Pesches Schlauch

List 7

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

It is time to stand for democracy

Digital Sovereignty

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

What is digital sovereignty and why is it important?

Peter Steiner - Links

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Peter Steiner

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

About me

I'm Peter Steiner or just Pesche for short. I live in Fribourg/Freiburg and work at Worldline Switzerland.

I like running and hiking; instead of a car I own a bike and I commute by train, trying to minimize my carbon footprint in order to keep this planet a liveable world for my granddaughter.

About 48 years ago I discovered my passion for programming with a Texas Instruments TI-57, Basic and Pascal, and I started earning money as a developer in 1989, first with C, C++ and Make, now with Java and Maven.

MicroProfile OpenAPI—Design First with Quarkus

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In an earlier article on the OpenAPI design-first approach I compared openapi-generator and swagger-codegen. Now I'm revisiting the topic by adding the Quarkus OpenAPI Generator to the comparison.

MicroProfile OpenAPI—Design First

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

You're given the task of writing a microservice AND providing a documentation in OpenAPI format. You already know that there are two main approaches:

code-first : write the code, using OpenAPI annotations, and then generate the OpenAPI document
design-first : write the OpenAPI document (a.k.a. the openapi.yaml file) and then generate the code

This is the second article in a series and reviews the design-first approach, the code-first approach was the subject of the first article.

MicroProfile OpenAPI—Code First

Fri, 01 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

You're given the task of writing a microservice AND providing a documentation in OpenAPI format. You already know that there are two main approaches:

code-first : write the code, using OpenAPI annotations, and then generate the OpenAPI document
design-first : write the OpenAPI document (a.k.a. the openapi.yaml file) and then generate the code

This article reviews the code-first approach, the design-first approach will follow in a second article at a later time.

Dizygotic Twins: Quarkus 3 and Wildfly 28

Fri, 02 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Compares Wildfly 28 and Quarkus 3 with respect to their support for Jakarta EE 10 and Microprofile 6

Sending a Hello from Mutiny in Wildfly

Mon, 15 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Shows how to use MicroProfile Reactive Messaging and Mutiny with Wildfly 28 and Kafka

Comments are Back

Thu, 16 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Using Cactus Comments with Hugo and Tranquilpeak

Ryuk the Resource Reaper

Mon, 09 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Testcontainers' Ryuk container and a workaround for better collaboration with old Docker versions

Migration from Wordpress to Hugo

Thu, 05 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

My blog is now built with Hugo and has a new look

envvc now on GitHub

Mon, 02 Jan 2017 12:59:50 +0100

envvc is now available on GitHub.

https://pesche.schlau.ch

Sat, 31 Dec 2016 15:28:09 +0100

Thanks to Let's Encrypt this site offers now a SSL connection.

Ich bin doch nicht blöd, Swisscom!

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 09:50:16 +0100

Swisscom hat eigene Rechenregeln: unlimitiert / 10 = 500

Updating my Android tablet on the Mac

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 22:32:37 +0100

Updating a Samsung Galaxy Tab with a Mac is not for the faint of heart.

Pesches Schlauch

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 06:00:31 +0200

Sind Schläuche schlau?

Visual Voicemail

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:51:45 +0100

Getting Visual Voicemail to work after carrier migration might need some carrier intervention.

Unlock Complete

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:39:32 +0100

The story of unlocking my iPhone for carrier migration.

Ich war alle Orange-Kunden, die gerne ihre Rechnungen bezahlt hätten.

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 17:47:32 +0100

Leidensbericht zu einem Jahr als Orange-Kunde (und warum ich es nicht mehr bin).

Datentarife und die Kosten eines iPhone

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 14:42:46 +0100

Was kostet ein iPhone (Gerät und Abo für 12 Monate)?

Pathé Westside - Pathetic

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:34:59 +0200

The new Westside movie theatre shows mostly dubbed films. What a shame!

Geotagging

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 21:45:14 +0200

Until recently, it was not easy to find an affordable and easy-to-use software for the Mac to match photos with GPX track logs (see also the review on trick77). There is HoudahGeo, which works very well, but is also quite expensive (€25) for a tool that does only one thing.

PhotoGpsEditor works, but I don't really like its interface. The Pictures and Track Lists are unsorted and when adjusting it's not very clear if need a negative or positive offset.
The new version 6.2 (released a week ago) of GraphicConverter has now support for GPS data. As I use GC for other editing tasks, I would like to use the same program also for tagging. GC lacks control over the matching process, most important: you can't specify the time offset. Before tagging, you have to change the time stamp in the photos themselves (!) to UTC (because all times in a GPX file are UTC times). Then you can match the photos with the GPS track points and revert the time adjustment (I use jhead for adjusting the time stamp of JPEG files).
What works best for me is GPSPhotoLinker. The version 1.6.0 was released two weeks ago and fixed a nasty time offset bug for photos that weren't taken in the computer's time zone. In GPSPhotoEditor you don't specify a time offset (where you always have to think if you need to add or subtract), but you choose the time zone of the photo. And because it shows you the values of your system time zone together with its sign, it's very intuitive which time zone you must choose.

Fáilte

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 17:19:51 +0200

Fáilte is gaelic and means welcome. We stayed in Ireland this summer and enjoyed it very much. The Irish people are very friendly, and these places were outstandingly so:

Bridgecourt House B&B in Kilkenny
Maire Rua self-catering apartment in Kilfenora

Sometimes the friendliness of the street signs is a bit overwhelming and you have trouble discovering the sign that you are looking for when you are confronted with a whole tree of signs. The picture above shows a crossroads near Shannonbridge.

Got rid of Wordpress spam

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 21:55:54 +0200

I have finally updated to the latest version of Wordpress and detected several different spam attempts in my blog.

The index.php and wp-content/index.php files contained a couple of unwanted links (their size should be less than 100 bytes).
One of my posts had some invisible links added at its end. One to a chinese site, disguised with the unescape Javascript function and others hidden by setting the style to display: none.

Datenflatrate für Mobilgeräte doch nicht so schlau?

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 20:28:22 +0200

Lieblings-Klagethema: die MNOs (Mobile Network Operators) in der Schweiz (und nicht nur hier) schaffen es immer noch nicht, attraktive Datenangebote zu schnüren; seit März hat sich nicht viel getan.

Tim Bray bringt eine neue Idee aufs Tapet: keine Flatrate anbieten, sondern einen lächerlich billigen Datentarif. Einige seiner Argumente: Kernkompetenzen von MNOs sind Bandbreite und Billing. Also sollen sie auch das Verkaufen: Bandbreite (Daten und Gespräche) und Billing (als Dienstleistung für Anbieter auf ihrem Netz).

Apple doesn't know how to count

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 20:46:42 +0200

The Swiss Federal Court recently approved a copyright tax on MP3 players (and harddisk DVD recorders), effective from September 1st. If you don't like to pay three times for your music (the download itself, the tax on blank CDs and the tax on players), you could write to your representative in parliament or join the initiative of the "Stiftung für Konsumentenschutz".

Anyway, I took the opportunity to save 90 (!) CHF copyright tax and bought a new iPod now. The fun part happened when I tried to register my iPod (screenshot from the registration wizard):

Merge down, copy up

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 17:06:15 +0200

If you are using any SCM that allows cheap branches (like Perforce) and are following the advices from the High-level Best Practices document, you might be interested in (or already know) Laura Wingerd's presentation Convergence vs. Divergence: Purposeful Merging with Perforce about how to converge to codelines using Merge Down, Copy Up [PDF]. I have seen it many times that a main codeline got broken because the Merge Down, Copy Up idiom was ignored.

Swisscom: Service und Kundenzufriedenheit

Wed, 23 May 2007 09:06:29 +0200

Seit meinem Wechsel zu Natel Easy haben mich als kritischen Kunden drei Punkte am meisten gestört:

Das Ausschalten der Combox wird im "Manual Prepaid" nicht erklärt. Diese kleine Unterlassungssünde ist nicht weiter schlimm, denn online in den FAQ wird's erklärt: der Code ##004# schaltet die Combox aus.
Ich würde gerne meine Mails über die Vodafone Live Email-Funktion abfragen können. Das scheitert leider daran, dass das Vodafone Live Portal POP3 nur auf Standard-Port 110 unterstützt, nicht aber auf dem SSL-Port 995 (Port 995 ist in meinem Fall zwingend, weil Gmail POP3 nur via SSL unterstützt). Der Hotline-Mitarbeiter versuchte sein bestes (er meinte zuerst, ich möchte Emails mit dem Client des Mobilgeräts abholen), musste dann aber kapitulieren.
Was mich am meisten stört: Der Slogal zu Natel Easy lautet: "für die volle Kostenkontrolle". Das ist schlicht gelogen! Das einzige was man kontrollieren kann, ist der Maximalbetrag, den man verbraucht. Aber unter voller Kostenkontrolle verstehe ich die Kontrolle darüber, wie man sein Guthaben aufgebraucht hat, also eine Aufstellung der Gespräche, SMS, MMS und Daten-Volumina. Natel Easy ist hier deutlich schlechter als M-Budget, welches Gespräche und SMS online auflistet. Das einzige, was Natel Easy hier bietet, ist die Benachrichtung über die Kosten des letzten Gesprächs...

Ich hoffe natürlich, dass mit der diese Woche verkündeteten Umstrukturierung von Swisscom und der "konsequenten Ausrichtung auf ihre Kunden" diese Kritikpunkte rasch beseitigt werden.

Psion SIBO SDK

Wed, 16 May 2007 08:43:53 +0200

I'm cleaning up shelves and have got an old "SIBO SDK 2.10" which I haven't used in years. It is a Software Development Kit for 16-Bit Psion handheld computers like Psion Series 3 or Psion Workabout. If you are interested in two floppy disks and four folders of documentation, please drop me a note.

Cablecom-Geschichten

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 19:38:17 +0200

Wie zur Zeit viele Leute bin ich etwas ungehalten und ziemlich unzufrieden mit Cablecom, der "unbeliebtesten Firma" der Schweiz (Artikel in "Das Magazin" vom 11. März). Innerhalb der letzten sechs Monate sind Cablecom drei mal Fehler unterlaufen, die einfach nicht vorkommen dürften:

Der Besuch eines Cablecom-Technikers bei den Nachbarn führte dazu, dass in unserer Wohnung das Internet für etwa vier Tage nicht mehr funktionierte (das der Nachbarn aber schon).
Mindestens zwei Unternehmen (das Versandhaus Heine sowie Premium Daten at shoppingnews.ch) haben mir Spam gesendet an eine Email-Adresse, die ausser mir nur Cablecom kennt. In einem Artikel des K-Tipp vom 28. März über einen ähnlichen Fall steht, dass Cablecom in den AGB die Weitergabe nicht ausschliesse und dass in den Web-Formularen zur Bestellung eines Internet-Anschlusses nirgends eine Möglichkeit bestehe, die Weitergabe seiner Daten explizit zu unterbinden. Da ich schon jahrelang Kunde von Cablecom bin und prinzipiell immer die Weitergabe meiner Daten verbiete, muss ich annehmen, dass Cablecom mir nie die Gelegenheit gab, auf einem Formular ein entsprechendes Häkchen zu platzieren. Ob dieses Vorgehen mit den Datenschutz-Vorschriften vereinbar ist, kann ich nicht beurteilen; aber falls weiterhin Spam eintrifft, könnte das ein Fall für die neue Anti-Spam-Gesetzgebung sein, die seit dem 1. April Spam verbietet.
Trotz vieler kritischer Berichte haben wir es vor einigen Tagen riskiert, unseren Telefonanschluss zu Cablecom zu wechseln. Der Kundenberater im Fachmarkt, der meine Anmeldung entgegennahm, hat es jedoch nicht geschafft, das Formular richtig auszufüllen. Nach meiner Nachfrage beim Kundendienst musste ich heute das Formular ein zweites Mal unterschreiben. Es stellte sich heraus, dass der Kundenberater vergessen hatte, neben seinem Namen auch noch seine Personalnummer auf das Formular zu setzen. Jetzt bin ich ja gespannt, wie gut das Telefonieren mit Cablecom funktionieren wird.

envvc

Thu, 05 Apr 2007 11:34:14 +0200

Did you ever have the need to use different versions of Microsofts Visual C++ compiler from the command line? Did you wish you wouldn't have to constantly call vcvars32.bat or change your environment (PATH, INCLUDE and LIB variables)?

In comes a little tool called envvc.exe. It sets the environment for the chosen version and then calls any chosen executable. As additional feature it verifies that you have installed the latest service pack for the chosen version.

Gratulation nach Schwarzenburg!

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 22:28:45 +0100

Wie diese Woche bekannt wurde, gewann Kaba-Gilgen AG aus Schwarzenburg nach einem sechsmonatigen Pilotbetrieb die internationale Ausschreibung der Pariser Métro (RATP), zwei Linien mit halbhohen Bahnsteigtüren (Platform Screen Doors PSD half-height, PDF) auszurüsten.

Ich gratuliere dem ADP-Team von Kaba-Gilgen für diesen Erfolg und freue mich, dass damit auch die Arbeit von Hug-Witschi den Weg nach Paris findet. Hug-Witschi hat im Auftrag von Kaba-Gilgen die Steuerung (Hardware und erste Version der Software) der einzelnen Türeinheiten entwickelt.

Ist mobiles Internet schon bezahlbar?

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 09:31:27 +0100

Irgendwann wird Internet mit mobilen Geräten (Mobiltelefonen, PDAs) selbstverständlich sein. Das mag zwar schon heute der Fall sein, aber bloss für Firmenkunden, wenn das Budget keine Rolle spielt.

Die Geräte wären bereit für Internet-Anwendungen. Es gibt Email- und RSS-Clients, schlanke Browser (OperaMini) und Clients für spezialisierte Anwendungen wie Routenplaner (zB Google Maps). Bald schon sollen YouTube und MySpace für das Handy angeboten werden; und alle Leute reden schon jetzt vom iPhone, welches neben einem iPod und einem Telefon auch noch ein Internet-Terminal sein soll.

Triple emulation

Sun, 17 Dec 2006 17:27:00 +0100

I'm cleaning up old harddisks in my vintage PCs and found a DOS partition that I used solely to run the emulator S3AEMUL for the Psion Series 3a. This emulator was once available for free: a clever marketing trick! I got soon hooked and bought my first PDA, back in 1995.

Out of nostalgia I tried to get the emulator running again – but without leaving OS X, of course. Thanks to Parallels Desktop this should be easy, I thought. Just create a new virtual machine, install FreeDOS and copy the emulator on it.

AltGr and Parallels Desktop

Mon, 06 Nov 2006 21:24:19 +0100

I'm quite happy with my alien operating system running along my other applications on my Mac. The biggest gripe is the keyboard.

Parallels maps the Windows Alt key to the Mac alt/option key. Ok, Alt to alt seems quite logical, but my fingers don't care what is written on the key – they remember by position. And the Windows Alt key sits right to the left of the space key!
Though it's handy to be able to tab out of Windows with Cmd-Tab, I can't really tab back in. When I change the focus to Windows using Cmd-Tab, I have to press Cmd-I before my key presses are sent to Windows again (I know that I can use the mouse, but the keyboard is so much faster). I like when things are logical and symmetrical because that is what makes life easier.
The support for AltGr (I have a Swiss German keyboard and need AltGr for all the programmers best friends: []{}|\@#) is weak, almost nonexistent. A couple of weeks back Parallels mapped the Enter key of Apple Laptops (the one to the right of the right Cmd key) as AltGr – without telling anyone. I don't remember where I first found about this life saver, probably macosxhints, but surely not the Parallels help.
As of the newest build (1970), Enter as AltGr has silently vanished again. And only hidden in the forum pages are instructions how to get back the AltGr behaviour involving the Terminal. This is not the Mac way to configure things! (Basically you have to create the file /Library/Parallels/.keyboard_config containing one word: numenterisaltgr and no LF following it).
I dream of having the same keyboard layout inside and outside Parallels Desktop (e.g. using the option key to compose all these special characters in Windows), and perhaps even having a combined list of OS X and Windows applications when switching with Cmd-Tab.

Erleichtertes Hörbuch-Rippen

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 22:33:40 +0100

Ist es nicht angenehm, sich ein Buch vorlesen zu lassen? Am liebsten natürlich ortsungebunden, vom iPod – bloss wie gelangt das Hörbuch in den iPod? Bisher geschah das wie folgt:

Die Import-Einstellungen von iTunes auf AAC/gesprochene Podcasts setzen
CD einschieben, alle Tracks markieren und die CD-Titel gruppieren (unter Erweitert)
Jetzt die CD importieren.
Die Schritte 2 und 3 für alle CDs wiederholen. Am Schluss hat man einen Titel pro CD.
Den Namen der Titel editieren und nummerieren (sofern das nicht schon automatisch geschah, weil der Titel abgefragt und gefunden wurde). So ist es später auf dem iPod einfach, die CDs in der richtigen Reihenfolge zu hören.
Alle Titel markieren und das AppleScript Make Bookmarkable anwenden. Damit wird u.a. die Option Wiedergabeposition merken gesetzt und die Datei-Endung des Titels auf m4b gesetzt. Dies muss so sein, damit das Buch bei iTunes 7 in der Bibliothek unter Hörbücher eingereiht wird. (Dieser Schritt ist Apple-spezifisch. Bei Windows gibt es keine AppleScripts und für dasselbe sind wesentlich kompliziertere Aktionen nötig. Die Suchbegriffe m4b windows sind dein Freund...)
Synchronisieren. Für mich hat es sich bewährt, eine intelligente Wiedergabeliste extra zum Synchronisieren zu verwenden, mit den Kriterien Zähler ist 0 und Genre ist Hörbücher (vorausgesetzt, dass man nach dem Importieren das Genre richtig setzt). Damit erreicht man, dass Hörbücher automatisch vom iPod gelöscht werden, wenn man sie einmal gehört hat.

Neu geht es (nur mit Apple) auch etwas einfacher: mit dem Audiobook Builder. Die Schritte hier:

Bad experiences with Milan Malpensa

Tue, 15 Aug 2006 20:47:15 +0200

We got an Alitalia flight with a stopover in Milan Malpensa for our holidays. I must say that we regret having chosen Alitalia.

The negative experiences started already when checking in in Zurich. Our connection flight from Milan was not open yet for a through checkin. No problem, we thought, we've got enough time to do that in Milan.

But there was no transfer desk when we arrived in Milan. When you first arrive, transfer desks are sign-posted, but when you get to the desks, there are no more signs. And even before the boarding desk was open, a huge queue started to build up. So I went to a nearby desk and asked, where we could get our boarding passes. Just at the boarding desk, was the answer. When we finally wanted to board, we were told that we had to queue at another desk to get a boarding pass.

Gimmelwald Gondola

Wed, 24 May 2006 05:13:54 +0200

Kellyerin ist von Gimmelwald nach Stechelberg geschwebt und Marcel hat das Video davon gefunden. In der Realität ist die Fahrt über den Rand der Fluh -- direkt nach dem ersten und einzigen Mast -- noch viel eindrücklicher!

Solving the Santa Claus Problem with Barriers

Mon, 22 May 2006 07:34:43 +0200

There are already many solutions to the "Santa Claus Problem" by John Trono¹. It's a "problem simple to understand and yet far from easy to solve"; the author's original solution (based on semaphores) was only partly correct. The probably most known analysis of the problem was written by Mordechai Ben-Ari², who also provided solutions in Ada95 and Java. This is the original problem description:

Santa Claus sleeps in his shop up at the North Pole, and can only be wakened by either all nine reindeer being back from their year long vacation on the beaches of some tropical island in the South Pacific, or by some elves who are having some difficulties making the toys. One elf's problem is never serious enough to wake up Santa (otherwise, he may never get any sleep), so, the elves visit Santa in a group of three. When three elves are having their problems solved, any other elves wishing to visit Santa must wait for those elves to return. If Santa wakes up to find three elves waiting at his shop's door, along with the last reindeer having come back from the tropics, Santa has decided that the elves can wait until after Christmas, because it is more important to get his sleigh ready as soon as possible. (It is assumed that the reindeer don't want to leave the tropics, and therefore they stay there until the last possible moment. They might not even come back, but since Santa is footing the bill for their year in paradise... This could also explain the quickness in their delivering of presents, since the reindeer can't wait to get back to where it is warm.) The penalty for the last reindeer to arrive is that it must get Santa while the others wait in a warming hut before being harnessed to the sleigh.

dmake Stories

Mon, 17 Apr 2006 17:16:14 +0200

At work, we started using dmake in 1991 (or even earlier) for building the firmware for the Vending Machine Controller Euro'90. The firmware consisted mostly of PL/M and C code and the compilers suffered from the DOS limitation of 127 characters per command line. Dennis Vadura's dmake 3.70 (hosted by the University of Waterloo and available as DOS version) featured the $(mktmp ) macro that let me create any needed temporary config and response files.

Gimmelwald-Lied

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 13:45:27 +0100

Über dem Esstisch in Zumbühls Städeli hängt inmitten der "Ahnengalerie" auch das Gimmelwald-Lied, schön gerahmt und wohl schon einige Jahrzehnte alt. Von der Version auf der Gimmelwald-Homepage unterscheidet es sich vor allem durch den Refrain, das Fehlen einer Zeile in der dritten Strophe und einige orthografische Feinheiten, etwa der Schreibweise "Gimelwald":

Gimmelwald-Lied

Fritz Lüthi

Uf Gimelwald da heimers so
sin epa trurig oder froh.
wes z'Läben is chan bringen.
U' z'wärchen hei'mer wäger all
i Fäld u Wald, in Hus u Stall
o z'Muetti mid de Chinden
Gimelwald, Gimelwald, griess Gott
mis schenna Gimelwald.

Swisscom and Orangeclick GPRS

Thu, 09 Mar 2006 10:33:29 +0100

One week per year I want to connect my Powerbook to the internet using GPRS. In principle this is easy: choose the right modem script in the Network Preferences and fill in the provider details.

Modem Script

Unfortunately, the Modem Scripts that come with OS X are rather old. I tried the newest one (for a T39), but failed. I asked the Swisscom hotline for help, but they told me that they don't support Apple Computers and directed me to the commercial solution from Novamedia.de ("Mobile High Speed" for €87).

Cablecom will von 16:00 bis 24:00 bremsen

Wed, 18 Jan 2006 07:18:54 +0100

Auszug aus den geänderten besonderen Bestimmungen (PDF) vom Februar 2006 (Kapitel 6, Fair Use):

Der Kunde darf durch die Nutzung seiner Internetanknüpfung andere Nutzer nicht beeinträchtigen, hindern oder einschränken. Insbesondere während den Spitzenzeiten zwischen 16 und 24 Uhr darf der Kunde das IP-Netz durch das andauernde Ausschöpfen seiner maximalen Übertragungskapazität (excessive usage) für die Peer-to-Peer Nutzung, das Betreiben von Gameservern, den Download von Foren usw. nicht in einer Weise belasten, welche die Performance anderer Kunden beeinträchtigen würde.

iSync Phone Plugin for Motorola C350

Thu, 12 Jan 2006 22:18:41 +0100

According to the iSync Device List, the Motorola C350 is supported by iSync. But my phone was not found.

There are small differences between the supported model and mine. Using USB Prober¹ my device announces itself as:

Device VendorID/ProductID:   0x22B8/0x5802   (Motorola PCS)

whereas iSync expects² a ProductID of 0x3802 for the C350.

Instead of editing the iSync plist file I created an iSync Plugin as Rui Carmo described in his detailed iSync Plugins Howto.

Using Macintosh Menus without the Mouse

Fri, 06 Jan 2006 08:32:33 +0100

Using the newest Development version of Quicksilver, you can now navigate the menu of the current application without a mouse, just by using Quicksilver. Unfortunately, the configuration of Quicksilver is not for the faint of heart, but Rui Carmo has nice instructions in The Tao of Mac.

I have chosen Alt-§ as hotkey for menu navigation. See an example for choosing a menu entry typing Alt-§ G R U (CD-Titel gruppieren = Join CD Tracks in iTunes):

Nummernportierung mit Problemen

Fri, 30 Dec 2005 13:23:32 +0100

Anfangs Dezember lief mein Mobile-Vertrag aus; ich meldete mich rechtzeitig bei orangeclick.ch für eine Nummerportierung an. Was ein Routinevorgang sein sollte, endete mit über drei Wochen Unerreichbarkeit.

Am Wochenende der Schaltung erhalte ich (auf die Festnetznummer) ein Telefon, dass Orange bei der Portierung einen Fehler gemacht habe. Weil die alte Sim-Karte aber schon deaktiviert sei, könne das Problem erst am Montag behoben werden.
Am Dienstag erhalte ich eine E-Mail, dass die Portierung nicht geklappt habe. Ich solle die 20stellige Nummer der neuen Sim-Karte mitteilen, weil "die Möglichkeit bestehe, dass Ihnen eine falsche Karte zugestellt wurde".
1 Woche nach meiner Antwort ist noch nichts geschehen. Ich hake nach und erhalte die Anweisung, eine neue Sim-Karte zu bestellen, weil ich tatsächlich eine falsche erhalten habe.
Wieder einige Tage später trifft per E-Mail die Ankündigung ein, dass die Portierung jetzt endlich erfolgreich vorgenommen wurde. Wenn ich die Nummer aber zu wählen versuche, kommt immer noch derselbe Ansagetext: "die gewählte Nummer ist nicht vergeben". Offenbar funktioniert meine Nummer erst wieder, wenn die Sim-Karte in ein Telefongerät eingelegt wird.
Kurz darauf liegt eine Abholungseinladung der Post im Briefkasten, mit dem Vermerk, der Brief sei "eigenhändig" abzuholen. Es vergeht eine halbe Woche, bis ich am 24. Dez. kurz vor Mittag endlich Zeit finde, den Brief abzuholen. Doch dummerweise habe ich statt dem Pass nur den Führerausweis dabei, so dass ich den Brief nicht mitnehmen darf.
Gestern endlich hat es geklappt. Bloss war dann die Schalterbeamtin von der Geschichte offenbar so verwirrt, dass sie vergass, von mir noch eine zusätzliche Unterschrift zu verlangen (eine hatte ich schon am 24. geleistet). Sie rief mich zuhause an, um zu fragen, ob ich zu Hause sei und jemand vorbeikommen könne. Leider könne das nicht der Briefträger erledigen, da die Briefträger nicht in ihrer Poststelle stationiert seien.

Nach dem verunglückten Voranschlag schon wieder eine Panne. Zusätzlich zum Fehler bei der Portierung an sich wurde hier versäumt, den Kunden drauf hinzuweisen, dass auch bei Ersatz-Sim-Karten zum Abholen dasselbe Ausweis-Dokument vorgelegt werden muss, wie bei der Erstabholung. Wieso eigentlich? Die Registrierungspflicht ist doch mit der Erstabholung erfüllt und der Fernmelde-Betreiber weiss damit, dass ich derjenige bin, für den ich mich ausgebe.

Was ist ein CS-Code?

Sat, 17 Dec 2005 12:37:44 +0100

Mein altes Powerbook (das ohne Safe Sleep) wurde langsam zu klein, so dass es mit einem der neuen "verdoppelt" wurde:


640	→ 1536 MB RAM	(Faktor 2.40)
867	→ 1670 MHz	(Faktor 1.93)
60	→ 100 GB	(Faktor 1.67)
.75	→ 1.32 Megapixel	(Faktor 1.76)
1	→ 2 Finger auf dem Trackpad	(Faktor 2.00)
1	→ 1 Maustaste	(Faktor 1.00)

Ein anderes temporäres Problem des alten Powerbooks sollte vor dem Verkauf noch behoben werden: der defekte Verschluss-Mechanismus. Ganz vorne bzw oben im Deckel ist ein kleiner Haken auf einer Welle gelagert. Beim Schliessen des Deckels wird dieser Haken von einem Magneten unterhalb des Trackpads heruntergezogen, bis er einrastet.

Darwinports and Mono incompabilities

Fri, 16 Dec 2005 20:31:32 +0100

I wanted to give dia a go and tried to install from Darwinports with sudo port install dia. I had a small problem during the install: after a couple of dependencies had been compiled, it aborted with this message:

--->  Installing glib2 2.8.4_0
--->  Activating glib2 2.8.4_0
--->  Cleaning glib2
--->  Configuring atk
Error: Target com.apple.configure returned: configure failure:
[... a couple of lines omitted ...]
checking for pkg-config... /usr/bin/pkg-config
checking for GLIB - version >= 2.5.7...
*** 'pkg-config --modversion glib-2.0' returned 2.6.3, but GLIB (2.8.4)
*** was found! [... rest omitted ...]

I couldn't find anything about this specific message. Because glib was just installed before pkg-config failed to find it, I tried installing the Darwinports pkg-config and then restarted the installation... and it worked this time!

Safe Sleep -- almost

Fri, 04 Nov 2005 15:55:50 +0100

Matt Johnston found out how to enable the hibernate mode (a.k.a. the Safe Sleep introduced with the new HiRes Powerbooks) for older Macs.

I tried it on my 867 MHz 12" Powerbook and it works. Finally changing batteries doesn't require to shutdown and restart anymore -- or so I thought. After some hours testing I reverted the hack. I observed two problems:

The fan wouldn't start anymore and the Powerbook got pretty hot
The clock stopped when sleeping

Nice work, Matt, but in my case: 😢

Why it didn't work out with Rekall (yet)

Sat, 01 Oct 2005 08:02:24 +0200

A couple of days ago I made Rekall work with MySQL on OS X. And now I'm not really using it!

There is a big showstopper for maintaining german content (or in any other language that uses more than the 7 bit ASCII character set): Rekall (on the Mac) doesn't handle Unicode correctly. Here's a short sample: to the left the expected display (from phpMyAdmin), to the right the screen shot from Rekall:

schlau.ch in Vienna

Mon, 19 Sep 2005 20:04:34 +0200

Thomas Goetschi of team schlau.ch presented today the Plone solution for www.bern.ch at the Day 1 of the Plone Conference in Vienna.

"Bonne chance" benötigt Glück oder Wissen

Sat, 17 Sep 2005 14:57:27 +0200

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:

Traumstart

Thu, 15 Sep 2005 21:30:54 +0200

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!

Rekall and MySQL with OS X

Tue, 06 Sep 2005 16:38:39 +0200

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.

Why only 8 weeks?

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 21:15:53 +0200

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.

SMTP enabled

Mon, 22 Aug 2005 18:54:03 +0200

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.

Friendly Scotland

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 20:00:06 +0200

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

Aerial Photos of Berne, Switzerland

Mon, 27 Jun 2005 12:07:25 +0200

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.

Don't believe your keyboard

Mon, 06 Jun 2005 13:48:20 +0200

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. 😢

Tiger and Realpolitik

Mon, 23 May 2005 21:01:19 +0200

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.

Back from Oxford

Mon, 25 Apr 2005 19:54:47 +0200

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:

Wordpress and new hosting provider

Thu, 14 Apr 2005 13:03:24 +0200

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:

Realpolitik for OS X

Tue, 15 Mar 2005 22:36:28 +0100

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.

Intelligent FTP upload with LFTP

Mon, 14 Feb 2005 16:36:17 +0100

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).

CVS with AppleSingle files

Mon, 07 Feb 2005 10:07:04 +0100

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.

Two Years Big and Small

Fri, 14 Jan 2005 14:39:12 +0100

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.

In the lowercase "f"

Thu, 16 Dec 2004 22:03:01 +0100

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 ;)

Installing a gaming PC

Thu, 16 Dec 2004 07:59:29 +0100

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.

El Niño Drawing

Fri, 10 Dec 2004 13:08:31 +0100

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.

friend-of-a-friend

Thu, 04 Nov 2004 22:03:48 +0100

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.

Gimmel01 ends with a shared victory

Sat, 16 Oct 2004 14:09:46 +0200

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...

Python für Kids auf dem Macintosh

Tue, 05 Oct 2004 20:08:13 +0200

Im Gegensatz zu PCs ist bei OS X Python bereits vorinstalliert. Leider fehlt jedoch ausgerechnet IDLE, so dass trotzdem noch etwas zu tun bleibt.

Installationsanleitung für IDLE (von PythonMac FAQ abgekupfert)

Tcl/Tk Aqua herunterladen und installieren
MacPython herunterladen und installieren (für OS X 10.3 sind das die MacPython Panther Addons)
Das Programm PackageManager im Ordner /Programme/MacPython-2.3 starten
Im PackageManager _tkinter installieren

"Neue" Division

Damit IDLE sich so benimmt wie im Buch beschrieben (vgl. Anhang D im Buch), muss noch eine Datei leicht verändert werden.

Python IDLE with "new" division on OS X

Tue, 05 Oct 2004 20:08:13 +0200

(Deutscher Text siehe separater Artikel)

K got the book Python für Kids. To enable him to use the book on OS X, I wanted to setup the Python environment on the Mac as on the PC: Install IDLE and, to hide the differences between integer and floating point math, configure to use the new division.

Installing IDLE on OS X 10.3 is easy with MacPython. IDLE comes as bundle, ready to be launched with the mouse from the Finder. But for using the new division without the need for from __future__ import division, IDLE must be started with options. How to embed these options in the IDLE.app bundle?

Boot Partition Drive Letter Problems

Wed, 29 Sep 2004 21:42:46 +0200

A friend's PC had lost its ability to dual boot (Windows 2000 for work and Windows 98 for games). I had installed BootMagic to switch operating systems some years ago and it worked fine until it was broken this month during some harddisk cleanup.

I completed the cleanup of the Win98 partition with a new installation. After installing PartitionMagic and BootMagic again, Bootmagic would still not work, and the Windows 2000 installation (which I didn't touch) booted, but after a successful log on I was always logged out immediately.

Creating a favicon.ico file with The Gimp

Wed, 18 Aug 2004 19:26:37 +0200

Because Gimp 2.0 doesn't support the Windows icon format yet, I looked for another way to create a favicon.ico file with Gimp running under Mac OS X.

The Web recommends at least three different conversion tools for this task:

ppmtowinicon is said to have problems with transparency
xpm2wico is not available as a Fink package
png2ico did the trick for me

Choosing a weblog software

Mon, 16 Aug 2004 16:28:52 +0200

I have evaluated a weblog software for a server without fancy options like CGI, Perl or PHP. I found BlogMax, Nanoblogger and Thingamablog and chose Nanoblogger for its Spring Theme and because it stores the entries in flat files.