Home → Archives → by month → April 2005
Making Waves and Starting Fires
At 8:58 AM PST, we rolled over the 50,000,000 [Firefox browser] downloads line
Think 300,000 downloads per day. This number even does not include downloads through the auto-update facility, from download.com and straight from FTP - just those from getfirefox.com. Say Blake and Asa:
As we turn open source into a household word and reassert the supremacy of simplicity, we are making waves—and starting fires.
When do you do the switch?
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Endangered Machinery: Air Fractionation Plant
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TGHM Technical Gases Hoesch Messer air fractionation plant
Dortmund, Germany
In service
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Posted in category Endangered Machinery
Improving and extending websites with Greasemonkey
Annoyance: Bloglines has no del.icio.us integration. This hinders my workflow as I cannot move items of interest directly from Bloglines into del.icio.us. Instead, I have to use a lot of Firefox tabs and a del.icio.us bookmarklet. Solution: Use client side DOM manipulation to replace all "Clip/blog this" links below each Bloglines entry with "Post to del.icio.us" links. Encapsulate the required Javascript and have it called automagically by a Firefox extension whenever the Bloglines site gets loaded - voila, we've got a so called Greasemonkey site customization script aka userscript.
Annoyance: Gmail sucks most where it should less, in search. Even for simple operations like "show all mails from a specific person" or "show all of today's mail" the extended search form has to be filled out. Solution: Add Persistent (or Saved) Searches to Gmail with a Greasemonkey userscript.
Annoyance: Flickr makes great use of Flash in Organizr, but its use of Flash for the simple task of displaying photos and photonotes slows things down unnecessarily. Solution: Install a Greasemonkey userscript that removes the Flash from Flickr photo pages and replaces it with DHTML that works better than the original solution. What we get is called Lickr, Flickr without the Flash.
So using the Greasemonkey plugin for Firefox plus custom scripts that run whenever a specified page gets loaded into the browser, both minor annoyances of specific web sites or web applications can be fixed and completely new features can be added to such, including some sort of persistence mechanism and the ability to pull in data from other servers with XMLHttpRequest. In other words, it not only allows to fix issues with websites but also provides an higher-level mechanism for adding custom features to web applications, all taking place on the user end alone. Now think about possible implications.
Adrian Holovaty also offers an Greasemonkey compiler that turns userscripts into standalone XPI extensions for Firefox that people can run without having to install the Greasemonkey extension itself. There is a central userscript repository that already holds a plethora of site-specific scripts, and the Greasemonkey author keeps us up to date on his Greaseblog.
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Four years
Today four years ago, Dortmund's two huge integrated steel works, Hoesch Westfalenhütte and Hoesch Phoenix, were closed down by then-owner ThyssenKrupp Steel, ending 160 years of of steel tradition after an estimated production of 290 million tons. All facilities have been sold to China, all buildings have been torn down, and hundreds of hectares land sit empty with no trace of its former use.
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Posted in category Endangered Machinery
XMLHttpRequest Usability
With everyone raving about Ajax, a current marketing term for XMLHttpRequest, little has been written about its usability issues so far (not to mention accessibility, which everyone was raving about half a year ago). Thomas Baekdal steps in an and not only comes up with some XMLHttpRequest Usability Guidelines but also with an example of a web form as Usable XMLHttpRequest in Practice. I like the visual indicators for "changes saved" and "correct your input", how few lines of code are necessary for such effects and how cleanly the structure, presentation and behaviour layers are separated.
RELATED DEL.ICIO.US TAGS
del.icio.us/haikohebig/xml-http-request
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Photo optics
Paul van Walree has a very good set of concise articles on the photographic optics and the main causes of image degradation like Seidel aberrations, chromatic aberrations, vignetting and flare, plus some articles on common misconceptions and on why you should always use a lense hood. Recommended.
Paul van Walree: Photo optics >
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Denken heisst Unterwerfen
Es war schon immer die grösste Sehnsucht deutscher Intellektueller, sich den erstbesten absoluten Wahrheiten und starken Männern zu unterwerfen, um endlich die Last des Denkens abwerfen zu können.
Richard Herzinger in seinem Weltwoche-Blog Ideen und Irrtümer zur Frage, weshalb "im Moment so viele Intellektuelle ihre Begeisterung für einen knallkonservativen Kleriker" entdecken.
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A note about metadata encryption
Dave Coffin, the man who reverse engineered the RAW file formats of most cameras and makes his extractor dcRAW available as open source (mentioned here before), says:
A firestorm of controversy recently erupted when Thomas Knoll of Adobe accused Nikon of encrypting the white balance data in the D2X and D2Hs cameras, thus preventing Adobe from fully supporting these cameras.
I cracked this encryption on April 15, and updated dcraw.c and parse.c on April 17. So "dcraw -w" now works correctly with all Nikon cameras.
This is not a new problem. Phase One, Sony, Foveon, and Canon all apply some form of encryption to their raw files. Dcraw decodes them all -- you can easily find decryption code by searching for the ^ operator.
Compression is not encryption. Phase One and Sony do encryption only. Kodak does compression only. Canon, Nikon, and Foveon compress the image data and encrypt some of the metadata.
And all of this is not entirely new. Neither that some Nikon RAW versions carry preprocessed instead of raw data nor that each vendor has a different understanding of what RAW is and of how a RAW file should be composed.
Naturally, camera vendors try to establish camera-specific RAW formats with camera-specific metadata fields as a selling point. Paired with camera-specific RAW extraction software, they promise better development results than a generic RAW extractor that does not know the sensor characteristics in all details could deliver.
In theory, this is true, in practice, experience says it is not. So the real reason for sticking to propietary RAW formats is a different one: using a standard, well documented file format could help third parties to turn the digital camera into a commodity of photo editing software - not exactly of interest to a camera vendor.
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Endangered Machinery: Rue Pierre Blanche
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Rue Pierre Blanche, Vivegnis near Liege, Belgium, with a view on the Cockerill Sambre/Arcelor hot rolling mill in Chertal. It sits right next to the LD steel mill with three 210 tons converters.
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Posted in category Endangered Machinery
421 tons - airborne!
Aviation history was made this morning when the first A380, the world’s largest commercial aircraft, successfully took off on its maiden flight, leaving Blagnac International Airport in Toulouse, France at 10.29 hours local time (08.29 UTC) from runway 32L. [...] For its first flight [...] F-WW0W took off at a weight of 421 tonnes / 928,300 lbs.
Airbus A380 First Flight website >
First Flight news reports at Google News >
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:: in category Aviation, Air and Space
Endangered Machinery: Au revoir, Esperance
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Esperance Longdoz/Cockerill Sambre/Arecelor blast furnace 6, Seraing/Belgium, during one of its last hours of full operation last Saturday night. In the lower part of the photo you can look straight into the tapping hole where the liquid iron leaves the furnace. The upper part is filled with typical dust emissions. Shutdown in progress.
Right now, it is the final hour of a voyage that started April 29, 1959. Between 8 and 9 o'clock this morning, the final tapping is taking place. It is the last part of the shutdown procedure which started about 48 hours ago. Within days, the impressive blast furance will be cold, free of electricity and disconnected from the plant's gas network. Together with all other Liege area hot metal plants, it will be demolished in 2009. A total of 12,000 jobs will be threatened in a region with an unemployment rate higher than 30%.
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Off to Belgium
Pilot and crew of this site are off to the Arcelor facilities in Seraing under a two day concentrated fire. ETA 1200 Z.
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Get Firefox
Jon Robb: Firefox [to IE] is similar to the difference between a BMW and a Chevy.
Tim Bray: The proportion of thought leaders who use IE on Windows is trending to zero.
To my surprise, a significant portition of hebig.org/blog readers is still using Internet Explorer - if you do so too, give Firefox a try. It is free, safe and smart. It even imports all your Explorer favorites and settings so you stay productive when doing the switch. Tried once, you won't want to miss the Firefox browsing experience.
[Quotes via Rainer]
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Boys need Toys
Just watched and listened to a M6 BMW Grand Tourer in light silver. Heaven. Looks much better than on photographs. After a number of questionable BMW releases, hands down one of the most exiting things on four wheels these days. Test drive please :-)
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Kleine Lebensrettung
Nach einem Jahr in London wundert sich unser Berliner Büroleiter mehr denn je über Deutschland. In Großbritannien wird erfolgreich Scheiße zu Gold erklärt, in Deutschland noch erfolgreicher Gold zu Scheiße.
Christoph Schwennicke von der Süddeutschen Zeitung ist zurück nach einem Jahr Auszeit von Deutschland und "möchte verrückt werden und verzweifeln am eigenen Land" ob des "kollektiver Schwachsinns", wie er in Deutschland beim Bundespräsidenten angefangen verbreitet wird. Das ist erfreulich, zeigt es doch, daß man nicht allein ist mit der Annahme, daß in einem Land, in dem die unsägliche Christiansen-Jammershow für viele schon rituellen Charakter hat und selbst motivierte Optimisten nichts mehr außer Schlechtrederei zustande bringen, etwas ganz gehörig schiefläuft.
Wir sollten uns nun endlich damit abfinden, dass wir in nachstaatlichen Strukturen leben, in einer Art Post-Etatismus. Ist das so schlimm?
Schlimmer als das offizielle Deutschland, das im Ritual erstarrte Verlautbarungsdeutschland und Talkrundenjammerdeutschland, schlimmer als das Sloterdijksche Simulierte-Machbarkeits-Regierungs-und-Oppositionsdeutschland ist es nicht.
Christoph Schwennicke: Kleine Lebensrettung >
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Freedom of Expression blog awards
Reporters Without Borders is calling on Internet-users to vote online for award-winners from among 60 blogs defending freedom of expression.
Many voices from Iran with its strong blogging movement, but more important, also voices from Zimbabwe, Nepal, Bahrain, North Korea and other dark spots. Seeing people making their case heard while under threat or oppression makes me happy again and again - what's a bigger threat to regimes than a printing press with worldwide reach? Of the 60 blogs presented, 25 are in English, and the awards could help to make all of them more well known.
Freedom of Expression blog awards >
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Endangered Machinery: The last tapping
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Rue Puits Cecile, Seraing, Belgium with the Cockerill Sambre / Arcelor blast furnace HF 6
If plans don't change, HF 6 will see its last tapping seven days and four hours from now. Then, the lights will go out in Seraing. Within the next few years, the entire region will follow: it is the starting signal for the closure of all Arcelor hot metal plants in the Liege region, including another blast furnace, a sinter plant, a LD steel mill, a continuous caster and rolling and finishing mills.
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Endangered Machinery: Inside a steel foundry III
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Step three: in which the drink gets served.
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Endangered Machinery: Inside a steel foundry II
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Step two: in which he pours himself a drink
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Endangered Machinery: Inside a steel foundry
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Step one: in which fresh steel gets cooked from scrap metal in an electric arc furnace, 10 tons at a time.
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Tweaking
I will be tweaking a couple of things behind the scenes and in the stylesheets for the next while. All changes are done live, so when in doubt, reload.
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Giganten aus Stahl
Die Welt, die Fortsetzung der Bild mit längeren Sätzen, berichtet heute über Severstal, den größten russischen Stahlkonzern (Hervorhebung von mir):
Sie haben Erzbergwerke, Kohlegruben, Koksereien, Stahlwerke - die ganze Kette.
Gerade bei einem so konservativem Blatt wie der Welt wird ma es gerne sehen, wenn die Redakteure immer schön auf Linie sind.
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Endangered Machinery: After Gneisenau
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Winding house, shaft 4, Southern winding compartment; Dortmund, Germany
One of the few remainders of what once was the largest mine of all (note that considerable parts are not shown on the linked aerial photograph)
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Endangered Machinery: Man at work
Self portrait
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Endangered Machinery: Forgotten Place
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Facility: Glückaufsegen coal mine, shaft 3, Dortmund, Germany
While "nothing left" or "demolition in progress" is the default status report these days, it has been very nice to rediscover a forgotten place - by pure chance and where I would have least expected it.
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Ford Feuerstuhl
Nachdem ich mit meinem BMW vor einiger Zeit ja gegen einen Zaun verloren hatte, dachte ich mir, daß ein Auto mit großem Innenraum eine schöne Abwechslung wäre und blieb dann bei einem Scorpio mit 2,4i V6-Motor in der Ghia-Ausstattung hängen, letzte Generation vor der mit der abgelutschten Karosserie. Nicht, daß man mich in andere Modelle dieser Marke hineinbekommen könnte, aber dieses ist nicht unwohnlich und zu realistischen Preisen habbar. Und man lernt einiges: Über die Vorzüge von alles elektrisch, alles Leder und von sich auch mit einem Meter vierundneunzig mal ausstrecken zu können. Daß mit knapp über 1000 Umdrehungen im hohen Gang mit brabbelndem Motor durch die Gegend zu gondeln ebenso angenehm sein kann wie sich auf der Autobahn als Reisegeschwindigkeit mit zügig erreichbaren 160 zu begnügen. Und Dinge, die man eigentlich gar nicht wissen will:
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