links for 2004-11-30
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(categories: cms)
November 30, 2004
Bi-lingual blogging in 2005
I'm planning on doing some bi-lingual blogging in the future. Ik ga ook eens wat in 't Nederlands bloggen in de toekomst. I've added "en" and "nl" categories to my blog, and plan on providing three types of feeds: all content, english-only and dutch-only. Ik zorg voor bijhorende RSS feeds: engels, nederlands en alles door elkaar. Maybe I'll blog more in the language you would be interested in, or less - I really don't know. For sure I'll blog more about trivia in Dutch. Misschien dat ik dan meer of minder blog in de taal die jij graag leest - geen Groot Plan in deze of gene richting op 't moment. Maar trivia zullen wel sneller opduiken in 't Nederlands. Anyway, I now have a train to catch. Tot later, nu moet ik de trein halen.
Ik ben fan
Welaan dan. Anders dan het eerlijk gezegd een beetje duffe m'a-tu-vu nieuwsbloggen van LVB gaat Michel one step beyond met zijn eerste podcast aflevering. Gaat dat horen!
November 28, 2004
links for 2004-11-28
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(categories: multimedia python)
November 27, 2004
links for 2004-11-27
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(categories: photography)
November 25, 2004
links for 2004-11-25
November 24, 2004
links for 2004-11-24
November 21, 2004
One step beyond
Saar does 20-piece puzzles on her own by now! The three of them still do puddles, though.
Old news?
Huh? I remember seeing those laying on my dokter's desk when I had a pre-op consult almost two years ago (anniversary of my second spine surgery is mid-december). When asking about them, he said: "Cool eh! You won't need them now, but it's good knowing we still have some other technique up our sleeves by the time you'll need it!"
(Gleaned from BoingBoing)
November 20, 2004
Daisy 1.1 release
(blatant commercial ahead, but we're proud about it nonetheless)
Zwijnaarde (Belgium), Nov. 19th 2004
Daisy, the Java Open Source Content Management Framework is going places with its second public release. Only a month after the initial public launch during the Cocoon GetTogether, the 1.1 version of Daisy ships with a new i18n subsystem in-place, and no less than 6 language translations: English, Dutch, German, French, Polish and Russian. Many of these translations were contributed by members of the rapidly growing community around Daisy, who enjoy the clean design and ease of customization of the Apache Cocoon-based Wiki-on-steroids-like frontend application. Daisy has been created with the software developer in mind, who wants a framework combining easy-of-first-use with lots of power and flexibility under the hood. To that end, the first enquiries as to how to integrate the Daisy repository with existing applications are being made on the Daisy mailing list, and Daisy's clean, stateless HTTP/XML repository interface will make such efforts a breeze.
Daisy 1.1 and the Daisy Wiki application ship with many new features, most notably:
- separate ACL permissions for modifying the publication status of a document
- document archival and deletion
- enhanced (email) subscriptions on change events, and an easy way to subscribe to individual pages
- easier role and login switching
- documenttype- and query-specific styling
Furthermore, all known bugs have been squashed and work has been started to make Daisy's repository database-independent, with (again) contributions from the community to start work on providing PostgreSQL support. Also foreseen for the next release is more user interface candy when configuring a site navigation hierarchy (but not at the cost of customizability), and other new features based on community and market demand.
Outerthought, an experienced Open Source Java & XML solutions provider, and the main driver behind Daisy's continuing development, is thrilled with Daisy taking off rapidly. "With our considerable experience in community-driven software projects - most notable in the Apache Cocoon framework itself, we knew that Open Source can never come as an afterthought - it must be an integral part of the vision driving a project. The Daisy project, code and resources have been built from the ground up with the goal of enabling a thriving community around Daisy. This is now starting to pay itself back, while Outerthought is committing itself to long-term maintenance and support of Daisy." Schaubroeck, an e-government solutions provider for many Belgian local administrations has been funding Daisy's development until now. "We are confident that this is going to change rapidly with the growing amount of interest in Daisy."
November 19, 2004
links for 2004-11-19
November 18, 2004
Music is the answer
It's that time of the year when people start wondering, or maybe worrying about next year. I've had my share of doubtful feelings last few weeks, luckily enough more about the current state of our world rather than about personal matters, but nevertheless my mood had sunk a bit lower than usual (not that I usually am a happy-happy-joy person, but that's another story).
An hour ago however, I had an uplifting moment. Imagine yourself the dark gloom of wet asphalt, the crawl of the traffic jam on the Brussels ring road, some drizzle and plenty of red brake lights in a David Lynch movie-like twilight atmosphere - between 4 and 5 PM on our daylight saving winter hour clock. I was listening to the recording of DJ Tiësto's Athens Olympics opening ceremony set, CD player dialed up somewhere near its maximum volume and both mentally and physically fully tuned into his loud beats (I'm sitting in a bar drinking coffee before my XSLT class starts, and my ears are still buzzing).
There's a break in the song that is playing, giving my ears a bit of rest, and traffic starts flowing again. I look up, and above me a plane departs from Brussels Airport, in heavy clouds and with all lights on. The engines fight against gravity, as the break is coming to an end. It lasted for only 5 seconds, but everything was perfect: the sound of the engines blending in with the accelerating beats, the sunset twilight making everything look unreal, and I could drive on, in my warm and cosy automobile cocoon... for another 250 meters. :-)
If you're feeling down and out: music is the answer!
links for 2004-11-18
November 17, 2004
The insanity of humanity
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When a video game degenerates into sordid reality - some Victims of Mass Destruction. The neocons must have figured out a solution already? Or is this simply payback time for our medieval crusades? It's a fucked-up world we live in: is this what Darwin had in mind?
November 16, 2004
links for 2004-11-16
November 15, 2004
links for 2004-11-15
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(categories: photography tech)
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(categories: reading)
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(categories: tech)
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(categories: photography tech)
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(categories: photography)
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(categories: photography tech)
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(categories: fun)
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(categories: design)
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(categories: design)
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(categories: tech)
Magnolia 2.0 released, Daisy 1.1 soon to be expected
Magnolia 2.0 has been released today. Certainly a slick and well-polished website and product for what basically is an LGPL'ed JSP front-end of JackRabbit. On related news, Daisy 1.1 is cooking up nicely behind the OT scenes, with a release to be expected this or next week. Daisy will ship with at least 4, and hopefully 5 UI languages (English, Dutch, German, Russian already confirmed). With the required i18n infrastructure applied throughout the Daisy and DaisyWiki applications, skin developers will be safer for future upgrades. These language versions are testament of a real open source project: after one month out there, we attracted two major translation contributions already. Thanks Alexander and Thomas!
<tongue-in-cheek>We do searching, versioning and table-editing already. Hurry up, guys! Don't forget about update mail notifications as well!</tongue-in-cheek>
XTech 2005
Sic transit gloria mundis. After a steadily dropping attendance number, XML Europe decided to reinvent itself, expand into various "web stuff" related topics as well (which will make a Cocoon tutorial much more fitting, ha!), and rename itself to XTech 2005 . Various deadlines for speaker submission are early January. Conference itself is 24-27 May 2005 (RAI, A'dam - one of the more boring conference venues I know). I guess I'll submit something anyhow. Daisy perhaps? I did the Cocoon Power Trio talk already twice at XML Europe 2003 and 2004, so I guess it's about time to come up with something new.
November 14, 2004
No sense
In what appears to be a rebuttal post, Micah compares apples with pears: XMLForm vs XForms. Micah: the standard form handling framework in Cocoon currently is CForms, formerly known as Woody, and this has been since the 2003 GetTogether. Woody has been created by Bruno and donated by Outerthought to the Cocoon community. So if you want to sell XForms to Cocoon, please make a comparison between CForms and (the non-implementation of) XForms, rather than talking about a framework the community doesn't care about anymore. And use the mailing list instead, your audience will be larger. ;-)
links for 2004-11-14
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(categories: photography)
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(categories: photography)
Doing a daily del.icio.us links post
If you were wondering how to do a daily post of your fresh del.icio.us bookmarks / links on your blog, don't mind sharing your password with Joshua Schachter from del.icio.us, have an XML/RPC-accessible blog system, and understand Dutch, then Michel has a recipe for you. Hurray for the lazyweb - I was wondering about this yesterday.
November 13, 2004
DNS hosting tip
When BlogHosts started folding down, Matthew found himself in a bit of trouble - his domain would go down with it as well:
Unfortunately I've received no word from Bloghosts on the domain situation. Silent-Penguin was registered through Bloghosts (as did many others) and although I sent them the required email, I've not heard anything from them. (on Matthew's old blog).
I register most of my domain names through joker.com. DNS hosting is done through DNSPark. Yes, I don't host DNS with either my registrar or my server/web hosting provider. It's a bit of extra money, but it's worth every penny in situations like this.
November 11, 2004
About me
In my on-going effort to educate the masses (ha!) and because I felt in a talkative mode, I made the definitive vanity page about yours truly. I tried to research what traces I left on the Internet over the past 10 years-or-so, and was in for a few surprises myself. I'll add links from various places to that page and see how soon it becomes the "I'm feeling lucky" Google link about myself. For the curious amongst you: enjoy! ;-)
November 10, 2004
Stupid things I spent money on
Well, actually one of the best wholesale image viewing and classifying utilities I found for the Mac so far. It comes with a price but it is blazingly fast, even on a collection of heavy RAW files. Photo Mechanic.
Other things I plan to spend money on:
- a Sigma 70-200 mm f2.8 HSM lens - I tested this one plus the Nikon alternative at PhotoKina. For sure the Nikon one is better and it comes with VR, but it's more than double the price and there's no way one can justify spending that amount of money on a lens if you're not a pro photographer
- a Manfrotto tripod, most likely one of the Neotec series - but I don't know what head I should buy with that (and there's simply too many tripod models to choose from)
- another flash unit - I went cheap a while ago and bought the SB-600, but should have spent extra bucks on the SB-800 - really
Things I'd love to have but really can't afford - ever:
- a ReallyRightStuff BH-55 ballhead
- a Nikon D2X for when my D70 breaks down - I held a pre-production sample at Photokina: such a beauty!
- a Nikon 17-35 or 17-55 zoom as my standard lens (there's a psychological barrier somewhere in my head about spending more than 1K EUR on a single piece of equipment - apart from camera bodies and laptops)
Things I'd love to be able to afford some day, and which don't focus on my own private pleasures:
- two return tickets Brussels - New York + hotel for me and my wife plus a babysit for 5 days
- 5 return tickets Brussels - US West coast (mostly California & Nevada) for the entire family - plus a 3 week car rental and lodging
- ditto for New Zealand and/or Australia
- a new house with four bedrooms and a large entrance hall plus some place to store the bicycles
- new bicycles for me and my wife
Priceless things:
- kids and wife, for sure
- some close friends, like the ones who visited us last night.
November 09, 2004
Firefox 1.0
For those of you who are living under a rock (cosy place, isn't it?): the Mozilla folks have unleashed Firefox 1.0 onto the masses. Congrats & enjoy! Their website is a little slow today (one wonders), but the mirrored download service is going nicely. Why don't you go over there as well and treat yourself to a refreshing browsing experience? And once you've got everything set up, make sure you browse about:config as well, if only to make sure outside links get loaded in new tabs. Thanks, Janne!
PS: if you're reading this through an aggregator - consider a brief look to my new (unfinished) homestead look-'n-feel. Finally!
November 02, 2004
The state of the world
It'll take some time before we will know what the outcome will be of what sure is to be called the elections of the century. Over the long weekend, we had two occasions where we switched channels on TV because the kids were watching with us. Both times, news reports were being aired about the latest Iraq hostages, with the usual grainy internet movie serving as a morbid background picture. Luckily, no beheading movies - though it's a piece of cake to find those (!) on the Net.
We've come to the point that it is hard to shield our kids away from the cruelty happening on their world, and where they are familiar with names like "Bush" and "Bin Laden" from tales amongst their friends on the school's playground. How long will it be until they find their way to ogrish.com? How can we, as loving parents, convince them that, ultimately, there's some piece of good in everyone of us? How can we explain the complicated reasons - some of them justifiable, but many of them acts of plain atrocity - behind what is going on at this very moment? How everything is interconnected and how very few people have the power to change things for the better - if there's still anyone with such power interested at all in worldwide harmony, peace and quiet.
We saw The Day After Tomorrow a couple of days ago, with the near-end of the world being predicted with the coming of another ice age. I just read this story on the web.... I'm not so sure anymore whether this world is going to last long enough for a nature-induced apocalypse, or that pure hatred is going to evaporate us from this globe, with free speech being a PC word which can only be used as a concept in a discussion, but never as a life style or as a sign of a compassionate attitude towards each other.
I saw OutFoxed yesterday evening - and I had a brief discussion with some folks last week where I stated that the rise of extremist right wing parties is only caused by the media, who are so eager to come up with newsworthy items that they bypass any ethics and steer the masses into the direction where they'll make (up) the juiciest newsbites.
I can only hope that today, the masses will be creating Good News - for a change. This world badly needs some of that.
Update: I removed the Drudge story about the Philly voting machines - it doesn't sound real enough to me.