Planet ALUG

Tim (spodlife): No kidding - Goat Condoms

2008-10-06T12:50:16+00:00

To brighten your Monday - a front page BBC News story about goat condoms in Africa :

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7648860.stm

Elisabeth Fosbrooke-Brown: New living room and office space

sunflowerinrain (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-10-05T20:30:30+00:00

The new room is looking almost ready to use. Photos of the renovation and construction are here.

Fitting the flooring anywhere close to the wavy walls has been very difficult. Ben has done a marvellous job.

There's still quite a lot of work to be done: put the rail on the stairs, cover the edges of the flooring, fit the sockets and wiring, fix the walls around the sockets, apply another coat of varnish, cover the steps with something (bamboo or tiles, not sure which) and sort out the join with the kitchen door.

I don't know what to do about the kitchen entrance. It would look better to remove the grotty old door and surround (put in as a temporary measure by the owner-before-last) and just have an archway between the kitchen and living room, but it's perhaps not practical from the point of view of heating - although the big fireplace in the kitchen is more than adequate for the kitchen itself, and could possibly heat both. There's also the question of sound insulation, keeping cooking and preparation noise away from rehearsal space. An archway, with perhaps a curtain, would look gorgeous, though.

The floor won't join up easily, either. Owner-before-last bought enough tiles (which I bought off last owner) to do the whole of the ground floor, and only got as far as doing the kitchen; but now there is bamboo flooring in the middle it might look odd going from one to the other.

Andrew Savory: Links for 2008-10-05

savs — 2008-10-05T10:00:30+00:00

I can't figure out how to reinstate my Delicious links since upgrading to MovableType 4 (something to do with Action Streams? Lazyweb?), so here's a bunch of links by hand:

Technorati Tags: development, google, iphone, mobile, gphone

Andrew Savory: Ch-ch-ch-changes

savs — 2008-10-05T09:23:18+00:00

As I walked down Shepherd's Bush Road to Hammersmith the other day, my feet went swish-swish-swish through the piles of fallen leaves. The seasons are changing once again, and as this summer fades to autumn, my life is also changing.

Previously, I mentioned a move to London as the first of many changes taking place. There have been a number of other big changes, which for one reason or another I haven't had time to write about.

One of the biggest changes was that I stepped back from Sourcesense, and since March I'm no longer a director or an employee. After 8 years building up and working in Open Source systems integrators, the time was right for a change in direction. It's all good, though: having spent some time recently working alongside some Sourcesense competitors, I'm happy to confirm that Sourcesense are some of the best in the industry, providing not just open source support and integration but also professional, agile, smart people with a proven ability to instigate positive change.

So where have I been these last few months? In London, working on-site with a customer as an independent consultant. I've been helping them with their roll-out of some key new open source search solutions as part of stabilising their platform for growth. I was working with some great people there, on some interesting and challenging problems, and was all set to continue there, but ...

Meanwhile, another opportunity came up that was too interesting to miss. And so, as of Thursday, I became Open Source Manager for the LiMo Foundation. My mission is to help them with their engagement with Open Source, and I'm sure I'll have much more to say on both the role and on mobile Open Source in general in the future.

So swish-swish-swish, the world keeps moving and changing, and so does my place within it.

Technorati Tags: consulting, contracting, life, LiMo Foundation, london, mobile, moving, open source, sourcesense, startup, work

Jonathan McDowell: Asus EEE 901

2008-10-04T17:30:52+00:00

As mentioned I bought an EEE 901. The battery life was the clincher. I've had it for about 3 weeks now, but have only really been using it for a week - since I finished doing my mobile broadband survey and got an Orange contract.

I can't really comment on the supplied Xandros install. I used it for a week or so, with Firefox + a shell for ssh (Ctrl-Alt-T IYF) but once I found time I installed Debian. I used the EEE installer which I think mainly does the appropriate ethernet driver magic without faff. Certainly went smoothly and all up and running minus wifi, which was soon sorted out with the rt2860-source package. Ethernet, bluetooth and camera all seem fine. SD reader is a USB device that appears when a card is inserted.

Battery life rocks. I can use it on the morning on the train (1hr30 or so), suspend to ram all day, use it on the train on the way home and then around the house in the evening without needing to charge it up. And that's while powering the USB 3G dongle and without any real tuning in terms of trying to save power by dimming the screen etc.

The keyboard *is* small. I wouldn't want this to be my main machine. However it is just about touch typable and the overall machine size is superb - even if I get a bad seat on the train I can still unfold the screen fully and it's my arms/elbows that end up being the issue rather than the laptop itself. I also notice the decrease in screen resolution down to 1024x600 (my old laptop is 1024x768); I can't fit enough xterms. :)

Speed seems fine too. I've not really pushed it hard (I've been resisting installing build-essential) but for a handful of xterms and Iceweasel it's doing a fine job. Equally firing up mplayer resulted in perfectly smooth playback of some mpeg4 over the network. Must actually remember to put something on it to watch on train journeys...

Speaking of train journeys the Orange dongle has integrated without too much hassle. 2.6.27-rc kernels have the appropriate hso driver but I found it caused crashes in areas of low/no signal. Patching up to the latest 1.6 driver solved the problem and adding PPTP to my work VPN into the mix means I can use offlineimap to pull mail locally and then read it with mutt on my journey even when the signal is fluctuating. Hopefully ridiculous starts can be mostly a thing of the past if I can get work done on the train.

What else to say? I'm quite liking the trackpad. The buttons are a bit stiff, but I'm getting used to the double tap, or tap and drag gestures in a way I never seemed to on the R200. Wifi reception seems fine. All in all I'm happy with my choice; the small keyboard is the main drawback and that's the (acceptable) price I pay for a small laptop.

Steven Rose: My first contribution to the Ubuntu community wiki

Steve — 2008-10-02T17:07:13+00:00

I have recently submitted my article entitled “Diet Ubuntu” to the community wiki, with some minor edits due to wiki format and so forth.

Find it here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Diet%20Ubuntu

Steven Rose: Delving into the realm of Last.fm and API

Steve — 2008-10-02T14:47:09+00:00

I have been researching the wonders of the Last.fm API structure in the hope of coding a plugin for WordPress to pull in an assortment of data in a much more customizable way than the current widget offerings over at LastFM. At present the idea is just an initial one, I am still researching into it.

I shall be applying for an API account at Last.fm so for now there is little point in any exstensive development until a response is given.

David Reynolds: Django pony wallpaper popularity

2008-10-02T09:47:11+00:00

From my logs it seems that the blue wallpaper was the most popular:

74 /blog/django-pony/magic-pony-django-wallpaper-blue.png

57 /blog/django-pony/magic-pony-django-wallpaper-green.png

41 /blog/django-pony/magic-pony-django-wallpaper-red.png

For fun, here is a little graph to demostrate:

MJ Ray: The Trouble With Big Webmail

MJ Ray — 2008-10-02T07:40:15+00:00

So last week, a relative commented to me that a solicitor sent a letter in reply to an email. I suggested that it might be because the email reply address was on one of the major free web email providers. “What’s wrong with my webmail?” So I explained…

First of all, as far as I know, no Big Webmail service supports encrypted email (and there are complications in how you’d provide such a thing on webmail anyway) and it can be fairly easy to trick the webmail service into giving access to other people. My relative was sceptical, but within a day, US vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s Yahoo mail was cracked and splashed across the news. (By the way - gov.palin counted as a personal email address? Huh? Her name isn’t “gov”.)

Even without passwords going astray, there’s no telling that the intended recipient is the only person reading the email. Here’s a fun paragraph from the Google Mail Terms:-

“Google maintains and processes your Gmail account and its contents to provide the Gmail service to you and to improve our services. The Gmail service includes relevant advertising and related links based on the IP address, content of messages and other information related to your use of Gmail.” (emphasis added)

The Electronic Privacy Information Center suggests this includes wiretapping.

There’s finally a growing awareness that free webmails are not safe, built on artificial anti-competitive encouragements like “you need a Yahoo!ID to subscribe to this yahoogroup” (no - the old “stick -subscribe after the group name, before the @” still works, just like it did before they bought it from egroups). Internet Psychologist Graham Jones writes:-

“It’s time to review your online security and think about whether you actually need Google and its like at all. Probably not.” (source)

I agree with that. Both of my phone companies (The Phone Co-op agency and 3) include webmail - although I have some personal domains (for long-term contactability), those webmails are fine for lists and short-term use. The sort of thing most people seem to use Big Webmail for.

The other main point in my argument was that free webmails are unreliable, thanks to tactics like Yahoo’s shoddy anti-spam attacks on other mailservers. There’s no telling whether the email will get through such bad behaviour and delivery-receipts are unreliable. I can quite understand why a solicitor won’t send email to the likes of hotmail, even if I think it’s just as probable that the solicitor doesn’t “get” email.

“Oh” said my relative. I think she’s still using Big Webmail though.

MJ Ray: Is Firsht Social Networking’s Godfrey?

MJ Ray — 2008-10-02T07:38:22+00:00

A case of a former friend impersonating someone on facebook was decided during the summer: Applause Store Productions Ltd. & Anor v Raphael [2008] EWHC 1781 (QB) (24 July 2008) . The victim was awarded thousands of pounds in damages.

As I write this, there’s still no response on facebook’s news page, but I wonder whether Firsht will be to UK social networking what Godfrey was to UK Usenet. A bit of a wake-up - a reminder that the internet isn’t a consequence-free playpen. I know that more than most - my youthful indiscretions are plastered across the web, if you know where to look. Fortunately, cooperative associates seem to understand that people learn over time and don’t hold decade-old mistakes against me.

Talking of not holding old mistakes against people, LinkedIn is profitting from an influx of bankers since the banks started going bust. That’s going to change the society behind their network - for better or worse?

All of the big name networks seem to be having some growing pains, like the breakdown of the Facebook metaphor and I think the “walled gardens” are ripe for replacement. I’m still listed there at present, but I’m using my account on the cooperativemagazine NoseRub server to monitor it and most of the stuff posted to facebook is taken from my websites. I’d like to make NoseRub import and export more things in more formats, but will anyone pay for that work? Otherwise, it keeps falling down my priorities because it’s in PHP and I don’t find that much fun. Maybe I’ll replace it with something more amusing in Scheme or Perl.

Aside: is there a good bot that produces an RSS feed of jabber/XMPP presence messages?

Steven Rose: We are back online!

Steve — 2008-10-01T21:09:49+00:00

After a little longer than I had first anticipated we are back online with the new, far more compatible layout, optimized code pretty much everywhere possible, and a much much cleaner back-end. Enjoy.

Direct any feedback on the theme through the usual channels.

MJ Ray: How not to be a Popular Politician

MJ Ray — 2008-10-01T07:33:47+00:00

So, while everyone was watching the Bush Bank Bail-out plan get rejected by Congress, they also found time to approve more bad copyright law, an RIAA-backed initiative to attack cooperative download tools like BitTorrent. Thankfully, the attempt to empower the Department of Justice to prosecute on behalf of Big Music was lost (DoJ didn’t want the task anyway) and the Bush administration is minded to veto it.

But that’s been the least of my politician annoyances in September. Earlier this year, we were encouraged by Cooperatives-UK to get involved with our Local Strategic Partnership. I went to North Somerset Partnership’s event but I was less than impressed by it. There’s no obvious way that NSP is capable of promoting cooperation. Publishing a thick glossy book about sustainability makes me wonder if it’s capable of doing anything sensible - most people I’ve shown it to have either laughed at it, or got angry about the wasted resources.

They’re not the only LSP we have here. Last week, I went to the West of England Partnership’s Transport Forum which

“horrendously perverted the idea of a “forum” - the event would have been better titled “Joint Transport Lectures” because nearly all our time was spent watching council officers and consultants tell us how wonderful transport is here (they’re meeting 18 out of 21 targets, you know!) and what roads and bus roads they will build next. … The whole event seems like a colossal waste of resources for all involved.”

So, I seem to be having a bad time with politicians recently. If the above wasn’t enough, we got a reply to our petition requesting ODF at the National Archives which amazingly doesn’t mention Open Document Format at all. I’ve written to our MP (John Penrose) asking about that.

And finally, I asked Climate Change Minister Joan Ruddock MP

“If there’s no windfall tax to fund it, how will the government remove the climate-harming services from the market and encourage new suppliers (particularly Third Sector ones who should show concern for their communities and sustainable energy) into the market?”

and got the non-answer of

“The Government is tackling a very wide range of issues that impact on Climate Change through a variety of mechanisms. The energy efficiency programme recently announced is directed at those most in need and where a small expenditure can produce a significant and lasting saving in energy use. Thus saving households money and reducing CO2 emissions.”

What the heck has that to do with removing harmful services and encouraging new suppliers?

If any politicians want to be held in better esteem, try giving some straight answers instead of imitating the above, please. “Yes, Minister” was meant to be a satire!

Steven Rose: ThreeSixtyVoice - Now on WordPress.org!

Steve — 2008-09-30T23:35:43+00:00

Good news on my adventures into plugins, I have had my first accepted into the WordPress.org subversion repository.

ThreeSixtyVoice is now up here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/threesixtyvoice/

This is beneficial for version tracking amongst many other things.

In other news I have had contact from David Larrabee from whom I got the original idea regarding a possible collaboration, of sorts. More to follow.

MJ Ray: International Development Webcast 30 September 2008

MJ Ray — 2008-09-30T07:21:33+00:00

At 1900 BST tonight (30 September), you can take part in an international development webcast by one of my cooperatives, with guests from the Cooperative College, the International Cooperative Alliance and the Cooperative and Policy Alternative Center.

Sadly, they’re still clueless about free software, so you may need to put mms://195.10.247.9/a83e447e-68fb-453a-9f0c-8b3fe5b382b9 into a standalone video player if your browser keeps on demanding Microsoft Silverlight like mine does. Drop them an email and suggest that the Bristol Wireless cooperative do better webcasts or something like that.

Steve Pearce: Eeebuntu for Asus EeePCs

Steve Pearce — 2008-09-30T01:59:41+00:00

For Geeks, Eee Xandros Sucks

A major problem with the 701’s Xandros distro is that they have engineered it in a way that makes it extremely difficult for users to fetch extra software.

The Eee community have introduced extra software repositories and used apt pinning, but this shouldn’t be necessary (it is also obviously fairly dangerous). You should be able to fetch and install software easily.

When the tech crowd see and use an Eee PC or another one of the popular net-books with an eee like “easy mode” interface, their initial thoughts are something like “this is toyish, give me a REAL operating system”.

Installing “kicker” and “ksmserver” for the full KDE desktop often isnt enough.

I am actually quite happy to use a simple interface. I however need more software. Remote access packages, openjdk, various IDE’s, various editors, multimedia, games etc.

The solution: fetch a better OS.

Other distributions.

Most of the major distributions have spawned projects to get those distributions running and running well on the Eee.

Most of the time, they only offer wiki posts detailing how to get a stock build of their distro running and how to apply the fixes.

Examples:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EeePC

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EeePc

http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_on_the_EeePC

This is a problem for a lot of users. They would much rather play with a distribution that just works. Obviously there are legal issues here and there and this is likely the reason why a lot of major distributions have avoided Eee development.

Some people however have embrassed Eee development. Taking a distribution such as Ubuntu (a real operating system) and tweaking/fixing it in such a way that makes it a perfect GNU/Linux distribution for an Eee.

Introducing Eeebuntu

Eeebuntu is a distribution designed FOR the Asus Eee’s.

It takes Ubuntu 8.04.1 (Hardy Herron) and strips it down into a fast OS with software you will actually want to use. (honestly, who wants to run Office.org 2.0, Firefox 2 and a tone of outdated libraries these days)

They decided to roll out a couple of versions. Standard desktop, NBR and moblin. Each have applied the necessary system and UI tweaks. Mostly to ensure UIs fit on the screen and things generally read well.

Some features of this custom distro include:

All firmware and drivers required are installed.
Bootspeed/grub optimizations.
Gnome UI fixes, lovely custom theme.
Audio fixes and set up correctly.
Web cam fixes and software.
Additional software: Amarok, amsn, Firefox 3, vlc, conduit, cheese, gpixpod, gtkpod, GnomePPP, gwget, Wireshark and more.
The (giant) standard Ubuntu software repositories enabled.
Several firefox plugins(fission, pdf download) are installed as default.
Collection of scripts in /eeesupport to aid with support after possible issues.

Eeebuntu is a great alternative to Asus’s Eee Xandros. Fetch it here: http://eeebuntu .org

For details regarding how to install from a flash drive. I recommend this document posted at the Ubuntu community wiki: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick

MJ Ray: Demutualised Building Society Survival Hits Rock Bottom

MJ Ray — 2008-09-29T16:09:37+00:00

Our webmaster cooperative is just switching from a building society to a cooperative bank because of support for free software and web standards in their online banking - I’ve just given up waiting for it. That’s disappointing, but the building society has given pretty good service over the years and were early accepters of our LLP company type. For comparison, look at this list of building societies which converted to banks late last century, which have been in the news lately:-

National and Provincial Building Society was taken over by Abbey National
Abbey National was itself taken over by Banco Santander
Alliance + Leicester is being bought by Banco Santander
Birmingham Midshires was bought by the Halifax
Halifax was bought by Bank of Scotland to form HBOS, which is now merging into Lloyds TSB
Cheltenham and Gloucester was bought by Lloyds TSB
Bristol and West was bought by the Bank of Ireland
The Woolwich was bought by Barclays plc
Northern Rock, nationalised earlier this year
Bradford and Bingley, nationalisation announced today

So that’s it. All gone. 0% survival rate of demutualised building societies. I’ll be amazed if any more convert in future.

Elisabeth Fosbrooke-Brown: Fruits of the surrounding fields

sunflowerinrain (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-09-29T15:44:33+00:00

Someone told me that grapes grown for wine aren't good to eat. They were wrong - at least for the grapes grown here. The harvest has begun, and Neighbour brought some for me to try. Black are for the wine, green for the cognac. The black aren't as sweet as usual because there wasn't enough rain at the right time, so they are tangy but delicious. The green are perhaps too sweet, but delicate.

There's something special about eating the things grown around where you live: much more pleasant than eating a handful of soil, too (spot the allusions). I looked at the maize (grown for oil), but I think it really isn't very edible. And while I was out on Saturday the sunflower fields were emptied, so I didn't get my paws on any seeds.

I've just had a lunch of local goats' cheese, bread baked 2 miles away, and grapes from the fields across the road. Oh happy.

Elisabeth Fosbrooke-Brown: Sun, sea, and heron

sunflowerinrain (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-09-29T14:48:35+00:00

Yesterday was warm and sunny, and I went to the beach in the late afternoon, hoping to get into the sea. The plan was partly successful - I paddled. More was not possible because the sea is so shallow at St Georges de Didonne, you'd have to go a long way to get to knee-deep.

Plan, part the second, was competely successful: watching the sun set into the sea from the view-point at Mortagne. Marvellous. Afterwards I drove home along the estuary, on the marsh road. The light here has strange qualities (rather like the north Suffolk coast but without the grey): the lilac and deep pink of the sunset was in the air all around; rather than watching a sunset, it was like being inside it.

A heron launched itself from the side of the road, almost in front of the car, and flapped frantically to gain height and swerve away. Then it flew alongside in a threatening manner. I didn't bother speeding up after braking to avoid it, so we went down the road side by side for a while, until it noticed something more interesting in the reeds.

Steven Rose: ThreeSixtyVoice, my first Wordpress plugin, of sorts…

Steve — 2008-09-28T17:44:26+00:00

I have re-written David Larrabee’s 360voice API Wordpress plugin, cleaning it up, and in my opinion improving it slightly with regard to load times and also validation.

What is ThreeSixtyVoice?

ThreeSixtyVoice is a Wordpress plugin developed from the initial ideas behind the 360Voice plugin by David Larrabee of Squidpunch.com. I have rewritten large segments of the code with validation and also load times in mind. Essentially it uses the APIs from 360Voice.com to display an assortment of data in a widget, or even in your template.

There is nothing wrong with David’s plugin, it functions as required, even if it is rather messy and does not validate correctly. I am by no means trying to belittle his work, but offer an alternative.

Features

Display your badges
Display your blog entries
Display your favorites (most played)
Display your position in various 360V leaderboards
Display your 100% complete games
Widget enabled

All items are able to be toggled on and off, with the number of blog entries and also favorites that is displayed configurable.

Get it here.

Jonathan McDowell: Which data contract?

2008-09-28T09:19:24+00:00

I bought an EEE 901. More on that later.

For the past few weeks I've been trying to work out which "mobile broadband" provider to go with for my daily commute. It's a train journey from the north coast of Northern Ireland to Belfast and goes through some sparsely populated areas, so I wasn't expecting to get anything that would provide 3G all the way. However I do want a provider that can do their best to keep a session up for the journey, handing over between 2G + 3G as necessary. Coverage maps/checkers aren't too bad if you just want to check a static point, but really even then it's better to actually try the provider in the location yourself. So, armed with a bluetooth GPS (BlüeNEXT BN-909GR), an Option GT 3G Quad PCMCIA card and my laptop I set about measuring signal strength along my train journey for each of the 5 providers available. I also made sure to actually try a session with them for at least one journey, because signal strength is not everything.

I wrote some Perl using Net::GPSD and Device::Gsm to query my current location, signal strength, 2G/3G status and network every 10 seconds. I did this for 3 train journeys (except for O2) and then also produced an "optimistic" file of all the data points combined for that provider.

A second piece of Perl took this data and drew the maps you see below. The graph on the right for each provider is all data points. Red means 2G, blue means 3G, green means "Limited Service" (ie it could see a signal, but not one it was allowed to connect to). White means that we had a GPS location and no signal at all. Click on the maps for bigger versions. You can see the route on OpenStreetMap - my graphs are a little squished horizontally, but the journey is from Castlerock (top left on the coast near Coleraine) to Belfast (bottom right).

At first glance 3 look to be the best bet. Lots of blue, a reasonably priced data plan. Except they can't hold up a session to save themselves. Not only does a 2G/3G handover almost always seem to result in a drop, but I had periods of failing to get a 2G session up at all and had some random drops while in 3G coverage as well. So strike them off.

O2 and T-Mobile don't manage any 3G outside Belfast (that's the bottom right corner btw). I found that a few periods of 3G along the journey helped a lot; it meant I could do a quick mail sync rather than the long drawn out affair it was on a 2G connection. They can both handle handover between 2G/3G and keep a session up for most of the journey, but the lack of speed counts them out.

Vodafone managed the worst reception, which is disappointing. I found them quite good when I lived in England (my datacard is from a Vodafone Pay as You Use data contract). I did find sessions being dropped during the no signal regions, so they just don't seem to be a good bet.

Which leaves Orange. I've had issues with Orange and data in the past (pre 2004 IIRC) but in testing they were able to keep a session up between Belfast and Castlerock, handling 2G/3G handover fine. Coverage was reasonably good and they manage 3G at several points along the journey (the blue points roughly correspond to Coleraine, Ballymena, Antrim and Belfast). I understand Orange have some EDGE capability, but my card doesn't do EDGE so I've no idea if that'll be an extra gain or not. I had a few issues with getting dud DNS servers but this happened with the other providers too so I was beginning to suspect the datacard of playing up. Manually setting known good servers in resolv.conf worked fine.

So, before I go and sign up to an 18 month Orange contract, what have I forgotten?

Steven Rose: Trying out the Intrepid themes and more in Hardy

Steve — 2008-09-27T10:18:03+00:00

Installing

I have spoken in the past about using Michael Vogt’s PPA (Personal Package Archive) to keep me tuned into some of the more stable aspects of Ubuntu 8.10 whilst still not having to install an operating system that is currently still in an alpha build.

When I read here about Kenneth Wimer’s PPA containing the latest community themes from Intrepid I thought to myself that it is worth having a peak at least. On the link provided it explains about using extra sources, to enable you to keep up-to-date with the changes made, but by adding his PPA you will also be pulling in the new login sounds, amongst other elements. To avoid this you can always disable the source after installing the package community-themes.

To add the mentioned repository head to System>Administration>Software Sources.

Enter your password when prompted, and then when the panel opens head to the third party tab.

When you are there hit the add button and paste the following into the input field:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kwwii/ubuntu hardy main

Now when your sources reload after prompting you to do so you should recieve some updates for the included packages (un-check ubuntu-sounds if needs be). To also pull in the community themes head to a terminal (Applications>Accessories>Terminal) and paste the following:

sudo apt-get install community-themes

Then you can head back to the software sources as you did previously and uncheck the box next to the PPA you just added to avoid pulling in any other elements such as the new login sounds.

A note regarding installing anything from PPAs, you will get a warning about no authorisation, provided you are using PPAs it is fine to continue.

Once all is installed, restart GDM using CTRL + ALT + BACKSPACE, login once more and you should be able to locate the new themes in your appearance preferences. The sounds should sort themselves out, if you chose to install them too.

The Verdict…

I have thus far only experienced the “Login Ready” and the start up sounds, but on first verdict they sound a lot fresher, far more modern. At least they do not remind me of the old Windows 98/ME Jungle sound theme like the drums and such did!

Moving on to the main point of this article now, the themes…or should I say the theme, with a handful of customization options regarding the controls plus the community developed ones. Click the images to view fullsize.

NewHuman being the “official” theme. For those Ubuntu aware, we all know of the age old Human themes, with its delightful browns, this is an adaptation of this, taking it to a much darker state.

Verdict: 4.5/10, not being a fan of the original Human theme or dark themes particuarly this one is yet to have much appeal.

Dust is the first of three community themes to my eyes at least seems like a slightly less in your face approach to the New Human theme, not so much brown but black and losing the shading in the windows.

Verdict: 6/10, although not liking dark themes an awful lot this has an initial appeal, especially comparing it to New Human.

Kin without a doubt has got to be my least favourite of the four, to be blunt it looks vile. It will appeal to those that like very bright themes, this tangerine glow will appeal.

Verdict: 3/10, simply because I need shades to look at it for any prolonged period.

New Wave is the best of a not so appealing bunch, although dark, I like it quite a lot, as its only the controls, which also look very clean and modern. I would be tempted to use it, if I did not have my custom theme, although until it is made compatible for Intrepid, I may have just found a temporary solution.

Verdict: 7/10, a clean, modern theme, that could appeal to a lot of people, fits well with the new modern sound scheme.

To conclude, I am not all that impressed with the new visual side of Intrepid, but that can soon be altered to a custom state, fingers crossed the finished package will offer a lot more in the important areas!

Richard Bensley (Teatime): Death Machines

2008-09-25T18:40:53+00:00

In a world gone right, giant robots call the shots.

Elisabeth Fosbrooke-Brown: Warm steps and new housemate

sunflowerinrain (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-09-25T14:01:36+00:00

The nights are getting chilly but the days are still hot. I just ate lunch sitting on the steps, and am regretting not putting on sunscreen. If I didn't have to work this afternoon/evening I'd go to the beach.

The metal thingies along the bottom of the doorframes keep beasties out quite well: even ants don't find a way over them. Flying beasties get in, of course, and once the Terrace Gecko investigated the open kitchen window but changed its mind when it saw me watching. Yesterday evening a baby gecko scurried over the doorstep and into the kitchen, and disappeared. I've just seen it - it seems to have made a home under the washing-machine, which is fine at the moment (geckos are excellent housemates because they eat insects), but this evening the washing-machine will be switched on...

MJ Ray: Another Wednesday, Another Joe-Job

MJ Ray — 2008-09-25T07:21:54+00:00

Yesterday, another of our mailboxes got joe-jobbed, just like last week. Again, it was one of our Exim servers (yes, one got done along with a qmail last week). Again, it was an address that should never appear as the SMTP sender. Again, I put something like

        deny
          message = 553 That address is not used for outgoing email so should never get errors - please telephone us if in error
          senders = :
          recipients = !/etc/exim4/permitted-envelopes

into /etc/exim4/local-rcpt.acl, added CHECK_RCPT_LOCAL_ACL_FILE = /etc/exim4/local-rcpt.acl to /etc/exim4/conf.d/main/02_local_options, put all permitted envelope addresses into /etc/exim4/permitted-envelopes, then ran update-exim4.conf and /etc/init.d/exim4 reload and the flood stopped.

So far, it seems to be working like it should. Is there a drawback I haven’t spotted yet, apart from the obvious problem of needing to list all outgoing envelope addresses?

Steven Rose: I have resurrected http://identi.ca/steveydoteu

Steve — 2008-09-25T00:36:11+00:00

It faded into obscurity not long after my registration, I remembered it for one reason or another today though, going to make an effort to write something on there now and then!

Subscribe to me here: http://identi.ca/steveydoteu

MJ Ray: Stop Software Patents

MJ Ray — 2008-09-24T22:36:25+00:00

Today is the World Day Against Software Patents - 24 September. If you’ve not already signed the petition, go do it now, please. Especially if you’re in Europe, but also if you’re in the US or other swpat-suffering nation.

Programs are protected by copyright and the underlying harmonies should no more be protectable by patents than music, or other natural matters.

Elisabeth Fosbrooke-Brown: Flooring delivery

sunflowerinrain (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-09-24T12:16:27+00:00

The parquet has arrived. Driver-bloke huffed a bit when I gave him directions, and even more when he saw the path and steps. I wondered why, because they only deliver to outside the house and I'd thought there would be no problem with dumping it in the drive (how big is a pallet of parquet anyway?). He asked if I were alone. Then he phoned his boss and said in an annoyed-sounding voice that he'd be a bit late for his next delivery.

And then he carried all the boxes and the three 15-litre glues from the road into the house.

Elisabeth Fosbrooke-Brown: Paris weekend

sunflowerinrain (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-09-24T11:59:19+00:00

Arrived at the hotel and was told that we'd been moved to the other hotel down the road, where there is a ground-floor room. Back down the road, and an encounter with a friendly woman who was deaf. Sis#3 was already at the hotel; person on the desk said he'd decided ground-floor room wasn't suitable because of the floor surface in the corridor and put us in a third-floor room. I suspect he was wrong, but ground-floor is often noisy so I didn't mind... except that the lift was too small for Chariot and I had to partially dismantle it. Nice room, though big-city-no-space size: we moved the beds as far apart as possible. We'd both had enough of travelling for the day, so we had a quick look at the street-market, sat outside a café and watched The World over our tasses, and went for a wander round the Galaries Lafayette. Perfume sampling, of course, and got pounced on by someone who demo'd putting on eye-cream with the inside of the wrist (interesting, must try it sometime). Found some gorgeous clothes in wonderful colours and horrible price-tags. Didn't buy any, of course.

Just as well we spent nothing in Lafayette, because the evening meal (in a flashier Café) was horrendously expensive. And perfectly marvellous. Marvellous décor, too, all brass lamps and red walls and candles. It was fun watching the waiters: there was a kind of roundabout of shelves and work-surfaces through which they ran at high speed. They scurried and bustled everywhere, making the place look even more like a scene from a 1930s film.

The next day we braved the buses. They're actually very good, and it's much more fun to look at the streets and squares as you pass than it is to fight the crowds of the dark noisy metro. Besides, most of the buses have ramps, which WORK :)

... And went to the Louvre. Sis#3 has been outside it a few times, but never inside. It was hard work, trying to follow the maps and find ways round the steps and stairs, but we managed to see the Mona Lisa and a lot of rather more interesting things including some huge friezes from the palace of Darius I, which, my dears, are in just the colours I want for the new room (though where to find a sofa in pale greeny-turquoise, I don't know).

Caught a bus all the way back to Gare Montparnasse. So, that's the route from Montparnasse to Gare du Nord sussed for when I go Eurostar :)

And so to bed^Whome.

Elisabeth Fosbrooke-Brown: Weekend in Paris - travelling there

sunflowerinrain (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-09-24T01:35:12+00:00

I drove to Angoulême to catch the TGV. It's 90 minutes away, but easy to park there and less hassle than catching an ordinary train from Saintes or Jonzac and then changing - at least, I think it is. Getting up before sunrise is always difficult, and more so after only 3 hours' sleep; I set off a bit late, having gone back into the house three times to find things I'd forgotten - the third time for something which was already in the car. Fortunately the route was easy to follow and there was hardly any traffic, so I was doing well until 10 miles from Angoulême. Just at the end of the stretch of dual-carriageway (isn't it always?) I came up behind a lorry travelling slowly. Soon I realised it wasn't the lorry driver's fault - in front of him was a line of cars, or rather a parade. Seems there was a vintage car rally. There was nowhere safe to overtake (especially in a RHD car); after a couple of miles the lorry driver gave up and pulled into a layby. Usually I'd be delighted to amble after a beautiful Mk 3 Triumph Spitfire; I think both the Spitfire and the MG in front of it could have gone a lot faster if they hadn't been behind a small 1920/30s car (I didn't find out what it was). Eventually there was a piece of road with a clear view of nothing coming the other way.

I arrived a little later than hoped at the station, but still in time... except that I couldn't find a way to the platform, nor anyone to ask. There was quite a queue for the only person in the ticket office, and by the time I found the desk (nowhere near the ticket office) where I needed to request assistance in crossing the track, the train was already waiting at the other platform. There was only a small queue here, but when it was my turn someone shoved in front of me (I was so tempted to clout his ankles). The person at the desk said it was too late to find a member of staff to take me across and I'd have to catch a later train.

Disconsolately I trundled back to the ticket office and joined the queue again. Suddenly a stationstaffer appeared and said he'd come to take me across and they were holding the train! Oh joy! And what a nice thing to do (though when we arrived in Paris 4 minutes late I wondered if I should apologise to the other passengers, but was comforted by the memory of the frantic group of Anglos who'd realised that they were on the wrong train and if the train hadn't been held back they'd have been travelling north instead of south).

The elevator-thingy is so much fun, unlike the ramps that are used on UK stations. One feels quite regal.

Lovely ride, those TGV trains. Being Saturday, first class was only 6 euros extra, so of course I'd gone for it. When they changed my seat booking to the wheelchair space, I wondered if it had been necessary to pay the extra.

Gare de Montparnasse is a bit of a nightmare, but after a few circles I got out on the correct side. I'd checked bus routes, but it wasn't necessary because the hotel was quite close, the weather was sunny, and it was fun to trundle through the streets past all the busy cafés.

Ben Francis: Advocacy Pays Off... Eventually

tola — 2008-09-23T14:44:17+00:00

Someone from school posted this on my Facebook wall on Sunday:

"Hi Ben. Long time no see. Just thought I would say that you were the first person to introduce me to Linux and now I am a full time Linux programmer! Penguins shall rule the world!!! "

W00t! Go Craig.

MJ Ray: Report on Shape the future of social enterprise in the South West 4 Sep 2008

MJ Ray — 2008-09-22T17:01:51+00:00

I went to this event a few weeks ago. The immediate outcome is the call for expressions of interest in RISE-SW’s projects. The deadline is next Monday (29th September) at 12 noon, so get emailing if you’re interested in them. After that, shortlisted EoIs will get two weeks to write a full bid. I’ve asked for a non-Microsoft copy to be posted. Microsoft is a social problem, not a social enterprise.

The consultation event was a pretty straightforward introduction and discussion in small groups, followed by feedback to the whole group, with lunch to finish. The host was Gareth Hart of Perfect Moment (yet another non-SE hired by RISE instead of SE providers?).

First, the introduction covered the CapacityBuilders Social Enterprise Programme, the context of the programme and RISE’s suggested themes for support: accessibility of SE support, better opportunity for the Voluntary and Community Sectors to be more enterprising, improving SE quality standards and organisations, making SE infrastructure sustainable, and developing more peer-to-peer SE support and mentoring.

In the discussion that followed, I think the standards and sustainability themes were largely kicked into touch as unachievable with the available budget, while we felt peer-to-peer support was better as part of the more general accessibility and opportunities themes. My personal pet points were that if the Social Enterprise Mark is funded, it should benefit small SEs rather than RISE, and that if another database or directory is funded, it should be Open in licence and maintenance, like ODP and unlike previous directories which have wasted government money.

I’ll be interested to see how that’s reflected in the Call for Expressions when I get to reading it this week.

James Taylor: Systems Administrators vrs Engineers

2008-09-22T11:20:49+00:00

So a few years back I was doing a fair bit of sys-admining, and a fair bit of programming. I would say probably 50-50 in my time. Since then I actually went down the route of doing a lot more programming, and as little sys-admming as possible. Im a firm beliver that programmers should be forced to do *Some* systems administration so that they understand the concepts and ideas behind security and the other issues that Sys-admins have to deal with, but I also believe that programmers shouldn’t be the sysadmins of the boxe’s they deploy to.

Of course in a small organisatio, you don’t get those kinds of options - its very hard to justify the expense of a specialist sys-admin where every month is another extension on the mortgage of the CEO (or whoever your startup financial backer is).

Anyways, my problem is that on my personal server, I’m not actually very comfortable in claiming to be the sys-admin of it anymore. I havn’t got a clue whats going on with it any more. Four years of solid programming with only minimal systems-administration in the mix. So this is why, when trying to get some of my new code (in Python - you hear that - I’ve broken my “all languages beginning with P are evil” habit) to start on the server, I broke *everything*.

Thank you, goodnight.

MJ Ray: Lots of Days: Software Freedom, British Food and World Peace

MJ Ray — 2008-09-20T07:23:47+00:00

Today is Software Freedom Day.

It is also the start of British Food Fortnight. (Tip to total coverage cooperative.) There is an open day 11-3 at Thatchers Cider, near here in Sandford. (To get there from Worle by bike, leave through St Georges to Bourton, then Hewish, Puxton, Nye, over the Strawberry Line and you’ll arrive on Nye Road in Sandford - turn right for the cider. I’m not sure of the best way from Locking direction…)

Tomorrow is the second equinox and International Day of Peace. (Tip to New Internationalist cooperative.)

What are you doing this weekend?

David Reynolds: DJANGO PONY!

2008-09-19T12:32:29+00:00

If like me, you like the idea of django pony but you're not so keen on the pink, here are some alternatives:

MJ Ray: Spam Revenge: Stopping Joe-job Floods in qmail

MJ Ray — 2008-09-18T13:22:41+00:00

Myself and a colleague were both getting Joe-jobbed yesterday. I had an easy time telling Exim to reject mine at SMTP time, but the colleague receives mail on our only Plesk server, so it’s using qmail. I’ve noticed before that qmail admin tools are primitive and incomplete, so I looked for the appropriate rocks to bang together to put this fire out. (I think I just sprained a metaphor.)

My best attempt so far is to edit the user’s .qmail file to start with a pipe to a command that exit 100s if it detects an error for an email which the user obviously didn’t send (wrong email client or whatever). qmail understands code 100 as a hard error, so I think that should generate an SMTP error, but I didn’t figure out from the logs whether it was SMTP-time or later and my testing was inconclusive. I suspect Plesk will remove my pipe when the user next edits their email account, too. How do qmail/Plesk users not drown in spam?

In related news, I’ve started getting “Challenge Response” emails from users of Merak Mail Server Software for emails I never sent. I’m answering the challenges so that challenge-response users get spam if their server spams me. Challenge-response is evil - I don’t want spam from your mailserver just because you accepted spam that said it was from me. If you are using Merak Mail Server Software, change away now!

One of my current anti-spam tactics is to read my email in batches (which Suw suggests is a good idea) and group messages which look “similar”. Very similar messages appear for very few reasons: people resending messages, mailing list threads, stuff from spam-nets and a few others. Apart from spam-nets, most of the others match one of a few keywords. My current method of doing this is part-automatic and part-human. Are there automated anti-spam tools which exploit this local similarity? I think DCC used to include this idea, but then there were software patents and hoo-ha and I stopped paying so much attention.

Finally, a small discussion has broken out in the comments of Is Yahoo Now Even Worse On Spam? about whitelisting and business-critical uses of free webmails.

Steven Rose: Ogg Vorbis > Mp3

Steve — 2008-09-18T03:25:22+00:00

“What is Ogg?!” I hear you cry.

You will all be highly familiar with the format Mp3 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3), as it is somewhat common in the world of digital music. You would think a widely used, compressed audio format would offer great benefits. Not entirely true, unfortunately, Mp3 is riddled with patents causing headaches for music distributors and also software developers alike. Permissions and more likely than not, money are needed to get anywhere. Ogg Vorbis, is entirely the opposite, open source. It is completely in the public domain, the entire source code available to view or use, thus allowing developers and anyone else to use it as they please, patent free and of course, cost free. It would also be your safest bet in avoiding any patent-based lawsuits!

I will be honest with you, I have known of the format for a number of years now, but for one reason or another shyed away from making the transition. I had many questions, much like you, the Mp3 user, has this very moment whilst reading this. What about portable players? What can I use to listen to it on my PC? Questions of that nature, at least. Nowadays even Windows Media Player can play Ogg with a simple set of DirectShow filters. I will post all relevant links at the end of this entry.

Vorbis.com: We have a new Windows DirectShow based decoder thanks to our friends at Illiminable. These will let you play your Ogg Vorbis files in Windows Media Player, and other DirectShow based players.

You have all the benefits of compressed audio, without the hassles of patents such as DRM, as an example. There is a plethora of media players and portable players with Ogg compatibility via codecs and plugins, a number also support the format straight out of the box. Having made the transition to open source operating systems, and also software in that respect, a number of months ago now, I felt that this was the next step. I feel that the play Ogg campaign is a very worthy cause, in need of much more support. I wholly agree with its mission statement:

FSF.org: A campaign to encourage use of the patent- and license-free standard Ogg Vorbis as an ethically, legally and technically superior audio alternative to the proprietary MP3 format.

Here are the links to all the related material I promised:

http://www.fsf.org

http://www.playogg.org/

http://www.xiph.org/

For information and downloads regarding the direct show filters, pay a visit to the following section of the Xiph site:

http://www.xiph.org/dshow/

http://www.defectivebydesign.org/

Very informative project on anti-DRM issues.

Lets get more people using Ogg! Make the transition today!

Steven Rose: HOW-TO: Adobe Flash Player in Ubuntu

Steve — 2008-09-18T02:56:39+00:00

At the time of writing this how-to is written whilst using Hardy Heron LTS (8.04), it should be simple enough to alter it for previous releases, I can aid anyone with this if needs be, just drop me a line.

If you can relate to the following, then this guide is most definitely for you!

Help, I cannot watch my favourite YouTube video in Ubuntu!

You may or may not realise that Adobe Flash Player is of course proprietory software, in laymans terms it is not open source or relased under the GPL licence or its derivatives.

If you are having issues playing Flash videos, for example on YouTube, you a most probably lacking the plugin for Adobe Flash. As a precaution more than anything, to avoid any conflicts I would suggest firstly removing Gnash (if installed). a project aiming to create an open source alternative to the proprietary Adobe Flash, although wonderful in many aspects and constantly improving, it still does not work all together seamlessly. I recommend using it though, if you have no problems with the flash elements you require in your daily web use.

In a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) execute the following:

sudo apt-get remove --purge gnash gnash-common mozilla-plugin-gnash libgnash0

This will make sure that you have not got Gnash on your system. If it is not installed you will get something similar to the following:

Here we can proceed to add the required resources to install Adobe Flash Player on your Ubuntu system.

Open a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and execute the following:

sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

Entering your password when asked (it will display nothing when you type) and answer yes to any questions regarding installation.

This will then proceed to obtain and install Adobe Flash 9 on your system. Restart Firefox if it was still open and things should be working for you!

Useful bookmarks

http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/

http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/

Chris Lamb: Debian Developer

Lamby — 2008-09-17T22:45:45+00:00

A few days ago I was awarded official Debian Developer status.

Many thanks to:

Thomas Viehmann
Ana Beatriz Guerrero López
Daniel Baumann
Christoph Berg
Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Stephen Gran
Steve McIntye
Neil McGovern
Cyril Brulebois
Matthew Johnson
Sune Vuorela
Peter Palfrader
Jonathan McDowell
Tim Retout

For posterity, my first experience with the Debian development process was with #400550. Never underestimate the importance of giving credit in changelog entries.

MJ Ray: Software in the Public Interest

MJ Ray — 2008-09-17T07:40:48+00:00

There should be a board meeting at 1900 UTC in #spi on irc.oftc.net, according to the last meeting. There’s no announcement or agenda online at the time of writing. (If only you’d elected me…)

Hopefully, a meeting will decide on issuing a statement in support of the campaign against Software Patents and supporting FACIL taking on the Quebec proprietary software problem.

Update: The agenda appeared between the time of writing and the time of posting.

MJ Ray: Software Freedom Day: Sat 20 Sep 2008

MJ Ray — 2008-09-17T07:37:21+00:00

Lucy Bridges writes:

“Saturday 20th September is Software Freedom Day [1]. As many of you will know, this is a worldwide event designed to promote software freedom. I am proud to announce that Manchester Free Software (like many other groups across the country and the world) will be hosting an event to celebrate.” (original)

I don’t know of any events in the Bristol or Somerset areas, but I wish the Manchester event all the best.

MJ Ray: Web Foundation and While I Was Out

MJ Ray — 2008-09-16T07:29:51+00:00

I concentrated on work after my return to the keyboard last week and then spent much of the weekend reroofing a shed, so today was my first day catching up with the news. Here’s what I noticed:-

One of my former sponsorees Adriaan Peeters was announced as a debian developer.
Koha roles for the 3.2 release window were decided at a meeting last Friday - I’ve one public and one private task to do, which I’ll try to start today.
PAYG iPhone will be an iWatering £400 - see Why I don’t want an iSomething for a view similar to mine. I’m using an old Sony Ericsson 3G phone rather than something like a Freerunner because I don’t have a good mobile telco yet and I don’t plan to start small device software hacking again yet - I tried once before and found it much harder than internet software.
Tim Berners-Lee Announces World Wide Web Foundation - well, I guess we don’t know yet whether it will be fairer than the pay-to-play consortium.
Facebook imposes site facelift which makes my fan run all the time (inefficient Javascript?), while LinkedIn launches advertising network - I’m looking for exit strategies from both of these now, but network effects keep sucking me back in.
The Mozilla Corporation took another step in developing their obnoxious
“Free Software” EULA which is actually enforced by their very-non-free trademark and logo copyright licensing. It really does show that Debian Iceweasel and GNU Icecat are necessary. Ubuntu get punished for breaking ranks and accepting MozCorp’s non-free terms - Some day, it comes back in your face indeed. And I know it’s juvenile, but the suggestion on the bug report that they rename it “firecox” just to spite MozCorp made me laugh. I’m pretty angry that Mark Shuttleworth incorrectly claims that debian calls it Iceweasel “to belittle or demean” Mozilla, though. “Weasel” was posted here as a simple alternative to “rabbit”. rabbits have bad connotations in many cultures, as tricksters, cowards, disease-carriers, sex-maniacs, bringers of bad luck and so on, while weasels symbolise resurrection and bravery - except in US politics (”weasel words”) and Dilbert, oddly enough.

Steve Pearce: Book Cataloging With Alexandria

Steve Pearce — 2008-09-15T14:27:55+00:00

Alexandria. A free software ruby/gtk book cataloging application.

I imagine this was created for use by librarians or persons who manage a large collection of books in an office or workplace. I am simply using it to manage my tiny collection. To list what I own, who is borrowing what etc.

Alexandria is wonderfully simple to use. Give it an ISBN number for each entry and it will attempt to pull in data and graphics for the title using Amazon.

It worked for everything in my collection. Cover artwork isn’t always possible, but you can simply add the cover art manually in the book editing area as shown below. This interface also allows you to alter details.

It is possible also to specify who is currently loaning the book in the loaning tab. Quite a smart feature,

Once you have built a nice collection of books in your library, they are displayed graphically as shown below.

Right clicking and selecting to view the collection as a list reveals the details,

Alexandria allows you to export your book collections to CSV, plaintext, HTML and various other formats.

Here is an example in the list format with no graphics.

Alexandria is certainly worth checking out. It’s feature list can be viewed here.

Elisabeth Fosbrooke-Brown: Lavender sunset

sunflowerinrain (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-09-15T09:16:16+00:00

What a beautiful evening. The sunset was very red and the air was still and warm and full of the scent of grass and lavender.

I tried to take a photo of the sunlight reflecting redly off the terrace roof and painting the big tree gold, but took too long to find the camera. Now the sky matches the flower-scent.

MJ Ray: BT raise phone call connection charge

MJ Ray — 2008-09-15T07:28:46+00:00

The biggest competitor to our telephone service, BT, increase their connection charge to 7p per call tomorrow (16 September 2008) for many customers (thanks to MSE for the news).

However, our telephone service’s basic prices remain 4.7p per call for up to 1 hour (then 1.175p/minute) for Evening & Weekend Local and National calls and 2.94p/minute Daytime Local and National Calls, with no set-up charge.

BT’s prices for 1471, 1571, ringback, alarm calls and 3-way calling are also increasing. What are they playing at? It says these price rises are “in order to stay competitive”. Huh? Increased competition but still raising prices - it’s almost like they want to stay competitive by not having any customers who read their bills! I guess then they’ll be able to charge what they like, pretty much. £5 per call, anyone? And Phorm would get through pretty easy if they only have negligent customers…

Elisabeth Fosbrooke-Brown: Fire in the field

sunflowerinrain (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-09-14T20:24:26+00:00

The old stairs were donated to Really Helpful Neighbours to attach to their grenier (grain-loft) because she was worried about him using the ancient ladder. He's a tough old bloke, but that ladder looked lethal.

She does worry about him doing daft things. Last week he caused a bit of excitement. I almost missed it, but while driving home noticed flashing lights and emergency vehicles at the end of the lane, and a group of people standing around discussing whatever it was had happened. It seems that while clearing straw in the field he'd set it alight with the tractor, and someone had gleefully called out the fire service. Two fire engines and the police arrived. Of course, it will be in the local paper because there is a complete report of the Sorties des pompiers (rescued cat from tree, unlocked car door, that kind of thing). Those rural fire engines are cute little things, as if from a French version of Trumpton. Hope he doesn't have to pay for it.

Elisabeth Fosbrooke-Brown: Room nearly finished

sunflowerinrain (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-09-13T13:19:13+00:00

Most of the new room is complete apart from the flooring. It needs a door, and I'm being awkward and insisting on a glazed door because I want to be able to watch the sunlight on the barn walls (Hey, this is important. If I wanted to be surrounded only by modern walls I could have bought a new bungalow. In fact, I would have liked a window under the stairs; but that would have been very awkward.) The trip to the secondhand and recovered building and furniture place in Royan was sadly fruitless. They had some beautiful wooden glazed doors in stock, but all too big. I briefly wondered what Benoit and Camille would say if I demanded that the wall be re-built with a bigger doorway. Only briefly. Anyway, Camille found this
http://www.bricodepot.fr/saintes-saint-georges-des-coteaux/node/493 which looks good and isn't very expensive.

Today I've varnished half the stairs, topside only, and I'm shattered. Also, it might be cheaper if I didn't get so much varnish on the floor and in my hair. The varnish sold by the man in the hugely expensive trade supplies place (did he look at me and think "female AND English!"?) turned out to be darker and not as red as the sample we showed him. I bought some more varnish of the same brand in a hypermarket while I was in Royan, but chose a lighter colour. There was "blond oak" which looked rather yellow, so I got "light oak" which was a pleasant light nondescript wood colour - on the tin. On the stairs, it glows like a marigold. Ah well, it should fade.

There's a local decorator and pointing expert, an Anglo immigrant called James, who is setting up in business. He will fix up the old walls with pointing, attempt to cover the dreadful dark grey concrete that some previous owner applied to damaged stones, and apply sealant to stop the saltpetre leaking all over the place. He'll also paint the new walls, or at least he'll paint those parts I can't reach, because although 100 euros a day is a good price for the work, I'm running out of money. He starts on Monday so I'd like to get as much done as possible this weekend. There's a brocante tomorrow, and that will take up some time. hmm.

As for the flooring, the supplier of reasonably-priced bamboo parquet is in Paris and charges 205 euros plus tax for delivery. There are more local suppliers, but much more expensive. You can get it in UK much cheaper, so I've emailed a UK firm who will deliver in Europe and asked for a quotation for delivery but they haven't replied. grump. I may have to pay the c.200 quid for delivery.

Elisabeth Fosbrooke-Brown: New room! Ooh!

sunflowerinrain (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-09-13T13:18:38+00:00

Ex-housemate and ex-housemate's husband were staying at my place for the first week I was back in UK, with two of their friends. In return for cheap holiday they offered to Do Stuff, and we thought it was going to work out well with the builders on Plan C[0].

However, it didn't work out. I was rather disappointed. Builders emailed on Friday (while I was offline in York) to say they could start yesterday, and were my friends available to help... oh well. I read the email when I got back south, and replied to say no but there's a key with Really Friendly Neighbour.

Today they sent photos of the beginning of the work. It's so exciting! :)

[0] Plan A was to start work at the beginning of August. Plan B, after discovering they couldn't get the necessary materials, was to start in September. Plan C was after they found a place which would sell them some of the materials in August.

MJ Ray: Away From Keyboard

MJ Ray — 2008-09-11T12:59:10+00:00

I’ve been away from the blogging keyboard for a few more days than I expected. For some reason, my Wordpress doesn’t work in lynx so I couldn’t post from the mobile phone when I had chance. I was at:-

Shaping the Future of Social Enterprise last Thursday
Bristol Knowledge Unconference last Friday
Kewstoke Council this Monday
Tour of Britain stage finish in Burnham-on-Sea this Tuesday - I then rode back which was pretty exhausting with my current poor legs and the terrible road surfaces
North Somerset Cycling Forum yesterday

I’ll write up the remaining events over the next few days and they should appear linked from below this article - please leave me a comment if you want to influence the order I write them. First I need to attend to some business matters, though.

Other recent random things: upgrading my kernel (to enable an rt2500 wireless card instead of the nasty bcm4301 I was using) seems to have fixed an X/GNUstep copy-paste problem I was having; why does http://identi.ca say “OpenID authentication failed: Not in requested trust domain” to my OpenID?

Jonathan McDowell: Which netbook?

2008-09-10T12:03:39+00:00

I think I want a netbook. Although I'm still happy with my R200 (especially since I replaced the battery) something smaller would be handy for the train and general carting about. With the R200 being 12" I'm more drawn to the 8.9" variants; 10" isn't a lot smaller and at the cheaper end doesn't appear to result in any higher a resolution than 8.9"

Really I'd like something with built in 3G/HSDPA, but only the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 seems to have this, and the Linux model isn't even on sale yet in the UK, let alone the 3G version.

If I can't get 3G then I'm drawn to the EEE 901. It seems to have the best battery life, has bluetooth and isn't too expensive (though at the higher end of what I'd want to pay for a 2nd machine). Plus it has the appeal that I should be able to walk into a shop and pick one up. Main drawback is that I've read the Ralink RT2860 wifi ain't great (and the driver isn't in mainline yet, though there is one kicking around). Any truth in this? Any other gotchas?

Thoughts, people? I've seen an MSI Wind in the flesh and it was a bit big. The Acer Aspire One looks nice enough, but not great battery life and no bluetooth. Any others I should be looking at instead of the 901? Must be easily available in the UK. I will, of course, be running Debian on it.

Tim (spodlife): First smashing images from Large Hadron Collider

2008-09-10T10:53:15+00:00

Working LHC produces first images