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Don't forget to tune in to the MacWorld Keynote tomorrow at 6 pm Berlin time. As usual, there will be no live stream, but you can follow the keynote transcript live with pics at the known places, such as engadget, gizmodo, MacTechNews (German), and this year on MacRumors. As you have probably heard, although Steve is not giving the presentation, there are quite a few rumors surrounding the keynote, so that we are probably in for quite an interesting event. Read on to learn more.

I have been using regular expressions within my Python projects for a while now, but I've never felt the need to use a full-featured parser generator. This changed yesterday and I had a look at PLY, a pythonic implementation for Lex/Yacc. Being used to parser generation in Java using ANTLR or Cup I came across some remarkable differences which I want to point out for you after the stop. You will also see a small calculator code snippet.

What many of you have been hearing about is finally official: I will be moving to Dublin, Ireland at the beginning of next year. There, I will be working for Hermes SoftLab, an international software engineering services company, as a Mac developer. My flight off the continent is booked for January 9th, and as you can well imagine, I am very excited. I cannot say much more at the moment, but I will be sure to keep you guys updated on my situation. Of course, in the first few weeks I may be quite busy, but I am sure our other bloggers will provide the site with plenty of content. On that note, I also have created a personal "to blog" list of all the things I keep telling people I will blog about, but haven't so far. Expect more on that in the upcoming days. Until then, pop open a bottle of Guinness (fresh from the tap follows when visiting me in Dublin) and send out a toast to me! Cheers!

Apple just released this press release a few minutes ago:

"CUPERTINO, California—December 16, 2008—Apple® today announced that this year is the last year the company will exhibit at Macworld Expo. Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, will deliver the opening keynote for this year’s Macworld Conference & Expo, and it will be Apple’s last keynote at the show. The keynote address will be held at Moscone West on Tuesday, January 6, 2009 at 9:00 a.m. Macworld will be held at San Francisco’s Moscone Center January 5-9, 2009.

Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers. The increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week, and the Apple.com website enable Apple to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world in innovative new ways.

Apple has been steadily scaling back on trade shows in recent years, including NAB, Macworld New York, Macworld Tokyo and Apple Expo in Paris."

So what does this mean? Well, Apple could still hold its own special events (at more appropriate times than in early January), but there are two things that concern me (after the jump):

Frankly, I did expect more from the Obama team when they allowed users to post and vote for their most pressing questions a few days ago. It seems rather half-hearted that many of the questions were omitted, and that the answer to the top question was buried somewhere between other answers and given real-estate of a single lonely line. See their blog entry here. Furthermore, the answers did not seem at all personal, as if someone had really sat down and thought about these questions. Instead, standard political answers were given.

Now I don't expect miracles from the president-elect, but if you start such a democratic Q&A, you might as well do it right, and actually respect the vote counts. Here, I feel the most interesting questions were ignored, and those that were answered felt like a quick copy&paste from the campaign book. I may be over-reacting, but I feel gypped.

What do you guys think?

When I see America's future president using Web 2.0 technologies to create a Digg-like website, where users can post - and digg questions to the president elect, I begin to grasp just how much I look forward to the next administration. The idea is simple: Anyone can post a question to the site, and other (logged in) users can vote for questions of their interest. At the end of a round, the ten most popular (most votes) questions are selected, and answered by Obama and Biden themselves. Click Read More to find out the winners of round one. I can tell you this much: I am really interested in the answer to the top question!

As you can tell, I've been in real video posting mood these past few days, and here is another little demo I have wanted to show you for a long time. It's a small app I developed a while ago, which does live color object tracking with your web-cam (in this case, the iSight camera from my iMac). I blogged about it before, but I think we all agree that a video would better explain how this little thing works than a textual description. So check it out after the jump!

Here is another little demo I want to show you guys. It's an app for the iPhone / iPod Touch I hacked up a few weeks ago, and allows you to draw shapes using the multi-touch screen. The app recognizes the shape you are attempting to draw, and replaces your squiggle with a nice clean version. Check out the video after the jump and please let me know what you think!

Hey dudes! Want to know what Trackmania Nations Forever looks like on the Mac using CrossOver Games? Well, wait no more and watch the video below, where I take the game for a spin on my iMac. So, why my sudden urge to video review this game that I have known for a long time? Well, in this video I not only demonstrate my awful racing skills, but also the soon-to-be released ScreenCamera (project name) for the Mac, which allows you to do screen-casts like the one below for free. Check it out after the jump (Read More).

If there is ever a time to visit the Mensa in KL, that time is next Wednesday. During the extended lunch time from 11.15 to 14.15 the Mensa will be serving the finest they have to offer. And I speak out of experience, when assuring you that the food really is splendid, all for an unbeatable price. Here is an excerpt of the Christmas Menu selection (in German):

Argentinisches Rumpsteak (R) mit Cognac-Pfefferrahm (4), Zapfenkroketten (1) und Feldsalat mit Kartoffeldressing

Gebratene Barbarie-Entenbrust, glacierte Maronen, Semmelknödel und Apfelrotkohl

Steinpilze in Rahm, glacierte Maronen, Semmelknödel und Apfelrotkohl

Geschnetzelte Schweinelende in Dijonsenfsoße, Spätzle

Lachs-Jakobsmuschel-Spieß, Zitronengras-Soße (3) mit frischem Gemüse und Sesamnudeln

Buffet: gebackene Garnelen, Roastbeef (R) rosa gebraten, Auswahl von Sushi und Räucherfisch, und vieles mehr

Obviously it's best to come early, and to team up with a few people (who don't mind sharing their food) to get the most out of all dishes. Alternatively, you can grab a plastic box at the buffet to take some of the stuff (like Sushi) home. See you there!