The Pipe Organ of St. Konrad, Aschaffenburg-Strietwald, Germany

December 19th, 2011

On saturday I had the occasion (but not the time) to play the instrument depicted above. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of its console with traditional stops on either side, as I was in a hurry.

It’s quite an interesting instrument, built in 2007 by Freiburger Orgelbau. The disposition of the stops qualifies the instrument for authentic playing of both baroque and romantic organ music:

I. Main (C–g3)

1. Bordon 16’
2. Prinzipal 8’
3. Gedeckt 8’
4. Flute harmonique 8’
5. Viola da Gamba 8’
6. Octave 4’
7. Gemshorn 4’
8. Superoctave 2′
9. Mixtur 4-5fach 1 1/’3’
10. Trompete 8’

Tremulant

II. Swell (C–g3)
11. Geigenprizipal 8′
12. Rohrgedeckt 8’
13. Salicional 8’
14. Vox coelestis 8’
15. Octav 4’
16. Traversflöte 4’
17. Nasard 2 2/’3’
18. Octavin 2’
19. Terz 1 3/’5’
20. Piccolo 1’
21. Trompette harmonique 8’
22. Hautbois 8’

Tremulant

Pedal (C–f1)
23. Prinzipalbass 16′
24. Subbass 16’
25. Octavbass 8’
26. Gedacktbass 8’
27. Octav 4’
28. Bombarde 16’
29. Trompete 8’

Obviously it is dominated by 8’ stops. Its timbre is rather full and warm instead of brilliant. I hope there will be a second chance for playing it. Here are the stops I’m most interested in:

  • Prinzipal 8’ – full and warm
  • Flute harmonique 8’ – one of my all time favorite stops. The length of those pipes is twice the length necessary, while a small drilling in the middle of the length ensures the pipe’s pitch is correct.
  • Trompete 8’ – not a bawler at all
  • Vox coelestis 8’ – if you like programming pads with two detuned oscillators on synthesizers, this stop is for you. You will ask “How can I create such a sound on a synth?!?”
  • Terz 1 3/’5’ – a third. A unique stop. I had absolutely no luck programming it on a synthesizer.
  • Hautbois 8’ – another lingual stop. Another sound you won’t be able to program on a synth.
  • Bombarde 16’ – nomen est omen. The right pedal stop for bombastic pieces. Grand Jeux comes to my mind :)

Legs of Rabbit

December 19th, 2011

That’s two legs of rabbit, one of my absolute favs when it comes to meat. Gently roasted and then stewed in some white wine at 80°C, it will help to make this one a worthwhile evening :) .

Edit: Later that same evening:

User Stories Applied & Agile Estimating and Planning

December 13th, 2011

Overview

Though we introduced two physical boards for managing the product and the sprint backlogs, I’m still searching for a method to organize their items in a manner that fits our needs best. There are two books sitting on my couch which I hope to read during the Xmas break. Both are written by Mike Cohn and seem to be standard works for agile addicts (and even recommended by Ken Schwaber).

User Stories Applied

Here’s just a short citation of its¹ back cover:

Thoroughly reviewed and eagerly anticipated by the agile community, User Stories Applied offers a requirements process that saves time, eliminates rework, and leads directly to better software.

Of course the book is not only about user stories, but also about all of the adjacent topics.

Agile Estimating and Planning

Again a short citation of its² back cover:

Using the techniques in Agile Estimating and Planning, you can stay agile from start to finish, saving time, conserving resources, and accomplishing more.

Again, this book is about management of agile software projects in common and not only about estimating and planning. I hope to learn a lot by reading them.

 

¹ Mike Cohn, »User Stories Applied« 2004, ISBN 0-321-20568-5

² Mike Cohn, »Agile Estimating and Planning« 2006, ISBN 0-13-147941-5

Rest in peace, Gramma

December 11th, 2011

Scrum User Group Karlsruhe – December 2011

December 8th, 2011

Today the local Scrum User Group met at the usual location. Thomas Spielhofer came from Vienna to gather feedback concerning the study »Successful agile leadership« (German Tongue PDF). Subsequently we discussed the points presented by Thomas.

I’ll not post more details as it’s late already and other things on today’s to-do-list are still open. In case you are living nearby, feel free to visit the next meeting in two months.

Scrum – The Definition of Done

November 27th, 2011
The first portable synthesizer, the Minimoog

The first portable synthesizer, the Minimoog

The Scrum Guide 2011 states:

The purpose of each Sprint is to deliver Increments of potentially releasable functionality that adhere to the Scrum Team’s current Definition of “Done.”

and

This Increment is useable, so a Product Owner may choose to immediately release it.

Using Scrum, we intend to create a »potentially releasable« and »useable« piece of product increment which is completely »Done« during each sprint, which means there’s nothing left to do. For example, the software behaves performant under real usage conditions and the end user documentation is written completely.

The Definition of Done is a kind of contract between the Product Development Team and the Product Owner. Together with a Product Backlog Item, it defines whether a product increment is »done«. Only »Done« product increments will be accepted by the Product Owner, otherwise the increment will be rejected.

My team currently struggles with performance issues which need to be addressed prior to releasing the product. The issue exists for quite some while now. It happened since performance was not listed in the Definition of Done yet and the team did only test with a small amount of data. Additionally the Definition of Done was neither respected on a regular basis nor was it maintained or emergent. Now it triggers stress, as improving the performance requires heavy changes under the hood while the planned release date is approaching.

During the last retrospective I grabbed the occasion to point out that the Definition of Done is a major key to success and that we need to learn how to cope with it properly. Unfortunately my team mates still did not understand the sense and purpose of the document. Is it their fault? No. It’s mine as their coach. I’ll try to communicate it once again tomorrow.

Street Name Rendering in MoNav

November 23rd, 2011
MoNav Street Name Rendering in Kandel

MoNav Street Name Rendering in Kandel

Thanks to the work of James Hollingshead, MoNav now provides street name rendering at high zoom levels. This required a change in the map file format, though, so the currently available maps (which admittedly are rather dated) won’t work with binaries built from the current tip of revision control.

The new code is already available for two months now, but I hadn’t had the time to check it out. Today I got the client to compile on Max OS X 10.7.2 (aka Lion). I did not get the map preprocessor compiled, neither on Lion nor on the server, due to missing mapnik dependencies, but I got it compiled on my local Linux box.

The above screenshot shows the inner city of Kandel in Rhineland-Palatinate. I usually use this state for test runs for creating maps, as its file size is acceptable for my desktop machine.

I’m quite grateful that James did the work of creating the first vector renderer for MoNav, and that he now also added street name rendering. The next step is to get the preprocessor compiled on the server, though this might take a little while as the map processing script needs adjustments too. For Maemo on the N900, an updated binary is already available via the repo. Before you install it, ensure you have updated map data available. Otherwise you will end with an updated binary which cannot load the map data present on the device – a rather useless constellation from a user’s point of view.

Thanks a bunch, James.

Porting a mail archive from KMail to Thunderbird

November 21st, 2011
Mail Icon, Tango Project

Mail Icon, Tango Project

I used KMail from its early days, and was always more than pleased with it. With the switch from KDE 3 to KDE 4.3, performance issues have been introduced so managing mailing lists became inconvenient. Since the switch to KDE 4.7, things got worse, so I decided to use another mail user agent.

Apple Mail had difficulties to read some of the mbox files for no obvious reason, as the file contents appeared to be OK.

During analysis, I noticed KMail had also created a mixture of mbox and maildir files in my archive. This means I spent a couple of hours to put things right before I got everything imported into Thunderbird. Meanwhile I think I should have abused Dovecot to migrate the messages between both clients.

Here are a couple of hints concerning the migration from a (rather huge) archive containing mixed mbox and maildir messages:

  • KMail uses hidden directories to save the messages. To make them visible on Mac OS 10.7 (aka Lion), use the following Terminal command line. Replace TRUE by FALSE to undo this setting after you are done: defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE && killall Finder
  • Kaosmos provides a very useful Thunderbird extension which allows to import mbox files.
  • Charalampos ‘DiAvOl’ Pournaris provides a PHP script which converts a maildir to the mbox format.
  • In case your KMail archive only contains maildir mailboxes, Bruno Cornec’s Perl script might be useful for you.

Thanks for the code, guys!

iCal events read only after import

November 21st, 2011

Today I imported an ics calendar file from my Linux box into iCal. After the import, the entries weren’t editable. Fortunately the ics format is a simple, human readable text based format which can be read in a text editor. The file contained a couple of suspicious entries which read as

ORGANIZER:MAILTO:user@foo.bar

Since I do not use Apple Mail (and the mail address in the file was deprecated anyway) I assumed that iCal does not know this email address and interprets those events as organized by another person, setting them to read only as a consequence. It’s easy to fix this by completely removing those entries. In case you dislike command line applications, you may want to leave and file a feature request right now :) .

  • Remove the imported, read only calendar from iCal and quit it.
  • Go to the Applications folder, open the Utilities folder and launch Terminal.
  • Ensure to execute the following commands by pressing enter after entering each command.
  • Type cd Desktop to make your Desktop the current working directory.
  • Type mkdir calconversion && cd calconversion – this will create a folder on your Desktop and make it the current working directory.
  • Copy your ics file to this directory, named yourfile.ics
  • Type the following command to create a second file with the ORGANIZER lines filtered out: cat yourfile.ics | grep -vi organizer > yourfile-purged.ics
  • Start iCal and import the file yourfile-purged.ics. All entries now should be editable.
  • Remove the folder containing the two temporary files from your Desktop.

That’s it.

Wasps still active in November

November 21st, 2011

Though it is already november, a couple of wasps can still be seen every now and then. Until recently, I thought they are dying during september or october. Obviously this isn’t necessarily true.

Edit

Two more:
2011-11-30
2011-12-10

Replacing a Mac Mini by a Mac Mini

November 20th, 2011

After Apple switched to Intel CPU based machines a couple of years ago, I bought the smallest model of the Minis available:

I didn’t use it much. It mainly served me to create binaries of some cross platform applications I was working on. However, it’s CPU speed and amount of RAM are a bit limited for nowadays requirements. Additionally some contemporary applications denied to run on Tiger, and updating the OS on the feeble machine was not an option. Thus I bought a more recent machine powered by Lion s/h:

Its base size is more than the one of its predecessor:

I’m glad that Apple dropped the optical drive – I didn’t use one for years, and even if, only to convert some of my audio discs to ogg files. As a consequence, the new Mini is a bit thinner than the older model. Here’s its connectivity:

The user can easily access the RAM slots just by turning and removing the bottom of the device:

The overall operation feels much smoother now, and it operates quite well on the recently purchased Dell display. I already ported all of my data from my Dell Notebook to the Mini, as it will serve me as my primary desktop machine. I’m pretty curious whether I will find a replacement for any application I was used to on the Linux notebook. Of course I will :) .

Replacing the last CRT

November 18th, 2011

Overview

I was still using a CRT connected to my Mac Mini, as I’m rarely using it. As this will change soon, I needed a replacement. Unfortunately the usual consumer devices as found in typical shops are often glossy – if not the panel itself, at least the cabinet. The closest to an acceptable compromise were some of the LG Flatrons (e.g. the E2441V), but a small stripe around the display and the stand still are as glossy as a grand piano.

I left the consumer displays alone and read the reviews of two Dell devices. The U2412M 24″ display provides an aspect ratio of 16:10 and a resolution of 1.920 x 1.200 pixels (in-depth german language review), whereas the U2312HM 23″ display provides a ratio of 16:9 and 1.920 x 1.080 pixels (in-depth german language review) respectively.

I wanted to buy the U2412M, but I found an U2312HM s/h at a very attractive price tag so I could not resist buying it. It arrived two days ago.

Package Content

The package contains an optical disc with drivers and the like, a quick setup guide, a USB cable, a power chord, and video cables, both VGA and DVI:

The add-ons

The add-ons

Panel and Stand

The main content is the panel and its stand, of course. The stand just snaps into the back of the panel, while no tooling is required. The stand also contains a cutout to bundle the cables. A simple but useful detail:

The panel and the stand

The panel and the stand

Connectivity

The panel provides two power inputs, DisplayPort in, a DVI input, a VGA input (but no HDMI input). The panel can act as a USB hub also, thus it provides one USB-Upstream and two USB-Downstream jacks:

The Connectivity

The Connectivity

Two further USB inputs are placed on the left hand side of the panel and are very handy to connect USB thumb drives or handsets.

Operation

The device can be adjusted to the desired position in a number of ways. The user can rotate the stand and turn the display in an upright position. It can be moved up and down, and tilted. With its completely matte and unobtrusive surface, it’s a perfect display for my needs:

Connected

Connected

Conclusion

I’m glad I bought it – it’s just a great device. As the resolution addict I am, only one wish came up since I set it up – even more pixels, please :) .

I’m not a fan of the 16:9 ratio often found on computer displays nowadays. My previous notebook had a 4:3 resolution of 1400:1050 pixels, and my current notebook provides a 16:10 resolution of 1680:1050 pixels. Now I have even more pixels in width, but still only 1080 pixels in height. Heck, a 4:3 display of 1920:1440 pixels in an upright position would be great :) .

The joy of Synth playing – the main controllers

November 15th, 2011

Guitarists, violinists, or the players of some woodwind instruments can influence the pitch of the played tones, either to bend the tone or to apply a little vibrato. Piano players can not. Synth enthusiasts can, as most electronic keyboards provide a pitch bender and a modulation controller.

The most common hardware used for those are two separate wheels. The pitch wheel is centered by a spring automatically, while the modulation wheel remains at the position where it was released:

The wheels of a Hammond XB-1 portable organ, besides its drawbars and sound control buttons

The wheels of a Hammond XB-1 portable organ, besides its drawbars and sound control buttons

Roland keyboards traditionally use a different approach by a combined pitch and modulation lever. Moving it left or right will bend the pitch down- respectively upwards. Pressing it towards the back of the instrument will apply modulation. The lever always is held at its origin position by a spring, e.g. the player cannot leave a little vibrato applied to the sound:

The (in)famous lever of a Roland A-50 MIDI Keyboard Controller

The (in)famous lever of a Roland A-50 MIDI Keyboard Controller

The Roland A-50 MIDI Keyboard Controller I’m still using offers both, the lever and two wheels. This allows the player to chose what suits the situation best. Frankly, I got used to the Roland lever and prefer it over the wheels when playing solos – but this depends on personal taste.

Some keyboards use ribbon controllers. Those are either small stripes (one axis for controlling one parameter only) or pads (two axes to control two different parameters), similar to the touch pads found on notebooks. The default behaviour is that the controller resets itself as soon it was released (»centered by a spring«). Sometimes an additional switch can be used to define whether the controller shall remember the last used position when releasing it (»spring is broken«). The Korg Z1 synthesizer provides both controller types, wheels and pad:

Wheels and pad of a Korg Z1 synthesizer

Wheels and pad of a Korg Z1 synthesizer

Other instruments use a joy-stick which can be moved in two axes. The Korg Kronos, for example, uses two of them. The smaller one will keep its position when being released. The second one, mainly used for pitch bending and vibrato, will return to its origin when being released. Here you can see two switches, the main joystick and the ribbon controller of the Korg Kronos synthesizer workstation:

Korg Kronos ribbon controller and joystick

Korg Kronos ribbon controller and joystick

Why am I blogging about those controllers? Because there is a cool video where Fernando Draganici demonstrates the power of the Kronos controllers. In case you are new to synth playing and have wondered how to use controllers, this one can serve you as a tutorial. The final fun starts at 5:50 – don’t miss it :) .

If comment spam wasn’t a problem, I was interested in a poll what other players prefer. Are you still using the wheels as introduced by the Minimoog? How many of us are addicted to Roland’s lever? Who prefers joysticks, and are there musicians using a touch pad all the time? And what about users of iPad controlled instruments?

Plenty of unanswered questions. Enjoy the video :) .

Edit: Here’s a further video, where the usage of the Kronos joystick can be seen e.g. at 6:53.

Klangwelten celebrating its 25th birthday

November 4th, 2011
Klangwelten, Tollhaus, Karlsruhe

Klangwelten, Tollhaus, Karlsruhe

Klangwelten is celebrating its 25th birthday, and we just attended the concert at the Tollhaus in Karlsruhe, where I already heard them two years ago. The event was just marvellous. Park Stickney’s instrument sounded more like a guitar than a harp, the singing of Katajaq (Inuuk) was more than impressive, Enkh Jargal’s singing and playing was just outstanding, Augus Wahyu Rhythm Explosion added liveliness (not to mention the great acoustic bass), and Terrence Ngassa really knows how to treat the trumpet.

There are several further tour dates. In case you have a chance to attend, do not hesitate – you won’t regret. And hurry up – Tollhaus was well crowded, and some of the concerts are already sold out!

Lineup:

  • Rüdiger Oppermann (Europe) – Harps, Morin Khoor
  • Katajaq Duo (Canada) – Inuit singing
  • Enkh Jargal Dandarvaanchig (Mongolia): Dinging, Violin
  • Park Stickney (New York): Harp
  • Terrence Ngassa (Cameroon ) – Jazz Trumpet
  • Agus/Wahyu Rhythm Explosion (Java) – Gendang drums
  • Jatinder Thakur (INdia) – Tablas

Once again, thanks guys and girls for an enjoyable evening.

—-

Edit: A couple of samples are available online:
www.klangwelten.com/festival/2011/2011_ton.html

Jules Verne’s “In 80 Tagen um die Welt!” @ Kammertheater Karlsruhe

November 3rd, 2011

Today we’ve seen the abovementioned work perfomed by Bernd Gnann and Hans Rüdiger Kucich. Frankly, it was a great joy and pleasure. After the show, the performers asked to advertize it as there are still places available. My recommendation: do not miss this show. Grab a ticket for one of the remaining shows till sunday.

40th Birthday Hiking Trip

November 1st, 2011

Since my 40th birthday passed by recently, I invited a couple of friends for a 20 kilometers black forest hiking trip. It led us from Forbach over the Rote Lache pass to Baden-Baden/Oberbeuern, where we took the bus to the station to get back to Karlsruhe.

The weather was warm and sunny, reminding us of the indian summer. Between Forbach and Bermersbach we followed the Ziegenpfad (Goat’s path), which is often used by families with children:

Obviously the inhabitants of the black forest take hunting very serious:

The Holzschuhrank is a locality and a shelter with a fountain and sleeping facilities, sited at a crossing:

Fortunately there were lots of details along our way which were missing in the OSM database, so all kinds of gadgets (such as Garmins, N900s etc.) came to play:

That’s deer ragout with croquettes and brussels sprouts. No, I didn’t take a picture of everyone’s dishes :) :

As we were late and the daylight saving time ended last sunday, it got dark while descending to Oberbeuern. At least the male participants appreciated the displays of the bus booting Linux 2.x :) :

Here’s the trip:

Late Autumn Hiking

October 30th, 2011
Hiking trail near Slevogthof

Hiking trail near Slevogthof

After a warm spring and a wet summer, the golden autumn fades out. Today it was cloudy though warm, and we grabbed the occasion for a hiking trip to the Palatinate Forest. The trip lead from Annweiler to the Trifels Castle, the Madenburg Castle and back to Annweiler. We needed almost seven hours for this 25 kilometers trip, due to several rests :) .

The Trifels castle is a well known tourist destination, though it was reconstructed during the infamous Nazi dictatorship. The Madenburg is a well known destination either:

The Madenburg Castle

The Madenburg Castle

It’s a great viewpoint towards the upper Rhine plane:

View from the Madenburg castle towards the upper Rhine plane

View from the Madenburg castle towards the upper Rhine plane

I was surprised by the local gastronomic specialities provided. This is Bratwurst, Saumagen, and yes, Krauts actually eat what they are named after ;-) :

Bratwurst, Saumagen, and Sauerkraut

Bratwurst, Saumagen, and Sauerkraut

I missed the liver dumpling, but that would have been too much.

The wood was relatively dry, so I didn’t find much fungi. Here is one anyway:

And finally, here’s the trip:

Unfortunately two of us needed to leave after Trifels castle due to some severe flu. Get well soon!

Struggling with Kontact and e-Mail

October 30th, 2011

I’m using and contributing code to Linux on the desktop for more than a decade now. I still prefer to use KDE as a desktop environment, and its mail user agent is one of the best I ever used.

Recently I upgraded my operating system to Ubuntu 11.10 aka Oneiric Ozelot. The migration of my PIM data went fine, except for my mail archive. I used some command line magic to port my data, and I also wiped all index related files in my mail directory. I’m still experiencing some glitches, though.

File indexing always was an issue on my system. While I like the idea, I always had to struggle with it, and I still do:

A MySQL database server now is required for kmail and akonadi, which often causes the fan of my notebook to operate at its maximum speed:

Incoming mails often cannot be moved to subfolders by the rules I use for filtering messages (e.g. from mailing lists):

I’ve also seen some empty mails where I do not know whether they contained important content. Some thread tends to crash every now and then, which I assume is related to the empty mails:

I tried to solve the issue by updating folders via the context menu from within the mail application. Since the progress is not visible for the user, I accidentally created some conflicts:

Sent mails sometimes appear twice, one copy in the outbox, one in the sent mail directory. This way I can not really judge whether mails have been sent or not.

I’m pretty sure this all is caused by my rather huge mail archive or some rather barbed settings file. But due to the sheer amount of issues, I wonder whether I should try to find the cause. In case someone could provide a hint, it would be great.

As open source software developers we often do not gain acknowledgment for out hard work. Despite the abovementioned issues, I’d like to express my gratitude to all of the developers of the great free software I’m using. Especially KMail served me very well over the years, and it always was a joy using it. Thanks girls and guys!

200th Birthday of Franz Liszt

October 23rd, 2011
Franz Liszt by Pierre Petit, via Wikipedia, Public Domain

Franz Liszt by Pierre Petit, via Wikipedia, Public Domain

Yesterday we celebrated the 200th birthday of Franz Liszt. Countless concerts took place all around the globe, and I noticed contributions in radio broadcastings. His main instrument was the grand piano, but he also composed about a dozen pieces for the pipe organ. Organ players may remember »Praeludium und Fuge über B-A-C-H«, a piece quite difficult to play, which exposes the capabilities of the instrument in an excellent manner.

In case Jazz did not exist, I guess he was one of my preferred musicians :) .

Also warum regen sich denn alle so auf?!?

October 12th, 2011

Also ich weiß ja nicht recht, wieso sich unsere politische Elite gerade aufführt wie ein Wespenschwarm, dessen Nest angegriffen wird – und das alles nur wegen dem bisschen Schnüffelsoftware?!?

Dabei ist es doch ganz einfach. Zuerst verbieten wir rückwirkend zum 1.1.2011 per Gesetz das Analysieren von staatlich genutzter Software generell. Dann überziehen wir die Mitglieder des CCC solange mit Klagen, bis sie allesamt aufgeben. Danach setzen wir die angemangelte Software einfach wieder ein, denn die tut ja eigentlich ganz prima und konnte von den Beamten ohne große Schulung äußerst vielfältig eingesetzt werden – wenn Sie wüssten, wieviele Kinderschänder wir auf diese Weise schon dingfest machen konnten!

Ich bin da aus Erfahrung zuversichtlich. Die meisten Bürger verstehen sowieso nicht, worum es geht, daher erzählen wir denen einfach, dass die Software inzwischen deutlich weiterentwickelt wurde. Weiß doch jeder, dass sich in der Informationstechnologie alles in kürzester Zeit komplett ändert. In ein paar Tagen wird die Presse auch nicht mehr über die Sache berichten, und wir können zur Tat schreiten. Das Bundesverfassungsgericht brauchen wir nicht fürchten, denn die sind mit den anderen Gesetzen, die wir erlassen haben, für die nächsten Jahre ausgelastet. Da haben wir schon vorgesorgt.

Alles ganz normales politisches Tagesgeschäft also. Wozu das Geschrei? Achso, stimmt, auch das gehört zum Tagesgeschäft. Das hatte ich übersehen – was schonmal vorkommen kann.