Leveraging synergy in this championship year
Michael Davies' Blog
Michael Davies
michael [at] the-davies.net
GPG Id: 0x0AA9D6FC
RSS feed.
Local
chicago
docs
photo blog
planet
site-index
software
News
lwn
/.
linuxtoday
kernel traffic
theregister
abc
bom
Software
sourceforge
savanna
tigris
ibiblio
freshmeat
tridge's junkcode
Software Development wiki
My Software
Utility
Free DNS
absolute truth
google
wikipedia
convert currency
convert time
convert tongues
convert temperature
convert temperature (2)
linux man pages
thesaurus
dictionary
acronyms
street maps downunder
street maps usa
toilets downunder
Powered by PyBlosxom
Copyright © 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 Michael Davies,
All Rights Reserved.
All opinions are mine only.
Aussie fair use
Good news on the fair use front reported here.
Nokia 770
My Nokia 770 arrived today in the post. Rock. This is is a very cool little box. This is "first post" using it - next step is loading up the development environment, and porting some python over. And don't forget self to donate to the GNOME Foundation like Nokia requests - Thanks Nokia for the cool box and for supporting GNOME!
p.l.o.a. problems
Andrew, that p.l.o.a. issue is already known (thanks wildfire) and scheduled to be fixed (and is my fault that it hasn't yet been fixed). Hopefully over the Christmas break this and atom support can get added when I get a round tuit.
Linksys NSLU2
So my latest toy is a Linksys NSLU2 "slug" home NAS unit. Look at that great size - just al little bigger than a Treo650. It arrived yesterday from OzTechnologies and everyting just worked.
Well, almost.
The USB hard drive I plugged it into wasn't jumpered right - which wasn't my fault as the drive was assembled into the USB case by the company I bought it from - and consequently the slug failed to properly format the drive as ext2. This meant plugging it into shadowfax (my laptop), deleting all partitions, and starting over after correcting the invalid jumpering on the drive. The slug should have given me some diagnostic rather than just failing.
Setup of the device is very easy, with a web browser interface to control all settings. Giving the device a static IP address, a name that fits in with the naming scheme of my home network, creating a couple of users and shares are all that's needed to be up and going. Oh yeah, make sure you change the default root password too - the interface doesn't compel you to do so :-(
Then it was a simple as creating a desktop shortcut by using my Ubuntu GNOME desktop to the share, saving the passwords into my keyring, giving me an easy way to connect to the device in the future.
So opening the share in a nautilus window is the next step, followed by opening up another window for ~/photos/. Select All, Copy, change window, paste. 90 minutes later all 20Gb of my photos are now on a network share instead of my laptop.
Yay!
Where to from here? Well, the nslu2-linux project is probably next on the agenda.
Nullifying the Patent Threat
Another honourable attempt at protecting Linux and Open-Source Software is the establishment of the Open Invention Network.
Looks like it goes something like, Promise to not exercise your patents against Linux or certain Linux-related applications, and you can use our patents royalty free.
It's early days (been going for less than 2 months) , and there's not much detail yet (what classifies as a certain Linux-related application?), so it's hard to judge the potential effectiveness. Nonetheless, any protection is good protection, even if it's using the tactics of the thought hoarders back at them.
Star Wars in 30 secs
Star Wars in 30 seconds from the Bunnies has just been released!
Riemann's Hypothesis
I'm most productive in the morning, so in my calendar I block out all time before midday for me to actual do technical work (as opposed to attending meetings / managing people).
This works generally well, except for people who think they're too important to honour previously made calendar commitments :-( Anyway, back to the story...
The key is to say in your calendar booking that you're doing something important. Something that your manager / other workers won't want to distract you from doing. As many people at work have at least some technical bent, I need task names that sound deeply technical - something that at least sounds worthwhile and something they are unlikely to know very much about. That way I can get back into the zone writing code undisturbed.
So my solution has been to use some theoretical computer terms combined with some mathematical problems. Afterall, who's going to argue with a calendar entry that says, "Verify distributed grid for solving Riemann's Hypothsis". Laugh all you like - that (recurring) calendar entry stood the test of time for the last 6 months.
That was, until today.
My manager googled and found this - http://www.coolissues.com/mathematics/Zeta/zeta.htm - "Now I've saved you 3 hours every week"
Damn you Google! I now need a new fake calendar entry for Tuesday mornings :-)
19 Inch Dell LCD
Just took delivery at work today of a new Dell 19" LCD display. While I lose resolution (1280x1024 compared to the 1600x1200 of the CRT had beforehand) the clarity difference is amazing.
I'm still running dual head, with a Dell 19" Trinitron CRT next to the LCD. What was very acceptible yesterday is becoming unacceptible today - i.e. moving back and forward between an LCD and CRT makes my eyes hurt.
Fortunately both monitors have dual inputs, meaning that as well as the desktop being dual head, I can go dual head with my laptop too. And that still leaves one more VGA cable to cater for the spare Linux box sitting under the desk.
So I have a 19" LCD and a 19" CRT as the eyes for my main desktop development machine; a spare Linux box to do some auditing; and a laptop. It's getting to be a nice setup.
HP Laserjet fun
Having fun with C# and HP Laserjets
LinuxSA December 2005 - Christmas Dinner
Hi all,
As is the tradition, for the December meeting of LinuxSA we go
somewhere for dinner (no meeting topic, no speaker). You'll need to
register (see below) so that we can book a table of the appropriate
size. (thanks to Janet for organising this!)
The important info:
When: 7:00pm on Tuesday, 20th December, 2005
Where: Genki Japanese Restaurant
http://www.harima.com.au/genki/map.htm
1/9-15 Field Street
Adelaide SA
Who: Any Linux-minded people who want to eat with us!
RSVP: Friday, 2nd December, 2005
http://www.linuxsa.org.au/meetings/
For more information:
Email: organisers@linuxsa.org.au
Web Page: http://www.linuxsa.org.au/
Mailing List: linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au
IRC: #linuxsa on irc.freenode.net
Return from the dead again
After 3 weeks of the flu' I'm now back on deck. Just.
Generics go mainstream...
James, you mean like Ada83 had 22 years ago? and Java 5 also has now?
It's taken just a little while for this wonderful language feature to make it out of the trusted computing / defence / aerospace market... :-)
And before you say it, C++ templates are just macros, so they don't really count :-)
How to solve "resource shortage"
How do you solve the problem of not having enough "resources" to meet your project's deadline?
Outsourcing via Primate Programming Inc.
RSA-640 Factored
Schneir reports that RSA-640 has been factored.
Some links to follow up. Note that this isn't RSA-1024 by any means, but it continues to highlight that relying upon today's strong crypto may not guarrantee data security in 20 years time.
From one of these reports:
The factorization of the latest RSA number to fall involved "lattice" sieving
done by J. Franke and T. Kleinjung using hardware at the Scientific Computing
Institute and the Pure Mathematics Institute at Bonn University, Max Planck
Institute of Mathematics in Bonn, and Experimental Mathematics Institute in
Essen. The factorization of RSA-640 was accomplished using a prime
factorization algorithm known as the general number field sieve. Sieving was
done on 80 2.2-GHz Opteron CPUs and took 3 months. The matrix step was
performed on a cluster of 80 2.2-GHz Opterons connected via a Gigabit network
and took about 1.5 months.
Not trivial compute power, but not out of the reach of people with lots of machines, or lots of money. Can you say university lab supervisor?
Practical Implications: Use RSA-2048 as a minimum for any new keys. Review the sensitivity of the data you are protecting with RSA-1024 and re-encrypt if you need longer term security.
LCA2006 programme available
The programme for linux.conf.au 2006 is now available. And there's some surprises in there for those who've been before - 8 simultaneous miniconfs, and 6 streams including seminars and tutorials running side-by-side. More value for money every year. And I know of a few surprises that the conference program doesn't show :-)
Just remember, there's only 7 days of early bird registration still available. Don't you think it's time you registered to come to this great Australasian tradition? :-)
linux.conf.au 2006. Dunedin, New Zealand. 23rd - 28th January 2006 - Register now!!!
Parallel Peer Programming
While looking at Planet+ I found Scott James Remnant's excellent piece on Parallel Peer Programming.
It's not very surprising to see that the fantastic efforts of Canonical are due, at least in part, to using some XP-techniques.
Bulky Pocket Syndrome
I now have a Motorola V3 as my cellmobile phone. The thinness of the device was its biggest selling factor - my wife is happier since I now suffer less from bulky pocket syndrome. There's only my keys and palm pilot problem to solve now :-)
On the cool tech side, the V3 doesn't have some proprietry gumpf phone connector - it uses mini-USB for both battery charging and connectivity. Under Linux it appears as a USB modem - something to explore to see if its useful in the coming weeks. There's also bluetooth, but shadowfax (my laptop) doesn't, so that'll have to wait.
Support Creative Commons
Support the Creative Commons fundraising campaign. Your right to release your content however you wish.
IronPython now free
Previously I ranted about how IronPython made a huge mistake by going non-free - meaning that Boo was now the pythonesque language of choice for cross-platform development.
So this morning I was pleasantly surprised to see that IronPython is now usable - it's changed licence to the CPL. This doesn't take away from Boo, but gives us even more choice for rapid application prototyping.
Well done Jim Hugunin!
World Wide Weather
What happens when Google Maps is merged with The Weather Channel? You get Weather Bonk.
It's getting worse
f(x)=6x+3 walks into a bar, goes up to the barman and asks "Can I have a couple of sandwiches please?"
The barman replies: "Sorry mate, we don't cater for functions"
Support NoSoftwarePatents by Voting in the Europeans of the Year ballot.
There's a new way of saying no to software patents - voting in the Europeans of the Year ballot, highlighting the efforts of Florian Müller from NoSoftwarePatents.com.
In case I obscured those links too much, here is the how to vote card and here's the ballot.
Do your bit to raise awareness that software patents are bad for consumers, software developers, in fact everyone except big multinational companies.
It's a Wonderful Life
That's it in a nutshell.
Converting ArrayList to string[]
For the third time today someone has asked how to convert an ArrayList into a string[].
ArrayList myArrayList = new ArrayList();
...
string[] myStringArray = (string[])myArrayList.ToArray(typeof(string));
That's how.
Support your local Debian Hacker
If you are able, you should support your local Debian hacker, lest he falls fowlfoul and have to resort to other means of paying for his beer.
And it would be a good test to the financial viability of an individual working on free software. Even if most starving hackers are not as famous as AJ. There's plenty of people I know who'd like AJ's little experiment to succeed - showing that career nirvana - developing free software with the freedom to scratch your own particular itch - is possible and is sustainable.
Go AJ, go!
linux.conf.au 2006 Registrations now open!
If you didn't see the announcement, registrations are now open for linux.conf.au 2006!
Also note that an ever-growing list of speakers and miniconfs are now available.
Ubuntu Release Party changes time
There's been a change to the Adelaide Ubuntu Release Party time - now at 2100 instead of 1800 so that you can go to the LinuxSA meeting beforehand...
LinuxSA October 2005 - Transmission of IP datagrams on avian carriers
Hi all,
Time for the LinuxSA October 2005 Meeting announcement...
CHANGED DATE! PLEASE NOTE BELOW!
We're privileged to have Peter N. M. Hansteen from Norway speaking at
our meeting this month on a topic that has been of particular interest
to LinuxSA members over the years (CPIP):
http://www.linuxsa.org.au/pipermail/linuxsa/2001-May/028952.html
http://www.linuxsa.org.au/pipermail/linuxsa/2001-May/029292.html
http://www.linuxsa.org.au/pipermail/linuxsa-talk/2004-December/000159.html
As Peter will be in Adelaide for only a brief time (which does not
overlap our usual meeting date), the meeting for October has been
moved from 18/Oct to 13/Oct.
The usual details:
When: 7:00pm-9:30pm (doors open 6:45pm) on
Thursday, 13th October, 2005
Where: Senior Secondary Assessment Board
of South Australia (SSABSA)
Boardroom (1st floor)
60 Greenhill Road
Wayville SA
Cost: FREE
Who: Anyone and everyone.
No pre-registration necessary.
Presentation:
While some draft internet standards get implemented almost before
they are fully specified, it took 11 years for RFC 1149 (The
transmission of IP datagrams on avian carriers) to be implemented.
A member of the first implementation team, Peter N. M. Hansteen
presents an overview of the CPIP working group activities, including
a view to future development.
Pizza:
After the meeting, please join us for pizza at San Giorgios (cnr.
Frome Street and Rundle Street in the city).
For more information:
Email: organisers@linuxsa.org.au
Web Page: http://www.linuxsa.org.au/
Mailing List: linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au
IRC: #linuxsa on irc.freenode.net
Adelaide Ubuntu Release Party
If you're in Adelaide next Thursday (Oct 13, 2005), why not come along to the Ubuntu 5.10 "Breezy Badger" Adelaide release party.
Contact Ryan (xfesty computeraddictions com au) to let him know you're coming...
Sound activated flashes
Foo camp did fun things with balloons and sound activated flashes. Looks like it was good fun.
Re-found via nat.
Reading elsewhere on the web, things like smashing lightbulbs and popping waterballons work well. And of course the traditional shooting bullets through apples. More fun things to add to my todo list :)
So, just how much money would it take....
So, how much money would it take to make AJ be the Subservient Chicken for just one day? :-)
Any takers? (just so long as its recorded using Annodex, or other free software)
The Long Weekend
The October Long Weekend - it's the traditional "start work on the garden after the long winter" weekend. The problem is that with spending time in Chicago, our house hasn't seen any maintenance since late last year. Even worse is that the Davies family have seen 3 winters in a _row_ :-)
So it was time to mow the lawns, weed, move stuff, remove dead stuff, plant, decide, purchase, arrange etc etc etc. An all day activity. So busy that I missed a phone-hook up meeting. Sorry guys :-(
The weekend did have a fun aspect to it - on Saturday I went mountain bike riding through Mt Crawford forest. Of course the guys I went with wanted to take the black diamond track, the most difficult, which just added to the fun. While there were some good stacks, I somehow avoided coming off. Very beautiful scenery, and some good exercise - will do this again soon.
All the best
Today the final set of people from the black day leave. Goodbye Trev, Scotty, Glen and Eunice! You were some of the best people to work with, both technically and as part of a team. All the best with Sarugo - securing your digital memories.
LCA2006: paper judging just about complete
I just finished judging papers for linux.conf.au 2006 last night, which really meant transcribing my results into the system and double checking the scores.
Again we have a great range of familiar faces presenting new stuff, and a lot of new faces too. LCA2006 should again be a nice eclectic mix of warm and fuzzy open-source goodness and cool fun - the best conference mix on the planet!
Which of course brings us to you. The excitement is building in the community, the logistics are well at hand, the speakers are almost decided and announced, but are you going to be there? If you haven't been yet, it's time to change that.
linux.conf.au 2006. Dunedin, New Zealand. 23rd - 28th January 2006
Some Advantages
There are some advantages to having your own server on-line.
Plug for booq
My mother-in-law just purchased a 14" iBook, and she wanted a Booq laptop sleeve to fit. Of course the 3 Australian distributors of the product don't sell this model in Australia, so it had to be a direct order to the US of A. Grumble.
So I ordered the sleeve from the USA direct from Booq (at exorbitant shipping cost), but they made an error in shipping by sending me the Vyper M (for 15" PowerBook) instead of the Vyper XM (for 14" iBook). Grumble grumble grumble. But they redeemed themselves by shipping me the right model as soon as I reported the error - no questions asked, no additional cost to me. Their response was the best I've had when purchasing something from overseas over the 'net and something going wrong.
Great customer service Booq! - and from the look on my mother-in-law's face, excellent product!
LinuxSA September 2005 - Introduction to TYPO3
Hi all,
Time for the LinuxSA September Meeting announcement (it's Tuesday
week). This month we have a special guest presenter from Germany...
The usual details:
When: 7:00pm-9:30pm (doors open 6:45pm) on
Tuesday, 20th September, 2005
Where: Senior Secondary Assessment Board
of South Australia (SSABSA)
Boardroom (1st floor)
60 Greenhill Road
Wayville SA
Cost: FREE
Who: Anyone and everyone.
No pre-registration necessary.
Presentation:
Ingmar Schlecht will be giving an introductory talk on TYPO3
(http://www.typo3.com/ and http://www.typo3.org/), an
enterprise-quality Open Source content management system. Ingmar is
a TYPO3 developer from Germany, working in Australia for a couple of
months.
Pizza:
After the meeting, please join us for pizza at San Giorgios (cnr.
Frome Street and Rundle Street in the city).
For more information:
Email: organisers@linuxsa.org.au
Web Page: http://www.linuxsa.org.au/
Mailing List: linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au
IRC: #linuxsa on irc.freenode.net
IP Address parsing weirdness
Hmmm, I wouldn't have expected this:
string str = "2.10";
if (null != System.Net.IPAddress.Parse(str))
{
System.Console.WriteLine("This is an IP address");
}
else
{
System.Console.WriteLine("This is NOT an IP address");
}
Can you guess what is printed? I didn't know you could abbreviate IPv4 addresses. Can anyone point me to an RFC that justifies this weirdness?
Update: Well, I'll be a suck egg mule. See your local copy of inet(3N).
Houseboat 2005
Spent last weekend travelling from Murray Bridge to Mannum via houseboat. Eat. Sleep. Play cards. Rest. A wonderful weekend.
Bad Jokes
Following in the same vein as these bad jokes comes this:
A neutron goes into a bar and asks the bartender, "How much for a beer?"
The bartender replies, "For you, no charge."
The masses complain, I fix.
Well, at least that problem is.
Code Comments Aren't Evil
Stewart writes, "Comments Are Evil", most specifically, "Remember kids, comments in code are evil. They are wrong - or misleading at best".
Unfortunately, this is wrong advice.
Code comments can be misleading - they can do more harm than good. But I've seen both ends of the spectrum, the Ada-comment-every-line-describing-what-the-loc-does and the *nix kernel hacking idea of the-code-is-your-comments idea. Both are extremes and both are wrong, even though "the definitive record is the code itself".
Code comments should:
- state the functional intention of what the block of code is trying to achieve, not how it is achieving it;
- highlight any tricky gotchas for future maintainers; and
- identify any use of common algorithms or design patterns or similar so that someone trying to understand it may get a leg up.
Getting the level of commenting right is hard, especially if you haven't written much code, or if you are unfamiliar with the domain or the implementation language. But commenting done right can greatly assist yourself and others when you revisit that chunk of code - whether that be to find that heisenbug, or to add new functionality, or even just understand what you were trying to achieve back 3 weeks ago.
More good junkcode
Ian Wienard's published junkcode collection is pretty cool. Sometimes the solutions being solved are a little obscure, but real-world and not contrived.
Good stuff.
ImageMagick Book
Well done Mikal!
The Definitive Guide to ImageMagick book is now up on Amazon.
Ignorance
More ignorance shown here:
And while you're at it, follow your literal interpretation of the Bible to teach young impressionable children that the Earth is flat and that we're at the centre of the solar system.
Without wanting to start a flame war, or some long heated discussion, I disagree with this opinion. You're welcome to have it, I just disagree with it. Being a Christian doesn't mean you have to put your brain away.
Random Update
So for the first time since arriving in Chicago I pulled out the bike and went for a 3 hour ride on Sunday. Felt really good except for the inevitable soreness on one's rear for not cycling for so long.
On the day job front, spent a few days in limbo going back and forward on what was actually required to be built. Besides costing us the few days of no progress while these things were debated and discussed, it had the effect of demotivating the team substantially. We're now back at exactly the same requirement scope that we were a week and a half ago (which was documented and agreed back then :-(, but now we have less time to build it, and the team has started wishing for greener pastures. Good one. It will be a busy coming month meeting this deadline.
In other news the infrastructure holding my vanity site together failed again - my investigations are pointing at a hardware fault in some network kit. Will need to play the "swap hardware one item at a time until you find the fault" game. More fun.
That makes my life sound all negative, but it's not. There's lots of positives right now too - plenty of personal triumphs that still need to be blogged :-)
Everybody Loves Eric Raymond
Free and open-source software comic strip - Everybody Loves Eric Raymond.
LinuxSA July 2005 - Using RPM and Quilt
Time for the LinuxSA July Meeting announcement (it's tonight :-)
The usual details:
When: 7:00pm-9:30pm (doors open 6:45pm) on
Tuesday, 19th July, 2005
Where: Senior Secondary Assessment Board
of South Australia (SSABSA)
Boardroom (1st floor)
60 Greenhill Road
Wayville SA
Cost: FREE
Who: Anyone and everyone.
No pre-registration necessary.
Presentation:
Geoffrey D. Bennett will be giving a talk on building RPMs, writing
RPM spec files and using quilt to manage patches.
Pizza:
After the meeting, please join us for pizza at San Giorgios (cnr.
Frome Street and Rundle Street in the city).
For more information:
Email: organisers@linuxsa.org.au
Web Page: http://www.linuxsa.org.au/
Mailing List: linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au
IRC: #linuxsa on irc.freenode.net
p.l.o.a. Updates
More people and hackergotchis added to ploa tonight.
The Black day realised.
So the Black Day has come to fruition. Today is the official last day for so many.
Today is the end of an era - this group of people is one of the most talented I've had the pleasure of working with. Monday will be very quiet around here :-(
Many of those departing have things to go to, so the mood today is fortunately upbeat.
LCA2006 Website Up
The linux.conf.au 2006 website has been turned on, replacing the dummy page that was there beforehand. Well done mjb and team!
Hint: book your airline tickets early :-)
On p.l.o.a. skin
sjh, have a look at the right-hand pane. What does it say?
As you can see, I'm not claiming the new look is my work :-) Most of the nice artwork belongs to p.g.o - I've just modified it to fit in with the LA website theme. There's more changes to come to p.l.o.a., but given my availability it'll be piecemail for a while, so I rolled out what I had so far.
Will he fix it?
Yes I will!
Ok, so I should have said in that previous post that I'll be fixing up p.l.o.a RSN. Just a bit time-strapped this morning :-)
p.l.o.a. upgrade - sortof
So I "finished" the p.l.o.a. upgrade, except that some people have found that it looks a bit broken under various OSes, browsers and configurations.
So why did I make it "live" if it's still broken? Astute readers noticed that in preparation for the new skin, I accidentally broke the original p.l.o.a. site. Whoops! So I had the choice of putting back the old site, or pushing out a nearly-but-not-quite-there new site.
The choice was easy - release early, release often :-)
Any reports of yuckiness welcomed. Just make sure you shift-reload in your browser to get the new CSS files before complaining.
toby-gets-a-reprieve
Rene, you can now relax. Toby has been given 6 more months to live. New deadline is November 6, 2005.
Tuxtype's looking for help...
sjh, have you considered taking on Debian package maintainership of tuxtype? Afterall, your skills as a typing tutor for linux.conf.au 2005 proved you have what it takes! :-)
Logo Update
p.l.o.a. has a new vectorised logo. Gone from
Stirling, SA.
We had a restful weekend away at a nice B&B situated next to the Downer family estate in Stirling, nestled away in the Adelaide Hills.
Stirling is a small town with a lovely country town feel about it - very relaxing - complete with a Saturday morning country fair and a protest march against further development.
Eating was a treat over the weekend with the local Siemers Indian Restaurant providing good spicey fare, and the not so local Sammy's Seafood which served up a massive 2 person banquet - delicious! The movie we caught was the fluff Mr & Mrs Smith.
For me, the highlight was our visit to Mt George Conservation Park - a great spot for a walking and seeing some magnificent views. I will be returning with my camera and tripod before summer, that's for sure.
Yahama DVD Region 4
mikal and sjh comment on my Yamaha DVD purchase, and suggest that all DVD players are sold region-free nowadays in Australia.
If that's so, why is there a region 4 logo on the outside of the box?
Region Free
So I decided to buy a nice new Yamaha Amp and was convinced by the salesman to buy a matching Yamaha DVD player. Of course I didn't think about region-free at the time - everything was soooooo shiny :-)
I spent not a few hours googling for region-free codes, now that I have the unit back home. No luck. Grrr.
Then I found this (see the comment labeled "...but what about the picture?"). Hmmm, could my unit be region-free out of the box? (Despite saying it was region 4 only on the box itself)
Tried it last night and it was so. A name brand DVD player that is shipped being region free by default. Cool - my collection of Baby Einstein DVDs purchased in Chicago are still playable! :-)
Adelaide LUG, huh?
Pia seems to be suffering from post-marital stress syndrome. Or something.
Does she mean Armidale LUG instead of Adelaide LUG (otherwise known as LinuxSA)? Or is this some thinly veiled attempt to overtake the efforts of the incumbent cool organiser? :-)
jhbuild just works
So tonight I'm using jhbuild for the first time in what has to be over 12 months to build all of GNOME from cvs (as opposed to just building the bits that I needed to play with).
I've forgotten how cool and automated it is. Well done jamesh and GNOME community.
Hackergotchis take 2
So the early adopters of p.l.o.a. hackergotchis are up and running, with a couple of interesting results.
Just as additional information, please make sure your PNGs are transparent, or else they get butchered like our fearless leader's did by a GIMP wannabe.
Hackergotchis on p.l.o.a.
Due to popular demand, Planet Linux Australia is now supporting hackergotchis. So send through your 70x74 PNGs (and IRC nick) to planet@linux.org.au and you'll soon be added.
Thanks again to the Planet Hackers - this little addition was already in the code base.
Update: Please send through your IRC nick as well. We might as well do it all :-)
LinuxSA June 2005 - Building and Running Linux on Embedded ARM Hardware
Hi all,
Time for the LinuxSA June Meeting announcement...
The usual details:
When: 7:00pm-9:30pm (doors open 6:45pm) on
Tuesday, 21st June, 2005
Where: Senior Secondary Assessment Board
of South Australia (SSABSA)
Boardroom (1st floor)
60 Greenhill Road
Wayville SA
Cost: FREE
Who: Anyone and everyone.
No pre-registration necessary.
Presentation:
Paul Schulz will be talking about "Building and Running Linux on
Embedded (ARM) Hardware": Linux (the kernel) runs on a large number
of computer platforms, from desktop PC's to Supercomputers to small
dedicated processors -- Paul is currently working with a
commercially available embedded ARM Processor platform used in
dedicated computer systems. The platform and the development
environment used are GNU/Linux.
Pizza:
After the meeting, please join us for pizza at San Giorgios (cnr.
Frome Street and Rundle Street in the city).
For more information:
Email: organisers@linuxsa.org.au
Web Page: http://www.linuxsa.org.au/
Mailing List: linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au
IRC: #linuxsa on irc.freenode.net
Sarge released
Old news by now - Sarge Releases. Congratulations all!
Just about everyone who reads this will of course know this fact already, but the real reason for me writing is to publicly distance myself from claims from silly claims that Debian never releases :-) AJ can now stop sending evil glares in my direction.
Apple moving from PPC to x86
Who would have thought that just as Apple gains momentum with their products, they take a huge risk and change processors?
Given the unavoidable teething problems in both hardware and software that'll come, I can see them struggling to makes sales for 12 months at least. I mean, who'd buy a Mac today? - no future in your hardware or software purchase. Who'd buy a 1st generation x86 Apple when they come out? And the 2nd generation stuff x86 couldn't be available until at least June 2007 - and that's 2 years away!
Apple make nice kit, and if they supported an open-source DRI-enabled graphics driver for xorg I would have bought a powerbook already. That's definately off the cards. Now the switch has been made, Apple will need to be become very price competitve - no-one's going to buy a similarly spec'd laptop for $AUD1500 more just because of an Apple logo. I guess that's a good thing for Mac OS X aficionados.
I hope Apple survives all this - they do nice hardware. I just hope they also realise they need to better support the future of computing.
BTW, this has new meaning now.
HTML Validation
This plugin allows you to do HTML validation inside Firefox.
This is very cool.
Not the first
D'Oh, AfC just told me he covered this first.
Fair Use recommendations?
Linux Australia is looking for opinions from members and interested parties on what sorts of things "Fair Use" legislation in Australia should allow. See Rusty's message for more information - email Rusty at his email address in the message to make your opinions heard!
Speak now or lose the chance of ripping your CDs to your iPod! (and other similar things considered fair and reasonable)
Echo
Echo... echo... echo... echo... "Rapid Application Development with PyGTK and libglade" at GUADEC looks like a simpler python version of my talk, "Rapid Application Development using C# under GNOME" which I gave at linux.conf.au 2005.
Good to see cool GNOME stuff getting talked about... Just wish I was there in Germany to hear it :-)
Note to self: Must get slides and software up on web.
The evils of aggregation
The problem in aggregating all your feeds together is that you miss out on the wonderful artwork some people put into their blogs. Worse, cool skins like the latest on http://planet.gnome.org slip under the radar because I aggregate aggregators for display on my personal planet. The Planet GNOME page rocks. Simple as that.
Perhaps some sort of skin change notification is needed.
Why I will never travel to Indonesia
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200505/s1378650.htm
Locked suitcases are now a must for travelling, and maybe even video tapping the contents before you leave. Something has to be done to stop this sort of stupidity.
Rain
First rain at home since the end of March (and probably earlier). 10mm overnight and now spitting. We really are the dryest state in the dryest country.
Krispy Kreme Konvenience
One thing that made the long trip home from DUD->ADL better was the discovery that Krispy Kreme have at least 2 outlets in Sydney airport.
No more flights through MEL or BNE for me :-)
Google Id
Some recent mismatches while looking for people - it appears Leon does the blues in addition to free software.
Rusty also does photography, Mikal has his fanboys in Illinois :-) but there's no mistaking AJ - has the whole front page of google to himself.
And in _my_ spare time, it appears I am a controversial catholic.
BTW, this all come about because a work colleague pointed out my newly improved google ranking, which which I'm very happy with right now.
Ghosts of conference past
So tomorrow at 0540 the taxi arrives for Ghosts of conference past 2006. ADL->SYD->CHC->DUD. I arrive in Dunedin at 1950 or so, stay for 2 days and reverse the trip home. 2 days travelling, 2 days in meetings. Now that certainly is two-double-oh-sux.
But the travel will be worth it to see what Mike Beatty and his team have already organised for linux.conf.au 2006. I feel really privileged to be able to have a (small) hand in this great conference for the 3rd year in a row. LCA is one of my highlights of the year. Cool!
Pia muppet
Go you little Pia muppet.
For the uninitiated, this is an attempt to support one variant of Mikal madness.
Dell I5K and Suspend
Good News! Ubuntu Hoary properly suspends shadowfax, my aging Dell Inspiron 5000.
That is, suspend to disk using ACPI works. Suspend to RAM hangs the machine still :-)
Thanks Ubuntu - much appreciated. Finally having suspend is great.
incompetence
Incompetence is not a rare quality nowadays.
This is unfortunate.
Sage - RSS Aggregation
Started using Sage, a plugin for Firefox, for RSS feed aggregation. That's only for my Windows desktop - under Linux I'm still deciding between Blam! and Liferea.
RHEL Purchase
So a project I worked on about 4 years ago resurfaced in the past week - the customer needed a new deployment and wanted us to do it for them.
The install had been running on Red Hat 7.2, but given the lack of security updates I suggested we move it to the closest enterprise-supported equivalent - Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 4.0
That's when the problems began.
Finding an Australian distributor that could get us the software in reasonable timeframe at a not-too-greatly-inflated price is not easy. Adding to that the slow approval mechanism of purchase requests and invoices, means that it's going to be the end of next week before I get the shrink-wrap in my hands.
If RHEL were freely downloadable I'd slurp a copy, and start validating our software while I waited for the shrink-wrap box. Alas it isn't, so my only choice is to go to a friendly local supplier who re-badge RHEL (following Red Hat's artwork removal guidelines to make it all legit) and use that while I wait for the "official" version to arrive.
Hoping to start the validation process tomorrow. In the mean-time, I'm testing our application against Hoary :-)
LinuxSA Apr 2005 - LDAP Overview
Hi all,
Time for the LinuxSA May Meeting announcement...
The usual details:
When: 7:00pm-9:30pm (doors open 6:45pm) on
Tuesday, 17th May, 2005
Where: Senior Secondary Assessment Board
of South Australia (SSABSA)
Boardroom (1st floor)
60 Greenhill Road
Wayville SA
Cost: FREE
Who: Anyone and everyone.
No pre-registration necessary.
Presentation:
Matt Geddes will be giving an overview of LDAP directories under
Linux:
- what they are,
- how they can be used, and
- a bit on configuring the service and using administration tools.
Matt enjoys having his Linux and Unix powered minion hordes do the
bidding of both himself and his customers.
Pizza:
After the meeting, please join us for pizza at San Giorgios (cnr.
Frome Street and Rundle Street in the city).
For more information:
Email: organisers@linuxsa.org.au
Web Page: http://www.linuxsa.org.au/
Mailing List: linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au
IRC: #linuxsa on irc.freenode.net
Police State
Seems the USA is about to become a police state - mandated nation ID with RFID. All the benefits of being able to control your citizens, with no chance of improving security.
As reported by Schneier, Miguel and rml.
Any bets on how long before Australians are similarly hoodwinked by a similar attempt at improving "security"? (better known as controlling your citizens). I'm just glad this wasn't attached to the AUSFTA as a condition of treaty or other similar misconception.
Fair Use in Australia
In case you haven't seen it, Fair Use is finally on the agenda here in Australia.
This is something interested parties need to be vocal on - here's our chance to speak up and talk about things that are broken.
What things need fixing?
- Having the legal right to format-shift music from a music CD to an Apple iPod (especially important since you can't legally buy music for an iPod right now in Australia. Aside: Why then are Apple selling them if they don't expect people to illegally format-shirt their music collection onto these devices?)
- Having the legal right to time-shift broadcast content. I should be able to legally record a TV programme or radio broadcast for later viewing.
- Having the legal right to play a DVD on my Linux computer. This is sort-of format-shifting, but also delves into the area of DMCA-style obligations from the AUSFTA. I should be able to legally create and use a player to view my purchased content if one isn't readily available (i.e. create and use a media player to view my DVD under Linux)
- Having the legal right to backup content (i.e. backup my DVDs to protect them from accidental damage), not just have that right for only software.
Big important issues for all content consumers. Speak up now - copyright was last reviewed in a serious way in 1971.
Bookmark Management
Started using del.icio.us today to do cross-computer bookmark management. I was sick of finding interesting things at work, and not being able to find them later at home. I could just do a link blog, but this way I can more easily share the love :)
A Good Football Weekend
It was a nice football weekend - Norwood beat Port in the SANFL, the Crows hold on and win, and Port are humiliated.
More linux.conf.au 2005 photos
Finally uploaded the remainder of my linux.conf.au 2005 photos - doubling the number of photos available online :-) Thanks Andrew for the bandwidth :-)
Find the second half of the conference here.
Platform Evolution
Edd comments on the need for platform evolution in GNOME. Whether you agree or disagree with Edd on this issue, the questions he asks are very important.
RAD with gnome talk
Sorry Colin that my talk was too basic for you. I was trying to cover too many bases in too little time. Perhaps a hands-on tutorial next year would be good...
Standards are important for documents too
Standardisation of code is a no-brainer. We need to follow applicable standards so we can interroperate with other pieces of software.
But we also need to follow standards when writing documentation. Example: I'm currently spending today reformatting a (binary) document by hand for changes in document styles. It's going to take 3-4 hours and it's very handrolic. There is no benefit besides consistency to be gained, but since this document is part of a greater set, the changes need to be made.
The problem is that a standard was originally agreed upon, but someone decided to start tweaking the format for some trivial benefit. Now since we had inconsistency, the format was reconsidered and changed substantially. Now I don't have a problem with that, but since the document format is un-machine-editable binary, the changes have to be made by hand. If the document source was XML it would be just an XSLT transformation away.
Laziness is a wonderful attribute of the OSS community. Spend more time upfront to save time later - the downstream task time drops dramatically, as well as gaining many benefits. See Tridge's keynote on auto-generated code in Samba. This is sadly missing in other worlds - the focus is on peep-hole optimisations and not optimising the whole process.
LinuxSA Apr 2005 - Linux Workshop
This is a couple of days late :-(
Hi all,
Time for the LinuxSA April Meeting announcement...
The usual details:
When: 7:00pm-9:30pm (doors open 6:45pm) on
Tuesday, 19th April, 2005
Where: Senior Secondary Assessment Board
of South Australia (SSABSA)
Boardroom (1st floor)
60 Greenhill Road
Wayville SA
Cost: FREE
Who: Anyone and everyone.
Pre-registration necessary if you want to bring a computer.
Email workshop at linuxsa.org.au with your name so we can keep
track of numbers.
Presentation:
Instead of the usual presentation this month, Janet Reid will be
running a Linux workshop with other friendly ITShare
(http://www.itshare.org.au/) people. Bring along your computer and
questions for assistance with installing, configuring, or using
Linux. Or if you don't need assistance, come along and help
somebody else out.
If you are bringing a computer, you must also bring its monitor,
keyboard, mouse, power cables, and anything else you need to make it
work.
Any questions? Email workshop at linuxsa.org.au
Pizza:
After the meeting, please join us for pizza at San Giorgios (cnr.
Frome Street and Rundle Street in the city).
For more information:
Email: workshop at linuxsa.org.au
Web Page: http://www.linuxsa.org.au/
Mailing List: linuxsa at linuxsa.org.au
qotd-20050421
"...when you move out of your parents' basement."
-- Jeremy Allison to Leon Brooks
Day Three
So today is day 3 of the conference. Perhaps I'm getting old or something, but I'm weary already. Today is the official conference opening, with the last 2 days being the "unofficial" miniconfs. Earlier sjh approached me about doing him a favour - and this morning it all came to light - someone had to be Tux.
So despite my best efforts I ended up featuring in the conference opening for the second year in a row, albeit in disguise this time. At least sjh wasn't able to convince me to ride a mountain bike down the stairs while wearing the tux outfit, carrying the Linus cutouts. You just have to draw the line somewhere :-)
So the conference proper was opened by sjh well, and the first of many surprises were announced. Speakers are able to hand out one 1Gb USB memory key device each lecture to whomever they wish. And it appears there are daily prizes of IBM laptops for conference attendees, drawn randomly - you just better mke sure you are in the room when your name is read out - unlike some unfortunates this morning :-(
Tutorials were next and I was stoked to do the kernel hacking one. Unfortunately my laptop wouldn't mount filesystems loop-backed, so I was stuffed as this would be something I'd have to do regularly in the tute. Most disappointed. But at least this meant I could drop into Malcolm's pygtk talk, which looked a pretty good choice as well.
Someone was faking DNS replies today, making life difficult for wireless users. Why they'd do this I can't understand.
The jra quiz show was next - which went down very well. Jeremy is a character. This is something we should do, perhaps over conference dinner, in future years.
Afterwards off to dinner with the Bennett's - both types.
Photos take 2
After putting up the first days photo on my personal domain and having it flattened, a new solution had to be found.
Thanks to Andrew, conference photos are now available at http://friends.andrew.net.au/mrd. Right now that's only Monday's, but yesterday's and today's should be up soon. The permanent home will still be michaeldavies.org, but only after the conference finishes and interest returns to regular, manageable, levels.
Day Two
So Day Two (Tuesday) went well. The GNOME.conf.au miniconf went all day, and was pretty cool. Got to hear Luis Villa speak for the first time which was great. Lots of good ideas flowing around, in addition to the usual call for more people to get involved and also to get involved in grass-root evangelism as well.
Much better write-ups here and here.
Tuesday night was the Speakers Dinner. Nice spot, good food and great company. Utterly exhausted and to sleep quickly. Conference proper starts on Wednesday.
Day One
Started the morning at the Debian Miniconf, with Jon Oxer opening up and Bdale giving us the "State of the Ntion" talk, suggesting that Debian needs something better than SPI and should consider the Foundation model used elsewhere. Bdale also talked about scaling problems in Debian - the number of developers increased, but so has the packages. Add in the multiplier effect of platforms and there's a problem. At least insome people's minds. The other thing that surprised me is the almost anti-Ubuntu feeling amongst many Debian developers.
Lunch was at the Pickle along with Bdale and hangers on. General technology chat.
After lunch was keithp's talk on Twin at the Embedded Miniconf. Very interesting talk. Eye Candy crack in 100k. I should play with an ARM processor device sometime again soon. Afterwards sat thru Russell Coker's NSA SELinux stuff - still not convinced it's not a too overcomplicated solution.
By this stage my brain hurt and I decided to do a dry run of my talk for Friday. That went well, althuogh I just realised I've got one more diagram to draw still. Perhaps on Wednesday :-)
Nighttime saw a bunch of us go into Civic to some pub. Nice chatting to some New Zealanders - next year's organisation is coming along well.
Photos pulled
Pulled my lca2005 photos from the web - my webserver was flattened by the load.
Once I remember how to resize a directory full of photos, I'll put them back.
Loser
Random Loser who decided to rip off linux.conf.au by swindling a student ticket when not a student, and bragging about it on their blog.
Loser.
LCA2005 Wiki
LCA has a wiki up here: http://wiki2005.linux.conf.au
First photos
My first photos for the conference are now available.
Day Zero
So after church this morning it was a quick dash home to grab the suitcases and head for the airport. Virgin Blue got us to Canberra, along with 10 or so other South Aussies who were on the same flight. Penguin t-shirts and laptops were dead give-aways. As was the Sunray someone carried in hand luggage!!!
Next to me was Tim Ansell, another conference speaker, with seat allocation entirely by chance. sjh was kind enough to pick the both of us up from the airport - the last thing I expected the lead organiser to be doing :-) He was nice enough to pre-register the both of us too.
Off to University House, dump the gear, then to Manning Clark to chat with some of the team and then back with 7 or so hackers to Woodstock pizza bar - for tales of eating live octopii, discussions on whether Buenos Aires was the future haven of free software hackers and other miscellania. Good stuff. Back to Uni House for this blog entry in the library using a Windows PC (*sigh*) and then back to the room for connectionless hacking before sleep and the big day tomorrow.
LCA2005 almost here
LCA2005 is just about upon me and boy, am I looking forward to it. Last year (if I don't mind saying so) was such a great conference, but as an organiser, I didn't get to see any of it really. So now that another year (and a bit) has rolled around I am so looking forward to being a geek this coming week! Cool talks, catching up with friends, meeting smart speakers who have dream jobs, and having time to just cut some code.
Woohoo!
P.S. The Kernel Hacking Tute is looking like it's gonna be very hands-on and useful. Especially with Rusty and rml running the show.
P.P.S. All the best to pipka and jdub for Sunday.
P.P.P.S. Now there's a quiz night on Wednesday night run by jra. What other wonderful surprises will sjh and team unfurl?
Drugs in the USA
Over in the USA they don't have Paracetemol, instead they have Acetaminophen. Strangely, the local pharmacy^Wdrug store had never even heard of paracetemol, even though they are the same drug.
work
Today started with a conference call and product demonstration at 3:30am to people in the USA.
yawn. Is it linux.conf.au week yet?
Gtk# or Windows.Forms
Mikal asks whether developing cross-platform .NET you should use Windows.Forms or Gtk# as your widget set.
Good question. Mono now uses a non-Wine Windows.Forms implementation by default, which is a plus going that way. I think Gtk# looks nicer, so right now it might be looking at what your primary audience is - if you are targeting Windows and some Linux, go Windows.Forms. If you are targeting Linux, with some Windows, go Gtk#.
I think from a compatibility and stability front, Gtk# is probably a better choice today.
Looking out my backdoor
Just got back from Illinois, left the front door open, oh boy...
We're home. And safe.
Update: So our trip home was.... interesting.
We arrived at O'Hare at about 10am and checked in with the Qantas partner in that part of the world, just some "American airline". Check-in amazingly took over an hour as the lady booked our seats, unbooked them, printed boarding passes, ripped them up, and started over again several times. The worst part of this was for the 3 flights OHA->LAX, LAX->MEL and MEL->ADL she split up the seats so the four members of our family weren't sitting together.
Not a huge problem until you realise we have 2 children under 4 years of age.
So getting through security went ok, and saying goodbye to Heather who had met us at the gate, we boarded the aircraft for our 1pm flight. S convinced a gentleman to give up his seat so the 4 of us could sit together, which was very nice of him.
Flight went well, with the kids did very well on flight #1. Arriving in Los Angeles meant we had an 8 hour stopover, since the booking system I had to use wouldn't let me choose more sensible flights. If you haven't been there, the international terminal at LAX, the Tom Bradley, has got to be one of the most boring terminals on the planet. No place for a family of 4 to spent 8 hours waiting for a flight.
We went to see the Qantas counter about the poor seat choices and they were wonderful. Honestly, given a choice I'll never fly international with anyone else. They fixed our seat allocations for the next 2 flights and apologised for their partner carrier's ineptness. Thanks Qantas.
Finally boarding QF094 bound for Melbourne, we had a long 15.5 hour flight ahead of us. With 2 small kids that's a long flight. The 747-400 had a small mechanical problem with 1 of the 16 wheel brakes reporting a fault, meaning we had to detour for repairs. This was because Melbourne airport is undergoing improvements to handle the new A380 aircraft joining the fleet soon. But this meant the remaining runway wasn't long enough for us to land on with one brake out of action.
So landing in Sydney was our fate. Unfortunately Qantas left us in the aircraft for about an hour while the brake was replaced. Normally not a problem, but quite tiring after being in the air for 14 or so hours already. Especially with no refreshmeants left. The air hostess was very kind in lending us her mobile phone so we could inform friends and family waiting for us at the airport that there would be a delay in our arrival.
Leaving Sydney we soon resumed our trek and arrived in Melbourne, albeit thoroughly sick of airports and planes by this stage. Local Qantas staff there were unhelpful with luggage, causing a slight ruckass with our heavy suitcases that had been accepted at O'Hare. The detour to Sydney meant we missed our connecting flight, and the need to go through security and check luggage again meant we missed a few more flight opportunities. Finally we boarded our last flight, arriving in Adelaide 2.5 hours later than expected. Glad to be home.
Firefox non-free?!?!
This article interviewing rms pointed me to this fsf page which suggests that Firefox is non-free. The key point being that the pre-built binaries have something called TalkBack included which is bug-reporting software. I hadn't heard about this before - this is a real shame.
Warming Up
Chicago is fighting its way to enter spring. The last 2 days have felt more than warm - I even turned on the air conditioning in the car - even though the mercury reached only 77F (25C). It's almost overwhelming seeing blue skies again, and watching the grass green up overnight. Strip malls (shopping centres) are now selling selling shorts and bikinis, and the mood of people you meet has climbed following the temperature trend - the weather really does affect people's moods. But the warm spell was only brief - last night a fierce storm arrived, prompting another tornado warning, and plunging temperatures again today to around 40F (4C). Running to the car last night in the storm saw me drenched through to the bone as strong rain pummelled Schaumburg.
Unfortunately we'll see precious few moments of spring 2005 here - we're heading home on Monday morning. It will mean 3 winters in a row - although suggesting that Adelaide has winters is nonsense once you've experienced the same here in Illinois. Our belongings have been all packed up by the movers, and our suitcases are standing by for the trip home. S has had multiple farewell events with her new girlfriends, and I've been out to lunch with work colleagues several times. Right now we're in the calm before the storm - the 3 flights that will take us home.
ploon.net goes live
Opened up ploon.net - my photoblogging site. We'll see how it goes.
Congraulations on conference sellout
Congratulations to sjh and team for selling out linux.conf.au 2005!
Krispy Kreme in Australia
Time to petition Krispy Kreme to open stores in Australian states other that Sydney (with Adelaide being the next state! :-)
http://www.krispykreme.com.au/contact.asp
sprints for linux.conf.au?
This is from http://pycon.blogspot.com/
What is a sprint?
A sprint is a focused development session, in which developers pair in a room and focus on building a particular subsystem. A sprint is organized with a coach leading the session. The coach sets the agenda, tracks activities, and keeps the development moving. The developers work in pairs using XP's pair programming approach. This might be a cool adaptation for BOFs or for a future hackfest at linux.conf.au's.
shared source cluelessness
Rhetoric from an ex-Microsoft employee. I wouldn't normally mention it, but since I made reference to Shared Source here recently, I thought I'd better followup.
Steven makes points along the line of revenue. That's not the main point. Average Joe is going to continue to buy his Windows OS via a shrinkwrap because of the assurances that buying Microsoft gives him. It's the same as Red Hat - take Fedora and package it - that's RHEL. Why do people buy free software? The assurances and the paid support. MS would not lose in this scenario by embracing open-source.
The main issue is modifiability. Being able to modify the code means fixing bugs. That's the major advantage of OSS. Being able to fix problems and guarrentee maintainability long-term.
Why doesn't my JVC video camera not work under Windows XP? It's too old, so the driver no longer ships withe the OS, and JVC don't care. This wouldn't happen with open-source.
michaeldavies.org back online
michaeldavies.org is back on-line after a few days in the wilderness. After a power failure it didn't come back and I was relying on remote support. What is strange is that it's back, but the TZ where the server is located suggests it's 2am :-%
This also means planet.linuxsa.org.au is back too.
Ubercool
Soon linux.conf.au 2005 will be a wonderful memory. Fortunately GUADEC 2005 will be the new thing to look forward to if you are a conference groupie. With jdub, davyd, AfC, conrad and gman all presenting, the Australia/New Zealand region is going to be very well represented.
Just wish there was the business case for my employer to send me :-P
linux.conf.au 2005 - 3 weeks to go
Only 3 weeks to go until the coolest-of-all-conferences happens - linux.conf.au - this year in the nation's capital, Canberra.
According to their webpage, there's only 22 places left. You'd better hurry if you were leaving your registration to the last minute! :-) Hope to see you there...
Personally I'm looking forward to the miniconfs, which I've missed out on seeing the last 2 years for differing reasons. Having some less formal chat and hack sessions will be great. Also catching up with people and talking about all the cool stuff that's happening, especially in the free software desktop arena. Oh, and I'm looking forward to getting this over and done with :-) Please, only ripe fruit.
IronPython makes a release, but Boo is fun
So Jim Hugunin made a new IronPython release here after a rather long break, and despite repeated calls to kick start developemnt again over the past 6 months.
In the mean time, I moved to Boo instead.
I was hoping that I'd still have time to track and play with IronPython, but now that I have some investment in Boo, that might just not happen. IronPython is *real* python, which is a major bonus, but Boo is *almost* python and gives me static typing, my biggest complaint against python. It's a bit of a toss up which one is better technically. But, IronPython has just moved to a Microsoft Shared Source licence, so the final answer is now clear - it's one of right and wrong. Boo, licenced under BSD/MIT, wins hands down. Sorry IronPython, you are destined to be history now.
Both projects have sparse documentation, so DumpAssembly has been quite valuable.
Cubeville frustration
mikal recently talked about distractions in cubeville, so did sjh. Right now I have a couple of different teleconferences going on over the other side of the cube wall, one to the north, another to the south, both on speakerphone. They think their comfort is more important than the productivity of the whole office. sigh.
I have my Bose TriPorts on, and music as loud as I can make it and still work, but I can still hear the details of this conference call.
The funny thing is that about a month ago the perpetrator complained to me because I was shelling pistachios in my cube. That noise was too much.
Breathe Michael, breathe. Two weeks and you'll be home. I'm not going to cause waves now.
Even Technorati tells me that cubeville problems are common.
ourmedia
Where can I store original creative works forever? ourmedia.
MSNbots
Looking through Apache logs yields some strange things.
The host 207.46.98.82, which resolves to msnbot.msn.com, is continually hitting my website looks for free software people.
For example, in the last 24 hours here are some requested non-existant URLs:
- /person/jdub/
- /person/rsharpe
- /person/mbp/
- /person/murrayc/
- /person/msevior/
- /person/rasmus/
- /person/hp/
- /person/bdale/
Huh?
Random Links Of The Day
Today's interesting links are:
- Building RSS feeds
- Canon lens reviews
- Free software photo collages
- New Camera hacks site
- What organising a conference does to you
- Photoblogging
- Turning b&w photos to colour photos
- 10 Reasons Why Software Ideas Must Remain Free From Patentability
- Blog Day! Blog Day! Blog Day!
- Running Injury Free
- GNU/Hurd Interview
This collection of links is brought to you by the numbers 0 and 1.
A few of my favourite things...
Building upon the list of things that S made - here's my list:
Things that I'll miss in Chicago
Chicago,
Our new friends,
Navy Pier,
Krispy Kreme,
Great Grains Crunchy
Pecans breakfast cereal,
StarBucks,
Barnes and Noble bookstores,
Borders bookstores,
Harvest Bible Chapel,
Best Buy stores,
Circuit City stores,
Comp USA stores,
snow,
WMBI,
Chevy's mexican restaurant,
Olive Garden restaurant,
The Mag Mile,
self-serve and payment counters at grocery stores,
Woodfield Mall,
Apple stores,
Uno's deep-dish Chicago pizza,
Millenium
Park,
Chicago
highways,
The gym at work,
Free Amazon shipping,
Friday night eating out,
No house maintenance jobs,
Column-shift cars,
Cheap petrol,
The NBA,
Major League Baseball,
The NFL,
The absence of revenue-raisers speed cameras on every road,
polite staff at restaurants and stores,
Old Navy.
Things I'm looking forward to in Adelaide
Adelaide, Friends and Family, No tolls or potholes on the roads, Driving on the correct side of the road, OBC, Cadbury chocolate, Haighs chocolate, Adelaide Central Market, Farmers Union Iced Coffee, LinuxSA, Froggy Cakes, Talking to people who say car-a-mel, not car-mel :-), Only having 6 channels of TV to choose from, Enclosed shopping centres, A sane affordable medical system, 50F (10C) minimum daytime temperatures in winter, No need to scrape ice from the car windscreen in the morning, Indian restaurants, Australian wood-oven pizza, No tipping, Adelaide Zoo, Kangaroos, Koalas, and Emus, Babysitters :-), Plastic money, Aussie Rules Football, The Redlegs, living in a city of only 1 million people.
First Shots
First shots with the new camera :)
PPC becoming mainstream
FC4 test 1 is out and announces support for PPC[64]. Couple that with Ubuntu supporting PPC[64] means that Apple laptops suddenly look very attractive. Cool hardware and cool free software on top. Mmmmmm.
G5 laptops from Apple are supposed to come along this year. When that happens, my Dell I5K, shadowfax, might get retired for a cool mobile 64bit platform :-)
Fort Wayne, Indiana
On the weekend we drove down to Fort Wayne, Indiana for a concert in their coliseum (sick). A great night out - well worth the effort to drive down. Guy, David, Bill and Marshall were fantastic, and a couple of the supporting acts were pretty exciting too.
We had to drive through Gary, Indiana which has to be one of the most industrialised regions I have ever seen. Steel mills, factories, railroads, smoke, pollution, and despair all were visible from the highway. This is not a place to go on holiday.
Passing through the industrialised area soon saw us in farm country which reminded me a little of interstate driving in Australia. One difference was the driving snow on the way over made things difficult, but on the way back we saw blue skies for the first time in months. That persisted all the way back home, but a return to grey clouds awaited us this morning. Temperature hasn't moved, being high-20's, low 30's (Fahreinheit that is).
Hash attacks
Schneier comments on more hash attacks. MD5 collisions in 8 hours. /etc/passwd soon to be in trouble.
LinuxSA Mar 2005 - Ubuntu
Time for the LinuxSA March Meeting announcement...
The usual details:
When: 7:00pm-9:30pm (doors open 6:45pm) on
Tuesday, 15th March, 2005
Where: Senior Secondary Assessment Board
of South Australia (SSABSA)
Boardroom (1st floor)
60 Greenhill Road
Wayville SA
Cost: FREE
Who: Anyone and everyone.
No pre-registration necessary.
Presentation:
Brian Astill will be giving a talk about Ubuntu Linux, "a Linux
distribution that starts with the breadth of Debian and adds regular
releases (every six months), a clear focus on the user and usability
(it should "Just Work", TM) and a commitment to security updates
with 18 months of support for every release."
Anyone with spare Ubuntu CDs to give away is encouraged to bring
them along (we ran out last month).
Pizza:
After the meeting, please join us for pizza at San Giorgios (cnr.
Frome Street and Rundle Street in the city).
For more information:
Email: organisers@linuxsa.org.au
Web Page: http://www.linuxsa.org.au/
Mailing List: linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au
IRC: #linuxsa on irc.freenode.net
New Toy
My new toy arrived yesterday. Woohoo!
[Aside: UPS Suck. I arrived home to find a UPS truck outside my apartment, so I ask the guy if there is a package for me - afterall, I was expecting one. He said that he didn't, and that it would probably come tomorrow. I went inside, a little frustrated. After talking to S, I went back downstairs to double-check with him - the UPS website said the package was Out for delivery i.e. in a van. I then found a note that the UPS guy left on the front door of the apartment block after I left saying that he had attempted delivery and no-one was home. That wasn't true because S and I were in the apartment. So I went to the Dry Cleaners room - the place UPS drops undeliverable packages. They didn't have my package either, so I drove around the complex and finally found the UPS van at another apartment block. After confronting him again, he handed over the package - he said he got "confused". This made me angry because he lied to my face about the package, and then put the note on the apartment security door after lying and didn't attempt delivery. This isn't the first time a UPS driver has been too lazy to deliver a package either. At least the camera arrived safely.]
Another one bites the dust
On the weekend we went and visited The Field Museum in downtown Chicago. Got to see the world's most complete T-Rex skeleton (not to mention the largest) - which has been named "Sue". Seeing paleantologists at work dusting off fossils on the other side of glass windows was interesting - but do they feel like they are in zoo themselves? We saw the Jacqueline Kennedy exhibition, which was overcrowded, hot, and something that toddlers don't enjoy even if their parents do. And what museum is complete without their own McDonald's restaurant, situated right next to the ancient Egypt exhibit?
That's one less thing left to do before we leave Chicago and come home...
DumpAssembly
After stuffing around trying to work out what name a .Net assembly used in an interface to an existing C library, I wrote DumpAssembly. At least now I can find class and method signatures, even if there is no documentation for that API.
I note Mikal did something similar once before for different reasons, and I know others have probably done similar, but I wanted to play with reflection anyway :-)
Europe and Software Patents
Big things are happening in Europe right now over software patentability. Looks like Denmark is joining Poland is saying that software patentability shouldn't be rushed through the EU parliament - it should be re-drafted to be fairer to software producers and open-source software, and not just benefit big American software companies . Very good news.
Monday is the big day. If you haven't already, you should have a look at http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ and read for yourself what is at stake here.
The New Newlyweds
Will jdubĄtv provide jdub and pipka the chance to be the OSS community's Newlyweds?
I know it's GNOME, but is it KDE?
Ratings
sjh wrote "this of course has me wondering where exactly on Michael's scale, using the numeric units 1 to 5, does the point a must read fall?" in reference to my book review yesterday.
This made me laugh. I'm been saying stuff like that for years - it's non-sensical of course, but it's my way of saying a scale of 1 to anything is essentially useless. Using "must read" is a much better indication of value. Are rating scales linear? Most often not - if you looked at the distribution of values of book reviews, say on Amazon, you'd probably find lots of 1's and 5's, but not many 3's.
Tangentally, S asks me to rate the dinners she cooks, so she can know if it was a success with me or not. My rating scheme is hevily weighted towards the top end - you'd never want to tell someone that the food they cooked for you was a 2 out of 10! (but that'd never happen as S is a great chef!)
Understanding Exposure
Recently finished Understanding Exposure: How to Shoot Great Photographs with a Film or Digital Camera (Updated Edition) by Bryan Peterson. I found this book really useful to me - I'm just a newbie photographer - so having Peterson explain things like the relationship between film sensitivity, aperture and shutter speed was exactly what I needed to hear. His explanation of correct exposures verses creatively-correct exposures made a light go off in my head. Similarly his division of different apertures into story-telling exposures, singular theme exposures and "Who Cares?" exposures, along with his discussion of shutter speeds - freezing the action, panning, and implying motion was succinct and useful.
Learning how TTL metering works, 18% grey, being able to correctly exposure everything from sunrise to sunset, snow, lots of green etc etc etc, all filled in gaps in my knowledge. Peterson takes photos that I like, and uses examples of his own work plentifully in this book. I like both his writing style and his photographic style. I've taken to writing some of his hints on 4x6" index cards to carry when out photographing. Out of the many books on photography I have read, this one is the best.
On a scale of 1 to 5, this book is a must read.
Intertwined Connections
Today I got email from some guy in the UK (Hi Paul!) who corrected me on some typos in my blog. Why was he reading my blog, and how did he find it?
I think the trail was something like "Slashdot ClearLooks story" -> archived desktop-devel mail -> ?? -> jdub's blog -> your blog.
Just goes to show that the world is very connected, and the flow of ideas around the world really does benefit from blogging. There were some comments earlier this year made by someone saying the linking to other people's blogs was just for vanity seekers (i.e. the google juicers), or for those who had nothing to say themselves. While that can be true, it's also an important way for ideas to be built upon, linked together and for conclusions to be drawn. As it has been said, "we stand on the shoulders of giants", and blogging not only makes that possible, but also accessible, for all.
Tornado
Another strange thing about living in Chicago, Illinois is the risk of tornados. Kansas isn't that far away...
Today at home, S and the kids were watching TV and all of a sudden the TV show stops and a weather warning replaces regular programming:
Tornado warning for Cook County in effect until 12 midday
No-one seems to raise an eyebrow, life continues as normal. My response is to just have a look around in the building that you're currently in and identify the room or rooms that are listed as "Tornado Shelters". About 3 times in the last 6 months the sirens at work gone off indicating that the risk of tornado is high. Talking to locals, there hasn't been a tornado in living memory around here, but nonetheless the warnings continue to go out.
outlook and exchange are aweful
Today I was sitting in a meeting, and one of the participants asked if I had a particular document. I didn't, and no-one had an USB key handy, so they emailed it to me.
The size of the content was 120Kb. It took 4 hours and 30 minutes to go from the local exchange server, to the Adelaide exchange server (the home of my mailbox), and back again to me here in Chicago. The network itself is quick.
Any of sendmail, exim, postfix, or qmail would have had the delivery done in a couple of minutes. Exchange's latency is just insane.
Spanish Blue
Last night was dinner and a movie in downtown Chicago, specifically Halsted St, which is sort of a Melbourne Street-in-Adelaide-styled cornucopia of boutique shops, fancy restaurants and theatres. Parking was atrocious - we ended up having to valet for the restaurant.
Dinner was at a Spanish restaurant called Café Ba-Ba-Reeba where the food de jour was tapas - entree-sized (that's appetizer-sized for USA readers) specialities of steak, chicken, mushrooms, squid, goats cheese etc. We just ordered a bunch of the chef's recommendations, sat back and started eating as all these mini-dishes just kept on coming. The theme continued into dessert, with 4 mouthfull-sized chocolate cake, pudding, sorbets etc. All very nice, yummy food, and quite affordable too - by Chicago standards.
The "Show" was Blue Man Group - what an amazing experience! The theatre and set was a sort of Aliens / The Matrix mix of pipes and gushing fluid. The audience in the first 7 rows wore waterproof ponchos - and believe me, they needed it. We fortunately were sitting in row 9, close enough to feel the goings on, not close enough to sufer the consequences. The show itself is a combination of rock music, comedy, and weirdness all wrapped up in blue paint. No spoilers here - it was very enjoyable, and something you should see for yourself if you get the chance.
Overall a wonderful night out.
correction
Due to popular consensus, s/Linux.Conf.Au/linux.conf.au/
Linux.Conf.Au 2005 only 7 weeks away...
This seat is reserved for you.
You are a geek, you want to code, you want to hear about cool stuff. You are part of the OSS community. You want the time of your life. You want to meet famous OSS people don't you ? You're looking for a project where you can give back. You're not sure where to start? That place is right here.
Register Now. Linux.Conf.Au 2005 - for cool hackers of all ages.
Fifth Sentence
Using my 35-70mm lens, I made several exposures in spite of feeling that this was not the shot I had in mind; it was very busy.
Learning to see creatively, Revised Edition. Bryan Peterson. Amphoto Books. ISBN 0-8174-4181-6.
da dada da dada da dada
Personal triumph today. I ran 10km. While the time of 61 minutes certainly isn't going to win me any races, it's a psychological mountain that's now been climbed! Woohoo!
Checkpoint
Going well, besides a slight ankle sprain that is. Today was 197/4.5/45. Tomorrow is the big run of 10km - not looking forward to it.
On the positive side, today was my first foray into podcasting, listening to Miguel on LugRadio. Worked well for most of the time, although I had to switch back to some music with a beat in the second half of the run.
SHA-1 gone!
Following on from the MD5 collision, it has been reported by Schneier that SHA-1 has been broken.
No collisions have been made public or even claimed, but the claim is that collisions are possible in 2^69 hash operations instead of 2^80. No immediate threat, but the writing is on the wall. We need better hashing algorithms soon.
Hula
Novell homesteads more of the noosphere by starting the Hula project - an open-source collaboration (read this as email and calendering) server.
As Nat says, this is a scaleable (50,000 simultaneous users and 200,000 mailboxes) proprietry product that Novell have LGPL'd/MPL'd. Looks like they have grand plans - an open-source equivalent to gmail for both mail and calendering being one of them.
The Ximian^WNovell guys do it so well. Evolution, Mono, f-spot, beagle, iFolder - they all rock. Now we're going to see an Exchange-killer added to the mix? Woohoo. I'm hoping this will be a resounding success - another piece of the software stack replaced by secure-by-design, virii-and-malware-free, guarrenteed-to-be-long-term-maintainable free software. Yum.
spam spam spam spam spam
Spam has broken through my defenses. Again.
I was bogofiltering, and auto-updating my wordlist, but only tagging definite spam as Spam, and lumping definite ham and unsure's together as Ham. The result has been that only about 50% has getting caught.
So time to try something different. I started my wordlist afresh, and am filtering Unsures to be manually dealt with. This will mean quite a bit of work for a few weeks until the corpus catches up, but at least it'll mean a more accurate filter for that junk that ends up in my mailbox.
So far (less than 48 hours) there's been no false positives, and the Unsure list has been small. Looks like my old wordlist really got bent out of shape. I was considering preloading my wordlist with one of those downloadable corpuses of spam. Anyone had good success going this way?
OSS Graphics Applications
Some good articles about the evolution of Open-Source graphics applications here on Newsforge with a response here on OSNews.
I've integrated Inkscape and GIMP into my workflow at work on Win32, as well as at home on Linux. GIMP has been great for a long while (and with plugins like photostack you can truely see its worth) and Inkscape is getting very usable - vector fonts on a path are sweet. The articles didn't mention the up and coming photo management tool f-spot, which I'm playing with and hope it to start using to manage the not a few photos that I've taken soon. I'm just dreading trying to catalog the shots that I've already taken.
Press coverege
Linux Australia got some good press for Planet Linux Australia on LinuxWorld, ZDNet, Slashdot and LWN. Cool.
LinuxSA Feb 2005 - Airstream
Time for the LinuxSA February Meeting announcement...
The usual details:
When: 7:00pm-9:30pm (doors open 6:45pm) on
Tuesday, 15th February, 2005
Where: Senior Secondary Assessment Board
of South Australia (SSABSA)
Boardroom (1st floor)
60 Greenhill Road
Wayville SA
Cost: FREE
Who: Anyone and everyone.
No pre-registration necessary.
Presentation:
Robert Hart will be giving a talk about Air-Stream, a not-for-profit
organisation using open source software and 802.11 wireless to build
a broadband network across Adelaide.
Pizza:
After the meeting, please join us for pizza at San Giorgios (cnr.
Frome Street and Rundle Street in the city).
For more information:
Email: organisers@linuxsa.org.au
Web Page: http://www.linuxsa.org.au/
Mailing List: linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au
IRC: #linuxsa on irc.freenode.net
Google Maps
Just found Google Maps. Still in beta, and only the USA, but cool vectorised, draggable maps. Very nice. An improvement on MapQuest, which inevitably gets me lost :)
Unicode
Continuing research into Unicode led me to this very nice document - UTF-8 and Unicode FAQ for Unix/Linux. What is amazing is that this document suggests that ken invented UTF-8 in a restaurant with rob. It's astounds me that these guys are responsible for so many important concepts!
Sara Super Sunday
Yesterday was Sara Super Sunday - combining Sara Yun's birthday with a Superbowl party. The Yun's were so nice to have us over again, this time joined by a bunch of friends to watch the big game. The level of excitement is not unlike a AFL Grand Final party.
The Superbowl is a 3-part event - there's the football, there's food and there's the commercials. All are equal in importance in this unofficial Amercian holiday.
For the record, the Pats won which went with expectations, although most people I spoke with wanted the Eagles to triumph.
Planet Linux Australia rollout
Planet Linux Australia just got rolled out. It was an action item for me to do as a 2004 Linux Australia Committee Member - and with less than a week to go before I leave the post it's finally done :)
LCA2005 Abstracts and Program
Linux.Conf.Au 2005 is only 10 weeks away, but to keep us all on the edge of our seats there are now abstracts linked from the speakers bio page, and a draft conference program is available.
Initial thoughts on what I must see? Jeremy Alison's and Robert Love / Rusty's talks.
I do need some place to hide on April 22 at 1:30pm though :-)
It's gonna be cool! - Registered yet? :-)
Dead Hardware
shadowfax's external power supply just died - no smoke, it just didn't power up. S mentioned something B playing with it and slobbering all over it :-) Fortunately my work laptop uses the same connector, so I have been able to survive :-)
The laptop itself is still going - but after 4 and a half years there are now cracks in the casing, the batteries hold charge for only 1/4 what they used to, and it's been known to throw spurious irqs occasionally - but generally speaking, given the travel shadowfax has been through, this Dell Inspiron 5000 has held up pretty well.
I will replace the external power supply with a surplus one bought from eBay for $USD16, but I'm not sure how much longer I can delay the purchase of a replacement. I don't really want to make that purchase while here in the USA because then I'd have to lug 3 laptops home :-)
Disney Photos
While I haven't blogged about it yet, there are now selected photos from the family holiday to Disney World on-line.
Furlongs / Fortnight
Martin commented on why he thinks GNU Units is useful. I haven't seen that trick before. Cool.
The reason I like having it around is so I can try and remember what the approximately equivalent units of measurement for furlongs/fortnight is:
You have: furlongs/fortnight
You want: cm/min
* 0.99785914
/ 1.0021455
That's why I like GNU Units, it's a game to play in the afternoon on unproductive days :-)
A Man on the Moon
I've just finished reading A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts by Andrew Chaikin. This is an amazing book, and makes me feel even more respect for those involved with the Apollo program. He describes well the large push of people and resources working together to achieve something astronomically great (pun not intended). This is one of those books that you only put down when you're exhausted from reading - not because you're sick of it. Chaikin covers the entire Apollo series from the start to finish and does a very good job of stiring up awe inside you. He introduces us to the astronauts, their families, the NASA staff at the Cape, and the thousands of people working together to make it all a reality. You really feel the achievement of Apollo 8, the tension and subsequent relief of Apollo 11, the we-will-overcome attitude of Apollo 13, and the anger at the early end of the Apollo program when the politicians lacked the will to continue. Some of the most sobering words in the book are that we've lost the ability to return to the moon. This is a book I will read again.
Having said that, his coverage of the most historically significant mission - Apollo 11 - is lacking. Perhaps this is to do with the reclusive nature of the participants, but it is a downfall of the book. I can't help feel that the book needed more coverage of what Armstrong and Aldrin were feeling once they detached from the command module and headed for the moon. I guess the author can only record what they were prepared to share.
I can't help feel inspired about my own goals and things that are important to me after reading this book. Big things are possible to those who try. And this book has encouraged me to try.
gnome-vfs mount
More cool stuff - this time tigrux bringing GNOME VFS to the command-line.
Ubuntu deployed in South Australia
Lifted from jdub's blog it appears a couple of South Australian schools are deploying Ubuntu.
Very cool stuff. If Tim is based here in SA, Geoffrey should get him to come and speak about the deployment.
I'm a prophet!
Wow. A couple of weeks ago when I saw those awful Bill Gates photos I thought that the GNOME community should do something similar for laughs.
Well they did. This is just *so* wrong on *so* many levels. Funny, but wrong.
Not as wrong as this, but still very wrong :-)
iPod Freeze - addendum
I made a msitake - the 40Gb iPod I have is a "Click Wheel" model, not a "Touch Wheel". Fortunately I'm not the only one out there who found the Apple support instructions misleading.
Just glad it's back and working :-)
iPod Freeze
My 40Gb iPod froze during a sync to iTunes. It's only 3 months old.
Grrr. So I try the documented Apple procedure for reboot - Toggle HOLD, then hold down MENU and PLAY/PAUSE for up to 10 seconds.
Problem is, the iPod stays frozen.
So now for the undocumented reboot procedure, via here thanks to Dan - the resident Apple guru - toggle HOLD, then hold down MENU and MIDDLE BUTTON.
So now to cancel that help desk call at Apple, and recharge, since the iPod has been on for the last 4 hours.
Have you registered for LCA2005 yet?
Have you registered to attend Australia's number #1 Linux and Open Source conference Linux.Conf.Au 2005 yet?
If not, you should do so NOW. Why? I'll give you 5 reasons:
1) There's only 2 days left for early-bird registration and you save AUD 230 on professional registration that way;
2) Rumour has it that the conference is well over 1/2 full already (filling faster than previous years);
3) There's only 11 weeks to go until it starts;
4) Andrew Morton, Robert Love, Eben Moglen, Ted T'so, Keith Packard and Bdale Garbee are all coming; and
5) Linux.Conf.Au will not only make your brain melt from overload, it's an aweful lot of FUN!
There is only one response possible - register now! :-)
Progress and Goals
Besides the last 6 days when I've been in Florida on holiday, I've been on track 100% for the last 3 weeks.
Today was 202.5/4.5/45 - goal is 176/7.5/80. I have until September to reach it.
Linux desktop demos
Nat's created some cool demos showing Mono and Beagle. Cool.
In other news, returned from Orlando and DisneyWorld. Overwhelming whirlwind tour - I don't know whether I can blog it all in under 50 pages.
Offspring
How not to build a mail client
Microsoft Outlook is really bothering me. It's my company mandated communication tool and it sucks.
Reasons why Outlook sucks:
1) It is very hard to change between connected and disconnected states. In fact, Outlook often gets itself into a state where no matter what you do, it ignores your attempts at going online if you've been working offline. Even stopping and restarting it doesn't help. The only recourse is to reboot.
2) When you are offline, client-side filtering rules are *designed* not to run. i.e. you can't filter your mail if you are working offline. This means that it won't filter email that you have manually retrieved - meaning that you have to manually wade thru spam and manually sort the ham into the appropriate folder, or reboot your computer and restart Outlook for filtering to work. See 1) why you can't go online easily.
3) When you are offline, you can't turn vacation on. From 1) you need to reboot, start Outlook, and then say you're going on holiday, then you can shutdown and walk away. Talk about unnecessarily delaying your attempts at going on holiday!
4) The auto-viewing of messages is a great virus trap. No more need be said.
5) Long distance syncing between client and server is incredibly slow. My Exchange server is in Australia and I'm here in the USA, and it can take up to an hour to retrive less than 50 messages every morning. In contrast, I can offline IMAP email between my Australian-based server and my Linux laptop here in the USA in a couple of minutes - and I'm pulling mail from lots of mailing lists. Did I mention that the company network bandwidth is greater than what I use to sync my personal mail? I guess I need to upgrade Exchange / Outlook to remove some of those NOPs.
Outlook is a great example of how not to design a communication tool. The Open-Source community should be thankful that Microsoft have done such a poor job, because they had the chance of doing something great before Evolution raced past it in speed, usability, functionality and security.
New Car
After the last incident the rental company agreed to give us a new car. In fact, it's a "free" upgrade from a mid-size to a full-size car - free in the sense that I'm not paying the difference in rental charges from a mid-size to full-size - not-free in the sense that we'll pay more in gas (i.e. petrol) during use.
They gave us a Chevy Impala. Nice luxurious car, everything that opens and closes, but it's so retro! If I didn't see the 2004 car manufacture's plate and the 4000 miles on the clock, I would've thought it was made in the 70's from looking inside. Think Holden Statesman Caprice in the 70's. That's the interior of the 2004 Impala.
Politics in January
Well, the silly season hasn't finished yet. Or at least no-one told the politicians.
Now that Afghanistan and Iraq are subdued, it appears George dubya has his eyes on Iran. What's next? Take India and Pakistan because _they_ are playing with missiles? What then? China? I thought the cold war finished over 10 years ago? Do I now have to consider a move to Africa or some other non-target region? This isn't a move towards peace, this is a move towards war. *sigh*
In other news, Latham goes and it looks like he'll be replaced by a joke.
LinuxSA Jan 18, 2005 Meeting Announcement
Hi all,
Time for the LinuxSA January Meeting announcement...
The usual details:
When: 7:00pm-9:30pm (doors open 6:45pm) on
Tuesday, 18th January, 2005
Where: Senior Secondary Assessment Board
of South Australia (SSABSA)
Boardroom (1st floor)
60 Greenhill Road
Wayville SA
Cost: FREE
Who: Anyone and everyone.
No pre-registration necessary.
Presentation:
Geoffrey D. Bennett will be giving a talk on vim. The talk will make
much more sense to you if you are already somewhat familiar with vi
or vim -- if not, run vimtutor (presuming that you have vim
installed), and complete the tutorial.
Pizza:
After the meeting, please join us for pizza at San Giorgios (cnr.
Frome Street and Rundle Street in the city).
For more information:
Email: organisers@linuxsa.org.au
Web Page: http://www.linuxsa.org.au/
Mailing List: linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au
IRC: #linuxsa on irc.freenode.net
frequent-flyer points
Today I looked into cashing in frequent flyer points to go to Linux.Conf.Au in Canberra in April, but alas there are no award seats available! What use is a frequent flyer program if you can't book seats 3 months in advance to a non-tourist, but high-volume traffic location?
Cold Snap and Cars
This morning it's 5F (which is -15C). Cold enough to make bare flesh ache. Thankfully we have scarves, coats and gloves. I'm wanting to find a balaklava in the local stores.
Major inconvenience from this was that the driver's side rear door on our car wouldn't shut once opened. The problem self-corrected after driving around with S holding the door closed with the heaters on full-bore for 20 minutes. Hoping that we can swap the car over - this is just too inconvenient. J enjoyed sitting in the front though :-)
Search Tools Compare
MSN Search
Lookout Search
Google Search
Beagle Search
As you'd know from other posts I've made, I'm playing around with Dashboard and Beagle, so as the proprietry world started copying the GNOME project's efforts, I was very keen to see what they produced.
Taking eat your own dogfood to a new level, I decided to install Lookout, MSN and Google Search on my work Windows laptop simultaneously. Despite having 3 indexes of everything now, and suffering from slowness when resuming from hibernation (when the MSN decides it needs to reindex everything *sigh*), I can at least now see how they all compare.
After a month of running all these search tools and comparing against Beagle (running on shadowfax, my Linux development laptop) my thoughts are that Beagle still has a few rough edges, but is just as quick and amazingly presents a better user interface (due to people like tigert over at Novell). Beagle does have some bleeding-edge dependencies (including rml's inotify that hasn't made it into the kernel yet). And Beagle, using Mono, leaks memory. But besides these things :) Beagle is doing pretty well - I look forward to it becoming part of mainstream distros.
So what's left to complete this is to compare against the Apple offering once it becomes available later this year and once I get access to a Mac :-)
The Right Thing
IBM today shows that it's not just a company that talks up open-source, but that really contributes back. They have opened up 500 patents from their vast portfolio for free use in open-source software. And they just haven't limited it to some OSS licence that gives IBM some monopolistic benefit - any OSI approved open source licence as of 11 Jan 2005 benefits from this gift.
Thank you IBM - much appreciated.
Wisconsin
Travelled north for an hour or so into Cheesehead-territory to have a look around to see what we could see.
Went into Milwaukee and found a confusing mess of off-ramps and roads towering over high rise buildings. Would have helped if I had brought a map along. Drove along the lake and almost got bogged in snow when someone tried to rear-end our car.
After that little experience, we headed south again on highway 43 South, which is also known as 94 East, which just confirms my earlier complaint.
Stopped at The Brat Stop, which is nice but dated family restaurant filled with normal ordinary country folk, not the city dwellers that you find in Chicago. Nice place with value food, most men wearing Trucker Hats, and TVs everywhere tuned into the only game that matters out here this time of year. We had a good feed and a nice break. I'll have to update the map for our weekend travellin'.
Voting now open.
Voting for the executive of Linux Australia is now open.
So go and vote for Geoffrey :-)
Sweet Home Chicago!
Chicago is a pretty city - and hugin is no fun to build.
Australian Made
One of the nice things about being here at the Schaumburg facility is that there is a nice gym available for almost nothing[1]. I've been trying to run 3 miles every day or other, since the weather hasn't been conducive to anything else. I'm really enjoying it.
Like the three-headed goat and hab, I recently dug out a Cold Chisel CD to listen to. Bow River, Goodbye Astrid and You've Got Nothing I want are all good for running, especially on my iPod.
It's great to be able to break the work day up by exercising, which is really only possible if you have the facilities available at work. Too bad when I return to Adelaide that won't be the case :-(
[1] Nothing if you are a US employee, USD 20 if you're me :-(
Snow Storm
Over the past 36 hours we've had a big snow storm which deposited about a foot of snow, in what was our biggest snowfall so far.
This morning I got up, waited for the heavy snow to stop, took some photos, and then gave a big sigh when I saw the car. Unfortunately my employer wouldn't spring for undercover parking, so when it snows there's a big job to do. On the car itself was a layer of about 10cm from bonnett to boot (from the hood to the trunk for the Americans reading :-) which isn't too hard to remove with an ice scraper.
The big deal was the snow between the car and the road. With a foot of snow covering the ground, it meant I had to move about a cubic metre (meter) of snow via snow shovel so I could drive the car. 40 minutes later the car could be driven - my hands were frozen but the rest of me was very warm.
Getting to work was a trial too, with traffic moving ever so slowly on the I-53 and quite a few accidents on the way (fender-benders). From leaving my front door to sitting at work has been almost 2 hours.
A Book Problem
I have a problem.
They say the best thing to do is to confess it. Well, there you go - I have a problem.
:-)
I love to read books. I love to visit book stores. This weekend, the Davies Expeditionary party of 2004/5 have been suffering from the common cold, so instead of doing the tourist thing, we visited bookstores. Oh oh. On Saturday we visited Barnes and Noble which was a quiet relaxed store with broad subject coverage - with some especially nice photography books. On Monday, we visited Borders which was equally nice, having some rarely-stocked books on Linux and Open-Source.
There's nothing quite as relaxing as grabbing a bunch of books, sitting down in the in-house cafe, listening to piano jazz, sipping good coffee and eating a toasted sandwich, on a cold winters day, and reading. Ahhhh. Out of the 4 day weekend we just had, we got to do this twice. Ahhhh. One of the best perks of spending time in the USA.
Without self-control I could have easily walked out with 20 books. I only bought 3 :-)
Christmas 2004
|
Christmas Eve was at the Zehner's, where we had a wonderful American time. Just like in Australia we stood around the BBQ, cooking up some food - the difference being that it was about -10C - brrrrrr! The Zehner extended family were very kind to us, inviting us in and making us feel very much at home over a big meal. Carol embroidered some beautiful Christmas stockings for J and B, and the Zehner's filled them with American-style toys such as a slinky and Jacks. J and B just loved it!
On Christmas Evening we went and visited Jon and Sara Yun, which we know from Harvest. The Yun's were also very generous, inviting us into their home for a meal and making us feel very much at home. We had a great time. The evening was capped off with light fluffy snow - meaning that we did get our white christmas! We felt very blessed over Christmas. More photos available. |
|
This web page is optimised
for standards.
If this page renders poorly, upgrade to a standards-compliant browser (like Firefox).
This page is Copyright © 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 Michael Davies. All Rights Reserved.