Home → Archives → by month → November 2004
Things I could blog
- A gallery of photo gallery layouts I've come up with but never used, e.g. "Variety in Style 2000 - 2004".
- A gallery of blogs I've operated before I started this blog. Most prominently in the early 1990ies, "Media News", a weekly paper blog for the shortwave enthusiast, consisting of newspaper clippings and own writings, made with a pair of scissors, a glue stick and the Calamus DTP system on my Atari ST and distributed as a set of photocopies made and paid for by public radio station DS Kultur, a antecessor of DeutschlandRadio Berlin.
- A story on why I don't blog that much any more. Actually, I've already written that story, but didn't blog it precisely for the reasons explained in it. What a vicious circle.
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Die Friedrich Merz Show
Warum wird die Christiansen eigentlich noch in ihre unsägliche Selbstdarstellungsshow eingeladen? Das abgesägte sauerländische Milchgesicht kriegt das doch auch ganz gut alleine hin.
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One for the Day: Concrete Jungle
Click to enlarge
FACILITY: Coal bunker with bucket conveyor
Site: Hüttenkokerei des Hoerder Bergwerks- und Hütten-Vereins (Phoenix Coke)
Location: Dortmund, Germany
Photo taken: November 2004
Changes since: None
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Posted in category Endangered Machinery
Ohne Worte
DWDL.de über heute.de, den Nachfolger von heute.t-online.de:
"Als erstes Internet-Nachrichtenangebot im deutschsprachigen Raum will heute.de zwei Varianten anbieten: Eine optimierte Version für Bildschirmauflösungen über 1024 x 768 Pixel sowie eine Version von 800 x 600 Pixel für herkömmliche kleinere Monitore."
heute.de startet am 6. Januar - 2005.
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Faces of the Fallen
1231 deaths and counting, cleanly and orderly selectable from drop down menus. No faces of the several 10,000s civilians shot in their homes, on the streets and in their mosques though.
Washington Post: Faces of the Fallen >
[via consumptive.org]
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One for the Day: Action, Baby
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Charging a 140 tons UHP furnace (Ultra High Power electric arc furnace) with scrap metal (ladle) and alloying additions (fork lift). ThyssenKrupp NIROSTA stainless steel works, Bochum, Germany.
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Posted in category Endangered Machinery
Back to basics
I am seriously considering getting myself a Polaroid instant camera. They are dirt cheap and very limited in what they can do - a great note taking, eye training and style improving device, and progess in style is what I need.
Reminds me of a person I recently talked to. He had dumped € 3.5k into new bodies and lenses and complained that all this equipment would really suck - "those pictures look no different than those taken with my € 300 camera". Surprise surprise. Nobody would expect to write better novels by buying a luxury typewriter. Assuming that 80% of what's wrong with a photo happens behind the camera, deliberately choosing a model not too well suited for the kind of photo you want to take seems to be a better way to learn: as you are limited in what you can do, you have to focus much better on your motif and how to approach it. Just don't overrate the role of your equipment while learning.
SLIGHTLY RELATED
The Branding of Polaroid 1957-1977
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Gewinnoptimierung
Die Gewerkschaft Communications Workers of America (CWA) erhebt "den Vorwurf, T-Mobile [USA] diskriminiere ihre Mitglieder, indem die gesamte nichtorganisierte Belegschaft beibehalten und gleichzeitig alle Techniker mit CWA-Mitgliedsbuch gezwungen würden, sich über eine Agentur erneut für ihre Posten zu bewerben."
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Idee des Monats
"Geht es nach dem Willen der ARD, so soll Schmidt künftig auf 'dadaistische Nummern' verzichten, wie es ein ARD-Verantwortlicher formuliert. Keine nachgespielten Dramolette mit Playmobil-Figuren, keine esoterischen Skatrunden."
Es berichtet die Forsetzung der BILD mit längeren Sätzen über die Geheimsache Harald >
[via generation neXt]
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Suck it up
"But, three months into my smoke-free life, writing and design still feel nearly impossible. I have nothing to say and no desire to say it. I can recognize beauty when I see it but have no desire to create it. I know that these feelings will pass like a stone, and that one day I will be a lean, energized karmic mass of creativity. Until then, merely updating The Daily Report feels like whitewashing prison walls."
Jeffrey Zeldman reports on his quitting smoking. I have nothing to add.
Suck it up >
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The Power and The Glory
Randgedanke: Warum erinnert die Interview-Begleitmusik der MDR-Serie Damals in der DDR eigentlich ausgerechnet an Ultravoxens Hymn?
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What Barry Says
Click to view Quicktime video
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One for the Day: Inside a Coal Processing Plant
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FACILITY: Part of the coal flotations facility
Site: Coal processing plant, General Blumenthal 11 coal mine, Wanne, Germany
Photo taken: October 2004
Status: Closed down
Changes since: None
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Posted in category Endangered Machinery
Surprise Surprise
"Compared to counties with paper ballots, counties with electronic voting machines were significantly more likely to show increases in support for President Bush between 2000 and 2004. This effect cannot be explained by differences between counties in income, number of voters, change in voter turnout, or size of Hispanic/Latino population. In Broward County alone, President Bush appears to have received approximately 72,000 excess votes. We can be 99.9% sure that these effects are not attributable to chance."
This is Florida only. You do the math. The interesting part is not that such things happened, but that there is so much silence around them.
Berkeley University statistical study: The Effect of Electronic Voting Machines on Change in Support for Bush in the 2004 Florida Elections >
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It's World Toilet Day!
Click to see entire photo
FACILITY: Workshop, Sinter Plant 4
Site: Hoesch Westfalenhütte iron and steel works, Dortmund, Germany
Photo taken June 2003
Status then: closed down
Status now: torn down
Let's not forget: today is World Toilet Day! "19 November was declared 'World Toilet Day' in 2001 by 17 toilet associations around the world." Attend today's World Toilet Summit in Bejing, China and "meet the KEY DECISION MAKERS, KEY OFFICIALS and the MOVERS & SHAKERS of the Industry! Make a Date!" And: learn everything about the Toilet Code of Practice! Toilet Code of Practice. No kidding.
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Correcting Lens Distortions with PTLens
Lens pincushion and barrel distortion can be a problem when capturing straight lines close to the edges of a photo with a wide angel lense or a zoom lens in wide angel position. I didn't care too much about correcting such distortions so far, but there is this one photo whose appearance has kept bugging me for months now:
RAG BERGWERK LIPPE/WESTERHOLT [OLD VERSION]
Shaft 1 (left) and shaft 2 (right) of 3 shafts; in service; Gelsenkirchen, Germany; April 2004
Click to enlarge
The banana-shaped train and the banana-shaped winding tower are hard to miss. If we have a look at the original version without perspective correction, the reasons for why things look banana become clear:
ORIGINAL VERSION
Click to enlarge
With a wood starting right behind the photographer's position, the pit had to be captured from a far too close position with the Canon Powershot S40's tiny lens set to its shortest focal length. Taken from a more distant position with dominating horizontal or vertical lines farther away from the edges and the focal lenght set to no more than 95% of its minimum, lens distortions would be much less obvious.
So, how to get rid of the bulge? Try the free PTLens Photoshop plugin (Windows only). "PTLens will examine the JPEG file, determine lens focal length and image orientation from EXIF information, use the focal length to lookup lens correction coefficients in a database, and call [the Panorama Tools DLL] to correct the image." And it works:
RAG BERGWERK LIPPE/WESTERHOLT [NEW VERSION]
Click to enlarge
PTLens comes with a whole range of profiles for digital cameras with built-in lenses and for Nikkor, Canon and Sigma interchangeable lenses. If your model is not on the list, you can send in a sample shots and the author Thomas Niemann will determine the calibration coefficients from it. It crashed Photoshop on first run after installation and then worked flawlessly on all Canon S40, Canon G1 and Olympus C8080 examples tested so far. Just 50 kB large and highly recommended.
Thomas Niemann's PTLens >
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My Future?
A random glimpse into some of the network shares available on students' notebooks in my university library reveals some creative machine names and descriptions (my notebook, "My Future") - and a whopping 20% of absolutely unsecured shares. Guys, "my future" could end rather soon if you leave your final thesis and other works on an open network share and someone not playing by the rules comes by. Then again, if you run Win XP Home like most of you seem to do and think about opening shares, you should think twice anyway.
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Blöder Witz des Tages
Warum liegt in London nie Schnee?
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One for the Day: Smelterscape II
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FACILITY: Vertical continuous casting plant for stainless steel slabs
Company: EWK Edelstahl Witten-Krefeld (former Thyssen StainlessI
Location: Witten, Germany
Status: In operation
Photo taken: July 2004
Changes since: none known of
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Posted in category Endangered Machinery
One for the Day: Smelterscape
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Some of the few remaining buildings of the Hoesch Westfalenhütte iron and steel works. Dortmund, Germany, November 2004.
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Posted in category Endangered Machinery
One for the Day: Favourite shot
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I've been asked recently what my favourite shot is of all those that I've taken within the last few months. No doubt: this street scenery near Metallhüttenwerke Bruch in Dortmund, Germany, taken September 2004 on a Canon G1. Though its main subject, the typical Trinkhalle refreshment stand of which there are hundreds, if not thousands in the city, is not directly visible at all, it yet dominates the scenery. If I would edit a photo book, this one would go straight go into it. (Yes, this photo has been posted before.)
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Posted in category Endangered Machinery
One for the Day: The longest building
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FACILITY: Plate rolling mill (Hot rolling mill for heavy plate, Grobblechstraße)
Site: Hoesch Phoenix iron and steel works (OX DO)
Location: Dortmund, Germany
Photo taken: June 2003
Current status: Torn down
The longest building of the Hoesch Phoenix iron and steel works: very close to 1,000 meters. Shelter to a plate rolling mill supplying the bridge, ship and oil rig building industries until late 1980, it has later been used as a storage for contiunously casted slabs, refractories and alloying additions for the LD steel mill closed down in 2001.
The photo has been taken roughly in the center of the building, read: several hundreds of meters away from each end. There have been three more wings to the left, including the rolling mill's drivetrain unit and one wing that has been presented here before.
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Posted in category Endangered Machinery
Skype via Siemens phones, Skype API released
Too cool: "The Gigaset M34 USB is a small, easy-to-use USB adapter for computers" that allows to place both Skype Voice over IP calls and traditional landline calls with the same Siemens Gigaset cordless phone. Both worlds, one phone.
Siemens Mobile: Gigaset M34 USB >
"'Siemens is delivering a giant step forward for Internet telephony for the residential market,' Niklas Zennstrom, Skype's chief executive, said in a statement."
Cne: Skype ready for both telephone worlds >
And:
Sype Developer Zone: Noncommercial API for Windows released >
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Von hinten durch die Brust ins Auge (Update)
"Von hinten durch die Brust ins Auge" is a German saying for doing something in an overly complicated manner. For doing something like I outlined yesterday in my entry on pulling del.icio.us links into this website. If you add links via the API, why use Magpie, but not the API to retrieve them? Just because of the caching? Huh?
The API PHP class works OK, but as expected, problems with German umlauts occur (help anyone?). For now, I use the API to pull the latest 10 Quick Links (del.icio.us tag: "is:quicklink") into this blog. They appear right below the latest blog entry, so everything below the Quick Links box is old stuff. I am not exactly happy with this solution, but putting the links into the sidebar would require considerable changes to the layout (too small sidebar on smaller screen resolutions). As long as I play around with my link submission form, the Quick Links box will stay where it is. Perhaps it will even disappear altogether from this site later - the entire list is just one link away anyway.
UPDATE 2004-11-09
The umlaut issue is fixed. To stay with proverbs, I didn't see the wood for the trees in terms of character encoding. Thanks Scott for giving directions and wielspm at xs4all dot nl for a helpful code fragment in the PHP documentation.
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Firefox 1.0 final is out, Air Mozilla event announced
Go and get it >
And: In celebrating the launch of Firefox 1.0, spreadfirefox.com "will be hosting AIR MOZILLA live from the Mozilla Foundation HQ, a 5 hour web event, including a live webcast and text chat." Today, 22:00-03:00 CET at spreadfirefox.com.
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9. November 1989: "Nach meiner Kenntnis...ist das sofort, unverzüglich!"
Foto: ddp
DIE TONDOKUMENTE (MP3)
Ernst Reuter, 24.06.1948:
Ihr Völker der Welt, schaut auf diese Stadt!
Walter Ulbricht, 15.06.1961:
Niemand hat die Absicht eine Mauer zu errichten
John F. Kennedy, 26.06.1963:
Ich bin ein Berliner
Roland Reagan: 12.07.1987:
Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
Günther Schabowski, 08.11.1989:
Nach meiner Kenntnis ... ist das sofort
Willy Brandt, 10.11.1989:
Berlin wird leben und die Mauer wird fallen
DIE PRESSEKONFERENZ
Süddeutsche Zeitung: "Günter Schabowskis legendäre Pressekonferenz vor 15 Jahren: Das damalige Politbüro-Mitglied wollte nur eine neue Reiseregelung bekannt geben - und läutete das Ende der DDR ein."
9. November 1989: Mit viermal "äh" die Mauer geöffnet >
FAZ.NET: "Der italienische Journalist Ricardo Ehrman brachte vor fünfzehn Jahren mit seiner Frage an Günter Schabowski nach dem Reisegesetz buchstäblich den Stein ins Rollen."
Interview: Ich habe Schabowski nervös gemacht >
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Integrating del.icio.us Quicklinks without cron
There are already various tutorials on the net describing ways to include del.icio.us links into a website or a weblog. Most of them rely on cron though, so here are my two cents for those who don't have cron (like me).
If you have cron, things are straightforward: have MagpieRSS fetch your del.icio.us RSS feed regulary, parse, write to file, include(); into website or post to blog via XML-RPC, done. Or, more elegantly, get links via the API, transform XML result via XSLT, write to file, include(); into website or post to blog via XML-RPC, done. Now without cron. My first idea was to check the age of the result file and re-do the parsing dance if it is older than x minutes when requested for inclusion. Too complicated, unelegant and unpleasant to watch for the user whose page request initiates the renewed parsing. New idea: Move the whole del.icio.us posting process to my own server:
Run a visually similar copy of del.icio.us HTML form from one's own server, post the new link to the del.icio.us server via its API, invoke local MagpieRSS parser upon HTTP 200/OK reply from the del.icio.us server, use MAGPIE_CACHE_AGE to throttle rebuilds to let's say once per 15 minutes even when submitting multiple links within that span of time, parse updated del.icio.us RSS file and write local file if MagpieRSS cache has expired, done.
This solution does not only seem to be somewhat elegant, but also leaves room to do just about anything before or after posting a new link to del.icio.us, namely to improve the somewhat basic default HTML posting form (keywords: have autocomplete, choose tags from clickable lists, show related and similar tags). Dietrich Ayala has written a PHP library for the del.icio.us API which looks like a good starting point. Testing the library will be step one, copying the default posting form step two (including validation, which is now your own task and no longer del.icio.us'), patching both together step three, bringing in "actions to do on successful link posting via the API" (for now, read: invoke MagpieRSS) step four. Stay tuned.
RELATED
del.icio.us links related to this blog entry
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Did it
Uploaded my first photo into Wikipedia (to improve the Zeche Kaiserstuhl article on a colliery not too much known about due to its inaccessible location right in the middle of a huge iron and steel works and its closedown decades ago).
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One for the Day: Machine shop
Click to enlarge
FACILITY: Machine shop, either part of the steel foundry or part of the ladle treatment plant
Site: Hoesch Phoenix iron and steel works (OX DO)
Location: Dortmund, Germany
Photo taken: July 2003 on Canon S40
Current status: Torn down
Note: Image quality is far from good, but this is the only photo I've got of this specific building (attribute to: learning curve). Compared to the average shop size at this size, it has been a very small building.
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Posted in category Endangered Machinery
A wiki tool with faceted navigation
"DiamondWiki is an experimental WikiClone with an emphasis on faceted navigation powered by metadata." Built upon PikiPiki in the Python language, this wiki tool lets you explore wiki pages via an XFML like facet browser.
Now this looks like something to play with. I've played around a lot with faceted navigation and XFML a while ago and even have some blog entry drafts, unfinished und unpublished for some reasons though, sitting on my fileserver. Regrettably, XFML sees very little support or actual use, though all it lacks to become more interesting is a good GNU licensed XFML browser and some XFML browser and generator libraries in popular languages like Python or PHP (or, let's party like it's 2004, some XSLT plus JS to do it client side).
DiamondWiki >
DiamondWiki facet browser >
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One for the day: Electric arc furnace
Click to enlarge
FACILITY: 120 tons electric arc furnace (EAF)
Plant: Elektrostahlwerk Oberhausen GmbH (Thyssen, former GHH)
Location: Oberhausen, Germany
Supplier: MAN GHH
Area size: 60 hectares
Status: Closed down
Photo taken: November 2004
Note: The electric steel plant shown is one of the last remainders of a once very large iron and steel works. It has been put in service in 1980 as an attempt to maintain operations at this site while shutting down all other facilities, including the outdated Siemens-Martin steel mill and all seven blast furnaces. As quality steel capacities had been shifted to the Duisburg site, the new Oberhausen mill had to focus on simpler alloys, but operated at too high costs and ultimately faced its close down at December 31, 1997.
Future perspective: Everything except of the two 120 tons EAFs and parts of the ladle furnace has been torn down. Shortly, the remainders will be transformed into a Galeria Stahlwerk as part of the O.Vision project.
Additional photos: Stefanie Grebe has some photos of this plant in operation. Unsurprisingly, they are of rather poor quality. That's what happens most times if professional or studied photographers try to capture heavy industry. Then again, as the opportunity to take such photos is no more, we just have to take things as they are.
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Posted in category Endangered Machinery
Circles of Knowledge
Stefano Mazzocchi introduces us to the Circles of Knowledge metaphor:
"Imagine to draw a circle and put everything you know and 'everything you know you don't know' into it. Outside the circle remains what 'you don't even know it exists'. As you learn something new, the area of the circle increases. But this also means that as you increase the stuff you know, you also increase the stuff you know you don't know, and, usually, the second one grows faster than the first. This is the reason why wise and knowledge people usually say (and truly believe!) they don't know much at all, because their 'know/know I don't know' ratio decreases as their learning progresses."
And concludes:
"Ultimately, as your circle increases, you end up learning the Socrat lesson: 'I know I don't know' which, using the circle of knowledge, means that your 'know/know I don't know' ratio dropped to zero as your knowledge reached infinite."
Stefano's Linotype: The Circle of Knowledge >
Related via the same source: a research paper from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology on a link between personal knowledge and self-assessments:
"Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities."
I am not sure though why I connect this very kind of miscalibration with "middle management".
APA Journals: Unskilled and Unaware of It >
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The nightmare continues
Four more years of the Perpetual War Doctrine. What did you smoke, Bush voters?
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Hemer zu, Lingen zu
Mit der Blücher-Kaserne in Hemer und der Scharnhorst-Kaserne in Lingen werden gleich zwei der Standorte, an denen ich meine Zeit als Panzerpionier verbracht hatte, geschlossen werden (und, um Niedersachen mal so richtig einen mitzugeben, den Standort Varel gleich mit).
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Heissa einmal werden wir noch wach...
... dann ist Dubya abgeschafft.
Wollen wir hoffen, daß es klappt.
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Getting Out the Vote: Why is it so hard to run an honest election?
Bruce Schneier: "Four years after the Florida debacle of 2000 and two years after Congress passed the Help America Vote Act, voting problems are again in the news: confusing ballots, malfunctioning voting machines, problems over who's registered and who isn't. All this brings up a basic question: Why is it so hard to run an election?"
Getting Out the Vote >
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