Lunatic Python - bidirectional interface between Lua and Python.
Archive June 2008
90% of Enviro Skeptic Books Have Think Tank Roots - where do all these reality-denying books come from? Conservative think tanks in the US seem to have a big hand in it. And as the study so nicely puts it: "Thus, the notion that environmental skeptics are unbiased analysts exposing the myths and scare tactics employed by those they label as practitioners of 'junk science' lacks credibility. Similarly, the self-portrayal of skeptics as marginalized 'Davids' battling the powerful 'Goliath' of environmentalists and environmental scientists is a charade, as skeptics are supported by politically powerful CTTs funded by wealthy foundations and corporations."
Algorithmic Botany: Publications - "The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants" as download!
Cog Blog - fascinating blog of a programmer who is building a new Squeak Smalltalk VM, and writes about the problems of the Blue Book architecture and possible solutions - and he comes from VisualWorks VM development, so he should know what he's talking about. Very interesting to read and the result could also be interesting, as he predicts significant performance gains for his new VM.
Factor: a practical stack language: - why I love following Factor development: the programmers have no qualms about radically redesigning the language and making massive changes to semantics, even shying away from redesigning defining words. This of course makes the use of the language for real purposes a bit hairy, but it's simply thrilling to see how language constructs are juggled and the path to an optimal language is sought. And since they adjust the entire included library every time, the transition pains are not quite as great (and the included library is already absolutely impressive and currently has one of the best Unicode implementations I've seen so far)
Fractured YEARFRAC and Discounted DISC - interesting summary of the disaster called Excel and OOXML. The standard that is not one, because it is not standardized. But Microsoft presents it as a standard, so it fits perfectly into the times when no one knows how to spell "standard" correctly anymore ... (and anyone who does financial calculations with Excel deserves to be slapped and whipped)
TileStack - Your Creative Playground - HyperCard rebuild on the web. Compiles their HyperTalk dialect "Speak" to JavaScript. Interesting idea, could definitely make sense.
"An Exotic Matter" - funny variation on the topic "Singularity".
Anne against the political will - "Thus, the scandal surrounding Anne Will's show ultimately proves two political realities: The Left Party is continuing its successful course as a force of a bourgeois left. And the nerves of some representatives of former people's parties are on edge." - and beautifully shows the panic about the left in Germany.
Introducing Gmail Labs - Google keeps showing how to use the platform meaningfully. For example, now in GoogleMail with optionally activatable prerelease features. That's how I imagine it, with centrally operated software!
Government wants to hand over personal citizen data to the USA - "The Bundestag was not involved in the negotiations and was not informed, complain the Liberals. The federal government had not taken a position on the inquiry of the FDP in the interior committee and even denied the incident." - it's nice how we can rely on our government to betray and sell us, and completely ignore the Bundestag in the process. Especially piquant when it's about data that the federal government and its executing authorities shouldn't even have ...
Toy Scheme interpreter in J - looks like shell-script-meets-line-noise.
Future - nothing but a big fun | tagesschau.de - "Anyone who predicts the future for money or makes contact with the deceased must inform their customers beforehand that their services are 'solely for entertainment purposes and have not been experimentally proven so far'." - it would be good if this also applied to the various forecasting institutes!
ruby-processing - also interesting, a connection of the Processing Graphic API with JRuby. You can write your Processing sketches with Ruby.
The Lew Language - simple programming environments are spreading. First Processing (Java derivative), then Nodebox (Python), then Shoes (Ruby), then Processing.js (JavaScript) and now Lew (Lua). They all have in common that they offer a very simple, exploratory introduction to programming - basically what home computers with the integrated Basic offered back then, only now with decent programming languages.
PLT Scheme version 4.0 is Coming Soon - the best Scheme system in the world will soon have a new version with many new features and some background changes. Sounds very promising.
Cold plate by candlelight - "In the report of the Enquête Commission of the NRW state parliament on the effects of long-term sharply rising energy prices, the governing parties CDU and FDP recommend in their majority vote that low-income individuals should forgo heating in the winter: 'In the short term, tenants … can react by lowering the room temperature, by forgoing full heating of individual rooms, etc.' " - this is what our proletarians understand by social legislation.
Dive Into Greasemonkey - no idea if I already had it, but it was very helpful just now.
django-ae-utils - two interesting tools for Google AppEngine. One provides sessions based on the Google Store, the other a user management independent of Google Accounts.
flickrfs - funny FUSE filesystem in Python, which makes Flickr directly accessible via the file system. Might even run on the Mac, there is FUSE too. Might be worth taking a look.
Google is just playing - "«He just wants to play» dog owners often say when their animal obsessively runs towards a stranger, harasses, barks at, jumps on them, and generally restricts their freedom in a highly intrusive manner." - google, the Doberman Pinscher of the Internet.
goosh.org - the unofficial google shell. - nice hack. A shell interface in the web browser for google.
RetroShare: a secure combined file sharing-Chat-IM F2F service - sounds interesting in concept, would be fun to play around with it. Surveillance by the music industry currently carried out in other networks is of course circumvented - or at least massively hindered - via closed P2P networks, since you can explicitly define trust in partners (like in the PGP Web-of-Trust).
RWE to offer customers a pure nuclear power tariff - the power tariff for mental off-road drivers? Or just one of the dumbest PR actions of the year?
Employers threaten lawsuit against wage supplements - I usually leave blogging for the weekend, but that stupid dog from the employers' association is really barking the last nonsense. Yeah, sure, let's best leave the support for Hartz IV recipients and blow all the money up the ass of the fat cats. I hope the nonsensical lawsuit happens and Karlsruhe shows the parasite its place in society ...