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Endangered Machinery: View from Southeast
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View from Southeast ← Blast Furnace #5 ← Phoenix works, Dortmund ← Hoesch Stahl AG
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"Where's the glory, I kept asking myself"
Magnum photographer Paul Fusco went to see funerals of American soliders killed in Iraq:
Bitter Fruit →
[via Martin Fuchs]
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István hat jetzt Martins Job
In diesem Jahr ging der Henri-Nannen-Preis für die beste Reportage (Egon Erwin Kisch-Preis) an den in der ZEIT erschienen Artikel Herr Mo holt die Fabrik, in dem der Verlagerung der Großkokerei Kaiserstuhl von Dortmund nach China aus Sicht des deutschen und des chinesischen Leiters geschildert wird. In der aktuellen ZEIT-Reportage István hat jetzt Martins Job wird wieder umgezogen, Arbeitsplätze diesmal, von Deutschland nach Ungarn und von dort wer weiß wo hin:
"Aber wenn das überall so geht, was bleibt dann noch in Deutschland?" →
[via vowe u.a.]
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Endangered Machinery: 4
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Night coming down over a set of gas suction engines in a closed down coking plant
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Zuweilen tendiert man ja dazu...
... Zeitungs- und Magazin-Redaktionen danach einzuordnen, wie und was sie über etwas schreiben, in das man selbst ein wenig Einblick hat. Heute erfahren wir also etwas über die Neues Deutschland, die da über autonome Austauschforen im Internet vermeldet:
Ein Wiki sein, das ist was Besonderes und doch so einfach. Jeder kann zur hundertsprachigen Gemeinschaft von Wikipedia zählen – die »freie Enzyklopädie« ist ein Weblog und somit aus Sicht von Fachleuten das Kommunikationsmedium von morgen. Einfach wikipedia.de in die Suchleiste tippen und man ist ein Blogger in spe. [...]
Vor 25 Jahren trafen sich Hamburger PC-Freaks im Chaos Computer Club und loggten sich in die Netzwerke großer Server ein. Die CCC-Hacker galten als kriminell, doch ihr Netzwerk war einzigartig und in gewisser Weise das erste Blog. [...]
So bleiben Blogs vorerst, was sie sind: Ein Ort für Leute mit viel Zeit, großem Mitteilungsbedürfnis, einiger Sachkenntnis und vor allem: einem guten Browser.
Das ist die selbe Zeitung, die vor ein paar Tagen erst in einem Artikel über das Kombinat Schwarze Pumpe nicht nur fälscherweise behauptete, im Westen überlege man eine neue subventionierte Steinkohlekokerei zu bauen, sondern im folgenden Satz auch gleich noch auf das ziemlich schmale Brett kommt, daß man das doch bittschön auch mit (Ost-)Braunkohle machen könne. Wie sich da Artikel aus den Ressorts Wirtschaft und Politik lesen, ahnt man schon - die Redewendung "In den Augen derer, die die DDR ökonomisch übernahmen" im Schwarze Pumpe-Artikel deutet es bereits zart an. Chapeau !
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Endangered Machinery: Backyard Furnace
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On a foggy day in Belgium
Blast furnace 6 ← Cockerill-Sambre, Seraing/Liege
Photo taken: April 2005
Status when photo taken: Operational
Changes since: Closed down
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Endangered Machinery: Reden Mine II
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Shaft 5 ← Saarberg Reden Mine, Landsweiler-Reden, Schiffweiler, Saarland, Germany ← Verbundbergwerk (centralized mine) Göttelborn-Reden
To the left of the headgear, the shielded walkway that connects the shaft entrance and the dryroom (Mannschaftsgang). To its right, two winding machine buildings: the large one houses the electrical winding engine, the small one right in front of it its disused predecessor, a steam winding engine. While there are mines that still operate steam winding engines, most mines made the transition to electrical engines in the second half of the twentieth century. Preservation of the steam side as seen here is a rare case though.
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Endangered Machinery: Reden Mine
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Shaft 5 ← Saarberg Reden Mine, Landsweiler-Reden, Schiffweiler, Saarland, Germany ← Verbundbergwerk (centralized mine) Göttelborn-Reden
Status: Operational
History: 1846 - Mine opened, 1949 - errection of shown headgear (Fördergerüst), 1995 - coal extraction stopped and conversion into a centralized mine water drainage serving large parts of Saarland's mine system, ongoing - mine water drainage
Photo taken: January 2005
Changes since: none known of
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Presenting: Facetbrowser
On my photo page, the show all photos listing has become much to long to still be useful - time to do something. To begin with, I tagged all blog postings carrying photos with tags in the facet:value-fashion, defined tag attributes (like description or long title, all stored in a simple PHP array) and wrote a basic interface called the Facetbrowser to browse all this. Though it is rather meant as a tool for myself to see if things work at all and check the metadata's integrity, you can already use it to actually find stuff.
You can browse the collection from these directions - or by these facets:
- Kind of industry
- Kind of facility
- Company name
- Location (city, region, country)
- Color or b/w photo (this will be changed into "content type")
- Status when photo taken
- Current status
Each photo is one item, a photo showing multiple facilities can be indexed as carrying multiple items. Thus, any blog posting can carry multiple items (mutltiple photos or (multiple) photos showing multiple facilities). This is why there also is a facet that shows the ID of the corresponding blog posting stored in Movable Type.
For now, the Facetbrowser is rather simple. From what is of interest to you as a non-editor, it just performs these basic tasks:
- Show which values a facet carries and what attributes facets and values have: [facet:?]?
Example: List all regions [region:?]?
- Show all items carrying a specific facet-value-combination: [facet:value]?
Example: Show all photos of blast furnaces [facility:bf]?
In its next iterations, it will also performs these more interesting tasks:
- Show what values of facet(B) match items that also carry the facet(A)-value(a) tag: [facet:?] IN [facet:value]?
Example 1: The names of all companies in the city of Dortmund: [company:?] IN [city:dortmund]?
Example 2: The types of facilities in the steel industry: [facility:?] IN [industry:steel]?
- Show what items carry the tags facet(A)-value(a), facet(B)-value(b), ... : [facet:value] AND [facet:value] AND ... ?
Example 1: All photos showing coking plants in the Liege, Belgium region: [industry:coke] AND [region:liege]?
Example 2: All photos showing things of the steel industry that were in service when the photo was taken but have been torn down meanwhile: [industry:steel] AND [thenstatus:operational] AND [nowstatus:demolished]?
Stay tuned and please let me know (via E-Mail or Instant Message) if you have questions or comments.
Facetbrowser Preview →
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Endangered Machinery: Sinter Genie
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Do you see his face right above the building? We met him in the witching hour.
Beeck Sinter Plant (closed down) ← Thyssen AG, Duisburg-Beek, Germany
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Minor Adjustments
The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges [in Iraq]
Getting out is going to be a more important consideration than the original goals were →
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Spruch des Tages
Nur die dümmsten Kälber wählen ihre Metzger selber.
Edmund Stoibers Selbstdemontage
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Endangered Machinery: Money Machine
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Blast Furnace 9 ← August Thyssen Hütte steelworks, Duisburg, Germany ← ThyssenKrupp Steel
This landscape is going to change considerably soon: 360 million Euro (450 million USD) later, we will see a second, identical furnace to the right of the one shown here, ensuring this mill's pig iron production for the next decades. With a total of four operating large-scale furnaces it is the biggest mill around. Currently, ThyssenKrupp's steel branch alone generates revenues of more than 130 million Euro (160 million USD) - per month.
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Es entbehrt nicht einer gewissen Komik ...
... auf SpOn unter der formatfüllenden Werbe-Frage "Sie suchen Anbieter von Vollnieten?" ausgerechnet das Parteilogo der Christdemokraten zu finden. Da sage noch mal wer, SpOn schreibe nur Mist.
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Endangered Machinery: Ten Years Ago
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Blast furnace 3 ← Ruhrstahl Henrichshütte ← Hattingen, Germany
Photo taken 10 years ago, long before this blast furnace was reconstructed and reopened as a museum.
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Volkspalast - Der Berg
Warum die Berliner Entscheidungsträger dermaßen versessen darauf sind, den Palast der Republik ohne erkennbaren Zwang in eine Freifläche bar absehbarer Folgenutzung umzuwandeln, erschließt sich dem Nichtberliner ja nur sehr bedingt. Hier kann nur Geschichtsbereinigung das Motiv sein, und dagegen kämpfen alle die, die den Volkspalast seit seiner vorübergehenden Wiedereröffnung im letzten Jahr mit kulturellen Veranstaltungen im Gespräch halten und zu einem Treffpunkt machen. Teilweise überwältigende Besucheranströme geben ihnen Recht, aber was getilgt gehört soll nun endlich auch getilgt werden, Status eines ziemlich coolen Veranstaltungsortes hin oder her, und so hat der Palast am Freitag wohl zum letzten Mal seine Pforten geöffnet, bevor die Bagger kommen werden: Volkspalast - Der Berg heißt die noch bis zum 26. August laufende Aktion um einen riesigen, aus dem Großen Saal herausquillenden Berg, der erwandert werden kann und zahlreichen Gruppen als Bühne dient. Danach kann der Abrissirrsinn dann endlich walten.
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Wikimania proceedings
As you might know, I am most fascinated by the potential of wikis as communication and knowledge tools for enterprises, especially research labs and engineering consultancies and companies. When I once helped designing and building both a rapid manufacturing process and machinery from scratch and to establish the new and small company in a nascent market, everything we did was new, and what we found out was stored in heads, emails and cabinets. Today, things could get narrated into a wiki right from the beginning. It would be a think and knowledge pool of manifold value of the old-school-version - and a rock solid foundation for future inner growth of the company, successful evolution of products and services and better monitoring of markets and competitors.
Ross Mayfield of Socialtext will address this topic in his keynote at Wikimania, The First International Wikimedia Conference, which starts in Frankfurt today (Website,
Blog, Press Mirror, Program). As I am unable to attend this conference, it will be interesting for me to see what attendees and speakers will put on their blogs and wikis. Rather as a note to self, these sessions sound interesting:
RELATED
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Mozilla Corporation Announced
The broad adoption of Mozilla Firefox has created significant economic value both in Firefox itself and in a commercial ecosystem that is developing around Firefox. This economic value is an unintended but real by-product of the Mozilla project's overriding goal of providing a Web browser with enough marketshare to drive open standards on the Web. Carefully managed, this value — and the resulting ability to generate revenue — can be used to make the Mozilla project self-sustaining and help keep the Internet open and diverse.
Mozilla Foundation Forms New Organization →
"The Mozilla Foundation has announced the creation of the Mozilla Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary that will continue the development, distribution and marketing of Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird. [...] By moving product development out to a new subsidiary, the Mozilla Foundation hopes to be able to concentrate on project and policy issues. [...] The Mozilla Corporation will now handle all relationships with commercial companies and its status should allow more flexibility in this area. [...] Any profits made by the Mozilla Corporation will be invested back into the Mozilla project.
Mozilla Foundation Announces Creation of Mozilla Corporation →
Mozilla Corp. in 12 simple items →
Mozilla Foundation Reorganization FAQ →
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"Solide, anständig und korrekt"
... steht bei den Christdemokraten weiterhin für Mauscheln, Vertuschen und Zurechtbiegen. Aktuelles Beispiel: die Causa Angela Scharping. Im historischen Rückblick also nix Neues.
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Greasemonkey 0.5 Beta is out
Greasemonkey, the fabulous Firefox extension that lets you remix websites with your own code, is out as 0.5 beta. Update is recommended: it is all new code with new features and massive security improvements.
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Endangered Machinery: Shed Roof
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Shed roof, contemporary edition
Photo taken July 2005
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Talk Digger
Talk Digger is a meta search engine that adds the dimension of time to seach resuls. It aggregates results of incoming links searches on Technorati, PubSub, BlogPulse, Bloglines, Ice Rocket, and Feedster and displays for each service i) the current number of incoming links, ii) a trend arrow that indicates at a glimpse if this number went up or down since the last search for a specific URL (advanced ego-meter), and iii) a barchart that graphs the last seven results for a specific URL.
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On faceted classification
Ever since I learned about XFML (which never set off), I am fascinated by faceted classification (example). It avoids the limitations of hierarchical categorization, the madness of Topic Maps and the unmanageability of freeform tagging. It can profit from tagging ideas like the simple addition of new metadata values (e.g. tags) and look roughly like shown in my semantic tagging example.
Show full entry
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Government paranoia, thou shalt know no limits
Starting this week, three US border crossings will begin to tag visitors to America with wireless RFID-cards, which contain visitors' personally identifying information and can be read from 12 yards [11 meters, ed.] away. If this program is "successful" [it] will go live at every border crossing, in addition to the current practice of fingerprinting and photographing visitors.
Homeland Security radio-tags foreign visitors →
Visitors to the U.S. will get the card the first time they cross the border and will be required the carry the document on subsequent crossings to and from the States.
High-tech border pass raises alarm →
Anyone here who didn't realize yet that Department of Homeland Security is an almost literal translation of Staatssicherheitsdienst?
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Writing styles
The last but one blog posting's 421-words-flood in draft mode:
- In digital imaging, noise can be an issue when using high ISO numbers
- Noise removal software uses just one metered value per pixel and is likely to kill off image details (though current versions preserve them remarkably well)
- Additive noise reduction averages on multiple metered values per pixel → as noise is random, actual improvement of S/NR (1 / sqrt (number of metered values)) → no loss of details, no artifical look
- Stack multiple identical shots on top of each other and set opacity of each layer to (1/(number of layers beneath it + 1))
- sqrt → S/NR 2:1 requires 4 extra shots, 3:1 9, 4:1 16, etc.
Less noise, similar amount of information, no time-consuming fine-tuning of sentences, much faster Idea to Blogged-It TimeTM — looks like a good way to get more of the stuff I want to blog actually blogged. So let's try this out a bit.
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