http://www.neverpanic.de/blog/ CoffeeBreak, the neverpanic.de blog en Clemens Lang Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Germany License 2011-08-10T23:00:34+00:00 http://www.neverpanic.de/blog/single/chaos-communication-camp-badges/ http://www.neverpanic.de/blog/single/chaos-communication-camp-badges/#When:23:00:34Z I’m currently attending Chaos Communication Camp 2011 in Finowfurt near Berlin. Apart from the cool location within an used-to-be military airport open-air aviation museum in Finowfurt near Berlin, Germany, the coolest thing so far definitely is the electronic badge handed out at the entrance: The r0ket, an ARMv7 µController with back-lit LED-display, several LEDs (of which one is also used as a light sensor to determine whether it’s night and the badge display needs back light), a multi-way jog, a rechargeable battery and some extension-connectors. The badge also features mesh-networking capabilities, although the firmware for that does not seem very stable or reliably usable at the moment. I will definitely be keeping this tool toy – there’s no better name-tag than this, I guess. Personal 2011-08-10T23:00:34+00:00 http://www.neverpanic.de/blog/single/gsoc-welcome-package/ http://www.neverpanic.de/blog/single/gsoc-welcome-package/#When:12:18:42Z I have been accepted into Google’s Summer of Code program this year to work for the MacPorts project. In a nutshell, I will be writing an equivalent to Gentoo’s revdep-rebuild – if you’re interested in the details, check out my proposal. At the beginning of GSoC, every student receives a welcome package from Google, with a few goodies and a prepaid Visa card through which they will be paid. I have received this package yesterday and want to share my unboxing experience This is what the package looked like from the outside. Welcome packages are shipped by FedEx; in my case they left it with a neighbour, since I wasn’t at home when it arrived. The package contains a pen, a notebook, a GSoC sticker that presumably glows in the dark (I’ve only read that, not tested it on my own), a welcome letter from Google (on US Letter paper, which feels weird to me being in Europe) and the payment card along with some notes and ToS for it. I particulary like the payment card itself, because it just feels awesome to have a Visa card with Google’s colors and the Google “g” on it: Google Summer of Code 2011-05-27T12:18:42+00:00 http://www.neverpanic.de/blog/single/christs-resurrection-in-little-switzerland/ http://www.neverpanic.de/blog/single/christs-resurrection-in-little-switzerland/#When:22:55:01Z Seen in a village in Little Switzerland: The text reads “Christ’s Resurrection”. I had a thorough look, but couldn’t spot what that sign was trying to point me to… maybe it’s stating the obvious: Jerusalem is located in Little Switzerland? Personal 2010-07-30T22:55:01+00:00 http://www.neverpanic.de/blog/single/whatthecommit.com-git-hook/ http://www.neverpanic.de/blog/single/whatthecommit.com-git-hook/#When:17:23:21Z whatthecommit.com generates commit messages for the lazy… but being one of the laziest people, this isn't just easy enough!I currently use Git for most of my version control needs. I'm keeping all of my hand-ins for university under version control to be able to sync them between university and my laptop easily and to make it easy for others to contribute (and sometimes they actually do!). But those of you using version control systems know what the biggest problem with version control is: Thinking of a commit message. Wait no moar! The ultimate solution is here! whatthecommit.com is a website that provides you with a fresh commit message every time you load it. So all you have to do, is copy and paste the line into your commit window. Still too much work? That's why git comes with hook scripts. Paste the following code in .git/hooks/prepare-commit-msg in your working copy and make the file executable and you'll be provided with a wonderful commit message every time you type git commit automatically! #!/bin/sh## A hook script to prepare the commit log message.# Called by "git commit" with the name of the file that has the# commit message, followed by the description of the commit# message's source. The hook's purpose is to edit the commit# message file. If the hook fails with a non-zero status,# the commit is aborted. case "$2,$3" in ,|template,) line=$( wget http://whatthecommit.com/ -O - 2>/dev/null | grep -o '<p>.*$' | sed 's/<[^>]*>//g' ) file=$( sed '1d' "${1}" ) echo "${line}" > "${1}" echo "${file}" >> "${1}" ;; *) ;;esac Linux 2010-07-03T17:23:21+00:00 http://www.neverpanic.de/blog/single/windows-7-on-msi-k9n-platinum-nforce-570-sli/ http://www.neverpanic.de/blog/single/windows-7-on-msi-k9n-platinum-nforce-570-sli/#When:00:41:28Z Recently, a fresh Windows install[1] was due on my home PC primarily used by my parents and family after my switch to a MacBook about a year ago. However, whenever I tried to start the installation routine, the setup would boot into the "Windows is starting"-screen with the nicely animated glowing 7-logo[2], but stay there indefinitely without an error message. When starting the setup in safe mode (I had to press F5 or F6 during start-up IIRC), the setup would just hang after Loaded: Windowssystem32driversdisk.sys I started searching the internet for similar problems and found a couple of recommendations related to nForce chipsets. Some told you to disable your on-board LAN ports (which I happen not using anyway) and a lot of similar disable-some-hardware tips, which, unfortunately, did not help at all. I had almost given up on Windows 7 and re-installed XP, when I decided to try a BIOS-update as a last resort. After using MSI's rather comfortable LiveUpdate[3] the Windows 7 setup did work fine[4]. [1]: MSDN-AA is one of the benefits of being a student [2]: http://images.google.de/images?q=Windows%207%20boot%20screen [3]: It's an Internet Explorer Active-X plug-in optimized for IE5 and 800x600, but other than that, it works pretty good. I can even update your BIOS from within the OS (does a hard reset after finishing, but that's probably the better alternative to shutting down on a possibly non-working BIOS) [4]: Sorry for the excessive usage of footnotes 2009-12-26T00:41:28+00:00 http://www.neverpanic.de/blog/single/rapidshare.-completely-unusable/ http://www.neverpanic.de/blog/single/rapidshare.-completely-unusable/#When:23:59:27Z A friend of mine wanted to share a video he made prior to publishing it at some video portal. He uploaded it to RapidShare. And that's where the problems started…RapidShare is changing it’s free download limits (as in speed, time and size) like others are changing their underwear. Their current setup however, is the worst I’ve experienced so far and makes RapidShare almost completely unusable without a client software. I had to reload about 20 times and wait around 15 minutes, before I even got a download ticket. I had to wait 90 seconds after I got the ticket for the download to finally start. For each reload I had to click twice, after I got the ticket it took another click to start the download. In total, that sums up to 20 * 2 + 1 = 41 clicks on a website that advertises itself as “1-CLICK Web hosting - Easy Filehosting”. The download itself took 43 minutes 25 seconds for a total of 114.83 MiB, that’s about 45.14 KiB per second. Compare that to a test download I did from a full-speed server that delivered 657.37 KiB/s for a 30.6 MiB file in 48 seconds. That’s more than 1400% as fast as a download from RapidShare, not counting the waiting time. The numbers speak for themselves – in my opinion RapidShare is completely unusable at the moment (and even more for less tech-savvy people than for me). Personal 2009-12-25T23:59:27+00:00 http://www.neverpanic.de/blog/single/bon-appetit-at-the-erlangen-canteen/ http://www.neverpanic.de/blog/single/bon-appetit-at-the-erlangen-canteen/#When:17:31:53Z It’s no secret the canteen on the Erlangen university’s southern campus is not the best – but I haven’t seen something like that before. A little bit disgusting if you ask me – I was lucky, it wasn’t my meal, though… Personal 2009-09-29T17:31:53+00:00 http://www.neverpanic.de/blog/single/xcode-from-null-to-100/ http://www.neverpanic.de/blog/single/xcode-from-null-to-100/#When:16:24:41Z I was recently browsing the new iTunes 9 Store and somehow ended up in the podcast section. I had a look around the featured podcast and noticed a somewhat new podcast about Xcode called “Xcode von NULL auf Hundert;” (the podcast is german and, as such, has a german title). Ever since I switched to a Mac I have wanted to learn some basics of Cocoa programming. I started reading some resources on Objective-C programming a while ago, but didn't finish any because most of them were pretty technical and theoretical and thus getting boring pretty fast. The “Xcode from NULL to 100;” podcast does a lot more learning by doing – e.g. they guide you to build a (graphical!) calculator and explain memory allocating and releasing using that example. The podcast targets absolute beginners – if you already have a background in programming, some of the information not related to OS X GUI programming will probably be pretty redundant to you, but you might still use the podcast to get started with Apple's Interface Builder. Xcode von NULL auf Hundert; podcast OS X 2009-09-17T16:24:41+00:00 http://www.neverpanic.de/blog/single/geshify-has-moved/ http://www.neverpanic.de/blog/single/geshify-has-moved/#When:16:52:55Z My syntax highlighting extension for ExpressionEngine has moved to a new home: http://geshify.com/ Web Development 2009-04-02T16:52:55+00:00 http://www.neverpanic.de/blog/single/subversion-property-copy/ http://www.neverpanic.de/blog/single/subversion-property-copy/#When:22:03:53Z Although there is a couple of Subversion GUIs for Macs, I usually use the CLI. I manage all source code I write during my studies using Subversion and usually add revision number and date of last checkin to the file using the svn:keywords-Property. However, I always forget the set of keywords I usually add: Author Date Id Revision URL. Unfortunately, there is no way to copy a property from one file to another in the standard subversion binary. There is, however, a little shortcut: svn propset $propertyName "`svn propget $propertyName $fromFileName`" $toFileName Typing this monster isn’t any userfriendly at all, though – a little .bashrc magic does the trick: # add svn propcopyfunction svn() { case "$1" in pc|propcopy) propName=$2 fromFile=$3 shift 3 `which svn` propset $propName "``which svn` propget $propName $fromFile`" $@ ;; *) `which svn` $@ ;; esac} Update: Thanks to Raim for the wildcard support. Using subversion auto-props is an option for files, but unfortunately, auto-props don’t work on directories yet. Linux 2009-02-15T22:03:53+00:00