The Kingdom of Loathing. Muahahahaa. Ahem. There's nothing that doesn't exist on the internet. And some things are very, very strange. And very, very old. And not only did I miss this very strange MMORPG (haha, no, seriously!) for ages, I also missed the Kickstarter for their CCG. And it all fits the color scheme of my blog.
Linkblog - 28.8.2013 - 11.3.2014
British intelligence service: #GCHQ #stasi #harassment - Golem.de. Some Stasi employees will probably quietly cry while reading about what the NSA and GCHQ and their friends are up to. Out of envy. It's absurd what undemocratic and partly almost fascist activities the affected intelligence services are pursuing. Where do "Western" democracies actually get their legitimacy in moral discussions with the "Axis of Evil"? It's only good that in Germany, due to our funny hobby intelligence services, we probably belong to the "Axis of the Stupid." Is the NPD or the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution now suing the Federal President for defamation before the Federal Constitutional Court?
OpenBuilds OX CNC Machine | OpenBuilds. Cool - the next step after 3D printers, now the CNC machine for DIY and sharing.
Microsoft opens .NET source code. Ok, it would have been even better if it had been an open source license right away (and with GPL they could have even protected themselves), but hey, this variant is not uncool either - co-licensing of patents for the reference sources is already a good move. And Mono has gained a bit more security.
Cool idea: Decks for every Ravnica Guild. And each deck led by the Guild Leader. Probably not the best decks for the respective guild, but with many on-flavor cards.
Welcome to RISC OS Pi in Documentation. Ok, quite cute - RISC OS now as a system for the Raspberry Pi. On the other hand, it probably has better performance than the old Acorn machines had back then.
The Julia Language. Had I already mentioned that? Doesn't matter, it's worth repeating, especially since there's now also a small compact IDE for Julia.
Here's what I found worth reading over the course of the week and didn't want to link separately, collected and uncommented.
Here's what I found worth reading this week, collected and uncommented:
kachayev/fn.py · GitHub. Various small tools to program more functionally in Python. Interesting for me mainly the persistent data structures, I have come to appreciate these with Clojure.
OpenCamera. Blogged about it because a) it's cool and b) it might interest me to build. 3D printer is coming eventually and Arduino is already here and photography is just so much on my line.
Will You Fight the Hand that Feeds? : Daily MTG : Magic: The Gathering. Hmm, God of Ramp. That sounds like a nice card in a Blinking Rhino (Roon) deck. Specifically because you can downgrade the Goddess back to an enchantment by blinking creatures if someone comes with creature removal. And since she is legendary, she could also fit wonderfully in Captain Sisay - I still have a Full-Art Alter from her that also calls for its own deck ...
Mogis, God of Slaughter by Jarvis Yu. I don't care about Standard - I want him as a finally usable BR General in EDH. So evil. T4 indestructible Enchantment that makes opponents sacrifice their creatures. Oh so evil. Could definitely replace Purphoros as my favorite EDH god.
Port 32764: Cisco confirms backdoor in routers. Ok, they confirm the existence - but where is the explanation, where it comes from? Why is it there and why hasn't Cisco removed it long ago? Does anyone seriously want to tell me that Cisco would never run a port scan on their own routers?
Google will Hausgeräte-Markt erobern. "Hey Google, is my home on fire?"
TeleHash / JSON + UDP + DHT = Freedom. Discovered via git-annex: a distributed messaging technique with interesting properties. Strongly P2P-oriented, strongly focused on encryption, and designed from the outset as middleware rather than primarily as a human-to-human protocol like XMPP. Definitely worth watching what comes out of this.
Self Mallard 4.5.0 released | Self. It's still alive. It's still one of the coolest systems to emerge from Smalltalk - very exotic, very different. From some aspects, systems can still learn today - the implementation of prototypical inheritance in the graphical development environment is really cool and still looks modern even today. The GUI framework itself has already found its way into Squeak some time ago, but outside the Squeak+Self world, hardly anyone knows it. Which is a shame. And the compiler is still one of the better ones in the field of bytecode languages. Especially when you compare how JavaScript presents itself today and what Self has been able to do for ages, you can get quite sad.
Ori File System. Hmm - not a real server, implemented as a real file system, sounds good. However, not available for Windows and therefore only conditionally suitable for my device mix. Might still be worth a look.
Commie Box Magic is another variant with a central library. The rules are further expanded and, in my opinion, more complex than in the Stack. I would probably prefer it. Especially because the simpler mana fixing in the Stack makes gold cards playable - you have the right mana ready in a few rounds, even if you currently don't have any of the colors of the gold card.
The Stack and Back : Daily MTG : Magic: The Gathering - hmm, the format sounds very interesting to do something meaningful with the large card collection. Could also be very fun as a Pauper variant, or in a version with a correspondingly weighted mix by rarity. The deck building is eliminated, which makes it easier to get people involved who are new to MTG - you can simply play what is written on the cards. There is no mana screw, because you can simply take a suitable land card in the draw. The game should become much more reactive as a result - few opportunities to pre-plan, since even if you know the stack, you don't know which card someone else might get. And the advantage: deck imbalance is purely a function of chance. Magic becomes even more similar to a board game. I think this is a project for my collection.
Un peu de math...: Installing and using Sage just got even easier.. - and that's it, just a git pull and a make. Ok, and large amounts of coffee while waiting for the build. Way cool. If you don't know Sage: a mathematics package with similar complexity and focus as Mathematica, which is entirely based on open source projects that are all integrated with Python as the "glue" language.
Hands on Sailfish OS: Intelligent building kit for tinkering and porting - Golem.de. Hmm - not really as open as one might have hoped, but more open than one might have feared. Sounds like a good hacking basis for tinkering projects anyway. Especially the combination of a "real" Linux and an Android environment for apps is pretty cool because it avoids technical isolation.
WordPress › WordPress 3.8 “Parker”. It's been a while since an update that actually appeals to me visually - and I like the new default theme so much that I'm seriously considering switching from my current one (which is still based on 2010, with minor adjustments). I found the 2011/2012/2013 themes rather meh. Especially 2013 was just plain irritating with its color scheme. 2014 will need a few patches, but that mainly refers to the design of gallery posts and asides - although I could almost live with the asides, maybe just tuck them into a sidebar or something. Hmm, let's see if I'll go through with it - the advantage would be that I could get rid of a lot of my own tinkered code and thus have less work with potential new versions that would require adjustments (although my adjustments have proven surprisingly stable, so far I haven't had to touch anything). What I do find really strange, though: the "Press This" bookmarklet has been almost unchanged in design for ages. Could also use some sprucing up!
Plug-ins for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom | Adobe Labs. I should check this out, there are a few situations where this would probably be very helpful (e.g. with Sony and Leica lenses).
Bublcam: 360º Camera Technology for Everyone by Bubl Technology Inc. — Kickstarter. This is quite a funny Kickstarter - and the prototype looks quite decent. Ok, it's basically "just" an action cam, and not even really action - throwing is probably not a good idea - but it's still cool.
Fishing in Modern: Top 64 at Grand Prix Antwerp by Raphael Levy. Very nice report about a good (and especially affordable) Modern Fish Deck. I'm considering getting it - I already have some of the cards, many are not so expensive, and with Modern as an eternal format, you can play it problem-free for more than a year. Moreover, Merfolk is right up my alley - on MTGO I play a Heroic Deck that works with buffs, sometimes also with a Sliver Deck (which works similarly to Merfolk). And in paper, my Standard Deck is a Nivix Cyclops Deck - which also works with buffs, albeit rather temporary ones.
Sony A7R Hands-On. Sounds very good. Only the price ... (and the fact that it's another new system for which you need new optics, which are then made by Zeiss ...)
Google Apps Script — Google Developers. Interesting - JavaScript scripting for Google Apps like GMail or GDocs and so. Doesn't look so uncool and now also has an Eclipse plugin to be able to edit the scripts offline.
Roundcube - Free and Open Source Webmail Software. Thanks to NSA, one starts to think again whether one does not want to handle mail oneself. Ok, one really does not want to, because sorting spam is no fun, but well, if one does want to, this might be a somewhat more modern variant of webmail solutions. In addition, one can integrate it into Owncloud via an app. Although this is really just an iframe integration - so do not expect to be able to use your address book together or something like that. Personally, I will probably stick with pushing my mail through Google and letting the NSA sort my spam. But contacts and calendars could soon end up on my owncloud. Even the file sync has become really good in the latest versions.
Drawing Attention : Daily MTG : Magic: The Gathering. Great article about what card draw in Magic the Gathering actually is and how to deal with it. Why is the game structured the way it is, what influence do the different colors have on card draw and how important are cards compared to other resources such as life points?
Scala Implicits - Not to be feared. Nice slide deck explaining what Scala Implicits are used for and why they make sense. Since Implicits are a feature that is often misunderstood outside the Scala community, it might be well worth taking a look.
lihaoyi/macropy. From my old Lisp days, I'm still a fan of macros - simply because configurable programming languages allow for a significantly higher level of description. Okay, this often comes at the expense of understandability, because a reader not only has to know the language and the libraries, but now also the macros. Nevertheless, for some purposes I still find macros very practical. Whether I would want to integrate them into Python, as this project does, I'm not sure yet - but the approach via the AST is at least interesting.
Tokens zum Ausdrucken is the alternative to making them yourself with the designer - simply select the appropriate tokens and print them. You can even collect several and print them together. Advantage: they are the original tokens in terms of design. Disadvantage: they are the original tokens in terms of design (sometimes you want to be a bit more individual). And only tokens, not any card proxies or homemade creations.
Welcome | Magic Set Editor. Create your own Magic cards - on the one hand ideal for creating tokens, or also for proxies (as long as they are accepted in the game round), or of course also for your own creations that you want to play with (this also only works, of course, if your own game round agrees). Use slightly stiffer, springy cardboard (or original cards - e.g. basic lands) and cut out the prints and glue them on, then put them in the sleeves and you're ready to go.
Magic Plugin for LackeyCCG. Drin was drauf steht - a plugin that allows MTG under LackeyCCG.
LackeyCCG - Play any CCG Online, or make your own. Mac or PC.. Looks interesting, an alternative to Cockatrice and allows playing any CCGs over the Internet, not just MTG. Just like with Cockatrice, only the game table and the cards are simulated - players must ensure compliance with the rules themselves. Therefore, not a real competitor to the Magic Online client - but of course much cheaper, as you simply use cards and do not buy them. And it runs on Win, OSX and Linux.
Zim - a desktop wiki. Since I'm working with Windows again, maybe it's time to either port my own desktop wiki again (sounds like work) or use another one that offers similar features. Zim looks quite good and is quite portable on the desktop - but I would probably have to adapt my Android app. Hmm. Sounds like work too ...
FriCAS - an advanced CAS. I've lost track of it a bit - FriCAS is formerly Axiom, a quite extensive mathematics package like Mathematica, written in Common Lisp. Available for various systems, somewhat rough in the interface (just a command line), but very powerful. And somewhat more modern than perhaps Maxima (whereas for Maxima there are GUI options, I have no idea what FriCAS has to offer). Like every decent open source project, it is of course only a fork of a fork - under Open Axiom there is another project and under Axiom the original code is continued. Although for me, since Sage (and actually even much more since Anaconda and IPython Notebooks), all of this has become less relevant - in general, my requirements are at a much lower level and are already covered by the libraries available via IPython and Python. Of course, Mathematica and similar are still interesting - but the motivation to start the packages and to enter the rather different syntax world is rather low. Python has long since achieved the good-enough status.
Python Data Analysis Library — pandas: Python Data Analysis Library. Hmm, I must have heard of this before, but I just noticed that it's included in Anaconda. And therefore, I should really look into it soon, as there are some data deserts that I could explore with it.
German government: "Data protection authorities not responsible for NSA scandal". Well, that makes it easy, if as an affected party you simply declare the responsible supervisory authority as not responsible. Classic interior minister logic.
Freebase. Knowledge database number 2 - here people, places, events and all kinds of other things are collected and provided as a structured database with query via service. Just like DBPedia, I found this through the Quepy project.
wiki.dbpedia.org : About. Also interesting - here Wikipedia is searched and evaluated for structured information. So, in a way, a Wikipedia for machines is created from the Wikipedia for humans. The whole thing is then pre-packaged with a query language and a suitable web service.
Quepy: A Python framework to transform natural language questions to queries.. Cool - you can feed English questions into it and the system forms a structured query from them and then provides answers from Freebase or DBPedia. Quepy is the part that formulates the query from the natural language. So to speak, something like Wolfram Alpha if you only look at the knowledge queries.
Tweak Mode for Processing. This makes the sketch interactive while it is running - in one window the code runs with output, in the other window is the code. Drag with the mouse on numerical constants and the values change up or down and the output updates automatically accordingly. Nice idea.
You are Missing the Point of Promises. A bit old, but an interesting overview of what promises are and what they should be, how they lead out of the hell of callbacks and what the rather theoretical model behind it all has to offer. And where you can find it in JavaScript libraries and in which libraries it is rather neglected.
part-cw/lambdanative. Interesting - a cross-platform programming environment targeting Android, iOS, OSX, Linux, Windows, and BSD. Based on Gambit-C, a pretty good (and already quite long available, so also "mature") Scheme compiler.
"3 windows builds have been performed on win95. There is an as yet unidentified runtime error running the 2.6.9 images on win7. More information here will be forthcoming shortly." - [[[Gcl-devel]] GCL 2.6.8 and 2.6.9 are released](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gcl-devel/2013-08/msg00011.html). Apart from the fact that I thought it was already long dead (a "few" years have passed since the release), it's funny that someone still makes builds for Windows under Windows 95 today ...
Anaconda. Hmm, had I already? No idea. It is a Python installation that comes with a stack of scientific modules (NumPy, Matplotlib, PyLab and the like) and also delivers a number of useful modules. Plus IPython with the usual tools - so notebooks and QTConsole - and a command line tool for package management. The nice thing: the installation goes into its own path, so it does not necessarily affect another Python installation.
Meet RegExpBuilder: Verbal Expressions rich, older cousin - The Changelog. I'm an old Snobol and Icon fan - and one of the features of both languages was the quite readable sublanguage for text patterns. What is usually done today with then rather compact to cryptic regular expressions. So I'm happy to come across a project that compiles the much more readable expression forms as usual in Icon into regular expressions. Ok, the goal-oriented execution in Snobol and Icon and the inherent backtracking is of course missing, so it's only syntactic. Still nice.
Trusted Computing: Federal government warns against Windows 8. As long as Microsoft does not also remove the article from the network, like the same article in the Zeit. TLDR: TCP offers more and more control over computers to people who are not the owners - and increasingly restricts the rights of the owner to protect themselves from it. Which is why the BSI warns the government (the title is somewhat misleading) against using systems that use TCP in newer versions. Whereas the NSA is very enthusiastic about the new possibilities. Which gives the whole thing even more background in the current Prism discussion.