Euro-Crisis: China Offers Help and Wants Concessions. Of course. Money is scarce, so let's ignore human rights and political systems or exploitation of the population and quickly recognize the whole thing as a market economy, after all it's about our prosperity! For that, one must make sacrifices in China!
A small collection of photos from our trip to Bremen. Nothing special - mainly because I had the camera set to 3200 ISO, and only noticed this at home. As a result, the images are more noisy than I would like, and the dynamic range was also a bit limited. But it's impressive how the NEX-3 saved me even with such a mistake.
I have uploaded new pictures to Flickr. Here they are - unsorted and uncommented.
Adobe announces Carousel - cloud-based image service: Digital Photography Review. Doesn't sound uninteresting at all. The engine used should be the one from Lightroom, with everything fully automatically synchronized between devices and editing possible on all devices. It will be interesting to see if it offers integration with Lightroom - that's my main image editor - and whether it also supports automatic offloading or external drives (for all the many gigabytes of images I have).
2 Click Social Media Buttons « WordPress Plugins. Similar to the previous plugin, but this one is now based on the code from Heise. And it has a nice explanatory component with a link to the Heise article. I've integrated it, so you can like me, +1 me, and tweet!
Social Opt In « WordPress Plugins. Maybe interesting - Heise prepares its own code, but this seems like an alternative. Or you take this as a basis and then mix in the Heise code when it's ready (it looks really useful in use and certainly has the advantage that Facebook is much more likely to accept something from Heise).
Instead of including the pictures here, there is only a reference to an album of pictures taken by my mother-in-law - the official photos are still pending (and I didn't take any myself).
FLASH PLAYER NOT SUPPORTED
SCO ultimately loses against Novell. Should this nonsense finally be over soon? It's not as if there aren't more absurd proceedings on the horizon (I just recall Lodsys), so it won't be boring. And the entertainment value of the longest-dying IT company has left much to be desired for quite some time ...
Panasonic launches Lumix G X Vario PZ 14-42mm F3.5-5.6 OIS pancake: Digital Photography Review. Due to the development of Sony, I am tempted to sell my Panasonic device and focus entirely on the larger chip (and possibly add a NEX 7), but this pancake zoom from Panasonic is really appealing for a compact setup. Even on the GH1, it would then be an impressively compact but flexible package.
Recently, Juliana and I ate Rote GrĂĽtze - and I had an urgent desire to make Rote GrĂĽtze myself afterwards. On Wednesday's market, we bought a lot of berries and this morning I stood at the stove.
The whole thing is quite simple actually. And it just tastes delicious. What goes in:
The preparation itself is also quite simple:
The pudding becomes so firm and thick, just as I remember it, not as thin as you often get it - it's really more of a pudding and not a soup. And if you have a bottle of red wine open, you can also cook the red wine well with the pudding (but a glass of red wine is really enough).
Sony-August-2011-New-Products. Oy, take a look at the part about the NEX7. Two configurable dials, 2.3MP ELV and 24 MP APS chip. And only slightly larger than the NEX5. That thing really excites me.
PyPy Status Blog: We need Software Transactional Memory. Interesting article on why we want STM, even if it may not be obvious - namely to make the more complex primitives of higher-level languages like Python transactional. And if we have STM as an implementation detail, we can also easily make it available to the programmer.
Setup services on your Pod - GitHub. Saved for later, I've already set up the link to Twitter on my own pod. I'll probably set up Tumblr soon too, since I still use it quite often. Diaspora is still quite buggy (it's really Alpha), but already quite complete in terms of features. And it's fun to play around with. However, people on Diaspora pods should also post more there, otherwise the social aspect has its problems - I only knew after self-experiments on two pods and several days of waiting that posts actually arrive at me - not because of technical problems, but simply because no one wrote anything ...
Why I'm not on Google Plus - Charlies Diary. Charles Stross on things programmers often get wrong when thinking about names. Specifically about Google+
Luban: a generic “language” for creating user interface — luban v0.2 documentation. Check it out - it could help with my eternal search for a compact user interface to use. Specifically, web as UI is becoming increasingly interesting with all the things that have emerged in this area in recent years.
Pictures from the Gimbter Kleinkunstmarkt - some of the more normal versions can be seen on Flickr. I just played around with the presets and some more exotic settings in Lightroom. I need that from time to time.
Sony NEX-7 full specs and images | Photo Rumors. Looks very interesting, even though I wouldn't really need the 24 megapixels. But the built-in electronic viewfinder would be nice. Besides, it looks quite nice and doesn't seem to be quite as absurdly small, so you can throw it in your backpack, but also hold it well. Of course, you have to see it in real life first - Sony is very big on leaking and then announcing but then never delivering (see the various optics that were on the roadmap and still don't exist). And the price of $1000 mentioned in rumors is not exactly thrilling. Let's see.
It was the night flea market again and we took a look. Haul: a flower vase for 1.50 Euro. And a nice evening walk.
PyPy Status Blog: PyPy 1.6 - kickass panda. Getting better and better - ctypes are now properly fixed (this is one of the FFI options in Python) and there is beta support for C extensions from the cpython environment (which is only a stopgap, direct PyPy extensions will actually always be more efficient, but at least some of the extensions are available as long as they do not offer their own PyPy version). Oh, and there is a first approach for a numpy module that is directly integrated with the JIT of PyPy - not yet complete, but a start has been made.
I took my M8 for a walk last Saturday - and that's the result. Instead of the mushrooms, there was the wild goulash pot that I posted a few days ago. It was also delicious. But somehow, when I look at the photos ...
Breaking: HP Makes Big Shift on WebOS, Exiting Hardware Business - Ina Fried - Mobile - AllThingsD. That's it for WebOS - the future sounds different.
The Python Standard Library By Example - Doug Hellmann. For all those who prefer a printed version of the internet: this is a book with all the PyMOTW (Python Module of the Week) articles in it, polished and beautified and nicely compiled. Certainly very practical, because sometimes you have a book quicker at hand than a computer - and computers are forbidden in bed anyway. (Warning: regarding bed, this is a 1344-page whopper!).
Python and fileinput - All this. I know the module, honestly. But somehow it has slipped my mind again. It's really a handy thing when you write command-line tools, simply because it takes care of the Unix-typical handling of input for you.
GNAT GPL for LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT – Ravenscar Edition. And for friends of robots made from Lego and bondage-and-discipline programming languages, there is now Ada for Lego Mindstorms NXT. After all, there are not many Ada links to report.
Cross-domain communications with JSONP, Part 1: Combine JSONP and jQuery to quickly build powerful mashups. Since I needed it for a colleague and therefore searched for it, I'll just bookmark it. JSONP is basically just a convention for JSON services that respond to a callback parameter by passing the generated JSON as a parameter to a function call and using the content of the callback parameter as the function name. This makes the data accessible from domains other than the one from which the actual script comes - normal AJAX does not allow this.
ipdb makes the Python debugger a bit prettier and more user-friendly by integrating the tools from ipython. If you're already using ipython, it might be a good idea to install ipdb as well. Alternatively, you can use pdbpp, which provides similar features without ipython (e.g., you could combine this with bpython).
Official Google Blog: Supercharging Android: Google to Acquire Motorola Mobility. Well, yes. Google is buying Motorola (ok, the part of them that is interesting for phones). Wow. Just spent 12.5 billion. Seen via Twitter by Don Dahlmann. I believe the next Nexus will then probably come from Motorola ...
Schneier on Security: New, Undeletable, Web Cookie. On to the next round: ETags are evil! Since they can be arbitrarily assigned by the server, you can simply insert a visitor's UUID there, and on the next visit, the browser sends the content for checking for file changes (provided it supports conditional-GET, but that's true for all browsers today). The user has no control over the use of ETags - and it actually doesn't make sense to give the user this control - so it's very difficult to defend against this method.
I came across wild goulash on the market and grabbed it. And then I bought fennel and green onions. Well, I did a bit of googling and got an idea for a recipe. As usual, of course, slightly adjusted. What goes in:
Preparation is surprisingly simple, though a bit time-consuming, so not exactly cooking when you're already hungry:
I prepared everything first, so that we can just reheat it later. To go with it - I have a Russian at home - bread.
rad2py - Rapid Aplication Development platform for python. Wow, why didn't I know about this before? It looks interesting, although the description is a bit heavy. And it's still in a very early stage (first full prototype planned for November 2011).
RMoD: Fuel. And another Smalltalk link - here a persistence library completely in Smalltalk without special support of the VM, but still good performance and good mapping capability for all kinds of objects.
SandstoneDb, Simple ActiveRecord Style Persistence in Squeak. A very simple single-file database for Pharo, which is interesting, for example, if you want to build small desktop applications in Pharo. So the classic GUI tools that you make for personal use, for example. And yes, today is Smalltalk Day at rfc1437.
Coral — Pharo Smalltalk for scripting. Oh, that's nice, that's one of the problems I always have with Smalltalk: I can work in the IDE and in the image and then export a headless application for the server, but as soon as I need a quick script outside the image, I have to switch languages. Coral provides the answer to this problem: a small wrapper, a minimal syntax extension and a minimal image to be able to write normal scripts with Pharo Smalltalk.
ToDE - tODE - the Object centric Development Environment. A bit stagnant in development, but still interesting: an IDE that builds on Pharo Smalltalk. The special feature: it runs in the browser, but offers all the usual Smalltalk development tools there. In principle, you could therefore install a hosted Smalltalk image as a development environment for the iPad and play with it on the go (Pharo and Squeak fit well into the browser interface because they usually don't come as native Windows, but as Windows-in-Windows - and here simply Windows-in-browser).
CouchDB: The Definitive Guide. Oh, the CouchDB book by O'Reilly is also available as an online book and even in German. Certainly interesting for one or the other who doesn't feel like wading through English books. The translation is not (yet?) complete, so you will still come across English chapters. But it's a start.
Installable Web Apps - Google Code. There you can find some background information on how to convert web applications into installable web applications or hosted apps. This allows you to use Chrome as a runtime for applications that behave very similarly to regular applications - Amazon's online Kindle is a great example. Programming is done in JavaScript, which is much less intimidating than it was a few years ago. As Packaged Apps, you can also do everything that Chrome Extensions can do (and can go beyond the scope of regular web applications).
Privacy Fail: How Facebook Steals Your Friends Phone Numbers | Kurt von Moos.com. Ouch. Facebook sends the iPhone address book to their servers and stores all contacts there when you activate the function "sync profile pictures with address book" - according to the description of the function, the user believes that only the pictures from Facebook are added to the contacts they have locally, but in reality the entire address book is facebookized. Without the user being aware at that moment what is happening.
Kindle Cloud Reader. Nice story - under Chrome it is installed as a Chrome application with offline storage of the books. This is very practical on Linux, because there is no native reader there. And on the iPad it should also work similarly - I have to check that out too (although there is also the normal Kindle Reader there).
mutle/vim.safariextension - GitHub. Another VI keyboard control for Safari, which I actually quite like - but unfortunately it doesn't have link navigation, so you apparently still have to use the mouse. Too bad, because that's actually something like the killer feature - on the other hand, both this one and vimlike are open source, maybe I should just sit down and combine the two (or build a patch for one of the two that adds the missing features).
vimlike-onsafari - Safari keybind changes like VIM. - Google Project Hosting. Hmm, thinly documented, but the essentials seem to work. So the navigation keys and following links. And unlike previous tests, it no longer gets confused when styling the link hints.
Update on UIKit lighthouse platform. Hmm, I didn't notice that - QT also has support for UIKit, the iOS framework, in 4.8. So you can build iOS apps based on QT. This raises the question of how this works with PyQt or PySide - Apple doesn't like interpreted code only when it is loaded afterwards. The app itself can be written with it, though.
Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions 30. What are Local Snapshots?. Not a bad idea what Apple came up with. The first rumors about local snapshots sounded rather strange, but what has become of it - automatic snapshots for on the go, when you don't have your backup drive plugged in, are quite practical. Not for real recovery in the sense of a disk crash, but for the usual "oops, I'm stupid, I didn't want to delete that yet" situations. However, I would like it if there were a GUI in Time Machine for this, where you can turn local snapshots on and off - yes, I know, you can do it from the command line, but I'm not an Apple user for nothing, I want pretty graphical buttons to press!
When you look around at phone tariffs, you can indeed get minor to major fits of rage. The telephony components are now somewhat okay, the SMS rates are still ridiculous to absurd - there are no more expensive ways to send your data in 140-character packages. But okay, that's nothing new. But when you look at the data rates, you really start screaming.
The reason why I subjected myself to this madness: SMS from T-Mobile that I had used up my full-speed volume and now for the rest of the month I have to live with 64kbit downstream and 16kbit upstream. Checked in my iPhone under data usage: 1.1G downstream and 430 MB upstream. Unfortunately, but in a period of almost one year. How I suddenly should have used 200 MB in the first 8 days of this month was a mystery to me until I remembered that the providers conveniently bill started 100kbit chunks. So that the full-speed volume is used up as quickly as possible. Thanks, push notifications.
Looking at the three big ones (T-Mobile, Vodafone, and O2), you first see nice overviews with prices. And of course flat. Today everything is flat. But flat was probably only the mind of the marketing guy who came up with this nonsense. Although the volume is actually unlimited, but of course only in the fine print it says from which volume you are reduced to ridiculous 64kbit - and that is only the download, the upload is then reduced to 16kbit, almost unusable.
To O2's credit: if you click on the right paths, you get a relatively clear view of the throttling stage there. So not under the mobile tariffs with the smartphone specification, but via the internet and then surfing with a mobile phone. Why one is clear and the other is not, only the web designers know. Or the price hiders. Possibly, the other providers also have an emergency page where you get a reasonable overview, but at some point, I didn't feel like looking anymore.
The fine print is incidentally only with the Telekom referenced with numbers in the tariff - and already displayed unfolded at the bottom. With O2 and Vodafone, you first have to think that something could be hidden under "further legal notices" or "further notes," without being pointed out. Why bother, it's insignificant, it's all flat. Oh, and of course pale-gray font and only 10 points high, it shouldn't be too easy to read. For me, this borders on fraud.
Apart from the hidden placement: the normally affordable tariffs (sorry, but tariffs over 50 euros a month are simply an audacity but not an offer) have ridiculous 300 MB volume until the shutdown. Oh, sorry, Vodafone only has 200 MB ...
Then there are the funny ideas about contract bindings. Yes, I can understand the 2-year binding if you take a contract with a device - after all, the device has to be financed over it and I don't expect gifts. But the then casual extension by one year if you don't cancel at least 3 months before the end of the forced period, that is really cheeky.
Especially when you look at the budget brands of the big providers: Base, Fonic, Congstar. Strangely enough, you can see directly on the tariff overview which variants of throttling there are. In addition, there are several variants. And there are significantly clearer prices. Only strange - they run over the networks of the mothers. I don't have to mention that the budget brands have more moderate contract bindings, do I? Of course, the budget brands are not good either - there is not even the claim anymore that you would get service (which the big ones don't really deliver either - those are rather acts of desperation than service).
It's strange that the same service can be offered at drastically different prices, and the budget brand still makes a profit. Could this have something to do with the fact that the mother brand simply sells things at moon prices? Oh, and it is of course pure coincidence that they all have almost the same prices in their respective segments. I mean, this is a well-regulated market, there are certainly no agreements or anything like that. How can one even think of that ...
The enemy of mobile internet, the stumbling block of the development of this sector? The absurd ideas of mobile phone providers. It's time for alternative radio technologies that can be provided by providers outside this inbred bunch of purse snatchers. But hoping for that is probably also absurd, the telecommunications lobby will take care that the market is not accidentally opened.
PS: yes, I know that Base is not Vodafone's budget brand but E+'s. Or uses the E+ network. Does Vodafone even have something like a budget brand?
Map Tunneling Tool. Cool - you can enter your location on a map and it will show you the antipodal point on the other side of the Earth. We are pretty much in the South Pacific, southeast of New Zealand. Spain has it good, they come out directly in New Zealand.
Sankra Software: Disable OS X Lion Resume per application. Since Apple implemented this feature a bit "aggressively" (it is also activated for apps that do not explicitly say "turn this on, I can handle it"), it can sometimes be quite annoying - some apps then perform both their own "new program start" action and then the system's action afterwards - for example, some editors open two windows on the same file if both the editor and the OSX say "Restore Window". Therefore, it is not impractical to be able to disable this feature per application. Although, of course, this will be forgotten at the latest when the application is updated, and you wonder why the windows no longer open automatically because the application has switched from its own control to system control. But hey, software is the last remaining adventure ...
Modula-3 Resource Page. Continuing with niche languages - Modula-3 has always fascinated me because it was a pragmatic and practical extension of the Wirthian language world and at the same time integrated a lot of interesting language constructs into a familiar imperative language system. And development continues to this day, the download even has binary packages for Darwin (the Unix foundation of OSX), although currently only 32bit (and I guess no bridge to Objective-C and thus to the Cocoa APIs).
Magpie Guide: Welcome. Since we're on the topic of niche languages: Magpie is yet another language for the JVM. This one looks a bit like a mix of Scala and Ruby, but the concepts are quite different. Particularly nice is multidispatch - generic functions that choose the appropriate version based on all their parameters and their types. Reminds me a bit of CLOS in that aspect. Additionally, there are full closures and functions, and blocks are first-class objects in the system. Additionally, there is an approach to metaprogramming with quotations, although I still consider the Lisp approach unbeaten (simply because in Lisp the structures of the parse tree correspond 1:1 to the actual syntax and the lists as internal representation, while in languages with Algol-like syntax the whole thing is much more indirect). What I personally also find pleasant: Magpie is very text-oriented, not so heavily reliant on special characters. It reads more pleasantly to me.
Today the street festival finally had some luck with the weather, after it rained all day yesterday. It was very crowded again.
"As far as legal knowledge is concerned, Interior Minister Friedrich – after all a lawyer – still has a lot of catching up to do." via Internet-Law » Friedrich uns graut vor Dir.
the "useless" language. Quite a crazy language - something like Forth, but all commands and syntax consist of single characters. There are also quite strange restrictions for function definitions (maximum 64 characters per line and only one if or while or similar in a function). Particularly fascinating is the U->C compiler written in U. The developer of the language has written an entire book about programming in U. But beware: the author's color choice is an acquired taste ...