Auf K's XP-Maschine sollte heute die CD-ROM zum Französisch-Lernmittel Bonne chance 3 installiert werden. Bonne chance! heisst soviel wie Viel Glück!, und das kann man bei dieser Installation gut gebrauchen.

Wenn man das Unglück eines gut konfigurierten PCs (normale Benutzer arbeiten ohne Admin-Rechte) mit einem neueren Betriebssystem hat, braucht es etwas Wissen oder die nötigen Hilfe-Links.

Schnellanleitung, wie die Software dann doch noch ohne Administrator-Rechte lief:

• Installation muss als Benutzer mit Admin-Rechten geschehen
• (Immer noch als Admin) Allen Benutzern Schreibrechte für das Verzeichnis C:\Programme\Lernbasis geben. Ein Tutorial hierzu gibt es beispielsweise bei Albert Weinert.
• Jetzt sollte das Programm für alle Benutzer zu verwenden sein!

Was ich LoThoSoft, dem Hersteller der Lernsoftware, sonst noch alles ankreide:

Mit zwei Vierpunkte-Siegen ist unserem Team Muri-Gümligen ein Traumstart in die neue Tischtennis-Saison gelungen.

Normalerweise starten wir schlecht und müssen dann die ganze Saison den zu Beginn verlorenen Punkten hinterherspielen. Vielleicht gelingt es uns diesmal, vorne mitzumischen!

I had some trouble getting Rekall to work with my MySQL server, but in the end I succeeded. Here's what I needed:

• MySQL binaries (I'm using 4.1.14-max)
• MySQL source code
• Rekall-2.3.4 and Qt-3.3.4-mini binaries from ATG
• MacPython 2.4.1
• Apple Developer Tools (from your Tiger Install Disk)

The short road installing just the binaries lead to an error:

dlcompat: Library not loaded:
/usr/local/lib/mysql/libmysqlclient.14.dylib

The reason is that the original MySQL binaries are built with the --disable-shared flag and contain only the static libraries instead of the dynamic ones.

Many years after most users I have jumped on the iCal train too. I've dumped my very old Palm and started using iCal as my main calendar.

But iCal itself is not good enough:

• it doesn't know how to calculate Easter. For this I have subscribed (free!) to project24, which is very nice for Swiss holidays (for German and Austrian ones too).
• it doesn't show the week number. project24 comes to the rescue again.
• I want to print/export real lists, not just empty boxes with a date. Some calenders have less than one event per week and I wanted a list with all events. All iCal does is filling pages with empty days and once in a while a day with an event. Clay Spinuzzi mentions the Ruby iCal module, which did the trick for me.

What I haven't got working yet: iSync limits the calendar period that is copied to my mobile to 8 weeks and I haven't found any hidden plist entry or any other hack to fix that.

I just installed Postfix Enabler to be able to send my emails through a SMTP server on my own powerbook. I didn't want the hassle to configure the postfix server myself, so I went for a software doing it the Macintosh way.

The default configuration was a little too open for my taste. I want others (that is me on the PC nearby) to use the postfix server only if they know a password. Using the Postfix Enabler configuration tab to setup password authentication still lets anybody on the same subnet send mail without a password.

The three of us had a very nice time in Scotland in the last weeks. Most people are very friendly and helpful; we stayed mostly in B&Bs and found some that I can't help telling (in alphabetical order):

• Aberdeen: Crynoch Guest House
• Broadford: Ailean Cottage
• Broadford: Blairmore B&B (just across Ailean Cottage)
• Pitlochry: Bridge House B&B

Triggered by a Slashdot Story I tried to find the best aerial photo of my home town Berne. Here is what I've found so far:

• Google Maps, not very detailed (linked from the Brad's UNESCO World Heritage map links page
• map.search.ch, much more detailed, showing the "Bundeshaus"
• The most detailed photos I found at the official town map site. When you choose "Orthofoto" from the "Darstellung" selection and go to the coordinates 600 420/199 550 you can see the fancy new plaza in front of the Bundeshaus at almost any scale (1:1000 works fine)

If you know of other photograph sources, please leave a comment.

I've got a Benq X-Touch 122 keyboard with Swiss German layout. Apparently this is a very rare species, or how else would it be possible to not get it right?

The shortcut on the front of the "Y" key is wrong; Undo is Ctrl-Z (or Cmd-Z), not Ctrl-Y. It is true that the "Z" key sits to left of the "X" with many layouts (the QWERTY ones), but not with the German QWERTZ layouts. 😢

Even before I upgraded to OS X 10.4 (Tiger), I got the report that the Save File dialog in Realpolitik crashes. Now I have applied a quick'n'dirty fix for the next couple of days for all Tiger users and released Realpolitik 1.7.0 Alpha 2 earlier than planned.

Currently I'm revamping the dialogs known to Mac developers as Navigation Services. Already done in Alpha 2 is the Open File dialog:

From the users perspective you have now a working type pop-up, where you can choose Realpolitik Files (.dpy files and files created by Realpolitik), Text Files or just any document.

The four days at the ACCU Conference in Oxford are over. Except Günter nobody seems to have blogged the C++ track.

Apart from the discussions and presentations what should go into the next C++ standard (called C++0x and scheduled for 2009), one of the big topics was concurrency and a new awareness that some new ideas are needed. Herb Sutter presented the points of his recent DDJ article. As an example for an exercise simple to understand and yet far from easy to solve he mentioned the Santa Claus Problem: