When you study computers-science at the University of Paderborn you get taught the Java programming language in your first two semesters (which you might already know by then). Afterwards you get a brief introduction on other programming paradigms and the corresponding languages: C, Pascal, Lisp, ML, SmallTalk, SQL, Prolog, …

Starting from your third semester you are expected to learn any arbitrary programming language by yourself. That’s it. I don’t know if this equations works out or not. But if you encounter someone who claims to be a “software-architect” and did study in Paderborn and considers programming to be beneath him,… well I think you catch my drift.

I can only pity all people who consider programming as beneath them, because they miss out on one of the important lessons of computer science. Language does define how we think. If we can express some topic in such a way, that someone other with a certain background on that topic can grasp and understand it, then we have truly conceived that topic ourselves. Here the computer is nothing more than an unforgiving and impolite listener. You need to be concise and exact or everything will blow.
If all programming languages were equivalent from the programmers point of view, everything would still be written in Assembler. This is where we Nerds who collect programming languages get our revenge. If you now still think of programming as something unworthy of a gentleman-engineer, well then: Fuck you very much.

I recently held a small workshop on Python at the PC^2. Here are the slides for the language introduction. I will post the slides of the project and it’s source code soon. Nonetheless my ambition for professionality in holding this workshop, I am still an undergrad student. A student who collects programming languages and has some expertise on this field, but still a student.

Now some fellow student of computer science asks whether he can have a certificate for attending this workshop. For his CV most probably. Does this guy want to ridicule himself? From the third semester he was expected to learn any arbitrary programming language in approx. one week and now he wants to have a certificate which states that took a workshop, held by a fellow undergrad, in order to learn a language as simple as Python.

His request might be correlated to the fact that in germany, more attention is paid to titles and certificates than to real skills. A behaviour which certainly applies to job applications. This feels like a Dilbert Comic, or a sketch from Loriot, that I now have to hand out certificates to fellow students, so they can pimp their CV with yet another certificate. I mean, where’s the justice? Who gives me a certificate for holding such a workshop, or even certifying my expertise in the Python language? Sadly: no one. This leaves me in the tricky question how I am going to pimp my CV. A difficult question indeed.

This is as disturbing as it is ridiculous and since we recently celebrated the 85th birthday of of Loriot, whose subtle, insightful and gentle humour has still to be surpassed in germany, I have taken the time of hand crafting a certificate of attendance for this workshop I held and I will happily hand it out to every attendee who want’s to add it to his collection. I hope you will find it as artistically pleasing as informatory. Behold:

Edit: I have redone that certificate, because the photocopier had problems with the original one.

P.S.: I hope you all have one of those valuable “Yodel Diplomas”.

Apart from all the common rejoicing of Barack Obama’s election, many people are talking about the expectations the new president will have to face. Apart from our confidence towards his abilities we should also take hers into account. Michelle Obama has been portrayed several times as at least as intelligent as her husband and she will be his most beneficial and impartial supporter and consultant. Congratulations and all the best for you both.

I like to use gVim for writing. It’s great, as soon as you’re used to it’s
inner workings. Since I was looking for a decent tool to write blogposts I
have also taken a look at plugins for vim. I’m momentarily using
Vimpress
to write this post. Let’s see if it works.

At the moment clamd (Packet clamav-daemon) in Debian Etch has a bug which lets it hang at some random point during it’s reload of the virus-database.
Bug #454587 — clamav-daemon: Clamav hangs checking database

So far one temporal cure is the completely purge and reinstall the clamav-packages. Also be sure to delete the directory containing the virus-database.

Another suggestion is to install clamav from [debian-volatile](http://www.debian.org/volatile/ “Debian Volatile”), but unfortunately there is no volatile for Etch and thus manually backporting is the best and cleanest solution to the problem. It works quite splendid and goes like this:

1. Add a source-line for volatile to your /etc/apt/sources.list:#

deb-src http://volatile.debian.org/debian-volatile sarge/volatile main contrib non-free


2. Update your apt-database

apt-get update

3. Install dependencies for building clamav-daemon:

apt-get build-dep clamav-daemon

4. Fetch the sources for clamav-daemon into a directory of your choice (I chose: /usr/src/).

apt-get source clamav-daemon

5. By now you should have a directory containing the complete clamav sources (including the sources for clamav-daemon). Change into that directory and start the whole build-process by issuing

dpkg-buildpackage -uc -us -rfakeroot -nc

6. As soon as the build is complete you can go one directory higher to find a whole bunch of clamav packages built from the sources, including the clamav-daemon package. You can now install the necessary packages via:

dpkg -i
7. Enjoy.

This howto is quite generic and should work for any other package you might want to backport to Etch.

As the release date of the seventh and last book of the “Harry Potter” series is getting closer, the most exciting question is not: “Will Voldemort be defeated?”, no it’s mostly obvious that Voldemort will be defeated, the really important question, is: “Is Severus Snape good or evil”. There are many theories out on the net, debating over different facts, theories and hypothetic ideas regarding his choice between good and evil, but in my opinion there is a third option Snape can take.
Read More

Since last Saturday I’m the proud owner of “das Kochbuch für Geeks” (en: “the Cookbook for Geeks”). I stumbled upon it, while browsing the O’Reilly Shelf at my favourite Bookstore.

The geeks Cookbook at Oreilly”

I really have to say: this book is “straight to the point”, its teh *definitive* guide for every noob in the kitchen and
even some old pro like me, can get something out of it. It contains a wide range of recipes, from fast to sophisticated, and boots some extremely valuable web-references, a real bonus. And even more, instead of just offering statically linked recipes like traditional cookbooks, this one sports modular recipes and a more pattern-based approach to cooking than I’ve ever seen.

Hopefully there is an english version out too, and for all who speak german: go hack the kitchen.

wmii-3 is my new window-manager. It’s great and I’m on it to get it modified for my needs. I think I will give the acpitools, combined with some awk, grep magic a go to display battery-info in my status-bar below.

I have chosen to abandon Kubuntu-Linux over the next weeks, but I am unsure where to switch. It would be safest to go back to Ubuntu and Gnome to have everything nice and cuddly, but I’m drifting towards the shell more and more again. I was a long-time user of WindowMaker and I only switched to Unbuntu because of curiosity over their Desktop-ideas. But at the moment I’m disappointed. At the moment everything feels sort of stuck in the Linux-Desktop-World. People try to imitate the big Players instead of using their own heads. Distributions like Fedora or (K)Ubuntu or SuSE have an immense overhead of background-daemons, which slow systems down way too much. It’s like losing control to me so I’m going to switch to something colesterol-free.

My first thought was Debian, but I don’t really like it as a development-system. Unstable could be a bit fresher and I never got into their system of package-building and I always need to build some stuff by myself. So I’m going to give Arch-Linux a go on my Box. Hopefully I get all that hw-compatibility-stuff done, like acpi with battery-status and sleep and hibernate. My first impression is splendid. Arch has a good way of configuring network-profiles inclusive swichting them from the shell via ´netcfg´ I really like it. And Arch has a User Repository of Packages build by users for users. Their simpler and nonrestrictive build-system allows more people to contribute, I hope even me, as this is a main factor for me to switch. I can even recompile things for my box if I like, mplayer for example.

And since I’m more attracted to shellwork than ever I would like to try out the new and improved wmii. That Window-Tiling-Mode seems to be really promising. Normally I’m spending way too much time to arrange my Windows, or to put them in fullscreen. Now I don’t need to grab the mouse for it. Sure, I will need to learn more commands, but I think it’s worth the effort.

Hmm it’s been some time again. Well things cleared up very much since last year and I’m doing some decent progress in all of my projects right now. I even have some time to model in Blender. It’s been more than 3 years since I even touched a 3D-Modeling Program. I’ve done small projects in 3ds-Max and Softimage before but blender can quite compete whith them.
At the moment I’m doing a small project to model the Stargazer-Bridge from STNG. Here’s a WIP-picture:

Sometimes I’m a real feature creep and thus need to run the latest stuff available. Its like that in blender and yafray right now.
Due to the Orange-Project new features have been pouring into the main blender tree in the last 6 month so the Ubuntu-Package was quite outdated.

Thats how I found another gem: Blender uses Scons as a make-replacement.
Its a build-automation-tool made with python. So you can extend it with own scripts. Right now I’m adding Scons-Support into
my C++-Software for Paderkicker. There is also a Eclipse-Plugin available somewhere.

Tango Desktop Project is trying to get some
consistency into linux apps. Good Luck.

So. I moved successfully and my server Hubert moved with us. Since my old flatmates wanted Hubert disconnected asap and replaced by a hardware-router we had some severe downtime. But now we are back up and running. Weee……

My girlfriend Charlotte and I are moving to a new flat the coming weeks and this is the floorplan of it:

Today I gave Ubuntu-Linux a spin on my spare-partition. I have to say: it really rocks. I have automagically a desktop to use with great overall functionality within half an hour. Just great. I backed up my data yesterday so today I can reformat my hard-disk and get Ubunto on my main drive.

Edit: Ubuntu is up and running,… but the ACPI-Problem remains. Got to rebuild a kernel tonight.

Edit2: ACPI-Problem is done. First I tried to go without rebuilding the kernel, since Ubuntu supports the inclusion of a new dsdt over the initrd-image, but this failed. Now the third kernel is in the oven to fix the last issues with the fglrx-module for my ati-card.
Next step will be the reconfiguration of xorg to use the fglrx driver. If this is done, I’m through and everything else is just cleanup.

This might be a good provider to get a staic ip for Hubert in the future.

During the Weekend I was able to test out the net-code inside OpenTTD. The multiplayer is really neat. You can play versus, cooperative and in teams. Initially we played with each player owning a company, then moved over to team-mode with 3 players in a company. I’m curious about playing 2vs2 or 3vs3 or something like that.

In the wake of gettin back into Transport Tycoon Deluxe I found this.
Edit: Additional I found this to play all that stuff. Really Neat.

Got to get my midi chip working.

Yesterday one of my flat-mates was playing a patched version of Transport Tycoon Deluxe. The one where you have advanced semaphores and stuff. Luckily I remembered that there was an open source version of TTD called OpenTTD. Well I somehow love such game antiquities because of their mosly magnificent concept and OpenTTD is somewhat ingenious. It has a stable network multiplayer mode and many other goodies that enhance the gameplay similar to what you get in those common TTD-Patches. I’m curious what the developer will enhance next. Oh yes,… of course I tested it and it was really relaxing.
If you just have Linux as an OS its really difficult to install a game wich has a decently gameplay. Normally I play Quake III to relax but thats all I had since yesterday.