Planet ALUG

Sometimes I come over all hippified and environmental (also I like saving money because I'm a capitalist pig) so I thought I'd blog a couple of products I have recently found and used to get our electricity bill down a bit.

The first recent purchase was a Current Cost energy meter, this is a device that clips a probe around your incoming power supply near the meter and wirelessly transmits the data to a basestation that reports your current power usage, estimated cost, how many units used in the past day/week/month. It cost me a total of about £33 including delivery+vat so hopefully will create some savings for us, if not it's a nice little geeky toy anyway.

This nifty little device also has an rj45 socket on the bottom of it, this doesn't speak ethernet but will allow you to do serial connections if you build a cable. Anyhow, if you do build a serial cable (that I've not built yet) it will dump a bit of xml every 6 seconds via the serial port to allow you to take this information and do with it what you will, make funkeh graphs etc. a bit of search engine magick will take you to the blogs of the people who have been working with this so far. Hopefully I will get a chance to make the cable in the next week or so and do something that is more useful for me.

Anyhow, as a side effect of getting this I did a bit more digging on devices to save electricity, and came across the Standby Saver, which was on the bbc tv show Dragons Den some time ago. They make 2 versions of this device, one for computers and one for a/v equipment. The idea is pretty simple, the computer version it senses power via the usb connection to your computer and when power goes away it will power off all the devices plugged into the strip off so you don't use any standby power. When you want to start them up again you push a convenient button that enables power to the entire power strip again. The AV version is similar but uses an infra red sensor to detect when you tell your television or whichever remote control button you want to power on/off.

Because of my recent drive to saving a few penguins and polar bears and some dosh I worked out that the 2 desktop computers upstairs which are only used infrequently use quite an amount of power while powered off (standby on ATX machines is in software rather than hardware) and with the added draw of the kvm etc. I was burning around 50W per hour for 2 machines to be physically poweed off. This equates to an electricity cost of something around £36 a year.

Anyhow, the Standby Savers cost £20 each with a small shipping cost, so I purchased a Standby Saver for the computers and another for the A/V equipment yesterday and they arrived today. The device itself looks nice and reasonably well made. A few bits of green plastic here and there and green leds although the shiny labels on them were peeling off in the box.

So, I plug in the version for the computers and get what is initially a great disappointment, when the computer powered off the power strip stayed powered. After a few minutes of fiddling I realised the problem. The Asus p5k-e motherboard in my new computer keeps the usb ports powered up when the machine is off! Argh! disaster! It won't be able to work with my hardware.

After a bit of ranting and swearing and trying to find a way to stop this utterly stupid behaviour of the Asus motherboard in the bios I realise that this is in vain or that I'm crap working out which bios option means what. It seems that I'm stuck with a new device to try and save me money that isn't going to work.

I give it a few more minutes of brain storming and I'm up with an idea. In my old desktop I had to add a pci usb port card as I needed some more usb ports, I found this old card in the cupboard and stuff it into my current machine, a few minutes later I have the machine working *perfectly* with the standby saver as when you power off the desktop it powers off the pci card too. A swift pat on the back from myself to myself later and I go to have a nice cup of tea.

I still have to setup the Standby Saver for the AV equipment, that uses an infra-red sensor instead of the usb cable and button. Hopefully It won't be so much of a problem but I have already noted that the power lead is pretty short and isn't long enough for where I want to put it which is a disappointment but I can probably work around that.

August 07, 2008 09:12 PM

While developing an RFID extension for the Koha library catalogue system over the last few months, I’ve learned a lot about I-Code tags and security systems, but I’ve not yet looked into Mifare yet, which is the other big RFID product line from NXP. I have been seeing several reports of problems with Oyster (which is Mifare-based) and a crack to be published.

I thought Mifare was meant to be a much tougher product than I-Code. I’m surprised and disappointed that NXP’s reaction to a hack was to try to prevent publication. I haven’t heard from any suppliers about vulnerabilities, so I doubt that NXP are passing the message on to all Mifare-operators yet. They should tell Mifare operators so that they can protect themselves. It looks like the head-in-sand approach to security, which is very worrying.

At least one of our RFID systems is Mifare-capable (which is why I think we should have been told about this vulnerability), so I’ll look into that when I get some spare time (March 2012 perhaps?) unless someone points me at a link with juicy details.

by MJ Ray at August 07, 2008 07:28 AM

August 06, 2008 11:09 PM

I took a late lunch-break last night, after 11pm, to see some of the party. It was warm, and very pleasant in the little picnic area down by the river, all prettily lit up. Food was just being cleared and the players were about to start, so I saw the show. Stromboli are three jongleurs, to use the medieval term, doing music, juggling, some tumbling, and a lot of visual comedy and eyebrow work. Very good, though I had to look away during the mouth-juggling because the thought of a pingpong ball stuck in the throat... *shudder*. Oh, and there was a chainsaw. A real one.

Stromboli finished well after midnight; the small children and over-80s and most of the Brits left, and then the dancing started. I had to return to work, leaving the party bouncing. Next year, I'll make sure I can attend these jollifications.

The Anglo-neighbours said how very French the Stromboli were. This made me wonder - I'm accustomed to similar things from fairs and Fringe street theatre, and have never thought about it, but I suppose I'd consider acts like this as European-including-UK. hm. No, hang on, we get it in panto! And how English is that? Well, ok, originally Italian, but definitely several-generation English and naturalised :)

And then I went back and built my very first Help project.

by sunflowerinrain (noreply@blogger.com) at August 06, 2008 11:30 AM

August 05, 2008 10:07 PM

Today was the first time I've been to the market in the next-little-town-north. There's not much in it: mostly a big fruit and vegetable stall. Suits me; though I glanced briefly in the direction of the clothing stall and averted my eyes before temptation struck.

Then back to St Dizant, through the ripening grapes and sunflowers. Some of those seedheads are enormous. Coming out of the little supermarket, having bought milk and cheese and a packet of breton biscuits (oops), I was greeted by the mayor. Odd, I thought, why is he wearing old jeans and a scruffy tshirt on a work day? Is it like BT managers showing that they've come in to the office on their day off? But no, he was part of the team building the stage for tonight's Spectacle.

I worked this morning so I ought to be able to sneak out for an hour this evening. It starts at 10 and doesn't finish until 1am.

by sunflowerinrain (noreply@blogger.com) at August 05, 2008 05:10 PM

August 05, 2008 03:11 PM

August 05, 2008 09:12 AM

Software Cooperative News has been upgraded to Wordpress 2.6 (and other co-hosted sites too), the “subscribe to comments” plugin has been activated and all comments will be pre-moderated from now on. There’s a few more changes to come, but hopefully nothing as dramatic.

WP-2.6 has a few more SALTs and KEYs in the config file, but it was a local change to the wp-settings.php to make virtual hosting work across many domains which took us off-line for a few minutes this morning. Sorry if you missed us. There seem to have been a few changes to the rich text editor (the Icon to add align-left etc has disappeared from blog text editor and some users can’t word wrap) which I need to check, too.

In other website news, updates from three people have gone onto the list about Online Banking with GNU/Linux, Firefox-based browsers or Free Software - Firefox-3-related breakages at NatWest and Norwich and Peterborough and a report that Nationwide works with FF3. Thanks to those contributors - as usual, I won’t say who told me what, in order to avoid telling people who banks where, but I’ve added more names to the credits.

by MJ Ray at August 04, 2008 05:30 PM

Maplins Dodgy Service

For an amateur micro-electrician I struggle to find the parts that I need for my electronics. Recently, Dave and myself have been working on a Digital Synth, and our abilities have been foiled by the terrible status of Maplins.

To buy over the counter parts in Norwich, we're really limited - we have two Maplins. The website says that there is a particular item, that there are 5 of them at both of the stores. When we visit the said store, they tell us the items been discontinued and there arn't any such items anywhere in the region or head office.

So now we're doing a mail delivery order from RS - 4*£0.50 items and then £5 pnp. I dont mind this - apart from if I had known on wednesday that this would be the case, we would have done all our purchases this way, and have had them all ready to go for our build session yesterday.

Not. A. Happy. Bunny. Damn you Maplins. Damn you and your stupid online stock system.

August 03, 2008 05:45 PM

The owners of the general shop in the town are friendly, helpful, and - it being a very small town - struggling. The shop is spacious, beautifully-presented, clean and polished... and the merchandise is carefully spread across the shelves. We know what that means: not enough trade to keep a lot of stock.

To boost trade, they organise and host events in the parking area. This summer they're doing shellfish suppers on Fridays and Saturdays (shame I can't eat shellfish because they're from the estuary here and apparently very good, but there are a few other things available).

I'm working on Friday evenings so I planned to go down there today, to be sociable and support my local wossnames. Then, in the late afternoon, the sky fell on our heads. When it rains here it really does come down like a waterfall. I looked sadly out of the window and got bread-n-cheese with some of friendly-neighbour's surplus tomatoes, which she brought round yesterday. Just as I finished supper, the rain stopped, the clouds moved inland, and the sun came out. Too late to get dressed and go out now, even if I weren't full.

Bother.

by sunflowerinrain (noreply@blogger.com) at August 02, 2008 09:02 PM

I haven't been out this week, owing to work-horribleness. Today it was probably too hot to do much anyway; it was windy this afternoon, too.

However, I've just been watering the herbs and tomatoes and strawberries (ate both the ripe ones) in a most beautiful evening. The wind has dropped, there are a few clouds, and it's gently warm. The sky is layered deep pink and hundreds of blues. The noise level in the garden is amazing: there appears to be a crickets' concert tonight.

The mad panic for a deadline tomorrow is now a lessened panic for a deadline on Tuesday. And I have screenshots of the UI! Wow, so that's what it does...

I shall return to writing "To do this, click Button A" (that's the easy part, or at least it is when you can see the product - the hard part is explaining why you should bother^W^W^W^Wwhat it's for). But first, a Heroic scrambled egg. As m'neighbour said when she brought them over in a bag because they wouldn't fit in an eggbox, "This week the chickens think they're ostriches".

by sunflowerinrain (noreply@blogger.com) at July 31, 2008 10:01 PM

“The Debian project is pleased to announce the fourth update of its stable distribution Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 (codename etch). In addition to correcting several security problems and a few serious defects in the stable release, for the first time in Debian’s history an update for a stable distrubtion also adds support for newer hardware by giving users the option to install newer drivers.”

Read the full announcement for full information, links to release notes and upgrade instructions and so on. All of our debian servers are already running this. It’s worth upgrading.

(My contribution was just suggesting a few minor changes to the draft announcement, as far as I know. Hopefully it’s an easy enough read!)

by MJ Ray at July 31, 2008 07:26 AM

Regular readers may remember that I stood in the board election of Software in the Public Interest, the main democratic free software corporation, a few weeks ago. Well, the result is posted with David Graham and Jimmy Kaplowitz are re-elected. Well done and good luck to both.

Thanks to the other board members for running the election and restarting the voting machine as necessary. The postponed July meeting might happen in irc.oftc.net #spi today (Wednesday) at 1900UTC, but I expect they’ll announce it in the usual place before it happens.

Naturally, I’m disappointed that more news, members’ panels and the annual report weren’t attractive enough to get more votes, and that old untruths were being reposted to some forums, but I can’t get too upset about this year’s result because both elected candidates had fine manifestos. I’m glad that Jimmy Kaplowitz’s platform includes posting more news and look forward to seeing that.

Slightly worrying are the low turnout (down for the third year) and that over 80% of those few voters were from debian (my estimate). I’ve my suspicions why, but I’d love any non-voters to leave me a comment telling me why you think it is.

The apology: the summary of responses to my questions about SPI membership will appear next week because I made a mistake on one site, set the closing date a week late and I don’t see any way to edit surveys after they’ve opened. Oops. Sorry. (Now, if that site was running free software, I’d see if I could fix the user interface to allow previews.)

(Aside: I was going to include a bar chart of the voting, like last year, but Wordpress’s stupid post editor strips style attributes from li tags. I’ll go looking for that with a hack-axe Real Soon Now, before it causes me serious trouble.)

by MJ Ray at July 30, 2008 07:43 AM

The people from Casa Nova have been unable to find a source of materials for Renovation Part 1. Camille was very apologetic and explained that they've not been back in France that long and had forgotten that it closes for the summer apart from agriculture and the holiday trades.

Start of Works is thus postponed from next week to the beginning of September. Relatives, friends, and acquaintances who would like a holiday in exchange for an hour or two per day helping a carpenter and an electrician, please apply for time in September and October.

Oh well, gives me another month to earn money to pay for it.

by sunflowerinrain (noreply@blogger.com) at July 29, 2008 11:39 AM

This is a pretty technical note, which I’m posting here for review and hopefully to help other people. The reinstall I mentioned last week was a MacOS X 10.5 server, so this time I installed Koha more simply and took more notes. I don’t want to put this in the distribution as INSTALL.osx, for reasons mentioned below. Also, I’d be very happy if people replaced all osx servers with debian ones, or at least some sort of tidy GNU/Linux.

The sysadmin installed XCode and fink for me and I ran

fink install apache2 apache2-dev mysql mysql15-dev

without any great event. I also re-used an old, imperfect, local finkinfo/idzebra.info to

fink install idzebra idzebra-shlibs

Next, I used the extremely horrible command

fink list $(sed -n -e “/PREREQ_PM =/,/}/{;s/^[ ']*//;s/::/-/g;s/’.*\$/-pm588/;/-.*-pm588/p;}” Makefile.PL | tr A-Z a-z)

inside an unpacked koha-3.00.00.094 folder to find out which modules fink had packaged already. Something similar can be done for debian and ubuntu, using apt-search or dpkg instead of fink and a libperl- prefix instead of a -pm588 suffix. (I think all systems should do something like that. Then we could merge the INSTALL.*s into the main INSTALL because they lag behind.)

Three of those, I copied to /sw/fink/10.5/local/main/finkinfo and edited slightly (usually to increase the version: dbd-mysql-pm, html-template-pm, xml-libxml-common-pm, xml-libxml-pm.info and xml-simple-pm.info… also in my fink-10.5 folder) and then ran

fink install dbd-mysql-pm588 text-iconv-pm588 xml-simple-pm588 data-dumper-pm588 digest-md5-pm588 file-temp-pm588 getopt-long-pm588 html-scrubber-pm588 list-util-pm588 list-moreutils-pm588 mime-base64-pm588 net-ldap-pm588 test-harness-pm588 text-wrap-pm588 time-hires-pm588 unicode-normalize-pm588 xml-dumper-pm588 xml-libxslt-pm588 xml-rss-pm588 yaml-syck-pm588

to install those modules.

For the remaining modules from CPAN, I set PERL5LIB to my new Koha folder (export PERL5LIB=/Library/WebServer/Koha/lib:/Library/WebServer/Koha/System/Library/Perl/5.8.8/:/Library/WebServer/Koha/lib/perl5/site_perl/:$PERL5LIB) and ran perl -MCPAN -e shell, telling the configuration screens to use PREFIX=/Library/WebServer/Koha (so install into the Koha folder instead of splattering across /System/Library). Then the command

install Bundle::KohaSupport

just worked, thanks to excellent work by Mike Mylonas and others.

Finally, all that was left was to run the normal installation in the koha-3.00.00.094 folder, picking the “single” configuration and ignoring “make test” failure (because it’s a work in progress and this is RC1), edit the /Library/WebServer/Koha/etc/zebra/*cfg to point at /sw instead of /usr, symlink koha-httpd.conf into /sw/etc/apache2/sites-available and run the a2ensite commands, copy the service plist files into /Library/LaunchDaemons and load them into launchctl, browse koha and start testing it.

Simple(!)

It only took me a full day of work to figure that out and do the reinstall… compared to under 2 hours from scratch on debian at the moment. Maybe it’s faster if you know the OS better and/or aren’t trying so hard not to splatter stuff across the base system. Did I do anything wrong above?

by MJ Ray at July 29, 2008 07:23 AM

The Grade-II-listed Grand Pier Weston-super-Mare has burned down. It was right in the centre of the next bay south from me, facing down the main street between the town centre and seafront, visible all the way around Weston Bay. There’s been a half-mile exclusion zone in the middle of town, but I’ve not been travelling that way today. I go past the pier four or more times a week. It will be very strange for it to be missing. Pictures by a nearby resident really capture the scale of the shock.

The pier is literally an icon, used for the WsM Forum that I help to run for the town. At least those landside towers are still standing. More reaction on WsM Forum.

by MJ Ray at July 28, 2008 03:16 PM

I just asked this question over on another site and thought I’d widen it to here:-

I’m standing for election to the board of Software in the Public Interest this month, so I was wondering how many users who contribute to free and open source software have joined? If so, why? If not, what’s stopping you?

http://www.spi-inc.org is the organisation’s website. Even if I don’t get elected, I’m interested to know why people do and don’t join and would like to summarise the answers to SPI, so please mention if that’s not OK with you.

I’ll summarise some of the other answers I’ve had in a day or two.

by MJ Ray at July 28, 2008 07:01 AM

Revisiting my list of must-have apps, here's a few more that have made the grade:

Scribble, a useful sketch pad. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a badly-drawn diagram on the iPhone must be worth a couple of dozen words. I particularly like the "shake to clear" feature. You can save your scribbles to the photo album.

Last.fm. I'm a user on the Mac, so it's nice to have it on the phone too.

Solitaire. It cost a couple of quid, but I've spent enough time playing it since then (particularly on dull train journeys) to make it well worth the money.

Chopper. Remember Choplifter? This game is a fun version of that. Love it.

Technorati Tags: apple, iphone, itunes, mobile, proprietary, appstore, purchasing

by savs at July 27, 2008 09:00 AM

So, it's been a week of living with the iPhone, how's it going?

Mostly, pretty good. I'm still in awe of the fact that a mobile phone has some basic usability added to it, and that to do anything I don't have to navigate through many different folders or remember which obscure softkey you configured as you do in Symbian world. Mobile Safari and the iPhone version of NetNewsWire are getting the most screen time, and it's a pleasure to be connected to my favourite time-wasting solutions anywhere and anywhen.

Email-on-the-move basically means delete-spam-on-the-move, and I think I'd rather have a rich client GMail app than use Apple's Mail, since the "search don't file" meme of GMail has infected me. I find myself pointing Safari at GMail almost as often as using the inbuilt Mail, usually when I know there's a specific email I want (e.g. the one containing my train ticket reservation number).

The AppStore is both awesome and terrible, in equal parts. For ease of use and simplicity to grab cool apps and spend money, it wins triple bonus points. For frustration, take all those points away. The closed system is a real problem for users and app developers: for example, I've been using NetNewsWire 1.0 for a week, waiting desperately for the new release (it's now up to 1.0.7), but yesterday evening the only update Apple would give me was to 1.0.1. Update: Turns out this is actually 1.0.7 even though the version number is 1.0.1.

I can kinda understand the rationale behind the App Store - not every developer could scale out their infrastructure to provide seamless downloads for the millions upon millions of iPhone users out there, so it's a benefit along the lines of Apple's podcast downloads. But implicit in providing a service like that is the need to make it quick, efficient, and to focus on removing the pain points, like speed of listing new and updated apps. Apple must work harder here.

Then there's some other bad stuff:

I've renamed my iPhone 'crashPhone'. Since owning it, I've seen reboots every other day. That's worse than the Nokia N95 I'd been using! (Which crashed once every other week.)

Doing an update of a bunch of apps via the AppStore on the phone caused it to rearrange them on screen, losing all my careful positioning. Not only that, but the update seems to trash the previous version of the app, including application data, so I've lost things like user preferences.

If you remember the key selling point for me was integration with the desktop and no more badly-mangled calendars, you'll be greatly amused by the screenshot, which shows the many duplicated events that are now showing up in iCal. I now have the fun task of clearing all this up. Just what I wanted to avoid.

Sync-n-Crash: this new service from Apple displays an error every time you sync your iPhone. After the first few times clicking "Report", I gave up on the assumption that we'll see an update to iTunes/iPhone when Apple is ready, and not when we're sick of seeing errors.

My migration to o2 was not without fault (no-one could ring me for several hours, voicemails left on o2 in that time were lost). Carphone Warehouse are also doing their best to piss me off, with no less than five calls so far trying to pressure me into taking out insurance, despite refusing it on the day I bought the phone and subsequently telling them to remove me from their call list. But these are faults with the UK retailers, and not the phone itself.

Other than the few gripes above, and despite the feature downgrades (no MMS, no camera flash, no video, low megapixel camera), the phone is still a quantum leap over my previous phone. I wouldn't go back.

Technorati Tags: apple, drm, iphone, itunes, leopard, mac, macosx, mobile, osx, ical

by savs at July 27, 2008 09:00 AM

This weekend, I will be mostly watching the Tour de France. It’s been a very good tour for software and cooperatives. Look at the current leaderboards:-

Teams

1. Carlos Sastre Candil (also 2nd in King of Mountains) Team Computer Sciences Corporation - Saxo Bank
2. Frank Schleck (3rd KoM) Team CSC - Saxo Bank
3. Bernhard Kohl (1st KoM) Gerolsteiner bottled water - OK, not related
4. Cadel Evans, Silence anti-snoring product - Lotto Belgium - also unrelated
5. Denis Menchov, Rabobank cooperative

Points

1. Oscar Freire Gomez, Rabobank
2. Erik Zabel, Team Milram, a brand of Nordmilch cooperative
3. Thor Hushovd, Crédit Agricole cooperative banks

Teams

1. Team CSC Saxo Bank
2. AG2R-La Mondiale insurance mutuals
3. Rabobank
4. Euskaltel - Euskadi - privately-owned telco and a government
5. Caisse d’Epargne cooperative bank

So however it finishes, I think it probably will have been a much better race for software and cooperatives than last year’s tour, likely to take 4 of the top 5 team positions and 1-2-3 in the green jersey contest… even the doping scandals have been for other teams this year, I think.

One day, one of my companies will sponsor pro-cycling. I hope. Anyway, if you’d like to cheer on other Software and Cooperative firm teams until then, European TV coverage details are on another site of mine and Saturday’s time trial start times are posted on a sister site.

by MJ Ray at July 26, 2008 07:07 AM

The notorious nutsack (cc-by-2.0)

The conference pack for LugRadioLive was called a “nutsack” for some reason (anyone know why?). It seems like a pretty good pack, as far as these things go.

First of all, it’s a durable paper bag, so much greener than plastic. It contained:

• the event programme/schedule
• a LUGRADIO LIVE badge which I only discovered when I tipped the bag out,
• a key-shaped yahoo keyring - I don’t know what it’s meant to symbolise and I already have one far-too-big novelty keyring - seems like a total waste of metal
• UKUUG t-shirt with amusing slogan on the back and a membership application form - tempting, especially since AFFS seems to be idling since I quit and ORG is a self-perpetuator AFAICT
• flier for PyCon UK 12-14 Sep 2008 Birmingham
• subscription form for the £50/year Linux Magazine
• flier for LinuxPro Magazine’s conference streaming which says “no special software is required”. Well, users actually have a choice of Java, MPlayer, Real, WindowsMediaPlayer or anything else which can view an Ogg Theora stream, which is pretty good, but not quite “no special software”. ffplay seemed unhappy in my first tests, with errors like “[vorbis @ 0xb7dbc430]Not a Vorbis I audio packet.
  [theora @ 0xb7dbc430]Warning, unsupported keyframe coding type?!
  [theora @ 0xb7dbc430]Header packet passed to frame decoder, skipping” which I’ll follow up RSN, unless any kind soul knows how to fix that.
• a bytemark pen - always handy to advertise a decent hosting company at people in business meetings, but I don’t think it’s refillable, so that’s not going to last long,
• a fun goodbye postcard from Birmingham Perl Mongers to LugRadio - it’s actually a digital photo print, which seems a really good idea that I’ve not seen done before
• CDs of ubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop Edition (oh well) and openSUSE 11.0 (oh dear)

All in all, smarter than your average conference pack… or am I just thinking that because it looks a bit like a picnic?

by MJ Ray at July 24, 2008 07:09 AM

The temperature is back to $Summer. mmmmm. On the other hand, there are mosquitos.

I was eyeing the grapes in the nearest vineyard: wine grapes don't taste very good, but I'm still tempted, just the one in a kind of bonding ritual. Fortunately the local vines are being sprayed, which puts me right off. I wonder where the vineyard for the organic wine is...

The verges were being cut this morning, so I rode through clouds of grass and, at one point, mint. Lovely :) On the road between here and La Grande Motte there is one little vineyard with two rose bushes planted in its border; no house anywhere near, but it looks more like a garden than an agrobusiness.

Broomstick has been attracting quite a lot of attention. I think there's a market here.

by sunflowerinrain (noreply@blogger.com) at July 23, 2008 08:14 PM

Visitors meant quite a lot of eating out over the weekend.

We found the nearest veggie-friendly place - Le Doublon in Lorignac. It says on the menu to ask about the vegetarian options, which turned out to be anything you like for which they have the ingredients. Outside is a little unprepossessing, with the front of a slightly scruffy bar (m'sister had turned it down because of that look and because that evening it had a board up with "moules et frites" scribbled on it). Inside, though, is smart, and there is a little terrace area. Food was lovely. It turns out to be yet another restaurant owned by Brits! But as usual, the cooking style is French. It also has an exchange library of English books. Even more important for me - music nights. They pay bands.

by sunflowerinrain (noreply@blogger.com) at July 23, 2008 08:10 PM

Answers on a postcard blog comment.

Bonus points for anything involving “Debian Cat”, or “Om nom Novell nom”, etc.

by Lamby at July 23, 2008 04:46 PM

We did a day in Jonzac. http://www.jonzac.fr/index.htm

The tour of the château is excellent if your French is up to it. There's not much left of the original building, which was trashed by the English who invested the town for a decade in the Hundred Years War. It was rebuilt, but then had a hard time in the Revolution, though it's still a good example of gothic architecture. I wondered how a town of this size could support the old buildings, as well as the new sport and leisure complex over the river: the tour guide explained that the old families of the commune do a kind of voluntary service. The young people want to get married in the Salle, so they have to do the repairs and decoration. Good plan.

One of the things mentioned is that through the archway over the road is the old route to the church, which was covered so the ladies of the castle could walk down without being seen. When the tour went upstairs I toddled off and explored the old path; it's amazingly atmospheric and would make a marvellous setting for ambulatory theatre.

The main street and space in front of the château were closed for music and fireworks that evening; there was an excellent band doing a sound-check but we didn't stay for the concerts.

As for the size of Jonzac - the population of French towns is tiny compared to English. Jonzac-central has 4000 inhabitants, which in England is the size of a large village.

While the Antilles (the big flashy leisure complex) was being built they discovered a Roman villa. There's quite a bit of known history for it, though excavations are ongoing. In fact, you can book in to a dig. More about that when I've been to see it.

by sunflowerinrain (noreply@blogger.com) at July 23, 2008 02:48 PM

LUGRadioLive 2008 by sheilaellen (cc-by-2.0)

One aspect I didn’t mention in the LugRadio Live Event Review was how old-fashioned it seemed in some ways.

I guess I’ve got used to seeing conferences experimenting with various web2.0 toys like live-blogging, feedback walls and so on, or the excellent live video streaming of DebConfs, but it was a bit of a surprise to find myself the only person in the audience who connected to the IRC channel from the event.

One possible reason for that was that the wireless network was a bit difficult, or at least that was what I was told. I felt quite smug with my 3G smartphone IRC client (which I’ll blog about later) until Rufus Pollock mentioned the 800+ patents involved in 3G. Damn - I guess I hate freedom.

In one way, I guess it’s appropriate if the network wasn’t up to the task. Broken networks were a regular feature of early ALUG meetings, as the end of this email hints.

Web2.0 was there a little bit. There was a facebook page (which I accidentally spammed while travelling to the event), flickr:lugradiolive and a twitter link of #lugradiolive - but how does that work? There’s no user called lugradiolive and you can’t have usernames containing # Update: twitter:#lugradiolive (thanks to Dave Briggs for the explanation in a comment).

Anyway, seeing as there will be another LUG Radio Live, maybe we can arrange something more interactive but free-software-friendly for 2009?

More reviews I’ve read: davee: Lugradio-in’ makes me feel good…, Peter Cannon: The party’s over for LugRadio Live and No’: Lugradio Undead - but why aren’t more people writing about this event? There seemed to be enough there. Or are they out there but I’m just not seeing them?

by MJ Ray at July 23, 2008 07:18 AM

There’s an old saying that bad luck comes in threes. Today, I am doing unexpected work because:-

1. one webserver was reinstalled instead of the upgrade I was expecting,
2. another webserver was cracked and defaced (combination of two known security problems that we didn’t fix quickly enough, but that’s the server owner’s call really), and
3. my internet connection keeps going offline for about 20 seconds at a time, which is just enough to stall ssh and VoIP, but not enough to debug.

Hopefully that’s it for today because there are other tasks I want to do. If I’m a bit slow to reply, now you know why! Sorry to anyone who was expecting me to do something else today - I will get back to you as soon as possible.

by MJ Ray at July 22, 2008 03:07 PM

So, you may not have noticed (apart from the authentication-fu for a few hours last night) but this blog has now been upgraded to use the latest version of Movable Type. As part of the upgrade, it's also moved onto a new machine, hosted by the wonderful Bytemark (as recommended by the majority in my request for server hosting recommendations).

After some initial complaints about the MovableType install process (upload these CGIs here, upload this HTML there, change permissions, blah blah) it was pleasantly simple to migrate my old content. Just dump from the old Postgres DB, import to the Postgres DB on the new server, point the browser at the MT install, and let the wizard do the rest. As far as I can tell, everything is working, but please do holler if you see any broken links.

by savs at July 22, 2008 09:18 AM

LUGRadioLive 2008 by sheilaellen (cc-by-2.0)

This weekend, I learnt lots of things while at LugRadio Live in Wolverhampton. One thing was the surprising delay between posting something on this site and it actually appearing in the feed on my mobile phone. Another is that I can’t post to my new blog hosting from my mobile phone, which I’ll debug Real Soon Now. So, this is a bit later than when I first wrote it and it’s now one post instead of seven or so…

Thanks to some unexplained delay travelling through Birmingham, I walked into LugRadio Live during the Introduction. The venue was generally pretty good, but the stage obstructed the entrance the acoustics in the atrium only seemed to work for the four gents. No idea what they said: I got past the stage into the audience and it finished almost immediately.

For the first talk session, I went to see Rufus Pollock of Open Knowledge Foundation introduce a plan for the Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network. Seems like a good idea. I’ve tons of questions, but I can’t quite get them into words, I don’t know when I’ll have time for this and I’m not sure they really matter anyway. I think I’ll mention CKAN to some librarians anyway and see what they make of it.

I expected Emma Jane Hogbin’s “Form an orderly queue, ladies” to start an argument with the usual chix silliness but I was pleasantly surprised by how reasonable the advice was. In fact, the speaker also criticised the “chix” movements, although it appeared she participates in some women-only clubs, so not a 100% win for equality there. Sadly, much of the talk has been overshadowed in my mind by the memory of a giant furry racoon walking in unexpectedly, so I’ll probably grab the video of the LRL-USA version sometime soon.

James Hooker’s talk titled “Taming the dragons — entrepreneurship and VCs” launched venturex as described on his own site already (along with more talk descriptions). It was an interesting demo, but it requires hackers to sell some votes in their companies to Venture Capitalists, which I believe is a bad thing for free software developers to do. We need to look more at a form of social entrepreneurism.</soapbox> I tried to ask a question, but the terrible atrium acoustics did funny things with my not-so-good hearing and I lost my way somewhat.

At the end of that talk, I got chatting to an interesting web developer from Leicester who also forsook The Gong-a-Thong Lightbulb Talk Extravaganza and headed up to the Lightning Stage for Robert Collins and the Bzr talk. As well as some glimpses of how it’s changed since forking from tla, it was interesting to see a real (imperfect) demo and a non-Emacs version control GUI. The web interface for casual users to submit patches sounded very interesting and I also learned that some people pronounce “svn” like “Sven”. Most things that Robert thought were benefits sounded like drawbacks to me, so I’ll stay with git for now.

Steve Lamb’s Green IT talk was the last presentation I saw. This talk really disappointed me because it seemed to be skewed towards the corporate governance nonsense instead of seeing Green IT as a vital pragmatic step, mentioning points I’d seen put more clearly elsewhere, as well as advertising Vista virtualisation and some panoramic webcam from Microsoft (who employ him) that doesn’t work with any free software, according to a deserved verbal shoe-ing in the Q+A. Only thing I remember that seems useful: charging from USB is more efficient than using wallwarts. Is that right?

Finally, the main event: LugRadio Live and Unleashed. It opened with the shock announcement that LRL will continue into 2009, as announced elsewhere already. The rest of the madness will presumably appear online shortly and I don’t remember it well enough to do it justice…

A tech conference crossed with a rocking gig by the strangest boyband ever, with a cheerleading racoon and some very cool people. I’ll try to be at LRL 2009. Will you be there? Were you at LRL this last weekend?

by MJ Ray at July 22, 2008 07:22 AM

In the past week or so I have updated the firmware or flash memory on:

2 cars (engine ecu and steering column interface module)
2 Sat-Navs
3 mobile phones
4 bios updates on various computers

and it seems like to solve an issue with my mouse that the firmware on that needs updating...

July 20, 2008 07:59 PM

All being well, as this post appears, I’m on my bike on the first leg of my journey to LugRadiO Live UK 2008 in Wolverhampton, blasting my way past WordCampUK who daftly picked the same day. However, I plan to post a report from LRL, while Dave Briggs will post from WordCUK.

Now, shall I heckle Open Knowledge, Community-Community-Community or Beard?

by MJ Ray at July 19, 2008 07:27 AM

HUZZAH! The Game my brother and I have made for Dragon Hall in Norwich made it to the press

http://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/search/story.aspx?brand=ENOnline&category=News&itemid=NOED17%20Jul%202008%2018:59:42:757&tBrand=ENOnline&tCategory=search

For those interested it was compiled in Swishmax, and all art was done in Blender and Gimp.

July 18, 2008 09:35 AM

One of the reasons that I didn’t post much last week was that I was contacting some of my MEPs as part of the Telecom Packet Action in order to help defend cooperative software distribution and use. This is a bit longer than my usual posts and no software is announced below, but I’m posting it here in the hope that more people will take part in this campaign that affects every EU internet user.

In short, some MEPs that I remember from the Software Patent campaign proposed amendments that would enable the unpopular three-strikes regime, where internet users could be disconnected and fined if they had three allegations of copyright infringement made (not necessarily proved AIUI) against them, and ISPs could be required to block legal peer-to-peer cooperative distribution systems like BitTorrent. ISPs would also have to distribute official advice about proper internet use and I remember how good that often is. Note that three-strikes wasn’t explicit in the amendments, but there did appear to be loopholes which could be used to allow it, such as only prohibiting technical feature requirements. For longer descriptions, see articles by La Quadrature du Net (Squaring the Net) and The Open Rights Group.

The UK Independence Party MEPs replied quickly that they would vote against, mainly because of the source of the legislation. I don’t completely agree with that, but at least UKIP does what it says on the tin.

Neil Parish MEP of the Conservatives sent me back a reply which referred to unknown numbering (H1, K1 and so on) and generally seemed like a mish-mash of replies that other people had received. I replied with questions about several aspects, including asking where his numbering came from, and I’ve not seen an answer yet. I’ll email him again in a few days because it’s been over a week.

I was really annoyed by the reported complaints by Malcolm Harbour (Conservatives lead MEP on this issue) about how voters have reacted to these amendments, where he called it “scaremongering” amongst other things. No mongering was required - those amendments are damn scary. See comments from a media solicitor at the end of a BBC report:-

“The amendment will cause several problems, firstly, many broadband users routinely transfer large files which are encrypted.

“Many of these are acting quite legitimately and in order to determine whether or not such large files are or are not the produce of illicit file sharing the ISP will have to carry out an unprecedented degree of analysis of its customers’ traffic. “Furthermore, computers are frequently shared - within offices, within homes, within educational institutions and inadvertently, where wrong-doers “piggy back” on an inadequately secured Wi-Fi connection.

“All this raises the spectre of people losing internet access - for reasons which are no fault of their own.”

The main thing that these actions over the last few years have taught me is the broken state of European Union decision-making. I know I’m sometimes dissatisfied with problems in local and civil democracy, but the EU is a good idea whose democracy and accountability seems broken on a massive scale. There are just too many disconnects, as far as the ordinary voter can see. We put things in to elections and consultations and get bizarre law-making like this. If we act to correct the bizarre law-making, some MEPs start criticising us quite severely.

And what kind of stupid representative system allows the representatives to repeatedly blame the voters but still be safely elected because of their high position on their party’s list? I’d love a simple, reformist constitution that’s simple enough for people to actually understand, approve in referendums and participate in the EU effectively. I doubt it will happen in my lifetime, though.

by MJ Ray at July 17, 2008 07:46 AM

A little while ago I completely rewrote the #debian-devel-changes IRC bot so it was actually maintainable. At the same time I added some commands suitable for developers, but I didn’t really advertise them anywhere. Here goes.

!bug <bug-number>

Print a one-line synopsis of the specified bug. The parser is fuzzy and will find the bug number embedded in URLs, etc.

!madison <source-package>

Print a colourful rmadison output for the specified package.

!qa <source-package>
!overview <source-package>

Prints the URL of the Debian PTS entry for the specified package.

!changelog <source-package>

Prints a URL containing the most recent debian/changelog file for the specified package.

!copyright <source-package>

Prints a URL containing the most recent debian/copyright file for the specified package.

!bug_graph <source-package>
!buggraph <source-package>

Prints the URL of the bug graph for the specified package.

!buildd <source-package>

Prints the URL of the non-experimental buildd status of the specified package.

!popcon <source-package>

Prints the URL which contains the popularity-contest data for the specified package.

!dehs <source-package>

Prints the URL which contains the Debian External Health Status of the specified package.

Some notes:

• Using these commands is easy: “/msg BTS <command>” on irc.debian.org or simply “<command>” on a channel that the bot is lurking on.
• Please don’t spam channels with data from the bot – use a private message. This particularly applies to #debian-devel-changes.
• If you are communicating with the bot in a private message, the leading exclamation mark is optional.
• If you would like the bot to lurk on other channels, please ping me on IRC after gaining a consensus on the channel in question.

As always, patches and suggestions welcome. (Source).

by Lamby at July 17, 2008 01:14 AM

Work Demonstration Complete

My Arduino board was being used for a demonstration at work, but it enabled me to get a lot of use out of it and work bought me a couple of bits that I wanted to play with, notably a network interface and a Mifare reader module.

Anyways, its back to being used for what I want to do things with, notably robot building. However, this time I am being distracted by a different use, which is sound generation - or should I say Noise generation.

I have had my imagination sparked by the prospect of using the Arduino plus some knowledge I have gained from my ham stuff to generate a synth. It's been done before, but not by a lot of people.

There seem to be a couple of routes to go down - This page documents the different ones. The main ones seem to be this:

1. Use the Arduino to control a synth or other noise making source.
2. Use the Arduino *as* the synth.

I've not yet completly decided which route I'm going down, I know that the sounds generated by the first method might be... better, but I have an aweful lot to learn about generating noises...

July 16, 2008 09:55 PM

You can now try the “Nouveau” free software nVidia video drivers from Debian experimental.

If you would like to try them:

• Ensure you are using Debian sid.
• Add experimental sources to your /etc/apt/sources.list.
• Run:
  • sudo apt-get update
  • sudo m-a update
  • sudo m-a a-i drm
  • sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-nouveau
• Edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf and specify the nouveau driver in the Device section.
• Restart X. You will need to remove the binary nvidia kernel module.

Editing your xorg.conf may be as simple as the replacing nvidia or nv with nouveau; nouveau won’t be chosen automatically over nv yet. If your xorg.conf has collected a lot of cruft over the years, see this wiki page for some pointers on what you can remove.

For the status of the drivers with your particular card, please see upstream’s compatibility matrix. My experience has been positive; I have been using them for about two months on my dual-head 8600GT (NV50) setup with only a few small issues and a generally superior Gnometris experience.

Some notes:

• If you find bugs (unrelated to the packaging), please report the problem upstream and not in the Debian bug tracker.
• At request of upstream, we are not providing 3D support. Please do not ask for it, as a wontfix tag often offends.
• Bonus points are awarded for removing the non-free nVidia driver; although installation of xserver-xorg-video-nouveau will remove nvidia-glx, purging nvidia-kernel-common and nvidia-kernel-source should remove all the module-assistant generated kernel modules. rms would be proud.

Many thanks to:

• Matthew Johnson (mjj29) for uploading.
• Julien Cristau (jcristau) for advice.
• Christopher Halse Rogers (ROAF) for his Ubuntu packages.
• The rest of the XStrikeForce, who do rather a lot of work you don’t really notice.

by Lamby at July 16, 2008 12:12 PM

Software in the Public Interest is a US tax-exempt not-for-profit organisation that supports a number of free software projects that I like - including debian, GNUstep and drupal - and it’s one of the most open and democratic free software organisations in the world.

SPI’s next board meeting is today (Wednesday) at 1900 UTC on irc.oftc.net #spi and logs should appear here and on spi-general less than a day after. I’ve not seen a formal announcement yet, but I expect the agenda will appear here. (Update: the meeting has been postponed until after the election, but that wasn’t announced.) I’ve posted the log of the last board meeting and the log of the annual meeting to spi-general.

I’m standing for election to the board for the second time. My platform contains four main proposals:-

1. Anonymise SPI votes - all votes are traceable at present
2. More SPI news - including getting the official announcements out on time
3. Consult members more - run a web panel, if members are interested
4. Report on SPI performance - at least some annual report

and free software developers who have joined SPI (at no cost) can vote for me online.

If you’ve got any questions about my platform, please ask them here - or anywhere else that’s appropriate - and I’ll try to answer. I think it’s a much better platform because I learnt a lot from the last campaign, so I hope you’ll vote for me.

by MJ Ray at July 16, 2008 07:24 AM

More posts about things which are not-quite-work
Its increasingly difficult to talk about things which are work related because, well, I'm not allowed to. Because the work is what I'm interested in and takes up so much of my time, it does mean that some blogs being to dry out.

Arduino java.lang.StackOverflowError
It seems obvious if you know, but there isn't that much in the Google results for a search with those keywords. Basically, this happens if you do something silly with strings and quote marks... for example, compiling the following (in Arduino 0011):

Ok, now, its not immediately obvious without good syntax highlighting that the " is missing from this, and compiling won't give you a line number where it all goes wrong.

I Think The Stack Overflow Error is caused when the distance between this typo and the next " is so big that it would cause a StackOverflow... I think. Im now not sure. Eitherway, look for missing quotemarks or similar typo's.

July 15, 2008 10:02 PM

Koha 3.0.0-final is very close, delayed mainly by a few serials bugs and translation updates as far as I know, but the big news recently has been Venezuela’s National Library evaluated, decided to deploy the Koha Integrated Library System — ecorrado which was very good to see.

Myself, I’m in a world of RFID-tag-related pain, which I’ll describe and publish code for as soon as it stops hurting, including perl modules like RFID::Reader::TRF7960::Serial and RFID::Reader::TRF7960::SSL. (Contact me if you want them before I get free time, please.)

I also need to remember how to publish git trees to alioth collab-maint. Too many tasks, too little time.

by MJ Ray at July 15, 2008 11:44 AM

Listening to Humph's introduction to ISIHAC this evening, originally broadcast in 2005, I wondered if there was something behind the intimation that one of Ipswich's main claims to fame was its historic airport. Humph talked of it being the home of the first airline flights from the UK to Paris, and various things about the parachuting, but he didn't mention that after years of protest from airport users and conservationists, Ipswich Borough Council had bulldozed the airport and handed out planning permission for a housing estate.

I used to love watching the British Skydiving team practise there, and it was where I had flying lessons. Only two lessons, but a wonderful memory - especially the one which was my best-ever birthday present, a surprise set up by friends. There was a superb thunderstorm as we were landing, and guiding the plane down through it was amazing. The instructor let me take it almost down to the grass. Then we sat in the old airport building (listed, it was) and watched the storm.

by sunflowerinrain (noreply@blogger.com) at July 14, 2008 02:07 PM

Clear blue sky and sunshine today, but not yet back to full summer heat: ideal for a ride out on Broomstick to take some bottles to the recycling banks at Morisset (next-but-one hamlet).

It was my first not-by-car trip in that direction. I'd noticed it was a slightly undulating route, but on Broomstick the hills are much more apparent. Turn right and up a small hill, long bendy swoop down, then over a second hill to Chez Moquet in a tiny valley, straight out over another hill and down to the little river. By the top of the second hill I had to help the motor by pushing, so decided not to go on towards the Champagne Water-tower. Fortunately, the way back is more downhill than uphill. Wheeeeeeeeee!

The landscape is green and gold: grass, trees, vines, sunflowers, maize, wheat straw and deep yellow vetch; speckled with a few poppies and cornflowers.

by sunflowerinrain (noreply@blogger.com) at July 14, 2008 02:02 PM

FFS. If you're running a forum site (Ubuntu Forums, I'm currently looking at you, though you're not the only offender), please don't require logins to download attachments. It's really annoying and I'm fed up of having to create user accounts I'll only ever use once.

July 13, 2008 08:30 PM

I was so tired this afternoon I fell asleep about 5pm, in spite of not having to be online for work half the night because it's weekend. A few minutes later I thought I heard something but couldn't wake enough to do anything about it, and went back to sleep.

When I did get up, there was a box of eggs on the kitchen table. My neighbour's chickens have been laying enthusiastically again. Lovely generous neighbour.

They are very eggy eggs. Big very bright yolks, and taste powerfully of egg (batterychicken eggs taste of fishmeal and chemicals). They also make batter rise, and so I've just had two deep golden yellow fluffy pancakes. With lemon squeezed on them.

:)

by sunflowerinrain (noreply@blogger.com) at July 12, 2008 08:53 PM

Just a quick note to mention that I got both of these lolcat images off of random websites whilst searching for 'happy cat' or 'sad cat', so I don't own the copyright. If you do and you don't want me to use them, let me know.

July 12, 2008 03:43 PM

I'm sure there will be millions of posts and articles along the same lines (cool iPhone apps), but I'm adding my personal choices because I can. So:

FileMagnet from Magnetism Studios. As Jeremy mentions, this is an insanely useful app. I used it to get the TFL underground map on the phone, quickly and easily. It's £2.99 but well worth it.

NetNewsWire from Newsgator. I'm using Newsgator more and more while working on Windows machines at client sites, having long been a fan of NetNewsWire on the Mac. Although there's a few usability issues to be worked out with iPhone NetNewsWire, it largely does what you need. And you can't argue with the price!

Super Monkey Ball from Sega. Sega win the prize for stupid by not having details of this game or any other on their iphone games website - perhaps they were as surprised as o2 by the release of the iPhone yesterday? - but that does not take away from the fact that this game is awesome.

Remote from Apple. Just do it.

That will do for now - I'll update the list as time goes by.

Technorati Tags: apple, mobile, iphone, purchasing, review, software

by savs at July 12, 2008 07:43 AM

When the original iPhone came out I spurned it in favour of my n95. The idea of downgrading to Edge/2.5G didn't really appeal to me, but I promised myself that when a 3G version was released, I'd rush out and buy it.

And so this morning, that's what I did.

The benefits of the iPhone 3G over my current N95 are marginal: the iPhone has a better screen, but the N95 has a better camera, can shoot video, and can send MMS. The real killer for me, and the reason why I migrated (not upgraded, but moved sideways) was for the usability and integration with the desktop. Support for the N95 through iSync is average, the Nokia Multimedia Transfer utility is average beta-quality software, and sucker that I am, I have some DRM music that won't play on the Nokia.

So, this migration is all about integration and ease of use. Please, no more badly-mangled calendars and address books.

The bitter pill in all this is that I have to go back to o2. My very first mobile was on BT Cellnet, and I stayed with them when they became Cellnet, then o2. But years back bad experiences drove me to Vodafone, and more recently bad experiences with o2 for business left me swearing I'd never use them again. Ah, how easily our standards slip in favour of having the latest shiny plaything.

o2 lived up to my expectations this morning. I was outside Carphone Warehouse in Ealing when it opened, and about 9th in line for sign-up. Sadly, for almost two hours the o2 servers were unable to process credit checks (buckling under the load). I suppose they only had a year to prepare for this.

First impressions of the iPhone itself: excellent. The text input is a bit tricky for me at the moment, but apart from that it's a joy to use. The integration with iTunes and the App Store is excellent. The 3G network is fast. And most important of all - syncing of contacts, calendars, music and films all works flawlessly.

Technorati Tags: apple, iphone, iphone3g, itunes, n95, nokia, o2

by savs at July 11, 2008 12:57 PM

I think O2 heard me:

Date:   9 July 2008 21:01:45 BST
Subject:   Order Confirmation

W00t! My order is confirmed, so ought to be here by Friday!

July 09, 2008 06:34 PM

I should have done this long ago. Every time I get McDonalds for lunch at work someone has a dig at me about it. Maybe they’re just jealous because I eat so much crap and don’t put much weight on, heh. But the other day I had a change of heart and decided to turn over a new leaf. I signed a piece of paper which said, words to the effect of “from this day forward I will not eat at McDonalds ever again. (Except on Sunday mornings before work)”. Sunday mornings are a tradition and if there’s been drinking the night before, it’s actually quite a nice start to the day.. In general though, I’ve been having way too much fast food lately, it’s not only expensive but it’s not that nice either.. I may not put on weight from eating McDonalds but it’s probably not doing me a whole lot of good; so I am never having McDonalds for lunch or dinner ever again. Burger King is still a maybe but I am going to cut down. It’s official. I’m off now to make my lunch for work tomorrow, a nice bagel with some ham and salad, oh and Reggae Reggae Sauce!!

by Simon at July 08, 2008 08:00 PM

I’ve moved to new, sponsored blog hosting which will also republish some articles from other sites that I write on. I’m doing quite a bit of Wordpress-based work now, so it makes sense for me to use it too.

I’ll be reconfiguring my other sites to point to this one over the next few days. The actual content of the posts won’t be changing much - no pay-for-post here - but it should open up a few more options.

Just to give some sort of continuity, here are links to archives of my previous main blogs: April-July 2008, 2005-April 2008.

If you’ve got any questions about the changes, please ask them in a comment… Also, if you spot any outrageously bad sponsors on the site, let me know - I’ve blocked one category already.

by MJ Ray at July 07, 2008 12:14 PM

I missed the town party last night (15 euros for a sardine supper was too much), although the music was audible over here. The band sounded good.

This morning the summer brocante on the picnic area/motorcaravan park next to the little supermarket was rather quiet, as one non-local person remarked in puzzlement. I went down on Broomstick with only 7 euros so as to avoid temptation, and bought only vegetables from the smallholding's stall. Some people asked about Broomstick, especially one man using crutches; I should investigate ways of obtaining a Powertrike or similar in France.

Travelling by Broomstick means seeing much more of the hedgerows, which are full of flowers. I've noticed the middle of the road into Mirambeau town centre is a long strip of wildflower meadow, and most of the hedgerows around the village (except next to the vines) are beautiful with all the usual plants plus orchids and brightly-coloured vetches. The route into St Dizant du Gua goes past vines, wheat, and sunflowers, though only a few early ones are in flower; then barley (I love the colour of ripe barley) and maize. And I discovered a small lake in La Petite Motte.

It began to rain on the way back, so I stopped at English neighbours' and had coffee and chatted about cabbages and k^W^W^Wthings, including robberies from gardens. There haven't been many, but someone in Morisset had most of their ducks stolen, and the mayor came out to investigate. It seems there is a gang which goes round villages nicking plants and anything left out. They did this area in the spring, so we should be ok for a couple of years.

by sunflowerinrain (noreply@blogger.com) at July 06, 2008 03:29 PM

Pretty awesome end to Series 4! The cliffhanger last week had almost everyone in the office talking about it - much better than the cliffhanger and finale to Series 3.

We've got a new Cybermen adventure look forward to at Christmas :-)

July 05, 2008 10:09 PM

I listen to more music on my computer than the expensive HI-Fi setup downstairs so it was time to do something about the very unHi-Fi sounds that were coming from the Harmon Kardon HK-695's. These suffer from the same problem that seems to affect just about every computer orientated sub/sat setup I have heard...a total lack of midrange and a harsh edgy top end.

July 05, 2008 02:59 PM

The couple from Casa Nova came round and measured walls and stuff and talked much of stairs and floors and internal windows.

What they will do first:

Close off the space under the mezzanine to make a room which will include the big window, so the stairs will be inside the room: this will allow separating from the barn in winter to keep warm. The room will be an odd shape, following the present odd shape of the mezzanine and extending it 2 metres; it will be about 40sqm.

Stairs with 1/4 turn onto a platform at the base to allow for the height of the room.

All the wooden pillars will be inside the room.

The extended mezzanine will at first have a 1-metre high wall instead of railings, to allow for the addition of a full-height wall later (with a big window onto the barn). This later full-height wall will be a Very High Wall, almost under the highest part of the roof.

Existing walls to be painted with chaux to cover the horrible tacky cement which disfigures areas of the lovely stone.

Floor will probably be laminate because it's cheaper than tiles, but still 20 euros per sqm. (ouch)

Wooden bench-seat along kitchen wall to cover the strange heating apparatus. This will make a lovely warm place to curl up on in winter.

They will start at the beginning of August and this first job will take about a month. I've done some sums and may need to borrow to cover some of it because I shan't have been paid enough by September.

There is a list of things which require extra help, mostly on the walls, and some of which can be done before the main work begins. Volunteers will be very welcome.

After they'd gone I stood at the door from the kitchen and realised I would miss the view into the golden barn very much. I wonder if there can be a downstairs window as well.

by sunflowerinrain (noreply@blogger.com) at July 04, 2008 04:36 PM

My French is fairly good though rusty, which means that I can follow most of what is said but have to search for vocabulary when I want to say something (or have to be creative with circumventions). Sometimes, though, I'm reminded of the Brit on the plane from Dinard, who had lived in France for years but whose French was still basic except for one area - "I speak excellent Building", he said.

Yesterday the plumber came to bring the bill for mending the loo, and to look at the Casa Nova plan for upstairs and in particular where the shower-room will be. He had some trouble finding the pipes up there, and came down to ask where the cumulus is. Cumulus? er...

Well, after opening a few doors he found it[0]. If I'd had the laptop on I could have found the word and shown him where it is easily, but my dictionary failed yet again. As I told him, the only cumulus I know is in the sky.

[0] water (immersion) heater

by sunflowerinrain (noreply@blogger.com) at July 04, 2008 03:32 PM

LugRadio have announced that after LugRadio Live 2008, they're wrapping up the show.

Gutted! LugRadio was a seriously entertaining show that put the fun in FLOSS for a lot of people. LugRadio and LugRadio Live will leave behind them a big void.

Now who's going to keep FLOSS sane? 

by tola at July 03, 2008 06:57 PM

Just read on Farewell LUGRadio? [theangryangel] and Ashes to ashes, dust to dust... Lugradio is at an end [sungate] that the most famous UK Free Software podcast is ending at the end of this year. I don't know the reasons yet, but it seems a shame.

I've been listening again since they proved me wrong and sorted out the dumb licensing terms so it's clearly legal to cut the shows up and only copy the bits that interest me, and Season 5 seems more interesting than previous ones. Then again, I enjoyed Red Dwarf VIII, so what do I know? (but VI and VII did drag a lot)

Maybe I will go to Lugradio Live 2008 in Wolverhampton on 19-20 July now I know when it is! (Why is the date only as a large slow graphic on the event page? D'oh! (Yeah I know I should have emailed them, but I had an unfun experience with the show, so I'd rather shout this in public. Wow. I guess I'm still unhappy about them regressing to school playground name-calling.))

There are some suggested alternatives on theangryangel, but most are more Ubuntu-centric (which wasn't a good thing about LR), non-Ogg and/or non-European, so it looks like I'll give LinuxOutlaws a try. Any other recommendations?

July 03, 2008 12:57 PM

For most of April and May I've been undertaking the Sisyphean task of finding suitable living accommodation in London, based on a fairly lengthy list of requirements and a rather sparse budget.

I must have seen more than 50 properties since the start of the search, dealing with more than a dozen different agencies. I now have a much better understanding of London geography (at least North and West London), and to my dismay an even better understanding of Estate Agent Psychology.

Herein some of the fun things I've learnt.

Firstly, all London estate agents are criminals. That's a little harsh - I mean to say they are lovely people, and genuine and honest professionals, as described on Greene & Co's website. I couldn't agree more, except for Greene & Co, who stood me up after I'd travelled 45 minutes by rush hour tube and walked 15 minutes in the pouring rain to a viewing. The bastards. Anyway, accept that there will be underhand tactics and dubious psychology at play when dealing with estate agents and your life will be much happier.

Foxtons are probably the worst for consistently over-valuing properties. I've seen shabby squats with them that are priced double or triple what competing agencies would charge in the area. But they do have the coolest cars (those racing colours minis) so that's ok. And actually, one property I saw with them was on for a bargain price. Unfortunately, they also required the tenants to allow potential purchasers to view the house once a week, as the landlord tried to sell it. Hmmm. Anyway, Foxtons certainly polarise opinions.

Be aware that all agents are fundamentally incapable of emailing you properties that match your requirements. Looking for 2 bedrooms? Expect to receive emails for one bedroom or studio apartments. No matter what your budget, you will always be shown properties at least £100 per week over the budget. Not keen on parrots? Expect to be sent "a parrot fancier's dream property!" at least a dozen times a week. In the world of estate agents, it's not the quality of the properties they email to you, it's all about the quantity.

Conversely when it comes to viewing time, if you show up with a list of more than three properties you'd like to see, you can almost guarantee you will be disappointed. There's a game estate agents like to play called "crap place, ok place, crap place", whereby for every nice but overpriced place they show you, they'll also bookend with two absolute horrors - often under the pretense of giving you an idea of what your money can get, but in reality to to psychologically pressure and panic you into paying over the odds for an average squat.

Sometimes getting the agents to show you properties can be like getting blood out of a stone. Especially on a sunny day, when they'll tell the rest of their office they are off to show you a dozen houses, and will then dump you after the first house and race off home for dinner or to get their nails done. Yes, this actually happened, several times. If you can do viewings early in the morning, you have a better chance of seeing more than one or two places before the agent runs for the nearest Nails R Us.

Female estate agents are required by law to wear impractically short skirts, high heels and fishnet tights. (My god. Did I really just complain about that? I must be really sick of their selling tactics.)

Most estate agents can park cars in gaps that I wouldn't consider parking a shopping trolley in. The notable exception (no discrimination intended) is the majority of the young female agents, who will cheerfully try and park in spaces better suited to shopping trolleys. I actually had to shout at one agent to stop her driving us into the path of an oncoming vehicle that had the right of way. The guys can drive, but unfortunately tend to drive like they are auditioning for Formula 1. Also London streets have lots of speed bumps. This is not a happy combination.

People are diverse, and if you think you've seen it all, you probably haven't. Viewing properties is a fascinating view of life, though often an unwanted one. For example there was the viewing where two foreign gentlemen were passed out in the flat after a heavy night (and morning) of drinking. It was off-putting to look around with one of them hastily picking up empty vodka bottles in his underwear. There's the family who were just cooking dinner (sorry I interrupted you), who seemed unconcerned about an excess of bacteria in the kitchen or the clouds of smoke, and quite terrified of daylight encroaching into the apartment.

There's the people that leave their most exotic laundry out to dry. That's nice compared to the ones that leave their very dirty laundry festering all over the apartment. There was one 'bargain' two bed apartment the size of a broom cupboard where four gentlemen were co-habiting, with a kitchen that was actually a cupboard in the lounge, and a bathroom with a ceiling black with mould. I asked the agent if they were planning to refurbish the place, for example replacing the radiator leaking onto the mushrooms growing on the lounge carpet, and was not too surprised to hear that cleaning would be up to the new tenants.

You can usually tell what sort of condition an apartment will be in before you step through the front door. One place I saw went to great lengths to give advance warnings, including copious rat traps in the communal corridor and stair well. The interior didn't disappoint, living up to the forewarning in a colourful riot of discarded food and unwashed, well, everything.

It's not all bad, and we did finally find a place that fulfills almost all our criteria and is even below our maximum budget. And one agency that managed to distinguish themselves and rise above the rest was Let's Do Business, crewed almost solely by antipodeans, who were refreshingly straight-forward and honest. We didn't end up getting a property through them, but they will be first on the list to call next time around.

Some of the nicer places made it onto a Flickr photo set of rentals.

Technorati Tags: apartment, estate agents, london, moving, renting

by savs at July 03, 2008 08:36 AM