hangout-disco - Renders a WebGL room with avatars for each participant of a Google+ Hangout, with the possibility to play music, etc. - Google Project Hosting. Fun - something like a virtual Hangout world.
Archive 14.10.2011 - 30.11.2011
BUSTED! Secret app on millions of phones logs key taps • The Register. Net - Android phones infected with rootkit/keylogger. And if I read that correctly, the software was apparently installed by network providers and/or device manufacturers. Oh, of course, it's just a "diagnostic tool" - just like the various trojans for PCs are only remote maintenance tools ...
Zinc HTTP Components. Interesting project that has set itself the task of providing as complete support as possible for all aspects of the HTTP protocol. Interesting because they start from the protocol definition and not, as in many other cases, the HTTP implementation is only as far as it was necessary for the respective web framework.
I'm a confessed PyPy fan, and with version 1.7, PyPy has done a good job - the memory leaks of version 1.6 seem to be gone, and you can now run long-running processes (like a Tornado web server here in the post) with it. Especially for more complex template engines and situations where you work internally with larger data structures to produce results, it's a real alternative - but remember, PyPy needs more memory for the same work.
GemStone Seaside | About. About Seaside: there is a pretty cool virtual appliance (i.e. pre-chewed virtual disk image) for mounting in VMWare installations with a GemStone/S installation including Seaside and a Squeak as an IDE for development for this system. So if you want to see how the big kids work with Smalltalk, click here to download and try it out.
Security flaw: Fire hazard with HP printers? - Golem.de. Finally able to remotely burn down offices. Surely every hacker dreams of that. Thanks HP for this extremely useful feature.
Python Math | Python for iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch - Keep away from the last update, as you can no longer bring in external scripts into the tool, which makes it completely useless. The author promises an editor in an update, but it remains to be seen whether it will be even remotely usable. Of course, this is just one of the nonsensical Apple policies he has implemented - but the way he installs an update and only mentions it in the last line of the update information is really bad. Because if you miss that, you have an currently unusable part on the Pad or Phone.
Fliers Still Must Turn Off Devices, but Its Not Clear Why - NYTimes.com. What always amazes me about this ridiculous request to turn off electronic devices: if they were really so dangerous, why are they allowed on board? As the author correctly states in the article: the authorities panic over small bottles of hand lotion, but the electronic devices are waved through. Nevertheless, this completely ineffective request is repeated over and over again. Cargo cult security.
YaCy - Free search engine software and decentralized web search. I'm a fan of distributed systems, so I should definitely check out this distributed search engine (alongside the distributed overlay network Tor and the distributed social network Diaspora, certainly an important component in a potential "free" network).
Flight data agreement has been negotiated - fm4.ORF.at. And where are our so-called diligent data protection officers of the states and the federal government now? Oh, sorry, they must hate Facebook. It's also much more important to campaign against Like buttons and threaten websites with fines rather than standing up to their own government representatives who draft and enforce such data trading deals.
Welcome to NeuroLab’s documentation! — NeuroLab v0.2.1 documentation. Okay, I don't need it right now (and honestly, I don't know if I will ever need it), but what the heck, I'm just a fan of neural networks. And Python. And therefore, here's a reference to a library that provides a whole range of algorithms from this field for Python.
A human review of the Kindle Fire – Marco.org. Sounds like the Kindle Fire is quite unnecessary. Good thing it's not even available on the German market (I wouldn't give up my Kindle with eInk display though, it's brilliant).
Nice Impressions
Pictures from the Microsoft Dynamics AX Congress in Nice. Okay, not actually pictures from the congress, but more of Nice. Palms, Mediterranean flair, the Mediterranean Sea, and big yachts. Unfortunately, it was mostly dark, but that has never stopped me from taking pictures.
Men's toys in Nice
Extra post for extra cars. They were just standing there one day in front of the convention center. We didn't really understand why - at the time there was some kind of local assembly or something, but in addition, there were hordes of uniformed people around, the cars were there, lots of police. Maybe some regional bigwig was there and he was a classic car fan. The cars were nice to look at anyway.
forger the digital sculpting app for iPad. 3D modeling on the go on the iPad following the clay shaping model. Could be interesting for one or the other who wants to bring it over to Blender to Collada to import it into Second Life, for example.
Technical Overview : Dart : Structured web programming. Of all the current "we're reinventing JavaScript" approaches, this one is almost the most interesting - in principle, it is a classic OO language with a C#-like feature set and mapping to JavaScript. But what is interesting about this system: it is designed from the outset to also develop in a browser environment. But not just within a browser, but as its own IDE, which integrates a runtime browser. And the developer of the project is the Newspeak (previous post) developer, who has already shown very interesting ideas for an IDE. Currently, the Dart Editor is much more oriented towards typical IDEs than the more innovative ideas of the database-based IDE in my opinion.
Newspeak » The Newspeak Programming Language. I think I've mentioned this before, but I'm not really linking it because of the language itself, but because of the IDE presented there - it runs within Squeak, but is largely autonomous and looks very interesting to me. From the first glance, I would say that someone is very inspired by the old Apple Dylan - the hierarchical representation of classes and methods, the linking and the general presentation of the source as a kind of hyperlinked database looks very good.
Radius limited searching with the ORM | Neogeo ramblings with a Python twist. Looking at this, there are really nice features in GeoDjango. Unfortunately, I don't currently have a project where I could use it, so just bookmarked for later. The blog also has other interesting articles about GeoDjango.
Pixelmator. For everyone who, like me, feels ripped off by Adobe because they simply pushed PSE 10 as a new product into the App Store instead of following the usual practices there and releasing it as an update for PSE 9 (not that I'm particularly surprised - Adobe has been pulling such stunts with the product for a while now, that there are no more free updates). I just want to point out Pixelmator again. Much cheaper, visually much better structured, much smaller (I find it ridiculous that a photo editor must occupy 2.6 GB on the disk without the possibility for the user to select what they really need). For me, the essential tool is the Healing Brush (since that is the retouching tool that Lightroom does not have in an adequate form), and Pixelmator also has it as a tool and delivers good results for me. PS and PSE are now history for me. Warning, Pixelmator appreciates a slightly more powerful CPU and a bit more memory - with large images, I notice short pauses on my MacBook Air 13" from time to time (not really critical, just noticeable).
LEGO Universe : Game Help - LEGO Universe. Oh no, I haven't even played it (though I bought it, just never logged in due to lack of time) and they're already shutting it down. I would have wished for a bit more patience from them - do companies now expect every idea to be instantly successful? It's a shame anyway, the ideas sounded really good.
Kodak sells Image Sensor Solutions business: Digital Photography Review. That doesn't sound good to me as a Leica M user. I hope my M8 lasts as long as possible and doesn't suffer from the digital component failures that were common with Kodak digital adaptations (I still think about my DCS 520 often).
Pinax. And once again something I think I already had. But for current reasons, it has come back on my radar, and therefore I will take a closer look at it. Something like a peddler's tray for Django projects with a focus on social networks and community sites. Sounds very interesting - a bit like Drupal with Python and on Django (so rather not finished sites but building blocks and framework for creating them).
Panasonic: Systemkamera GX1 mit Dreikern-Bildprozessor - Golem.de. Still a bit thin on information (as usual, but already more about it at dpreview), but Panasonic seems to really want to catch up with Olympus and certainly also Sony. It will be exciting again, the G3 has already shown at Panasonic what the newer generation can do and the GX1 is supposed to top that.
Autumn Walk
Autumn has been at work for quite some time, but today the weather was really beautiful, so I took a longer walk around the Aasee and the Schlossgarten and took some photos. A small selection is attached, I just love the colors in the autumn sun. The walk ended with delicious Turkish food at Frauenstraße 24. The photos were taken with the Leica M8.
New55 Film. There seems to be a project in the works that wants to reinvent the Polaroid Type 55 film (the one with the simultaneous positive and negative). Their project - according to their own statements - already has successes to show, including providing a correctly exposed positive and negative (with Polaroid, only one of the two was ever correctly exposed). Hmm, if this really takes off, I'll take a few packs of it!
Pixelmator. Cheaper, smaller and visually much more appealing than Photoshop Elements Editor. And it has the Healing Brush (and an interesting alternative, where you simply paint a selection and then heal this entire selection). And supports Lion features - so versions, full screen etc. I got it, PSE will probably be filed under "paying tuition" in the round file.
Another Visit to Hamburg
The weather wasn't the best, so it was dry and not too cold, but unfortunately the sky was rather averse to photography - only milky mush in the sky. Never mind, still took photos and still had fun. The spice museum is really great, especially because of the smells. The Cap San Diego is interesting, albeit somewhat meager (the engine room is of course great, but with the cabins only a few are visible and the whole thing is rather sparse, they could make more of it). The exhibition "A Suitcase Full of Hope" is interesting, although it consists of 90% of set-up cardboard walls with printing. So much reading is in order. And the evening at the landing bridges is for me always a nice finish.
Adobe Carousel: Mini-Lightroom for iPhone and iPad available. Hmm - from the description, it sounds like what Apple offers with Photostream. Ok, Photostream doesn't have non-destructive changes, and the editing options are significantly larger, but you can also handle this with Snapseed, just like sharing. On the other hand, Carousel has the clear advantage that it is foreseeable when Android and Windows will also be supported - and Android support could be quite interesting if Apple doesn't get the iPhone 4S problems under control (or Deutsche Telekom doesn't get the SIM problems under control - it doesn't matter who is to blame). I would be interested to know if you can bring Lightroom Presets into Carousel and make them available on your devices - that would be quite an interesting thing, because you could use your preferred looks everywhere. And then it would be easy to use it for taking pictures on the go.
Codify – iPad. Hey, looks nice for the iPad - a Lua IDE, where you don't provide the results as your own app, but let them run within the environment instead. Not a bad approach, the old basics were nothing else - and you can play around on the iPad without any additional tools, graphics and multitouch and stuff also work. Maybe exactly the right thing for doodling on the go.
CCC | Chaos Computer Club analyzes current version of the state trojan. Well, well, the current state trojan is just as bad as the alleged prototype. And of course, everyone claims not to use it. So what is the wonderful, legally compliant version of the state trojan that is allegedly used in the authorities? It would be interesting if the authorities would provide this trojan to the CCC for analysis. But that would be honest and transparent behavior. Apparently, we can no longer expect that from authorities in our banana republic.
Galileo Computing :: Developing Apps for iPhone and iPad - index. Since I once again have access to an iOS Developer Account, I'll blog about it. A free book to read about iOS development, which also works with the new features in iOS and Xcode (at least with some of the new features). Seen at Schockwellenreiter. Of course, you can also simply buy the book if you want dead trees.
Deutsche Telekom can't seem to learn... | iPhone 4S: Deutsche Telekom exchanges SIM cards | Mac & i News Forums. Interesting - the Deutsche Telekom problem with SIM cards in the iPhone 4S doesn't seem to be new at all. Okay, it's a link to the Heise forum and thus anything but hard fact, but somehow still strange. In Google, for example, in various Android forums I also found something from April this year, it really seems to be the case - and the hotline also just accepted the order for the exchange without any problems. I'm curious to see if the replacement card is also a 3N card (you can apparently see this directly on the cards). And just as curious to see if my iPhone's tantrums will stop then. However, it's a weak image that the Deutsche Telekom service notes still claim that exchanging the SIM card won't help and that there is no normal announcement - I only saw this by chance in the Heise ticker.
Pixelmator 2 Sneak Preview. Hmm. Sounds like it could be a good alternative to Photoshop Express - the Healing Tool and content-aware Fill would be exactly the two features I use in PSE (and which are not provided by LR or other tools). I really should try it out - the over 1G disk space usage just for PSE is somehow quite annoying ...
Mellow Morning » Django Facebook 3.2 – Simple image upload and wall posts. Since FB is unfortunately still the only social network with a serious API (sorry, but G+ doesn't have a serious API as long as they only offer a level like RSS-over-JSON and the Diaspora API is unfortunately still internal - but Diaspora is in alpha anyway, so there will certainly be more in the beta), you have to deal with it. And the new features of django-facebook look like they could ease some of the pain (and maybe one or the other interesting toy could become interesting for me).
Oh, Apple… oh, Aperture… | massenbelichtungswaffen.de. Since I often wonder if I should try Aperture - this article has cured me from spending the 70 euros for a longer time. Because what good is an image manager and image editor that might have problems with my (current or future) cameras ...
And once again it was sent ...
Not much to write about, everyone knows it and it's not the first time in the blog here. But the weather was nice and Juliana wanted to go, so why not. It was cold. And colorful. And loud.
WordPress Germany FAQ » Privacy notes on the use of Akismet in Germany. Found at Schockwellenreiter and also implemented - I already had the explanation in the imprint, now the checkbox when commenting has also been added. It might be a bit cumbersome for the three people who comment here from time to time, but I think it's bearable. Especially since there are other ways to comment - your own blog posts, or tweeting, facebooking or googleplussing (there's also a privacy-compliant user consent for that), so you can choose where you want to leave your data traces. (And of course, you can also simply send me an email to the email address listed in the imprint, which then works without consent - but be careful, my email provider is Google! They are evil!)
iPhone 4S: Users report problems with new SIM cards. I would like to point out that I find it particularly unpleasant when such problems occur with me. Bugs can please have The Others (tm), ok? Definitely not only occurs with previously used MicroSims and turning off the SIM PIN only brings half the relief: then the miserable slow SIM unlocking is better, but the network connection still drops. The last time at least it helped to simply turn mobile data off and on again, but this is not a solution, as you don't notice it directly and therefore in the time when the phone desperately tries to get a connection outside, the battery is sucked dry. Bah.
PayPal is (once again) a pigsty: "PayPal just sent us an email saying “appeal denied,” where they announced that they would lock up the Diaspora* community’s donations for 180 days. Yes, you heard that right. PayPal gets to earn interest on all of our donations for 6 months, while we have to wait for PayPal to come up with a reason to justify their decision." via Diaspora* — How Diaspora* Found Its Tiger Stripe in the Midst of a Paypal Fiasco. I only use PayPal because it is still the only way to meaningfully cash out small amounts in SecondLife (and I certainly don't make large amounts there). Otherwise, Stripe really sounds quite interesting, especially for smaller projects where you need payment - and don't want to submit to PayPal's arbitrariness.
The impact of Apple’s Siri release: From the former lead iPhone developer of Siri. One of the developers of the app that later became Siri spills the beans. Very interesting, some things are indeed simpler than one might have imagined, others certainly more complicated than it reads in the summary. But I agree with one thing: this will surely give a boost to user interfaces for small devices and consumer computers - I can't imagine that we will forever stick with the rather crude text input interface, with keyboard and all.
Mojolicious - Perl real-time web framework. Looks quite interesting, simply because it gives a rather lean impression and does not require too many Perl peculiarities. Of course, you can also have this with Ruby or Python, microframeworks are not extremely exciting, but there are still people who work with Perl.
vim-orgmode - Text outlining and task management for Vim based on Emacs' Org-Mode : vim online. Who wants OrgMode but finds the Emacs key layout simply sick (which could be about 99% of all VIM users), now there is also OrgMode for VIM. As a plugin. I myself mostly use VimWiki, but maybe I'll check out VimOrgMode as well, it sounds quite interesting (although I have connected VimWiki with Trunknotes to edit things on the go - but there is also an iPhone app for that).
AirPrint Activator v2.0 « Netputing. Bookmarked for later - this allows you to share your network printers and the PDF converter on the Mac as AirPrint printers, so you can print from the iPad on the couch (and since you can also print to a PDF converter, you don't even have to waste paper).
John Lee Hooker Jr. in the Hot Jazz Club
Pictures from the concert tonight. It was an absolutely fantastic concert, the place was packed and the atmosphere was great. The musicians put on an impressive show. And as it happened, we had a table right in front of the stage, there was nothing between us and the musicians. Accordingly, the pictures turned out that way.
About Weavrs. Social Media Bots. Defined by keywords, they run around and simulate a defined personality. Can be further controlled by filters and topics. And here someone who is now getting started with the bots and releases several "personalities" on G+ in response to "Real Name Requirement". Of course, this won't convince Google that the Real Name Policy is completely bananas. But it's still funny.
Textastic – Syntax highlighting text editor, FTP, SFTP, Dropbox – for iPad. I use this editor on the iPad - also integrated with PythonMath, as it has "open in..." and Dropbox integrated.
Python Math | Python for iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch. Pretty cool, this is a really useful Python on the iPad. No GUI modules or anything - just a slightly enhanced shell and the standard library as well as sympy. numpy, scipy and matplotlib are under consideration. The implementation is surprisingly usable - it's good for small tinkering and you can export the transcript by email and get files via the "Open in ..." functions e.g. from Mail or Dropbox.
Recently on Flickr - Black and White Edition
I've been creating more black and white versions again lately, also on Flickr - and they needed to be collected here again. Here they are - unsorted and uncommented.
Recently on Flickr
It's been a while since I last uploaded my Flickr photos to the blog. Here they are - unsorted and uncommented. So the colorful ones. Ok, and a few toned black and white images (the automatic script does not recognize them as monochrome).
Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera // Jonas Pfeil. That's a really cool concept. A ball with padding and a lot of small cameras built in, arranged in such a way that the ball can take a full 360-degree panorama with one click. You just throw the ball up and get the panorama back. Way Cool. Want one!