For some time now I wanted to change my weblog to a server based one. I did no extensive research, but what I read about WordPress made my try it first locally and then for good. So far I'm happy with it.

To get the nice permanent links (like http://pesche.schlau.ch/2005/04/14/wordpress-and-new-hosting-provider/), the web server (if it is an Apache httpd) has to support mod_rewrite. After some failed tries I mailed my hosting provider (hosttech.ch) if they could enable mod_rewrite. This is the answer I got:

After much carbonizing by Ben Hines and some polishing by me a new Realpolitik Release is available on Sourceforge, the first release for OS X.

The release version Realpolitik 1.7.0 Alpha1 is not yet stable (hence Alpha 1), there are still some known (and probably many more unknown) errors like selection and redrawing problems with the orders window, but with some care (backup your .dpy files!) it should be usable.

Parallel to the Mac version a new Windows version is out. It's called Alpha too, but should be as stable as the old releases. The only major change for the windows version is the switch from Mindvision Installer VISE to the NSIS installer. VISE was once free for shareware developers, but is not anymore. And NSIS looks at least as good as VISE, is open source and has CVS-friendly plain text configuration files.

Ever since I started my blog, I was looking for a neat solution to upload my internet pages whenever Nanoblogger updates the local copy.

I didn't want just a recursive upload, because some directories (e.g. data) shouldn't be publicly accessible. My first attempt was a script using ncftpput, but it always uploads the whole site.

I wanted a more intelligent solution that copies only new and changed files. This is presumably a very common tasks, there should be plenty of ways to achieve it. But almost all FTP clients capable of intelligent uploads involve some GUI. The only command line client I could find is lftp (available on OS X from Fink and from Darwinports).

Longtime Apple developers probably know this intuitively, but I needed some time to figure it out: When CVS-ing files with a resource fork, you must not use the /usr/bin/cvs that ships with OS X!

Because Apple used to separate data and metadata, most files in the pre OS X era had a data fork and a resource fork, but for the user this was transparent; the user just manipulated one file. Tools without this "Classic" background know nothing of the resource fork. Files without data fork appear in the Terminal to have 0 bytes.

It is exactly two years that I ordered my first Mac, a 12 inch Powerbook. It's compactness and completeness (almost everything built-in without protruding parts, Bluetooth and fast WLAN, except the second and third mouse key) make it still the right choice. And with OS X it has a decent operating system that lets you use the mouse if you want to, but the power of the command line is integrated in a better way than with Windows and Cygwin.

The Firefox New York Times Ad is finally out (PDF or a smaller PNG); it took much longer than the German ad in the FAZ ;)

After four years I had again a PC assembled, but this time as a gaming PC for K (and for the rest of the family, too ;) ).

At work we have a PC department that assembled the PC according to my wishes. The installation of the OS I like to do myself; I chose Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE) over XP Pro, because it's less expensive but has almost all features of XP Pro. The Media Center itself I don't need; the PC hasn't got a TV card.

Every year after christmas the El Niño Cup takes place. It is a tournament where the result is less important than exercising and having fun. There is a team day, where every team plays Volleyball, Basketball and Unihockey, and a single day, where the disciplines are Badminton, Table Tennis and Archery.

Last year I wrote a program to ease the drawing. It is a fairly complex problem:

• Every participant must have six matches, two for every discipline, against members of its category (men, women, mixed...)
• There should be not two matches against the same adversary (except if the category has less than 7 players)
• Between two matches there should be a break of at least the duration of one match

This year I enhanced the program some more. The amount of tweaking the program output by hand is now almost zero. Just some games remained to be exchanged to satisfy the at-least-one-break condition.

While reading an interview with Tim Berners-Lee concerning the Semantic Web, I stumbled for the second time in a couple of days over the friend of a friend project FOAF.

I don't know if FOAF has a future or if it is just another geek thing -- but I couldn't resist and generated my own FOAF description.

After many months of betraying each other, the diplomacy game gimmel01 ended with a shared triumph of England, France and Austria.

Now we are waiting for the last players to sign up for gimmel02, and after that Andreas will try to find a way eliminating me...