Kernel 2.6.8 After updating to 2.6.8 K3B wouldn’t burn CDs and DVDs any more as a normal user. Apparently some security related bug fix in the 2.6.8 version caused this behavior. The Gentoo folks removed this particular change from Gentoo kernel sources. So, now I’m back to kernel 2.6.8

KDE 3.3 Upgrade to KDE 3.3 went pretty smoothly. I only needed to transfer my particular configuration changes for the kdm login manager from 3.2.3 to 3.3. Unfortunately ripping of audio CDs with kaudiocreator doesn’t work any more. Somehow the required kio_audio program wasn’t build. I fiddled a bit with the kmultimedia sources, but achieved nothing. The required source are there, but the program is not build. Who knows, but perhaps this is just as well. I think, the ripping of a CD under KDE 3.2.3 caused my company PC to come to a standstill. My 1 Gb of memory was quickly eaten up and after a couple of seconds more the PC grind to a halt. Possibly there was a kernel memory leak triggered somehow. Update: I found a hint in the Gentoo forums. A reemerge with “audiofile cdparanoia” included in the USE flags of kdemultimedia fixed this.

Xorg 6.8 Again, the update was easy enough. A minor configuration change in the “InputDevice” section for the keyboard in the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf. The “Driver” was named “Keyboard” in XFree86 and worked with Xorg 6.7. This changes to “kbd” in Xorg 6.8. The new transparency stuff is pretty amazing and adds quite a bit of eye candy. This Gentoo wiki entry has the details, what needs to be configured. Otherwise I think I’m experiencing some redraw problems with rdesktop, when connecting to a Windows PC. This happens in particular, when windows are moved or scrolled. I don’t remember seeing this before my update to 6.8

The Gentoo Wiki in general has some very good tips and HowTos. By following this tip I was able to operate audacity and xmms at the same time (the buffersize tip for snd-via82xx).

I’ve just finished “The Return Of The Dancing Master” by Swedish author Henning Mankell. What a captivating book. I’ve found it at my local bookstore in the English Books section and I guess it’s natural, that I’m writing this in English.

This crime story is just in the style, which I like. While moving slowly you never ever have the feeling, that the story drags along. On the back there there is a quote from the “Independent”: ‘Mankell is the master of the slow burn and The Return of the Dancing Master makes us crave more of his misty, haunted atmosphere’. This exactly describes my feeling. The books, which I liked as much as this were the “Bones” stories by Kathy Reichs.

While the story is fiction of course, I would think that the presented facts about the Swedish facets of National Socialism are correct. I didn’t know, that there apparently have been quite a few people in Sweden, who sympathized with Hitlers brain dead ideas. And that some even fought for Germany on their own free will.

I find a bit of consolation in the words, which Major Stuckford says in the prologue:

“No people are inherently evil. On this occasion the Nazis happened to be Germans, but nobody is going to convince me that it couldn’t have happened just as easily in England. Or France. Or the USA, come to that.

Well, Robert Strong was kind enough to post a comment to my article on trying to get Spellbound working under Linux. Now I tried it again and voila: it works. And I’ve found some additional things along the way.

First, I tried to reinstall Spellbound version 0.6 as root user. I had at some earlier time already tried to install that version and thought, that it didn’t work, since there was no entry in the popup menu for text areas and the Ctrl-Shift-F7 also wouldn’t do anything. But now, that I had reread the installation instruction, I read something about a toolbar button. Somehow I missed that until now. So, installation went ok and again no entry in the popup menu. But then I customized the toolbar and what a surprise, I could drag the Spellbound button to the toolbar and was finally able to spellcheck the text area (after reloading the page).

Then I completely removed firefox including the ~/.mozilla/firefox/ directory and started totally fresh by reinstalling firefox and then Spellbound as the only extension. Now everything worked as expected just from the first time including an entry in the popup menu. From this I conclude, that extensions like Webdeveloper and Mozex, which were already installed, when I first attempted to install Spellbound and which also modify the text area popups somehow influence the Spellbound installation, that an entry into the popup menu is not made and that the Spellbound key code doesn’t work. But of course this is only speculation.

So, I’m happy in the end and this is the first article written with the support of Spellbound. Thank’s again for a beautiful extension.

I think, I’ve finally found the right workflow for the pictures taken with my Canon G3 camera. First I’ve decided to use the RAW within the camera. The general recommendation is, that if you want to further process your pictures (color correction, contrast enhancement, etc), it is best to save the pictures in a lossless compression format, which would basically mean TIFF format or possibly PNG. JPG is not recommended since repeated saves would decrease the quality with each save. And the fact, that all required tools to process the RAW files are also available under Linux, further simplified the decision.

First there is the program dcraw from David Coffin, which does the actual conversion from Canon Raw format to PNM as the intermediate format. The final format is then created with either with the netpbm tools or with cjpeg from JPG utilities. And if you work with Gimp 2.0 there is the RawPhoto plugin, which allows the direct loading of the RAW file into Gimp. The only thing, that was missing, was the EXIF data in the converted JPG files. Then I remembered the the tool jhead, which does a lot of things on the command line, which Exifer does on Windows with a nice GUI. And my particular strategy works, because the Canon cameras create a THM file in addition to the main RAW file. This THM file is actually only a standard JPG file, which contains the thumbnail and also the EXIF data. Therefore I’m using the jhead program to tranfer the EXIF data and the image thumbnail from the THM file into the JPG intended for viewing.

I’ve glued all these programs together with a little Perl script named crw2jpg, which uses the Image::EXIF module to extract the date, when the image was created from the THM file. The script automates these steps:

• Extract image creation date from THM file.
• Rename the CRW and THM files to a name, which use the image creation date.
• Create the JPG file by executing the pipe: dcwraw | pnmconvol | cjpeg (pnmconvol does a slight sharpening of the image).
• Transfer the EXIF data and the thumbnail into the newly created JPG file with jhead.
• Autorotate the picture according to the respective EXIF flag. This is also done with jhead

Now if I wanted to improve the picture by applying some Gimp or Photoshop technique, I can always open the RAW file.

There is even a Java library, which gives you access to the RAW data within the RAW file. I found this link on Dave Coffins page.

Tja, das war es dann ja wohl mit dem Urlaub. Zum Glück mit ein paar schönen Tagen als Abschluß. Und wir haben es dann heute tatsächlich noch geschaffte zur Adlerwarte Berlebeck zu fahren. Wir hatten dann auch das Glück, das wir zum richtigen Zeitpunkt für eine Freiflugveranstaltung anwesend waren. Ich fand es sehr interessant, was der Falkner so an Informationenen zur Adlerwarte selbst und den Greifvögeln dargeboten hat. Die Adlerwarte existiert schon seit 1939 und wurde von Adolf Deppe eröffnet. Die Adlerwarte ist damit die Älteste in Europa. Es sind zwischen 180 und 190 Tiere aus 46 verschiedenen Arten vorhanden. Der obere Vogel (ich habe mir leider den Namen nicht merken können) ist mit 51 Jahren einer der ältesten Vögel überhaupt. Das aber auch nur, weil er sein Leben auf der Warte verbracht hat und damit eine Menge Überlebensstress weg gefallen ist. Auf dem zweiten Bild ist der Falkner dann noch mit einen recht großen Uhu zu sehen. Interessant war zu Lernen, dass es sich bei der Harpie auch um einen Raubvogel handelt und die größte Raubvogelart ist. Mir war dieser Name bisher immer nur aus Fantasy-Romanen als fliegendes Ungeheuer bekannt.

Und was habe wir bzw. ich alles im Urlaub gemacht? Wir haben in der Umgebung folgende Sehenswürdigkeiten angeschaut:

• Die Externsteine in der Nähe von Horn/Bad Meinberg. Hier noch ein etwas obskurer Link, wie mir scheint.
• Das Hermannsdenkmal
• Der Vogelpark bei Heiligenkirchen.
• Die Bilstein Tropfsteinhöhle in der Nähe von Warstein.

Im Vergleich zu anderen Urlaubzeiten haben wir richtig viel unternommen.

Und ich selbst habe in der Zeit auch noch folgende 4 – 5 Bücher gelesen:

• Shadowmancer von G.P.Taylor (Fantasy, in English)
• Wormwood ebenfalls von G.P.Taylor (Fanatasy, in English)
• Die Tote im Badehaus von Sujata Massey (Krimi)
• Der November Mörder von Helene Tursten (Krimi)
• Und nach langer Zeit ohne technische Literatur, habe ich während der Ferien auch noch etwas an Better, Faster, Lighter Java von Bruce Tate weitergelesen. Hier ist mir erstmals richtig deutlich geworden, was DAO (Data Access Objects) sind und ich habe einen Eindruck von Spring, einem Framework, der in letzter Zeit immer häufiger in den diversen Java Weblogs erwähnt wird.

Also alles in allem doch ein interessanter Urlaub.

Ich glaube, die Urlaubs-Ende Depression setzt ein. Heute war der letzte Urlaubstag. Dann bleiben noch Samstag und Sonntag und dann hat uns der Alltag wieder, aber volle Kanne.

Auch wenn wir nicht verreist sind, war es mit Ausnahme der wenigen richtigen Regentage eigentlich ganz schön. Wir haben es tatsächlich geschafft, uns einige Sehenswürdigkeiten hier in der näheren Umgebung (primär Raum Detmold bzw. Tropfsteinhöhle in Warstein) anzuschauen. Bleibt noch der Sonntag, wo wir vielleicht noch die Adlerwarte in Berlebeck besuchen wollen.