Due to some talks I held at the LinuxTag, I received an electronic mail regarding this year’s call for papers. They are explicitely looking for papers about Openstreetmap, but I won’t write one and have no clue whether anyone already offered one. If you are interested, better ask them before writing the paper to avoid duplicated work.
Archive for the ‘society’ Category
LinuxTag 2010 – Call for Papers
Sunday, January 17th, 2010
Frisch getestet – die 9-Uhr-Monatskarte des KVV
Monday, January 11th, 2010
Tram Roadsign (openclipart.org, public domain)
Zum Jahreswechsel hat der KVV einerseits die Preise erhöht, andererseits neue Produkte eingeführt. Während ich sonst auch im Winter mit dem Rad ins Büro fahre, verkneife ich mir das im Moment ob des winterlichen Wetters. Nachdem ich eher selten vor 9:30h im Büro bin, habe ich mir heute die neue 9-Uhr-Monatskarte des KVV besorgt.
Beim Kauf wird das aktuelle Datum aufgestempelt. Die Karte ist ab dann einen Monat lang gültig¹. Die Karte gibt es für das Gesamtnetz für 52€ und für drei Waben für 37€.
Auf der Karte trägt man vor Fahrtantritt den Namen des Inhabers und im Falle der 3-Waben-Karte zwei Orte ein. Die Karte ist zwar für drei Waben gültig, allerdings muss man sich entscheiden, welche drei Waben das sein sollen.
Das Stadtgebiet Karlsruhe umfasst ob seiner Ausdehnung (bekanntlich) zwei Waben. Wohnt man also in Karlsruhe, kann man noch bis in eine Nachbarwabe (wie etwa Wörth) fahren. Wohnt und arbeitet man in Karlsruhe, kann bzw. muss man sich für eine der Nachbarwaben entscheiden, die man vielleicht doch gelegentlich mal anfahren will.
Für meine Zwecke ist die Karte genau richtig. Bisher hatte ich den KVV eher gemieden – wenn es das Wetter zuließ, bin ich mit dem Rad gefahren und ansonsten auch sehr oft einfach gelaufen, weil sowohl eine Monatskarte als auch eine Viererkarte für die paar Haltestellen, die ich ins Büro fahre, schlicht zu teuer war. Mit der 9-Uhr-Monatskarte hat es der KVV zumindest in den Wintermonaten geschafft, mich dort abzuholen, wo ich stehe. Ich sollte aber folgerichtig an den Tagen, an denen ich doch mal um 7h ins Büro fahre, aufpassen, eine Einzelfahrkarte zu lösen :) .
¹ Montags bis Freitags 9h bis 5h, Samstags, Sonn- und Feiertags ganztägig und bis 5h des Folgetages. Gilt bis zum gleichen Tag des Folgemonats, oder sogar bis zum darauffolgenden Werktag, falls es sich um einen Samstag, Sonn- oder Feiertag handelte.
When software development keeps you busy during the X-mas break
Monday, January 4th, 2010
Buggy Golf (pics from openclipart.org, public domain)
I do not operate a car of my own. Instead, I’m a customer of a local car sharing provider. For the X-mas family meeting, I rent a less than two years old car.
10 Tüten Haribo
Saturday, December 12th, 2009oder: Von der Schwierigkeit, sich vom Kunden nicht über den Tisch ziehen lassen, auf jeden Fall aber sein Gesicht wahren zu wollen.
10 Tüten Haribo
Ich kaufe die Dinge des täglichen Bedarfs seit Jahren fast ausschließlich im Edeka in der Karlstraße in Karlsruhe (Nähe Karlstor), da er von zuhause aus mit dem Rad in wenigen Minuten erreichbar ist und zudem direkt an meinem Nachhauseweg vom Büro liegt. Das Angebot und die Warenpräsentation ist ansprechend, das Personal freundlich und die Fluktuation gering. Der Bäcker im Eingangsbereich bietet ebenfalls gute Ware. Im Gegenzug liegt das Preisniveau natürlich etwas höher als bei den Discountern, und der eingemietete Fleischer spricht mich eher weniger an, zumal es bei mir um die Ecke einen guten Metzger gibt.
OSM-Booth at OpenExpo, Karlsruhe
Sunday, November 15th, 2009
OSM-Booth at OpenExpo, Karlsruhe, Germany
The OpenExpo just opened. Both OSM as well as KaLUG are manning a booth. As last year, there aren’t many visitors yet, but this will change until noon.
Günter Wallraff Lecture
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
Wallraff Lecture at the JuBez, Karlsruhe, Germany, 2009-11-10
I just attended a a lecture of Günter Wallraff at the Jubez. He’s a master of investigative journalism, which surprisingly is not very common in germany.
He has played several roles during the last decades: as a turkish worker, as a journalist for an infamous german tabloid, as a black guy in germany or as a call center agent. Meanwhile, he’s kind of an institution.
I read some of his reports, books and saw some of his films. Visiting a lecture is like meeting a bigfoot: »Wow, I never believed it really exists!« :)
Update:
KDE-Founder gets the German Federal Cross of Merit
Sunday, November 8th, 2009The initiator of the KDE project, Matthias Ettrich, got the Federal Cross of Merit on Friday , 2009-11-06.
I’ve been a KDE user since I use Linux (I’m an old fart, my first Linux installation was back in autumn of 1998). My first impression was »OK, I just dropped Windows, and this is the operating system that shall do better?!?«. Since then, a lot has changed, and KDE 3 has been out for a while. It always did a great job on my machines.
I’m not that happy with KDE 4.2, though. I switched recently, and there are still glitches of stuff which worked flawlessly in KDE 3 but fail in KDE 4. For example, I always have excessively used the fish:// protocol, which lets you transparently work with and edit files on a remote computer as if they were local files. Since KDE 4.2, however, this protocol very often reports »No connection to server« which renders it rather useless. I’m now back using scp on the command line. No wonder that Linus switched to Gnome a couple of months ago :) .
There are other issues, but I’m pretty confident that KDE 4 will mature just as its predecessors did. So thanks a bunch, Matthias, for your work on KDE!
Unstructured points of interest – today’s catch
Thursday, October 29th, 2009After an intense working day (we are doing some last-minute bugfixing to get interiorcad 2010 released) I needed something to relax and read the backlog of some mailing lists. This means I did what I do all day: processing information :) .
Here are some bits of stuff I preseved for later inspection.
openstreetmap
Engadget shares some videos concerning the new routing capabilities of Google Maps. A phantastic service, and I was immediately asked whether this will influence Openstreetmap. The answer clearly reads as »yes«. Some people who are interested in free routing will surely leave OSM and use this cool new Google service. But anyway, it won’t harm OSM much. Still Google Maps focusses a different audience than OSM does. And competition always is a good thing, as it cheers us to do better.
Some guys in the nederlands have created a service where you can export POIs from OSM data. Some time back I provided POIs extracted from OSM data by some home-grown C++ code. I’m glad that this is now available as a web service – much better for users than installing some weird command line app developed by an squirrel hacker like me.
I always wanted to write a tool which converts OSM data into some MIDI or audio data. But if you are too lame, chances are given that you are overhauled by someone else. So here it is, some Ruby code to convert OSM into MIDI data. Need to try this out »real soon now™«.
Some hiking map now allows to load, edit and save routes on top of OSM maps. Great service, while the inclusion of Google Sat imagery would be a great addition.
Sarah Hoffmann provides a map which renders hinking relations. It’s now available world wide and updated once a day. If you want your area to be renedered in a different style, write her an electronic message.
Nick Whitelegg updated Footnav, a 3D OSM visualisation tool aimed at countryside use.
The german newspaper »Die Zeit« shares an article concerning the history of the prime meridian.
Linux Audio
I’m using Linux for over 10 years now, and as a consequence I do all audio and MIDI processing on Linux boxes.
Rui released fussy doula of his famous Qtractor audio and MIDI sequencer. Highlights include audio send/return auxiliary inserts, mixer peak meters gradient eye-candy, MIDI System Exclusive setup manager etc. The recently added SysEx support means that my summer hack on Simple Sysexxer more or less was an unnecessary effort, except for the fact that I learned some more about C++ hacking :) . Nevertheless, Simple Sysexxer still is a famous tool to do mass backups of your synths.
Steve Harris released an update of Time Machine, now capable of automatically starting and stopping the recording after a certain treshhold has been passed.
There also was a release of Guitarix, a software guitar amp emulator. Need to build and try it out on weekend.
That’s it so far – time to go to bed. Another challenging and pleasing days of managing the release of some CAD/CAM software is ahead.
Daylight saving time ends
Saturday, October 24th, 2009
Analog Clock (SVG from openclipart.org, public domain)
Tomorrow morning, the daylight saving time in germany ends. At 3AM, the clock is moved one hour back, granting one more hour of sleep.
It’s still two months until solstice, and the »normal time« will last until 2010-03-28, when the daylight saving time takes effect again. The next months, it will be dark when I leave the office at 6PM, effectively prohibiting casual after work biking tours. This probably means the biking season finally is over.
20th birthday of the ZKM in Karlsruhe
Sunday, October 11th, 2009
ZKM - Media Museum
This weekend, the ZKM (center for arts and media technology) in Karlsruhe celebrated its 20th birthday. Both museums, the media museum and the museum of contemporary art, granted free access to the exhibitions. A great occasion for a cloudy sunday afternoon visit.
ZKM - Museum of contemporary art
Internet Providers hijacking DNS queries
Wednesday, October 7th, 2009A couple of days ago I noticed that my internet provider obviously hijacked my DNS queries. When I clicked a valid URL on or tried to upload images to my very own blog, I was told the address was not found and prompted by some »continuative results«:
Thanks for the help, guys...
Happy birthday, reunited Germany!
Saturday, October 3rd, 2009
Fireworks (public domain image by Jon Sullivan)
19 years ago, germany has been reunited. To celebrate this day, the 3. October is a public holiday, known as »Tag der Deutschen Einheit«. I’m just listening to a broadcast of the Deutschlandfunk. It provides original recordings of the happenings between 1989 and 1990, as the peaceful revolution prepared the end of the GDR and the German reunification.
OSM@Open Source Expo, Karlsruhe, Germany
Saturday, October 3rd, 2009
Just as last year, we will man a booth at the Open Source Expo 2009, which will happen at the Kongresszentrum Karlsruhe, Germany, on Sun 2009-11-15 and Mon 2009-11-16:
It’s a much smaller and more local exhibition than the Linuxtag, but a nice one anyway. We will probably be three people on sunday and two on monday. If you plan to attend, we could shift people, so please do not hesitate to contact me.
Germany has voted
Sunday, September 27th, 2009Today the 17th Bundestag, the german parliament, has been reelected. As a short summary, one half of the former government is past, while the other half has been reelected. According to the first extrapolations, here are the first results:
- CDU/CSU: 33%
- SPD: 23%
- FDP: 15%
- Linke: 13%
- Grüne: 10%
- Others: 6%
Both of the major parties (especially the SPD) lost, while the smaller parties won a lot of ballots. The result means that the CDU will form a government with the FDP.
I’m just listening the broadcast of the Deutschlandfunk. One of the speakers postulated that the SPD will reunion with the Linke. I was not a big fan of such plans.
The result is not exactly my taste. I prefered a government of one of the two major parties together with two of the smaller ones. But maybe it’s is better than the current (read as: former) government of CDU and SPD (aka grand coalition).
Bundestagswahl – was sollte man wählen?!?
Saturday, September 26th, 2009
Musterstimmzettel zur Bundestagswahl 2009
This post is in german language. It’s about tomorrow’s election of the german parliament, the parties that stand for election and the difficulty to make a decision.
Morgen steht die Bundestagswahl an. Ich halte mich üblicherweise mit politischen Aussagen zurück. Dem Wahlkampf jedoch konnte man sich nicht entziehen, selbst wenn man keinen Fernseher sein eigen nennt – die Wahlplakate waren schlicht omnipräsent. Zudem haben wohl alle Parteien die vielfältigen Möglichkeiten entdeckt, die die modernen Kommunikationsmittel so bieten. Egal ob klassische Webseiten, Blogs oder Twitter, der Wahlkampf ist pervasiv und verfolgt einen auf Schritt und Tritt.
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How to successfully repel a content customer
Thursday, August 13th, 2009Two years ago I did a contract with a telco. For 30€ I got a flatrate for both wired telephony and a 2mbit DSL line. The contract included a duration of at least 24 months, which prolongs automatically for 12 further months if none of the partners cancelled it three months before the renewal.
Dinosaurs entering Web 2.0 – slowly, but steadily!
Friday, June 19th, 2009After me and Linus, one further old fart, who is a friend of both usenet and IPv6, but also openstreetmap, entered web 2.0. Welcome Sven :) .
Glitches during the election of the german president
Monday, May 25th, 2009During yesterday’s election of the german president, some interesting glitches happened. I’m not talking about the political aspects of the election, but of some housekeeping issues.
Horst Köhler reelected as president of Germany
Sunday, May 24th, 2009On the 60th birthday of the Grundgesetz, Horst Köhler has been reelected as the President of Germany by the Bundesversammlung.
As in 2004, Gesine Schwan was his main competitor, but Horst Köhler won again. Though we left the chance to get the very first female president ever, Horst Köhler might be the right guy for the next five years. As he is not allowed for a third term in 2014, he might be tempted to even more show the way towards the future, independently from political parties and “daily business”.
German constitution: 60th birthday
Sunday, May 24th, 2009
(Image shamelessly stolen from de.wikipedia.org)
The german constitution, the »Grundgesetz«, became effective the 1949-05-23. Since then, after 12 years of Nazi terror and the lost second world war, the Grundgesetz became the base of our free and modern democracy. Together with the Bundesverfassungsgericht, it served us very well during the last 60 years. Kudos to its fathers and mothers!