Linkblog - 21.10.2010 - 19.11.2010

pyfpdf provides PDF generation without dependencies on other packages. However, it says "ported from PHP" up front. But if that doesn't deter you and you want to produce simple PDF outputs, you might not be so badly served with it.

Processing.js v1.0 Released and it is still a really nice toy. Now it is almost on par with the big Processing in terms of features.

Is My Blog Working? This is a question you ask yourself quite often. And the answer is not always as simple as just looking at it - for example, what about caching? This tool provides some information, but there is even more at RedBot and Cacheability. Especially for cache information, the last two are better than the first link.

With certainty: Calls for stricter laws | tagesschau.de - already absurd that federal ministers from the Union and FDP clearly oppose state ministers and their populist saber-rattling. Even more absurd that even SPD ministers are calling for something that has been rejected by the Federal Constitutional Court. And as the basis for all this, only claims without evidence and without verifiability. With this, the terrorists have already won, and these prole feeders are making themselves into errand boys. Can we please have them monitored by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution now? Their anti-constitutional stance is clearly documented ...

WP Super Cache is highly recommended if you use several plugins like I do (and possibly access external services like the Tumblr plugin). Okay, there is a risk that a broken status from Tumblr might be cached in the sidebar, but this will resolve itself after a while. However, the runtime of a fully loaded WordPress is indeed a bit sluggish.

offline_messages for OpenSim here in a PHP version. I should take a look at it, actually I should be able to build something in Python from it that I can then use.

I've now activated the wp-Typography plugin on my blog for testing. While I haven't seen many good hyphenation algorithms for German before, this one might work reasonably well. It certainly makes sense to prevent widows and orphans. And in the first test, the text already looks very pleasant.

Number magic at retirement age: Trick 67 - taz.de - because the intention behind it is simply to cut pensions. None of the prolethicians in Berlin really believe that workers can last until 67. That was never the goal, not even for Münte and the other liars of the SPD.

The Front-end Editor is a very useful plugin for Wordpress. You can directly edit many elements in the front end with a double click. Since I usually only notice typos and formatting errors when I look at my blog from the front end, I can edit directly there without going through the admin. It's much faster for me.

The Icon Search Engine is probably known to everyone except me, but since I needed an icon again, it was quite practical. I always find it quite strange when icons that are supposedly free suddenly cost money on some sites, so a site with a clear indication of the license and documented origin is quite nice.

F# in MonoDevelop and cross-platform web sites & screencasts | Blog | TomasP.Net contains a lot of information about F# on Mono for Linux and OSX.

JQTreeTable does not use DataTables, but it is still quite interesting as it provides a Finder-like table representation for hierarchical data.

'Super-secret' debugger discovered in AMD CPUs • The Register. Wow. Hardware Backdoor.

'Space Quest' Lands on the iPad — Courtesy of Safari | Touch Arcade - eat shit, Adobe. Who still wants Flash?.

jQuery lightBox plugin is very nice. It doesn't use Prototype or Scriptaculous, but simply jQuery - which is very helpful if a site already uses jQuery. And with the jQuery LightBox Plugin for Wordpress you can easily use it for displaying images in your own blog.

Twenty Ten Weaver is a more flexible child theme for Twenty Ten. However, it overloads some of the PHP files from Twenty Ten, so you depend on whether the developer continues to maintain it. But it can customize a lot of things on its own, which I have currently done with my own theme.

Dynamic Widgets | Qurl is a very practical WordPress plugin that enables dynamic rules for widgets. With this, for example, the "latest articles" can be suppressed on the homepage (since they are all there anyway and that would be redundant) and, for example, my Tumblr photos can also be suppressed on gallery pages (so they don't distract from the actual image content - and, for example, black and white photos don't suddenly become colorful just because of Tumblr).

kbhomes's TextCaptchaBreaker shows why text CAPTCHAs are basically bananas. They are often too easy to crack and especially automated - and this code shows a very nice implementation of it. My old blog still has text CAPTCHAs and gets along quite well with them, but that's probably due to the low traffic - in the last few weeks, more and more spam comments have been posted there and I'm not sure if they weren't placed by bots.

Word This - Google Chrome Extension Gallery is very helpful, as Chrome is so stupidly designed that bookmarklets run in the same security context as the current website. This means you have to allow a website to run JavaScript if you want to use a bookmarklet like Wordpress's "Press This". With this extension, blogging moves to its own icon and out of the bookmarks bar.

JLOUIS Ramblings: On Erlang, State and Crashes explains well what the "in case of error, crash" mantra of Erlang is really about - namely the construction of an application as layers of supervisor processes and error handlers. The essential part is the structure of the application - just crashing is not enough, the architecture must also be prepared for it.

atomo - very interesting language, very flexible and compact. I stumbled upon it because someone built a Mongrel2 Adapter for it. What is interesting about atomo for me is that it is yet another new language with prototype-based object orientation. Something that is tried far too rarely (other languages in this area are Slate, Self, Io, Newtonscript and JavaScript).

Also interesting: atomo is embedded in Haskell and thus provides a dynamic scripting language for Haskell environments and of course a good integration into the Haskell world. There was something similar with one of the first Perl6 prototypes, which was also built in Haskell (Pugs).

WordPress › WPtouch « WordPress Plugins - no idea if I want something like that. Could be quite interesting though, after all I have such a touch device myself. On the other hand, Mobile Safari also displays normal websites well. Moreover, there is still a problem: the nginx cache knows nothing about it and would potentially cache the wrong pages. In any case, I'm not sure that these mobile extensions get along well with caches.

Unionsminister: Sitzblockierer sollen Polizei-Einsatz bezahlen | tagesschau.de - which would also help to control the annoying demonstrators, because hey, it's simple: demonstrators in general or even strikers cause costs and then you can get them from them and then people will think twice about whether they go out on the street!

The erosion of democracy has always worked quite well through the wallet.

Introducing Thirty Ten, my guide to creating a Twenty Ten Child Theme | aaron.jorb.inaaron.jorb.in. I need to take a closer look at this to customize my site a bit more without having to do everything myself. Update: it works. My current layout is set up as a child theme for Twenty Ten.

WordPress › WordPress Nginx proxy cache integrator « WordPress Plugins. I use it on my box to speed up my WordPress. WordPress itself runs in a KVM with a standard stack and an Nginx in front as a cache. Does it hold up?

rfc1437 | Content-type: matter-transport/sentient-life-form - Strong trends towards "throw away with archive and start over" with slight options for "throw away, static archive and maybe shovel a part into the new platform if I find the time". The link shows where I'm currently playing around. Wordpress with a few small plugins and an nginx caching front.

Questions and Answers about the Health Reform | tagesschau.de - I find it quite astonishing that the politicians in Berlin still have to engage in "hard negotiations" to decide how much the contributors can be fleeced. The fact that the negotiations no longer discuss savings on doctors' fees, hospital costs, and drug prices is, however, not surprising. The pretended saber-rattling by the Federal Health Administrator is just a show for the media.

Kilim - stumbled upon this while browsing the Orc documentation, a microthread library for Java.

Orc Language - haven't read any of this yet, but it looks quite interesting. The core is Cor, a functional language without side effects, and on top of that Orc, which is used to orchestrate services in distributed systems. All of this in a quite appealing, compact syntax on the JVM. Could definitely take a look at it as an alternative to Scala and Clojure, with Java being integrated as an external service, thus allowing quite simple construction of distributed systems where parts are implemented in Java. Reminds me in many points strongly of the ideas of Erlang (generally assume a distributed system, but still keep parts local for performance reasons), but I find the syntax much more pleasant. And with the JVM a much more widespread VM than Erlang's BEAM.

Twisted Orchestration Language in Launchpad - and someone has ported the Orc combinators to Python, using Twisted. However, I personally find Twisted rather disgusting to program, but to each their own ...

Fat Cat Software - iPhoto Library Manager - since I was stupid enough to create a photo book on a different Mac than usual (well, the usual one was always busy), I guess I have to check this out to see if I can merge my books onto a single machine. It's a shame that Apple doesn't offer any merge function in iPhoto. With a notebook and a desktop, you quickly end up with separate libraries. If Lightroom supported book printing, I would have left iPhoto long ago. It's all a bit unsatisfactory.

Interactive Fabrication » Beautiful Modeler - wow, that is exceptionally cool.

The V4Z80P – A Z80 Based Laptop @ Retroleum - someone not only builds their own computer with their own system, but it's also a laptop. Or something similar, at least.

Tornado Web Server Documentation - I should really take a closer look at Tornado. I just built a web service for a side project using web.py, which was surprisingly simple (and dirty). Tornado is based on a very similar concept, throws in Django-like templates, and also offers a good asynchronous server and support for asynchronous sockets and HTTP requests. Could be a good alternative for web services that require few resources.

Oracle cooks up free and premium JVMs - and Oracle begins to try to cash in on Java. If it works, Java could soon be in a similar situation to .NET: the free implementations lag behind the scope of the commercial ones. What this means for alternative languages on the JVM remains to be seen - but it will certainly cause some problems. However, the JVM world is large enough and equipped with sufficient alternatives, and Oracle is not Microsoft. Therefore, this could all just be a storm in a teacup and at most affect the typical Oracle victims.

Kunsthalle Bielefeld: Westphalian Expressionism - I think I actually have a reason to go to Bielefeld.

Mediathek for Mac OS X - I should check that out. After all, archiving is now the viewers' responsibility thanks to stupid private broadcasters (and politicians who have made themselves their errand boys).

Panasonic DMC-GF2 Preview: 1. Introduction: Digital Photography Review - I hate you, Panasonic. Now I want the cute little GF2+14mm Kit. Damn it. First Apple with the MacBook Air and now Panasonic, everyone just wants my money.

Eventlet Networking Library - I need to take a closer look at this, the monkey-patching of standard libraries to trivially use them in an asynchronous environment looks very interesting.

Links

rfc1437 | Content-type: matter-transport/sentient-life-form - Strong trends towards "throw away with archive and start from scratch" with slight options for "throw away, static archive and maybe shovel a part into the new platform if I find the time". The link shows where I'm currently playing around. Wordpress with a few small plugins and an nginx caching front.

Bitrot

I've been hit by this as well. My old blog software probably won't be able to survive unchanged. Old Python version (2.3), old (very old) Django (0.91), old PsycoPG driver (1.0), old PostgreSQL (7.4) and all of this on an old Debian (a wild mix of various versions with backports and custom programs and several failed upgrade attempts). Argh.

Well, I'm still torn between "rewrite" and "throw away". The latter has the charm that I won't have to carry all that junk around anymore. And honestly, nothing particularly interesting ever happened on my blog anyway. Maybe I can set up a wget mirror beforehand and dump the whole thing somewhere statically, as an archive.

Rewriting naturally has a lot of charm as well, but converting thousands of old entries (over 4000 articles and over 4000 links, plus almost 200 images) from 8 years (first entry on 3.11.2002) of blogging doesn't sound like fun. And presumably, thousands of the links are outdated and obsolete anyway.

No idea what I'll do, maybe I'll try to bring the Metaeule to the new box first, where I only have the problem that PHP4 is no longer in the Ubuntu repository for 10.04 and I therefore have to force the owl onto PHP5 (and that with code based on Wordpress 1.5 - I must really be crazy).

Or I try to install an ancient Debian with the packages used at the time - the box doesn't run in the front anyway, but behind other machines, so the hacking risk is rather low at this point. The Metaeule naturally also has a few thousand posts in the archive (only 8291, which is almost nothing), but if I can keep the old software running (some security patches have been applied over time, so it can actually continue to tinker along), I don't necessarily have to tackle it.

Somehow, the internet was also such a really bad idea ...

Twisted Orchestration Language in Launchpad - and someone has ported the Orc combinators to Python, using Twisted. However, I personally find Twisted rather disgusting to program, but if you like ...

Kilim - stumbled upon this while browsing the Orc documentation, a microthread library for Java.

Orc Language - haven't read anything about it yet, but it looks quite interesting. The core is Cor, a functional language without side effects, and Orc, which is built on top of it, is used for orchestrating services in distributed systems. The whole thing in a quite appealing, compact syntax on the JVM. One could certainly take a look at it as an alternative to Scala and Clojure, Java is integrated as an external service, which makes it quite easy to build distributed systems in which parts are implemented in Java. It reminds me in many points strongly of the ideas of Erlang (generally assume a distributed system, but still keep parts local for performance reasons), but I find the syntax much more pleasant. And with the JVM a much more widespread VM than Erlang's BEAM.

Interactive Fabrication » Beautiful Modeler - wow, that's incredibly cool.

Tornado Web Server Documentation - I really need to take a closer look at Tornado. For a side project, I've built a web service with web.py, which was shockingly simple (and dirty). Tornado is based on a very similar concept, throws Django-like templates into the mix and offers a good asynchronous server and support for asynchronous sockets and http requests right away. Could be a good alternative for web services that need few resources.

Fat Cat Software - iPhoto Library Manager - since I was stupid enough to make a photobook on a different Mac than usual (well, the usual one was always occupied), I'll probably have to take a look at this to see if I can merge my books onto a single machine. It's quite annoying that Apple doesn't offer any merge function in iPhoto. With a notebook and a desktop, you quickly end up with separate libraries. If Lightroom supported book printing, I would have been gone from iPhoto a long time ago. Everything is somehow not quite satisfying.

The V4Z80P – A Z80 Based Laptop @ Retroleum - here someone not only builds his own computer with his own system, it's also a laptop. Or something similar anyway.

Oracle cooks up free and premium JVMs - and Oracle begins to try to cash in on Java. If it works, Java could soon be in a similar situation as .NET: the free implementations lag behind the scope of the commercial ones. What this means for alternative languages on the JVM remains to be seen - but it will certainly cause some problems. However, the JVM world is large enough and equipped with enough alternatives, and Oracle is not Microsoft. Therefore, this could all just be a storm in a teacup and only affect the typical Oracle victims.

Kunsthalle Bielefeld: Der Westfälische Expressionismus - I think I actually have a reason to drive to Bielefeld.

Mediathek für Mac OS X - I need to check this out. After all, archiving is now the viewers' job thanks to stupid private broadcasters (and politicians who have made themselves their errand boys).

Panasonic DMC-GF2 Preview: 1. Introduction: Digital Photography Review - I hate you, Panasonic. Now I want the cute little GF2+14mm kit. Menno. First Apple with the MacBook Air and now Panasonic, everyone just wants my money.

Eventlet Networking Library - I need to take a closer look at this, the monkey-patching of standard libraries to make them trivial to use in an asynchronous environment looks very interesting.

Immateriblog.de - Matthias Spielkamp über Immaterialgüter in der digitalen Welt - and against the nonsensical Verdi paper on copyright and the net. Because at Verdi, there are once again blockheads who are mentally stuck in the last century. And that a union adopts the argumentation of company bosses, whose only business model seems to be moral blackmail, is absolutely embarrassing in my opinion.

don’t look » columnManager - interesting jQuery plugin that enables efficient column show/hide for tables. If this could be combined with the DataTable plugin, it would be a very practical thing.

John Resig - Simple JavaScript Inheritance - a very nice pattern to simulate class-based inheritance with JavaScript (for the situations where this structure makes more sense than the normal prototype system of JavaScript).

jQuery column cell selector - bramstein.com - another jQuery plugin, this one provides a practical pseudo-selector for columns in a table to then make changes with JavaScript.

Inform 7 - meanwhile, Inform has become a language similar to English for creating interactive fiction. And it has received a GUI for the Mac with which you can analyze and test the various story paths. Somehow impressive what has all emerged, just for text adventures.

Magic Launch - interesting little tool with which you can configure the application that comes up for a file when you double-click. Especially interesting if you want to open some files in different directories with different editors (e.g. because one project works with Netbeans and the Netbeans Python plugin, another one normally with TextWrangler and a third one with VIM for Unix compatibility). Or if you simply have a file extension that is used by different programs.

Coffee on the Keyboard » Bleach, HTML sanitizer and auto-linker - Library from Mozilla that offers white-list based HTML cleaning. The Mozilla people usually know what they are doing, so this library might actually be useful.

robhudson's django-debug-toolbar at master - GitHub - ok, this tool is officially hugo-approved. Simply brilliant, it provides exactly the right amount of information for Django development and doesn't interfere with existing layouts (at least it worked well for me in experiments).

Oxymoron CSS Framework - I can really understand Zed. CSS drives me crazy occasionally too.

postgres 9 streaming replication and django balancer - Santana may not yet run with Django 1.2, but the balancer for database access combined with PostgreSQL replication sounds like a nice method to scale up Django systems when normal means with one database are no longer sufficient. Maybe I should set up a test installation.