result is similar to Zope Page Templates - so an attribute language for XML with Python integration. And it's also fast: an XML template on my machine achieves around 70 hits/sec.
Linkblog - 17.5.2005 - 9.7.2005
http://n3dst4.com/articles/phpannoyances/ - he doesn't like PHP either.
SPB-Linux is a very small Linux that can be booted from a USB flash drive and enhanced with various extensions (X, Mozilla, XFCE Desktop). It should also be relatively easy to extend with various system administration tools.
Spyce is a Python web framework with damn good performance: a simple page with a template behind it delivers over 90 hits per second on my machine (Spyce integrated into Apache via mod_python, memory cache). Take that, PHP!
Spyced: Why PHP sucks - a rather good analysis of what is rather annoying about PHP.
Why PHP sucks - and yet another person who doesn't like PHP.
For those who don't feel comfortable with English as a language for introductory literature, there is an online German-language Haskell course to work through. It looks quite decent - although I find that a bit little is explained.
One of the more complex topics in Haskell are the Monads - a way to simulate things like side effects and sequentiality in a purely functional language with lazy evaluation - simply because you sometimes want the output before the input, for example when querying data from the user, or when you want to save a state that is called again later. The tutorial helps to understand the concept of Monads.
vcXMLRPC is an XML-RPC implementation in JavaScript. Very practical for integrating JavaScript code and server code when you don't want to manually piece together every encoding/decoding. However, the project apparently stopped being developed in 2001.
Scatman Eddy as an outsider - we are lost.
Introduced at LinuxTag: a image viewer for the blind - way cool!
Women are still underrepresented in the US IT industry - blogged for Jutta.
OXlook - Open-XChange connects to Outlook - blogged for the company. Don't ask ...
I generally consider USB sticks to be unnecessary and silly. But the SwissBit Victorinox retroALOX 1GB has a high "must-have" factor.
The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Smalltalk Compiler is an older but still good description of the compiler classes in Smalltalk-80 derivatives like VisualWorks Smalltalk and Squeak.
Staats-GmbH for tax software is dissolved - just plain embarrassing the whole thing. And the money that was burned there ...
Oldest traces of civilization found in Saxony - take that, Egypt! (but of all places, Saxony?)
Hula Girl - Dashboard - Music - finally we know what this strange dashboard is for
Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 released - wow. It took quite a while
No attorney's fees for cease and desist letters in multiple representation - not yet the long-awaited breakthrough, but at least a first sign of intelligence. It would also be nice if multiple representation (as practiced, for example, by Walldorf and Stättler in the music industry and with burning programs) were treated similarly. At least where not explicitly representing the rights of specific companies but rather general ones.
Österreichische Gesundheitskarte violates the privacy of the unemployed - just for documentation that political madness also affects foreign politicians. It seems to be a European plague. Shouldn't we finally introduce strict quarantine regulations?
Lawyer as a serial bank robber - can he now defend himself in court and save on legal fees?
At Schockwellenreiter seen: QTAmateur, a simple QuickTime player that can also export - could actually end the constant QTPro buying, because I actually only need very few of the export functions of QT.
FDP will block disclosure of executive compensation - that's where you see who the FDP really represents.
Kodak confirm SLR/n and SLR/c discontinued - after Kodak was one of the first to build digital SLRs, and not even bad ones, it's now probably over. Ok, the SLR/n and SLR/c do make rather bad impressions, compared to current SLR bodies from Canon or Nikon. Earlier Kodaks like the 6xx and 7xx series were really great devices.
Algol 68 Genie - An Algol 68 interpreter. Obercool. Algol 68 is indeed a vintage language, but a fascinating one: the only one where a metalanguage was defined for the definition of the language itself, in which the definition of the language itself is written. The Algol68 Report is still one of the most fascinating programming language standards I know.
There is also a PDF Browser Plugin for Safari. Free for non-commercial use. It displays PDFs directly in the browser instead of launching an external viewer. I haven't tried it yet, though.
PithHelmet is an ad blocker for Safari. Very similar in function to the AdBlocker for Firefox. Very practical, making Safari a quite interesting browser again. In addition, PithHelmet for Safari provides selective JavaScript suppression and similar mechanisms - just like OmniWeb does. However, one or two rules (especially the BadSense rule caught my attention) are a bit aggressive, but you can configure that well.
Safari WebDevAdditions is a developer toolbar for Safari - so display of block-level elements, links, etc. It makes a quite practical impression on me.
Saft is a kitchen-sink extension for Safari. Packed with features. However, it's shareware, and I haven't tried it yet.
Scharping is no longer running for the Bundestag - if the statement came from a politician from whom one could assume that he would actually be elected, it would indeed be interesting. But Scharping?
Agfa-Photo GmbH goes into insolvency - oh man
Basso again! - takes the second stage win in a row at the Giro. Wow. This gives hope for the Tour.
Blechtrommeln machen Lärm and like Heiko, I'll keep banging on my little drum. Even if I'm just one Oskar Matzerat among many.
Digibux - Digital Library Bets on Open Source - cool. Maybe this will finally create an open format for eBooks. So far, many book contents have been distributed as HTML collections (only laboriously searchable with grep) or PDF (more focused on form than content). The software of the digital library, on the other hand, is specifically designed for research and use of the contents. What else comes to mind: how about a Spotlight plugin for the software?
X.4 Dashboard (Quarter Life Crisis) is a text about the worst usability blunders Apple made in Dashboard. Among other things, it also dissects the Weather Widget. What particularly annoys me about this part: Münster is not to be found. Not as Münster and not as Muenster. We have an airport here, so the data should be available (such tools usually access airport weather data, as it is free and available worldwide) - but nothing of the sort.
Delicious Library - yep, it works! Awesome.
Shoebox looks quite nice - a quite clever photo management with similar organization options through categorization as iView offers. I liked the quite high speed while playing around. However, I have already bought much more photo management tools than I can use, so I am practicing self-restraint here.
TBNL - A Toolkit for Dynamic Lisp Websites enables generating dynamic content with Common Lisp. Essentially, it's something like a FastCGI solution for Common Lisp.
Voyager reaches the boundary of the solar system - good journey and greet the aliens for me!
Ann Elisabeth was diligent and identified the Bulgarian twin spammers - who are likely responsible for a large part of blog spam.
Michael Hampton examines what nofollow has really brought: Nofollow revisited. If you're still using the raw version of WordPress: NoNoFollow install and disable nofollow.
US Department of Justice puts nationwide sex offender registry online - some news just leaves you speechless ...
Dive Into Greasemonkey is a free online book by Mark Pilgrim about programming userscripts for Greasemonkey. With these userscripts, you can change websites when they are displayed using JavaScript - for example, cut out firmly integrated advertising blocks, rewrite links with affiliate IDs so that your own is used, simply repair strange HTML so that you can actually do something with the website, or all kinds of other fun things.
FramerD is an object database (ok, a Framestore - but it's something similar) with an integrated DB server, CGI interface, and Scheme scripting language. Ideal for building knowledge databases, as FramerD is optimized for the pointer-heavy structures involved. But also very exciting, as you get a Scheme with server and ODB. I definitely have to play with it, especially since it should also compile on OS X (though it doesn't work for me right now). And it is licensed under GPL. And for the snake charmers among the monkey programmers, there is also an experimental Python library for accessing FramerD...
Found at Tim Pritlove: Lehmanns has a new releases blog with descriptions: New at Lehmanns. Nice. It's my favorite bookstore anyway (even though I mainly deal with their mail order department and occasionally with stands at trade fairs).
Fire department cuts up wrong car - ok, the owner was also quite stupid: car parked without a license plate on a fire station lot next to a row of junk cars. But it will probably be paid for by the insurance, so luck in misfortune ...
CamlServ is a web server in OCaml. I haven't looked at it in detail yet, but it could be interesting - OCaml is a language of the ML family (or the ML-like languages) with various very interesting extensions (e.g. a powerful object system). Unfortunately, the project does not seem to be very active anymore - last release from 2003 ...
Quartus Forth 2.0.0 is the new version of native-code Forth for the Palm platform. I've played around with it (and its predecessor PilotForth) for a long time - I'm just an old Forth fan.