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.

tech/windows | 25 Feb 2005 | #

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.

travel/chicago | 25 Feb 2005 | #

correction

Due to popular consensus, s/Linux.Conf.Au/linux.conf.au/

tech/linux-australia/lca2005 | 24 Feb 2005 | #

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.

tech/linux-australia/lca2005 | 24 Feb 2005 | #

Fifth Sentence

Following like sheep:

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.

tech/misc | 22 Feb 2005 | #

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!

exercise | 19 Feb 2005 | #

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.

exercise | 18 Feb 2005 | #

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.

tech/code | 17 Feb 2005 | #

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.

tech/code | 16 Feb 2005 | #

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?

meta | 16 Feb 2005 | #

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.

tech/code | 11 Feb 2005 | #

Press coverege

Linux Australia got some good press for Planet Linux Australia on LinuxWorld, ZDNet, Slashdot and LWN. Cool.

tech/linux-australia | 10 Feb 2005 | #

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

tech/LinuxSA | 09 Feb 2005 | #

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 :)

tech/code | 09 Feb 2005 | #

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!

tech/code | 08 Feb 2005 | #

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.

travel/chicago | 08 Feb 2005 | #

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 :)

tech/linux-australia | 05 Feb 2005 | #

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? :-)

tech/linux-australia/lca2005 | 04 Feb 2005 | #

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 :-)

meta | 04 Feb 2005 | #

Disney Photos

While I haven't blogged about it yet, there are now selected photos from the family holiday to Disney World on-line.

travel/chicago | 04 Feb 2005 | #

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 :-)

tech/misc | 02 Feb 2005 | #

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.

tech/books | 02 Feb 2005 | #

gnome-vfs mount

More cool stuff - this time tigrux bringing GNOME VFS to the command-line.

tech/GNOME | 01 Feb 2005 | #

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.

tech/linux | 01 Feb 2005 | #

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 :-)

tech/misc | 01 Feb 2005 | #