Cactus Mite
Cactus Mite
Content-type: matter-transport/sentient-life-form
Cactus Mite Revisited
Jutta and I have been playing around with macro photography again - Jutta has acquired a Zeiss cold light source, so there's finally enough light even for absolutely crazy magnifications. Result: the cactus mite visited again:
If you want a size comparison: the following image is a section of a fairly precise millimeter scale - the top two lines are one millimeter apart, the bottom one is on the half millimeter. The image field corresponds to that of the image above.
The slight blurriness comes from the extreme magnification ratio - about 12x magnification relative to the base area of the 10D chip - and from the optical system operated far outside its optical parameters.
The equipment used was a Canon EOS 10D, a Canon EF to Contax Y/C adapter, a Contax bellows unit, a Tokina ATX 17mm/f3.5 in retro position, and the whole thing then on a tripod and ball head (such an Arca Swiss Monoball is already something fine - the ideal ball head for macro work). Then some finesse, patience, and series shots with minimally changing distance between lens and subject.
e-Voting: Contesting the Bundestag Election Due to Voting Computers
Problems with voting machines in the federal election:
Wiesner criticizes in particular that the voting is indirect – via the voting machine and the software used – and it cannot be verified whether the vote is stored immediately and unchanged in the vote memory and subsequently in the electronic vote memory until the election result is determined is not changed.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed that he succeeds with his application, but I don't see any greater chances - because surely it will just be discussed to death again and by then the Federal Constitutional Court may decide, the current coalition will have long since gone to Orkus (they won't last 4 years) ...
Some things annoy me terribly
For example, if umlauts are not processed cleanly - as with pre_populate_from in Django. Therefore, I no longer use this in my CMSProject, but simply fill the slug in _pre_save. And then let a corresponding routine run there. Although this is not really perfect, but at least usable ...
And yes, this is a test post for the function to create a slug from a title with umlauts.
And then there was ...
... the bankruptcy of the Red-Black horror coalition and the loud howling and gnashing of teeth of all the interest group arse-lickers who now think they might lose their little butter. Meanwhile, the hunt against Hartz IV recipients continues and the welfare state is dismantled, but the police state is further expanded. Any sense is left out and therefore the little conjuncture is simply murdered with a VAT increase. The whole thing is then garnished with a clear violation of the constitution in the budget for next year. And these idiots stand up and celebrate themselves and their pathetic work.
When watching bad movies, you can always switch channels. Where is the remote control for reality, please?
Apples WebObjects with new licensing terms
Apple has clarified the licensing issues with WebObjects - Deployment on Linux boxes is now also completely allowed. Thus, the XCode environment with WebObjects is now completely free from development to deployment.
Taking Photos While Geocaching
A series of pictures taken during various geocaching tours. Some in the Coesfelder Heide, some near Wolbeck:
A Few More Pictures ...
... there is in my CMS Testbed(yes, I'm knitting on my own content management software again). And when I look at how little trouble my own software gives me and how much trouble Wordpress always causes (for example, today I couldn't upload any pictures without being able to find any reason - nothing in the log files, no error message, just the refusal to upload), then the switch could be getting closer and closer ...
Linux-Vserver on Debian Sarge
Linux-Vserver on Debian Sarge - the title says it all. Bookmark for later - could be interesting for my server.
Mac-on-Linux
Mac-on-Linux - strangely never blogged about, so now. Running Mac operating systems in a virtual environment under Linux on Macs - ideal for Linux-powered Mac Minis where you still want to have the one or other OS X program ...
Mac-on-Mac
Mac-on-Mac is the inverse counterpart to Mac-on-Linux - a port of the virtual machine to OS X, with which you can then run Linux or other Mac systems under OS X in a virtual environment. Status is still very raw ...
Dream Dancer at Work
Who wants to have a good laugh: RatcliffeBlog—Mitch's Open Notebook: Measuring podcasts: The right first step - about the pathetic attempts of Audible to make money from podcasts. Regardless of what you think about podcasts (I don't think much of them, their accessibility is simply terrible), Audible's ideas (which sell DRM-infested audiobooks) are simply laughable.
Boycott Sony-BMG!
Their rootkit nonsense is now also affecting Macs:
Sony BMG has turned the Windows universe against itself with the XCP copy protection from First 4 Internet. Now a copy protection method also appears that is supposed to perform similar tasks in the Mac cosmos as the XCP software. Until now, there were hardly any Trojans and rootkits known for Mac systems.
Great. Hardly any rootkits and Trojans - until now the music industry pushes such nonsense in our face. What are they smoking at Sony-BMG anyway? One thing is clear: a CD from them will not come into my player again. Stigmatizing consumers as criminals and whining about how bad they have it, and then launching an attack on my computer with CDs? Forget it.
Phishing: iTAN does not offer protection either
Phishing: iTAN offers no protection either - which was actually clear to everyone beforehand, but of course did not stop the banks from marketing this nonsense as the best invention since sliced bread ...
Loss of Reality Among SAP Board Members
SAP Executive Rants Against Open Source:
Otherwise, it is important not to mess too much with the code of high-quality software programs.
Wait a minute. "High-quality software programs". He works at SAP? Where do they have any high-quality software programs? I mean, if you don't consider "high-quality" as "hopelessly overpriced junk", as he probably does?
another week in Munich
And therefore, here are only sporadic updates when I feel like it and have the time. Given the interesting project and the quite pleasant weather, this will probably be rather rare.
SPD Sells Job Protection
To continue playing a role in the Berlin government, the SPD sells out job protection:
The experts from the Union and SPD have agreed to further relax job protection in a grand coalition. As reported by the "Bild am Sonntag," the probationary period for new hires may be extended to up to two years in the future. "This does not shake the substance of job protection," SPD labor market expert Klaus Brandner told the newspaper.
Okay, the whole thing is from Bild am Sonntag, so you can't put much stock in the truthfulness, but if it's really true, that's quite an outrageous audacity. A probationary period of two years is de facto an abolition of job protection, no matter what this SPD blowhard says - new hires then have no security at all, and the slightest disagreement and the contract is terminated. That's simply absurd.
Especially since employers already have a comparable option with fixed-term contracts today, only the employee then at least has some security for the duration of the fixed-term relationship - with the idea sketched above, there is no security at all.
And let's be honest: a boss who needs two years to determine if a new employee is suitable for the job (and that's exactly what the probationary period is for, not as a dishonest way out for the abolition of job protection), must either be a lying piece of shit, or dumb as a piece of bread in the puddle...
The lies of the SPD in recent years (with Hartz IV and all the crap from Schily) and in the current coalition negotiations is in any case a clear sign that the SPD no longer deserves its own name. It has nothing to do with social anymore. This is the sale of the welfare state purely out of power greed and obsession.
Off to the Police State Germany!
Coalition of Social Democrats and Christian Democrats to review data protection:
Under the title "Germany – a safe and free country," the fight against terrorism is described in the paper available to heise online as "a very important task for all German security authorities." In addition, a "claim" of citizens is postulated "to be protected from crime." According to the interior experts of the grand coalition, other constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties must be subordinated to this. It is necessary to examine, as stated in the eight-page contract document, "to what extent legal regulations, for example in data protection, stand in the way of effective combating of terrorism and crime" and whether the "proven security architecture" needs to be further developed.
Speechless.
Value Added Tax vs. Wealth Tax
Open Letter: The Wealthy Want to Pay More Taxes:
Krämer said it cannot be that seriously considering an increase in the value-added tax without also taxing the wealthy more. An increase in the value-added tax would hit average earners, retirees, and the unemployed much harder.
Funny how people with money can understand this, but our federal proles can't ...
The Cowardice of the SPD
She shows herself in the position on (not quite?) General Secretary Nahles:
Nahles had previously been sharply attacked within the party. The spokesman of the conservative Seeheimer Kreis, Johannes Kahrs, said in the ARD morning magazine: "I think it is absurd that someone is rewarded as a regicide who, with his stubbornness, has led the party into crisis."
I think it is absurd that a right-wing pile of trash like the Seeheimer Kreis gets a voice in the SPD at all. He should just go over to the Union ...
The "regicides" were, by the way, not Mrs. Nahles, but the party executive - of whom 8 also did not attend the meeting. But criticizing them, the little coward naturally does not dare, because they could cut him back in his perks and trim him down to what he is: nothing.
But unfortunately, the SPD executive probably does not have the guts and will chicken out in front of the conservative forces and thus help to make the SPD just as boring, uninteresting, predictable and insignificant with new personnel as it already is. Just a red-painted Union. Who needs that? When we have Stoiber and Seehofer?
Rumsfeld denies UN access to detainees
In the Land of the Free and the Brave:
The United Nations has accused the United States of imposing unacceptable conditions on a planned inspection of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Even China does not set such conditions for visits to its prisons, said the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Nowak, in New York.
With the current administration, perhaps rather a land of cowards and liars?
coverage
coverage is a tool for creating coverage reports - which parts of a program were executed and which were not. Useful as a supplement for unit tests to ensure that the unit tests also cover all areas of the code.
Sony BMG's Copy Protection with Rootkit Functions
At Heise, there is a report about the problems with Sony BMG's copy protection:
This software emulates rootkit functions - rootkits also hide their (illegal) activities from the computer user. The copy protection installs filter drivers for CD-ROM drives and IDE drivers, through which it controls access to media.
Ultimately, this is another breach of user data integrity. And considering the idiotic copy protection laws in Germany, you're not even allowed to do anything about it. And so, the individual's right to their property (this is not just about Sony's silly CD, the entire computer is affected!) is once again sacrificed on the altar of the music industry's arrogance.
By the way, this copy protection also includes monitoring functions for media other than its own protected content - and in my opinion, this massively violates data protection regulations, because regardless of what Sony wants to protect, what else is going on on the computer is none of their business.
Another reason not to buy CDs from Sony BMG.
Stoiber has dusted off
Stoiber is not going to Berlin - the signs of decay of the grand coalition are already evident before it even comes into being, and they are really quite amusing. On both sides, people are falling apart like cardboard boxes.
The entertainment value of this Berlin docu-soap is certainly remarkable.
A Test Framework for Django
DjangoTesting is part of my DjangoStuff project and is the start of a testing framework for Django, modeled after the testing framework that Ruby on Rails provides. Currently only model tests are implemented, request/response tests are planned.
The testing framework is built solely on unittest and django, so you don't need additional modules (besides my DjangoStuff project, of course). It provides python-based fixture notations (fixtures are just python classes with attributes in a DATA subclass) and a basic command line utility to make use of those tests and fixtures.
Tests and fixtures are stored in applications and projects, so you can have application specific tests (especially usefull with generic applications) and project-level tests that will integrate stuff over several applications.
I think a good testing framework would really be important for Django applications, especially for applications that should be shared between projects. But I do think that a good testing framework needs some banging on, too - so I started it as a small subproject on my own. But if it grows into something useful, I will opt for inclusion into Django trunk.
Education and Prosperity - But Not for Everyone
Go together - education only for those who can afford it. The others should better stay stupid: Chances of inequality have grown further. And our state governments (on whose behalf education policy grows) will make sure that this remains the case. With certainty at least in the Union-governed countries, to which NRW unfortunately now also belongs.
For someone like me, who comes from a working-class family, this development is more than shocking. In my time, children from working-class families were not the majority in the classes at the grammar school, but there were some there. But with today's developments - school fees, teaching material fees, later tuition fees - the politicians make it very clear what they think of workers: nothing at all.
We are Germany? Up the arse. Money is Germany.
Müntes Departure?
I can't help but crack a small, nasty grin about Müntes' preferred candidate for General Secretary losing to Andrea Nahles. Guess that's nothing for Münte as the new Wehner, pulling the strings from behind and everyone dancing to his tune - he's been whistled off.
Case/When/Otherwise for Django
If you have any evil plans for a switch statement for Django (hia rjwittams! ), you might want to look into my TagLib. There is a case/when/otherwise statement in there. It's quite easy to use:
{% case variable %}
{% when "value1" %}
{% endwhen %}
{% when "value2" %}
{% endwhen %}
{% otherwise %}
{% endotherwise %}
{% endcase %}
The reason for the tag structure is that the django template parser only looks for parameterless block-closing tags in the parsefor function and so you can't just pull an easy one like this:
{% if condition %}
{% elif condition %}
{% else %}
{% endif %}
You would have to copy over much from the template parser to get a parsefor that looks for a token with a tag and parameters to close the current block.
So I opted for the scoped tags approach where the "case" tag only sets up a context variable "case" and populates it with a dictionary with "value" and "fired" - with the latter one a trigger that can be fired by any "when" tag to prevent other "when" tags or the "otherwise" tag to fire themselves. A bit ugly, but working.
Walk along the canal
Walking along the canal and captured a few impressions:
Adhoc-Organization in CM-Systems
Adhoc organization is what I named the basic design decisions for my new content management system (blog system, personal wiki, digital image shoebox - whatever). It's coming along nicely, even though up to now I only used it as a sample application to make use of my little tools from the DjangoStuff pseudo-project. And it still is one of the best ways to see how tagging or searching or the new calendar tag or other stuff is used.
But it's coming along so good that I think I will be able to change over some sites in the near future. The basic design decisions are somewhat documented in the linked document in my trac-wiki. The main objective for me is to get something that I can use as easy for image presentation as for text presentation and that allows me to really integrate both parts. So that articles really can consist of a multitude of media and text.
It's quite fun to work on a project where you tear down the model and rebuild part of it from time to time, or make major refactoring decisions that leave you with a broken heap of python-bullshit for a while
Advertising Banners in 2005
Do site operators actually look at their own sites? If I need 30 seconds to close a page on Netzeitung because a crappy ad banner is blocking all resources, I don't find that funny anymore. I already thought it was stupid that you could barely scroll through the TV program on Yahoo because of all the Flash ads. But a newspaper that claims to understand the internet should perhaps take a look at its own pages and do some quality assurance on the ads it places ...
Aperture and Performance
From creativepro.com - Stripping Raw Naked - an interview with the maker of Aperture:
JS: It depends on what you do with Aperture. I mostly run it on my 15-inch PowerBook. That's not to say that I don't enjoy the refreshing wind-blowing-through-my-hair feeling when I sit down in front of a G5 running Aperture. But a PowerBook is fine for what a lot of photographers do in the field with their laptops: browse images quickly and step through the thumbnails. Maybe tag the images they like, maybe zoom in closely on one. The photo edit stage. For that, a PowerBook does take a speed hit, but it's totally usable.
This is where our scheme of loading a proxy image comes in -- the 1024 proxy is often all I need to see at this stage. Depending on how many megabytes each image is, Aperture on a G5 can load the full Raw image in less than a second. On my PowerBook, that same image may take three to four seconds to load fully.
For heavier duty image processing, faster GPUs and multiple processors are of huge benefit. Aperture does make extensive use of dual processors, but you do not need a Quad [a new model from Apple that has two dual-core processors].
That sounds more usable - if a 15" PowerBook is actually considered operable.
Bock: meet Gärtner
And that with Scatman Ede as the economic miracle. Well, whether his underlings would have turned against him would be doubtful anyway. But certainly a great idea if those who are well greased by the industry are the ones to decide on the use of biotechnology ...
cucumber2
cucumber2 is a very interesting Object-Relational-Mapper for Python and PostgreSQL, which also supports table inheritance in PostgreSQL.
Django Project
Django Project - a very nice web framework that I use here.
PostgreSQL 8.1
PostgreSQL 8.1 with Two-Phase-Commits and User Roles:
Transactions can now be prepared on multiple computers with PREPARE TRANSACTION and executed together later. If a machine fails after PREPARE, the transaction can be correctly completed with COMMIT after the restart.
Yes!