leah blogs: April 2004

30apr2004 · Morgen 1. Mai!

Und schon wieder ist die Woche ‘rum:

Ein statt zwei Ständer?Was?

Also IKEA kommt gleich nach der Hölle.

Du hast doch nacher sicher Zeit, mir Franz zu erklären, oder?Was denn erkären?Ja, diktieren halt!

Wenn alle Menschen tot sind, ist doch eigentlich Weltfrieden, oder?

NP: Pearl Jam—Porch

29apr2004 · Zwei Sprüche und ein Rätsel

Was heißt “schönerer” auf Latein?Andreas!

[rezitiert aus “Willhelm Tell”:]
Durch diese hohle Gasse muss er kommen!Das hat der Frauenarzt zu meiner Mutter auch gesagt.

Zur Abwechslung mal ein Bilderrätsel: Was ist das?

Lösung (mit der Maus markieren):
Jesus Cries Superstar!

Super, hmm?

NP: Joan Baez & Bob Dylan & Paul Simon—Sound of Silence

28apr2004 · *gähn*

Langweilig heute:

Die ist schwanger!Toll!Nee, gar nicht! Was meinsch’ wie die danach aussieht!

Inzest!Nicht mit meiner Mutter! Mit jedem dritten Neger, aber nicht mit meiner Mutter!

(Mir fällt auf, das das Wort “Neger” jetzt schon 23 mal aufgetreten ist, und entschuldige mich hiermit bei allen Menschen mit anderer Hautfarbe.)

Linktipp: http://unmoralische.de.

NP: Black Wednesday—Well
(via http://music.download.com)

27apr2004 · Unser täglich Zitat gib' uns heute...

Ich hab’ ein neues Duschgel erfunden, von dem man nicht sauber wird, sondern dreckig. Ich nenn’ es “Antifa”.

Du, mein Brenner geht nicht.Hast du auch die MAC-Adresse richtig eingestellt?

Ich find’ die Schule eigentlich so widerlich!

Sie haben “lieberer” gesagt, in diesem Fall heißt das aber “gerner”!

Was schenkst du deiner Mutter [zum Geburtstag], Reizwäsche, oder?

Ihr sauft doch nur viel!Des stimmt nicht, wir können auch trommeln!

Etischist

War Zypern eigentlich mal ‘ne britische Kolonie? Die hießen doch Zybriten, oder?

Ich frage nur, wann Russland in die EU eintritt.

Ich hol’ mir jetzt ein Schild, wo draufsteht: NEGER.

NP: Dead Moon—It’s OK

26apr2004 · Random stuff

Did not much today…

The DaimlerChrysler collection has some very cool works by Jeff Koons, Max Bill, Walter de Maria and Andy Warhol.

More by Walter de Maria:

James Duncan Davidson has a nice photoblog.

<quix> Curses.public_instance_methods(false) # => ["shit", "fuck", "bitch", "ass", ... ]

http://www.cssvault.com/: Why haven’t I been there before?

25apr2004 · GCC 3.4.0

I just compiled GCC 3.4.0, it seems to run fine.

Compilation took about 70 minutes on my 1.8 GHz box, the build directory was 705 MB in size.

Unfortunately, I can’t find the piece of paper I wrote the statistics of 3.0.4 and 3.3 on, but I think compilation was faster this time.

During the testsuite run (), there have been some (not important) looking fails probably due my quite old assembler, and a well-known one.

My biggest problem with the GCC 3.x series were the slow compiliation times, which seem to have gotten better:

make times for a full, out-of-the box Ruby 1.8.1 (possibly not representative):

GCC 3.4.0: 1m47.110s
GCC 3.3.0: 2m21.326s
GCC 2.95.4: 1m7.914s

Toxical release tomorrow. Maybe.

NP: Pearl Jam—The Kids Are Alright

24apr2004 · Toxical

Toxical, based on the techniques described on April 20, is a simple, but flexible CMS that generates static pages.

It allows the simple creation of websites using just a plain text-editor (or an advanced one *g*), without knowledge of HTML (although it’s helpful), since alternative syntaxes like Markdown, Textile etc. are allowed.

It is near a tech-preview release, as I have all the important stuff working, but its still a heck of scripts, stylesheets and Makefiles. Not to mention it only generates ugly-looking HTML pages as I had no time yet to create a nice default design…

Going to refactor it tomorrow, and build a real sample page (its own homepage) with it. Maybe make a release available. Hmm…

NP: Nirvana—Something In The Way

23apr2004 · Pisa vorbei

So denn, PISA ist vorbei. Eigentlich ein netter Weg, nur 4 Stunden Schule zu haben.

Was würde ohne Photosyntese fehlen? Nenne fünf Dinge!
Hanf, Tabak, Wein, Hopfen, Sauerstoff zum Joint anzünden.

:P

Noch ein Bild vom Schweineherz vom Mittwoch:

Schweineherz

Am Montag keine Schule, yes!

22apr2004 · Gnaa

Was es heute gab:

Alle Menschen haben im Durchschnitt blutige Beine

…, dem zahl ich ‘ne Tafel SchokoladeNe Halbe!Was? Ne halbe Tafel Schokolade?

yucky-ducky

Alle Einwohner Biberachs können in einem Wolkenkratzer wie dem Sears Tower arbeiten!Toll, dann braucht man nur ein Flugzeug!

Außerdem hab ich heute 80€ gespart: Einfach in der Bücherei diese Bücher für 4€ kaufen:

  • Klaus Braune, TeX-Tools
  • Thomas Michel, XML kompakt

  • Clifford Stoll, Die Wüste Internet, ein Augen öffendes Buch über das Netz der Netze, Es ist nur gut, wenn die Euphorie um die Datenautobahn gedämpft wird. Ich würde es uneingeschränkt empfehlen, wenn da nicht ein blöder Kommentar über GNU drin wäre. Lest’s trotzdem.

Yay, morgen PISA. :-)

NP: Wellwater Conspiracy—Sea Miner

21apr2004 · Die Zitate von heute

Nicht so viel los heute, aber trotzdem paar nette Sachen:

Du bist wie ein Fels in der Brandung — feucht und schwer!

Ich bin genau um halb zehn geboren!Pünktlich zu Knoppers!

Taktometer [meint: Metronom]

Ach was, es klingelt erst in 45 Minuten!

Schneewixchen

Wirst du Gynäkologe, wirst du Höhlenforscher, oder?

Sie kämpfen, solange Atem in ihnen ist?Sie kämpfen also nicht beim Ausatmen?

Superhaug stolpert über die Treppe.

NP: Pearl Jam—Alive

21apr2004 · On the Pokemon photosensitive epilepsy

Pokemon Seizures tells us about the Pokemon photosensive mass epilepsy in 1997 which happened due very fast switching between a blue and yellow background during a fighting scene.

See what bible.com tells us about Pokemon (discovered by batsman):

The epileptic seizures were said to be caused by the incessant flashing lights in the cartoon overloading the optical nerves and inciting seizure; however, seizures can also be caused by demonic attack.

And on the Pokemon game:

We also find the influences of New Age Cults, Wicca, Witchcraft, Paganism and Satanism in this game.

How can we know if a game or toy is good or bad? Determine if the game, video or book involves supernatural power. There are only two sources of super natural power — God or the devil.

*rofl*

20apr2004 · A file format for integrating non-XML data in XML workflows

Basing the data of a CMS or documentation initiative on XML isn’t a bad idea, as there are many useful tools around to handle it. From a single XML source, the documents can be converted to (X)HTML, PDF using XML-FO, TeX using TeXML and many more.

However, XML is inconvenient to enter, even with advanced tools like Emacs and its nxml-mode.

But there is a solution: Most documents are only simple structured, and there are many ways of marking up them using plain ASCII, for example

  • Markdown
  • Textile
  • Wiki-like syntaxes
  • selfmade formats

Ruby, my favorite implementation language (XSLT excluded, which has many advantages in XML processing), supports all of these: Markdown due BlueCloth, Textile using RedCloth, RDoc is Wiki-like and selfmade formats can be implemented easily because of powerful string processing features.

Therefore, I propose a RFC2822 like format to turn all these formats into XML easily and support metadata. Here a document with some features:

Title: A sample document
Author: Christian Neukirchen <chneukirchen@yahoo.de>
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 13:54:54 +0200
X-Comment: make better version

This is some example document of
marking up non XML data...

This will get transformed to something like this:

<document xmlns="\..." xmlns:dc="\...">
  <head>
    <dc:title>A sample document</dc:title>
    <dc:creator>Christian Neukirchen
        &lt;chneukirchen@yahoo.de&gt;</dc:creator>
    <dc:date>2004-04-20</dc:date>
    <comment>make better version</comment>
  </head>
  <body xmlns="\...">
    <p>This is some example document of
    marking up non XML data...</p>
  </body>
</document>

… or something like that. (Don’t take the format for granted, but it will be something in that style.) By default all backends will create simple XHTML which easily can be transformed to DocBook without big problems. The *Cloth allow embedding of arbitrary tags, so all features of the XML workflow can be used (for example, generation of a ToC, insertion of automatically generated data etc.).

More to follow…

20apr2004 · Zitate

Heute war nicht viel los (ja auch nur vier Stunden), das meiste in Gemeinschaftskunde:

Herrgotts!Wer kotzt?

Hört ihr jetzt mal zu, ihr Hitler-Fans!

Oder die Frau Bickel, dein Liebling?

Der ist ein ganz toller Kerl, weil er gut mit Kindern umgehen kannIst der Belgier?

Den hab ich schon vor zwei Jahren gelöchert!

Da unten, neben dem alten Zeichensaal, da steht “Handarbeitsraum”!

Also 40% mal 2%: 80%!

Englisch:

They need very many elevators.

See you later, escalator!

NP: Beatsteaks—Hand In Hand

19apr2004 · Famoser Start

Und gleich ein famoser Start in die nächste Schuletappe:

Reichswolf

Langsam wird man ja schon blöd.Sie sind doch schon blöd!

Kennst du den Mann, der Hunderte von Millionen Schulden gemacht hat?Schröder?Nicht der, das ist ja sein Beruf.

Wichtigstes Marketinginstrument: Werbetrommel

Ich gründe jetzt eine Modemarke namens Insider: Dann gibts überall Insidergeschäfte.

Wir erschießen alle Hamas mit ‘ner FAMAS!

Außerdem mach ich ‘ne Audio-DVD mit allen Stücken von Edvard Grieg, Werbespruch: Wollt ihr den totalen Grieg?

Oh, geil! Der apokalyptische LKW!

Kocht deine Gebärmutter für dich?

Es gibt kein “zu jung”, nur “zu eng”.Aber “zu eng” ist ein dehnbarer Begriff!

NP: The Sundays—Wild Horses
NP2: Pearl Jam—Whale Song

18apr2004 · Ferien 'rum

Und schon sind die Ferien wieder vorbei… die Zeit der großartigen Quotes beginnt wieder. :-)

Übrigens, weberberg.de berichtet, dass die Handballer des IBOT, die ja auch in unserem Klassenzimmer campiert haben sollen, insgesammt zwei mal Feueralarm ausgelöst haben, weil sie geraucht haben. Schaden: 3000€. *roflmao*

NP: Bob Dylan—Only a Pawn in Their Game

18apr2004 · Mosaics

Recently, I have been playing with computer-generated mosaics, especially randomly composed ones. I created a nice one with ImageMagick today, using pictures from sxc:

Preview of mosaic
Fullsize view

First, I took the three images (water surface, drops on a leaf, sunset), and cut them into 64x64 pixel sized tiles using

convert -crop 64x64 filename tile-1.png

This creates—depending on the size of the image—about 200 to 500 tiles. Do the same for the other files.

Then, put them together with

montage -geometry 64x64 +frame +shadow +label -borderwidth 2 -bordercolor white -tile 16x16 ls tile-{2,3,4}.png.* | shuffle | head -256 mosaic.png

Of course, adopt -tile and the parameter to head to your needs.

The tool shuffle is like cat, but it prints the lines in arbitrary order, you can write it using ruby in just one line,

ruby -e ‘puts $<.readlines.sort_by { rand }’

If you’re more interested in creating ‘real’ mosaic, that make ‘sense’, you should try pmosaic by Peter Kirchgessner, a GIMP plugin.

NP: Audioslave—Shadow On The Sun

17apr2004 · Apocalypse 12

Apocalypse 12 was released yesterday, it describes the OO related stuff of Perl 6. Interesting, but there is some stuff I don’t like, for example, private instance variables begin with $:, public with $.. This makes refactoring unnecessarily hard.

Watched “Being John Malkovitch” tonight, a great movie, probably the best one I saw this year (not that I watch a lot, but still…).

Still catching up the two days of disconnection, oh well…

14apr2004 · BlueCloth

BlueCloth is a ruby port of Markdown, which converts text from a simple, readable plain text format into XHTML.

It’s syntax totally rocks, it’s intuitive and really readable. In fact, this blog entry is already written in it! Yeah, I have quickly abstracted my old, though similar way of marking up these entries and plugged BlueCloth in instead. Now I just needed to hack it a little to support em-dashes (—) and ellipses (…). The resulting XHTML is much clearer and nicer!

You can get BlueCloth at
http://bluecloth.rubyforge.org/

It’s name by the way results from RedCloth by _why which does about the same, but it doesn’t use Markdown, instead, it uses Textile. I like Markdown’s syntax better, however.

The really cool thing is however that both have (just about) the same API, so in future Blogs and Wikis, the User can have the choice between RedCloth, BlueCloth or even self-developed stuff.

NP: Audioslave—Like A Stone

14apr2004 · Mixed bag

Number Spirals and their cool properties. Impressive.

Who cares if there’s a million programmers that know X, if all you need is a handful of competent developers that’ll work smart and deliver? A great pro-LFSP blog entry.

TeXML: an XML vocabulary for TeX, this sounds cute, but I like the passivetex approach better: Just write the whole XSL-FO processor and the XML parser in TeX(!).

And on the seventh day, He exited from append mode.

BTW, I’ll probably not blog for the next ~3 days as I’m away.

NP: Jack Johnson—Jack Kerouac

13apr2004 · Julian Opie

You probably have never heard of Julian Opie before, me neither.

He's a great artist from Britain doing comic-style drawings based only on the easiest shapes. I like especially his women stripping in 5 steps.

www.julianopie.com (a nicely made page resembling MacOS 9, by the way.)

See also another page showing some of his drawings.

A Google Images search will show you even more pictures he made.

13apr2004 · de-jong-explorer

Surfing through the wallpaper section of freshmeat, I found a reference to the "de-jong-explorer", a fantastic program.

It basically renders images produced by some simple formula, the Peter de Jong map equations:

   x' = sin(a * y) - cos(b * x)
   y' = sin(c * x) - cos(d * y)

This formula has chaotic behavior for most values of a, b, c and d. The author has put an image gallery of some pictures online: navi.cx/images/chaos.

It quickly installed and a small program, try it out!

NP: Pearl Jam—Black, Red, Yellow

12apr2004 · XML & collaborative tools

The knee-jerk reaction to fulfilling these requirements interoperably is to convert all data formats into XML.A Manifesto for Collaborative Tools

Heard about Dragonfly BSD, which has a particular interesting feature: It can freeze and thaw running processes. For example, you type C-e, and the current process gets dumped to disk. An utility then can reload the process from that dump. Very cool.

I know people that keep their dead tortoise in the freezer.

NP: Black Monday—Fixated

11apr2004 · Two links

Today's userfriendly make me really laugh.

Ever wondered how stars would look if they were zombies? Here you are: Zombiewood.

NP: Silbermond—Machs dir selbst

10apr2004 · Some links

At downlode.org/etext/patterns, there is a nice summary of A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander. Interesting to browse, I think I'll need to get the real book too.

For the ones more interested in eastern culture, a look to academic.bowdoin.edu/zen is recommended. It gives a nice overview of Japanese gardens (with their cool dry gardens). Lots of images (unfortunately rather small).

Why didn't anyone tell me about M-x grep-find before?

NP: Nirvana—Where Did You Sleep Last Night

09apr2004 · Mahatma Chaplin...

or Charlie Ghandi?

A day without breaking a unjust law is a lost day.

NP: Metallica—Wasting My Hate

09apr2004 · As seen on #lisp...

 <dan`b> hmm.  I think my lwn subscription runs
         out tomorerow
 <dan`b> "I believe ctrl-W for delete line
         originated, and is pretty much only used
 <dan`b> in vi and emacs (I have neither one
         installed on my system, and I'd
 <dan`b> rather not install something I'll
         only use once, so I can't confirm
 <dan`b> this)"

Ok, this LWN article really seems crap (haven't read it, don't have a subscription):

  1. C-w doesn't delete the line in Emacs (that's what C-k does), but kills the region.
  2. You have vi installed on your system.
  3. If you're not interested in trying new things, you probably shouldn't write for "Linux Weekly News".
  4. C-w works in lots of applications, it's supported in readline, Gtk+ and Mozilla has it too.

NP: Void Main—Follow the GNU feat. RMS

08apr2004 · Nice pages

I discovered a nice page on contemporary design and architecture today, mocoloco.com. Definitely worth having a look at it.

At phiffer.org, there's a nice little Javascript demo. Alpha channels are fun to play with.

07apr2004 · Emacs update finished

After installing texinfo 4.6, GNU Emacs 21.3.50.2 now runs out-of-the-box without any problems. I think it's time it replaces my current, rather old Emacs 21.1.

I also don't use CVS now to get the latest one, but GNU Arch, which simplifies getting diffs a lot.

Sag jetzt nicht das du müde bist.Ich bin so fit wie ein Stein!

NP: Bob Dylan & Johnny Cash—I Threw It All Away

06apr2004 · chine nual

Just finished reading the "chine nual", which I really can recommend everyone interested in Lisp Machines and Lisp in general. It's a great read if you want to see how Lisps looked short after Common Lisp but before CLOS.

NP: Bob Kanefsky—The Eternal Flame (God Wrote in Lisp Code)

06apr2004 · Endlich Ferien!

Heute war nicht mehr soviel los:

Über Tageslichtprojektoren: Draufhauen wenn er nicht mehr tut!

Nicht schwulen!

Lehrerin nach Gk: Mmh, ist der Stuhl noch warm.

Eins ruft Zwei, bitte kommen!Zwei ruft Eins, *stöhn*

Cool mal down!

Überlegt euch mal 'nen salonfähigen Ausdruck [für die weibl. Brust] — Titten!Gewölbte sekundäre Geschlechtsorgane!

Was kommt nach dem Busen, da kommt der ...?Magen!

Englischaufsatz über Stephen Hawking: He did studies in "black holes."

NP: Pearl Jam—Nothingman

05apr2004 · Abuse of assert(3)

Yesterday I saw some awful abuse of assert(3). First:

 file = fopen ("...");
 assert (file);

Repeat after me: assert is not for userlevel errors! Instead it's purpose is to find internal inconsistencies. However, then the real fun started:

 assert (strcpy (dest, src));

Hell, no! assert is a macro, if you compile with -DNDEBUG, you get serious problems. Even the manpage says that:

BUGS: assert() is implemented as a macro; if the expression tested has side-effects, program behaviour will be different depending on whether NDEBUG is defined. This may create Heisenbugs which go away when debugging is turned on.

But then, the developer programmed that in Visual C++...

05apr2004 · Montag

Highlights:

Böööh, Würg!Du sprichst so gebrochen.

Sie fluchen die ganze Zeit rum!Sei ruhig, du dummes Ei!

Lach net so dreckig.

In das Schränkchen soll er passen, Schränkchen soll er passen, zwei hoch drei...

Ich dachte Schuhmacher fahren Autos...

Die Waschmaschinen müssen zu Schleuderpreisen abgegeben werden!

XY, deine linke Brust hängt schief!

Mit leerer Blase pisst man nicht.

Naja, nur noch heute und dann Ferien.

Kennt ihr das Sportspiel mit Mikroben? — Sprinter Cell.

04apr2004 · Sudden Incidence

Just had this incidence:

A language should allow you to shoot yourself into the foot, but not force you to do that.

NP: Wellwater Conspiracy—Space Travel in the Blink of an Eye

04apr2004 · Tom Lord on microbreweries

Just read this great thing on gnu-arch-users:

>> It's even just down the street from my favorite microbrewery :-)
> Uh, oh. That could be a huge productivity sink. :-)
> Oh wait, he said microbrewery. They only serve little beers; arch is safe.

It's not micro- in that sense. The beers are honest pints but it's a very small brewery. Very small. You can't really even fit inside the place — you can just sort of stick you head and arm in. They only have room for one glass and so they have to shut down between customers to wash it. Consequently there's usually a very long line just to get in and you aren't allowed to stay long. The nice part is that, being so small, they can clean the place just by picking it up and shaking out the dust. The bad part is someone stepped on it by accident last year and shut them down for a week for reconstruction.

*rofl*

NP: Dan Bern—Hiroshima

03apr2004 · Emacs CVS

Just updated my GNU Emacs to CVS HEAD, trying to ride on the bleeding edge for a while...

Installation was quite painless, but my makeinfo was too old so I needed to hack the Makefiles a bit to include --force.

I tried the new GTK+ 2.0 support but didn't like it, the plain X style looks better on my box (but then, my GTK is quite old and I don't have anti-aliasing).

Also tried the new debugger mode—gdba—it works nicely but I personally don't use debuggers that often.

After removing the tons of new font-locking which seem to appear in every new version again, I like it better than my old 21.2 one. If I now knew how to make info-mode not remove the heading underlinings, it would be perfect.

Especially cool is the reveal-mode that shows the text inside the "..." of invisible regions if the point is over it. It makes exploring (and editing!) outline files a joy.

NP: Manowar—Hand Of Doom

02apr2004 · On rival

I first figured I could embed Irb somehow in my applications, but then I didn't had a look on its API. Who the hell designed that?

For now, I think the easiest way is to rewite a REPL from scratch—not that hard, but there is more interesting stuff to do.

NP: Deep Purple—Highway Star

02apr2004 · Endlich Wochenende!

Die Highlights heute:

Du hast ein schlaues Wissen.

Leih' mir's G'wehr!

Über ein Liebesgedicht: Das ist langweilig, da fand ich ja 'Passion of Christ' geiler!

Saurer Regen brennt voll in den Augen!

FKK-ZK

Ich komm' wieder hoch!Ja mir kommt's auch hoch!

Joe Blob (Tipp: Wechselstaben verbuchseln)

Darf ich auf's Klo? Ich hab was im Auge!

Ihr habt voll des niedrige Niveau, wisst ihr des eigentlich?

Kann man auf der Donaufahrt eigentlich Skorbut kriegen?

Dann gab's noch 'ne Franz-KA raus, Schnitt: 4.0 (wer's glaubt...), beste Note: 3+.

NP: Bob Dylan—Gates of Eden

01apr2004 · April Fools

Some April fool hoaxes worth noticing:

RFC3751 Omniscience Protocol Requirements

A New Israeli test confirms: PEI (Pigeon Enabled Internet) is FASTER then ADSL

Improvements to Debian

Other fun:

You rock, you rule

NP: Pearl Jam—RVM

01apr2004 · Hacker humor

Yesterday in IRC:

 <pbaldanta> it's an internal joke in my
   company... everyone say me how the say dog
   in their countries.
 <chris2> :)
 <pbaldanta> so, another language???
   japanesse, for example?
 <phubuh> pbaldanta: hardly reliable
   sources say "inu"
 <zem> kutta in hindi
 <chris2> whats cat then, runge?

NP: Dan Bern—I Need You

01apr2004 · Schule heute

Naja, der Knüller wars nicht, aber paar gute Quotes gibts trotzdem:

Er fickt dich ins Aaaarschloch!

Hast du auch so 'ne große Blase unterm Dünndarm?

Ich hab im Stahlbau gearbeitet—mit Schmieden und Schweißen und soDie sind doch alle schwul, oder?

Was ist das Idealgewicht für einen Lehrer?200g inklusive Urne!

In einem Englischaufsatz: Hopefully, the future is coming soon...

Außerdem, gestern vergessen:

Aber ob ich kriminell-asozial bin, können glaub' nur die anderen Arschlöcher sagen...

BTW, wusstet ihr das "Else If" die meistzitierte Informatikerin ist?

NP: Bob Dylan—Like A Rolling Stone.

Copyright © 2004–2022