How to convert accent characters to their base characters in Python. Pretty basic approach, but sufficient for many purposes. For proper solutions, there's PyICU ...
Archive 11. October 2005
No idea if I've had this before, but Caching Tutorial for Web Authors and Webmasters looks like a useful description of HTTP caching directives, with explanations for application programmers.
Django i18n status
I worked a bit more on the i18n stuff in django today and finally switched my gallery to the i18n branch. You can now see the strings on that site with either english or german settings. Other languages get english output (so if you are in Germany and still see english strings - check the language settings in your browser, wether German is defined with higher priority than English).
The code works quite nice and I think I will give it a week or so to settle and than start to put finishing touches to it - like adding much more translation hooks to the django source.
There is a hole in the canal
Here's the translated Markdown body:
Expressed differently: we have the canal empty:
However, according to WDR information, the barrier in Lüdinghausen might be about to break. Therefore, as a precaution, a state of emergency was declared for the lower reaches of the Lippe up to Ahsen.
It's strange to imagine that the canal now has a full closure at two points ...
Getting Nix Done - Yay!
Innovative Power of Software Patents
Because software patents have such high innovative power, Blackberry will probably disappear from the US market, because:
As part of that litigation, NTP, whose only assets are wireless e-mail related patents, had been granted an injunction banning the sale of BlackBerry devices in the United States and forcing Research in Motion to stop providing e-mail services to all American customers except government account holders.
Exactly. A company that has nothing but a few patents (which are also quite banal, as one has almost come to expect with US patents) has obtained a sales ban against another company whose product is physically available for purchase through the courts. Extremely innovative. And certainly something we need in Europe as well.
Creationist Plague
Oh, great, now the creationists are already in Thuringia. Well, no wonder, if you belong to a party that also demands a reference to God in the European Constitution...
And no, "Intelligent Design" is not a scientific theory that could be discussed as an alternative to the theory of evolution - ID is complete nonsense, religiously motivated hostility towards science. Barely disguised creationism, nothing more. Therefore, the demand for a scientific discussion of this alleged "theory" is simply nonsense.