POV-Tree - another tree generator. Free as in free beer. Also in Java. More focused on pure trees with fixed presets, not as algorithmically oriented as the previous one.
Archive 28.10.2008 - 15.12.2008
SuperColdMilk - tons of ac3d plugins.
Creating sculpties with Albatross3D - Exporter for Second Life Sculptmaps from Albatross3D.
Albatross3D - 3D modeler for Windows, Linux, and BeOS (no Mac). And free as in free beer. Although I'll probably stick with AC3D on the little Asus.
2,700-year-old marijuana found in Chinese tomb - Bill und Ted hatten doch ne Zeitmaschine?
IronClad - allows the use of CPython C extensions under IronPython.
Python-Ogre | High performance gaming and graphics library for Python - is becoming more and more complete and contains everything to build 3D games. I could also take a look at it.
Tutorial: Introduction to the Adobe Flex SDK - nice, especially since I'm still looking for a good introduction for Whirled, and the tutorial covers exactly the interesting part - how to connect media files with events.
VPython - had I already mentioned this? A small module for easy creation and manipulation (and display) of 3D objects.
C o r e P y : Synthetic Programming in Python - Generate machine code from Python for various processors. Potentially interesting for the places where you need maximum control and performance and Psyco and PyRex are not sufficient.
Rands In Repose: Dumbing Down the Cloud - interesting post about what Dropbox gets right. Dropbox is also one of the few cloud services that I really find useful and that will probably replace my iDisk syncing in the long run (simply because it's junk and doesn't work reliably).
Continue: Web Applications in PLT Scheme - and since I can't refer to Scheme without referring to the best Scheme environment of all time, here's a link to a tutorial on programming web applications with PLT Scheme.
JazzScheme - interesting "new" (not really, already 12 years old, but soon to be open source) Scheme environment. Unfortunately only X11 under OSX so far. But the GUI screenshots look very interesting.
Mankind's new best friend? - Rats against landmines and TB!
Molotov Alva - Movies completely created in Second Life - with an interesting story and by someone who knows how to make movies. Already from 2007, but still good (and yes, I once met Molotov Alva inworld).
arRsync - an Rsync GUI for Mac OS X - Title says it all. Addendum: the programmer was probably on drugs. You can't enter ssh servers or anything, only paths. What the hell is rsync good for local paths? The advantage of rsync is especially on network connections ... (oh, and no documentation and no status, unless you sacrifice an email address for "information about the new release")
duplicity - hmm. Could potentially be interesting to back up my server when I shut down the second one next month and instead back up to S3, for example.
IT-Gipfel: Vertrauenswürdige De-Mail von Innenministerium und Telekom - so the company that wants to put a trojan on every PC and the company that decided arbitrarily and unilaterally to tap phones that interest them, want to build a "trusted" email platform together. Did I get that right?
Mercurial hosting — bitbucket.org - might be quite interesting, simply because it offers simple and easy publishing of small projects. Essentially something like Flickr for projects (on Mercurial - for Git there's GitHub, but I just prefer Mercurial)
Modular camera with a 6 x 17 cm giant sensor - wow. That's finally a format!
Respectful Insolence: That'll teach 'em for using an actual valid placebo control - "Alas for poor Dr. Ng, he was tripped up by the vagaries of comparing two different (and almost certainly equal) placebos against each other. Do such studies long enough, and inevitably sometimes the "wrong" placebo will win. Science is like that."
Wikipedia shut down - great, another bunch of people (at least the member of parliament and the judge) who don't understand the internet. Couldn't the judges just burst out laughing when they receive requests to block wikipedia.de and fine the applicant for mocking the court?
I'm actually Knuth's homeboy on Flickr - damn, I'm jealous of such a photo.
ISS advises against using Trend Micro's ServerProtect - Security vulnerabilities in security software. Great job!
Microsoft explains seven-year patch delay - seven years. For a glaring hole. Great. Proprietary software is so damn secure because only professionals work on it and security is of course the highest priority. (and anyone who finds sarcasm in that sentence can keep it)
The world’s most super-designed data center – fit for a James Bond villain - now that's a data center after my own heart!
To WebKit or not to WebKit within your iPhone app? - interesting article about WebKit on the iPhone in your own applications.
Deutsche Bank sues Lehman Brothers - will Ackermann still sound so arrogant? But it's probably just peanuts anyway ...
The flying car - let's be honest: when I look at typical road behavior, I really don't want flying cars to be built someday ...
Train drivers jump from freight train - "Because the brakes of their freight train failed, two train drivers jumped from the moving train on Monday evening (10.11.08) in Frechen. The train only came to a stop several kilometers later when it crashed into a warehouse in Cologne." - please what?
The Qualitative Decline of a Provider
There was once a provider that sold root servers in Germany. And the services were good. And the support was good. And oh wonder: you got competent contacts. And hey, you got quick responses. And another thing: when you described problem situations, the contact person on the other side actually understood what it was about. And everything was good.
And then the provider grew. And grew. And somehow the brain didn't grow with it.
Fast-forward to yesterday: I received an email. According to this email, one of my servers had attacked another server in the network. As evidence, a log/dump was attached, which showed this attack traffic. My IP and that of another computer were visible, as well as the protocol: FTP data. So far, so good. If my machine has any guests, I find it good when I am told about it.
First act: contact via ticket and request console - because the network connections are disconnected, there is only a console connection via the web. Oh great: the provider has selected software that doesn't work with proxies - direct access to ports only works when the firewall does NAT (which is less common with corporate firewalls). And with that, it's already 6 hours of forced downtime because there is no other, alternative way - to access a machine with a pure text console setup, I have to use a web console based on Java. Ok, even intelligent companies make dumb decisions from time to time, I thought...
Second act: then at home, the console was started directly. And in between, I pondered the addresses - I know this address, don't I? Hmm, let's see. And correctly: it is in one of my scripts. And it is called once a day, and then shovels some gigabytes of data to this target machine. Why? Well, the target server is the backup server accessible via FTP for data backups ... I should have been suspicious that the original email didn't mention this. Intelligent providers know their own machines. But ok, such a faux pas can happen, take it with humor, what can you do. It's just the internet.
Third act: support message sent - quickly before 18:00, although support is listed until 22:45, but well. No reaction after an hour. Hmm. Called - "oh, yes, I saw the ticket, I'll pass it on again". Two more hours. Then the statement "the traffic was not a backup, it was an attack". What?
Third act drags on for some time, because the support employee simply refuses to accept this clarification. What is unusual about the traffic, he does not want or cannot say. I wouldn't have logged in at all. Strange only that in my research on my machine and the backup server the files have exactly the times specified and thus clearly a login and transfer took place. I can finally only get the data to the FTP server, not conjure it up. Ok, the data is large - but I have 50 GB of backup space, I should be able to fill that. And the volume is around 14-15 GB. Yes, that's a lot.
But no, the support employee insists that I make a written statement. I have to comment on what nonsense they have made at the provider. Doesn't go well. Bad mood.
Fourth act: the next morning first a meeting, then immediately the fax was made and faxed. Waited, worked, occasionally checked the mailbox. Nothing. After 6 hours no reaction. Support ticket expanded with comment, also no reaction. Downtime of the server meanwhile far over 24 hours - because of a misinterpretation on the part of the provider. But he doesn't need to bother about it. Harassment as standard treatment for customers who dare to object?
Too bad that I can no longer recommend Hetzner as a server provider. A pity, after so many years, such a blatant mistake, I really didn't expect that.
(Possible cause: simply the data volume and a misguided intrusion detection system, or maybe the one file that is larger than 2 GB? Who knows - the provider has no interest in clarification, and on my side I can't analyze it, especially not with a machine disconnected from the network).
Update: the fax did not arrive (well, happens sometimes, fax is primitive Stone Age). Kindly, I was allowed to send a photo of the fax, because the next time I am near Stone Age technology is Friday again. And oh wonder - a few minutes after sending the photo comes "the server is back online" - but what surprises me now: in my fax was exactly what I already said in the ticket. And of course there is no explanation, no explanation and also no "Sorry, our mistake". Nothing else. Scratching my head and annoyance over 30 hours of downtime.
CLPython - an implementation of Python in Common Lisp - I think I've already mentioned this, but good things are worth repeating. And they seem to have been busy - they're already very close to a Python 2.5 implementation. I really should play with this a bit, as it combines two of my favorite languages and could help solve one of the central CL problems: the rather meager selection of good (meaning currently maintained and combinable) libraries. But whether I can get it running on Allegro CL 3.01 on my EeePC is rather questionable. I fear that in the last 5 major releases, quite a bit has happened ...
CouchDBX Revival - CouchDB as an application under OS X (Leopard only).
Nagare - from the description it sounds a bit like Uncommon Web and Seaside (the two leading web frameworks for Common Lisp and Smalltalk). And it uses Stackless - in my opinion, Guido should have included Stackless on the roadmap for Python 3000.
The Picodore 64 - a Commodore 64 PDA - from a modified toy (there were two joysticks and obviously a racing game with built-in C64).
Fabric - interesting small tool for simplified deployment of software on clusters or distributed systems.
"Secure Identity = Unique Identity" - "He is convinced that citizens' informational self-determination can be better protected by new technologies, so one should not always see such systems as a threat scenario." - could it be because the protection of informational self-determination has no place at all in their entire presentation? Why is it repeatedly claimed without any basis that something protects informational self-determination, when there is no evidence or concrete example for this? A bit more care in lying would really be appropriate.
WPA allegedly crackable in less than 15 minutes - Holy Cow!
SPD rebels make Ypsilanti fail - because, Koch as Prime Minister is so much better than being tolerated by the Left. After the nonsense in Schleswig-Holstein, I actually thought the SPD would be rudimentarily capable of learning from such debacles, but the stupidity and ignorance of some prolethicians are simply boundless. Class strategy, this way you can keep spouting nonsense and always just pretend to be seriously interested in taking responsibility someday. And meanwhile, a documented right-winger can laugh into his corrupt fist.
Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple? - 11,000 years old. Wow.
NASA - MESSENGER Teleconference: More 'Hidden' Territory on Mercury Revealed - I am a big fan of these robotic and orbital missions. And the Mercury flybys already bring a lot of interesting images.
Otto the octopus wrecks havoc - Hermit crabs juggle and spit out lamps. New Olympic discipline and Otto gets the gold medal.
pysmell - Name completion for Python code as a small external tool that can be integrated into vim. Sounds quite interesting.
Tom Otterness - Making the Sculpture - my favorite artist for metal sculptures tells how his sculptures come to life.
JSSpeccy: A ZX Spectrum emulator in Javascript - ok, we can make the Internet, I've seen it all now ...
Richter: Wahlcomputer insecure - "Several judges criticized on Tuesday during the oral hearing of the court in Karlsruhe that with the current systems neither the correct storage of the votes cast nor their counting can be controlled." - what is so hard to understand that Prolethikers still argue against it?
Zed on the banking crisis - "My problem with any bailout is that I’m not getting anything in return. I mean, I’d trade my tax money for bailing out a few banks if maybe I saw some CEOs get put to the guillotine. I am actually not joking about that. I think the quickest way to get the bailout approved is to drag the leadership of every bank in the country into a large stadium and begin beheading them on national TV. Then threaten to stop the beheadings if every American doesn’t donate fifteen-thousand dollars by Monday." - I love his style!
