sametmax/0bin. Interesting approach to circumvent the problems of pastebin hosting. With pastebin-like sites, the problem is that users post all kinds of content and the server operator can quickly be held liable. 0bin tries to shift this problem so that the operator cannot know what is in the pastebins, as they are stored encrypted and the encryption is done by the client via JavaScript. This works, of course, only if the judges also accept that the server operator cannot know what is going on - and not, for example, argue that he should then just install different pastebin software where he can know and still hold him responsible. Certainly an interesting approach, especially the idea of putting the key for the encryption in the hash of the URL (i.e., the part after the # in the address) and thus having a functioning URL, but still not providing the server with the key (since the hash of a URL is only used by the client and not communicated to the server).
Linkblog - 27.3.2012 - 21.5.2012
Panasonic 12-35mm f/2.8 X lens officially announced!. Ok, the lens looks really good now - I think I might be tempted. Because a brighter zoom with a bit more wide-angle could be very good for the GH1.
Embedding Python in Objective-C: Part 2. An interesting project that embeds Python in Objective-C projects and allows direct connections between Python and Objective-C code via automatically generated bridge modules. I might check this out at some point, I still have a game project that could benefit from this.
jodal/pykka. An actor library for Python, based on threads and optionally on GEvent. Looks quite good and could be quite practical for communicating processes if the actor model fits. Perhaps one could also use something like this as a basis to run my Linda Tuplespace in a distributed manner.
Jython 2.7 alpha1 released!. Wow, it took a long time, but now at least the three major alternative Python runtimes are all at 2.7 (IronPython, PyPy and now Jython). I hope that Jython 2.7 has gained significantly in performance, because otherwise it is far behind in comparison - my last tests were rather depressing (2-3 times slower than CPython).
cocoa-python - Port of Objective-C runtime to Python using ctypes. It's actually all in the link text. Interesting because the author uses it to write a port of Pyglet that does not require PyOBJC and would therefore be completely python-only source code.
R17 - flexible, scalable, relational data mining language. Looks quite interesting, basically something like a cross between AWK and SQL. The result isn't really pretty, but it seems practical - especially because you can easily use multiple processors, or even multiple machines (implicit parallelization), and thus also quite easily evaluate large amounts of data with ad-hoc queries. Because there is a simple format for passing data to further steps, it can also be easily adapted to new data sources without first running a lengthy export step there.
The Schemaverse. And while we're on the topic of strange projects: someone has programmed an MMO that runs entirely within PostgreSQL. So using pgSQL as the language. Something like a multi-user battleships game. It just runs in a database. And is controlled via SQL.
sipML5 - The worlds first open source HTML5 client. Oh - someone wrote a SIP client in JavaScript that runs entirely in the browser. It is based on WebRTC, a standard for real-time communication on the web.
Plumbum: Shell Combinators and More — Plumbum: Shell Combinators. Looks interesting and much more thought out than some alternatives I've looked at (and much more expanded than shutil+glob).
Exclusive premiere: The full Leica X2 review – Ming Thein | Photographer. Certainly, the X2 (especially together with the electronic viewfinder) will not run even approximately in the category "cheap", but somehow it sounds like a really good update to the X1. And compared to the, in my opinion, completely absurd overpriced M9-M, the X2 is at least roughly within the range of "could consider it if you have some money left over".
Pocket-sized fuel cell charges phones for two weeks - Mobile Phones - CNET - CNET Asia. If this thing becomes a reality, I want one. Finally, mobile power that can be stored and then activated anywhere outdoors when needed. Plus, a battery charger connected via USB for the camera battery (or check if you can charge directly in the camera via USB) and the job is done.
Clojure/core — Reducers - A Library and Model for Collection Processing. Why a new library? Because the standard functions are interesting and meaningful, but sometimes you need a stricter implementation that avoids intermediate temporary collections and provides direct out-of-the-box support for parallelization. Without much fuss and bother, just a different namespace.
A free book (that will also be available as dead tree or electronic wood from O'Reilly) about backbone.js. Backbone.js provides an MVC-inspired structure for JavaScript programming (where you can argue a lot about what exactly is the View and the Controller and whether it is "pure" MVC - or you just program and ignore the theoretical ballast).
PyPy Status Blog: STM update: back to threads?. The discussion and development continue to progress - and the discussion is returning to the old thread model, only expanded with a function to define atomic blocks of code. And all of this in such a way that the code would even run under normal CPython (though then of course without the advantages of STM, since there is no STM in CPython, there is still the GIL) but still makes sense to use multicore architectures. I like it more and more and I hope it will soon land in the PyPy Main Branch.
tuupola/jquery_lazyload. This might be interesting for displaying large amounts of images because it allows you to delay the loading of images until the user actually scrolls to them. The page is pre-built with placeholder images, and only the images are later sent over the line. However, I think Infinite Scroll is the better solution, as it allows not only images but also general content to be added - and it also works smoothly with Masonry so that these content blocks can also be visually well distributed.
dirq 1.1.2 documentation. Hey, I was recently looking for something like this - a queue based on the file system. The advantage: simplest persistence and good "debugging" by simply poking around in the file system. The disadvantage is that queues often need to perform some operations atomically - and this can become a bit tricky if you want to get it right. This is a port of an already existing Perl module, so the chances that most of the childhood diseases are out are quite high. The API, in any case, looks nicely simple. Definitely worth a closer look.
Hotcanvas: Realtime coding. I'm a fan of Processing-like environments, this one comes quite close, but runs as an interactive environment and looks quite nice. Ok, there are probably quite a few of these things by now, but still, I like this kind of stuff.
Bilderarchiv | rfc1437. My image archive was revised over the weekend and now comes with funny JavaScript gadgets for automatic tiling. Not really groundbreaking, but more interesting than the previous, rather boring format. jQuery Masonry is the main part of the work. Nice little JavaScript library. The most interesting part is probably the heuristic in my little plugin, with which I bring the images into portrait/landscape/square formats, so that the whole thing does not become too boring due to an excess of landscape formats. Unfortunately, there are still gaps in the image stream, where Masonry could actually become a bit smarter (and e.g. pull up small squares). Or I have to sit down again with the heuristic and make sure that the chances of gaps are reduced.
ownCloud.org | Your Cloud, Your Data, Your Way!. I will definitely keep an eye on this, because once the OSX desktop client and the iOS client are available, this will be a clear alternative to Google Drive, Dropbox, or SkyDrive for me. After all, I already have my own server (classic Ehschonda solution), and I would only use Dropbox for integrating various iOS applications and then integrate their content into my own server and bring it to my desktops. Because no matter how good a cloud provider is (and so far Dropbox is one of the clearly better ones), my own server gives me more trust in the end.
RubyMotion - Ruby for iOS. Since MacRuby already interests me, this sounds good too - directly programming for iOS in Ruby. However, there is no free version, which somewhat limits the trying out. Additionally, there is nothing in an IDE, it's pure command line. Which can be an advantage, but for debugging, for example, it's a real disadvantage.
Mojolicious - Perl real-time web framework. You had one problem, you took Perl. Now you have two problems and a bunch of sharp brackets to cut yourself on. Jokes aside: nice to see that Perl is not only still active, but also actively modern in the web environment. After all, Perl once set the standard in that area.
RavenDB - 2nd generation document database. Bookmarked because I want to check it out in the not-too-distant future. Sounds quite interesting from the features and might be useful for one or two projects that I am currently thinking about.
JSIL - .NET to JavaScript compiler. No idea if I already had this, but it's one of those crazy projects you can safely link twice. The actual .NET IL code is translated - so you can run programs in the browser that were not really intended for it. For example, part of XNA is supposed to run, so you can run games in the browser that are actually for the XBox.
Amazon.com: Send to Kindle for Mac. Could be quite nice to easily "print" the various online documentations to the Kindle and read them comfortably there. In addition, they might also end up on the iPhone for on the go ...
the { buckblogs :here }: Maze Generation: Ellers Algorithm. Maze algorithms have fascinated me since my youth, but this one was new to me. It generates perfect mazes line by line, without trackback or recursion, with a runtime linearly dependent on the size of the maze. Pretty brilliant stuff.
jQuery Masonry. Alternative to BlocksIt. Worth checking out. Even pushes blocks more aggressively, rearranges the order if necessary.
BlocksIt.js - Dynamic Grid Layout jQuery Plugin. That's what it says. Sounds quite interesting, I have to check it out.
Kronuz/SublimeCodeIntel. CodeIntel is a port of the Komodo Code Intelligence to SublimeText2. With this, you can almost refer to ST2 as an IDE.
Cubism.js. So many projects, so little time. But just a quick blog note, if I ever have to deal with time series visualization in the near future, this looks really good for that.
jlongster/dcpu-lisp. Why this is cool? Well, Notch is working on a new game - something like Elite with integrated hacking. And the hacking happens on a 16-bit CPU that is based on a 6502. And now all kinds of people are building code for this CPU. Among other things, here is a Lisp compiler.
Subrepository - Mercurial. Quite embarrassing, what one keeps discovering and realizing that one should have been using it for a long time, but doesn't. Especially the tip with the "shallow main repository" sounds good, that could simplify some of the organizations of my projects. So far, I have rejected subrepositories precisely because of the fixed connection of the large main project with the library projects, since I use completely different external branches (i.e., repositories) for different environments and, for example, do not want to push my dependencies from the maintenance environment into production. With a shallow main repository per environment, on the other hand, I could cleanly separate the relationships and still document at a central point how the dependencies of the various repositories are represented. And yes, all of this here is just a note for myself, if you don't understand it, just ignore it, colorful pictures will definitely come again soon.
645 PRO app for iPhone offers access to lossless camera output but not Raw. Sounds quite interesting, but not so much because of the pseudo-RAW - there won't really be such huge differences - but because of the user interface, which is much closer to a normal camera and also provides a few more pieces of information. According to comments, however, it does drain the battery quite quickly.
ThinkUp: Social Media Insights Platform. I definitely want to check this out - a tool that collects your own social activities (well, they're not always that social) via various APIs and combines them. And in a self-hosted database. Supports Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ and evaluates the data collection according to various criteria. And with Social Timeline there is then a tool for displaying as a timeline, which could be integrated into your own blog. This could even be a much more pleasant variant than importing all posts from social networks into your own blog.
Google+ Importer for WordPress » Sutherland Boswell. I'm currently considering whether I might want to integrate this - it automatically imports public Google+ posts. I would probably need to adjust something to turn the posts into asides, but that shouldn't be too complicated. Maybe the tool can already do that directly. The question is whether it makes sense to bring the posts from Google+ over - especially with the image posts, I already get them later and mirror them in my media data. But the text-only posts would also end up here, which might be quite useful. I'll have to think about it a few more times.
Mozilla Archive Format, with MHT and Faithful Save :: Add-ons für Firefox. Asked about something like this today, my knowledge was a bit outdated, so I googled again and this seems to be the most interesting extension to save complete pages (including images, styles, and JS). Practical, for example, if you want to put together a dummy for presentations.
pycounters. I need to check this out, it allows you to easily integrate counters into a project that provide data on things like function calls or similar - basically something like the Windows Performance Counters, but for Python projects.
Parliament: Fractions want to curtail speaking rights in the Bundestag. When will the pack finally be monitored by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution? Because this is a first-class attack on the Basic Law. There are no fractions, no party discipline, and no restrictions on speaking rights for members of parliament with their own opinions in the Basic Law - there are only free members of parliament. And then the prolethicians in Berlin are still surprised about political disillusionment. Hurray for Lammert, who at least tries to resist this circus of dumbfounding in this regard.
Virtualenv-clone 0.2.2 : Python Package Index. Not yet tried, but according to the description it copies virtualenv environments and fixes import paths, egg files, .pth contents and scripts. And it should work more completely than relocatable virtualenvs.
Introducing Pivot.js. Hmm, definitely worth a look, Pivot looks quite nice, simple API and interesting possibilities. I have a project at work that could really use some reporting features. And offloading to the client is sometimes a quite good idea.
abique/tmfs. Poorly blogged, could be helpful someday - a user-space filesystem for Time Machine backups on Linux.
Open Letter to the Content Industry. The Schockwellenreiter recommends it and I can only agree: it's worth reading. This is a truly well-rounded rant against these pathetic "content producers" who let themselves be used in open letters to make degrading tirades against and spread lies about the online community.
The unbearable finality of pixel space. I tried the linked archiving tool for Flickr once and it works really well. I can even forgive the PHP for that. I have also occasionally pushed Flickr images into this blog (the "Neulich auf Flickr" posts), but the advantage of this backup script is that the structure and even the Flickr access rights are preserved. Unfortunately, albums and sets are not yet backed up, only the photostream. And the layout is very spartan. But maybe this would be a candidate to play with Bootstrap 2.0 and spice up the whole thing a bit.
flatiron/plates. An interesting JavaScript templating engine that takes a slightly different approach than many others - there is no separate template language, only HTML and JavaScript. Any logic is in the JavaScript and any structure is in the HTML and both are quite strongly separated. Instead of a template language, there are functions for precisely specifying which elements in the HTML should be changed how.
RQ: Documentation. Hmm, python-job-queue based on Redis with a rather simple interface. Could be an interesting alternative to Celery.
Kenko extensions tube with full electronic control!. Woopdidoo. Ok, extension tubes are not the optimum in terms of performance, but still quite interesting, as they offer a relatively simple and usually cost-effective way to improve macro capabilities.
iphone - What happens to JavaScript code after app is compiled using Titanium Mobile - Stack Overflow. I was also interested in the question, so I blogmarked it here. Quite interesting what happens there, it goes much further than what PhoneGap does, for example.
Titanium Desktop – Node.js Prototype « Appcelerator Developer Center. Titanium is already on the list of things to test because, alongside PhoneGap, it is one of the ways to turn JS+HTML code into apps and desktop applications. And here, one of the developers shows how to integrate a node server into the desktop. This would also be quite interesting, although it probably won't work with iOS and Android (since there you are forced to use the JS engine provided by the system in the browser widget if you want to load dynamic code from outside).
Embedding and running Node.js within a Firefox XUL extension. Impressive what you can do with Firefox and its infrastructure. Theoretically, you could also modify this extension so that it runs in a single-site browser, which then directly opens the homepage of the embedded server, allowing you to build completely autonomous desktop applications in JavaScript (and for those wondering why I'm collecting all these JS-on-desktop things: with the help of Phonegap and some glue, you could not only build apps for iOS and Android, but also desktop applications with the same code).
NodObjC. I'm not sure if I really want this, but with this library you can bridge ObjC frameworks with JavaScript. This could be interesting, for example, in the context of PhoneGap, if you need to access iOS native APIs that are not yet provided by PhoneGap (though you need Node.js as a basis, I don't know if that already works on iOS).