datumsgrenze.

nach zwei jahren eine der lausigsten ausgaben. grobes mittelmaß, vermutlich der einfluss von zuviel bloggerbrause, hochschülerinnenzeitung auf käse-niveau (titelstory). got it?

furchtbar, die wahlwerbung (schüsselfresse ganzseitig), jenseits die pro-raucher-kampagne im putzigen kommentarkleidchen, diktiert von tabak austria herself.

und dann ausgerechnet schlögl! ich möchte, dass sie mich zärtlich am popo kraulen! von diesem tödlichen provinzbürgermeister will ich einfach absolut nichts mehr lesen, und sei es noch so ein mickriger satz. schon allein, weil er immer noch denselben schmarrn sagt wie vor sechs jahren.

(man kann wohl in diesem land nicht tief genug graben; stößt immer wieder auf die gleichen alten, hässlichen knochen.)

einzig skocek ist wirklich gut. und brus zumindest anregend.

nur: zwei kolumnen und wenig mehr reichen mir nicht für ein monatsmagazin "zur förderung des qualitätsjournalismus".

ubuntu ain't mac's type?

apparently not, if one looks at the countless (mostly unanswered) questions about how to configure ubuntu to get along with a mac keyboard.

well, but i did the following: chose "Macintosh" as keyboard model and "german (no dead keys)" as layout;

and then added ~/.xmodmaprc containing these few lines:

clear control

! define Alt key as mode switch
! (enables €, @, », « etc.)
keycode 64      = Mode_switch

! define Ctrl as Alt key
keycode  37     = Alt_L

! define Apple as Ctrl key
remove control  = Control_L
keycode 115     = Control_L
add control     = Control_L

probably quite unusual to do all the control commands with the apple key (even os x doesn't do that)... but that's a minor trade-off for a generally huge improvement.

(btw. if you should need different keycodes i recommend xev to determine them.)

where is the scandal?

tirol county museum: 100.000 years of sex. the cultural history of sexuality. (via reddit.)

...where is the fpö?

oesterreich, vast and undefined.

in the end we'll all meet again.

this time: javascript meets LaTeX.

although it's by far not enough to typeset some math; TeX is all about typography. (which reminds me how little browsers have achieved in this field: still no individual letter kerning, no hyphenation support, no standard method of including fonts, no no no...)

in wonderful accordance with most uber-scripters also simon willison recommends dojo, mochikit, prototype and the yahoo! ui library as the big four client-side javascript libraries. (via langreiter.)

besides some very interesting remarks about leaky abstractions there's a user comment that complains about ignoring jquery; which is justified partly (in regard of jquery being really usable at a very basic level), but on the other hand it simply doesn't fit looking at the source code (which is geeky stuff).

however, i am delighted by jquery's features (counting less than those of each of the big four) and its interface (except the ugly $ method, again).

it currently would be my favorite library when thinking about finally writing client-side code for some of my private projects like parss et al.

btw. there's little talk about speed and performance of each of those libraries. i think that's pretty amazing because it should matter a lot how fast the average user will experience all that nifty javascript stuff in her browser...

or is it just me being bothered by the sedate behaviour of many web 2.0 sites (just take digg.com as an example)?

japitools: Java API compatibility testing tools; including comparison results for classpath, libgcj, harmony, jnode and kaffe.

à propos free java: lately, i tried to compile rhinola again on my ubook and got the following output:

buntekuh:~/Desktop/rhinola$ ant gcjlib Unable to locate tools.jar. Expected to find it in /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.4.2-gcj-4.0-1.4.2.0/lib/tools.jar Buildfile: build.xml

Total time: 9 seconds

obviously, rhinola still needs some of sun's (still) proprietary java stuff – which i have had installed the last time when everything went so smoothly.

unfortunately, copying tools.jar from another jdk installation to the aforementioned directory does not alter the result (except for the "unable to locate" message). wtf?

anyway, the main question is: did i get the promising "gnu-compiled" buzz-phrase wrong or is there a free tools.jar somewhere that makes the magic happen?

the only revolution that ever worked out is done by mother earth.

"Von Neumann's deathbed was under military guard lest he, heavily drugged, accidentally divulge the highly sensitive secrets to which he was privy."

– Wann stirbt ein Mensch? – Wenn er wie ein Monstrum aussieht.

the longest 2.38 minutes of my father's life.

from berlin friedrichstraße to hauptbahnhof. (via bov.)

and there was even more: the central station itself was sovereign territory of the german democratic republic; thus, it was not enough to exit the train to gain personal freedom. my father and his colleague still had to make it through and out of the station. and so they did.