Linkblog - 27.1.2010 - 20.2.2010

5 Animals That Can Do Amazing Things ... With Their Penises | Cracked.com - what evolution comes up with to ensure the survival of a species ...

ZODB - a native object database for Python — ZODB v3.9.0 documentation - because I always forget: ZODB is also available standalone, without the Zope monster on top. And with direct access from Python, ZODB offers some very interesting features. Still one of the most developed real object databases for Python (but unfortunately still no general query language for the database to handle object sets more efficiently).

Foto verboten - we can still hope that the British way will not prevail in the EU. However, the EU has already adopted some completely stupid ideas in the past. For amateur photographers, who usually do not have their photos registered with a recognized agency (we can assume that photo agencies will continue to ensure that their own rights are protected), this would be quite catastrophic.

The dark side of Dubai - a somewhat different story about Dubai. If you strip away all the ostentatious buildings, you're left with a dictatorship based on wage slavery and deception. And now the place belongs to Abu Dhabi.

django-piston - I should also take a closer look at this, as it is supposed to facilitate the building of Web APIs with Django. And some of my company projects could benefit from it.

Fuck you, Google « Fugitivus - why Google really screwed up with Buzz. This "automatically follow all regular contacts" is pretty much the dumbest idea ever, especially with their idea of opt-out-not-possible. I've been saying this for a while, just because they have "don't be evil" as a motto doesn't mean they also have "don't be stupid". It's hard to get much dumber than the introduction of Buzz.

Murky - a nice small GUI client for Mercurial for OS X. It already looks quite useful, you can easily navigate through the history of a project, display differences, etc. - of course, all of this can also be done with the shell, but sometimes it's just simpler to work with a GUI.

Tomboy : Simple note taking - because I looked it up again: it now also works on OS X. However, it is still extremely buggy (scrolling artifacts, no standard key bindings, you have to blindly fiddle with the bottom right corner to resize the window, the handle is missing). It is based on rather fresh libraries that are not yet really up to the best Mac-UI standard. But to access notes from Linux Tomboy and sync via Dropbox, it is sufficient.

Front Range Pythoneering: Realizing Jython 2.5 - it's written further down there. Jython has a GIL as a funny Easter egg in the future module (which makes future language features available as "Beta"). So no GIL, just a joke. I would have been quite surprised otherwise.

Interactive Python GIL Visualization [dabeaz] - very interesting analysis of the effects of the GIL in multithreaded Python projects. Could Jython (no GIL, threading based on Java standards) be a help here?

maven-jython-plugin - Maven Jython Plugin - hmm, the Jython support for Maven is quite outdated - the artifact only targets 2.2.1 and the plugin only goes up to 2.2.1. It seems like an update is urgently needed.

Protests against G8: Whistling concert for Ludwig Spaenle - "While students do have the right to freedom of expression and demonstration, this should happen during non-teaching hours." - exactly, protest where no one cares and no one notices. That's how politicians imagine democracy.

Security Researchers: Paying with Credit Card and PIN Insecure - Golem.de - but apparently paying with EC cards is absolutely secure.

Bill Clementson's Blog: Elephant and Rucksack - Comparison of two CL Open Source Prevalence packages - because I'm also interested in Common Lisp again at the moment. Elephant and Rucksack are probably the more interesting persistence solutions for Common Lisp right now. Unfortunately, Rucksack is not asdf-install-compatible, so a lot of manual work is required.

Presenting django-devserver, a better runserver. - interesting idea, an extension of runserver that logs SQL statements and provides cache information. This could be quite interesting for my current Django project, as I sometimes produce somewhat more complex SQL there. (And yes, I'm tinkering with Django again, maybe something publishable will come out of it - but it's primarily a work project).

Jesus, Kirk and Vinny - about stuff like that.

Schneier on Security: All Subversive Organizations Now Must Register in South Carolina - it's reassuring that, with all the nonsense going on here, the USA can still up the ante. Could all subversive elements in South Carolina please report? It only costs $5 ...

Twitpic / Astro_Soichi - twitter from space ... (the photographer is sitting in the ISS)

Persistence.js: An Asynchronous Javascript ORM for HTML5/Gears « I am Zef - very interesting, an Object-Relational-Mapper in JavaScript that maps objects to HTML5 databases. This could be very interesting for offline iPhone web applications, because raw database programming (raw database, not naked programmer) is not always fun.

Report: Post plans DE-Mail for 20 cents - when I read such nonsense, I really wonder what kind of weed the clowns at Post and 1&1 are smoking. The weed can't be legal if it produces such absurd delusions. Quite apart from the fact that "secure online communication" operated by such shops is a farce anyway.

Simtec Electronics Entropy Key - if you ever need real randomness.

Faster or Lazier Pagination - interesting approach, simply not to determine the amount of sentences, but instead to assume a number of pages and update this when accessing later pages. A bit similar to some websites that only offer a section of the page list as navigation - for this you don't need to know how many pages there really are. Google also cheats by limiting the number of pages to a maximum. For large amounts of data with slow count(*) certainly very useful and possibly you could also combine this with cached maximum page numbers for different queries, so that the next time the assumption about the amount is already more precise.

Please read: Security Issue on AMO « Mozilla Add-ons Blog - it was only a matter of time before the first Firefox extensions with trojans were distributed and slipped through Mozilla's review. Extensions are exactly that - code snippets that run in the same security context as Firefox itself. I believe that in the long run, we need a completely different architecture with much stronger sandboxing for applications and extensions if we want to get this under control.

Using ctags in Vim - amix.dk - ctags enables navigation in larger sources and entire projects based on the definition structure. Under Ubuntu, you can easily install the taglist plugin with vim-addons and then use it extensively. Pretty genius.

Vim 7: Turning completion on - amix.dk - after having dealt with IDEs for a while, but somehow I have to realize I am not really IDE-compatible, VIM can also do symbol completion - and also for Python. Quite easy to set up and quite practical for accessing system functions.

collision detection: Molecular secrets of the "iron-plated snail" - iron-plated snails that live in hydrothermal vents 3 kilometers below the ocean surface. Steampunk snails?

mongoengine - Python API for accessing MongoDB with a structure similar to Django ORM.

BookmarksExtension - Mercurial - Mercurial always has surprises in store with its extensions. Bookmarks are nice for quick small maintenance fixes for which you don't want to set up your own repository, but also don't want to use an in-repository branch (because this makes the history overly complex).

Court: E-mail cease and desist letters are admissible - every time a post starts with "The Hamburg Regional Court," I already know there's nonsense again from the technically most incompetent authority among the regional courts. How good that there are still higher instances that don't fall for such nonsense quite as often. The cease and desist lawyers will certainly be pleased that they will soon only need to write to outdated email addresses or wherever - it doesn't matter, it's delivered anyway ...

InfiniDB 1.0.2: Analytical Database Engine for Data Mining - Golem.de - hmm, based on MySQL - I don't know if I should consider this a recommendation or a deterrent. On the other hand, a DB specifically for data mining-like query profiles would sometimes be useful - so I should try it out.

Pollution in 1/8 | RIPE Labs - 1/8 and 27/8 are now normal IP addresses - and there are conflicts with people who specifically used 1/8 for various things because it has been "unallocated" since 1981 ...

Time Capsule Memorial Register - hmm, will I have to list my TimeCapsule there someday? I still have one from the first generation ...

homebrew - GitHub - new package manager for Unix software on OS X. A few interesting approaches, unlike Fink and MacPorts (I usually prefer the latter) it builds on already installed tools and libraries and therefore does not install half the internet if you only need a small tool. However, it currently has almost no support for dependencies, and the selection of packages is still quite narrow. And the result is really just self-compiled tools with a bit of link management around them.

The Definitive Guide to Jython — Jython Book v0.91 documentation - it is what it says on the tin. Refers to Jython 2.5.1 and is also available as (updated with additional content, the open source version of the book is not yet fully updated) dead tree from APress.

CLiki : FirstStepsWithAsdfAndAsdfInstall - since asdf and asdf-install are anything but intuitive, here's a link to a tutorial

HintsForAsdfAndOpenmcl – Clozure CL - and this is how you generally get asdf-install running on Clozure CL.

Alex Payne — On the iPad - "For now, though, I remain disturbed. The future of personal computing that the iPad shows us is both seductive and dystopian. It’s not a future I want to bring into my home."

Apple buys P.A. Semi chip designer, Intel says wha? - because the other day at the Stammtisch the discussion was whether Apple really designed the A4 in the iPad themselves: in 2008 they bought a chip design foundry whose CEO was one of the StrongArm architects ...

AppScale, an OpenSource GAE implementation - an interesting project that mimics the Google App Engine API as an open source solution for self-hosting.

Clozure CL - not linked for the first time, but the current 1.4 distribution has become really nice by now, there are the first IDE tools (Apropos, Listener, Inspector, Editor) in a usable form and the Cocoa framework and the ObjC bridge are also quite mature. Furthermore, it is one of the fastest starting Lisps for the Mac. Offers nice possibilities to play around with OS X APIs.

Eucalyptus Community - and here is a project that emulates the AWS APIs (EC2, S3, and EBS). Interesting if you build AWS-hosted systems and later want to switch to your own systems. The cloud is quite nice, but you should have an exit strategy in case the provider goes under. Doesn't happen? Tell that to the potential customers of the SUN Cloud solution, which is currently being shredded by Oracle ...

Minimum Wage Ruling: Postal Service Provider PIN Wants to Lower Wages | tagesschau.de - great how the entrepreneurs immediately reach into the pockets of their already poorly paid employees. Somehow, the new swimming pool has to be paid for. Tariff-secured 6.50 in the East and 7.50 in the West? That's not security, that's an insult. For such an hourly rate, the entrepreneur assholes wouldn't even say good morning. So much for the social responsibility of entrepreneurs - the next time Merkel talks about it, remind her how willingly employees are ripped off by these supposedly social employers.

Apple - iPad - Technical specifications and accessories for iPad. - two months in which the tech "experts" can write their fingers off.

denkspuren: Factor @ Heilbronn University - someone has used Factor as a programming language in university courses and seems quite impressed. I myself also like Factor - in a way, the Factor-IDE gives off that old Lisp machine vibe and the language is just nicely compact. However, I often notice that when I play around with it, I end up spending a lot of time finding the right abstractions - there are just mountains of included code and while the documentation is good, there's a bit of a lack of tutorials on how to use the code. Best practices and cookbooks would be in demand. Factor is still fun, though.

Mainz: Brüderle no longer a state party congress delegate - funny, the FDP. Accidentally not electing a federal minister as a state delegate anymore. Oops, and he's gone. I believe something like this can really only happen to the FDP.

django-extensions - very useful tools for Django that plug into the manage. For example, a diff for SQL.

Introducing Bibble 5 - don't forget the old acquaintances. Bibble 5 is also available in a Linux version and Bibble 5 also has Asset Management (which LightZone lacks). Major disadvantage of Bibble: they refuse to implement DNG with, in my opinion, rather silly arguments ("we don't want to work with Adobe-converted files and explain why the results look different from those from original RAW"). This leads to cameras with direct DNG output (Ricoh, Leica) not being supported and my converted old formats from the Kodak DCS 520, which has not been available for many years, also not being supported. Quite stupid, because otherwise it is quite close to Lightroom in structure.

kbarni's bibble plugins - Plugins - various plugins for Bibble, some of which are free. If I actually get involved with Bibble, this would certainly also be an important point.

LightZone « lightcrafts - stumbled upon it by chance, nice image editing software for RAW photos. Written in Java, therefore available on all platforms (Windows, MacOS X and Linux). No usable software for managing the image archive included - this has to be realized externally - but images are edited non-destructively, results saved in JPG files (including the stack of applied tools). All in all, it looks quite nice and could be an alternative to LightRoom if I find a usable image archive software for Linux (at least a more usable one than I have so far - unfortunately, Picasa does not support Panasonic-RAW in the Linux version).

Scala 2.8.0 Beta 1 | The Scala Programming Language - Scala is also getting ready for the next release. The extensions and changes sound quite good - and the impact on existing sources seems to be low.