The Empire Weblog

JabRef: Java GUI for managing BibTeX and other bibliographies has been released in version 1.3.1.

This is the only tool I know which is able to provide you easy access to and an excellent managing environment for your BibTex databases. This release at last supports relative path settings to the directory of your electronic versions of your documents. So it's easy to share the BibTex databases as well as the documents with others over a network, e.g. through a CVS. Btw, if you are using CVS and MS Windows, have a look at Tortoise CVS as a good integration of CVS capabilities in your explorer, etc.

If you have ever been looking for a good program to manage your BibTex databases, have a look at JabRef! It's really good! And most of all: it's quick and easy! :-)

Just a few minutes ago, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) revealed the official Candidate Cities for the Olympic Games 2012. The cities are: Paris, New York, Moscow, London and Madrid.

Leipzig's application was rejected. There have been some doubts Leipzig might not be able to deal with the large number of visitors. Also the infrastructure in and around Leipzig shall have been a factor for the rejection.

What a prejudiced point of view!

If the IOC would have looked into the past of Leipzig and the region around it, then it had seen how the entire area was making a tremendous effort to improve public transport, national rail services, motor ways, quality of living and many other things since the German Reunification. Furthermore, the IOC could have pictured what could have been possible until 2012. A outlook full of promise. A outlook they will never gain from London or New York!

However, a decision was made in favour of the known mega cities. As it often happens!

I do really wonder, how London can be nominated as a Candidate City! London has one of the worst public transport and also railway systems I have ever seen. The world famous Tube is running more and more a bad service. The tracks' state is worse than you would ever expect. In Germany, The Tube wouldn't be allowed to run under these conditions.

Alone four train derailments last year. The last one only one week ago.

For over one year now, Central London is "protected" by the Congestion Charge (CC) from individual traffic invasion. However, now buses and cabs are crowding Central London. A recent poll even shows the extension of the Congestions Charge to the Kensington and Earls Court is declined by the Londoners.
The Mayor of London sees a big success in the CC. On the one hand it is. On the other hand it is not really. As already stated, Central London is now crowded by cabs and busses. The urban rail services are as bad as the tube, maybe even worse. Travelling in and around London is a daily adventure. It's almost never possible to predict how long your journey from A to B will last. Often you can be happy to arrive and not to be forced to turn back.

I am definately conviced, that London will not be able to improve this clapped out public transport and railway system until 2005, July 5th, when the IOC will announce the city for the Olympic Games 2012.

I think, New York will not be a good choice either as it has equivalent problems as London does.

I wish Moscow and Paris good luck with their further application! They have deserved it to become the place for the Olympic Games in 2012 as Leipzig would have deserved it too.

Today, I have found a very useful plugin for my bloggin engine. The Hivelogic E-Mail Encoder Plugin will encode plain e-mail addresses in your blog entry's body with help of JavaScript. That means, JavaScript enabled Browser will show your E-Mail address as ususal. However, your address should be protected against the known spam robots...

To install the plugin, just download the ZIP and extract it.
In your MT installation on your server, copy the 'hivelogic_email_encode.pl' file into MT's plugin directory.

Below MT's extlib directory, create another one, called bradchaote and copy the 'hivelogic_email_encode.pm' file there.

All you need to do now, is to tell MT that it shall use this plugin. Go to your templates and look for your <$MTEntryBody$> tag and add the following:

<$MTEntryBody hivelogic_email_encode="1"$>

Jim as designated co-chair of the new Grid Transaction RG (in foundation) is asking for possible use cases for transactions in [Data] Grids.

The RG is going to hold a session at GGF11 in June. So, if you have any ideas of possible grid applications requiring transactions, please drop or a line!

Remember, the GGF11 takes place in Hawaii ;-)

Yesterday evening, I found out that my current provider will close down by 15.05.2004. I have been realizing the last days, that something is going wrong there. However, I didn't expect this end. I think, the most worse thing is, that no customer was informed via mail or another official way.

Nothing of that! All information I have so far, I am getting from this forum thread: Where's GIWeb gone?.

Yesterday, the official websites of the hoster were hacked, too! Many customers became feeling unsure due to there was even no official announcement by Global Interactive.

Anyway, I have started to look for a new provider and found domain)FACTORY.

Today, I struggled with all the stuff to get my domains moved to the new provider. Everything seems to go all right so far. Let's see.