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Michael Reichmann from "Luminous Landscape" writes about the Contax N-Digital test that never was and draws his conclusions. And as much as it pains me, I have to agree with him on this.
Artikel - 3.11.2002 - 19.11.2002
Threads considered harmfull
Threads considered harmfull - a fairly controversial discussion on kuro5hin.org about the dangers of thread programming. In my opinion, a whole range of problems are addressed that arise with threads in programs, and that often the same problems can be solved more simply and efficiently in other ways.
I discovered an example myself not long ago, the Medusa Webserver. It works completely without threading and processes, instead using input dispatching. In doing so, it even implements multiple virtually parallel running servers in a simple and efficient event loop. Medusa is also the basis for Zope. There, however, multiple processes are pre-started and centrally managed. In the Python Community Server, on the other hand, Medusa is contained in its pure form.
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Spammer out of Conviction - Aaaaaaargh. Could someone please knock some sense into this guy? With a really big spoon? This can't possibly be true ...
Found at heise online news.
3GB Compact Flash
3GB Compact Flash - ok, still quite expensive, but it seems CF is moving forward. For today's digital cameras with huge megapixel counts, exactly the right thing when it reaches affordable price ranges. For my 1.5 megapixel camera, rather total overkill.
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I hate broken mail servers and mailfilters going haywire. Today bmf played up on me and trashed some mail. Of course there was bound to be some interesting content in there, but I don't know, since I can't read them. fsck. So bmf is out again. But how to get rid of spam? At least bmf filtered enough of the shit out so I didn't have to wade through them all by hand. Now I have to set up some redirection to only filter stuff that's probably spam to protect important mails. Damn, that's bound to be work.
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Here's an example of what comes out of my new scanner and Photoshop 7. The original is a Velvia slide from the Rollei 6008. I mainly post-processed the colors, as after brightening it (to bring out the detail in the tree on the right) the sky had become very washed out. In the original, it's really as vibrant as it appears in this image. I also had to do quite a bit of spot removal, since this is my test slide that has accumulated quite a bit of dust over time. Still, the result turned out pretty nice.
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The ''Scheibenwischer'' comes to an end - a shame, one of the last truly great figures of political cabaret is retiring. Ok, he's not the youngest anymore, but unfortunately there's a lack of new talent in the political sphere. Too bad.
Found at tagesschau im Internet.
The Commercialization of Knowledge
The Commercialization of Knowledge - yeah great, rosy prospects. Whoever creates something is screwed. Whoever uses something is screwed. Only those who sell and exploit the parts that others also thought of get to skim off the fat profits. That's probably what many managers imagine the future to be like ...
And incidentally, you can also strip the annoying competitor Open Source of its breeding ground (the information). This idea stinks.
Found on heise online news.
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Jutta is currently creating a list of various Contax cameras with descriptions and details on http://www.contax-users.de/kameras.xml (to the extent she can based on brochures or manuals). If you have a Contax camera, you can contribute material there.
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A timeline of Michael Jackson's face - definitely recommended for anyone thinking about having their appearance surgically enhanced. Wow, the man looks like a living corpse now...
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Rau urges parties to be honest - well, Brother Johannes, I'm afraid that's in vain. People who have been lying and cheating for decades won't suddenly become honest because of a call for integrity...
And what else besides blocking politics should come from the opposition? Some are busy explaining why a Bavarian as top candidate is a good idea despite electoral losses, and others are trying to pin all the blame on Möllemann.
Found at tagesschau on the internet.
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Anybody think radio acts slower and slower as time goes on? My last post took 60 seconds to get a reply from the server. What's the point of having the server on the desktop if it takes longer than a typical remote server to answer? [ Mathieu's Radio Weblog]
Since I noticed exactly that today, I followed the tip and compacted my database. To do this, simply go to the Radio menu, into the Utilities submenu, and call Compact Databases. After confirming, Radio rattled away for a while and my databases shrank from 24 MB to 3.3 MB. After that it's faster. You should run this point regularly (once or twice a week?) so that Radio doesn't get too slow. To be safe, you should make copies of the database files beforehand, in case something goes wrong during compression and Radio still runs.
Found at Garth Kidd: Deadly Bloody Serious about Radio UserLand.
Möllemann under money laundering suspicion
Möllemann under money laundering suspicion - and so Möllemann's downward spiral continues. You could almost start placing bets on whether he'll make it or not. I'm betting he won't. Who wants to take the other side?
Found at tagesschau im Internet.
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Bundestag passes higher pension contributions - why do you even vote for that bunch if they can't come up with anything better than reaching into the same people's pockets the way the others would too? The "Social" part in the SPD's name is by now just as much of a farce as the "Christian" in CDU/CSU. Well, there are supposedly still people who believe the FDP is liberal and the Greens care about environmental protection. Politics stinks. In the end, those who have already been skimming money off the top can set even more aside and we pay the bill. All lies. Found at tagesschau on the internet.
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Stupid spammers. Three days ago I planted spam trap addresses in HTML comments on my pages here at muensterland.org. Very obvious spam trap address and in an HTML comment. These addresses are only on the web, nowhere else. Never used and nothing that could be connected through combination with other address parts. And what happens today? The first spammers are spamming the addresses. Ugh.
So if you really want to know why you're getting spam on your addresses: check out which websites your email address appears on. The chances that that's the reason are quite high. Even if it only shows up as author information in an HTML comment...
Well, websites on muensterland.org are spam-safe, another argument for a site here :-)
I'm doing an interesting project to backup a Radio installation into the cloud.
I'm doing an interesting project to backup a Radio installation into the cloud. - Yeah! Go for it!
That's exactly what we need. Data backup of client systems on the server in a form that can be synchronized and kept consistent across multiple clients. Then I can finally manage my weblog with Radio from the office, and most importantly, you can help users when a disaster strikes them. A feature that simplifies life for users.
Of course, the system operator would then need to provide disk space and backup to tape, but usually a server operator is much better equipped to do this than the average user, who often doesn't even have adequate backup facilities for their home system.
Found at Scripting News.
Macintosh Common Lisp 5.0b
Macintosh Common Lisp 5.0b - despite its hefty price and what I consider to be the rather questionable way that recent subscribers were strung along with updates to classic versions for as long as possible until even the last of the free updates ran out and thus everyone has to pay the hefty prices, it's still one of the best Common Lisp implementations I know of.
Well, I'll refrain from the upgrade anyway and continue to rely on Open MCL - a free implementation of Common Lisp that is based on an older MCL version. What Gary Byers is doing there is really impressive and eventually there will be a GUI there too.
Found at VersionTracker.com - Mac OS X.
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Does that "Are you on?" advertising from eon annoy you too? I find it just completely ridiculous. And they have no idea about web design either – on Chimera (a Mozilla-based OS X browser) you just see an empty red page.
I mean, sure, some web designers assume certain browser features, but we're talking about a damn advertising campaign here! Who's dumb enough to set up an advertising campaign so that someone gets absolutely no information just because they suppress advertising popups on the web? You can't be that stupid...
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ObStupidProgrammers: start/stop scripts that check for existence of a pid file but not whether the contained pid actually is still running or just left over from a crash ...
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A bit of exploration with Radio Userland and its translation capabilities uncovered quite a bit of information. Of course, nothing is really properly documented — you have to search and dig. Google is definitely your friend... First, you need to set up a database as described at http://frontier.userland.com/localizationGuestDatabases. All the translation work happens in this database. If it's located directly in the tools subfolder of Radio Userland, it will be activated with every startup. Second, you need to create your own new property. To do this, jump to user.prefs using Apple-J (Ctrl-J on Windows). There, create a new scalar of type String (Table menu, then New Scalar and select String). The name is language. This string is set to the value german and then activates the German translation from the guest database in the web interface. If you want documentation for the previous paragraph, you'll only find it indirectly. A search on http://radio.userland.com/ for localization at least revealed that the function radio.string.getLocalizedString takes the language version into account (or rather, the message — it was already older — stated that you need to patch this function so that it takes it into account). If you look at the function (simply jump to radio.string.getLocalizedString using Apple-J or Ctrl-J on Windows), you can see that it takes user.prefs.language into account. For hackers, Radio is a paradise because the entire script source code is there and you can just start hacking. You can rummage through everything and investigate. Stick your nose in everywhere and change just about anything. For end users, however, something as essential as activating a subsequently installed translation database should really be made a bit easier |;-)|.
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A Shallow Introduction to the K Programming Language - If you're in the spirit of the Pragmatic Programmers and want to learn a new programming language again, and are willing to take on something truly new and unusual, this is the right place. K can be considered a mixture of Mumps (the K-Tree reminds me strongly of it), APL, J, and functional languages. Wild, unreadable, extraordinary. Unfortunately, there is no native Mac OS-X version available, only Linux, Solaris, and Windows. Found at kuro5hin.org.
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The Cluetrain
Manifest - as a communications enthusiast, I can only say one thing about it: ACK.
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For those who find the other version somewhat stiff in its wording, here's a somewhat freer but more fluently written version of the Cluetrain Manifesto. It's also worth checking out the main website, as there's plenty more material there (comments, etc.). And yes, the manifesto hits the mark. Even if many company executives, marketing directors, and business school graduates won't like it.
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Book recommendation: The Pragmatic Programmer. A very interesting book that deals with the philosophy of programming, but pursues an approach that deviates significantly from the classical method. You could consider it a pragmatic approach to Extreme Programming. Many ideas have resonated with my own way of working - you can tell the authors are actually programmers who have been in the job for years. Many ideas can also be directly transferred to open-source projects, even if commercial interests are not pursued there. It's less about tools and languages (although the Pragmatic Programmers recommend on their website - and I can only reinforce this recommendation - learning a new programming language each year), but much more about the mindset behind successful and intellectually demanding software development. Software development should be fun again and lead to a successful conclusion. As a counterpoint, you could see "The Mythical Man-Month" by Frederick P. Brooks. In this book it becomes clear why, for example, there's no point in accelerating a delayed project by adding more staff. And many other misconceptions of classical project management are illustrated using IBM's OS/360 project. While OS/360 is only of historical interest today, the problems in large projects are the same as they were back then.
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Corruption suspicions against Möllemann continue to mount - wow, Möllemann really wants to outdo Kohl and catch up to Strauss. Ok, Hunzinger as a source is about as reliable as Möllemann was as economics minister, but still, this is slowly shaping up to be a real political disaster for Möllemann and maybe the prosecution authorities will finally get one of the players after all.
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Clement and Merz at Odds over Hartz Concept. "In the debate over labor market reform, an initial discussion between Economics Minister Clement and Union economic expert Merz brought no compromise. While Clement offered a special session of the Bundestag for further consultation, Merz called an agreement unlikely." Clear. First they make loud noises saying they want to work constructively, but when it comes to constructive work they just build walls. What else would you expect from the opposition - so far they've never shown any form of constructive work competence. Actually, they haven't shown competence anywhere except in getting 30 million to Liechtenstein ... (why wasn't Kanther held accountable for that anyway? So much for coming to terms with the past ...) Found at tagesschau online.
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People taking their notebook out of the network to go on a journey and not only taking their notebook but their cabling adapter and terminator for the 10base2 network with them should expect network troubles. And please don't blame them on the firewall ...
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German bugfix for Photoshop 7 ready - could have happened faster. After all, the English fix has been out for several weeks ...
Found at heise online news.
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Free content a "birth defect of the Internet"?. The T-Online boss apparently has some comprehension difficulties. I consider it a personal insult to all those who built the Internet in the first place and made it what it is, when their achievement is called a "birth defect" — as if it were some kind of disability, deficiency, or deficit. These commercial rip-off artists are now profiting from things we built, making the network interesting, and contributing our own accomplishments. What Mr. Holtrop doesn't understand: people are the Internet, not commercial megacorporations that can't think beyond their stock dividends.
What's reassuring: when Mr. Holtrop gets fired for incompetence and T-Online has to realign its strategy again because it turns out that those great paid contents weren't so great after all (which wouldn't be the first time for T-Online), the free content and personal commitment will still be there.
People, boycott this nonsense, show those trying to sell off the Internet that they can't count on your cooperation!
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Möllemann Millions Apparently from Liechtenstein - well, it looks like things are really starting to heat up for Möllemann now. The whole thing is slowly taking on almost CDU proportions. But if you look at how the CDU handled their donation scandal - none of the main players were excluded, they all continued on. Let's hope the FDP shows a bit more courage there and really shows Möllemann the door. Möllemann will have to come up with something to wriggle his way out of this one.
Found on tagesschau on the Internet.
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Anyone who wants the current television program for Germany (at least the main channels that interest me, a list is below) as an RSS feed can simply add the following feed:
http://kenny.gws-online.de/~gb/tvnow.xml
This feed provides the currently running and directly following broadcast for the main channels that are important to me. I find it quite practical, especially in MacReporter with this plugin - that way you're guaranteed not to miss your favorite show.
I have the following channels included in the feed: ARD, ZDF, WDR, NDR, BR, MDR, Arte, 3SAT, RTL, RTL II, Super RTL, SAT-1, Kabel-1, Pro-7, Vox. I don't include all the sports stuff and music channels, sorry, I just never watch them.
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Music Industry: "Copy-Protected CDs Will Be Accepted" - laughable. Strangely enough, I only know people who accept copy protection that doesn't work. As soon as it actually works and prevents MP3 copies from being made, for example, the CD goes back to the store. Because unlike the music industry's nonsense and in line with general opinion, there is indeed a right to make a copy for your own purposes. Even if it's just because it's simply practical when the computer acts as a jukebox. Well, it's become increasingly apparent lately that the music industry is losing touch with reality...
Found at heise online news.
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EU Council and Commission remain inactive on Echelon - great. People, use more GPG! By the way, there's a very nice solution for MacOS X users with GPG Tools - definitely worth checking out, absolutely recommended for Mail.app users. For internet connections, solutions like Freenet are then worth considering to distribute content in a way that's resistant to censorship and surveillance.
Found at heise online news.
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Setting up a virtual host with Apache for a Python Community Server with Manila-style hostnames (one host for each server) is quite easy:
set up your domain to have a wildcard A record for the domain of the server
set up your apache to have a virtual host with a "ServerAlias *.doma.in" in it
add a ProxyPass rule for the new server where you rewrite / to become http://pycs.server.doma.in:5445/~~vhost~~/%{HTTP_HOST}/
enable the rewriting rules in rewrite.conf for PyCs so it recognizes those addresses
That's it. Run it. Have fun.
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Today I received my new scanner, a Minolta Scan Multi II. Not the absolute latest model, but I got it relatively cheaply through a clearance sale. Finally I can scan medium format film properly, with all the comfort you'd expect from a high-end film scanner. And it's a true multi-format scanner—it can even scan 16mm film, for example. Now I just need to find out whether the film masks for the Multi Pro also fit in the Multi II, then I'll be able to scan my Minox films without major issues :-)
I'm curious to see how it performs in practice. Initial tests are already quite usable, though the scanner is in my opinion somewhat slower than my Scan Elite (though in that one medium format film only fits if I fold it beforehand). It doesn't have ICE like the Elite, but it does have GEM and ROC. Well, with 35mm film I can choose which one I want to use.
Another thing that stands out is the different technology for the film holders—much more stable and better designed for fixing. It's also nice that the 35mm film holder can position the entire strip, so you can scan 5 or 6 frames directly in one go from the strip. Saves a lot of manual handling, even if it then takes quite a while.
The serviceability of the device also seems to be better—for example, the lamp can be replaced without much fuss. With the Elite you have to take the device apart for that.
I'm looking forward to the first real-world uses of the device. I think I'll have to take the Rollei out more often in the coming time ...
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Does anyone understand the new railway pricing? I just find it completely confusing. Are they now trying to hide cheap prices behind confusing rules so that nobody can find them?
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Well, with something like here I can only think of one thing: "Live long and prosper" :-)
Found at Telepolis News.
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Squid overdid it today when all those rules from yesterday didn't work and squid again went on caching files. So now it is replaced by apache. And guess what? It works as expected ...
Chimera
Chimera is now available in the new 0.6.0 version. A very nice and fast browser based on Mozilla but with a Cocoa interface. Every Mac OS X user should take a look at it. Especially with large forms (e.g. the news list in Radio Userland), it handles things significantly faster than other browsers. However, the text edit field is a bit slow; the cursor lags a bit during input. Strange, but they'll probably get that under control too.
Found at VersionTracker.com - Mac OS X.
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Compile Nightly, Run Faster - well. Nice idea, but for me it's a clear indication that it's high time today's programmers learned a bit more about their craft. After all, the idea of putting bytecode compilation into "the evening hours" is pretty silly - I still prefer to keep compilation using tried and tested methods on a normal developer machine.
Just-in-Time compilers are a nice thing for languages that build on bytecode and where the target platform isn't clear beforehand, so compilation is better done on the user's machine at the time of use. But if you're already planning a batch compile run on the server machine (which can only compile for that server machine anyway, so it addresses quite different issues than a JIT), then for heaven's sake do it where it belongs, namely on the developer's machine.
Strange. Java really does spoil one's sense of programming. And something like this on advogato - well, at least the author didn't know the "locate" command either ...
Found on Advogato.
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What no one from Münster could imagine seems to be happening after all. Following the now beginning investigations against Jürgen Möllemann and the discussion about party expulsion proceedings, the political comeback kid might finally experience a landing from which he doesn't bounce back. Well, maybe he still has an extra parachute in his luggage. Oh no, don't say that ...
Found at tagesschau im Internet.
Found at tagesschau im Internet.
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On photo.net is an (English) review of the Hasselblad H1 by Michael Reichmann (operator of Luminous Landscape). Michael's tests are always quite refreshing because, unlike many other reviewers, he doesn't focus on features and specifications, but instead engages more with proper photography. Real user reports, basically.
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Squid annoyed me. Again. I had the experience that Squid pings servers even though it shouldn't do. Ok, annoying, but you can cope with that (although it produces timeouts from time to time).
I can live with squid sending out requests two or more times even though there really isn't a need to - looks like it's internal GET processing get's fucked up when some timeout on browser-side occurs.
But what really did it for me was it's stupid HEAD handling. It caches HEAD requests. Yeah, stupid idea, they were originally invented for bandwidth saving requests. They are supposed to go out and check the server, and not be cached, because if the document didn't change the client won't need to fetch it, but it needs to know wether it changed at all.
Ok, set up an acl rule for HEAD methods and set it no_cache (actually what braindead idiot invented the "no cache deny ACL" syntax with ACL describing pages that should actually not be cached? This is arse backwards two times!). Should work. Doesn't work. If there was a GET or POST request before, a HEAD will deliver data from the cache, even though it was set no cache. Stupid. Bad. Ugly.
So now I had to come up with an additional rule to suppress only those GET requests that may lead to bad HEAD requests (luckily this was possible because I was having Problems with AmphetaDesk and it's updates, and AmphetaDesk fills in the Browser name). So now I don't cache HEAD requests and don't cache results for AmphetaDesk. Does it work? Not really, if there are still documents in the cache of squid, it delivers HEAD from those documents, regardless of configuration. Damn.
So I had to remove them. That's what the PURGE method is for, right? Wrong. PURGE only purges Documents, not cached headers. So you first have to GET the document, than to PURGE it, to remove it's cached HEAD requests. Oh-my-god.
And now I still have some TCP MEM HIT in the log, although it shouldn't cache. Looks like it handles memory caching different than disc caching. Oh, and this is reproduceable with 2.2 and 2.4. Damn. Sucker.
Couldn't live be made actually easier for sysadmins? Please?
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Here we go. Now that the community server is running, we need an initial weblog as well. Let's see who else comes along, but for now the test phase has begun. Many new features are planned, especially provisions for "real" server names have already been made. Those who want can get an address like hugo.muensterland.org. However, this will likely become a paid feature, while free weblogs remain limited to the user number.
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Muensterland.org works with the Python Community Server. Therefore, it makes sense to write something about it here. Python Community Server
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Further websites on the topic of photography by me can be found here:
- My photography blog at f-2.org
- B&W gallery with images from the Leica M6 and the Contax-T
- all kinds of images, digipics, Rollei, Polaroid (no longer available)
- Images with the Contax RTS III
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On F-2 - photography with open eyes there is an article about my small tool for focal length conversion. Practical for comparing focal lengths between different formats.
Found at F-2 - photography with open eyes.
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On Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) there is a review of the Minolta DImage 7Hi. I find this camera very interesting because it displays SLR-typical speed. Nothing is more annoying than cameras that take longer to process an image than the photographer ...