Archive 4.6.2004 - 11.6.2004

Catastrophe! World Collapse! Anarchy!

My DSL went down. Horrible. I had to dust off my old modem skills, call colleagues for dial-up numbers and perform a few other mental gymnastics (like remembering dial-up procedures at http://www.westfalen.de/) just to get an ISDN internet connection running again. Now the world wide web crawls here at rural 64 KBit per X75 encoding over the line ... Welcome to the stone age

New image gallery plugin - needs testers - WordPress plugin for images in posts

Ray Charles Died

One less great voice.

At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD you can find the original article.

The 'process' Python module - Process Management for Python - simpler than the standard functions

Threadframe: multithreaded stack frame extraction for Python - Easier debugging of multithreaded Python applications

Wine faster than the law allows: license gone

He can use the forced break to ride his bike more and improve his fitness for the tour.

At Radsport-News.com I found the original article.

Macro Photography Differently

The Ingredients:

  • Canon EOS 10D
  • Canon to Contax MM bayonet adapter
  • Retro adapter for Contax MM bayonet
  • Filter adapter from 52mm to Series VII
  • Filter adapter from Series VII to 67mm
  • Tokina RSX 17mm/3.5 wide-angle lens
  • a Manfrotto 352RC ball head
  • a Manfrotto 055SB tripod
  • the camera's self-timer

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The image field is then approximately 6 x 4 millimeters. In the image, a spine attachment of a cactus. And you can also photograph a cactus mite with it. The main problem is focusing: since I don't have a focusing rail, the cactus and equipment had to be moved. Image field selection via the ball head, rough focusing also via the ball head, fine focusing by carefully moving the subject. That's why the cactus mite isn't perfectly sharp either - for that you really do need the focusing rail.

microlen.htm - Discussions about macro photography lenses

Natural History with the Microscope as a Hobby - All about microscopy and microphotography

Network operators build cost traps into mobile phones

Oh man, now there's already something like dialers for cell phones. And it's being built in right from the sale. Rip-offs everywhere. Of course Vodafone is leading the way - yes, exactly, the ones with the million-dollar severance packages for managers who just got a tax gift after fraudulent stock price manipulation ...

At NETZEITUNG.DE Internet I found the original article.

Cactus Spine Approach

Spine attachment of a cactus

Spine attachment of a cactus

Photographed with the EOS 10D, a Contax adapter, a Contax reversal ring and the Tokina 17/3.5 in reverse position at aperture 16 and 3/4 second with subsequent exposure correction of the RAW file by 1.5 stops.

Depth of field, magnification and close-up lens calculator - Calculation of depth of field and magnification ratios

Cactus Mite

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For size comparison: the distance between the centers of the two darker bars is one millimeter! The image is not optimally sharp, as I had to capture the whole thing relatively primitively - for example, at the time of shooting I didn't have a macro focusing stage for focus adjustment, but had to do it manually. Still, it's impressive what kind of images you can get with relatively little effort.

Bus and train travel more expensive for disabled people?

Necessary subsidy cuts - at the expense of the disabled. How wonderfully social.

The original article can be found at WDR.de.

Cinema: Unnecessary Heroes

That certainly sounds quite interesting

At DIE ZEIT: Feuilleton I found the original article.

Koch for New Nuclear Power Plants in Germany

Another one with a scrambled brain ...

At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD there's the original article.

PyWork - Web framework based on Apache, mod_python, XSLT and ZPT

Xoltar Python Page - Functional Programming in Python

Flower Pictures

With the corn poppy, I always imagine it whispering with the wild rose...

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European Election - go and vote!

Well - the European Parliament is repeatedly sidelined and outvoted by the Council and Commission. That's crap. Just like the fact that the Union in the Bundesrat massively obstructs legislation in the Bundesrat. Both have their causes in the political systems: the Commission and the EU Council are also - admittedly very indirectly through the national governments and their appointed representatives - democratically legitimized. So far so bad.

But what is crystal clear: poor voter turnout in EU elections won't convince the people who already don't take Europe seriously in national governments that the EU Parliament deserves more attention. And we voters have that in our hands: if voter turnout is correspondingly higher, if voters actually treat the election as such, then eventually even the last office jockey in the government apparatus won't be able to ignore it.

Of course, the fact that Commission members and various councils have distinguished themselves through corruption and incompetence is a problem. But that needs to be fixed where it originates - in the respective countries. Because German representatives in the various bodies were sent by our own government.

So don't vent your frustration about the nonsense of politicians in the various governments on the EU Parliament. On the contrary: that should be an incentive to show that as a citizen you do value the EU Parliament. And the best way to do that is through participation in the election. Better to cast an invalid ballot than not to go, because voter turnout itself is a statement. And a statement that says I don't give a damn will definitely not change anything for the better. At Der Schockwellenreiter there's the original article.

Angler idyll and skyscrapers

Fishing idyll and high-rises

Fishing idyll and high-rises

I found the contrast somehow amusing.

Blömkes

Blömkes

Blömkes

Out hunting for flowers again.

House Entrances

House Entrances

Hauseingänge

Strange blossoms architecture produces in some corners of Münster ...

PS/2 and MCA History - History of IBM PS/2 Systems

Rebuttal to Ken Brown

Tanenbaum is cool

Here you can find the original article.

iSync is Rubbish

I just wanted to do a sync after several days, and iSync suddenly wants to copy all my appointments from the organizer to my Mac - without me making a single change to any of these appointments on the organizer. That's absolutely ridiculous. And you can't even tell from the message that mentions 132 new objects which objects those actually are and which device they're coming from - at first I suspected the sync was coming from my phone.

Why can't Apple get synchronization right and why do they pester us with this pathetic pile of junk?

Sure, it's nice that you can synchronize all kinds of devices with iSync and even sync multiple devices at once. But that's completely useless if synchronization regularly duplicates and scrambles your data.

QDB: Quote #330261

Oh man ...

Here's the original article.

Reagan and the Soviets

Oh yes, retroactively fulfilled prophecies. What the colleague here "analyzes" with Reagan and Bush and their supposedly perhaps much cleverer approach, others do in the same form: only "analyze" it so that Nostradamus was a clairvoyant ...

Sorry, but just because the Soviet Union collapsed, and Reagan was president at that time, doesn't automatically make the president and his policies the reason for the collapse. You could just as easily claim that Kohl brought about reunification - instead of the more correct analysis that he just happened to be Federal Chancellor at that time.

Someone is always American president or German Chancellor or great guru of Humba-Humba at the time of a major event. And someone will also implement some policy. So what?

Reducing major historical events to only the years before the event ignores the history and the internal development that underlies the whole situation. The changes in the USSR began independently of Reagan and even earlier. It's possible that the Americans' insane arms buildup was one factor - but certainly not the only one, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't even the most important one.

Ultimately, something shimmers through in the argument that has always annoyed me about history class: the reduction of history to the behavior of princes, kings, warriors or other big shots. Sorry, but that's nonsense.

At Ideas and Errors - Excursions through the New World Order there's the original article.

Another Awesome Algorithm Archive

Who is looking for an algorithm could find it in the NIST Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures - the chances are very high given the abundance of algorithms cataloged there.

At Gary Kings unCLog I found the original article.

Berlusconi wants to change the calendar

Here's my favorite Seibel priest ( Masematte for blabbermouth) at it again: he wants to change the calendar so that Christmas and a few other holidays always fall on a weekend, so that lazy workers have to toil more. Yet another idiotic proposal that our March Hare will certainly be happy to pick up ... Here's the original article.

Burningbird » Glory Days: The Parable of the Languages

The Revenge of Programming Languages on XML

Here you can find the original article.

Canon EOS 300D Digital Rebel Tips and Tricks

A page with information about the 300D firmware hack and what it can do, as well as many other tips related to the 300D. What actually surprised me a bit about it is the following small box that was on the page:

FACTOID: Did you know your 10D and 300D run DOS? That's right. Embedded in the camera is DataLight's ROM-DOS. In fact, if you use the right tool such as s10sh you can see that inside the camera is an A: and B: drive. On the A: drive reside command.com and autoexec.bat, and most interestingly, camera.exe. DOS? DOS?? Wow. Somehow a bit scary.

Here's the original article.

Ian's Shoelace Site - Slipping Shoelace Knots?

Wow. An entire site about knot techniques that deals specifically with shoelace knots, among other things, and explains why some people can't keep their shoelaces tied while others don't have these problems. I love the Internet!

Here's the original article.

Merkel wants to extend nuclear power plant operating times

Total radiation in Merkelnix's head ...

At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD you can find the original article.

PyPerSyst - Orbtech Wiki - Persistence for Python objects

The Spinning Cube of Potential Doom

Very interesting: a graphical visualization of security events that makes various port scan techniques visually recognizable.

Here's the original article.

Upcoming Qonos Scientific PDA

The company Hydrix (apparently consisting in part of former HP RPN calculator developers) is working on a calculator based on Linux and using open source software for the tasks. Very interesting - it's supposed to come out at the end of this year. Let's see what it actually turns out to be.

Here's the original article.

Adapters: Olympus E-1

For the Olympus E-1, there is now also a set of adapters for various SLR lenses - so there are now two digital options for classic lenses like the Leica R or Contax MM line. The Olympus version is even more robustly and generously designed than the EOS version, since the Olympus system has a significantly shallower flange focal distance and therefore more space remains for adapters. As a result, the adapter for the Olympus system can remain directly on the camera (with the EOS adapter it's better to keep it on the lens). Particularly interesting for people who are simply looking for a digital option for their lenses and don't want to invest in the Olympus system. Here's the original article.

digitale Fine Art Prints - Barytabzug - Iris Giclee Prints - exposure on baryta paper - unfortunately not really cheap

Tax authorities threatened with tax shortfalls due to Mannesmann shares case

This can't possibly be true. A company artificially inflates its stock price to sell itself off, the board members pocket million-euro severance packages for it, the stock price comes back down to earth, and the state — and thus all taxpayers — are supposed to foot the bill?

The whole Vodafone-Mannesmann deal is nothing but one big fraud anyway, and we get to clean up the mess. The very idea of such blatant corruption makes you pretty angry.

Tax justice in Germany has been gone for a long time. And this whole pile of garbage is the best proof of it. It can't be right that companies themselves still profit from this crap, while ordinary taxpayers are constantly hit with higher burdens because the money runs out.

If we're blowing billions up the backsides of companies for stupidity and audacity, it's no wonder money is lacking...

Here's the original article.

Schwarzweiss-Magazin Wollstein 6/2003 - Permanence of various photographic techniques

Insanely exciting Germany tour stage

I don't know when I last saw such an exciting stage in a tour race. The leader and his 4 pursuers only 20 seconds apart. Several pursuers (especially Jens Voigt and Igor Gonzalez de Galdeano) attack in turns. And Patrick Sinkewitz keeps up with them. A fantastic performance - especially since he had no more helpers. Until the finish with a final sprint against Jens Voigt, he was fully involved and defended his yellow jersey brilliantly. If he keeps the yellow jersey until Leipzig, he owes it definitively to his great performance and not to the weaknesses of his opponents.

Francisco Mancebo drove out the last kilometer on the mountain sovereignly - he's simply a mountain expert.

Jan Ullrich has shown that he still needs to work on his mountain form at the Tour de Suisse to be ready for the Tour de France - on the mountain he's definitely losing far too much time.

BugMeNot.com

A very interesting service - it provides (dummy) login credentials for services that require registration. For example, all those newspaper archives that need logins. If you don't want to enter your data, you simply use BugMeNot. With the bookmarklet, the whole thing is nice and easy. And you can also use the service to link to pages on services that are so heavily restricted.

Especially practical for those annoying demographic-data-collecting and we-spam-your-registration-to-death services.

Is that ethically correct? Sorry, folks, but is the constant asking for shoe size, hair color, and penis length (hey, the penis-enlargement providers have to get their addresses from somewhere) by the various archive services ethically correct?

Here's the original article.

E-MailRelay -- SMTP proxy and store-and-forward MTA - general purpose SMTP proxy with its own spool handling and the ability to integrate external filters

fotoKASTEN - Digital photo development on the Internet

Yet another image printing service with an affiliate program

mtaproxy.py - Teergrube utuility for SpamBayes - Tarpit with integrated SpamBayes

RoughingIT - pyblosxom 1.0 Release

PyBlosxom (Blosxom in Python) has been available as a 1.0 release since May 25th - still new enough that it's worth writing about now

Here you can find the original article.

STIM - MouseSite

Everything around human-computer interfaces and their origins such as the mouse, graphical user interfaces, windowing systems. Currently mainly documenting the presentation from 1968, when Doug Engelbart showed in a 90-minute multimedia presentation how to work with a networked computer with a window-oriented interface, hyperlinking and other features. It's quite fascinating what ideas and partially realized implementations already existed so early on. Here you can find the original article.

Stopping spam with the Anti-Spam-SMTP-Proxy (ASSP) - SMTP proxy with Bayesian filtering, this one is without honeypot

Toll Collect: Toll rate cannot be changed

Are the toll rates hard-wired into the devices? What kind of idiots designed all this crap?

surprised face

I hope it was just some official without a clue speaking again and the thing isn't actually built that stupidly. On the other hand, we're talking about Toll Collect here...

At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD you can find the original article.