Schmidt & Pocher
Is it just me, or is his sports jacket to short? It should end at the carpus…
Nonsense Article: Asylum Debunks 10 Gross Food Myths – Asylum
I stumbled over an article today: Asylum Debunks 10 Gross Food Myths – Asylum | For All Mankind.
Point 5: “Don’t swim for at least a half-hour after eating.” and further:
While your mother led you to believe that digestion diverts blood flow and oxygen from the limbs to the stomach — increasing the likelihood of cramping up and potentially drowning — today’s accredited experts agree that the body holds more than enough oxygen to service both the stomach and the skeletal muscles.
What they’re not telling is: After eating out in a snack bar, you don’t want to do your laps in the swimming-pool. If you do, it can end up in indigestion, cramps or throwing up.
I propose that the authors of this article eat a steak before doing 100m in the swimming pool as fast as they can. I guess they’ll literally think this through 
A plan for spam, perhaps?
I’m currently trying the Tagged Message Delivery Agent (TMDA) (Homepage).
Thanks to Markus Leist!
It’s an MDA, written in python with a filtering mechanism using white lists (the e-mail addresses you trust), blacklists (the spammer mail addresses). Additionally, e-mails use a tagging mechanism like time-dependant addresses or for a certain kind of communication. The cool thing though, e-mail addresses which are neither in the white- nor in the blacklist need to be confirmed by the sender. I’m actually a bit curious how this will work.
If you’re bombed with spam each day, you may want to have a look at TMDA. Though you should know how to setup your mail queue, it’s not as easy as installing Mozilla Thunderbird on your system.
, photo by David Trattnig
Something different for the morning
Just tried and was totally amazed by this wonderful recipe I found on the internet > masala chai (indian spiced tea).
If you like tea and oriental spices, try it!
LGM 2008 Group Photo
How nice. Alexandre published the first LGM group photo on flickr:
LGM Aftermath LGM Aftermath
or: How I learned how to write documentation the hard way.
Current situation
The current situation for the GIMP user manual is this:
- The user manual is written using DocBook/XML.
- Each DocBook/XML file contains all translations separated by lang attributes.
When I joined the documentation project back in 2003, we thought, that the separation of author and translator brings unnecessary barriers:
- Authors can only write in one language (reference language)
- Translators can only translate a string given by the reference language and are enforced to do only that (translation slaves)
Our model (mixing translations with the actual documentation writing) was superior, because the classic model of translators didn’t exist anymore. Every writer was free to describe a GIMP function or GIMP model in it’s own way. The only problem we had: No translator was able to join us, because the writing of DocBook/XML scared everyone away. Additionally – in the meantime – maintaining all translations became a burden for everyone.
Libre Grafics Meeting 2008
I saw dark clouds coming upon me this time. Me as the one who still defended our model of creating documentation for GIMP. Andy Fitzsimon used the GIMP manual as a bad example of an unmaintainable documentation in his talk. He is right, as well as all the other guys who tried to tell us.
Back in 2007 I couldn’t see, that our way we create documentation was supposed to fail:
- lack of contributors a.k.a translators. Writing XML as a translator is hard. There are a lot of tools available for translators which provide a very nice and usable GUI.
- not focusing on one language which will be the reference language.
You can only concentrate on one thing and not on eleven other manuals simultaneously. - and the worst: Trying to invent the wheel.
Tools and Architecture is already developed by others. They do have disadvantages though, but you can’t solve them by creating something new and just thinking, it will be better than other tools because it’s new.
I learned my lesson. We now switch to a system using one reference language and creating translations from this language. Andy Fitzsimon introduced publican as a possible basis, as well as Erik Gebers introducing Scenari. Both noteworthy tools which are interesting to look at.
Something for Blinkenlights?
Just saw this post on information aesthetics. Would be awesome to play pong on this via blinkenlights *G
The largest color LED display worldwide, & the first photo-voltaic system integrated into a glass curtain wall in China. the display requires zero external energy, as the facade harvests solar energy by day & uses it to illuminate the screen after dark. [...] You can play with the online simulator, or watch a movie after the break.
Tags: blinkenlights, china, solar, led
I love eboy …
Fun with a Card Reader
My mum bought a software+hardware solution for her sewing machine from Pfaff. The software transforms vector images into data which the sewing machine can read. It stitches the image on a piece of fabric. Actually very neat, if it works.
But as always there are problems. I can’t get the card reader to work. It just remains silent. Windows recognizes the new piece of hardware, as well as GNU Linux does. Reading and writing is not possible, because the software shipped with the card reader can’t read from the card (at least that’s what’s the error message says).
Now… we have to call support…
Update: It turned out that the card was defect. How can someone produce b0rked cards? No quality control?
Back to Basics
I got myself a blog on wordpress.
I hacked on a few blog products for Zope myself, but I abandon now those projects. I’m open for new challenges.
