The Air Traffic Google maps mashup (provided by ZHAW) that displays departing and arriving planes at Zurich airport has received quite some media attention. It’s not fully real-time for technical and security reasons (fear of terror attacks, as usual) and when observing the airplane lineup during the approach to runway 28 I noticed that some planes were not displayed (I don’t know the reason however). A nice idea nonetheless.
Postfix mailq formatter/dumper/searcher: mq
While debugging a Gentoo/Mailman problem, I found this very useful python wrapper for mailq provided by Dan Mick. It allows to selectively display message IDs of queued messages for a certain recipient. Thanks, Dan!
[Mailman-Developers] Postfix mailq formatter/dumper/searcher: mq
“Realising Dreams – strategies for deep design” by William Gosling
One of the about 30 something new books on my bookshelf – and a truly great one I just finished reading. Gosling gives a systematic insight into the matter of design and innovation. A very inspiring and useful, yet very concise framework!
“Realising Dreams – strategies for deep design” by William Gosling
Some practical advice for startups
“The Art of the Start” by Guy Kawasaki. Not the latest, but a courageous and entertaining presentation worthwhile watching.
MODx Content Management System, Magnolia CMS, Alfresco
I’ve just discovered the new ajaxified, PHP-based MODx Content Management System. It looks and feels great (test it here!). If there wasn’t any need for a dedicated admin interface (i.e. instead, content editable in-place for privileged users), it would be even more userfriendly. Maybe that’s the next step to take?
Another not-yet-ajaxified but nonetheless cool CMS (JEE based, supports JSR-170) I already mentioned before: Magnolia CMS (live demo, currently out of duty).
Further, a nice JEE based Open Source DMS/CMS/ECM supporting JSR-170: Alfresco.
For this site, I might switch to MODx instead of keep using WP (which basically still fights with the same problems it always did). The more as I’ve been dealing with AJAX professionally for a while now (but focussed on JEE as the enterprise server platform). As a DMS, Alfresco would come in handy. Now all I need is enough spare time to realize my plans ;)
QR-Code for this blog’s RSS feed
The QR Code of this blog’s RSS feed, provided by Feed2Mobile:
Posting JavaScript code doesn’t seem to work in WP and as I lack the time to properly include it in the template, here’s the link to the JS:
http://feed2mobile.kaywa.com/202181538.js
(will include it ASAP)
Debian “etch” arrived :)
I actually wanted to install OpenSUSE 10.2 on my barebone (which is now no longer acting as a server but a mere “always-on” client). As the OpenSUSE 10.2 DVD didn’t boot I quickly decided to give the newly released Debian 4.0 “etch” a try instead. Coincidentally, that was probably the right decision as the installation (using the new graphical installer) went smoothly[1] and the box runs as solid as expected. I particularly like the fact that the installer gave me a) the choice whether to use lvm and b) even the choice between using a plain or an encrypted lvm volume. I went for the encrypted volume which adds another layer of security at the price of a somewhat lower performance (felt performance, not measured performance).
Congrats and thanks to all the tireless Debian developers and maintainers for this nice release!
[1] There were only two avoidable incidents: 1) Creating filesystems on the 60 GB drive took quite a while (i.e. one night), probably due to slow formatting instead of quick formatting (or due to a physical integrity check of the whole device). The installer should probably ask the user whether (s)he really wants to spend that much time for something that isn’t required in general. 2) It took me a while to find out that the ethernet cable wasn’t plugged to eth0 but rather eth1, resulting in a dead connection. Unfortunately, the NICs of the Lex barebone are labelled wrongly. In order to connect the cable to eth0 you need to connect it to NIC 2 (instead of to NIC 1). That of course isn’t debian’s fault however, nonetheless the error message could be a bit more specific than basically just “… mirror is not available …”. I thus tried different mirrors, different ifconfig and route settings, different NIC drivers (the 8139too is the correct one) before arriving at the conclusion that the problem had to do with the physical connection.
Unison File Synchronizer, Gentoo and Windows
I’m currently migrating a couple of Windows boxes. When installing the latest (at the time of writing) Unison for Windows, I ran into three problems:
- Unison didn’t find the appropriate GTK+ DLL on the Windows boxes. This can easily be solved by installing GTK+ for Windows as explained (note: “If everything else fails, read the manuals” is not always the best strategy, but it’s applicable here too ;)
- After having emerged unision on my server and configured a new unison profile on the current Windows box, when executing unison on Windows, it complained about a rather cryptic ‘Uncaught exception Unix.Unix_error(20, “create_process”, “ssh”)’ error. Googling lead to the nice Bornholtz Group blog entry explaining what to do in such a case. Doing what’s written there solved the problem for me.
- After that, unison on Windows could connect to the server but complained about a unison version mismatch. My local “Unison for Windows” version was 2.27.10 whereas Gentoo installed an outdated version 2.17.1 of unison (unison-2.17.1-r1.ebuild).. and even for that I had to add an ~amd64 keyword for net-misc/unison to /etc/portage/package.keywords. So I had to make Gentoo install the most current stable version of unision, i.e. v2.27.10. Fortunately, that’s very easy to do, but yet it has to be done manually (edit the existing unison ebuild, creating new digests and manifest files, copy the things to the local portage overlay etc.). For your convenience, I’ve added a TGZ archive for Unison v2.27.10 which you can extract in your local overlay portage tree (e.g. in /usr/local/portage, don’t forget to configure it in /etc/make.conf: set PORTDIR_OVERLAY=/usr/local/portage): net-misc_unison_2.27.10.tgz.
Now unison works great for me. Nonetheless I haven’t tested this only slightly modified ebuild thoroughly enough for submitting it to bugs.gentoo.org. So keep this in mind before using it.. (no warranty etc. blah blah ;)
BlogCampSwitzerland’07
Back home from a (too) short visit to the BlogCampSwitzerland. Unfortunately, I missed the morning sessions as I was partying in the future yesterday evening till early today ;). Nonetheless I enjoyed attending a couple of sessions and meeting other ppl living in and around the Swiss blogosphere.
I don’t have the time at the moment, but will come up with some more comments later..
goScreen version 5.3 released
Andrei Gourianov has released version 5.3 of my most favourite Windows tool: goScreen.
It has a couple of new features, among others the possibility to specify “default applications” for each screen page.
So, if you’re thinking about “going multi-headed” think twice and check out goScreen first. You’ll find that switching between many different virtual desktops[1] is much faster and less tiring than doing the same with real screens. Not mentioning the very significant difference in weight, power consumption and costs..
[1] I’m currently using 11 of them and don’t notice any lag at all