Garmin Forerunner 305

This year for Christmas I received a Garmin Forerunner 305 from my lovely wife. It's a GPS receiver with built-in heart-rate monitor - it does just about everything my existing Polar F11 does, but gives me the added bonus of GPS data as well as Open-Source accessibility. Both GPSBabel and garmintools support my device through a pretty standard usb interface which is fantastic! (as opposed to the Polar which uses an audio interface, and is currently Windows-only :-(

The open-sourceness accessibility is very important to me, and now being able to extract the raw data easily is a huge win that justifies the changeover price by itself. I've already scripted up a nice interface, and am exploring some pre-existing solutions too - stay tuned for a later blog post. While it's early days - I've only been on 2 runs so far - the heart-rate monitor seems less susceptible to spikes which is a bonus - I don't like looking at the watch and seeing that it thinks that I'm working at 190bpm when I _know_ I'm only at 140bpm.

Getting fit is really quite a bit easier when you have gadgets to distract you :-)

/exercise | 29 Dec 2007 | #

16km Run Goal - Completed

Yesterday I broke through a distance barrier that's hung over my head for 3 weeks - running 16kms. The barrier wasn't physical so much as mental - getting my head in the right place to run that distance. Just like golf, running is only 25% physical - the rest is keeping up the concentration.

24 hours after the run and the body has held up remarkably well. I'll take a couple of days off now for Christmas, before starting towards the next challenge.

GPS points plotted thanks to Gmaps Pedometer.

/exercise | 24 Dec 2007 | #

World Domination, part 317

Cool, I've just been publicly called a shadowy underworld evil genius.
Now I just need to work on getting that on a business card :-P

/tech/linux-australia | 18 Dec 2007 | #

Dead Drinking Bird

Sadly, office cricket, or over-zealous cleaners have resulted in this mess after the weekend:

:-(

/tech/gadgets | 17 Dec 2007 | #

The latest addition to my desk

Ever since the days of Bugs Bunny cartoons I've wanted one of these :-)

/tech/gadgets | 14 Dec 2007 | #

Biometric Insecurity

A very nice succinct blog about why we should be cautious about biometric authentication schemes. It's a useful read.

I've been discussing this with Ken for the last couple of years - security systems are only as secure as the weakest link in the system. If your biometric reader (fingerprint, retinal scan, DNA fingerprint, whatever) just dumps raw data over some data bus, who says you can't do a man-in-the-middle data capture and replay attack? How about your storage of the data? How about the security of that database? And the operating system on which that database sits? How about protection from unauthorised modification? How about that data falling into the hands of unauthorised users? We've already seen databases with the records of millions of citizens "disappear". Given that our judiciary holds biometric data in very high esteem, who will guarantee its integrity?

I'm all for improving security, but the illusion of security only harms the innocent. It seems to me that many biometric system proposals are susceptible to the Bribing the Doorkeeper on the Great Wall of China-kind of attack.

/tech/code | 05 Dec 2007 | #

LinuxSA December 2007 -Christmas Dinner Breakup

 Hi all,

 As is the tradition, for the December meeting of LinuxSA we go
 somewhere for dinner (no meeting topic, no speaker).  Please register
 (see below) so I can let the restaurant know how many are coming.

 Last year we had it down south (Blackwood), so this year we'll be
 pleasing the northerners.

 The important info:

 When:   7:00pm on Tuesday, 18th December, 2007

 Where:  Mawson Lakes Hotel
         http://www.mawsonlakeshotel.com.au/
         10 Main Street, Mawson Lakes

 Who:    Any Linux-minded people who want to eat with us!

 RSVP:   Monday, 17th December, 2007
         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

/tech/LinuxSA | 05 Dec 2007 | #

Fourth Goal Reached

The fourth exercise goal has now been reached. Another 5% body weight reduction, but this time it took a quite a bit longer - 14 weeks. Partially I've been slack, and partially it's a lot harder once you approach goal weight.

But now I leave weight behind as a measuring stick and start setting goals based around my running speed. I have some big improving to do in this area :-)

/exercise | 29 Nov 2007 | #

pyglet enters public beta

Ever since Richard Jones introduced pyglet at OSDC 2006, I've been waiting expectingly for it to get to beta. Well, that day has come!. As the webpage says, pyglet is a cross-platform python windowing and multimedia library for Python - something cool to play with. Congratulations to all involved!

/tech/code/Python | 09 Nov 2007 | #

Mac OS X Leopard - fom a Developers Perspective

A couple of interesting links for information about Mac OS 10.5 Leopard for developers:

• Ars Technica
• Matt Gemmell's Overview

/tech/mac | 30 Oct 2007 | #

Ubuntu 7.10 on a Mac Book Pro using Parallels

If you're attempting to get Ubuntu 7.10 running via Parallels on a Mac Book Pro, don't specify more than 512MB RAM for your VM. Unless of course you like modprobe failing on boot with mysterious hangs while CUPS tries to start.

/tech/mac | 22 Oct 2007 | #

LinuxSA November 2007 - Multi-Pointer X Server (MPX)

  Hi all,

  Time for the November meeting announcement (it's over a month
  away!)...

  The usual details:

   When:   7:00pm-9:30pm (doors open 6:45pm) on
           Tuesday, 20th November, 2007
   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:

   Peter Hutterer will be talking about his research with the
   Multi-Pointer X Server (MPX).  MPX is a modification of the X server
   to support multiple mice and keyboards in X. It provides users with
   one cursor per device and one keyboard focus per keyboard. Each
   cursor can operate independently. MPX is the first multicursor
   windowing system and allows two-handed interaction with legacy
   applications, but also the creation of innovative applications and
   user interfaces.

   Peter is a PhD student at the Wearable Computer Lab at the
   University of South Australia.

  Finding the Venue and Parking:

   You can park either beneath or next to the SSABSA building.  If you
   are driving west along Greenhill road, you can turn left into the
   driveway if you are going slow enough to notice the sign and turn in
   time :-), or you can turn left at the next road, and left again to
   go along the street behind the building to access the carpark that
   way.

   If you try to enter the building from street level but the doors are
   locked, walk down the stairs and use the lift in the below-ground
   carpark.

  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 | 18 Oct 2007 | #

The Future of Software Development

Nice summary article on The Future of Software Development. Worth a read.

In summary, the article suggests that the future holds:

• Modern programming languages, with better abstraction,
• Awesome libraries allowing us to build systems quickly,
• Agile development methodologies, enabling quick development with certainty, while bringing the fun back for the developers.

Of course the thing that the article doesn't mention is open-source. That really adds to the libraries point well, but at a higher abstraction level. Building systems where dependable open-source components can be used for your infrastructure - allowing you to concentrate on your value-add - is a huge win for our industry. Commoditisation is allowing open-source systems to leap-frog proprietary offerings, and is better from an integration perpspective - tailor or fix to meet your requirements.

My new day job is far more about this than it has been previously - using open-source where it makes sense and building upon it. It's more than fresh air - it's a personal revolution!

/tech/sweng | 18 Oct 2007 | #

Shell redirection

The standard idiom of redirecting stdout and stderr to /dev/null is of course:

          frobnicate 1>/dev/null 2>&1

What is lesser known is that this can be short-cutted to:

          frobnicate &>/dev/null

/tech/code/shell | 09 Oct 2007 | #

Living in the 70's

Today's song of the day: I'm living in the 70's :-)

/exercise | 08 Oct 2007 | #

Random Acts of Kindness

This morning a package arrived from Germany which contained the following:

It's a firewire/USB iPod dock connector (so no custom cable is required) + a case for my ear buds. Nice. The problem is that I don't know where it came from. There's no indication on the package, and I certainly didn't order it. So thank you to the Fairy-of-Random-Acts-Of-Kindness for giving me a nice surprise this Monday morning.

I'll have to Pay It Forward.

/tech/misc | 08 Oct 2007 | #

LinuxSA October 2007 - Linux at the Australian Red Cross Blood Service

  Hi all,

  Time for the October meeting announcement (it's 12 days away)...

  The usual details:

   When:   7:00pm-9:30pm (doors open 6:45pm) on
           Tuesday, 16th October, 2007
   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:

   Ashleigh Kennett-Smith will be doing a presentation about how and
   why the Australian Red Cross Blood Service uses Linux servers and
   clients for its mobile blood collection units.  The system is based
   entirely on Fedora 7 (servers and clients), with a standard
   operating environment automatically set up through kickstart.
   Ashleigh will go through various aspects of the system:
   - hands-off install with kickstart
   - hostapd, FreeRADIUS and SSL
   - MadWifi and wpa_supplicant
   - LUKS/dm_crypt for disk encryption
   - repackaging Fedora with Pungi

   Ashleigh has been using Unix-like systems for 14 years (including
   Solaris, Tru64, SCO, Linux, HPUX, AIX) and is currently working with
   the Australian Red Cross Blood Service.  His role includes
   developing systems for their mobile blood collection units.  He was
   the sole developer of their previous system which used Red Hat 9
   servers and Windows 2000 clients.

  Finding the Venue and Parking:

   You can park either beneath or next to the SSABSA building.  If you
   are driving west along Greenhill road, you can turn left into the
   driveway if you are going slow enough to notice the sign and turn in
   time :-), or you can turn left at the next road, and left again to
   go along the street behind the building to access the carpark that
   way.

   If you try to enter the building from street level but the doors are
   locked, walk down the stairs and use the lift in the below-ground
   carpark.

  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 | 04 Oct 2007 | #

Maven Trick #257

The project I'm looking at right now uses Maven to do dependency management - and trust me, the project has so many dependencies it _needs_ Maven :-)

So the question begs, when integrating the large working source tree with external-to-maven tools, how do you get the CLASSPATH out of Maven for use elsewhere.

Many googles and reading bits of Maven: The Definitive Guide later the solution is a semi-obvious:

mvn dependency:build-classpath

/tech/code/Java | 04 Oct 2007 | #

City-to-Bay: Done.

Today was the City to Bay fun run here in Adelaide. It's been a goal of mine to do this for a while, so it's a big tick in the box to run it out on my first attempt. It's only 12kms - with most of it downhill - and while I've been doing that distance easily in training, it's another thing to actually complete the run with race number on, along with 24,000 other competitors - it's a big (psychological) deal for me.

My time of just under 65 minutes wasn't earth shattering by any means, but today was about competing with myself - proving that I could do it - and moving one step closer to the next set of goals. Only 9 months or so to a local half marathon :-)

/exercise | 16 Sep 2007 | #

LinuxSA September 2007 - Air-Stream Wireless

  Hi all,

  Time for the September meeting announcement (it's next Tuesday)...

  The usual details:

   When:   7:00pm-9:30pm (doors open 6:45pm) on
           Tuesday, 18th September, 2007
   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:

   Daniel Moscon and Troy Vodopivec will be doing a presentation about
   Air-Stream Wireless.  Air-Stream Wireless is a non-profit community
   group who use wireless in combination with free and open source
   technologies to deploy a Wide Area Network (WAN) that supports
   community participation, local content and communications.  Over the
   last six years the group has grown from a handful of friends to the
   largest non-profit community wireless network in Australia, covering
   several hundred square kilometres.

   Troy Vodopivec is the chairperson of Air-Stream Wireless, primary
   systems administrator and the developer of our current FreeBSD
   RouterOS and captive portal system.  Daniel Moscon is also a
   committee member with significant experience in long-distance
   wireless LAN equipment and embedded systems using OpenWRT.

  Finding the Venue and Parking:

   You can park either beneath or next to the SSABSA building.  If you
   are driving west along Greenhill road, you can turn left into the
   driveway if you are going slow enough to notice the sign and turn in
   time :-), or you can turn left at the next road, and left again to
   go along the street behind the building to access the carpark that
   way.

   If you try to enter the building from street level but the doors are
   locked, walk down the stairs and use the lift in the below-ground
   carpark.

  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 | 14 Sep 2007 | #

Playing with certificates

One frustrating thing is working with digital certificates that someone else has created and deployed - and you have to pick up where they left off. I mean, with a directory of crt, ket and csr files, how do I verify which ones belong to which? and exactly what was that openssl command-line to check? It's not something I do everyday. That's what I use this blog for - to cover the overflow when my brain is full

Reverse encoding the ASCII-armored text is relatively simple:

• openssl x509 -noout -text -in webserver.crt
• openssl rsa -noout -text -in webserver.key
• openssl req -noout -text -in webserver.csr

Of course checking the modulus and public exponent sections manually is error-prone. So make it easy on yourself and check the shorter hash instead:

• openssl x509 -noout -modulus -in webserver.crt | openssl md5
• openssl rsa -noout -modulus -in webserver.key | openssl md5

And once you realise that the private key has been lost, or that the certificate has expired, you'll need to do one or both of the following to regenerate thus:

• openssl genrsa -out webserver.key 1024 to generate the key,
• openssl req -new -key webserver.key -out webserver.csr to create the certificate signing request file to ship to the certificate authority.

/tech/code | 12 Sep 2007 | #

Rest in Cairns, FNQ

Trinity Beach.

Crystal Cascades.

/travel | 29 Aug 2007 | #

Printing from Ubuntu to a Brother HL-2040 connected to an Airport Extreme

So I needed to print to a Brother HL-2040 laser printer that was connected to an Apple Airport Extreme from a Linux box (Ubuntu Dapper).

There are several ways of doing this - the get it working way and the funky way.

First up, you need to get a CUPS driver installed on Dapper for the printer. This is well documented here. For future-proofing these details are:

• Download the Debian HL-2040 LPR driver from http://solutions.brother.com/linux/sol/printer/linux/lpr_drivers.html#de
• sudo dpkg -i brhl2040lpr_2.0.1-1_i386.deb
• Download the Debian HL-2040 CUPS Wrapper from http://solutions.brother.com/linux/sol/printer/linux/cups_drivers.html#de
• ln -s /etc/init.d/cupsys /etc/init.d/cups for debian vs ubuntu differences
• sudo dpkg -i cupswrapperHL2040-2.0.1-2_i386.deb

That gets us drivers, but how to I see this USB-connected-to-an-airport printer over the network?

The get it working way consists of using gnome-printer-view (Clickety click: MenuBar|System|Administration|Printing) select Add New Printer, then select Network Printer, choose HP JetDirect, then Host: the Airport Extreme's IP Address, and leave the Port as 9100. Voila, it all just works - amazing.

The funky way would have been to utilise Rendezvous^WBonjour^WZeroconf to automagically discover and connect the printer. Using ahavi-discover the printer is definitely out there and visible (under _riousbprint._tcp) but it appears that CUPS doesn't want to recognise the advertised URI of mdns://PrinterName._riousbprint._tcp.local. Close, but no banana. Some glue is still missing for this to work - a real shame.

If anyone has ideas on getting CUPS to accept the mdns URI, please let me know. I like to do the funky thing wherever possible :-)

/tech/gadgets | 27 Aug 2007 | #

Third Goal Reached

The third exercise goal has now been reached. Another 5% body weight reduction in 4 weeks. Next goal happens in less than a month's time - complete the City to Bay Run (12km run from the city to Glenelg).

Total loss: 20% in 17 weeks.

/exercise | 17 Aug 2007 | #

State of DRM: Crackers 2^32, Music Industry 0

The State of the DRM war.

Every major DRM technology has been broken, and subsequently broken again after being fixed. DRM as a technology solution to an economic and IP protection problem is not working. Here's an interesting idea - why not charge what people are prepared to pay, then there's no piracy to chase, legal music downloads increase, and profits go up. Novel, eh?

/tech/IP | 02 Aug 2007 | #

Clearcase labeling with spaces in filenames

Working with spaces in filenames is a right royal pain - should be a criminal offence, if you ask me! (if it wasn't for -0 on xargs and -print0 on find, it'd be a lot more painful, but I digress :-)

Clearcase has it's own slightly different set of tools which doesn't help matters either. So one problem you commonly face is "I want to apply a label across some specific set of files, but some of them have spaces in them." The standard tricks don't work, but fortunately there is a workaround. Here 'tis.

shadowfax:> cleartool find . -type f -version "some criteria" -exec 'cleartool mklabel MY_NEW_LABEL "$CLEARCASE_XPN"'

'XPN' gives us the extended pathname (as opposed to 'PN'), and the double quotes cover the space-in-filename issue. Just one of them dang things you blog about because you never know when you'll need it again later :-)

/tech/misc | 17 Jul 2007 | #

linux.conf.au 2008 CFP closing soon

Are you planning on submitting a talk or tutorial for linux.conf.au 2008?

Get your submissions in by Friday 20th July.

And for those of you concerned about the video option - please don't worry. It's entirely optional. We are aware that many people don't have the means or expertise to make a video and get it online - but for those who do, for those who want to, go for it!

** please forward this message to friends and colleagues you believe should make a submission to present at linux.conf.au 2008 **

/tech/linux-australia/lca2008 | 16 Jul 2007 | #

Second Goal Reached

The second goal has now been reached. Another 5% body weight reduction in 4 weeks - 2 weeks ahead of schedule (the black day final deadline)

Total loss: 15% in 13 weeks.

/exercise | 16 Jul 2007 | #

LinuxSA July 2007 - Hacking and mapping on OpenWRT and OLSR

  Hi all,

  Time for the July meeting announcement (it's next Tuesday)...

  The usual details:

   When:   7:00pm-9:30pm (doors open 6:45pm) on
           Tuesday, 17th July, 2007
   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:

   Kim Hawtin will be doing a presentation about "hacking and mapping
   on OpenWRT and OLSR".  OpenWRT is a Linux distribution for embedded
   devices, such as the Linksys WRT54G wireless router.  OLSR is a
   routing protocol for mobile ad-hoc networks (think mesh networking).

  Finding the Venue and Parking:

   You can park either beneath or next to the SSABSA building.  If you
   are driving west along Greenhill road, you can turn left into the
   driveway if you are going slow enough to notice the sign and turn in
   time :-), or you can turn left at the next road, and left again to
   go along the street behind the building to access the carpark that
   way.

   If you try to enter the building from street level but the doors are
   locked, walk down the stairs and use the lift in the below-ground
   carpark.

  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 | 12 Jul 2007 | #

GPLv3 Released

Important cross-roads day in the world of free and open-source software - the predominant licence is up-issued to a new version - GPLv3 is released.

Will existing projects migrate? Importantly what will the Linux kernel guys do? What about other important projects like Samba? Will it become the licence of choice for new projects? Is this the deal-breaker for the future of the Microsoft-Novell deal (and all others like it)? What will be the response of distributions - Ubuntu, Debian, Red Hat, SuSE, etc? Will this see TiVo-like devices move away from using Linux and start using a BSD instead? Will this alienate the FSF from "mainstream" open-source, or will this unify free and open-source developers together? Will it be a non-issue altogether?

It will be very interesting, won't it? :-)

Update: Luis Villa provides good commentary about the licence itself, info for developers and for companies and finishes with some good closing thoughts.

/tech/IP | 30 Jun 2007 | #

Testing testing testing

So anyone who knows me professionally knows that I'm a big fan of test driven development, so it's no surprise that when the LCA2007 conference had some nice testing presentations I was pretty excited (even though it wasn't specifically about TDD, but rather about testing in general).

Unfortunately, I was unable to attend (but for very good reasons - the birth of Nathaniel).

Fortunately the video was released (paper video, tutorial video) soon afterwards.

So Erik has just put the paper online (which I promise I'll read soon). And there's also an (almost blank :) webpage specifying a mailing list too. Hopefully some traction will be built around this.

So I'd encourage people to think about testing their software. Even better, write your tests before you write your software, and watch the video, read the paper, check out some test driven development resources online (Kent Beck, Martin Fowler etc) and sign-up on the mailing list. Let's advance the state of software by building quality in at the start.

/tech/sweng | 29 Jun 2007 | #

Moonlight: Silverlight on Linux

Miguel and his team have been busy - 21 days after Microsoft revealed their cross-platform browser-hosted CLR efforts, the free software world have reimplemented a good junk of it.

• Implementing Silverlight in 21 Days (aka Moonlight)
• Another report of the 21-day hackathon at Novell
• Moonlight-based Desklets
• A Mono Developers Guide to writing XAML by hand. (ie. the language of Silverlight)
• Silverlight Surface demo

Besides the cool tech and the flashy demos, what is very impressive by itself is what can be achieved by a small focused team in a small amount of time. Slow viscosity/inertia/velocity (or whatever you want to call it) is the enemy of innovation. Slow development progress begats further slow progress, whereas quick results sky-rockets the motivation of the team. Seriously, the more projects I see, the more I'm convinced that if you can get the obstacles and interruptions out of the way then you have a great chance to get a coherent, innovative, quality software product developed quickly. It's less about process, it's less about documentation, and it's more about focus.

The hackfest/sprint is certainly under-utilised as a software development lifecycle today.

/tech/code/C-Sharp | 29 Jun 2007 | #

Juggling

• Chris Bliss
• 8,9,10 and 11 Balls
• Jason Garfield 2004
• WJF 2006 trailer

Just love the commentary :-)

/tech/misc | 18 Jun 2007 | #

LinuxSA June 2007 - Linux on the Nokia N800

  Hi all,

  Time for the June meeting announcement (it's next Tuesday)...

  The usual details:

   When:   7:00pm-9:30pm (doors open 6:45pm) on
           Tuesday, 19th June, 2007
   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:

   Tim Wegener will be giving a presentation about Linux on the Nokia
   N800 Internet Tablet.

   Tim Wegener is an engineer in the microelectronics field. His day
   job involves VLSI hardware design, implementation and verification,
   along with writing design automation tools and gluing them together.

   Tim uses Linux at work and at home; on the server, the desktop, and
   now, the palmtop. In his spare time he enjoys tinkering on the
   computer, writing programs and playing music, among other things.

  Finding the Venue and Parking:

   You can park either beneath or next to the SSABSA building.  If you
   are driving west along Greenhill road, you can turn left into the
   driveway if you are going slow enough to notice the sign and turn in
   time :-), or you can turn left at the next road, and left again to
   go along the street behind the building to access the carpark that
   way.

   If you try to enter the building from street level but the doors are
   locked, walk down the stairs and use the lift in the below-ground
   carpark.

  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 | 14 Jun 2007 | #

You win some, you lose some

So despite this morning's good news, today is an even bigger black day than last time.

Very sad, but thanks for the memories - time to move on with life.

/tech/misc | 13 Jun 2007 | #

One Goal Reached

So today I achieved something that I never thought possible - my initial fitness goal has been reached. 10% of body weight reduction in 9 weeks.

How?

• Reduction in carbs overall, and a great reduction in carbs after 4pm
• Reducing portion sizes when I do eat
• Always drink 8 glasses of cold water a day
• Consume lots of Extra chewing gum :-)
• But most importantly, I run every weekday morning on an empty stomach - I've worked up to 6kms daily (with a longer run on Fridays)

I didn't actually think I'd be able to achieve this - so I'm pretty pleased with the result. Now onto the next goal!

/exercise | 13 Jun 2007 | #

linux.conf.au 2008 Call For Papers (CFP) opens

linux.conf.au 2008 opens up the Call For Papers (CFP). So,

• If you are doing something cool in the linux/open-source world,
• ...and if you can make it to Melbourne, Australia between Jan 28 and Feb 2, 2008
• ...then submit a proposal, and see if you get accepted as a conference speaker. Trust me, it's a worthwhile thing to do!

As someone who is on the CFP Committee, come on! - submit a paper if you're involved in doing something cool/important/different/zany in the open-source world. We want to see your proposal! :-)

/tech/linux-australia/lca2008 | 01 Jun 2007 | #

Bush Walking 2007

Last weekend we made our way up to the Flinders Ranges, some 5 hours drive north of Adelaide. We based our stay in a quaint little town, Quorn - home of the Pichi Richi railway, at the local backpackers.

I must say it's very green up that way, much more than I would have expected. In the last month or so the rain they've had has quickly transformed the area. If I compare it to my last trip to Rawnsley's Bluff a few years ago, which was post-winter, I'd have to say it's much greener now.

So we visited quite a few places up that way, taking in some beautiful sights such as Alligator Gorge (picture above), and Hancocks Lookout (picture below). The camera spent more time out of the backpack than in - and now I have a couple of full CF cards to weed through for the gems :-)

I just love the Australian countryside - it's one of the reasons I haven't moved overseas permanently.

/travel | 26 May 2007 | #

LinuxSA May 2007 - How to Build an Embedded Asterisk IP-PBX

  Hi all,

  Time for the May meeting announcement (it's next Tuesday)...

  The usual details:

   When:   7:00pm-9:30pm (doors open 6:45pm) on
           Tuesday, 15th May, 2007
   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:

   David Rowe will be giving a presentation on How to Build an Embedded
   Asterisk IP-PBX.

   David is an engineer who is developing open telephony hardware and
   software full time.  At the moment he is working on open IP-PBX
   hardware and an open source line echo canceller, plus a few smaller
   projects.

  Finding the Venue and Parking:

   You can park either beneath or next to the SSABSA building.  If you
   are driving west along Greenhill road, you can turn left into the
   driveway if you are going slow enough to notice the sign and turn in
   time :-), or you can turn left at the next road, and left again to
   go along the street behind the building to access the carpark that
   way.

   If you try to enter the building from street level but the doors are
   locked, walk down the stairs and use the lift in the below-ground
   carpark.

  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 | 08 May 2007 | #

Australia's Do Not Call Register opens

Finally Australia's anti-telemarketer Do Not Call Register website opens.

Hopefully this will stop the flood of phone calls from telecommunications companies with call-centres in Mumbai asking me to switch carriers during dinner.

Attribution: Our ABC - even though they got the URL wrong :-)

/tech/misc | 03 May 2007 | #

Dynamic Support for Scripting Languages

Microsoft today announced 1st class support for Dynamic Scripting Languages for the .NET Framework. That is, they're adding first-class support for dynamic languages on top of the Common Language Runtime (CLR) - they've coined it the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR).

Currently the target languages are Python, JavaScript (EcmaScript 3.0), Visual Basic and Ruby. I'm not sure if this is big P Python, or just improving the integration of IronPython.

This is important, even though it's just a Microsoft announcement for their Windows platform. The Mono project will no doubt be inspired by Silverlight to raise the bar again. Looks like we're going to get multi-language, cross-platform, client-side immersive web applications - this is AJAX++.

Links:

• Jim Huginin's announcement
• Miguel de Icaza's prophetic post
• Microsoft's Silverlight
• IronPython

/tech/code | 01 May 2007 | #

Follow-up criticism?

So Davyd, I agree - I don't like where the Liberals are going with their Nuclear energy policy. But from what I see the ALP is no different. Will I find an equally strong condemnation of the ALP on your blog soon?

/tech/misc | 29 Apr 2007 | #

LinuxSA April 2007 - Linux Music/Audio Applications

  Hi all,

  Time for the April meeting announcement (it's next Tuesday)...

  The usual details:

   When:   7:00pm-9:30pm (doors open 6:45pm) on
           Tuesday, 17th April, 2007
   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:

   Kevin Hremeviuc will be giving a talk on Linux Music/Audio
   Applications.  Kevin has been making computer music since 1990,
   starting on a Tandy Color Computer with a Lowrey keyboard.  Since
   1997 he has been using Linux, and these days he runs a single-boot
   Linux machine on which he will be showing us the joys of making
   electronic music with Linux.

  Finding the Venue and Parking:

   You can park either beneath or next to the SSABSA building.  If you
   are driving west along Greenhill road, you can turn left into the
   driveway if you are going slow enough to notice the sign and turn in
   time :-), or you can turn left at the next road, and left again to
   go along the street behind the building to access the carpark that
   way.

   If you try to enter the building from street level but the doors are
   locked, walk down the stairs and use the lift in the below-ground
   carpark.

  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 | 13 Apr 2007 | #

Large Behomeths, Small Startups, and Open Source

So Paul Graham has come out and said that Microsoft is dead. That's a pretty big claim on a company about to get several million sheep to pay several hundred dollars each to upgrade to the latest offerings of Vista and Office. But it might not be fatal - if they have the will and are willing to use the tens of billions of dollars they have in the bank, it would be possible to change corporate culture - but it would be a monumental change. There are good signs already (and some negative ones), but it's really all small stuff.

The issue is that lumbering behomeths have trouble being agile. Innovative software doesn't get written by large companies with long-standing culture practices and heavy-weight processes; but rather by small nimble startups, where hours worked are long, and everything can be challenged. Demotivation is limited because there are no boundaries.

One particular instance where there are no boundaries (read this as disruptive technology) is of course an Open Source development model. The keys here are software freedom, distributed development, collaboration, international 24x7x365 involvement with full internationalisation.

While I have my own personal biases (blind-spots?), I think the Open-Source Software snowball is rolling down the hill, gaining momentum, and can't be stopped. Jump on board, or be overtaken.

/tech/code | 11 Apr 2007 | #

A Special Day

Christos anesti! Aléthos anesti!

/life | 08 Apr 2007 | #

Planet Linux Australia migration

Planet Linux Australia is in the progress of being migrated to a new server, so please be patient of any disruptions to service over the next couple of days.

As part of the migration, we've also upgraded the Planet aggregator software to Sam Ruby's Venus branch. And not just that, but now all of the p.l.o.a. install (code, config, artwork) is managed in bzr branches.

/tech/linux-australia | 03 Apr 2007 | #

DRM-free iTunes

Wow. According to AppleInsider, Apple and EMI have announced that DRM is a failed business model. (Press Releases). DRM free songs for USD 0.30 more. The only sticking point is that it's in AAC format - which AFAIK only Apple devices support. Nonethless, Wow.

/tech/IP | 02 Apr 2007 | #

Step 3 - check!

After considerable negotiating, arguing, pain (by me) and hard work (by James and Michael) my day-job project finally gets to tick off the Step 3 of the Joel Test - Do you make daily builds?.

If our platform had a GNU build system this would have been easy - make, xunit, cron, mail - but this is on Windows, so we have a solution held together by duct-tape and chewing gum (with more and more python getting added :-) But it is holding together.

The good news is that I now get an automated command-line daily build on a controlled build-box, straight out of source control, followed by xunit tests run automagically, with the result emailed to me every day (including logs so that failures can be analysed without returning to the build box).

Yay!

/tech/code | 28 Mar 2007 | #

Planet LinuxSA - minus the weather

Due to popular request, Planet LinuxSA no longer includes Adelaide's weather.

/tech/LinuxSA | 24 Mar 2007 | #

OpenMoko (Neo1973) - the world's first integrated open source mobile communications platform

  Hi all,
  
  Time for the March meeting announcement (it's 12 days away)...
  
  The usual details:

   When:   7:00pm-9:30pm (doors open 6:45pm) on
           Tuesday, 20th March, 2007
   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:

   Rod Whitby will be giving a talk on the OpenMoko (Neo 1973) phone.
   OpenMoko is "the world's first integrated open source mobile
   communications platform", and Rod is the proud owner of a very early
   engineering sample (it doesn't place calls yet, but maybe by the
   time the meeting comes around...).

   Rod is currently CTO at the Australian Semiconductor Technology
   Company (ASTC), and was previously the Chief Architect at Freescale
   Australia, and the founding Chief Engineer at the Motorola Australia
   Software Center.

  Finding the Venue and Parking:

   You can park either beneath or next to the SSABSA building.  If you
   are driving west along Greenhill road, you can turn left into the
   driveway if you are going slow enough to notice the sign and turn in
   time :-), or you can turn left at the next road, and left again to
   go along the street behind the building to access the carpark that
   way.

   If you try to enter the building from street level but the doors are
   locked, walk down the stairs and use the lift in the below-ground
   carpark.

  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 | 08 Mar 2007 | #

linux.conf.au 2008 Ghosts

This weekend was Ghosts Of Conference Past for linux.conf.au 2008 (otherwise known as http://mel8ourne.org/). Friday night after I flew in I had the chance to catch up with a remote team member for my day job - James Cormack. Over dinner at a nice restaurant with James and Kristy, I was well prepared for the hard slog of Ghosts 2007. Saturday morning was meet up with some of the Linux Australia committee, a couple of ghosts, and some of the Melbourne team met together to debrief LCA2007 and to talk about the wonderful things Melbourne has planned for next year! Ghosts went remarkably well, lots of great discussion - seeing the things that LCA2007 learnt, seeing they things they didn't :-( and hearing about a bunch of stuff that I didn't know happened. Well done Seven, you put on a rockin' conference!

The Mel8 team are well advanced, and certainly look on track to again raise the bar. Donna is going to be a good conference organiser. I always enjoy seeing the transition between Ghosts and the conference proper - the organising team just continue to come up great stuff! Except for the long days (and nights) stuck in a office, ghosts is fun because of the people you get to talk to. BTW, thanks to Red Hat for providing the office facility.

Why is there a photo of Sydney and not Melbourne here? Because for the first time we held ghosts in the city of the last conference, rather than in the city of the next conference. We did this to save on travel costs - so that all of the Seven didn't have to travel.

Ghosts ended with flying out back home on the last flight of the night to Adelaide. Goes without saying I was pretty exhausted.

/tech/linux-australia/lca2008 | 04 Mar 2007 | #

LinuxSA February 2007 - One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project

  Hi all,

  Time for the February meeting announcement (it's next Tuesday)...

  The usual details:

   When:   7:00pm-9:30pm (doors open 6:45pm) on
           Tuesday, 20th February, 2007
   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:

   Joel Stanley will be giving a talk on the One Laptop per Child
   (OLPC) project:

   OLPC[0], a not for profit group originating from the MIT Media
   Lab[1], have spent the past two years dreaming up, designing and
   developing a sub-US$100 laptop for use by children, to be sold
   exclusively to governments who will provide them to disadvantaged
   children.

   At LCA 2007, Jim Gettys[2], VP of Software at OLPC announced that
   they were giving away a couple of XO[3] laptops, to those who were
   willing to work on them. Joel Stanley was lucky enough to receive
   one, which he will display on Tuesday. He will give some background
   on the OLPC project, and talk about the current status laptop,
   including some of the more interesting technology it employs.

   Joel is 21, in his final year of an Electrical Engineering (Computer
   Systems) and Economics double degree at the Uni of Adelaide. He runs
   ubuntu, edits with vim, and doesn't care if Han shot first.

   [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_Per_Child
   [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Media_Lab
   [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Gettys
   [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Machine

  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 | 16 Feb 2007 | #

Trusted Code 2.0

So back in .NET 1.1 days we had a problem running C# code off a remote fileserver - Windows trusts, by default, code on the local machine only. Fortunately there is a work around, which we dubbed The Dilbert Zone.

Moving our product across to .NET 3.0 means changing the security trust on the local machine for this new environment in a similar fashion.

Start the appropriate configurator found at Start|Settings|Control Panel|Administrative Tools|.NET Framework 2.0 Configuration

Navigate to Console Root|.NET Framework 2.0 Configuration|My Computer|Runtime security Policy|Machine|Code groups|All_Code|LocalIntranet_Zone and select Add a Child Code Group.

Create The Dogbert Zone, with condition type = Zone, Zone = Local Intranet, and Permission set = FullTrust. Select Ok a few times and exit out of this user-unfriendly administrative console.

Restart Visual Studio 2005, and voilà - it just works as expected.

/tech/code/C-Sharp | 16 Feb 2007 | #

apt-file

Why didn't anyone tell me about apt-file before? This is a essential for developing on a debian-based Linux distribution.

/tech/linux | 24 Jan 2007 | #

LinuxSA January 2007 - EMACS: The only program you ever need. Also edits text.

  Hi all,
  
  Time for the January meeting reminder (it's tomorrow)...
  
  The usual details:
  
   When:   7:00pm-9:30pm (doors open 6:45pm) on
           Tuesday, 23rd January, 2007
   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:

   Greg Lehey will be giving a talk on "EMACS: The only program you
   ever need.  Also edits text."

   Greg Lehey is a developer in the FreeBSD and NetBSD projects, and a
   former member of the FreeBSD core team.  He has been in the computer
   industry for nearly 35 years, many of them spent in Germany.  In
   this time he has performed most jobs, ranging from kernel
   development to product management, from systems programming to
   systems administration, from processing satellite data to
   programming petrol pumps, from the production of CD-ROMs of ported
   free software to DSP instruction set design.  He is the author of
   "Porting UNIX Software" (O'Reilly and Associates, 1995) and "The
   Complete FreeBSD" (O'Reilly and Associates, 2003).
  
   He is also an awful Emacs bigot.

  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 | 22 Jan 2007 | #

SHA-1 not considered safe

So I don't know how I missed this:

Federal agencies should stop using SHA-1 for digital signatures, digital time stamping and other applications that require collision resistance as soon as practical, and must use the SHA-2 family of hash functions for these applications after 2010

Both MD5 and SHA-1 aren't safe as previously mentioned - but having an advisory indicating that you should stay away from SHA-1-series algorithms is biting.

Here's a paper on the implications on S/MIME, TLS and IPSEC. This is something that really should be considered soon.

/tech/code | 21 Jan 2007 | #

LCA2007 rocks

So from all reports linux.conf.au 2007 rocked. Well done Seven!

Now it's time to block out time next year for linux.conf.au 2008 (aka Mel8ourne 2008). I'll be doing that when I return to work.

Now of course I missed LCA this year, but for really good reasons :-) So in response to those asking where I was - Nathaniel was born just a few days before the conference opening. Next year LCA, next year :-)

/tech/linux-australia/lca2007 | 20 Jan 2007 | #

Following the meme...

As a result of sjh's prod - here are 5 things not generally known about me... Hmmm...

• I've found peace with God and hang out at this church every week;
• I worked as an Ada programmer for 8 years straight out of uni before going more mainstream with C/C++/C#/Python/Java etc;
• I've had several knee operations including fixing a snapped ACL;
• I once took 7/24 bowling leg-spin in a 2 day game;
• I have a plan to hike around Wilpena Pound in 3 days once my kids are old enough.

Other people I'd like to hear from: James Cormack, mbp, mikal, Erik and Michael Neuling. I'd like to hear from g, Glen Turner and Dan Shearer, but alas they don't blog!

/tech/misc | 11 Jan 2007 | #

Just some photos

/photos | 05 Jan 2007 | #

The Working Environment

Well, Martin Fowler agrees,  every developer should work on a 21 inch screen. These days I say that everyone should have at least two 20 inch screens .

Now that's settled, let's think about redesigning the office - morphing the workspace into a Bionic Office.

/tech/sweng | 04 Jan 2007 | #