Messages

1301

Developer's Corner / Re: My (Ended) Search for a Python IDE

« on: February 19, 2006, 04:59 AM »

Being the opensource zealot that I am, I, of course, chose an open source IDE as well. My IDE is pida, which is written in python and makes use of other tools. I won't reiterate all its features here, the main ones are listed on its website.

It still being developed at an amazing speed. If you find a bug, tell the devs and they'll fix it almost "while you wait". I like it, because I can use my beloved gvim as editor. 

edit: updated pida's url

1302

Developer's Corner / Re: Best Programming Music

« on: February 19, 2006, 04:53 AM »

I only listen to electronic music, working or not. Electronic music covers a wide range; popular genres of electronic music are "techno" and "drum & bass". There is much more, and I listen to much more genres. Some tunes cannot be categorized, but those are rare.

I prefer high tempo music for coding, it helps me stay focused and also makes me work&think faster ;-) But most of the time I just load my playlist in my music player of choice and let it play at random. If a song really disturbs me, I skip it.

For me electronic music is the natural choice of a programmer, but then I also have a high autism quotient...

1303

Developer's Corner / Re: Source code colors: Contrast / Readability / Ergonomics

« on: February 19, 2006, 04:37 AM »

I have found orange on black to be quite readable. It's not a bright orange, something that stands out without contrasting too much. My screenshots would look different from what I see, because the LCD of my laptop is very old.  XChat and my terminals are orange on black. When programming, I use gvim for which there are many many color schemes available. There, I go with the darker ones that were designed for night use (my room never sees sunlight).

I change my gvim colors ever few months; whenever there is a new color scheme out I give it a try. I don't have much trouble adjusting to new schemes, but they have to be "good". I prefer color schemes that choose different variations of one tone, that are monochrome so to say.

Attached I have a screenshot of the inkpot color scheme and the new baycomb color scheme; both are gvim color schemes of course.

1304

Developer's Corner / poor linuxers can only use truetype fonts

« on: February 19, 2006, 04:06 AM »

I have been using Bitstream Vera Sans Mono for a long time now. Bitstream Vera fonts are truetype fonts. The monospaced variant is good for programming because you easily tell "one" from "ell" from "eye" from "big eye"; the zero also looks significantly different from "oh".

Dina has this too, but it does not seem to be a truetype font and therefor is not available for me. My recommendation for all Linux-users is to give Bitstream Vera Sans Mono a shot. On most systems its also known as simply "Monospace".

I know there are bitmap fonts available for linux, but, frankly, they look ugly. Anyway, this is my two cents from the linux front.

1305

Living Room / Re: The IT Crowd

« on: February 18, 2006, 02:19 PM »

The IT Crowd is hilarious! 

So I'll give a few pointers: get your BT-client up and running, then go to mininova search for "it crowd" and look for so called "releases" with "[eztv]" in their name. When you click on the green arrow icon, you can download the torrent file which you will then have to load/open/whatever in your BT-client. Click on the release to get more info about it and to get to the magnet link (whatever that is...)

The best thing about watching tv series this way: there are no commercials! 

You will have to get used to the various "britush" accents though...

1306

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Extensions: Your favorite or most useful

« on: January 31, 2006, 02:46 PM »

adblock and filterset.g of course, for a peaceful web experience

1307

Living Room / Re: What's your "Autism Quotient"?

« on: January 31, 2006, 02:45 PM »

I didn't score anything! After I answered all the questions, I couldn't see the result.

Here's a screenshot

Anyway, I think I scored very high, I always score high! 

EDIT;
The screenshot link works kinda, it just displays the wrong image. Sorry about that, I forgot to keep that one imag when cleaning the directory.

1308

Site/Forum Features / Re: Jan/Feb Poll - What Area Should DonationCoder.com Focus on Most in 2006?

« on: January 31, 2006, 02:35 PM »

More Reviews.

So I can tell people to "go to donationcoder.com, they've got reviews so you will know what to pick"

1309

Living Room / MPlayer beats them all

« on: January 18, 2006, 11:20 AM »

Flamebait
people will think "there goes the FOSS zealot again"...

Recommending MPlayer
anyway I strongly recommend MPlayer, even for windows. I installed it on a friend's PC and he was so thrilled that he in turn recommended it to two other friends who also where amazed by its capabilities. So far I have gotten only positive feedback, if you disregard the complaint about lack of an uninstall function (what is not installed, you cannot uninstall). MPlayer for windows ist just one .exe with a directory full of codecs. This makes updating either totally supereasy and also does not mess with codecs of other players.

There seem to be installers available too. I am sure you will find your way :-)

Why it rocks
MPlayer will play anything: avi, mkv, mov, ogm, mpg, dvd, vcd, svd, kvcd, mvcd, rm, wmv, disc images...; it will play any stream, even those bloody rstp-streams (which it can also dump on harddisk so you can listen to it later). MPlayer also understands all the subtitle formats and even can convert between several of them.

Keyboard shortcuts are "teh win"
What I like best about MPlayer are the sensible keyboard shortcuts: <space> for pause/play; f for toggling fullscreen view; . (dot) to go frame-by-frame; m for toggling mute; +/- for adjusting the subtitle delay; z/x for adjusting audio playback delay; <left>/<right> for jumping back/forward 1 second, <up>/<down> do the same in 10-second-intervals; q to quit the player. There are some more keyboard shortcuts, but these are the ones I use regularly.

With GUI, and without GUI too 
It is a command line program, a fact which will scare away many potentially happy users. But fear not, brethren! For there are GUIs available too. You only have to find one that suits your needs. (As a Linux zealot I am in the comfortable position that my OS allows me to customize my desktop which acts as a GUI to mplayer)

Lack of features
What it doesn't do: it won't interfere with windows media player; it does not need admin privileges for "installing", just copy the .exe on your desktop and drag your media files onto it; it won't create suspicious registry entries; there is no "telephoning home" or other "usage reporting".

Possibly difficult to build on windows
MPlayer is actively developed, so frequent updates from CVS are a good idea. However, I have no idea about building it on windows. You will get help on irc://irc.freenode.net/mplayer though. They have always been friendly towards me.

1310

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: website for the informed netizen: GROKLAW (and heise.de too)

« on: January 07, 2006, 11:19 AM »

I just found out that heise also has an English newsticker. So in case you are wondering what's afoot in .de or the .eu, you might want to check it. The heise newsticker is not as specialized as groklaw; however it is the best-known news source of its kind in the German-speaking parts of .eu

(Yes I know .eu is not a avlid TLD yet)

1311

Mini-Reviews by Members / website for the informed netizen: GROKLAW

« on: December 15, 2005, 07:41 AM »

Introducing
the URL http://www.groklaw.net/

First Contact
I came across Groklaw when I was reading an article at the heise.de newsticker about SCO sueing several companies (it's an emo topic, so I'll stop here). Said article referred to groklaw. Upon going there I was overwhelmed by long articles, not interrupted by ads. My first read took two hours, because I wasn't familiar with a lot of the terms and the comments were interesting to read too.

What it is About
Groklaw is about helping non-lawyers understand whats happing in a trial or during other legal procedures. It is focussed on the USA legal system. The person behind Groklaw, PJ, is not a lawyer herself but a journalist. They sit in court and at hearings and later report about them. Also they try to get hold of public material of such court sessions. Groklaw is very accurate, precise, and extremely informative. If you want to LEARN or UNDERSTAND what's afoot in the covered legal battles, groklaw is the place for you. Here you can find Groklaw's mission statement which is much better than anything I could write

Among others the following cases are covered:

• SCO vs IBM, the biggest "case"
• SCO vs Autozone
• SCO vs Novel, very important as well
• State of Massachussetts adopting ODF, and MS not liking that

Why I go there
I am honest: What interests me most are cases where either MS or SCO are... uhm being slapped across the face, in a figurative manner. I exclusively use Linux and opensource software; on my PCs (one workstation, one file server) there runs not one piece of software I couldn't get the source code for if I wanted. SCO wants me to pay for using Linux. Since I am poor, I do not find this such a great idea. MS has been The Enemy since always.

My "workflow" goes like this: I check my favorite newsreader for new headlines at groklaw's newsfeed, and read the articles; sometimes I follow links to external sites when they cover things in greater detail. After working my way through all those law-talk I take a short break and then go at the comments.

Worthwhile Comments
The comments are sometimes funny, sometimes off-topic but never trollish. PJ does not like it when people become abusive or insulting. It is more like a top-quality (moderated?) forum. Most comments deal with the matter at hand, ask questions or provide further information, sometimes about only remotely related topics. But still it doesn't run wild; or maybe I don't want to see it like that. At any rate, Groklaw is about the only site I can spend several hours a day, reading articles not in my native language an using terms I do not fully comprehend.

Worldwide Influence
I have been reading Groklaw for two, three years now and it is still appealing; in fact, as I am now getting used to the legal terms more, it is even more enjoyable and educating. I am aware that the U.S. legal system differs from the European or the German system, but the companies "battling" each other are the same on both continents.

One could say Groklaw is slightly biased against SCO, but Groklaw provides you with all the information so you can make up your own mind and express your opinion.

Coming to an End...
So far I have not contributed to Groklaw in terms of comments or donations, but I strongly recommend this site to anyone slightly interested in the U.S. legal system; people using Linux, and other OSS; people who love, hate, work, have been laid off by SCO, IBM, MS, and other "big players"; real-life intriguing exciting "stories"; copyright holders or challengers; patents and their abuse; and in many other cases as well.

Groklaw is *NOT* a playground for all those uncountable flame wars! They seek to inform and maybe even educate, not engage in silly troll-feeding.

I like  Groklaw  and if you don't you better do not tell me so