The week started with development on saba in phonegap. I got that to work with backbone.
I created a template to send invoices from German. Unfortunately at this point the amount of text that needs to be on there (numbers in both languages, custom phrases for the tax service) makes any attempt at whitespace impossible. I’m just glad if everything fits onto one page and I can send that.
There was a flurry about the BMW Guggenheim laboratory that was supposed to call in Kreuzberg on its world tour. Some extremists threatened it with violence because they have issues with gentrification, see Peter Bihr’s write-up. The most recent news that reached us was that it was rescheduled for Prenzlauerberg, but now there is yet another piece in Freitag about the lab.
If the goal of the lab was to provoke discussions about the future, it has been quite successful at that, though probably not in the clear-cut fashion that its organizers imagined it would. The discourse about gentrification is often hijacked and skewed and lacks representation and realistic courses of action. Anybody who has read their Jane Jacobs would say that it is inevitable that neighborhoods change. You can prevent them from overheating by releasing development pressure to other areas with targeted development. Freezing time is not a solution. Neither is socialism.
I attended a work session at Fraunhofer FOKUS about a report on open data in Germany. We touched upon most of the points that I have discussed about in the UK an the Netherlands already these past years so with all of that prior art, the Germans should be able to follow a clear path to open data.
Phonegap development continued in earnest but it turned out on the iPhone DOM manipulation is ridiculously slow even for the simplest of operations. Instead of trying to optimize a dog of an application I switched to native iOS development which should be a challenge, but the clear definition is a refreshing change from the relativity of web development.
On Friday I received a shipment of tyres and I could build up my bike again to tear through the city. That was a beautiful day.
Friday night I attended a discussion at the Deutsches Theater about the culture cuts in the Netherlands and how they could/would be applied to Germany. I piece about that is forthcoming as soon as I get around to writing it up.
