iTunes Again - This Time Problems

Well. Bought Abraxas/III by Santana. Unfortunately, iTunes can only load part of the songs - 3 songs refuse to load. So now I also get the chance to test Apple's support.

Satine for Python

Satine for Python - XML Binding for Python - transparent use of XML data via native Python data structures

Fearmongering for tuition fees

German to English Translation

Anyone who wants to know how the practical results of surveys come about, which are used to justify the greatest political nonsense, should simply follow the link. In this case, it's directed at our education system.

We shouldn't be too arrogant in our response to American think tanks. We've had the same problem here for a long time - and it's getting increasingly massive. In many areas, lobbying has long been more important than expert opinion or even the will of voters.

I found das Netzbuch and the original article.

This is a "stress position"

A few images showing what the US government considers valid interrogation methods. In my opinion, simply and clearly crimes against human dignity. War crimes.

I found the original article at Warblogs:CC.

Tour de Suisse: Ullrich still in yellow jersey

That does offer some hope for the tour. However, T-Mobile should hold back a bit on the dropouts, otherwise they won't be able to put together 9 riders for the tour anymore.

I found the original article at Radsport-News.com.

Giant Hogweed - A Burning Danger

Attack of the Killer Plants.

The original article is available at WDR.de.

iTunes Music Store RSS Generator

iTunes Music Store RSS Generator - RSS Feeds for iTunes new releases

News: Microsoft distances itself from AdTI study

Even Microsoft doesn't want to support this nonsense, and they're usually not too shy about spreading lies about Open Source

Here's the original article.

Auto Bellows PC for Contax

The bellows announced in P2367 arrived today. I'm thrilled. Simply a fantastically well-crafted precision instrument. With all sorts of adjustment options, loads of control wheels, loads of applications. Wow. Simply fantastic. Oh, and it was one of my eBay bargains again - only 1/3 of the new price, but everything in fantastic condition as far as I can see. Runs smoothly, without noticeable scratches or dents. And everything included - not even the cable adapters are missing. Now I just need to figure out if there's possibly a way to trigger the Canon EOS 10D via the cable release with an adapter - with the Contax RTS III there are of course no problems due to the system. But both cameras have purely electronic shutters, so something should be feasible. If worst comes to worst, a second cable release will do, but the direct connection is more elegant.

The nice thing about the bellows is the wide range of adjustment options. Shift only horizontally, but nicely with detent. Tilt only around the vertical axis, but also with detent. At the camera mount, the bayonet can be tilted 90 degrees and thus the camera can be changed in format - by tilting the bellows on the tripod you can also get vertical shift or tilt around the horizontal axis this way without twisting yourself into a pretzel.

The lens standard can either be simply rotated (after loosening the bellows, the tilt goes 360 degrees - so simply rotate 180 degrees backwards), alternatively you can also mount the front standard in reverse on the bellows to get even further forward with the lens. Even in reverse position, the automatic diaphragm is retained.

And then there's the slide copying attachment: the slide holder has a vertical shift. Combined with the horizontal shift of the front standard and the freely adjustable magnification factors, you can create beautiful section magnifications with it.

Oh, and in a few days I'll get the macro stand for the system, then I'll have almost all the parts. I'm only missing the adapter for 67mm front lenses (I'll definitely get that since I can then use the nice Tokina again) and the adapter for Zeiss loupe lenses.

Ah. Simply wonderful all this equipment.

Tour de France exit for Vinokourov

Crap. Ok, was to be expected after the crash, but it's pretty rough.

I found the original article at Radsport-News.com.

Severe Security Vulnerability in Linux Kernel 2.4 and 2.6

And Menno ...

(Fortunately I only have trustworthy users on my servers)

At heise online news there's the original article.

iTunes Music Store

Well. So it's open now. Ok, let's see. Die Toten Hosen - just one song in a compilation. Emerson Lake & Palmer - no song, didn't even find it in the overview. Same with the Pogues. And Die Ärzte. And Element of Crime. Extrabreit - found under Rock, but no titles. Kraftwerk - the same thing, artist known, but no titles. The Levellers - wow, two albums. But only one with titles - I already have Levelling the Land. The other one - Hello Pig - is without titles. Kate Bush - just one album, Lionheart. Ok, I have everything from her anyway. Then finally: Clannad - apparently all albums, also all with titles. And one that I don't have yet. Wow - my first iTunes purchase. What I noticed when buying: from the overview you can only buy individual titles, not whole albums. For that you have to search for the artist's shop page. But you can't do that with one click from the overview, you have to go through the search. The buying itself is easy - just say you want to buy, confirm that you want to buy, and it starts loading away. And the credit card gets charged. You can nicely see the progress of the download process in the status window and also in the new playlist Purchased Music. Very easy overall. Quite different from the other music stores. What else I noticed: the categorizations are rubbish. Why a sampler with Uns' Udo, Die Toten Hosen and similar stuff is sorted under Pop is as much a mystery to me as the question of why Tom Waits is Rock and how the categorization of Clannad albums sometimes under Folk and sometimes under Pop comes about. Well, at least I didn't have to look for them under Electronic. With Tom Waits, by the way, only the title Rock was listed as a category, but the artist can be found under Alternative. Rather inconsistent.

Also annoying are the sometimes very incomplete compilations of an artist's titles - for example, The Cure does have some albums in there, but on the one hand the release dates are listed as 2001 and on the other hand the albums are sometimes empty and sometimes only have individual songs. Kind of a shame - missed revenue if you ask me.

Also weird was what happened with Tom Waits: Foreign Affairs is listed, but when buying I get a message that it's no longer available. Same with a couple of his other records. But you can play all the songs. Does Apple maybe have some knots in the database? Is there a bug report address?

Nice though is that albums with fewer songs are automatically cheaper than 9.99 euros - good attention to detail in the implementation of the shop!

Buying while a download is still running also works without problems - iTunes remembers all purchased and not yet downloaded songs. It will probably survive a disconnect too, but I didn't want to try that right away.

Otherwise I don't seem to have standard taste, but I think I'll still poke around there for one thing or another. Even if it looks a bit thin at the moment. Damn. Another money pit.

Secret Code: 00000000

That really gives me courage ...

At Megawatt: The Last Latent Appliance Fetishist you can find the original article.

Tony's Calculator Collection

I can't believe it. A collection of online calculators. And my first calculator (which I got when I switched to grammar school) is included. Sometimes I love the internet Here's the original article.

Just posted! Canon EOS-1D Mark II Review

Could someone give me $4500 as a gift?

This camera would probably be the ideal Contax digital option for the MM system - with the 1D Mark II you can swap out the focusing screen and insert one with a split image. With the 10D, manual focusing is usually more of a gamble - at least in most situations.

At Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) there's the original article.

Vinokourov suspected of fractures

Oh Shit!

erstauntes Gesicht

At Radsport-News.com I found the original article.

Contax RTS Macro Photography - Part I

I now have an Auto Bellows PC for my Contax, so I did a bit of googling and came across this nice site that documents all the Contax tools for macro photography. Very interesting.

Here's the original article.

Contax RTS Series SLR Camera Models

Contax RTS Series SLR Camera Models - Plenty of information about the Contax RTS system

EU election almost over

And of course, the Union is supposedly the big winner - even though they also lost votes. But lying to yourself is much easier than facing reality: that namely the politicians completely failed to motivate voters to actually show up at the polls.

Radio UserLand: Bootstrap: How to redirect an RSS feed - inline redirect für RSS

Blue Letter for the Federal Returning Officer

Sometimes you just have to hold your head in disbelief at how much stupidity our federal politicians display.

surprised face

At Telepolis News (12.06.2004) you can find the original article.

Dark lonely Saturn moon received earthly visit

Yes, I know that the money for such missions would certainly be better spent elsewhere. Nevertheless, I find such missions incredibly exciting and I'm always thrilled to see pictures of alien worlds. Human curiosity simply wants to know what it's like in places that one will never actually be able to reach oneself.

At Telepolis News (12.06.2004) you can find the original article.

Ehlert and Partner

Ehlert und Partner - Magnifying glasses, microscopes, etc.

German licenses launched

That's quite nice. German versions of the Creative Commons licenses, which have also been adapted to German law.

At Creative Commons: weblog there's the original article.

A Year Ago Today

It's interesting when you compare the olds with the news.

The great acquisition of the supposedly market-leading antivirus vendor that nobody knew only caused a stir back then — otherwise it was simply irrelevant.

The immunity of US soldiers is a disgrace, especially given the torture in Iraq. It probably had good reason that immunity was enforced — after all, it seems the US administration had long planned torture as a tool in its fight against terrorism.

Sun's claim that Linux users didn't really want Linux was already a laugh back then — but it's become particularly funny given all the egg dances Sun has performed in the meantime.

IP addresses being sold on the black market — no idea what came of that. I suspect it's still being sold. After all, the actual problem hasn't really changed.

Homeland Security is still a bunch of lunatics and overreach is the order of the day. However, they're no longer hunting as many runaway Democrats.

And while the CSU may not like penguins, Munich got them anyway. And gradually the project seems to be really taking off, after apparently there was stronger resistance to Linux in administration initially.

IBM receives patent for Caps Lock status indicator on PC keyboards

IBM of course also participates in the absurd patents on trivialities.

The original article can be found at heise online news at this link.

Magnifying Glasses - Magnifying Lenses, Hand Magnifiers, Pocket Magnifiers, Illuminated Magnifiers, Measuring Magnifiers, Stand Magnifiers, Jeweler's Loupes, Work Magnifiers, and More in the Magnifying Glasses Online Shop

Magnifying Glasses - Magnifiers, Hand Magnifiers, Pocket Magnifiers, Illuminated Magnifiers, Measuring Magnifiers, Stand Magnifiers, Impact Magnifiers, Work Magnifiers, and more in the Magnifying Glasses Online Shop - All Types of Magnifying Glasses

Radford photographer to face trial in Jan.

In P960 I had already written something about Bob Shell - represented on some mailing lists on photography topics - being charged with murder. His trial is now likely to take place in January 2005. Here you can find the original article.

UserFriendly: They took the "We" out of "Weblog"

Ouch.

Here's the original article.

Back to the Future

DSL is acting up again

ASCII - ISO 8859-1 Table with HTML Entity Names

ASCII - ISO 8859-1 Table with HTML Entity Names - Reference tables for character sets and HTML entities

A Year Ago Today

Translation

I've now also built one of these, I can't think of anything anyway so I'm filling the gap with old stuff tools. No idea if I really want to do something with this long-term, but here's the first batch of reheated sauce:

Investigation committee because of Möllemann?
Koch has to pay
Blix: "I had my slanderers in Washington"
Visible Human Server Anyway, Möllemann is back on the agenda, Blix is out though, but Iraq is still in, Koch is still a ripoff artist and bastard and whether Jutta got the Visible Human Server back then is not confirmed |:-)|

Catastrophe! World Collapse! Anarchy!

My DSL went down. Horrible. I had to dust off my old modem skills, call colleagues for dial-up numbers and perform a few other mental gymnastics (like remembering dial-up procedures at http://www.westfalen.de/) just to get an ISDN internet connection running again. Now the world wide web crawls here at rural 64 KBit per X75 encoding over the line ... Welcome to the stone age

New image gallery plugin - needs testers

New image gallery plugin - needs testers - WordPress plugin for images in posts

Ray Charles Died

One less great voice.

At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD you can find the original article.

The 'process' Python module

The 'process' Python module - Process Management for Python - simpler than the standard functions

Threadframe: multithreaded stack frame extraction for Python

Threadframe: multithreaded stack frame extraction for Python - Easier debugging of multithreaded Python applications

Wine faster than the law allows: license gone

He can use the forced break to ride his bike more and improve his fitness for the tour.

At Radsport-News.com I found the original article.

Macro Photography Differently

The Ingredients:

Canon EOS 10D
Canon to Contax MM bayonet adapter
Retro adapter for Contax MM bayonet
Filter adapter from 52mm to Series VII
Filter adapter from Series VII to 67mm
Tokina RSX 17mm/3.5 wide-angle lens
a Manfrotto 352RC ball head
a Manfrotto 055SB tripod
the camera's self-timer

The image field is then approximately 6 x 4 millimeters. In the image, a spine attachment of a cactus. And you can also photograph a cactus mite with it. The main problem is focusing: since I don't have a focusing rail, the cactus and equipment had to be moved. Image field selection via the ball head, rough focusing also via the ball head, fine focusing by carefully moving the subject. That's why the cactus mite isn't perfectly sharp either - for that you really do need the focusing rail.

microlen.htm

microlen.htm - Discussions about macro photography lenses

Natural History with the Microscope as a Hobby

Natural History with the Microscope as a Hobby - All about microscopy and microphotography

Network operators build cost traps into mobile phones

Oh man, now there's already something like dialers for cell phones. And it's being built in right from the sale. Rip-offs everywhere. Of course Vodafone is leading the way - yes, exactly, the ones with the million-dollar severance packages for managers who just got a tax gift after fraudulent stock price manipulation ...

At NETZEITUNG.DE Internet I found the original article.

Cactus Spine Approach

Spine attachment of a cactus

Photographed with the EOS 10D, a Contax adapter, a Contax reversal ring and the Tokina 17/3.5 in reverse position at aperture 16 and 3/4 second with subsequent exposure correction of the RAW file by 1.5 stops.

Depth of field, magnification ratio and close-up lens calculator

Depth of field, magnification and close-up lens calculator - Calculation of depth of field and magnification ratios

Cactus Mite

For size comparison: the distance between the centers of the two darker bars is one millimeter! The image is not optimally sharp, as I had to capture the whole thing relatively primitively - for example, at the time of shooting I didn't have a macro focusing stage for focus adjustment, but had to do it manually. Still, it's impressive what kind of images you can get with relatively little effort.

Content-type: matter-transport/sentient-life-form

German to English Translation

Translation

The Ingredients: