René Rebe

I updated my ExactImage-based QuickLook plugin to also correctly display 16 bit per channel files, enjoy: 1.7 update with improved 16 bit channel support. As usual: If you have another image format you like to preview on the Mac just let me know!

In late-2010 I already wrote in depth about Apple’s iTunes Connect App review times. As one of our latest Mac App updates kinda rushed a little faster thru the review, I wanted to give a brief update about the current state:

December 14, 2011 08:52 Prepare for Upload
December 14, 2011 08:52 Waiting For Upload
December 15, 2011 08:49 Upload Received
December 15, 2011 08:52 Waiting For Review
December 19, 2011 12:36 In Review
December 19, 2011 14:19 Pending Developer Release
December 20, 2011 00:16 Processing for App Store

While I do not know if that is just due lucky Christmas, at least it looks like the review times are now less than a week.

Update: And another such sprint:

December 18, 2011 06:15 Prepare for Upload
December 18, 2011 06:16 Waiting For Upload
December 18, 2011 07:57 Upload Received
December 18, 2011 08:05 Invalid Binary
December 18, 2011 08:20 Waiting For Upload
December 18, 2011 08:30 Upload Received
December 18, 2011 08:34 Waiting For Review
December 20, 2011 17:52 In Review
December 20, 2011 18:16 Pending Developer Release
December 21, 2011 01:04 Processing for App Store

Last saturday we went out to the thai / indonesian restaurant Goodtime in Berlin, Chauseestraße. While I have been there before -about a year ago- the last time was more of a short visit compared to the lengthier dinner this time.

My first impression was more positive than I remembered (I had some kind of canteen atmosphere in mind), the restaurant comes with some simple, white and stylish design chairs and painted walls. The menu includes the range of ingredients you would expect from an Asian restaurant: fish, chicken, duck, served with various vegetables, rice et al. And here comes the main point that pushed me to write this article: be warned that their kind of spicy is very spice. They really mean it. And this while I like and am really used to spice food. So unless you want to burn some flu away, and taste something beside hot, I suggest you order specifically without all the chillies.

All in all it was ok, however, for the price I would expect better, prompter service, as well as a more pleasant atmosphere: as the tables are placed fairly close to each other, the waitress’ often move them around to match group sizes, and when people come and go, including the waiters, they may often hit your chair, or table :-/

You can get similar quality food in Berlin Mitte, for nearly half the price at the Otito - only their tables and walls are not painted as nice, however the atmosphere is somewhat less hectic, …

With all the reviews about Bulldozer performance, I wonder how much is to be attributed to Intel’s compiler not generating latest, greatest, vectorized code for AMD CPUs, …

I still believe that Bulldozer delivers excellent server performance, especially when it comes to hardware assisted virtualization, and that desktop performance would look better with unbiased benchmarks, (and a better “core package” aware Window process scheduler) …

I got quite some CPU cycle requirements. For some time now I’m waiting for AMD to deliver sub 100 Watt (e.g. 95W) CPUs, but unfortunately the 95W editions of the Phenom II X6 1055T and 1065T are nearly impossible to come by (except you are an OEM ordering thousands of them). So I got a test system with the regular, 125W 1055T, and it just keeps running too hot.

While I’m still waiting for the Bulldozer to appear, and in a 95W flavor no less, I decided Sunday is a great day to experiment with undervolting the aging, hot silicon I got at hand. Actually it turned out the beast of a silicon I got can be undervolted by huge margins, from the factory settings:

NbVid NbDid CpuVid CpuDid CpuFid UNb CpuMult UCpu PCore
P-State 0: 32 0 6 0 17 1150.0mV 16.50000 1475.0mV 23305mW
P-State 1: 32 0 14 0 12 1150.0mV 14.00000 1375.0mV 20625mW
P-State 2: 32 0 18 0 6 1150.0mV 11.00000 1325.0mV 15370mW
P-State 3: 32 0 22 1 14 1150.0mV 7.50000 1275.0mV 10838mW
P-State 4: 32 0 26 1 0 1150.0mV 4.00000 1225.0mV 6738mW

Down to so far stable:
Read the rest of this entry »

The Chaos Computer Club apparently got their hands on the German’s federal trojan, 0zapftis! According to the preliminary analysis a piece of junk, full of security holes, …

For years the increasing trend for public monitoring, including CCTV, becomes questionable: beside common sense, many studies find no security improvement at all. Rather the contrary: due intended (but often not archived) cost savings, CCTV usually comes with reduced human resources for real people to be present, guard and inform citizens. Until someone notices a riot on a monitor the victim is usually nearly dead, already. In case the CCTV was not plain defect to start with, or the tapes (or discs) lost or already deleted, the images are usually too blurry to identify and search the wrongdoer.

It looks like the politicians have not learned the lessons from the former DDR, which is still known for their systematic monitoring of all their citizens. The western world will soon be on par with measures taken by the Stasi back in those days. An this despite all the memorial installations all over Berlin.

Some time ago I got a black NEC display which comes with four video inputs: VGA, 2 DVI and even DisplayPort as well as USB hub with two upstream ports. As I found no setting available on the monitor to change the USB upstream port to use, I usually just changed the USB cable when I had another computer for some testing on my desk.

However, today, I found out that there is a NEC MultiProfiler setup utility which allows to permanently assign dedicated USB ports per video input. This way I finally got a full KVM switch inside the monitor, assigning the first USB port to the DisplayPort, and the second USB port to all the other video inputs, used for temporary testing of various stuff.

Oh, cool: one can hack, and restore old SDK (and GCC) support in Xcode 4!

And also install Xcode 3 on Mac OS X 10.7, Lion.

I have not yet checked how well that works, though.

Updated: hack-installed Xcode 3.2.6 appears to (mostly) work on Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion), e.g. Xcode itself and the Interface Builder do work, Dashcode, however, fails to lunch due to some missing Framework symbol (_dispatch_get_concurrent_queue expected in /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib).

Since the beginning of this year I use the “Flinkster” car sharing of the German Railway company (Deutsche Bahn, DB Rent). So far this worked out pretty well, and the pilot run of all-electric vehicles in the region Berlin / Potsdam is a welcome bonus. If one happens to have to fuel, the cars come with a DKV petrol card, so one does not have to directly pay the gas, which is already accounted for by a per kilometer (think mile) charge.

So far this was not a problem, until yesterday. I did not even had to gas up. But as there was a gas station on the way, I thought it is nice for the next customer not to need to detour just to find a station in the middle of Berlin. Although it was a “big” Aral station I better asked if they take the DKV card, and was surprised to find they do not. Puzzled and thinking whether I ever refilled a Flinkster car at Aral, I continued my way, and there was a Shell station just on the next corner anyway. As I knew Shell worked earlier this year I just filled up the car, and was likewise surprised to find that this Shell station did not take DKV cards either, … Ieeek!

The employee told me every leaseholder of each individual station can decide whether they take those DKV cards, or not! And usually only the very big ones do, … While I find this pretty irritating, and annoying, the lesson learned is that one really has to check on each and every gas station if a DKV sign is in sight, and if in doubt: better ask. Thinking that the market dominating oligopolies accept the DKV or other petrol cards is unfortunately not enough, …

As I already fueled I had to pay myself, and and sent in the receipt to the car sharer. Hopefully paying back works out as smooth as they promise, …

We finally got another App for iOS. Actually I had this speedometer around with me for two years or so already for my own use. However, ad-hoc provisioned App certificates expire faster than you can watch after them, so often when I wanted to run it for my own use the provisioning profile was already expired. So I finally polished it for global distribution for all of you, and here are some free promo codes, enjoy:

LH3EKYM7JPXW
YLY7AW3PPJNE
HRAARNM7PMRX
WTNH3FF77E3N
YJLRA9JHLK7P
L49JW3NFHRX4
4JN3MWJMYE4E
7Y34J349PFLE
YMKYM9REKMR9
YKYT49RXKX9L
LM9YP4WEX6FR
NXL7MXNF7PPK
WHRJJXWTRXXK
93E63TFKPYF3
RE7H4APMLXH9
XTALKFX6PMN3