schrankmonster blog » Internet

downloading the whole Jamendo catalog

bietiekay — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 11:20:35 +0000

Yesterday @simcup wrote on twitter about that he is currently downloading the whole Jamendo catalog of Creative Commons music.

Although I already knew Jamendo it never occurred to be to download their whole catalog. Since I am a fan of choice I immediately thought about how I could download the catalog too. Since the only clue was a cryptic uri-like text how to achieve that it suddenly sounded like a great idea to write a universal tool and release it as open-source. This tool should allow users to download the whole catalog and keep their local jamendo mirror in sync with the server. So anytime new artists, albums or tracks are added the user does not need to download them all again.

So the only thing I had as a starting point was that cryptic uri pointing me to something I’ve never heard of called Rythmbox. Turns out that this is a GNOME music player application which has Jamendo integration. After some clueless poking around I decided to take a look at the source of Rythmbox, especially the Jamendo module.

This module is written in python and quite clean to read. And just by looking at the first lines I came across the interesting fact that there is a almost daily updated XML dump of the Jamendo catalog available from Jamendo. Hurray! Since Jamendo wants developers to interact with the platform they decided to put a documentation online which allows anyone to write tools and stream and download tracks. After all the clues I found I finally ended up on this page.

So there are the catalog download, track stream and torrent uris necessary to download the catalog. Now the only thing that is needed is a tool which parses the XML and creates a nice folder structure for us.

Parsing XML in C# (my prefered programming language) is easy. Basically you can use a tool called XSD.exe and let it generate first the XSD from the XML and then ready-to-use C# classes from that XSD.

After doing all that actually reading the whole catalog into a useable form breaks down to just three lines of code:

Isn’t it great how modern frameworks take away the complexity of such tasks. At this point I’ve already parsed the whole catalog into my tool and only wrote three lines of code. The rest was generated automatically for me. The best of all – this also works on non-windows operating systems when you use mono.

When the XML data is parsed and available in a nice data structure it’s easy to iterate through all artists, all albums and all tracks and then download the actual mp3 or ogg. And that’s basically what my tool does. It takes the XML, parses it, and downloads. It will check before downloading if the track already exists and will only download those added since the last run.

Additionally since I am deeply involved into the development of the GraphDB graph database at sones I want to make use of the Jamendo data and the graph structure it poses. Since the directory structure my tool is generating is only one aspect how you could possibly look at the data it’s quite interesting to demonstrate the capabilities of GraphDB based on that data.

The idea behind the graph representation of the data is that you could start from almost any starting point imaginable. No matter if you you start from a single track and drill up into genre and artists, or if you start at a location and drill down to tracks.

So what the Downloader does in matters of GraphDB integration is that it outputs a GraphQL script which can be imported into an instance of GraphDB.

The sourcecode of my tool is available on github and released unter the BSD license – feel free to play with it and to contribute.

Source 1: http://www.jamendo.com
Source 2: https://github.com/bietiekay/JAMENDOwnloader

der letzte Flug des Space Shuttle Endeavour

bietiekay — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 18:07:44 +0000

Am kommenden Freitag soll das Space Shuttle Endeavour zum letzen Mal und ein Space Shuttle zum vorletzten Mal abheben. Da will man dabei sein

Ich habe glücklicherweise gerade die Herren (und Damen?) von SpaceLiveCast entdeckt. Offenbar machen die schon eine ganze Weile Livestreams zu den verschiedenen Raumfahrt-Events.

P.S.: Wenn ich einen Wunsch frei hätte, wäre das, dass die Seite einen Video Podcast Feed anbietet….(wird Hilfe benötigt?)

Source 1: http://spacelivecast.de/
Source 2: http://www.raumfahrer.net
Source 3: http://spacelivecast.de/2011/04/29-04-ab-1900-uhr-sts-134-letzter-endeavour-flug/

type to win

bietiekay — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 07:19:15 +0000

In the dusk of Flash it’s nice to see that HTML 5 and JavaScript are here to bring small and fun games to our browsers.

“Z-Type was specifically created for Mozilla’s Game On. I immediately wanted to participate in the competition when I first heard of it, but the deadline seemed so far away that I didn’t bother to begin working on a game back then. Fast forward to this tweet announcing that the deadline was only one week away – it took me by surprise. I still hadn’t even began working on anything. The thought of just submitting my earlier game Biolab Disaster crossed my mind but was immediately dismissed again.”

Great sound, great graphics and in the higher levels quite difficult.

Source 1: http://www.phoboslab.org/ztype/

great SIP Softphone for Linux and Windows

bietiekay — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 10:23:38 +0000

Thank goodness I can uninstall X-Lite! At sones we are using a SIP based telephony solution. And therefore some times a SIP softphone application is needed along with the obligatory hardware SIP telephones. Till today the only half-working software I knew for that task was X-Lite. But a colleague told me today that there is a better software which not even looks better but also works better than X-Lite.

It’s called “Ekiga” and it’s a GTK based open source application which can run on Windows and Linux. It looks clean and therefore nice and works great.

A special tip from me: Abort the Welcome Wizard because the only thing it does is registering you with ekigas’ own services.

Source: http://ekiga.org/

Sintel:

bietiekay — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 11:10:31 +0000

After the last Open Movie Project “Bug Buck Bunny” – Sintel is the next short movie available for free download. Get it here.

“Sintel” is an independently produced short film, initiated by the Blender Foundation as a means to further improve and validate the free/open source 3D creation suite Blender. With initial funding provided by 1000s of donations via the internet community, it has again proven to be a viable development model for both open 3D technology as for independent animation film.
This 15 minute film has been realized in the studio of the Amsterdam Blender Institute, by an international team of artists and developers. In addition to that, several crucial technical and creative targets have been realized online, by developers and artists and teams all over the world.

“Sintel” commenced in May 2009, with producer Ton Roosendaal establishing a core team consisting of Colin Levy (director), David Revoy (concept art), Martin Lodewijk (story) and Jan Morgenstern (composer). In August script writer Esther Wouda was approached as a consultant, which resulted in her taking the responsibility for the entire screenplay. Esther then worked in close cooperation with Colin, David and Ton to deliver the final script early November. Meanwhile, Colin and David realized the first storyboards.

Based on a public call for artists – with over 150 respondents – the Durian artist team got established in July 2009. They first met in a pre-production week in Amsterdam in August, and all decided to join the project per October 1st. With the final movie budget still unknown, the target then still was to finish the film within 7 months, with a team of 6 artists and 2 developers. At that time the team still had the hopes to be able to realize the script in a 6-8 minute film.

In november, the Netherlands Film Fund approved on a substantial subsidy for Sintel, enough to extend the project to 10 months, with possible 1 or 2 extra artist seats in the final months. It was also by this time that breakdowns and animatic edits showed that the script had to be revised to become more compact, with a story structure using a flashback.

In the months after, Colin’s work on the Director’s Layout – 3D animatic shots – and final designs on the grand finale gradually made the movie longer, from 9 minutes in november, to almost 12 in May. Proper story telling, to absorb an audience with convincing characters and action just takes time!

With the highly anticipated extra funding from the Amsterdam Cinegrid – also funding a 4k resolution version – Ton finally could extend the team with 5 artists and a developer in March 2010. With 14 people the film then was completed for a first screening on July 18th in cinema Studio K in Amsterdam.
Three artists then stayed in Amsterdam working on final shot edits, lighting design, compositing, and on the impressive 2 minute film credits. The movie ended up with a total duration of 14m:48s, 888 seconds!

Watch it now:

Sintel

Source 1: Elephants Dream
Source 2: Big Buck Bunny
Source 3: Sintel
Source 3: Sintel Download

Still 9 days to go till SXSW 2010

bietiekay — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 13:23:41 +0000

Since there are still 9 days to go till SXSW 2010 it’s a pleasure to give out a link to the completely unofficial torrents which old all mp3 files of almost all songs which are to be presented at this years SXSW:

“The SXSW® Music and Media Conference showcases hundreds of musical acts from around the globe on over eighty stages in downtown Austin. By day, conference registrants do business in the SXSW® Trade Show in the Austin Convention Center and partake of a full agenda of informative, provocative panel discussions featuring hundreds of speakers of international stature.”

Source 1: http://www.sxsw.com/music
Source 2: http://sites.google.com/site/sxswtorrent/2010

137 years of Popular Science is available now

bietiekay — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 13:04:33 +0000

That’s great news for everyone interested in science and history. As it turns out Google and PopSci just made their entire 137-year archive available online… good times!

“We’ve partnered with Google to offer our entire 137-year archive for free browsing. Each issue appears just as it did at its original time of publication, complete with period advertisements. It’s an amazing resource that beautifully encapsulates our ongoing fascination with the future, and science and technology’s incredible potential to improve our lives. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.”

Source: http://www.popsci.com/archives

Nine Inch Nails – another version of the truth – fan blu-ray release

bietiekay — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 12:11:45 +0000

“12 months,
a core team of dozens (with a network of thousands)
spanning 3 continents,
4 languages,
5 specialist teams,
countless sleepless nights…

It’s finally here.

Filmed in Sacramento, Portland, and Victoria by the Nine Inch Nails team, edited and produced by their fans, The Gift is a stunning work in 1080p High Definition video with 5.1 Surround Sound, multi-language subtitles, and artistically-driven ethics.”

You’re reading it right: the final production is ready to be downloaded. I am downloading it right now.

It’s a complete Nine Inch Nails live concert in full-hd. Free for all / Not for sale. Get it while it’s hot!

Source: http://thisoneisonus.org

How to unleash the “Virtual WiFi” feature in Windows 7 in C#

bietiekay — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:09:59 +0000

Great stuff ahead – this is just the thing I would want to write if it’s not been written already. This tool is free and open source and it’s the perfect workaround for those usual cases when you want to download a podcast in your holiday and your apple branded device tells you “You can only download files up to 10 Megabyte over 3G connections” – You take your notebook, log into 3G, create a WiFi Hotspot with this tool and off you go.

“Over the last week some of you may have heard about Connectify. It’s an app that unleashes the “Virtual WiFi” and Wireless Hosted Network features of Windows 7 to turn a PC into a Wireless Access Point or Hot Spot. Well, I looked into what it would take to build such an app, and it really wasn’t that difficult since Windows 7 has all the API’s built in to do it. After some time of looking things up and referencing the “Wireless Hosted Network” C++ sample within the WIndows 7 SDK, I now have a nice working version of the application to release. I’m calling this project “Virtual Router” since it essentially allows you to host a software based wireless router from your laptop or other PC with a Wifi card. Oh, and did I mention that this is FREE and OPEN SOURCE!”

“The Wireless Network create/shared with Virtual Router uses WPA2 Encryption, and there is not way to turn off that encryption. This is actually a feature of the Wireless Hosted Network API’s built into Windows 7 and 2008 R2 to ensure the best security possible.
You can give your "virtual" wireless network any name you want, and also set the password to anything. Just make sure the password is at least 8 characters.”

Source: http://virtualrouter.codeplex.com/

what would you do with 1 million frames per second?

bietiekay — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 21:15:28 +0000

This is just beautiful:

Musik zum Piratenpartei-Wahlkampf 2009

bietiekay — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 09:57:23 +0000

“Und ein weiterer Schritt im Free! Music! Contest wurde getan: Der Sampler steht nun zum Download zur Verfügung! Da die Rückfrage kam: Natürlich sind alle Stücke unter Creative Commons lizenziert.

Fast vier Stunden Musik waren eingereicht worden und am Ende stand eines fest: Mit einer einzelnen CD wären wir nicht in der Lage gewesen, die Qualität der Einsendungen entsprechend zu würdigen. Also verzichten wir auf ungefähr 70% des Gewinns und haben dafür 100% mehr feinste freie Musik. ”

Track-Listing

Source: musik.klarmachen-zum-aendern.de

maybe I should…

bietiekay — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 13:11:11 +0000

…switch this website to another weblog software in the future. The dasBlog development isn’t exactly what I would call fast-paced. It even seems that there was no movement at all for the last year at all regarding new features.

I took a short look at a current WordPress installation we did for our Developer Website at sones – and I have to admit that feature-wise this WordPress is way beyond anything I could achieve in dasBlog anytime soon.

Additionally the fact that the skin of this site seems to be broken (especially for older browsers) I would have to do a skin-redesign – turns out that this is way easier in WordPress than it is in dasBlog.

making things up…

bietiekay — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 10:38:31 +0000

While trying out the new Mozilla Weave I came across the nice interface the guys built into their sync service. Funny messages included.

Source: http://labs.mozilla.com/weave/

That’s what I call customer support

bietiekay — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 19:55:59 +0000

One of our two DSL lines in the office is provided by QSC. So far the decision to go with QSC was one of the best since I deal with Internet providers. These guys at QSC are just brilliant. Great support, great service, great pricing!

They even sent me a notice that there will be a planned maintenance downtime in more than a week. They do the maintenance on a saturday morning. When it’s unlikely that anyone will miss the uplink. (Since we got two, we won’t actually miss it… it’s just slower)

Plain-Text Username Password Authentification with WCF

bietiekay — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 11:58:58 +0000

If you got it, it’s easy. If you’re starting from scratch it ain’t as easy. We were in need of such a Username+Password Authentification so I started googling around.

I found several articles but had to mash it all together in a trial-and-error session. Now that I am enlightened I want to share my knowledge:

Step 1: Implement an UserNamePasswordValidator class and override the Validate method.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.IdentityModel.Tokens;
using System.IdentityModel.Selectors;

namespace sones.Pandora.Database.Hosting
{
    public class UserNamePasswordAuthentification: UserNamePasswordValidator
    {

        public override void Validate(string userName, string password)
        {
            if ((userName != "Username") || (password != "Password"))
            {
                throw new SecurityTokenException("Validation Failed!");
            }
        }
    }
}

Step 2: Edit the App.config file to enable the previously implemented UsernamePasswordValidator.

    <bindings>
      <basicHttpBinding>
        <binding name="CustomAuthentication">
          <security mode="TransportCredentialOnly">
            <transport clientCredentialType="Basic" proxyCredentialType="Basic"/>
          security>
        binding>
      basicHttpBinding>
    bindings>
    <behaviors>
      <serviceBehaviors>
        <behavior name="SecurityBehavior">
          <serviceCredentials>
            <userNameAuthentication
            userNamePasswordValidationMode="Custom"
            customUserNamePasswordValidatorType="sones.Pandora.Database.Hosting.UserNamePasswordAuthentification, PandoraDB_WebServiceHost_UsernamePasswordAuth"/>
          serviceCredentials>
        behavior>
      serviceBehaviors>
    behaviors>
    <services>
      <service behaviorConfiguration="SecurityBehavior" name="sones.Pandora.Database.Hosting.PandoraDatabaseHost">
        <endpoint address="" binding="basicHttpBinding" bindingConfiguration="CustomAuthentication"
          name="ep1" contract="sones.Pandora.Database.Hosting.IPandoraDatabaseHost" />
      service>
    services>

In this example the ServiceHost will use no server SSL certificate and therefor allow normal http access instead of just using https ssl. You can configure that behavior with the <security mode=”TransportCredentialOnly”> line. Just change there and define an apropriate certificate and you’re good to go with https / ssl.

farewell popfly

bietiekay — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 08:32:42 +0000

I’ve seen the launch of PopFly two years ago. And now I am going to see the landing

“Unfortunately, on August 24, 2009 the Popfly service will be discontinued and all sites, references, and resources will be taken down. At that time, your access to your Popfly account, including any games and mashups that you have created, will be discontinued.”

Now somebody please tell the world that the code of popfly will be released in some way so that other people can learn and work with it. That would be great. Oh if we just wouldn’t have that many lawyers on this planet.

Source 1: http://popflyteam.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!51018025071FD37F!336.entry
Source 2: http://www.popfly.com/

Google Copy-Wave

bietiekay — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:06:54 +0000

Oh dear. Another hyped protocol/platform from Google… oh wait. It’s not from Google. It’ all started in Xerox PARC…

There are several papers that describe what Google now claims to have developed…

left: Xerox PARC Paper; right: Google Wave

Conclusion: Go and read old Papers. As it turns out almost all newly hyped things have been described in papers from years ago.

Source 1: http://www.waveprotocol.org/whitepapers/operational-transform
Source 2: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/215585.215706

small and reliable SFTP server for Windows

bietiekay — Sun, 24 May 2009 21:48:52 +0000

I had to transfer some data the last days and I wanted to do it fast, encrypted and using only one tcp port. SFTP is one of those protocols that come in handy in these cases.

Since the machine that would host the SFTP service is a Windows machine I reached out to find a free, reliable and easy to install and use SFTP Server.

I found Core FTP mini-sftp-server. It’s a small download of just one .exe file. When you start it up it’ll show the dialog above. You can configure username, password, port and path. Click “Start” and off you go. Works as advertised.

Source: http://www.coreftp.com/server/

Society for Geek Advancement

bietiekay — Fri, 22 May 2009 08:22:14 +0000

“”Being a geek means being so interested in something that you don’t care whether or not it’s cool.”

THE SOCIETY FOR GEEK ADVANCEMENT was founded upon the principles that we should all embrace our inner and outer geek and have fun while doing it. As individuals who love learning, innovating and believe in possibility as well as change, the second step of responsibility is to “be the geek that keeps on giving”. As a member of SGA, we work together as a global community to provide the tools and help others realize their true potential too!”

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Source: http://geekadvancement.com/

Go little Mailserver, go!!!

bietiekay — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 18:44:55 +0000

Since we moved into a new apartment in the last 3 weeks I had no stable internet connection – neither had my private Mailserver.

As of today everything is in place – the mail- and fileserver is up and running and connected to the internet again. So I had a server which buffered all the mail that came in during that time. That sums up to:

63.671 Mails in about 18 days. Hussah!

Go little Mailserver, go!!!

Never gonna give you up, Never gonna…

bietiekay — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 17:53:42 +0000

Die Bits-und-so Adventskalender DVD kam an! Hurray! Und nicht nur die war in der Packung:

finally faster internet

bietiekay — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 19:43:25 +0000

QSC just delivered a second DSL line to our office – now even faster – 16 Mbits downstream should be enough for now. Since the german telecom could not deliver more than 3 Mbit/s we had to ask QSC for their service… overall a very good customer experience so far.

If you order a DSL line in germany from a reseller like QSC it means that a technical guy from the german telecom is sent to your place and he is doing the last mile connect – in our case the guy thought it would be enough to drop the TAE socket inside the wall… means we have to get another company to do the cabling afterwards… well.

clicking to fast

bietiekay — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 21:34:25 +0000

gnaaaaa 100 requests per hour…

how OS X is going to make everyone stupid

bietiekay — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 19:26:58 +0000

Okay – the title of this article is a bit, well… too much. It’s not going to make everyone stupid. What OS X is doing: It creates stereotypes. Like this one: Everyone with a Mac seems to automagically think he or she is a design-web-hip-artist of some sort.

There are great artists that do great things with a Mac – don’t get me wrong. As a matter of fact many great artist have switched and stayed on the white-sometimes-black (for an extra charge) side of the apple.

What I want to say is that: Making “doing things” look simple doesn’t always cut it. Of course you can get it done in seconds on a Mac – but “the real stuff” takes as long and as much of knowledge as on every other platform. You just have to know things – that you’re not told. Things that are hidden from you for the sake of usability. Things every nerdy-Macintosh-Fanboy just knows and which every other normal guy does not know.

The cause I am writing about this is a site of a very very great band called “Amplifico”. I visited their site and found that they are offering their EP for free download. I clicked on the link. Nothing happened. Maybe you can guess why nothing happened:

It can look as simple as it does on a Mac to make a website. But in fact it isn’t. Thank god for OS X! It’s wonders of usability and the feel every application has are the things I really like about it. I don’t like about it that so many things think they are something they are not just by using it. I don’t like that so many misinterpretations of the User Interface are possible – giving people the sense of “having everything in control” when they actually don’t.

Rickrolled by bitsundso

bietiekay — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 19:38:35 +0000

Oh dare you Timo Hetzel!

das gute Gefühl guter Unterhaltung

bietiekay — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 19:11:09 +0000

Auf dem täglichen Weg ins Büro und von dort wieder nach Hause höre ich die verschiedensten Podcasts. Ein Stammpodcast seit nahezu der ersten Stunde ist Bitsundso und die verschiedenen Ableger davon: Games und so, Videogames und so, usw.

Und da Herr Hetzel und Crew seit wenigen Tagen hochoffiziell die Möglichkeit anbieten sie finanziell direkt zu unterstützen und dafür sogar noch zusätzlichen Nutzen (neben dem guten Gefühl) zu erhalten habe ich mir sozusagen direkt dieses famose Bits und so Plus Abo gegönnt.

Auf das da reichlich wunderbare Unterhaltung (wie in den letzten Jahren schon) kommen möge. Kaufe Bits und so Plus und werde glücklich!

Source: http://www.bitsundso.de/plus/

free dr pepper

bietiekay — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 22:45:58 +0000

I am not a fan of Guns’n'Roses – but this deal is a steal: Dr Pepper betted that the band won’t get their new album released in 2008. If they would release it in 2008 every US citizen would get a free serve of Dr Pepper.

get yours!

Source: http://www.drpepper.com/freeDrPepper/

SPAM down 100%

bietiekay — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 22:04:49 +0000

Obviously the SPAM Provider whose internet access was cut off on wednesday (as reported by the Washington Post)

Incoming mails is down from 4226 two days ago to 1663 today…giving a spam filter total of 0 false negatives (down from 1115 false negatives two days ago).

Thank you, whoever you are, for cutting of that evil spam providing internet access provider!

Source: WashingtonPost

Bruce Schneier accurately predicts the random.

bietiekay — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 20:54:30 +0000

This is just hilarious! Like we all like to fool around with Chuck Norris it’s time to do the same with the security guru Bruce Schneier:

Source: http://geekz.co.uk/schneierfacts

Wie man “Schlag den Raab” schaut – ohne Werbung und ohne herumklicken

bietiekay — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 16:26:51 +0000

Hätte ich einen Fernseher wäre “Schlag den Raab” eine der wenigen Sendungen die ich mir glaube ich ab und an anschauen würde. Nun lief diese Sendung zum 13. Mal und ich dachte mir: Schaust du einmal nach ob das nicht im Internet als Stream angeboten wird.

Wird es – und zwar von ProSieben selbst – als Flash On-Demand “auf-der-Webseite” Player. Und hauptsächlich als Notiz für spätere Sendungen an mich selbst hier mal kurz die Anleitung wie man sich die ganzen Einzelvideos von Schlag den Raab auf den heimischen Rechner zieht um sie ohne Werbeunterbrechung und ohne lästiges herumklicken durchaus auchmal auf dem ebenso heimischen Fernseher anschauen kann. Die Qualität reicht dabei so gerade bis kurz nach knapp aber durchaus schaubar.

Also – für mich und den geneigten Leser:

Wie schon bei vorherigen Folgen der Sendung ist der vordere Teil der URL immer der gleiche, also http://videoplayer.prosieben.de/show_comedy/schlag_den_raab/flv/ – geändert wird jeweils das Jahr der Sendung – in diesem Fall 2008, der Monat – in diesem Fall 11 – und die Nummer der Sendung – in diesem Fall die 13. Danach kommt -00-01.flv bis -00-15.flv – wieviele Einzelteile das sind kann man auf der Webseite abzählen oder einfach probieren bis ein Notfound kommt. Einfach oder?

Das ganze Zeug ist dann mit handelsüblichen Playern abspielbar und die Qualität ist wie schon gesagt nicht so schlecht für ein On-Demand Angebot der kostenlosen Sorte:

Der Platzverbrauch ist dann entsprechend auch bemerkenswert für ein On-Demand Angebot aber das ist ja nur von Vorteil:

elastic windows

bietiekay — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 18:04:12 +0000

Amazon has done it’s thing and you can now order Windows based machinery based on EC2. That’s great news for us since we’re definitly planning to make our software also available on EC2.

“Amazon EC2 running Microsoft Windows Server® 2003 is a fast and dependable environment for deploying applications using the Microsoft Web Platform, including ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX, Silverlight™, and Internet Information Server (IIS). Amazon EC2 enables you to run any compatible Windows-based solution on AWS’ high-performance, reliable, cost-effective, cloud computing platform. Common Windows use cases include website and web-service hosting, high-performance computing (HPC) and data processing, media transcoding, distributed testing, ASP.NET application hosting, and any other application requiring Windows software. Amazon EC2 also now supports the SQL Server® Express and SQL Server Standard databases, and makes those offerings available to customers on an hourly basis.”

Source: http://aws.amazon.com/windows/

How to fix a “Maximum length exceeded” error message in ASP.NET

bietiekay — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:43:15 +0000

Since I had to fix it for more than hundred times before – here is once and for all the solution:

Add to the httpRuntime section of the web.config file of your ASP.NET application or webservice:

and you’re done.

Charlotte Roche wieder im TV

bietiekay — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 19:29:22 +0000

Diesmal ist 3sat eine zeitweilige Heimat für Charlotte Roche. In der dort ab 1. Oktober startenden Reihe “Charlotte Roche unter…” wird sie Müllmänner, Bestatter, Altenpfleger in ihrem Alltag besuchen:

“Dabei probt Charlotte Roche nach eigenen Angaben den “charmanten Aufeinanderprall“. Ohne Drehbuch, ohne Absprachen, ganz spontan lässt sie sich auf Berufswelten und Menschen ein. “Ich versuche nicht, irgendeine verborgene Wahrheit ans Licht zu zerren. Es geht darum, was wir gemeinsam erleben.“ Und der Zuschauer lernt mit.”

Dankenswerterweise gibt es die kompletter Serie schon im Internet zu schauen – hochinteressante Sache das und meiner Meinung nach seit langem das beste Projekt von Charlotte.

P.S.: vielen Dank an Martin von Zwobotgeist für den Hinweis.

Source: 3sat

Auf der Suche nach einem CMS…

bietiekay — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 12:09:49 +0000

In unserer kleinen Firma sind wir zur Zeit auch auf der Suche nach einem brauchbaren Content Management System und da kommt natürlich so ein Artikel wie gerufen: Eine Übersicht über einige der großen CMSe. Im moment favorisiert der Verantwortliche für die Webseite das Typo3 – das hab ich dann auch mal per VM zur Verfügung gestellt – aber wirklich überzeugt hat es zumindest mich nicht – nungut, ich muss damit ja auch nicht klar kommen.

“Wenigstens bin ich nicht der einzige! Und neu ist meine Problematik auch nicht: Bereits Anfang 2004 war der große Dave Shea auf der Suche nach einem geeigneten CMS, das seine (wirklich nicht besonders exotischen) Forderungen erfüllt. So ähnlich fühle ich mich auch gerade, jedoch fast 5 Jahre später. Und wie es scheint, hat sich gar nicht soviel verändert ”

Source: http://praegnanz.de/weblog/subjektiver-cms-einkaufsfuehrer

free graph paper generator…

bietiekay — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 09:59:07 +0000

…if you do have a decent printer and if you haven’t got any graph paper – you could print it yourself.

thx to Kristian.

Source: http://www.incompetech.com/graphpaper/plain/

you don’t understand what’s been said: download subtitles!

bietiekay — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 19:35:40 +0000

If you are frequently watching foreign language TV Shows you might be interested in subtitles for your TV shows:

“Here you can find subtitles for the most popular TV Shows and TV series. Subtitles are available in multiple languages. All subtitles here are packed with WinZip, you must unpack to use it. To watch DivX/XviD movies with subtitles you first need to install a DirectShow filter for Windows Media Player which is called DirectVobSub.”

Source: http://www.tvsubtitles.net/

I finally got my low latency network audio solution

bietiekay — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 18:30:45 +0000

In May 2005 I wrote about a wish I had for years:

“As usual I’ve got a very strange wish what nobody else seems to have on this planet. I have several computers of different platforms. And on one of this machines there are speakers attached…I want to have the possibility to output from any of the machines to the speakers. And please loss-less and low latency!”

It took more than 3 years to fulfill this particular wish. But now it’s done. In 2005 I mentioned the Airfoil software that could run on MacOS X and forward sound from almost every application to an AirTunes compatible device. As it turns out Rogue Amoeba did their homework and created a free “Airfoil Speakers” application which can be used on Windows and MacOS X.

So the things are simple: Start the speaker application on a machine that is in the same network/subnet as the Airfoil master. The virtual speaker is then displayed on the master machine and you can assign a sound source from that machine to the speaker. Hmm… Simple Setup sample: One machine is in my kitchen (Windows XP machine) and one machine is on my desk – an iMac. In the kitchen only the speaker application is started and the iMac instantly “sees” the speaker. One click and the sound output of my desk machine is forwarded through the network to the kitchen… Easy and cool. One can think of any other combination of Speaker/Master application – even multiple speakers can be powered by one master…oh joy!

So here is what the master looks like:

and this is what it looks like on a client (speaker):

Source 1: nerd wish of 2005
Source 2: http://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/

free eBook galore: Python

bietiekay — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 13:26:33 +0000

There are more than 10 free eBooks available about Python:

… like “Dive into Python”:

“This is a fantastic book that is also available in print. It covers everything, from installing Python and the language’s syntax, right up to web services and unit testing. This is a good book to learn from, but it’s also excellent to use a reference. I frequently find myself visiting the site! If you only read one book on this list make it this one.”

other eBooks:

An Introduction to Tkinter
How to think like a Computer Scientist
The Standard Python Library
Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python
The Django Book
The Pylons Book
Data Structures and Algorithms with Object-Oriented Design Patterns in Python
Building Skills in Python
Building Skills in OO Design

Source 1: Dive into Python
Source 2: An Introduction to Tkinter
Source 3: How to think like a Computer Scientist
Source 4: The Standard Python Library
Source 5: Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python
Source 6: The Django Book
Source 7: The Pylons Book
Source 8: Data Structures and Algorithms with Object-Oriented Design Patterns in Python
Source 9: Building Skills in Python
Source 10: Building Skills in OO Design

free eBook: Data Structures and Algorithms

bietiekay — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 13:36:23 +0000

“This book written by Granville Barnett and Luca Del Tongo is part of an effort to provide all developers with a core understanding of algorithms that operate on various common, and uncommon data structures.

Data Structures and Algorithms: Annotated Reference with Examples is completely free!”

The first draft is available now – and it’s 97 pages.

Source: http://dotnetslackers.com/projects/Data-Structures-And-Algorithms/

turn new pictures into old ones…the Bakumatsu picture generator

bietiekay — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:10:09 +0000

“Bakumatsu were the final years of the Edo period in Japan. It was a turning point in Japanese history as it was the end of the period of isolation in Japan. The feudal way of governing was coming to an end, and the start of the Meiji government, which would later take Japan to the world power status.”

This is a very cool picture effect free to use which turns this:

into this:

Source: http://labs.wanokoto.jp/olds

Rechte-Kleinstaaterei

bietiekay — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:21:21 +0000

Da surfe ich hier und da mal herum – schaue mir ein paar Internetseiten über Bamberg an und da werde ich Zeuge einer ganz seltsamen Darbietung.

Bislang wusste ich dass Verbreitungsrechte im Internet auf Länder vergeben werden können – also dass man beispielsweise einen Webseiten Inhalt oder Livestream nur innerhalb der USA abrufen kann.

Nun scheint diese Art der Gängelung auch innerhalb von einzelnen Staaten Mode zu werden. Offenbar kann man in Deutschland nämlich die Rechte nur für ein bestimmtes Bundesland erwerben… Leute Leute wo wird das noch hinführen?

Source: http://www.bamberg-guide.de/bamberg/magazin/artikel.php?id=20080809201222

Photosynth is open for the public

bietiekay — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 09:05:43 +0000

Believe it or not – it’s been 2 years since I first wrote about Photosynth technology. Today Microsoft made it available to the public. It’s not a tool (yet) – like I wanted – right now but it’s built into this website – so you have to upload your pictures, they are processed and then you can browse on this website… well it’s a start for a really great technology.

“We’re pleased to announce the first full release of Photosynth, available now at photosynth.com. Photosynth takes a collection of regular photographs and reconstructs the scene or object in a 3-D environment. For those of you who have seen the videos or tried our tech preview, you could experience synths that we made in the lab and get a feel for what Photosynth is and how it works. But now, for the first time ever you can create synths from your own pictures and share them with your friends. Explore great synths from others or create a few of your own.”

It’s not going to work on anything different than Windows. So stick to the movies if you’re on anything else. But as far as I know it’ll run o

Source 1: http://photosynth.net/Default.aspx
Source 2: http://www.schrankmonster.de/PermaLink,guid,fdc3d1fb-4966-418b-83ea-1e0c12aae833.aspx

how to push an INN NNTP newsserver dump to a new newsserver…

bietiekay — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:32:25 +0000

I happen to have this ginormous archive from a local newsserver – more than 14 gigabytes of text and more than 8 years of history. Now this archive is a dump from the INN NNTP server that was previously used. It’s one folder per newsgroup and one file per article.

So I now want to integrate that archive into my own new newsserver – so what I am going to do is: Writing a small client application that can push all the articles from the folders to the new newsserver via nntp procotol.

Since the NNTP protocol is trivial to code and to explain I won’t reimplement it once again – instead I am going to use Randy Charles Morins nice article about accessing NNTP servers with C#:

“NNTP is an older fading protocol in the Internet protocol family. The protocol is used to retrieve news from news server, a.k.a. NetNews servers. The protocol works by posting messages into various forums, a.k.a. newsgroups. Then other end-users can read the recent posts in the forums. There also exist protocols for distributing NetNews contents amongst various NetNews servers, allowing thousands of servers to share news and forums. The most popular news server is of course Microsoft’s [nntp://news.microsoft.com]. More often than not, you can launch your NetNews client by typing the nntp URL in your browser’s address bar.”

I just made a quick-n-dirty addition of NNTP USER/PASS Authentification because my new server needs a username/password authentification. (NNTP Authentification is specified in RFC 4643)

The tool is easy to use since it’s command line and only takes simple parameters:

Grab the source and compiled binary here: PushToNNTP.zip (32,82 KB)

I release all of this under cc-by-nc-sa license.

Source 1: http://www.developerfusion.co.uk/show/4472/1/
Source 2: http://www.rfc-archive.org/getrfc.php?rfc=4643
Source 3: PushToNNTP.zip (32,82 KB)

When a site redesign isn’t accepted by your users…

bietiekay — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 21:06:27 +0000

…they eventually start making their own layout of your site… And you cannot do anything about it but listening to them!

A few days ago a big it-news site in germany relaunched it’s site with a new fixed-with-all-left layout. And more than 3000 comments by users had one and only thing to say: We don’t like it.

They disliked it that much that a few sat down and created their own site layouts by using firefox plugins like “stylish” – where you can create your own styles for sites.

I always wanted to see what these style-altering plugins can do but I never had the drive to think me into it…

Source: http://userstyles.org/styles/9589

Munich in 3D …

bietiekay — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 20:51:48 +0000

OMG! I just realized that the better part of Munich is available in Google Earth in 3D mode – which means real real 3D buildings like this. I thought that the birds eye view of Virtual Earth is cool – but this is a different animal.

read the MSDN Forums with a cool client interface

bietiekay — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:58:41 +0000

I often read in the MSDN Forums but I will read more often because now there’s a client application available:

“After many months of hard work we are proud to announce the availability of our first CTP of the Microsoft Forums Client. Much of the work for this CTP is in foundational code that will let us build the rest of the application, but we hope that this first preview will let you see what direction we’re heading in, and also give you a chance to give us feedback!
Things that work in this CTP:

Getting the list of available forums
Subscribing to forums you’re interested in
Manually (by right click menu) synchronizing the Question and General Discussion threads in a forum
Reading posts that have been synchronized
Hierarchical (threaded) view of conversations”

Source: http://www.codeplex.com/msdnforumsclient

a concept map of everything “distributed systems”

bietiekay — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 09:27:59 +0000

Apparently someone had some time to kill:

“The other day I had this idea, what if I were to take all the concepts I write, speak, and consult about and turn them into a concept map. That might help me explain how things like messaging, unit of work, and exception management work together and why. It also shouldn’t be too much work. Or so I thought.

I started out with a blank piece of paper, and this is what happened:”

Source: http://www.udidahan.com/2008/08/04/distributed-systems-concept-map/

Olympic livestream

bietiekay — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 08:31:20 +0000

German public tv is doing almost 24h livestreams of the olympic games…

encoder.olympia.geo1_ola_vh.mov (,76 KB)
encoder.olympia.geo2_ola_vh.mov (,77 KB)
encoder.olympia.geo3_ola_vh.mov (,77 KB)

bootie – bootleg mashup music

bietiekay — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 10:13:31 +0000

What is a mashup? Wikipedia:

“A mashup or bootleg^[1] is a song or composition created from the combination of the music from one song with the a cappella from another (also mash up and mash-up). These songs may be considered part of the European bastard pop musical genre. “A mash-up is a song created out of pieces of two or more songs, usually by overlaying the vocal track of one song seamlessly over the music track of another… Mash-ups are incredible fun and a fascinating way to reexperience some of your favorite tunes.”"

And there is this website – offering over 200 tracks and extras around the mashup theme – even best-of-samplers are available:

Source 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_(music)
Source 2: http://www.bootieusa.com/

Version 2 (final) of my Dropbox Tool

bietiekay — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 10:07:08 +0000

Some days ago I wrote about a 10 minute hack of a tool I always wanted to have – now I was using it quite often so I decided to upgrade it a bit – besides of the usual bugfixing I added these features:

unlimited filesize – if the file is >4 Megabyte it’ll split into smaller portions and uploaded one by one
Progressbar When uploading severel hundred Mbytes you just want a progress indicator.
new Icon (curtesy of my wife – she did not like the old icon…)

You can grab the source here.

Source 1: DropBox-v2.zip (92,77 KB)
Source 2: a selfmade web drop box in 10 minutes