AK's weblog

Today I realized that I'm need of a DB persistence layer for Ruby, making it easy to map a DB table to an object. I know that something like this already exists, it's the ActiveRecord part of Ruby on Rails web application framework. But... I don't want to restrict myself to web applications, and I don't want to rip out the ActiveRecord part out of RoR, I want to write it on my own. Fortunately, Ruby makes that pretty easy, as it is completely dynamic, and thus makes it possible to "define" new methods on-the-fly (actually, it works a bit different internally, but you won't be able to see any difference from outside -- that's how encapsulation should be ).

I did some research on the topic of good DB persistence layer design, and found a nice page on exactly that topic. I won't implement all the optional parts of the whole concept, and Ruby simplifies a few things so the class diagram will be a bit simpler for my system, as the paper is actually a bit Java-specific.

What will definitely miss is the automatic "resolution" of 1:1 and 1:n relations as found in RoR, but so far the design is so simple yet flexible that (I think) it will also be usable for stuff like LDAP. So far, not much code exists, but I will keep you up-to-date.

On an interesting side note, an (ex-)colleague was poached for writing a simple and fast persistence layer for Java. But I don't even think about leaving my current employer!

The internet is a great thing. Many people and organizations put a lot of information on their websites, which only have to be combined. If done properly, it's interesting how much information can be retrieved within a very short time.

My goal was to identify a nuclear power plant in the United States of America on a satellite picture. First of all, I searched for a list of nuclear power plants in the US. That was easy: http://www.insc.anl.gov/pwrmaps/map/united_states.html

The "International Nuclear Safety Center" is so kind to put up a good overview over the power plants in the US. I chose one of the power plants, namely the one in Oyster Creek, N.J., according to this page the oldest operating nuclear power plant in the US, and known by fishers as certain kinds of fishes are attracted by cooling system's warm water output. That reminds me of some studies that concluded that river Danube would have the right temperature for alligators and that type of animals should the Zwentendorf power plant start operating. But I digress.

After a few minutes of searching, I also found a topo map of exactly that area showing where the nuclear power plant (only called "power plant" in the map) is:


And from that on, it was all very easy. The coordinates are about -74.19621 longitude and 39.81927 latitude (the online interface where I retrieved the topo map from gave me those coordinates, it was linked by some fishing website, BTW), and retrieved a few more detailled images from Terraserver-USA:





Et voila, we have a nice overview over the area of the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant. And when I'm able to do that within an hour, what keeps terrorists off from doing the same type of research?

A dissertation got censored because of similar type of information which "might help terrorists", and not even pilots get this kind of information even while they're forbidden to fly over nuclear power plants (and Oyster Creek is explicitly on that list, although I lost the link to it...).

So, ausnahmsweise mal ein Blogeintrag auf deutsch, nachdem das Thema sowieso nur fuer deutschsprachige Leute interessant ist, auserdem funktioniert ranten auf deutsch fuer mich immer noch besser als auf englisch.

Also, gestern Tocotronic-Konzert im Posthof. Der grosse Saal, falls den wer kennt, war gerammelt voll, sogar die Sitzplaetze oben waren voll besetzt. Die Vorband, "Le Grande Illusion" ("le grande" französisch ausgesprochen, "illusion" englisch %-) ), war nicht uninteressant, wenn auch "Band" in "Bandbegleitung" als Neutrum-Wort zu betrachten ist. hrhr Gespielt haben die grad mal 30 Minuten, war aber trotzdem ganz nett.

So, nun jetzt zu Tocotronic: angefangen hat das ganze ja mit einem langsamen Song vom neuesten Album. Und dann noch so ein langsamer Song. Und noch einer... Hoert das denn nie auf? Das schlimmste: im Publikum war die Hoelle los, zu den langsamen Sachen!! Kinderchen, Tocotronic ist kein Punkrock! Ueberhaupt: beim letzten Konzert von Tocotronic, das ich gesehen hab, waren wesentlich mehr erwachsene (zumindest erwachsen wirkende) Leute, und obwohl auch einiges los war, war's wesentlich weniger anstrengend. Was mich aber wirklich gestoert hat, waren diese grosse Menge an offensichtlich hirnlosen Mitgroehl-und-Pogo-Typen. Verdammte Kiddies. Tocotronic ist keine Musik zum mitgroehlen. Ohne wohltemperierte Stimme sollte man besser nicht zu den guten Tocotronic-Klassikern wie "Jackpot" (naja, für einen echten Klassiker ist es noch zu jung, aber trotzdem grenzgenial) oder "Freiburg" mitgroehlen und die anderen Leute anrempeln.

Was uebrigens auch ein Novum war, war eine richtige Absperrung zwischen Publikum und Buehne, und eine richtig harte Security. Die haben zwar Wasser in Bechern ans Publikum verteilt, als dann es aber mal einer geschafft hat (eh einer von dem primitiven Typen), auf die Buehne zu klettern (uebrigens zu "Ich muss reden, auch wenn ich schweigen muss"), hat er uebrigens von einem total wuetenden Dirk von Lowtzow ein paar verpasst gekriegt ("die Ruhe in Person" Dirk ist richtig ausgerastet, unglaublich, aber Recht so), und dann von einem Security-Typen rausgeschleppt worden, unter Applaus vom Publikum uebrigens.

So, wieder zurueck zur Musik: wie schon erwaehnt, bestand die erste Haelfte des Konzerts aus langsamen Sachen aus den letzten zwei Alben, erst dann kamen aeltere Songs, aber auch kaum schnellere Sachen. Die besseren Lieder wurden allerdings erst in der Zugabe gespielt, meiner Meinung nach uebrigens die einzigen Lieder, die Pogo et al rechtfertigen. Schliesslich endete das Konzert in einem Meer von Verzerrer-Noise, auch ganz nett anzuhoeren, wenn auch offenbar zu obskur fuer die meisten der Leute um mich herum, zumindest schienen das deren eher entgeisterte Gesichter auszudruecken.

Fuer's naechste Mal Tocotronic (Oktober 2007? fruehestens) wuensche ich mir auf jeden Fall weniger Kiddies (kaum erfuellbar), weniger hirnlose Deppen (dito), und ein besseres Album. Aber wahrscheinlich macht Alter langweilig, und die bereits genannten Zielgruppen (sind "hirnlose Deppen" und "Kiddies" wirklich die anvisierten target groups?) checken das nicht, weil sie die Toco-Sachen von Mitte der 90er hoeren, die in ihrem CD-Regal neben NOFX und WIZO eingeordnet sind, weil die Freunde, von denen sie das empfohlen bekommen haben, das als "Punk" klassifiziert haben.

Ach, ich koennte mich stundenlang darueber auslassen, aber nur soviel: Tocotronic-Songs sind in Liedform gegossene proto-autobiografische Texte und obskure Lyrik. Nur das kann man als Band schlecht transportieren, entweder weil es zu einem Einbruch an CD-Verkaeufen und Konzertbesuchen fuehren wuerde, oder weil es bei den meisten sowie nicht ankaeme.

Was ich eigentlich sagen wollte: das Konzert war ganz OK, koennte aber noch einen Hauch besser gewesen sein. Fuer die Perfektion waren zuviele neue Songs in der Setlist.

le already blogged the traditional meal for Easter, so here you have another picture of the wonderful Weihfleisch we had today:

As I wrote in december, Tocotronic is doing a concert in Posthof in Linz on March 26th, and that is... today. The concert is sold out, but fortunately, I was able to get a ticket: I bought it about a month ago, and at that time, about 2/3 of all tickets were already sold, so I guess I was lucky.

The last time I've been to a Tocotronic concert was in 2002, that was the last time they played in Linz, so I'm already quite eager to seem them again. And since their last album wasn't really that great, I hope that they will play more of the old songs.

Anyway, stay tuned, a report on the concert itself will follow later.

I'm finally out. Yesterday I left Roman Catholic Church. I haven't been to church for at least 10 years, and I actually haven't belived in anything what the church had proclaimed. I converted to Atheism a few years ago, not only because the concept of belief in a religious meaning seems so totally unlogical to me, but also because all religions actually seem quite silly after you've had contact with Discordianism.

Anyway, religion in the western world is very often constructed in a way that it has real influence on the people without providing hardly anything substantial. Mankind was always occupied with questions like "who are we?", "where do we come from?", "where do we go?" (and probably "what shall we have for lunch?"), and religions claim to have answers to the questions, without actually providing real answers, but only "believe that it was in that and that way". This doesn't give anything to me, it doesn't make me happier in any way, it's actually the other way around: religion would put the burden of sin and a double moral standard on me, something that actually would make me less happy, so Atheism is the way to go for me, as I can make my own moral and ethical standards.

So I think leaving church was a good decision, as it finally interrupts the final connection that I had to it.

Yesterday I posted some examples for censored material in NASA's World Wind. Well, today, I searched around a bit and found some quite interesting surveillance material of Andrews Air Force Base, which I collected here. Again, some of the pictures are distorted, because I found out too late that the distortion can be disabled. Anyway, interesting details can be recognized, e.g. a squadron of eight F/A-18 Hornets (WP link) or seven F-16 Fighting Falcons (WP link).

Just in case you didn't know: Andrews AFB is the home airport of the Airforce One, the US president's plane. It's interesting that they give out that detailled information about it without any problems while they censor photos of the White House and the Capitol.

Despite popular belief, the content of the posting that I did this day in de.alt.sysadmin.recovery is not true. Fortunately. Don't ask.

World Wind is a really nifty application to look at satellite pictures from the whole planet (with varying resolution). Unfortunately, it's Windows only, and of course, you only have really good quality when you look at US maps. But look at what they did to the picture material of the White House and the Capitol:


(should some of the buildings look distorted to you, that's because it's a 3D map, and the data for the height isn't very accurate...)

Today's good news: I got the acceptance for my first flat. Next sunday I will have a meeting with the landlord, and do stuff like the contract. The flat has 43 m2, lies on the Auberg in Urfahr, the part of Linz north of river Danube, quite central, but quite calm, too. More information including photos and stuff will follow in about a month.

Yes, you can now buy a law in the European Union: see here.

Yay! Finally, I've completed my apprenticeship final exam. All I had to do was answer a few simple questions about different parts of computing, pretty easy all in all. And I even passed with "Auszeichnung" (distinction). It's wonderful that it's finally over. Now let's go on with real life.

Today, Nico and me released tpp 1.2, the ingenious text presentation program. That new release is completely refactored, in fact it shares probably five percent of the pre-1.2 version of tpp. We implemented all but one feature from the previous version -- we kicked out LaTeX support. But we added LinuxDoc support instead, but it's currently broken, so better don't use (or fix it, we're happy about every patch that we get). Other additional features are support for line wrapping, the possibility to set a footer and a header, a reload function where you can immediately reload the file that you've currently opened instead of quitting and restarting tpp, and support for transparent terminals.

Since WP 1.5 is out for quite some time, I decided to take the risk and upgrade. I also added a new and better CAPTCHA. The theme will definitely change in the next few days, but the theme that I used before isn't available as WP 1.5 theme.

Today I saw Constantine, and I have to admit, it's a really thrilling movie, quite violent, but cool. Not a movie that makes you think a lot, but nevertheless really good. My absolute favorite is Peter Stormare as Satan with red eyes and a white suit, demonstrating (again) that he's an outstanding actor.