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Archive for 2009/02

  • First hours with Safari 4

    Today Apple released the first the first public beta of Safari 4. As a very curious person I, naturally, had to already give it a try :-) Since I'm still using Webkit in the background, I can't really say anything about the version of the rendering engine; so I will focus on the GUI changes here. So far I really like it. Sure there are a few smaller issues and tons of stuff that I have to get used to, but overall Safari 4 looks like a good evolution.

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    2009/02/24 at 23:46:07

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  • django-flatblocks 0.2.0

    While working on a small site for my family where I'm using flatblocks (and which originally actually led me to create that project to begin with) I also needed a simple view for editing a flatblock. Since this is something I can absolutely see my self needing on every single project I use flatblocks, I've now also included that view in django-flatblocks.

    The other change included in version 0.2.0 is that you can finally localize the fieldnames of models. So far the only translation included is the German one but I definitely welcome patches with more translations :-)

    So that's basically it for 0.2.0. I plan to make such small releases more or less right after adding a new feature so that you can easily specify a real version number in your dependencies.

    As always you can get this release on PyPI. There you can also find detailed descriptions of the new view (or take a look at the docstring of flatblocks.views.edit).

    Another issue I've been thinking about for the last couple of days is if this project might benefit from an issue tracker. For me personally the only real option here would be to move over to bitbucket.org since I actually like hg quite a bit and that service has a very simple and elegant issue tracker. Let me think about this a little longer for now ;-)

    2009/02/24 at 10:01:03

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  • Looking forward to the Kodak Zi6

    Image screenshot from kodak.comIt's really rare that I'm looking forward to a new gadget that much but for the last couple of days I just can't get the Kodak Zi6 mini camcorder out of my head (Thank you Mr. Norton :-/ ). For 150 EUR it looks like a really good and very affordable HD camcorder for on-the-go and thanks to its SDCard-slot and use of AA-batteries I could even use it for slightly extended stuff. Now the darn thing just has to get released in Austria (which should happen somewhen in March according to Kodak).

    The only aspect that I'm not all that excited about is its quite narrow field of vision. Some people compared it to a 50mm lense, which I love on my DSLR but can definitely see making a few problems on something like this. But that's about anything I could complain about right now.... I just want to finally get my hands on it :D Prepare to get some really stupid videos from me in March ;-)

    2009/02/23 at 22:18:58

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  • Internet rant #20854

    A small rant about people giving away too much information about themselves on the Internet, companies having problems understanding the Internet and again people jumping too early to conclusions once they hear a rumor on the Internet. Or to be precise: People scrobbling content that they shouldn't have, companies publishing content that they shouldn't publish yet and allegedly going after people who downloaded it and users deleting their accounts from a certain social networking site just because they heard a rumor that that site might have leaked information.

    Or: How stories like the TechCrunch story about Last.fm, RIAA and user-data as well as all that is going on around it annoy/amuse me to no end.

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    2009/02/23 at 19:26:03

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  • Getting to VIM's Python interface

    Scripting is usually one of the selling points for those types of text editors that are specifically targeted at power-users. But most of the time you have to learn a whole new scripting language to really be able to use it. Imagine my surprise when I noticed that VIM besides having it's own scripting language also let's you also write plugin in Perl, Python, Ruby and TCL. This way you don't really have to learn a new language for scripting VIM, although you might still want to look into it because there are a few problems.

    Since I like Python quite a bit, the rest of this post will be mostly focused on the Python interface.

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    2009/02/21 at 23:58:39

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  • R.I.P. DL.tv

    A bit of internet history has left the scene last week: DL.tv. After 267 episodes the show has probably received that bit too much restructuring. I think I started watching it back in late 2005 and even went back once to show the very first couple of episodes just to get them all. Back then DL.tv provided something quite unique for me: A video tech-show available online and free of charge ... and in a good resolution ;-) It always had its own style which I really enjoyed, never being completely serious while not appearing arrogant or dismissive on new and crazy stuff.

    A big "Thank you" to the crew that made this great show possible and good luck for the future. Now I really hope that this will result in Robert being more often a guest on TekZilla ;-)

    2009/02/19 at 12:07:01

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  • Release Fail

    It only took nearly 4 month, but today and according to Eurogamer.net we here in Europe are finally going to receive our dosage of Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix for the PS3. If I remember correctly the Xbox360 version was basically release at the same time in Europe and North America but for some obscure reason the PSN-version never hit the net.

    I'm currently at a point where I don't even care anymore who messed that whole affair up: SCEE or Capcom. There is simply no excuse for ignoring one region (which was more or less a 2nd home-market for Sony during the last console generation, thank you) when it comes to any title where the localization should be pretty limited not to mention games as anticipated by fans like SSF2THDR. If the game had been available even in December or January I would have got it without thinking for more than a minute. But now with SF4 being available this Friday in local stores I hardly find any motivation to spend those 15 EUR.

    2009/02/18 at 23:20:25

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  • Sexy new Mercurial-site project

    Seems like there is finally getting some movement into the whole "get Mercurial a new website" project with a repo (incl. forks) being created on bitbucket.org. I don't really know how official that whole thing is but at least mercurial-scm.org looks way more sexy than the "classic" MoinMoin-based site. From what it looks like right now, the whole project still seems to be in its early stages content-wise but it's definitely a very important step into the right direction.

    Over the years, even Git got a very flashy intro-page and Mercurial and the community-size/popularity seemed to have stagnated size-wise thanks to the missing "marketing". I really hope that the folks behind this new site will help push Mercurial quite a lot :D

    2009/02/16 at 23:34:22

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  • Github now also hosts project files

    Slowly but steadly Github seems to be really becoming a full project-hosting service. Just yesterday they added a simple upload-area were project members can for instance upload release-tarballs and things like that. Besides manually uploaded files, the downloads-page of each project also includes the tarballs autogenerated by github (I think one per tag). It's weird, though, that they absolutely require Flash 9.01 and don't offer a simple HTML-only fallback. I can understand the wish to upload directly to S3, but at least a fallback would have been nice. Not that this is a showstopper, though ;-)

    Anyway, I guess all that is missing now is a simple issue tracker like the on bitbucket has.

    2009/02/11 at 09:51:17

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  • Das war das Barcamp Klagenfurt 2009

    Dieses Wochenende fand an der Uni Klagenfurt wieder einmal ein Barcamp statt. Barcamps sind immer etwas Schönes. Tja, jetzt ist Sonntag-Abend, folglich ist es jetzt leider schon wieder vorbei. Da ich in letzter Zeit wieder deutlich mehr Lust am Bloggen gefunden habe, kommt jetzt natürlich auch eine kleine Retrospektive -- weitestgehend aus Orga-Sicht ;-)

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    2009/02/08 at 22:04:19

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