Content-type: matter-transport/sentient-life-form

Re: Factor: Google Charts - I really should use Factor more often. Every time I see how practical a visual REPL is (in Factor, graphical representations of objects can be embedded in the normal output, similar to old Lisp machines), it tempts me.

Nuclear meltdown in Japan increasingly likely

BBC News - Japan earthquake: Explosion at Fukushima nuclear plant. That was it with the hopes that maybe it would still turn out alright. And people are still running around claiming that something like this could never happen to us, because here everything is much safer. Funny enough, I do remember incidents in cooling systems that were only admitted long after they occurred - and the failure of the cooling system is the problem in Japan, the tsunami and the earthquake were just the triggers.

What I wonder, though, is how will the catastrophe in Japan change our perception of nuclear energy? With Chernobyl and before that Harrisburg, secrecy was relatively easy - but Japan is a country where all inhabitants are highly technologized. The joke about at least 5 cameras per Japanese might be exaggerated, but the number should be high enough to make secrecy more or less absurd. And the high integration into the internet leads to publication channels that were unthinkable in Harrisburg and only conceivable for utopians in Chernobyl.

Surely, energy companies and the government will now show solidarity and talk about how earthquakes and tsunamis in Europe are not a problem. And thus completely miss the actual problem, because as mentioned above, cooling systems can fail not only because of earthquakes and tsunamis. Therefore, such a problem is quite conceivable here as well, if the cooling system fails for other reasons. And why should we believe our energy companies (and the government), who are regularly caught lying, more than the Japanese energy company, which is also known for lying?

It will be difficult for politicians to lie convincingly about such things. And maybe, just maybe, people in Europe will wake up from their wishful thinking that nuclear energy is so safe.

consistency and ecosystem opportunities - Twitter API Announcements is an email where Twitter pretty much leaves all reality behind. Just to remind you: Twitter is this cute service where you can send 140-character messages - and I'm not saying that to make fun of it, it's often quite practical to search there when something is currently happening. But when I then read this bloated nonsense about "prevent diffusion of user experience" and other bullshit bingo in the email, I can only wonder what they're smoking. The real thing behind it is probably rather an attempt to close the platform to control and exploit it more - for example, the uproar about this absurd fat bar in Twitter has probably caused some panic at Twitter. Because if all users leave the official client, no one will look at the bought trends anymore ...

Python Tools for Visual Studio. If you are on Windows and a number cruncher - SciPy and NumPy are now directly available on the .NET platform with these tools. And I wonder why Apple doesn't include something like this with Xcode, as it would certainly be popular in the university environment (just think of Sage).

ABCL - Release notes v0.25. New version out and ABCL is increasingly developing into a really usable Common Lisp implementation. Since it runs on the JVM, you also have easy access to many libraries (if you want to) and since 0.24, Quicklisp also runs smoothly with ABCL, giving you easy access to many Common Lisp libraries. However, there are some issues with the CL libraries, as many programmers do not consider ABCL (and there are still deficiencies in the CLOS area).

BBC News - Voyager: Still dancing 17 billion km from Earth. It is often forgotten and because it is still one of the most fascinating missions - the Voyager probes are still active in service. And they are still making important contributions to research. More of that!

J Source is now available under GPL3. The craziest programming language in active use is now even more accessible. But beware of the Source: it's C, but C from someone who thinks in J and writes in J and only abuses the C compiler for it.

blueMarine is a project I was previously unaware of, taking inspiration from Lightroom and Aperture. However, it currently has no RAW editing functions (while Darktable has non-destructive editing), but focuses solely on image management. This might actually work in my favor for Linux, as I usually just want to view images there, with editing mostly happening on the Mac.

darktable seems to have completely passed me by unnoticed - an open-source alternative to Adobe Lightroom for Linux. I should really take a look at it. I really like Lightroom, but it's always good to know an alternative, as there's no guarantee that I'll always like Adobe in later versions ... (and for Linux I will always need an alternative as long as Adobe doesn't support Linux)

fantasm - Project Hosting on Google Code. Definitely worth checking out, a workflow engine in Python. Something like this could be quite interesting for projects at work.

Strange Phenomena in iPhoto

I only use it as an image storage for creating books and syncing to my iPhone and iPad, so my iPhoto is rather unimportant for photo management. But at the moment, I have a phenomenon that is driving me crazy: I imported a CD of normal Jpegs. Then I created an album and put the pictures in it. And now iTunes always claims that this album is empty during sync. The import is also listed as a separate event in iPhoto. iTunes also claims in the sync panel that this event is empty (0 pictures). Accordingly, when syncing "All Pictures," all pictures are transferred - including these pictures. Only the albums and events that consist only of these pictures are not there. Because iTunes thinks they are empty.

What's the point of this? Does anyone out there have an idea? Googling hasn't brought up anything useful, and I've already tried various things (deleting and recreating albums, different ways of creating albums, etc.). The whole thing is quite strange. iLife is quite nice as long as it works, but when problems arise, the whole thing is nearly completely undiagnosable. Which wouldn't matter much to me if I didn't stupidly need it for syncing with my iPhone and iPad...

One reason why I prefer to stick with Lightroom, because I know where the pictures are and the databases are normal sqlite, so I can get my hands on them if necessary. And if they are in the trash, I can reconstruct everything from the pictures and sidecar files. I'll also cross Aperture off the list, its picture management sounds too much like that of iPhoto...

It's quite embarrassing when a tool from Adobe is more reliable and trustworthy than what Apple delivers. Especially since iLife is supposed to be foolproof - when problems arise and necessary troubleshooting is required, it's more of a case of "no user-serviceable parts inside".

harukizaemon/hamster. Immutable Threadsafe Datastructures - for Ruby. You can't change them, but you get new, modified versions back. Ideal for using them across thread boundaries. Clojure has this built-in, Scala since 2.8 as well. I would like something like this for Python ...

Pyjamas - Python Javascript Compiler, Desktop Widget Set and RIA Web Framework. I already mentioned this in the old blog, but a) a lot has happened and b) it came up again today as a topic, so I'm blogging about it again.

Check it out: pqc - PostgreSQL Query Cache. A PostgreSQL proxy that caches queries via a Memcache database to improve performance for recurring queries. Since it works as a proxy, it can also speed up applications that don't already implement caching on their own.

Whoever the asshole at Apple is responsible for the appallingly bad app sorting in iTunes (seriously, how can someone be so completely braindead to replicate the already quite clunky sorting interface for the home screen in iTunes with the mouse in nearly the same stupid way?), that "designer" deserves to be slapped, kicked, and fired. If I spend 20 minutes sorting my apps, I expect that when I click "Apply," it will actually be applied. I certainly do not expect all the icons to revert to their original positions before my 20 minutes of work. And no, this is not the first time I have cursed this pathetic app sorting interface. Bah.

Apple just can't do encryption

I fell for it again and thought, I'll just enable the encryption of iPad backups. Pretty stupid. I should have been warned by the debacles with the encrypted home directory. But of course, I did it again. Everything worked fine until today when the backup mess happened - it got stuck in the first step and just wouldn't proceed. Possibly corrupt backup files on the Mac. Ok, the standard procedure is to simply delete the backup in the settings under devices and create a new one. But that doesn't work if you have encryption enabled - it complains, naturally only after all the steps have been completed, that it can't make backups because no session with the iPad can be started. Huh?

And of course, I can't reset the password - it always claims it's wrong (even before I deleted the backup). My suspicion: the password is checked against the backup and if there isn't one, or it's defective, you can't perform a successful check. Resetting the password doesn't work, creating new backups doesn't work, and making iTunes forget the iPad also doesn't work. Before someone thinks they need to tell me I don't know the password: iTunes saves the password in the keychain if requested and yes, the password is the one I enter. And yes, that is definitely the correct one - the device identifier is saved as the account name with the password. And no, this exact password is of course not accepted...

Solution according to Apple? Completely reset the iPad and set it up again. Great, fantastic idea. Sure, many of the data I have are on my Mac, but over time, data have also been added that are not on the Mac. And I would like to transfer those somehow.

By the way, normal backups and restores work - and with unencrypted backups, you can also create a new one if the backups are corrupted. But not if you have encryption enabled.

Frankly, this renewed experience with Apple's inability to build reasonably stable encryption solutions makes me rather skeptical about their full-disk encryption in the upcoming 10.7...

Update: after a few experiments (tested on another computer, iPad backup reconstructed from the TimeMachine backup and tried with it) I suspect the password is also noted on the device - and this note seems to be corruptible. Because even on another device, the definitely correct password is rejected as wrong, and another device also insists on making an encrypted backup (which makes sense, otherwise you could trivially get the data via a backup on another device). The problem is not that it protects itself against manipulation - the problem is that this crap can break and without any external signs - the backups have always worked fine so far, they are just suddenly worthless now (just like the data on the device).

The Sinclair ZX81: 30 years old today. Happy Birthday, old plastic box. I loved that thing and started some crazy projects on it. It started with 1 Kilobyte of memory, later with the great expansion to 16 Kilobytes - you couldn't hit the table too hard, otherwise the connections would wobble and the computer would reset. And the box even got me my first (and only) article in c't! After the ZX 81 came the ZX Spectrum with gigantic 48 Kilobytes of memory (from the money of the article). Then it got boring with PCs. It wasn't until the 90s that Macs came into my life.

Beef Rolls with Ratatouille

Well, that was today's cooking experiment. Partial success, because I completely miscalculated the quantities (no problem, there's a freezer and delicious rations for another day are also quite nice) and the ratatouille was somehow overcooked today. But that's what happens when you want to handle several pots at once, it doesn't work perfectly the first time. But the roulades were great - although gigantic. Only recommended if you're really hungry! I cooked some ahead of time (using a roasting pan for just one roulade would be silly), gives about 3 servings:

3 horse meat roulades (careful, these things are rather XXL size, one is enough per person!)
300g mixed minced meat
Pitted black olives "natural" (about 10-15 pieces, depends on the size - and the taste)
1 onion
3 cloves of garlic
Mustard (I had a nice spicy fig mustard, but a simpler medium-spicy one should also work), about 3 tablespoons
1 carrot
half a celeriac
1 bay leaf
2 cloves
some peppercorns
100ml red wine
200ml broth (probably should have been more, the sauce was a bit meager)
3 bell peppers
1 eggplant
1 zucchini
1-2 tomatoes
Basil, oregano, thyme, or whatever spices you like
Pepper and salt as usual
Olive oil

For the preparation, it's best to start with the roulades and their filling - because that takes the longest and the roulades simmer in the oven, so you can then prepare the ratatouille in peace.

By the way, for the dish, it's advisable to have a roasting pan - those are these gigantic and very heavy pots in an oval shape that you know from your mother's roasts. Expensive, heavy, annoying, but with the size of the horse roulades, don't even think about a normal pot, take a roasting pan right away.

Chop onion and garlic finely
Chop olives finely
While we're at it, chop eggplants finely and soak in salted water (sometimes they are bitter, so they need a bath before use)
Mix minced meat, onions, garlic, and olives thoroughly. You can also add spices (thyme, oregano) here. Basically the distribution: meat spicy, vegetables rather mild, so here the slightly stronger things.
Spread roulades flat (and wonder what you manage to do with them - the things are gigantic!)
Spread each roulade with a tablespoon of mustard
Then distribute the filling
Roll up the roulades and secure with roulade rings or roulade needles (rings worked better for me - two per roulade, because of the size)
Chop celeriac, carrot (and if desired another onion!) finely
Preheat the oven to 170°
Heat oil in the roasting pan, sear the roulades from all sides for a few minutes
Remove roulades, set aside on a plate, add celeriac and carrot pieces to the roulade broth and fry
Add cloves, bay leaf, and peppercorns
Fry everything well, it should leave traces on the vegetables
Deglaze with red wine (pour over)
Bring everything back to a boil
Pour in the broth
Bring everything back to a boil
Put the roulades back in the roasting pan
The liquid should not be too little at the bottom, because some of it will still boil away and then the roulades will become dry, so if necessary, fill up with some water (or if you have any left, broth)
Bring to a boil briefly
Put the roasting pan with the roulades in the oven and let them simmer there for about 1.5 - 2 hours. In between, you should turn the roulades over (1-2 times).

Now that the roulades are simmering - and that takes time! - it's a good time to clean up in the kitchen and wash all the plates and bowls that you used in between because you panicked that there was no surface for the tongs, or the vegetables also had to wait somewhere for their destiny or something similar. Take a short break and relax, ratatouille is actually quite simple. About 30 minutes before the roulades are done, start with the rest:

Chop bell peppers and zucchini into small pieces, keep eggplants separate, they need longer (optimal would be to keep all three vegetables separate)
If desired, add an onion and some garlic - you can simply do this with the roulades above and take some for the ratatouille
Chop tomatoes finely (if you want, you can pre-cook them in hot water and then peel - I don't have problems with tomato skin and save myself the trouble)
Heat oil in the pan
Add eggplants and pre-fry (here you would also add the onions and garlic)
When the eggplants start to become translucent, add the zucchini
When the zucchini starts to become translucent, add the bell peppers and tomatoes
Fry everything thoroughly and season. The tomatoes should fall apart, but the other vegetables should still be recognizable in their shape.
Put the lid on the pan (your pan has a lid, right? If not, it's difficult!) and let it simmer for 5 minutes (that was my mistake, too long, became too soft - the 5 minutes are an estimate from me, I had more)

When the ratatouille is ready, the roulades should also be ready. So take the roulades out of the oven and put them on the plates. If you want sauce: simply strain the vegetable-broth mixture from the roasting pan through a sieve and then add some water to dilute and make sauce with sauce thickener. Is currently still theoretical for me, as there wasn't enough at the bottom to bother, so I just put some of the roast residue on the roulade.

I ate the whole thing again as usual with bread. And with it - since I had it open anyway - a glass of wine. It was very tasty (ok, in a restaurant I would have commented on the very soft ratatouille, but with my own experiments I am quite tolerant with myself), just simply a much too large portion. And the time invested to produce the whole thing was not in proportion to the time in which I devoured the portion. But hey, the weather wasn't so great today, so you can also make such cooking excursions.

jsFiddle is a very nicely made online editor for JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Various JavaScript frameworks are supported, and there is the possibility to save snippets and discuss them with others. Progressing.js is also available, as well as a number of tools to unleash on the code. Quite cool for experiments.

Toolbox, H5 and twentytenfive are Wordpress templates that are based on HTML5. I should take a look at them and see if I can't build my own theme on one of them, instead of deriving it from the standard theme. Since I am currently a subtheme of the standard Twentyten, Twentytenfive might be the easiest - but Toolbox could also be interesting because it is a really minimal theme that I could use as a real base.

balupton/history.js provides an API for accessing HTML5 History manipulation, but it also supports older browsers and uses that ugly # notation - but only when HTML5 is not available. Could be quite interesting for a project of mine.

Today I learned that there are two-legged skinks (which are actually legless reptiles) that use their front feet as shovels like a mole: Handwühlen. Just when you think nature is already weird enough, you learn a new curiosity.

Paprika-Bohnen-Suppe mit Hack

And once again, a funny episode from "Cooking with RFC1437". Today, a real man's soup. Okay, for men who aren't too wild about spicy food. So, a little man's soup then.

two bell peppers
one onion (not too small)
4 cloves of garlic
2 mild peperoni
300g ground meat
400g kidney beans (from the can)
500ml vegetable broth (for me it was only 450, the remaining 50 were in the previous cooking frenzy)
tomato paste
basil
cilantro
pepper and salt

Chop or dice the onions (I dice, well, sort of like cubes - just small)
Dice the garlic
Dice the bell peppers
Dice the peperoni and wonder when you'll buy a food processor
Pan hot, add olive oil
Fry the ground meat crumbly (just put in the ground meat and with the spatula keep dividing the clumps until you have nice small crumbly fried ground meat) - don't fry it completely, it will still be cooked in the soup
When the ground meat is done, put it in the pot
Put the onions and garlic in the pan and let them become translucent
Put the bell peppers and peperoni in the pan and fry for a few minutes together with the onions
Take everything out of the pan and put it in the pot
Half a liter of vegetable broth in the pot
The beans in the pot
Basil and cilantro in the soup - I am quite generous with basil
Let it boil, then simmer for 30 minutes (so just not too much bubbling in the pot - on my stove, half a point on full pot is enough for that), stir occasionally
Taste and add pepper and salt

The whole thing then tastes a bit like a mild, slightly sweet chili con carne. I suspect that with chili spice and hot peperoni, the whole thing is also a usable spicy variant. And can certainly be varied cheerfully with the vegetables. The whole thing then yields approximately 4 normal soup bowls.

Plagiarism scandal: Doctoral supervisor distances himself from zu Guttenberg. Just as a question posed to the room (honestly, I don't know!): doesn't a doctoral supervisor read the doctoral thesis of their doctoral candidate?

WordPress JSON API. I don't know if I really need this, but it might come in handy someday - the XMLRPC or Atom APIs are quite cumbersome if you just want to quickly access data from the blog via JavaScript.

Feeding the Bit Bucket» Blog Archive » Common Lisp, Clojure and Evolution. No, Clojure is not described as an evolution of Common Lisp - it's simply the example program "Evolution" from the book "Land of Lisp" translated into Clojure by someone who is learning Clojure by implementing all the examples in Clojure using the Common Lisp code as a basis. And therefore a good comparison opportunity between Clojure and Common Lisp. Maybe interesting for 2 or 3 readers of my blog. Otherwise, for me as a bookmark to look back at later.

Naked Password - jQuery Plugin to Encourage Stronger Passwords. Yes, that's what it says. The internet is very, very strange.

Weekly Market in Münster

With the dreary winter weather at the moment, the weekly market is not only a good opportunity to get the food I want to prepare over the weekend, but also a real feast for the eyes. I need colors! (Pictures with the Sony NEX-3 and the 2.8/16mm lens)

Hundreds of Tourist Photos Weaved into One (18 total) - My Modern Metropolis. Many tourists photograph the same subjects from the same angles - and here someone has layered many of these images on top of each other and produced composite images. Gives the images a wonderful painterly impression.

Fairytales

Sometimes the differences between what we see, what the camera captures, and what we imagine are too fundamentally different. Digital enables the adjustment of the appearance to the imagination - because photography is not always just a simple representation of what the chip sees. Images taken with the Sony NEX-3 and the Leica Elmar 50/2.8. Edited with Lightroom.

Cooking with rfc1437 - Mediterranean Pork Medallions

RFC1437 on the Road. If you've been wondering about the constant food photos in the sidebar lately - these are often things I've cooked myself. Since I can't really cook, it's quite a sensation for me when it actually tastes good!

Today: Mediterranean Pork Stir-Fry

Pork (cut into 2cm strips), amount depending on hunger
one bell pepper (it was a large one, otherwise take two)
400g mushrooms
50ml vegetable stock (for the sauce later)
250ml cream (that was too much, next time I'll only take 200ml)
two cloves of garlic (I remove the heart, it smells less, tastes the same)
Oregano and sweet paprika (I put that on the meat before frying, it becomes more flavorful then)
Pepper, salt (well, that's always there)

Cut meat into strips, dice bell pepper, chop garlic
Pre-season the meat
Heat pan with olive oil
Add meat and fry until it gets a nice crust (not too long, otherwise it will be too dry later, it will still be simmered in the sauce) - for thin strips, 2 minutes seem enough
Remove meat, add mushrooms and sweat (I had to google that, it just means frying until they sweat, so water comes out)
Add vegetable broth, bring to a boil
Add cream, bring to a boil
Taste the sauce, season with oregano, pepper and salt to taste
Add meat and bell pepper, cook in the sauce for 5 minutes
optional: Let the food boil over (bah, uncooperative food won't wait when I'm not looking)

I just eat it with bread - that also helps if, like me, too much sauce is made. And no, I don't think this is particularly calorie-conscious eating. Presumably, the sauce can also be made with something other than cream, but hey, I can't cook, I have to stick to recipes! (that's why it's being blogged, then I can cook the things that taste good to me without having to search long)

You are heroes!

Thanks, Judith Holofernes!

The BILD newspaper is not to be regarded with a wink as trash cultural asset and no harmless “Guilty Pleasure” for well-groomed upstarts, no witty social reference and no lifestyle quote. And least of all is the Bild newspaper what you want to sell it as: hated but largely harmless inventory of an otherwise much smarter Germany.

The Bild newspaper is a dangerous political instrument — not only a strongly magnifying telescope into the abyss, but a malicious being that does not describe Germany, but makes it. With an agenda.

by Wir sind Helden. The advertising campaign of the Blöd with these unspeakable "celebrity quotes", for which people give themselves who should actually know much better, is an unspeakable nonsense. And at least someone says what they really think about it, instead of being instrumentalized for the Blöd. (Obligatory Guttenberg: I shamelessly copied the title from the Schockwellenreiter)

MostAwesomeDude/bravo is a Minecraft server written in Python. Looking at what's happening around Minecraft, I think I should check it out. Especially after a bit of browsing - it seems to be a good mix of freeform building like Lego and (adjustable difficulty) monster-slaying gameplay. And since you can run your own server, which can now also be multiplayer, you can build your constructions together with others or share them (though they can also break everything if you let them). And it doesn't cost a monthly fee, which personally kept me away from Lego Universe (even though I bought the box).

Ada 95: The Craft of Object-Oriented Programming. Free online book (formerly Prentice Hall from 97) about Ada 95. Quite nice to see the beautifully byzantine-looking source code of Ada again.

IP Addresses and Privacy

IP Address: Data Protectionists Target AdSense, Amazon Links, and IVW. I don't know, but I think slowly this is starting to overshoot the mark. Yes, data collection should be avoided when avoidable. And certainly, one should always keep in mind what can be done with the data for a central figure like Google. But if this leads to, for example, the Google API Loader for jQuery no longer being usable because their accesses also go to Google servers, or if, as here, complaints are made about Amazon Affiliate links - which only access Amazon when clicked, not generally - then things are getting a bit hairy.

Then we are only a short step away from generally prohibiting links to pages from larger providers. Or absurdities, such as the idea expressed here of the illegality of using Google Mail in Germany. Yes, IP addresses are conditionally personally identifiable. And with IPv6, this will certainly become even more apparent (since there the reuse of IP addresses is not as mandatory as with IPv4). But the IP address is at the same time the central pivot of the Internet, and if one focuses too much on it, one eventually reaches the point where the highest data protection officer prohibits access to the international Internet because one thereby reveals one's IP address to computers outside Germany...

Data protection is to a large extent also the education of users and the self-responsibility of users - the latter can of course only be achieved with an appropriate level of knowledge. I would feel much better if the data protection authorities also produced useful output in the form of citizen information. But there it's somehow bleak.

So, discuss with the large providers and, if necessary, take them to court to force them to comply with data protection guidelines: yes. Public discussion about the problems and dangers: yes. Wildly attacking random forum operators: no.

Why is the data protectionist going after something as irrelevant as mentioned in the article, and not even against one of the big players in the forum industry, such as Heise, Spiegel, Focus, or Golem? Too much respect for the reaction to be expected there?

Something smells fishy about the whole thing. Possibly we don't have all the information - but I can't think of what information might be missing that would make the whole thing an appropriate reaction.

Because I wrote about Prograph: Andescotia Software seems to have a new commercial Prograph version available. The whole thing works under OSX 10.4 and there is a demo version to try out. And it's not expensive at all with 68 dollars. I think I know what I'll be playing around with tonight! And as a free download there is the book "Visual Programming With Prograph CPX". Update: the playing has been canceled, the demo does not start under Snow Leopard ... (and the traffic on their mailing list does not look like there is a big reaction to be expected). Too bad. I wrote an email, maybe something will happen yet, but it sounds very much like a dead project again. Once again.

hotzen/ScalaFlow provides a very interesting extension to Scala: dataflow programming with automatic resolution via continuations - you define variables, can access variable values before values are assigned to them and the system itself sorts all accesses and assignments into the correct order. Particularly interesting as a basis for parallelization, when partial areas only emerge later but corresponding processing should already be defined earlier. Dataflow languages have been of interest to me since Prograph. The integration into a normal language as a basis could be quite interesting.

JSSpeccy: A ZX Spectrum emulator in Javascript. It works.

remogatto/gospeccy - a ZX Spectrum Emulator written in Go. Since I was an old Spectrum owner and this was my first box that I bought with my own earned money (back then an article in the c't! My first and only foray into writing!).

lsyncd is somewhat like Dropbox but very simple. Essentially, it's a daemon that listens for directory changes via inotify and automatically triggers an rsync if needed to synchronize directory trees. Since you can sync any directories with it and can also intervene in the sync process via Lua integration in lsyncd, it could be useful for some loosely coupled sync situations (e.g., autonomous nodes in a very loosely coupled cluster or home servers that automatically sync to a server on the internet). Additionally, it offers functions similar to Hazel - you can assign various actions (not just sync) to different file change events.

Plagiarism – GuttenPlag Wiki. With the latest politician statements in support of Guttenberg, I really wonder if a Mrs. Merkel and a Mr. Seehofer are really too stupid to look at the Wikia page beforehand - at the time of my post 175 instances with evidence of the copied originals. This has nothing to do with mistakes or negligence, this is just plain system.

Totally wild: MS Optical Super Triplet Perar 3.5/35. A lens produced in a very small series (only 200 pieces) for the Leica-M bayonet. The basis is a triplet - i.e. a three-lens - but designed with modern calculations and modern glass types. Of course, triplets have known problems - some show up in a softer drawing and lower line resolution, others in the rather meager light strength. Nevertheless, the little guy is pretty cool. Unfortunately, the edition is already completely sold out. For my M8 (and the NEX-3 with adapter) it became a C Biogon 2.8/35 from Zeiss for me. That is already a much more classic calculation and execution, also not so super light-strong, but nicely compact. And Zeiss-typical "chön charf". I admit, however, if Leica had a retractable Elmar 2.8/35 or 3.5/35 (i.e. new, not the old, known lens for screw Leicas - the old one has too many optical defects by today's standards), I could get weak (Elmare are four-lens, I already use a 2.8/50 and 4.0/90, both retractable, the 50 is a hybrid: a four-lens triplet, i.e. the last two lenses cemented).

Spherical aberration. Not only about spherical aberration, but also about the problem of focus shift when stopping down - the latter is not so intuitive to understand, because why should the point of best focus shift in the plane, just because you stop down - after all, only the depth of field is increased. But it's never quite that simple, especially with fast lenses.

BoPhoto.com: M8 coder - simple manual handcoding of M lenses. Another useful template to apply lens coding. Some Zeiss and Voigtländer lenses have a small gap at the bayonet, where you can even use paint for the marking, which then holds better and doesn't wear off as quickly. Or you can make the markings on thinner paper and clamp it between the lens and the body. It's a bit fiddly, but perhaps practical for occasional changing.

Get inPulse and Hack Your Watch. Looks pretty cool, just a small computer and a display, programmable, connected via Bluetooth. Could do some nice tricks with it. Maybe even display the time.

PyPy Status Blog: PyPy Winter Sprint Report. Most important point: fast-forward is in Trunk, so the next version of PyPy will definitely have 2.7 compatibility.

And for those who want an overview of various S3 file systems: Comparison of S3QL and other S3 file systems. The list also includes commercial packages and a simple feature comparison is made.

s3fs - I should also check this out, as it allows me to mount Amazon S3 on the server and access it from the outside via WebDAV, indirectly also to S3. For my pictures, it might be sensible in the long run to have two offsite backups with different techniques. For this purpose, I should also take a look at the s3fslight fork, as it is said to work better with rsync and that would be interesting for automatic backups. Both store files directly in S3, so they can be trivially downloaded. On the other hand, both have problems with the eventual consistency feature of S3, you have to run the synchronization multiple times, especially when you make many changes. Therefore, I should also take a look at s3ql, which forms a complete file system that only uses S3 as storage. This makes it more difficult to access file contents outside of s3ql - but there are also things like deduplication and encryption (in cloud storage, it seems more sympathetic to store things encrypted rather than unencrypted, even if you can trust some providers more than others).

nginx HttpDavModule. I want to check it out to get easier access to my server from OSX - might be quite interesting for some things (e.g. backups of my pictures to my server to have an offsite storage location).

Newspaper: Guttenberg plagiarized parts of his doctoral thesis - and now everyone with the princes: "everything just stolen"!

Archive 16.2.2011 - 12.3.2011