traits.js - Traits for Javascript. Interesting experiment for JavaScript - Traits offer better composition than classic classes and more structure than JavaScript's prototype-based OO - and here the features of Traits are well mapped to the existing JavaScript features (e.g., objects are mapped via closures). The disadvantage, as with all such language extensions, is that you can usually work with them yourself, but other libraries do not use them and thus the advantage in projects that heavily rely on third-party libraries is rather minimal.
Archive 22. June 2011
Technical Discovery: Speeding up Python NumPy, Cython, and Weave. Interesting for number crunchers who don't necessarily want to switch to PyPy, but want to stay in the normal CPython world. Provides a quick comparison of NumPy, Weave, and Cython.
Circus Ponies NoteBook for iPad - Take Great Notes. Hmm, Circus Ponies NoteBook is one of the most powerful notebooks (with built-in outliner) on the Mac - but the reviews for the iPad version are not so great. And there is no decent sync - I really wonder why productivity app manufacturers don't just initially integrate the Dropbox library, because without usable sync, the apps are not really usable.
OmniOutliner for iPad. Wow! Why didn't I notice? There's now an OmniOutliner for the iPad! OmniOutliner is my preferred outliner on the Mac, among other things because it can be configured in many ways very similar to the Frontier Outliner (especially splitting a point with a simple Enter is something that surprisingly is not supported directly by many outliners - but essential for me when I want to write texts in the outliner). Unfortunately, only cumbersome iDisk import/export instead of a usable Dropbox sync.
Leos Home Page. Leo is an outliner and data organizer - that's nothing special at first. But this one is written in Python and portable (everywhere there is PyQT, at least in version 4.9, older ones also had Tkinter as a surface library). Can also be used as an IDE for Python.
Brennender Berg – Wikipedia. Highlight of Saarland. Some have Roman settlements, large ports, huge moors or gigantic ship lifts - in Saarland, a mountain has been burning for 250 years. That's something too.
Mozilla Firefox Add-on Builder and SDK - for creating extensions with HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript. The Builder is a web-based IDE and the SDK provides a whole stack of APIs for programming extensions.
Firmware 04 für Sony NEX Kameras - if you have one of these cameras, go ahead, download and install. The art filters are at best funny (funny in the Hipstamatik sense), but what really rocks is the focus peak. The edges with the strongest contrast are then optically marked in the image, which enables really trouble-free manual focusing. This might not be important for AF lenses - but for those who, like me, want to use manual lenses via adapter, it's simply brilliant. After installation, I already played around with the Zeiss 50mm 1.4, which works really well. It gets really exciting when I then put the NEX-3 behind my Contax macro equipment.
Python/Harmattan - MeeGo wiki. Very interesting in connection with the N9: a complete (and they really mean it - almost all parts of the system are accessible) API for MeeGo in Python. With this, you can program the entire phone completely in Python and also publish the applications created in this way in the Ovi Store (Nokia's variant of the AppStore). Nokia already had something similar with Symbian in the form of Python S60 and the tablets under the predecessor of MeeGo, so good Python support has almost become a tradition with them.
Nokia N9 first hands-on!. Ok, it's a MeeGo phone and after Nokia's cooperation announcement with Microsoft no one really knows where MeeGo (Nokia's Linux-based phone system) will go, but the N9 is absolutely cool. And MeeGo has underneath the Linux system that was developed with the N770/N800/N810 tablets and the N900/N950 phones (N950 is the developer version).
gcc python plugin and static analyser for CPython sources. In a very strange way cool. I mean, seriously: who looks at gcc and thinks spontaneously "oh, there I should embed a Python interpreter"? Yes, I know, the answer is "the author of this plugin". Strange things some people do ...
Dirty lens article. Afraid of scratching the front lens of your camera or worried about a bit of dust or fingerprints? Read the article, check out the example pictures. Or also this article here ("scratches"? I'd rather call that "destroyed"). And next time, just keep taking photos, because often it turns out better than you fear.