So I’ve got myself a new and shiny HTC Magic as a replacement for the old and dying Touch. And then I thought: hmm, Android is an open platform, and apps are natively written in Java. I know Java. Why not try to write something?
A good idea soon came from a friend: a client for the menu of the Mensa, university’s cafeteria of sorts. So one can look, while walking from the lectures (or sitting in them), what there is to eat today, and whether one doesn’t rather want to walk straight home. And so, a day, lots of coffee and a lot of googling later, I present you this wonderous Android app to see and download:
The app is not on the market, since I can’t be bothered to put it there. And at the install it says it wants access to your phone status and SD card data: I assure you it is the app’s own will, I did not make it do that. The permission to use internet connection is intended, obviously, but that’s all it does.
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download: Darmstadt Mensen Android App (87.54KB) added: 01/11/2009 clicks: 156 |
Which German mobile network do you use?
- E1 - E-Plus (0163, 0177, 0178, 0155, 0157) (38%, 9 Votes)
- D1 - T-Mobile (0160, 0170, 0171, 0175, 0151) (25%, 6 Votes)
- E2 - O² Germany (0176, 0179, 0159 ) (25%, 6 Votes)
- D2 - Vodafone (0162, 0172, 0173, 0174, 0152) (17%, 4 Votes)
Total voters: 24
Loading ...Finally, a new desktop. The “one-laptop-for-everything” idea doesn’t seem to work for me – not for long, anyway. Now, off to get Windows 7 and some games on it and give it a proper bashing.
Many users of Windows 7 are aware of the functions of the new taskbar – Aero peek, built-in progress bar, overlay status icons and jumplists. Many stock 7 apps use those, including Windows Media Player 12.
For the ones who dislike WMP and prefer the old good Winamp, there now also is a possibility to make use of these new possibilities. It is granted by a new Winamp plugin, win7shell, available here: http://code.google.com/p/win7shell/.
This plugin implements the following:
- Progress bar showing the current position of the playing track. Becomes yellow when paused and red when stoppen:
- Overlay mini-icons for play, pause and stop, also combined with the progress bar:
- Aero Peek – different options of displaying the track information, as well as album art and playback control buttons:
- Jumplist – a list of the recent and most played tracks as well as some frequently used Winamp options, accessed with a right click:
Plugin’s author is actively working on it, talking with the users on Google Code and releasing updates. I found out about this plugin yesterday and instantly recommend it to anyone using (or considering) Winamp on Windows 7.
A 42-year old driver has to pay 900 Euro for speeding on the autobahn Thursday morning. The man was going along in a rental car on the A5 near Weiterstadt. A camera has caught him going at 149 km/h in the road works area. Only 80 is allowed there, so the police. Because the driver has no residence in Germany, he has to pay the 900€ as a “security payment”.
Holy crap. I go along there every week a few times, and virtually noone is keeping inside the speed limit… a good thing I’m already out of the probation time, and have never been caught *shudder*.
Autobahn (pronounced /ˈɔːtoʊbɑːn/) is the German word for a major high-speed road restricted to motor vehicles [...], similar to a motorway or freeway in English-speaking countries.
© Wikipedia
Autobahn. A word that is familiar to every driver. One of the last accessible places on Earth, where one can take a car to the very limit, without breaking the law.
Yes, two-thirds of all German autobahns do not have a constant speed limit. Half of them do not have any at all. And still, the autobahns are statistically seen the safest roads in the country – less accidents happen there and fewer people die, than on the rural roads and in the cities. How is this possible?
In this article I would like to familiarise the reader with the phenomenon of German autobahns, their history, features and rules. We’ll begin with history.
History
The official term “Autobahn” is first to be found in the German documents of 1932. It described a “high-speed road without intersections and oncoming traffic”. The first road fulfilling these requirements was opened in the same year between Cologne and Bonn, and was built for speeds up to 75 mph, although only a few vehicles could even reach such speeds at the time. Today this autobahn bears the designation of A555.
In 1933, with national-socialists coming to the power, they begun a mass construction of autobahns. They were planned to be used for rapidly moving troops inside the country, and also as temporary airfields in the case of need. Under the Nazi propaganda pressure the autobahn network developed very fast, and because there were simply not enough cars to create any traffic, even cyclists were allowed to use them.
After the war, most of the autobahns were in a fairly bad state. In Western Germany, a restoration program was lauched in the 50’s, that slowly transformed into expansion of the existing network; a lot of construction went on up to the middle of the 80’s. In the East, however, most of the autobahn network still remained damaged right up to the German reunification in 1990. Little money was spent on road works in the time of the Cold War. East German autobahns had a speed limit of 60 mph, in places even lower than that.
Autobahns today
At the present day the length of the autobahn network in Germany exceeds 12500 kilometres. More than 50% of all the autobahns are unlimited; there is only a “recommended” speed of 130 km/h (roughly 80 mph), that is optimised for fuel usage and CO² emissions. Normal traffic speed in the middle lane of a mildly busy autobahn is about 85-90 mph, and it is common for traffic to flow at more than 100 mph in the fast lane.
Unique conditions are created to ensure safety at such speeds. Obviously, there are no intersections or traffic light; all autobahn connections are made through high-speed multilevel interchanges. Anywhere on an autobahn, there are at least two lanes heading in each direction, three in the more busy parts, sometimes even more. The road surface is kept in perfect condition: tarmac is renewed every 15 years at least, the lanes are clearly marked. In the past years, new autobahns are being built using a new type of concrete surface, that will require less maintenance and will serve up to 30 years.
On the busy parts of the autobahn, such as around big cities, electronic signs are used to display warning signs (e.g. about road works or congestion coming up ahead) and/or temporary speed limits.
Still, despite the heavenly conditions created for fast driving, a vital role in the security is played by the rules and regulations of the autobahn network. There are only a few rules and they are not complicated; however, non-compliance may lead to expensive fines at best, or a terrible accident in the worst case.
Rules of the autobahn
The main rule of driving on the autobahn (just as on every other road in Germany) is the “Rechtsfahrgebot”, the rule to drive on the furthest lane available to the right. It is this very rule that allows the vehicles driving at different speeds not to interfere with each other: slow vehicles drive on the right, and the fast ones overtake them on the left. It also works together with almost all of the entrances and exits being on the right, too: you slow down and switch to the right to exit, and you speed up and overtake slower vehicles going to the left when entering.
When entering the autobahn, cars already on it have the right of way. Thanks to this, the entering traffic does not disrupt the flow on the autobahn. However, there is one expection: if you have just entered the autobahn and are accelerating in the entry lane (which is an additional lane to the right of the main road), you may overtake slow traffic on the right side and enter before them. With this exception, when entering the autobahn alongside a slow lorry, you won’t have to slow down and accelerate again.
Only vehicles capable of going at least 60 km/h are allowed to enter the autobahn. Interestingly enough, the is no regulation for minimal speed on the autobahn itself – it is only forbidden to stop, except in a case of emergency or a breakdown. Running out of fuel is not considered a breakdown and is, in fact, illegal: there are more then enough gas stations along the autobahns.
Fines for breaking the autobahn laws are, as said above, quite high. So, for not keeping the distance to the vehicle in front, a fine can go up to €400 and withdrawal of the driver’s license for up to three months. Speeding tickets can reach €600.
Traffic cameras are common on the autobahns, some installed in certain places all the time, some deployed by the police. Also, the police can be seen patrolling the autobahns sometimes, in designated cars as well as undercover.
Future of the autobahns
The autobahns are one of the most important links in the german transportation network. Surely, this is a warrant for constant maintenance, modernization and expansion of the network, in near future as well as in the long-term plans. But many things can change in the upcoming years.
One of the main problems of the autobahn network is the amount of traffic, mainly by freight transport. Lorry drivers in Germany are prescribed to drive not more than 4,5 hours at a time, and between driving sessions pauses of at least 45 minutes are to be made. The problem is, there are simply not enough parking spaces for all the pauses and night breaks. Different measures are undertaken to solve the problem: new autobahn parking lots and rest centers are being constructed along the main routes, and additional taxation of the freight transport is being introduced.
Another discussed problem is the environmental issue. The main argument is said to be high fuel usage at the autobahn speeds as well as increased emissions. Debates on the topic are being held for many years, but no definite conclusion is in sight.
Sources: de.wikipedia.org, focus.de, Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt, many others and generally Google.
The 25th anniversary of the famous Tetris game will be celebrated in a ceremony on June the 2nd in Los Angeles. The author of the unique game, Russian developer Aleksej Pazhitnov, will visit the celebration himself. According to him the June 1984, as he at age of 29 first got the idea of creating a program for “Tetris”, was “just moments ago”. “I was strongly attracted by different puzzles. It was a sort of distraction from my main work”, said Pazhinov.
In the middle of 80’s Aleksej Pazhitnov, an employee at the Computing Center of the Science Academy of the USSR, decided to write a program for the minicomputers, that would represent a puzzle game.
He expected the new game to be an improvement of a classical game he liked very much, called Pentomino Puzzle. In that game, one had to compose 12 different types of figures, each consisting of 5 small squares, to a pre-defined large figure.
The first version of the new game was a program, that would rotate the displayed figures by 90 degrees around their center.
But at the time the computing resources available in the USSR and worldwide were not enough to run such a program. So Pazhitnov decided to simplify the game by removing one of the squares from each figure, making it four. This change also influenced the name of the game – “Tetris” derives from the Greek “tetra”, meaning “four”.
After the release of “Tetris”, many leading software and game developer companies of that time – Spectrum Holobyte and Mirrorsoft, Bullet-Proof Software and Atari Games, Famicom and his American partner Nintendo Entertainment System – started a long battle for rights to release all variations and console versions of the new game.
In 1988 with support from Hank Rodgers (president of Bullet-Proof Software) Pazhitnov founded a company for game development AnimaTek, and in 1991 Tetris company was founded. In five years Pazhitnov went over to Microsoft, where he worked on the famous puzzle series Pandora’s Box. And later, in 2005, he joined WildSnake software, where he had to start developing a new series of games for PCs and gaming consoles. In March 2007 Pazhitnov was awarded the Game Developers Choice Awards First Penguin Award.
Nowadays Pazhitnov lives in Moscow and Seattle.
P.S. The classic Tetris can be downloaded here, for example.
via habrahabr.ru
Things you come across in code. Trust me, this happens more than you expect it to…
// Magic. Do not touch.
//When I wrote this, only God and I understood what I was doing
//Now, God only knows
/* This is O(scary), but seems quick enough in practice. */
Followed by four nested for-loops.
doRun.run(); // ... "a doo run run".
/* You are not meant to understand this */
// Replaces with spaces the braces
// in cases where braces in places cause stasis
$str = str_replace(array("\{","\}")," ",$str);
options.BatchSize = 300; //Madness? THIS IS SPARTA!
last = first; /* Biblical reference */
double penetration; // ouch
In English, please
Bitte, in Deutsch
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