Tuesday, August 31, 2010

completed another good work-out in the gym

Now looking forward to a couple of hours reading Being Geek. To be presented on Thursday at the Ruby User Group, Berlin.

the Catholic Church and the Inquisition

Saw part of this movie ("The Tudors" (2007)) during my workout on a treadmill in the gym.
I actually only switched to it from a basketball match, when I saw that terrible inquisition scene, where they set somebody on fire.
I think I have been asking myself that question, since I was young: Why was that organisation by the name of Catholic Church not simply abolished, once there was enough intelligence "available" outside it? Why does it still exist?

Norman Walsh: Reconsidering specialization, part the first

http://norman.walsh.name/2010/08/30/specialization

On DocBook, DITA, poor typesetting on the iPAD and a lot, lot more.

Rails 3: Appreciate with Charity

Rails 3: Appreciate with Charity

Email overload? Try Priority Inbox - Official Gmail Blog

Email overload? Try Priority Inbox - Official Gmail Blog

procmail has been around since December 1990. Those, who didn't want to know, needed to suffer for that. Well deserved.

Monday, August 30, 2010

new PCs come without recovery medium – what to do?

New PCs (including ASUS Eee Boxes) come without recovery medium, but they seem to have a recovery partition on their hard disk. You have to find a utility, that copies that hidden partition to an external bootable medium like a USB memory stick (that needs to be bootable!!!).
I used R-Drive Image for that. Its evaluation period was long enough for my purpose.
This article by Benny Neugebauer didn't actually describe my problem, but it helped finding that utility.

the Eee Box Windows 7 initial set up allows not only the local language

 And I like that really a lot. Computers must speak in English to me.

Friday, August 27, 2010

Ruboto: Android App development with Ruby - The H Open Source: News and Features

Ruboto: Android App development with Ruby - The H Open Source: News and Features

Miranda IM v0.9.0 messaging client released - The H Open Source: News and Features

Miranda IM v0.9.0 messaging client released - The H Open Source: News and Features

Easier event scheduling in Google Calendar - Official Gmail Blog

Easier event scheduling in Google Calendar - Official Gmail Blog

Call phones from Gmail - Official Gmail Blog

Call phones from Gmail - Official Gmail Blog

Meritocracy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Meritocracy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Berlin - Martinique

Martinique - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sun, beaches, pleasure, a Linux geek around, … – Martinique is calling!!!!

Berlin <-> Paris covered by Lufthansa bonus miles, Paris <-> Martinique for less than EUR 400 through swoodoo.com.

I'm almost on my way.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

How to add more than one google/gmail Calendar to your iPad/iPhone - O'Reilly Answers

How to add more than one google/gmail Calendar to your iPad/iPhone - O'Reilly Answers

OMG, how long did it take them to find this out? I had written about this last year. And others even earlier.

WikiLeaks founder cleared of sex allegations - Yahoo! News

WikiLeaks founder cleared of sex allegations - Yahoo! News

What a surprise!!!! But actually from how bad it was made, you can see, it wasn't made up by the FBI or the CIA but rather by amateurs.

Babies feel and remember stress when parents don’t respond - Parentcentral.ca

Babies feel and remember stress when parents don’t respond - Parentcentral.ca

two cantors at Berlin's Rykestrasse Synagogue

Rykestrasse Synagogue - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wikipedia says it't Germany's largest synagogue. I was surprised to read this. I had not thought so.

This was another rather enlightening time at the synagogue. Will have to go their more often. Two cantors and a choir, perfect. Pulled me away from rather sad things happening around me.

After the concert those sad things started getting hold on me again, but only slowly.

I received another rather nice e-mail from one of the Haskell book authors (JG), that I had asked recently to be a trainer with my Haskell courses in Berlin, and that was rather enjoyable as well. We will see, how much demand there is for topics like Haskell, Scala, and GAE in Germany. If there is, than have a look at my specific web page in English resp. in German!

free Oracle on Linux: Oracle Database 10g

Oracle Database 10g Express Edition

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

an event scheduler - my latest perl helper

The need for a new helper script in Perl arose recently. I called it JHschedule_courses.pl.

I wanted to create weekly events,
  • given a start date,
  • given the number of weeks,
  • given the offset of the registration deadline,
  • and given the offset of the end date of that event.
The output of JHschedule_courses.pl would be
  • the start date within any such week,
  • the respective registration deadline,
  • and the respective end date.
This output would serve as a here document to a loop within a shell script, which in turn also uses an XML template (as another here document within that loop) and which would create an XML structure for any such event as described above, but obviously with some constant text included. The entire XML structure would (after some tweaking) get uploaded to a calendar system.

I was pretty sure, I could achieve this functionality using Steffen Beyer's Date::Calc (esp. Add_Delta_YMD), which I have been using in variouses contextes for many years now. And now it's done. Thanks a lot to Steffen Beyer! Do you have an Amazon wishlist?

how to convert a rectangular image into a square one?

Most of the images I download from LinkedIn or Xing are not square ones. But I want to make use of them in my Google Mail address book, which allows me to select a square sub-section of those rectangular images. I know how to transform rectangular images into square ones using Gimp, but that takes far too many manual steps. I would actually prefer a command line utility. Can anybody help?

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

FSFE Legal - The Freedom Task Force

FSFE Legal - The Freedom Task Force

SUSE Studio: Build openSUSE 11.3 appliances now

SUSE Studio: Build openSUSE 11.3 appliances now

The interesting topic here (for me) is: how to build appliances for AWS? And apparently SUSE and AWS use incompatible versions of Xen. But sooner or later they are going to solve this.

Emacs org mode - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

org-mode - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

How to smear a hero « Nicholas John Mead

How to smear a hero « Nicholas John Mead

Engine Yard CLI Now Open Source | Engine Yard Ruby on Rails Blog

Engine Yard CLI Now Open Source | Engine Yard Ruby on Rails Blog

Wibiya: a Better Toolbar for Your Blog | All About Our Web Toolbar Wibiya Blog

Wibiya: a Better Toolbar for Your Blog | All About Our Web Toolbar Wibiya Blog

I personally use AddThis, and I think, it's really hard to beat.

Did weak copyright laws help Germany outpace the British Empire?

Did weak copyright laws help Germany outpace the British Empire?

JasperReports 3.6 Development Cookbook | PacktLib, Packt Publishing’s online digital book library

JasperReports 3.6 Development Cookbook | PacktLib, Packt Publishing’s online digital book library

Compiere 3 | PacktLib, Packt Publishing’s online digital book library

Compiere 3 | PacktLib, Packt Publishing’s online digital book library

High Availability MySQL Cookbook | PacktLib, Packt Publishing’s online digital book library

High Availability MySQL Cookbook | PacktLib, Packt Publishing’s online digital book library

MediaWiki 1.1 Beginner's Guide | PacktLib, Packt Publishing’s online digital book library

MediaWiki 1.1 Beginner's Guide | PacktLib, Packt Publishing’s online digital book library

GlassFish Administration | PacktLib, Packt Publishing’s online digital book library

GlassFish Administration | PacktLib, Packt Publishing’s online digital book library

MediaWiki - O'Reilly Media

MediaWiki - O'Reilly Media

Python 3 Object Oriented Programming | PacktLib, Packt Publishing’s online digital book library

Python 3 Object Oriented Programming | PacktLib, Packt Publishing’s online digital book library

FreeSWITCH 1.0.6 | PacktLib, Packt Publishing’s online digital book library

FreeSWITCH 1.0.6 | PacktLib, Packt Publishing’s online digital book library

Nginx HTTP Server | PacktLib, Packt Publishing’s online digital book library

Nginx HTTP Server | PacktLib, Packt Publishing’s online digital book library

Study: Women prefer geeky men to athletic ones - Odd News | newslite.tv

Study: Women prefer geeky men to athletic ones - Odd News | newslite.tv

Question is, why they think, geeks are DIY men in. I haven't come across any such during the last 30 years, but maybe they know better.

But what about geeks, who are doing a regular work-out and are musicians as well? Poor "geeks-only"!

Saturday, August 21, 2010

watching Salt with Angelina Jolie tonight at a Berlin movie theatre

anybody wants to join watching this movie?

teaching Ruby in secondary education in schools

Are there any activities teaching Ruby in secondary education in schools, I mean anywhere on this planet? That could well start with a course introducing into software development. Is there any course material available?

We shouldn't leave this field to PHP or whatever, right?!?

on the downside of non-private friend lists in web-2.0

Wherever I can, I set my friend-lists to private, but sometimes you think, this is professional land, it should not be necessary here, or you simply neglect it. It's not that I am ashamed of my friends, it's just, that I don't force them to stand up for me and all of my cases. Most of them are not really as decided and minor-shy as I am.

Right now some raging "strangers" of the Berlin programming languages scene harvest my LinkedIn contacts list, contact them, and issue them an ultimata.

These are more perfect examples for my new project regarding civil rights.

But for the time being this a fierceful threat for someone standing up for a noble target.

Right, in the end this society will hopefully account these enemies of civil rights for their deeds. But it might take a little longer. The Evil will get held liable for their deeds in court, their names will all get made public sooner or later.

perlfork - Perl's fork emulation

perlfork - Perl's fork emulation

Picked this up on twitter from a conversation between 2 rather well-known hard-core Rubyists (and both certainly former hard-core Perl Mongers):
my mate James Edward Gray II (author of the Textmate book, author of the Ruby CSV library modules, renowned I18N guru, contributor to my FRITZ!Box call monitor, …) and Yehuda Katz (member of Engine Yard, Rails core contributor, …).
SYNOPSIS

Perl provides a fork() keyword that corresponds to the Unix system call of the same name. On most Unix-like platforms where the fork() system call is available, Perl's fork() simply calls it.

On some platforms such as Windows where the fork() system call is not available, Perl can be built to emulate fork() at the interpreter level. While the emulation is designed to be as compatible as possible with the real fork() at the the level of the Perl program, there are certain important differences that stem from the fact that all the pseudo child ``processes'' created this way live in the same real process as far as the operating system is concerned.

This document provides a general overview of the capabilities and limitations of the fork() emulation. Note that the issues discussed here are not applicable to platforms where a real fork() is available and Perl has been configured to use it.

Access two Gmail accounts at once in the same browser - Official Gmail Blog

Access two Gmail accounts at once in the same browser - Official Gmail Blog

Use Linux? Now you can video chat too - Official Gmail Blog

Use Linux? Now you can video chat too - Official Gmail Blog

Günter Neuhold - Der Ring des Nibelungen - Membran Shop

Günter Neuhold - Der Ring des Nibelungen - Membran Shop

I have liked operas since when I attended my first ones at Karlsruhe during university time at the KIT, but I had sort of aversion against Wagner for political reasons. I really enjoy having recognized now, how beautiful and ravishing this music is.

Diverse - The Complete Wagner Operas - Membran Shop

Diverse - The Complete Wagner Operas - Membran Shop

InformIT: IronRuby Unleashed

InformIT: IronRuby Unleashed

USD 28 only for the watermarked e-book at informIT.com .

Friday, August 20, 2010

O'Reilly Media book: MediaWiki

http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596519681/

Part III, chapter 9: Installing MediaWiki.

This book is rather helpful at setting up my civil rights … wiki. Exciting!!! Sorry for repeating myself!

Update 2013-11-14: Ch. 6: Adding an Article to a Category
Introduced a category on my 1st articles on my "personal" wiki: ToBeExported. Allows me to export all of them as XML at once. So I will be able to tear down my wiki and build it up again with the old contents – e.g. in case I want to get the URL shortened again.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

civil rights …: brand-new domain and wiki almost set up

This is getting excited. I want the press and the media to know this and to celebrate it. This is a tiny but an important step in this area.

Manga Guide Complete Set | No Starch Press

Manga Guide Complete Set | No Starch Press

The parcel from the U.S. just arrived. Customs not involved. Why is that? But it's great. So how will I get the books to their audience? And who is going to be the audience? Just son#1? OMG! Poor boy!

Any idea?

These are the topics:

  • databases
  • calculus
  • molecular biology
  • physics
  • electricity
  • statistics
Apparently some of them got translated to some indigenous languages like German – have a look here!

what about a ".org" domain and a wiki?


I actually think, the issue is very serious and very urgent.

I kept thinking about a way of how to join efforts.
Maybe setting up a wiki on a domain at ".org" is the right thing.
I started enquiries and activities into that direction.

I still need your advise and your comments, and I seriously welcome and appreciate your support.

One thing is very true: buzzwords shouldn't be used in this context, because they are far too loud and appeal in an improper way. But of course, it's far too intriguing to use them. So we must take care.

I asked around at my web space provider (a non profit organization in the research support area), if anybody there would like to support this effort on an hourly basis. Waiting for their feedback.

How Bad Was Jezebel? - Biblical Archaeology Review

How Bad Was Jezebel? - Biblical Archaeology Review

software staff meetings and a few crucial questions

These questions actually come from "The Software Developer's Career Handbook" ("Being Geek") by Michael Lopp.Beware: not every yes is a good yes.

  • Is there an agenda?
  • Is it followed?
  • Is random debate encouraged?
  • Can debate occur without involving the manager?
  • Is debate limited to a specific time?
  • Is the time allotted for the meeting always filled?
  • Can it go over?
  • Does it always go over?
  • Is it a fun meeting?
Well, I have the book in front of me, and I know, what Michael Lopp thinks are positive yes-s, he calls them organic. If I look back at one particular bank project during the last couple of years, the manager utterly failed in terms of this check.The manager let aggressive Geek style team members bash others, because they dared to prolong the staff meeting, and because these other teem members asked quiestions, that the first ones already got dealt with in a 1:1 outside the staff meeting.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

suffering from e-mails getting bounced because of some RBL listed SMTP server

My domains are hosted by United-Domains.de, my mail box and web space are hosted by another provider.
Provider#2 uses an RBL list, which has a "bad reputation entry" concerning the SMTP server of provider#1.
This is how I finally understood my situation today, after having suffered from e-mails getting bounced for quite a couple of months. What a luck, provider#2's hotline isn't any expensive at all.

I had a calm and relaxed conversation with the highly experienced supporter at the other end, and he explained me how to remove the RBL checking for my e-mail addresses. He warned me to do so, because that would increase the amount of SPAM arriving at my account, but I praised their SPAM detection and flagging of the e-mail headers and also my own procmail rules.

Now, I am very positive, my suffering found an end.

Ruby update closes XSS vulnerability - The H Security: News and Features

Ruby update closes XSS vulnerability - The H Security: News and Features

Mud-slinging in the Warez scene - The H Security: News and Features

Mud-slinging in the Warez scene - The H Security: News and Features

The Facebook dislike button scam - The H Security: News and Features

The Facebook dislike button scam - The H Security: News and Features

FRITZ!Box 7390 "looses" substantial amounts of time during 24 hours

My 7390's firmware version is this: 84.04.85-18065.

There are other issues with the 7390 as well, but it's a solid piece of router / wifi access point / pbx / dect access point / … - I do love my 7390, and I don't want to swap it for anything else.

I didn't experience those firewall attacks again, that I mentioned earlier.

But the box rebooted all off a sudden recently w/o leaving any reasonable or informative message.

Update re lost time:
Changing the NTP server (e.g. to 2.de.pool.ntp.org) seems to help.

Update 2011-01-05 re lost time:
No, changing the NTP server did not really help at all. I am losing about half an hour quite often. The NTP server is now again set to de.pool.ntp.org.
Manually re-connecting the Internet connection under Internet / Online-Monitor helps, if you want to get the time corrected instantly.
But I don't want to imagine, I oversleep a train connection, because my FRITZ!Box initiated alarms on the phones do not occur at the right time.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

"drag and drop" and the cmd-key

My Situation: 2 finders open, one pointing to a local disk, the other to a remote disk.

If you drag (using the cmd-key) exactly one file from that "local finder" to the "remote finder", the meaning of the operation is "move".


If you drag (using the cmd-key) more than one file from that "local finder" to the "remote finder", the meaning of the operation is "copy".


How do I achieve a "move" for more than one file?


Update 2011-07-23
Starting with Lion you also achieve moving more than one file like that.

"Requiem" - Membran Online

Requiem - Membran Online

"10 Great Tenors" - Membran Online

10 Great Tenors - Membran Online

"10 Great Sopranos" - Membran Online

10 Great Sopranos - Membran Online

Franz Schubert - Schubertiade - Membran Online

Franz Schubert - Schubertiade - Membran Online

Gustav Mahler - Membran Online

Gustav Mahler - Membran Online

civil rights in Cyberland

"Civil rights in Cyberland" - what were your first thoughts, when you read this?
  • are there any?
  • should there be any?
  • why should there be any?
  • is there actually any contradiction?
I have obviously no idea, what your (professional) background is, my dear reader. Mine is 30 years I.T., and like 20 years in Cyberland, i.e. the Usenet, mailing lists, forums.
Everybody in Cyberland did experience bashing at one stage, either you simply observed it, or you were the victim, or you were an acting party.
My experience is, it was taken for granted during these last 20 years, that there simply aren't any civil rights in Cyberland. Moderators are usually not staff trained in law, and don't you ask them about their point of view regarding relevant issues of their society, the environment, education, raising children! Either no answers or just horrible answers.
My point of view is, this is going to change in the near future. It must change.

Right now, I am collecting your thoughts, so please don't be shy and please start commenting heavily!

As I was born in Germany, holding a German citizenship, and living all over Europe, my special area of interest is Fascism in Germany. Of course, Fascism and Cyberland is not entirely disjoint, especially in Germany, and especially in Berlin. So I am very curious to hear of your experiences in this area. I heard particularly bad things about the Berlin P3rl Mongers, but that needs further research - and your help! (P3rl is a typo on purpose, suggested by a dear friend.)

Usually people being bashed, deprived of their civil right, and simply put "victimized" in Cyberspace lose their "family", their "living space", and very bad: the place, where they were able to articulate in their past. So after their "strike" you usually don't hear of them any more. They experienced a deep cut in their lives, and they are condemned to stay silent. This must change.
Obviously this reminds you of fundamental, religious communities, where people get treated in a pretty similar way.

I don't want to leave you without hope for a change though.
I have no statistical figures at hand, but I guess, after the take-over of Dejanews Google has been #1 as hoster of web forums and mailing lists, the relevant place in Cyberspace is Google Groups.
So if you get Google to act in a positive way, other places and their system of rules will get compared to Google's style.

Now we should start collecting bits and pieces for a civil rights system in Cyberland. I suggest we use the best  parts from the democracies on this planet. But don't you exaggerate! Stay earthed, feet on ground!

Please return soon with your contributions!

Your brave historian Jochen Hayek

Update / 2010-08-19:
I actually think, the issue is very serious and very urgent.
I kept thinking about a way of how to join efforts.
Maybe setting up a wiki on a domain at ".org" is the right thing.
I started enquiries and activities into that direction.
I still need your advise and your comments, and I seriously welcome and appreciate your support.

Richard Strauss - Membran Online

Richard Strauss - Membran Online

Membran Online -- the online music shop

Membran Online

Music Alliance Membran -- the music publishing house

Music Alliance Membran

Monday, August 16, 2010

Headius: "My Thoughts on Oracle v Google"

Headius: My Thoughts on Oracle v Google


My Thoughts on Oracle v Google
As you've probably heard by now, Oracle has decided to file suit against Google, claiming multiple counts of infringement against Java or JVM patents and copyrights they acquired when they assimilated Sun Microsystems this past year. Since I'm unlikely to keep my mouth shut about even trivial matters, something this big obviously requires at least a couple thousand words.
Who Am I?

started the new week at the gym ...

... with a nice work-out, running 3 km on the treadmill in 28:25. I think, I will top this later today.

Breakfast: müsli with strawberry-red curd cheese.

The new bill from Deutsche Telekom's mobile phone branch arrived. So that is something asks for getting worked on, before I go tho bed after this pretty long Sunday.

Salome (opera) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Salome (opera) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dalida - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dalida - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Jazz in France" - Membran Online

Jazz in France - Membran Online

Yotam Silberstein : Guitarist and Composer–album: next page for EUR 8.50

Yotam Silberstein : Guitarist and Composer

nice and solid guitar jazz

Jailbreak community develops its own iPhone patch - The H Security: News and Features

Jailbreak community develops its own iPhone patch - The H Security: News and Features

John Carmack ports Rage engine to iPhone - The H Open Source: News and Features

John Carmack ports Rage engine to iPhone - The H Open Source: News and Features

An Organic Open Source Movement? - The H Open Source: News and Features

An Organic Open Source Movement? - The H Open Source: News and Features

daniel.haxx.se » Websockets right now

daniel.haxx.se » Websockets right now

Soldiers returning from war surprise kids, loved ones. NSFW b/c you will bawl your eyes out (video) : theCHIVE

Soldiers returning from war surprise kids, loved ones. NSFW b/c you will bawl your eyes out (video) : theCHIVE

Oracle sues Google over Android - The H Open Source: News and Features

Oracle sues Google over Android - The H Open Source: News and Features

Sunday, August 15, 2010

An introduction to Xproc: An XML Pipeline Language

An introduction to Xproc: An XML Pipeline Language by Dave Pawson.

There is no book on Xproc available yet at O'Reilly's.

Gábor Szabó quoting DHH, Mr. Ruby on Rails

On 2010-08-15 Gábor Szabó, the World Perl Chief Evangelist, quoted David Heinemeier Hansson aka DHH, Mr. Ruby on Rails, in this tweet:
DHH: http://bigthink.com/davidheinemeierhansson "German is the ugliest language", "Java is German, Ruby is French"
So what's their individual background for German bashing?

DHH is quite well-known for his pointed statements. DHH is Danish, he is a Danish native speaker, and just for simplicity let's assume he addresses U.S. audience. I am not so sure about the Danish population, but regarding the U.S. population, I think it's just simple common sense, that foreign languages are ugly, and German in particular. There is a U.S. elite though, that likes the French cuisine, so the French language gains a little over all these other per se ugly foreign languages. From the linguistic scientific point of view German, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, and Flamish are only minor derivatives of a common prehistoric language. And as I consider DHH a super-smart guy, I assume, he is fully aware of that. So considering one of them an ugly language, is considering all of them ugly languages. Fair enough.

My friend Gábor though is a descendant of a European so-called minority, that suffered horribly from German suppression and persecution esp. around WW II.
If you want to have a short glance at the Tanach, which is what the christian world calls the Old Testament, esp. at Shemot aka Exodus, chapter 34, verse 7:
… but punishing children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generation for their father's wickedness.
Actually German bashing is quite popular in Israel, but that's silly to mention.
So I think German bashing is also "fair enoughWRT my dear friend Gábor.

I think it always helps to reveil the individual background of the more or less subtle bashers, otherwise the innocent reader could well assume blind hatred, which it certainly isn't regarding these two guys. They both also certainly speak German fairly well. But you knew that already, I'm sure.

And here is another aspect: Most geeks don't know more than one or two programming languages and hate the others, and so it is of course with natural languages: You know your native language, and you hate all foreign languages, because fit's a PITA to learn them. So that might be a good reason for both of them as well.

To avoid any such rubbish, my own son#2 (almost 4 years old right now) happily and eagerly learns not only his mother's language, i.e. his native language (in Yiddish: "mame lashon"), which is Brazilian Portuguese of the gaucho flavour, pretty close to Portuguese from Portugal in some respect, but also English, Hebrew, and last not least German, because he spends most day time of the working week in a day care center in the middle of Berlin, the capitol of Germany. Bilingual kids gain a lot for their lives, on top of that multilingual kids are a mere blessing for their environments.

So much for today. I hoped you enjoyed these lines. Pls come back here occasionally! And pls don't you forget to press the Flattr button on top of this article a couple of times!

Update / after Gábor and DHH commented here:
Why do I personally like German as a language?
I am not even sure, why and whether I like it. It's just that I remember Berthold Brecht, Schiller, Goethe, Ingeborg Bachmann, Karl Marx, Martin Buber, Max Weber, Hans Lenk (one of my most important profs in Karlsruhe), Franz Kafka, Karl Kraus, Rabbi Nathan Peter Levinson, and nowadays Kathrin Passig in German. It was my 1st language to experience serious literature in.
You can always get divorced from your love, you cannot get divorced from your native language, as much as you might want it.

Update / 2010-08-15 19:00:
I saw Gábor's new tweet:
I deleted that quote from DHH as some people think I am applauding it @erez @Jochen_Hayek (quoting #fail)
I am not sure, why Gábor mentions me. I certainly didn't criticize him. I just thought, it's worth discussing it. I guess, he sometimes underestimates statements made by the World Perl Chief Evangelist.

Update / 2010-08-16 04:00:
I just remembered, that sometimes, if I am getting a little louder with my boys, I always attempt to avoid doing so in German. I rather shout at them in Polish (the older one's native language is Polish though), Portuguese, or Hebrew. Everything is then better then German. If I try to hear myself in this situation, it always rings a bell like "KZ shouting".

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Friday, August 13, 2010

installing Linux on an external disk still makes Win 7 unbootable w/o the external disk

I had that problem like 10 years ago already with other hardware and different Windows.

That computer does not come with a separate recovery medium, the recovery stuff is stored on its own 1st partition.
Once that problem will be fixed, it's possible to create a separate recovery medium, e.g. a 16 GB USB memory stick, from starting the computer using "F9".

Looks like I can't fix it with pure Windows means.

Will this fix it?!?

  • Yast2 has a module called "Boot Loader Settings",
  • there is a tab "Boot Loader Installation",
  • there is a menu button "Other",
  • there is an entry "Restore MBR of Hard Disk".

EFI System partition - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

EFI System partition - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

emacs documentation

I have proudly owned O'Reilly's "Learning GNU Emacs" since November 1996. It has always been a very, very valuable supplement to the info mode documentation prepared in Texinfo.

That book covers GNU Emacs version 19.30, nowadays I am using version 23.x resp. 22.x. Better GUI integration has happened since and variable customization.

As part of my project "let's create courses and presentations from my e-books!", I recently also acquired the 3rd edition of that fine book, and I used it today as PDF.

I was always happily searching and replacing in case-ignorant-mode. But sometimes my finger do things with emacs, that emacs takes more literally then it was meant. That way sometimes I destroy this and that. LIke my gnus folder and topics structure. One of the minor things is to inadvertently go into non-case-ignorant-mode. But today during my booking-keeping time, I "had to" create yet another nice and useful replacement rule for my bank statement. And again, non-case-ignorant-mode - bad, very bad!

I wasn't lucky, when I tried to look this up in the emacs standard documentation "The Emacs Editor", but looking it up in the O'Reilly book was a hit. There has always been a section titled "are emacs searches case-sensitive?". I speaks about case-fold-search and case-replace. I understand that, and I "customized" the variables. Looking at these PDF files using Snow Leopard and its Preview application is also a big plus, I want to tell you.

Oracle outlines Solaris 11, says little of OpenSolaris - The H Open Source: News and Features

Oracle outlines Solaris 11, says little of OpenSolaris - The H Open Source: News and Features

Scala programming language roadmap - The H Open Source: News and Features

Scala programming language roadmap - The H Open Source: News and Features

Thursday, August 12, 2010

being O.T. on mailing lists

A (nice) guy told me in a nice way, one of my postings looked like advertising for O'Reilly books on that mailing list. Luckily enough, we had connected before through Xing (for the U.S. guys: something liked LinkedIn), I gave him a call on his mobile phone, and we talked about it. He actually agreed, that my posting on O'Reilly's new HTML5 book was the least O.T. posting out of a couple, but still.

Good to get feedback from "mates" and to sort it out one-2-one.

That still tells me, to be a little more cautious with public announcements.

It was about a presentation on HTML5, that I offered to give. Actually: From my "being slightly O.T." on a couple of mailing lists came an invitation to a technology conference in October. The guy reckoned, if I had specifically offered to that particular group, that I would give a presentation on their meeting, that would have been alright.

Hmmm. Well, it was meant that way. And "just in case", nobody wanted it on any of the local user groups' meeting agendas, I would have presented it "wherever".
I think I do need a marketing person for that. It's just that I can't even afford employing and salarizing myself these days. So instead of doing nothing I think I have to accept, that errors and problems and misunderstandings just occur … and deal with them.

I do have these Israeli marketing girls on my twitter following list, that's a little like an ongoing course on that topic – a little.

Googe Mail "Contacts Manager" has even gotten much, much nicer …

… with the recent update.

I wonder how long it will take for the new features to find their way into the Google Apps version of the Contacts Manager.

a fresh openSUSE 11.3 install

My NEO's hard disk broke over night after running 365*24 for a couple of years (sic!!), so I got me new 3.5" hard disks for this one and also its brother.

I started installing openSUSE 11.3 over the network yesterday. That worked pretty fine.

But I got problems with X. I have no clue, where the X Windows set-up hides. Something tells me, to have a look at, which yast2-* components got activated with YaST's package management. I think, the thing is actually called SaX. I will call SaX then instead. Didn't find it. I am stuck. Shall I chat with Andreas Jaeger about this? Better not, he might remove me from his IM list then. I shall wait. It's not urgent at all. I don't really need a GUI on that machine. But then: it's sort of my experimental box. If 11.3 works there, I will upgrade to it on the others as well.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

gtugcampout on USTREAM: HTML5 Technical Talks, Product Pitches and Product Demos will all be streamed from the Silicon Valley GTUG Campout on the weekend o...

gtugcampout on USTREAM: HTML5 Technical Talks, Product Pitches and Product Demos will all be streamed from the Silicon Valley GTUG Campout on the weekend o...

Schedule - svgtugcampout

Schedule - svgtugcampout

Plan 9 from Bell Labs (THE website)

Plan 9 from Bell Labs (the link to THE website)

The last time I gave Plan 9 a try was, when I worked with Derwent in London. That was pretty much in vain then, I just couldn't really get it running on a PC. But nowadays they provide you with images for virtual machines. I still assume, if Plan 9 had ever gotten to enough speed, there would never have been GNU Hurd and Linux either.

This time I came across Plan 9 in the context of Google's Go programming language, which they seem to provide for Plan 9.

Plan 9 from Bell Labs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Plan 9 from Bell Labs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Go Programming Language (on GoLang.org)

The Go Programming Language on GoLang.org

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

brand new hot stuff: Using SQLite - O'Reilly Media

Using SQLite - O'Reilly Media

We (Aleph Soft Education) are going to teach you this tomorrow, if you want so!

Look up, what else we have to offer!

"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life."

"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life."

 author: Winston Churchill

my slides' ToC had truncated section titles

I asked on the mailing list docbook-apps, what I should do, and a helpful mate suggested to make use of <titleabbrev>. That was a pretty good suggestion, I was rather thankful for it, and I did that for a couple of presentations.

Introducing <titleabbrev> is a rather tedious process though (and remember: engineers are notoriously lazy, but as engineers they are also rather ingenious by nature), as you keep trying to replace the original long title by a fancy shorter one.

Recently and just of the blue it came to my mind, that there ought to be a stylesheet parameter determining the width of the navigational ToC. Its name is toc.width, I set it to 500, and there is no more need to abbreviate section titles.

"off topic" posting on mailing lists, and getting bashed or not

I am subscribed to quite a few mailing lists ("ML"), and procmail is my friend.

A couple of minutes ago a V.I.P. posted absolutely O.T. on webscrapers@cool.haxx.se, and I bet nobody will complain. And I fully agree with that. There is a relaxed and professional atmospherere on that ML, and I like that.

During the last couple of weeks I have been posting "off topic" a couple of times on Berlin related geek MLs, and that was for "good" and rather justifiable reasons. As I already knew, what usually follows is a series of bashings, and I can't stand that any more after all these years, and I am not willing to either. So I usually ask people to refrain from bashing, and I also threat a little with involving my lawyer.
I also usually tell them beforehand, they should make deliberate use of their Delete button, but that suggestion doesn't get received well.

It's sort of funny to compare these different situations. I always, always reckoned, that there is a German tendency of dedicating yourself as the voluntary policeman, although one wasn't asked to play that role and it's not even paid. They just do that out of passion. I find that weird and sick.

I can't remember right now, that I ever saw any such bashing on a non-German mailing list. But it happens on (almost) every German mailing list or newsgroup or whatever.  Until recently I thought the German P3rl community is absolutely not like that. I got proven wrong. A couple of minutes ago I got a rather harsh (but at least private) and threatening e-mail from a German P3rl V.I.P. . Let me call him "SR"! That sounded like an ultimatum, and in way like "it's either you or me". I am old enough, to not react immediately but rather sleep it over. But still, I think I will tell him: you will go, not me. But you are not going to tell him, are you? I don't think he will like that answer. But than what choices will he have? And what are his options? Getting sort of violent? I hate violence, but nowadays I do know how to counteract.

This is just one of the many German features, that I don't want to get identified with abroad. And such shame makes me turn into camouflage mode abroad and on the web to not get recognized as German. 
And it also made me switch my Mac keyboard from German to Austrian mode, as I can't stand my screen showing the German tricolor. I intend to work in Israel starting in the near future, so that's essential, as you understand.

BTW: not even immigrants in Germany are immune against that "play the policeman" syndrome.

P.S. The incorrect spelling P3erl is quote on purpose for some reason, that I don't want to get into here and right now.

Saturday, August 7, 2010

COBOL - The New Age Programming Language

COBOL - The New Age Programming Language

Found this funny article through a tweet by Matz.

Programming in Lua

Programming in Lua, Second Edition

I came across Lua recently on my latest FRITZ!Box, where they use it as a compact and tiny scripting language.

Now I decided to make use of my Lua competence and prepare a Lua course as well.

The slides are already created. Where are the participants? Why do you hesitate? Speak up! Where in this world do you want me to present this course on Lua?

a SnowLeopard keyboard in "multi-country mode" showing the German tricolor

The only period of time, that the German tricolor could ever, ever got seen on me was during my military service. I think, that's more than enough.

But … SnowLeopard uses the national flags to indicate, in which country mode the keyboard currently is. Now for a Germany/German keyboard that is the German tricolor.

Now my question: can I replace that with something … different?

Alright, currently I am testing the Austrian keyboard layout, next one will be Swiss German. But the latter still shows a tiny German tricolor. Poor Swiss!!!!!
Looks like the Austrian may win, as there is a better matching regarding the number button overlays…

Google Wave to dissipate - The H Open Source: News and Features

Google Wave to dissipate - The H Open Source: News and Features

O'Reilly Media's "HTML5: Up and Running" is out – are you ready for HTML5?

HTML5: Up and Running - O'Reilly Media

This book appeared in their Up and Running series, which is not to be confused with their other series The Definitive Guide.

Here is the text from the back page:

If you don't know about the new features available in HTML5, now's the time to find out. This book provides practical information about how and why the latest version of this markup language will significantly change the way you develop for the Web.
HTML5 is still evolving, yet browsers such as Safari, Mozilla, Opera, and Chrome already support many of its features -- and mobile browsers are even farther ahead. HTML5: Up & Running carefully guides you though the important changes in this version with lots of hands-on examples, including markup, graphics, and screenshots. You'll learn how to use HTML5 markup to add video, offline capabilities, and more -- and you’ll be able to put that functionality to work right away.
  • Learn new semantic elements, such as <header>, <footer>, and <section> 
  • Meet Canvas, a 2D drawing surface you can program with JavaScript<
  • Embed video in your web pages without third-party plugins>
  • Use Geolocation to let web application visitors share their physical location<
  • Take advantage of local storage capacity that goes way beyond cookies
  • Build offline web applications that work after network access is disconnected
  • Learn about several new input types for web forms
  • Create your own custom vocabularies in HTML5 with microdata

Berlinians eager for a presentation can leave a comment here suggesting days, times, and locations. As soon as the figure is on a serious level, I am instantly going to set up a Doodle Poll, promised!

I think, I can promise a couple of free copies of the book sponsored by O'Reilly.

Who is going to join me in this effort?

Visit Aleph Soft Education !

Update / 2010-08-09:
A huge corporation in the social networking business invites me to give the presentation on this book resp. on this top at an event, that they sponsor. I am very honored. Expect an update with more details on this!

on the French/English words "vengeance" and "revanche"

I was recently communicating with "somebody" on a revanche-seeking person, and "somebody" was creating this german word vingativ from the Portuguese word <

ruby and PDF

the speaker: Lukas Rieder
working for "paper c"

some approaches

writing PDF
... act as flying saucer ...

UNIX tools

xpdf :
$ pdftotext -layout -enc UTF-8 ...

pdftk
$ pdftk compressed.pdf uncompress output uncompressed.pdf

imagemagick
$ convert ... # e.g. towards JPEG

the speaker wrapped some unix tools and called that "PdfUtils", and released it as GEM.


WAR! It’s Patton v. Rommel: Vic Gundotra Will Lead Google To Victory In Social War With Facebook

WAR! It’s Patton v. Rommel: Vic Gundotra Will Lead Google To Victory In Social War With Facebook

Google pulls plug on Google Wave | - CNET News

Google pulls plug on Google Wave | - CNET News

APRESS.COM : Writing Perl Modules for CPAN : 9781590590188

APRESS.COM : Writing Perl Modules for CPAN : 9781590590188

The book is not spick-and-span, but IMHO just as Perl itself red-hot.

When I held that paper book in my hands again this evening, it came to my mind, this would make a rather interesting topic for a course - no sooner said than done! (indeed!)

Had a look at the link quoted above, and I found, that they give away the PDF for free - they say. The link is actually unfunctional. Dropped them a note, Sam Tregar (the author) on Cc. And within a couple of minutes the PDF was in my Inbox. Automagically. I liked that a lot!

I guess, they will correct that broken link sooner or later.

The presentation is complete, 1st approach at least.

That means: I can give you 90 min. presentation (+/-) within the next couple of weeks, either in Berlin - or wherever here in Europe and Israel (if you cover the costs). Languages for the presentation: German, English, French, and Hebrew (if I try hard enough).

In Berlin I fancy nice locations like Berlin.Betahaus.de (arond Moritzplatz)  or Hotel Steigenberger in the West-City (actually just around my corner), that would cost everybody just a couple of Euro.

This is the Doodle poll for fixing day and time for this presentation in Berlin:

Whoever thinks, s/he would like to participate in a 2-days course (Europe and Israel): you can leave a comment here. I promise: the price for it is far below the usual prices on the market.

There will be more Perl presentations and courses, have a look there now and then!

But there will also be a full bandwith of other interesting topics here as well.

The name is Aleph Soft Education.

I am quite sure, rather sooner than later we will have well-known names as lecturers here in Berlin, in Europe and Israel.

Friday, August 6, 2010

using the XSLT scissors on jobs.perl.org

The Honorable Grey Temples Guy in Charge of jobs.perl.org didn't show the slightest interest within months. I had asked him, whether he couldn't make that thing restrictable on the "Terms of employment".

Their RSS feed is rather readable XML, the information is embedded within a nice tag: Thanks for that! So this will be one my next XSLT finger exercises. And obviously it will come ad free. I hope, that's not causing trouble. Anybody interested in seeing this in a public place? I mean, there must be thousands of Perl freelancers out there annoyed by all these Salaried employee job specs on jobs.perl.org. Give me a shout!

"you make me feel like …"

Love Note WIN - FAIL Blog: Epic Fail Funny Pictures and Funny Videos of Owned, Pwned and Fail Moments



my blogs, my blog followers, my IM contacts, Jabber SPAM

I have no idea, how often my blog articles get read. I have no idea, whether my friends read my blogs. I am not too optimistic there.

But I do have quite an extensive list of IM contacts. And there is that nice book on XMPP resp. Jabber at O'Reilly's. Why not write an application, that takes my blogs' syndication feeds and broadcasts them to my IM contacts. Maybe that will make my IM contacts list quite shorter in a pretty short time. Who knows?

Maybe there is already some software out there, that does exactly that or just almost. Maybe you want to tell me.

Wanderlust, Michael Lopp, and my FRITZ!Box call monitor

Just the way Michael Lopp describes it in his book Being Geek -- The Software Developer's Career Handbook in the section on Wanderlust, I have carried around that idea with me for quite a while, that I would like to be able to see on my phones, from which company somebody is calling, in case I don't have a specific entry for him/her in my address book.

Today I got up and I knew, the feature is actually already implemented. I do maintain a list of country calling codes, which my call monitor actually reads, when it starts up. Today I just understood, that a company's core phone number is just a little longer than a country calling code, but actually my software doesn't mind that. So I started adding company core phone numbers to that list.

And from now on, that should only be rare occasions, where I don't know, from which recruiting company and which location, the recruiter is calling from. I love it.

a familiar, touching tone…

Did that ever occur to you?

Somebody playing the piano in your neighborhood, a familiar tone, a song from long ago, from very long ago, and it got you crying?

That happened to me right now. The tune was The Beatles' Yesterday. It wasn't played perfectly, apparently with just one hand, the guy was exercising apparently, a few false tones, it was getting better, the further he got. He hadn't played it in quite some years. It was played with an attempt for the right intonations, staccatos, breaks…

Did it remind him of a couple of yesterdays? Guess so! Names, places, embracements, kisses, some shy, some not, tears, despair, disasters… – healing and recoveries as well? We don't know.

Oh, actually I do know. It was "idiot me" opening the songbook on just the right page for today. Do you want to join me shedding tears?
Let me see, what pages that songbook still has for me!

Spent a splendid time in the kids' / music room now, playing the piano and finally also the guitar. Poor neighbors also had to bear me singing.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Being Geek - your career in IT - O'Reilly Media

Being Geek - O'Reilly Media

I plan on having a talk on this book at a very nice location in Berlin, like these ones:
Who wants to join?

Update / 2010-08-03 17:30 : Here is the Doodle poll link for the event. Pls mention your preferred location!

Update / 2010-08-05 :
There are not just friends out there, means: I had to find a way to make sure, the poll doesn't get screwed by trolls.
I spoke to O'Reilly at Cologne – participants well get a few free copies.

Update / 2010-08-09 :
Talked to a well-known German chain book store today. The presentation will take place there, but not very soon. Any TV or radio broadcasting station interested in this?
Whoever wants to have a look into the book and let me summarize the contents: contact me and we will find time and place to do so!
Should there really be enough people showing interest, we can meet at c-base.org or just about anywhere in town. Contact me!

Abstract:
As a software engineer, you recognize at some point that there's much more to your career than dealing with code. Is it time to become a manager? Tell your boss he’s a jerk? Join that startup? Author Michael Lopp recalls his own make-or-break moments with Silicon Valley giants such as Apple, Netscape, and Symantec in Being Geek -- an insightful and entertaining book that will help you make better career decisions.

With more than 40 standalone stories, Lopp walks through a complete job life cycle, starting with the job interview and ending with the realization that it might be time to find another gig. Many books teach you how to interview for a job or how to manage a project successfully, but only this book helps you handle the baffling circumstances you may encounter throughout your career.

  • Decide what you're worth with the chapter on "The Business"
  • Determine the nature of the miracle your CEO wants with "The Impossible"
  • Give effective presentations with "How Not to Throw Up"
  • Handle liars and people with devious agendas with "Managing Werewolves"
  • Realize when you should be looking for a new gig with "The Itch"