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Wed, 29 Jun 2005
[12:24] I Got A Headset!
Date: 6/29/05 at 8:24PM
Not excitingly groundbreaking news for some but as I spend four to five hours on the phone every day I get REALLY sick of trying to type with one hand. The headset was ceremoniously awarded to me after the following e-mail went out (I'm the 'chap'):
From : [Name removed to protect the guilty]
To : [A broad selection of people on the floor I'm working on]
Subject: Mental Status of your PB02 man
[My bosses name removed], I am a little concerned about the mental status of your PB02 chap who has been working on a desk in the server team.
On Monday afternoon he stuck a plastic bag on his head and then proceeded
to use parcel tape to create a DIY hands free kit by sticking the phone to
his ear.
Is this normal behaviour amongst PB02??? Do you want me to call security?
I have pictures on my phone if you don't believe me.
Regards
[Judgemental man not appreciative of ingenuity]
NT Server Team
UPDATE: Someone just forwarded me the phone picture which I present for your viewing pleasure:
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Mon, 27 Jun 2005
[06:32] TCPDump on Windows
Date: 6/27/05 at 2:32PM
I had a situation today where I needed the functionality of TCPDump but I couldn't install ANYTHING on the server I wanted to dump on. This ruled out WinDump as you need to install WinPcap to get that, and most other similar utilities, working. I then stumbled across MicroOLAP TCPDump. This is a windows port of the original tcpdump program using their own Packet Sniffer SDK. From what I've read on the site, the SDK is actually a rebadged (and reworked?) Network Investigation Suite - a Delphi based fully self-contained, dynamically-loaded packet capture technology.
It is free for personal use and attracts a $US40 license fee for commercial use.
It has exactly the same command line switches as the *nix version (yay!) but the interface selection is a little difficult. I couldn't find any doco on it so here's what I worked out/guessed:
How To Find Your Network Interface ServiceName
- Start RegEdit.exe
- Navigate to the HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\NetworkCards key
- Assuming you have a NIC in the machine there will be one or more keys listed here, one for each NIC. Each key is an integer but I don't know what this integer is, it is NOT the number of cards you have. There are two string (REG_SZ) values in each of these keys. Description and ServiceName. The Description field should provide you with enough information to identify the card you're after, the ServiceName is the string you are going to need.
As you can see in the image below, my ServiceName data value is "{5A484F38-DF22-483C-A4B8-69570E3C7DE2}".
- That's all you need - to use it with tcpdump:
tcpdump -i \Device\{5A484F38-DF22-483C-A4B8-69570E3C7DE2}
If you don't want to expend all that effort I've written a script that will enumerate all the NICs in your registry and put the ServiceName value in an InputBox so you can copy it out. Copy everything between the lines below into a file with a vbs extension and double-click it (NOTE: you'll need WMI on the box for this to work):
Set oReg=GetObject("winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\.\root\default:StdRegProv")
sKey = "Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\NetworkCards"
lRet = oReg.EnumKey(&H80000002, sKey, arSubKeys)
If (lRet = 0) Then
For Each oKey In arSubKeys
sSubPath = sKey & "\" & oKey
oReg.GetExpandedStringValue &H80000002, sSubPath, "Description", sDesc
oReg.GetExpandedStringValue &H80000002, sSubPath, "ServiceName", sValue
InputBox sDesc, "Network Card ServiceName", sValue
Next
Else
WScript.Echo "Couldn't get registry array (" & lRet & ")!"
End If
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Sun, 26 Jun 2005
[15:47] LUGRadio LIVE - Report
Date: 6/26/05 at 11:47PM
LUGRadio Live 2005 happened this weekend (Saturday 25/06). My report on what was there and what I saw follows (yes, it's all me me me, it's a blog goddamit):
I was all organised and had everything together and ready so all I had to do was get up at 0615 , shower and head for the Tube. I got there and made my connection at Euston station with no problems. 2 hours and 46 uncomfortable minutes later (you get what you pay for with the ole £18 return ticket) I alighted in Wolverhampton. I was just on the verge of congratulating myself for the eminient smoothness of the travel arrangements when I realised I had absolutely NO idea of where exactly I was going in Wolverhampton! I tried wandering around in the vague hope that I'd either bump into it or I'd come across an internet cafe. I didn't. Forty-five minutes later I realised that I had a couple of the podcasts on my MP3 player and I slowly FFWD through to the annoucement of the location. I got there only an hour late and got into some serious llistening. I managed to check out:
- Rufus Pollock - Digital rights and freedom campaigner
Had some interesting things to say about the various open source licenses and their various interactions with each other. Also touched on the new OpenSolaris licensing and warned of possible linux "contamination" leading to potential SCO like legal action in the future. He also made some interesting points about free software and the government. He pointed out that schools are THE place to get Linux in because getting the mindshare of the children is going to be what gets Linux into the position of a contender rather than an annoyance to the major powers. He also pointed out that winning market share from those who CAN make a choice is not really helping. Those who can make choices about what they want to run are probably something like 5% of the overall OS market. Schools and government offices are what needs to be aimed at.
- Mark Shuttleworth - Founder of Canonical and the Ubuntu project and part time space-man.
I found this to be one of the most interesting talks. He gave the talk whilst playing a slideshow of photos taken by and of him when he was training and IN space. The talk segued through space travel whenever a photo caught his eye and Ubuntu development and philosophy the rest of the time. I remember when Mark did the space thing back in 2002 and I didn't really pay attention at the time because a) I had no idea who he was and b) I was busy thinking unhelpful things like "Goddamn rich people" and being jealous. He seems to be a pretty philanthropic kind of guyand he further fired my ambitions to do something for the OS/FS/Linux community this year. He also followed on with the school theme and talked briefly about his SchoolTool project. Basically a project to develop a common global school administration infrastructure that is freely available under an Open Source licence.
- Bill Thompson - Tech commentator and BBC journalist
This talk drew some interesting parallels between the Madrid bombings on the 11th of March 2004 and the Open Source community. He pointed out the difference between the American reaction to the 9th of September attacks ("Who did this and where are they so we can do it back") and the Spanish reaction ("Who did this and why did they do it? What can we do to stop them doing it again?"). He then moved on to how Open Source software was used to provide a website including registraion and pre-registration functionality, high turn-over forums in three languages and a certain degree of privacy - all in three days. Bill said the the slideshow was available on his website but damned if I could find it.
- Ian Bell - Co-creator of 80s classic game Elite
This was an interesting talk in that the presenter seemed seemed very much drained by the subject he was talking about. There are documented troubles surrounding this attitude but I still felt really sorry for him. He was obviously very smart but just seemed to be over everything.
- Kevin Carmony - President and CEO of Linspire
This guy is pure PR genius. I played with the first couple of versions of Lindows when they came out but I've done nothing more than read news stories ever since they became Linspire. I must say that purely going off what he said I'm definietly up for another look. Although his distro is probably not what I'm looking for it might be a very good stepping stone into the Linux world for Windows people I'd like to move over (people like my parents for instance). He pointed out that a lot of the work they are doing with Linspire is getting hardware drivers for Linux in general. They are big enough to be able to deal with companies like Via, Abit, Nvidia, Asus, AMD and get drivers out of them. He also explained that everythign that is developed at Linspire to make their desktop more useable is given back to the community that owns the original base product.
- and, of course, Jono Bacon, Ade Bradshaw, Stuart Langridge and Matthew Revell doing the live recording of LUGRadio late in the afternoon!
Of course I also got some cool free stuff:
- An O'Reilly pocket Etch-A-Sketch
- An O'Reilly Developers Notebook (basically a little book full of grid paper)
- A boxed copy of Linspire with a 12-Month Click-and-Run license
- A RedHat Europe cap
- A CD with all the LUGRadio episodes to date, signed by all the presenters of course (yup, I'm a sad fanboy)
- A 12 month subscription to Make magazine (I scored that by travelling the furthest to get to the meet).
- The latest Ubuntu and KUbuntu releases on CD
I'd like to plug Make magazine just briefly. It's a new offering from the O'Reilly company and I really like it. I bought the two available copies before I got the subscription because I really enjoyed my brief skim through them. It could be that they just happen to be paralleling my current side project (building a magentic swipe card reader - Make's take on it here) but there seemed to be plenty of other stuff to interest the hardware hacker - sort of like 2600 but without the social commentary.
I think the best thing I got took away from this event (apart from masses of swag) was the re-enforcement that Linux is more about community than anything else. All the really cool people who gave up their time to talk at this event which, lets face it, isn't exactly world-shaking, without being paid anything at all embody the spirit of what the Open Source community is all about. They came, they talked about what they give to the community and none of them put themselves up on a pedestal. If you wanted to approach them and have a chat, you could!
Although on the face of it it might be nice for all of the talent available to work on one distro and perfect one desktop manager and one application suite the reality is that all of these projects inter-operate anyway. If someone comes up with a bright idea you'll see it spread around soon enough. Without the choice the community becomes no better an option than what is offered by the proprietry "Do It OUR Way" OSs.
I get more dissilusioned with private enterprise everyday and I really hope that I can provide something useful to the world - no matter how fleetingly - rather than tapping my blood for some vampiric leach who cares not for the quality and elegance of the solution so long as they get paid.
Vive la resistance!
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Thu, 23 Jun 2005
[07:20] MSTSC Three Finger Salute
Date: 6/23/05 at 3:20PM
I've been using the Microsoft Terminal Services Client (mstsc.exe) a lot recently and today the root explorer.exe hung on the server leaving me unable to do anything. I needed to press Control Alt Delete to get to the Task Manager but I couldn't because the local machine obviously gets precedence on that little combo. A little digging on the MS Support site revealed:
To send Ctrl Alt Del via a Terminal Services connection you need to press Ctrl Alt End.
The only other really interesting combo I found is Control Alt Break which toggles between Windowed and Full Screen modes.
To get the word from the horses mouth or decide for yourself what is really interesting, check out the MS article How To Connect Clients to Terminal Services By Using a Terminal Services Client in Windows 2000 - in particlar the Shortcut Keys section.
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Wed, 22 Jun 2005
[03:48] Sunbird Calendar
Date: 6/22/05 at 11:48AM
I finally caved yesterday after all of my meetings moved about three times and my diary (written on paper) ended up looking like some kind of cryptic treasure map. I'm using paper because I don't have a tiny mobile computer yet (they're all too delicate and expensive) and I can't use the work calendering system (Lotus Notes) because I still don't have access due to some administrative bungles.
So, I headed for Sunbird. I looked at Sunbird a while back and it seems to have moved on quite a bit since then. The 0.2 release was set free on Friday, February 4th 2005 and it's slowly developing into a useful app.
The problem I have is that I want it accessible from multiple locations (hopefully I can get online from wherever I am) to deal with the lack of portable device to keep it on. Sunbird provides the ability to publish your calendar to a remote server via HTTP. It uses the iCal file format. Searching for iCal on google provides a link to iCal Exchange. This is a free service that will host your calendar, password protected if you wish. Obviously if you are going to be putting private/secret information (ie 1630 - Dominatrix Appt.) in your diary you don't want it out there on the internet so it's up to you to decide if you can utilise this service. If you have the luxury of a home server then you can host it yourself - there's an Apache module, mod_dav, that will do the job for you. From what I've seen the website that Carlos provides is pretty slick - the interface is simple and data transfer is quick!
I had to get it to go through my work proxy and as the interface is still lacking polish there is no proxy option. To get it working I had to do the following:
- Download Sunbird 0.2. This is the ZIP package, just unpack it somewhere
- Run sunbird.exe from wherever you unpacked it.
- Shut it down again, now all of the initial preferences have been set.
- Locate your prefs.js file. It will be somewhere like: C:\Documents and Settings\
YOUR_USER_NAME\Application Data\MozillaSunbird\Profiles\A_RANDOM_STRING\prefs.js and open it in Notepad
- Add the proxy settings:
user_pref("network.proxy.autoconfig_url", "http://your.proxy.url/proxy.pac");
user_pref("network.proxy.type", 2);
I stole these settings from Firefox, I use an automatic proxy so if you have a single proxy these settings might not be correct. I'll look up the other proxy settings and post them here later.
- Start up Sunbird again
- Go to the Tools menu and select Options
- Add your remote URL. If you're using iCal then it will be something like http://icalx.com/private/USER_NAME/CALENDAR_NAME.ICS
- Press OK
- Over on the left hand side there's a little tabbed menu. Click on the second tab, Calendars and right click on the calendar listed there. Select Edit Calendar from the menu.
- The Remote Calendar URL should be populated now but you should tick the Automatically publish your changes tick box down the bottom. Press OK
- Last step, right click on the calendar and this time select Publish Entire Calendar from the menu
- A window will pop up with the URL you entered before, press the Publish button. If you've selected a private calendar then you will be prompted for the username and password you entered on the website. Press the Close button.
That's it!
It works but it's a no-frills service so far. Obviously Sunbird has a long way to go, maybe it's time I finally pulled my finger out and did something useful for the Open Source community.....
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[01:10] Painting London : Your Options are Bumpy or Sticky
Date: 6/22/05 at 9:10AM
I've been doing a LOT of walking in the past two weeks in the search for a place to live. Whilst on these adventures I've been observing London and the way it's different to home.
I'm one of those annoying people who like to tap on fences/railings whilst walking past them. If one has a stick, all well and good; If not, hands will do. So anyway, I was walking along a road (after a failed attempt to get into BT Tower) and I turned onto Euston Road. This road is quite large so the powers that be have built a fence along the side to stop you wandering into the traffic. I automatically stuck my hand out to tap-tap-tap on the railings as I went by and - and this is the exciting bit - nearly stripped all the skin from my fingers. This was my first encounter with the Bumpy Paint.
I stopped and investigated the railings. Although they were painted matt black the paint was impregnated with what can only be described as 'stuff'. Some of the stuff was quite large and protruded from the surface about 6-7mm, other pieces were smaller like sandpaper. Looking around I noticed that every other council owned object was painted with the same substance, lightpoles, traffic signal boxes, fences - anything that hadn't moved while the painting team went through I think. Since then (that was last weekend now) I have come across it in several places and I'm still not 100% sure what it is.
My initial theory that they'd heard I was coming over and wanted to force me to sand my own arms off doesn't realy seem all that likely and the only other thing I can think of is that it's an anti-graffiti measure. It would probably stop Magic Marker activities but I doubt spray paint would have any problems, it's also possible that the nodules would prevent bill posters from sticking their wares as there wouldn't be enough points of contact for the glue to hold. I've search for anti-graffiti products and there are none that match what I'm seeing here. I decided to send an e-mail to the London Mayor (it was the only e-mail address I could find) and ask him. The mail was received and they replied:
We will look into all of the points you have raised and get back to you as soon as possible.
So they obviously haven't read it :) If they ever do I shall pass on the information here: watch this space.
The sticky paint is easier. I came across it about two days ago and I thought I'd actually found an answer to the bumpy paint. Whilst walking along Vauxhall Road I saw a big yellow sign (see a lovely selection here) saying Anti-Climb Paint. I rushed over thinking that it was going to be the bumpy paint and found that it was actually some black goop that they smear on stuff to stop vandals/burglars from climbing on or over them. Theoretically you can't climb downpipes because you'll slip off and you can't climb other things because you won't want to get dirty. I'm not sure just how effective this actually is. I think some gloves would make it quite easy....
I like an industry that covers all angles. The paint industry brings us non-slip paint for pool surrounds and slip paint for everything else!
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Sun, 19 Jun 2005
[03:52] Hey! Where'd my life go?
Date: 6/19/05 at 11:52AM
Woah! I've had so many things I've wanted to post this week and a grand total of zero spare hours to do ANYTHING in.
Work has been non-stop and frequently hasn't finished until nine (that would be PM) after starting at seven-thirty/eight which means I have to be well out of the house by about seven (I'm currently less than three minutes from a Tube station). The whole Work/Social Networking obligation this week (Bob, this is the new guy, don't hurt him...much) have precluded me actually getting home before midnight any night this week - not to metion the fact that Thursday night we were forced to go to a Karaoke bar...wheeee, now my only suit smells like I'm a hardcore chain smoker!
In addition I'm trying to locate a place to live which means viewings. The agents over here (who appear to be exclusively Australian or South African) don't start work until nine so I can only view places at lunch time or in the afternoon if I can scab off earlyish.
To cap it all off, I suspect that the lack of sleep, combined with exposure to less than clean environs has contributed to a lapse in the vigilance of my immune system and I seem to have a cold...
My only hedonistic moment this week was when I spent eight hours plaing GTA:San Andreas (Yes, I have an XBox, not a PoopStation so it's new to ME OK) last night (I didn't start until after all the real estate agents were closed though, we played from five until one). Damn that's a cool game - more on that later!
Anywho, I shall now attempt to post all the things I've been meaning to post this week so apologies in advance for hopelessley out-of-date information (for those of you avidly scheduling your lives based on my blog).
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Mon, 13 Jun 2005
[15:42] LUGRadio LIVE
Date: 6/13/05 at 11:42PM
Since I so cunningly managed to miss Linux Conf 2005 (no no, there are plenty of tickets left, I'll buy one later) in my own home town I'm NOT going to miss LUGRadio Live 2005, not when I'm so close!
I've been considering it for the last couple of days and, in a serendipitous twist of fate, a mailing list that arrived today pointed out to me that a man whom I very much respect and admire is also going to be there. That man is Mil Millington! If you haven't heard of him I suggest you check out the link, he is a most hilarious author and has written several books now including Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About and A Certain Chemistry.
See you at LUGRadio Live 2005.
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Sun, 12 Jun 2005
[09:32] This Blog Sucks
Date: 6/12/05 at 5:32PM
It has been pointed out to me that my blog sucks and that "The feeds are utter poo".
Strong words but, sadly for me, true. The feeds are indeed "poo". I've been doing some digging and it seems that feeds out of modblog.com are generated by some magical php and that this php is not as magical as it should be. It strips all HTML from the blog entry! This leads to some interesting formatting issues wherever the feed is displayed.
I have raised Bug 252 with the Modblog team and we shall see what happens.
UPDATE: I was notified (somewhat bizarrely) by a comment on this blog that the nasty bug is under investigation, I await it's resolution with bated breath....
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Fri, 10 Jun 2005
[06:29] Vindication
Date: 6/10/05 at 2:29PM
I've been meaning to write a diatribe on telecommuting for the last week but I haven't had a chance. I mention this because I spent my second day physically at work today and, since my MP3 player ran out of batteries on the tube this morning I listened to my co-workers chatting today.
I was both stunned and vindicated by what I heard. I've had problems with this company before and I spent more than a little time reviewing their behaviour and reputation in my city, country and eventually my geographic area. My conclusions then were that they were universally unloved by their employees for exactly the same reasons. This was based on internet research and a few internally aired isues - issues that were quickly removed from intranet sites and Inboxes upon their discovery.
Today I heard comments indicating that team morale is rock-bottom due to problems with expense claims, constant unpaid overtime demands, no remuneration reviews and attempts to bribe the workers into ignoring the dismal working conditions with vouchers for goods and services.... I'm glad I'm contracting :)
I honestly have no idea how this company continues to function. They chew up and spit out young, naive talent and spit out jaded IT contractor husks like me.
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Thu, 09 Jun 2005
[13:46] Podcasts, Crappy JVC MP3 Players & LUGRadio
Date: 6/9/05 at 9:46PM
Since I have become a commuter I've found that one requires Things To Do whilst on the Tube. Books are a nice idea but space is often at a premium and asking 4 people to move so you can turn the page is a little annoying - especially if you're a fast reader. Therefore I turned my attention to the auditory world. A brief tangential but highly relevant detour:
Before leaving the sunny shores of Australia I invested $A200 in a JNC SSF-5100 MP3 player. I selected this because it:
- is ultra-portable as it is tiny
- has 1Gb capacity
- has a built in radio
- doesn't run off some crazy proprietry battery
- is firmware upgradeable
- supports USB2
Let me now provide you, dear reader, with another list or things I would never have found out about the SSF-5100 had I not been so rash as too buy it. I would have never known that:
- the "built-in radio" is actually one of those amazingly crap untunable magic-scanning dohickeys that was NOT built into the unit. It is external to the MP3 player itself, being lodged halfway up the headphone cord. Also it can't pick up ANYTHING. Not one station has it managed to focus it's teensy receptive powers on!
- the AMAZING battery life. I can run this thing continuously for anything up to 20 minutes before I have to change the batteries. I am stunned by how fast it eats them up. I though that maybe if I bought the Extra-Heavy-Mega-Super-Alkaline-MP3 Player Specific batteries from a certain vendor that I might do better. I was wrong. Although 20 minutes is an exaggeration, so is their claim of 9 hours. I went through 3 batteries on the plane trip over here (26 hours TOTAL travel time) and I've gone through another 2 this week alone. I think on average you get about 4-6 hours.
- the little joystick one uses to navigate the menu is COMPLETELY USELESS! It was difficult to drive when it was new and still reasonably firm but now that it's lost its spring/auto-center functionaliy it is a magical mystery tour of prodding and poking. It's a four-direction thingy with Left being previous track/rewind, Right being next track/ffwd and up/down is the volume control - no problems there. However, to mess around in the menu you have to push in (z-axis). This is IMPOSSIBLE. It's like trying to poke a rock at the bottom of a mud pool with a stick, complicated by the fact that you can't SEE the rock and the stick is considerably larger the the rock so you can't tell if you hit it anyway. It gets better! The menu has a timeout so while you're trying to push in and make contact with something it decides you've left and goes backk to what it was doing before you entered the menu - usually something like blowing raspberries at you or drawing lewd and uncomplimentary caricatures of your bad profile.
- playback controls are pathetic. The ffwd/rewind aren't adaptive. If you start to ffwd/rewind they speed through the track at about 10 seconds to the second. I would expect that if I were to continue to ffwd/rewind for more than, say, 10 seconds real-time then the rate would speed up. It doesn't. This makes zipping to the end of long tracks (I have many hour long or more MP3s) excrutiating - 30 minutes of MP3 takes about 5 minutes to get through. You can only ffwd through a track, you can't rewind past the start of the track you're on and into the previous track. Combine this with the thumb numbing ffwd process and you have an excellent recipe for 4 minutes and 30 seconds of ffwding, 2 seconds of pressure relaxation and an automatic reflex to put the pressure back on...bingo, you're on the next track and YOU CAN'T GO BACK. It's fiendish I tell you.
In summary, don't buy one. It blows goats (Note to self, research where that term came from).
Anyway, the bastard makes sounds if you leave it the hell alone so I converted my oggs into mp3s and stuck them on there. I have an extensive CD collection that I oggified but I find that listening to the same things over and over isn't a great way to keep the mind ticking over so I started to look around for something else to occupy myself...and I discovered PODCASTING!!! OK, so I was aware of the term but as I was restricted to 3GB of download bandwidth per month back home I never really bothered with streaming anything and podcasting has passed me by along with Net Radio (with the notable exception of Egg Radio). So, for those of you who have also been living under a rock for the last couple of years a breif precis:
Podcasting is basically someone recording their internet radio show and making it available to listen to on your magical portable audio device. I love it. I've been downloading all sorts of techy rubbish and listening on the Tube. My favourite at the moment is LUGRadio. Basically an hour of humorous banter about linux, open-source and "stuff". It's deadset hilarious and I commend it to one and all. For more exciting and interesting podcasting doolally go check out Idiot vox or PodCast Alley. Also, for the Aussie ex-pats, don't forget that JJJ also wrap up a lot of shows as PodCasts as well!
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Wed, 08 Jun 2005
[15:35] Blergh
Date: 6/8/05 at 11:35PM
It appears that if there's one thing I haven't learnt it's reading ALL of the documentation BEFORE youmake a damn fool of yourselfstart working on something. Let me paint you the scene...swirly lines...swirly lines...swirly lines
I finally got to go to work today after technically starting last Wednesday....that would be a full working week, a full working week which I spent reading doco. There is a trick that most people know (well, most people I know - this could be an IT phenomenon) of reading for "fact position retention" rather than comprehension. There is no way that I could have remembered everything that I read in the last 7 days but I do now have little signposts stuck in my brain of which documents to refer to when I need more info on a certain subject area.
My jobs today were to:
a) Get into the bloody building without assistance; and
b) test the unattended installation processes of a monitoring server
In that simple word lay the seeds of my undoing. For the most part the project on which I am working is installing agents on servers as opposed to installing the servers that the aforementioned agents talk to.
So, I get two documents e-mailed to me. The first to arrive covers the Unattended Agent Install, the Unatteded Server Install arrived a while later. I grabbed the first one, obviously without engaging any kind of cognitive process, and as it fit with the theme of my previous reading so well my brain stayed in signpost-mode and I started blindly following the steps....luckily I couldn't get very far as I had to try and copy 7Gb of install data (sheesh!) over the network and I ended up talking to my boss whilst still in the data gathering stages of my first foray. Luckily I'm so anal about things that I don't actually DO things the first time through, I pretend to do them and see what data I need and what might go wrong. He pointed out that I was not doing what I was meant to be doing (yay me) and completely refrained from calling me a prat, which was nice. I then went on to read the right document and do the wrong thing out of that as well, because I DIDN'T READ IT ALL FIRST.
I'm a little upset with myself for this, mostly because the most spectacular mistake of my career (well, thus far anyway - no point in putting limits on myself now, there's always room for escalation) came about from exactly the same thing. I read a document and started blindly following instructions without actually thinking about what I was doing....and destroyed a server that took a lot of people several months to build. That time I was lucky in that I had a whole weekend to reverse the damage and a few knowledgable friends to call on. It caused a managerial battle but no real technical damage was done - well, none that I didn't reverse and I learnt a lot that weekend :)
I hope that by writing this and pointing out to all and sundry (Ha! I know no-one's actually reading this) that I'm a prat (someone had to say it) will prove to be a cathartic experience for me and that I can move on and not repeat my mistake again. We'll see I guess.
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Tue, 07 Jun 2005
[06:59] SCUBA is for losers
Date: 6/7/05 at 2:59PM
It seems that an Israeli inventor has come up with something akin to those little tubes the Jedi had in Star Wars I & III, a portable device to obtain breathable air from water! It works by spinning water in a centrifuge until the pressure is low enough to allow the gas to part ways with the liquid - as per Henrys Law (the mass of a gas that dissolves in a definite volume of liquid is directly proportional to the pressure of the gas). The original story is on Isracast but there is also some interesting information on www.technovelgy.com on this and other Sci-Fi inspired inventions.
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[01:54] Toolset - the word that never was
Date: 6/7/05 at 9:54AM
I've been reading/proofing a lot of doco over the last couple of days and, amongst other bizzare things, I've come across the word "toolset" spelled tool-set. I was going to correct it and then I thought, "Hey, I don't know which is correct!" so I checked a dictionary search engine. I was a little suprised that there was no entry anywhere for toolset. I looked for tool-set instead...no entry!
I'm sure that anyone in the IT industry will have run across this word many times as it is oft used to describe the functions provided by a particular program or subset thereof. A search of the web for toolset on any engine you care to name returns a large number of hits so the word is certainly in use, it just hasn't made it to the dictionaries yet. Now that I come to think about it, I don't know if it really should either. Writing "toolset" delivers no more to the reader than writing "tool set". However, as I read out on t'internet:
In English, words, particularly adjectives and nouns, are combined into compound structures in a variety of ways. And once they are formed, they sometimes metamorphose over time. A common pattern is that two words — fire fly, say — will be joined by a hyphen for a time — fire-fly — and then be joined into one word — firefly. There is only one sure way to know how to spell compounds in English: use an authoritative dictionary.
So, let us sit back and watch etymology in action!
UPDATE: It seems that toolset IS known, to something called the Webster's New Millennium Dictionary of English, Preview Edition (v 0.9.6). I haven't been able to track down any info on this publication so far but they define "toolset" as:
Main Entry: toolkit
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: a set of software applications that aid a task; also written tool kit, also called toolset
Usage: computing
So there you go! The copyright date on the definition is 2003-2005.
On a seperate note, did you know that the hyphen is actually only one of the horizontal line based punctuation symbols? There are actually three of them. The hyphen, the en dash and the em dash! Read more here.
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Sat, 04 Jun 2005
[17:07] Zombie vs Ninja - Rating *** (3/5)
Date: 6/5/05 at 1:07AM
I have long been a fan of old Hong Kong martial arts flicks and as soon as I saw the trailer for Zombie vs Ninja I knew I'd like it.
It has everything you could ask for from a HK flick: the beautiful kung-fu choreography, the incomprehensible plot and of course the sublime dubbing. But this time there's more!
The protagonist and his antithesis are both of European descent (and are both the same actor?) and the evil "Ninja" or "Nin # Ja" are also predominately caucasian. This makes for some really bizzare fight scenes and some crazily gratuitous swearing.
A plot synopsis: All but impossible - even five minutes after "The End" I have not a clue what happened. Basically the hero (Ethan) sees his father killed and seeks training followed by revenge. The training comes from the secret zombie master aka the town undertaker. That was about ten minutes in at which point it lost me. Nonetheless (isn't that a strange word) I thoroughly enjoyed the ride!
Highly recommended.
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[03:54] C-To-English
Date: 6/4/05 at 11:54AM
After posting my software list yesterday I felt the need to justify my selection of PasswordSafe and the BlowFish algorithm - if only to myself. With that in mind I headed off to the authors site (Bruce Schneier). Whilst reading the details I came across a link to an English version of the C code for Blowfish as generated by the c program by Leevi Marttila - this is quite old (circa 2000 I think) but I hadn't heard of it. I read the translation and found that you can actually follow the program! Some snippets:
There is William code named "bf_N" who has 16 leafs.
There is Edward code named "noErr" who has 0 leafs.
..
This rugged Charles code named "subkeyfilename" says "Blowfish.dat"
any time he has chance.
From here I'm assuming that melons are about same size as coconuts.
From here I'm assuming that apples are about same size as oranges.
..
Comment by author: " ABCD - big endian - motorola ".
If "ORDER_ABCD" is mentioned, then read next lines.
These briefcases can hold next things:
Treat next things as a compound. There is David code named "word". He
likes melons. Move to next person.
There is Thomas code named "byte". Calculate next thing: 4 He likes to
carry that amount of bags of cherries. Move to next person.
..
Count the amount of things this thing really has: Get the amount of
tomatoes that Kenneth has. Take a box that corresponds to that number
from John. Then count the amount of things this has: Get the amount of
tomatoes that Raymond has. Add previous amount to this: 1 Take a bag
that corresponds to that number and count the number of melons. Take
away what he has. Give this guy these things: Get the amount of melons
that Walter has. Move to next calculation.
..
Beware of stoned humans! There is James code named "bf_P". Calculate next
thing: Get the amount of leafs that William has. Add previous amount to
this: 2 He likes to carry that amount of bags of melons. Initially that
persons has these things: sugar coated 608135816 and this sugar coated
2242054355 and this sugar coated 320440878 and this sugar coated 57701188
and this sugar coated 2752067618 and this sugar coated 698298832 and
this sugar coated 137296536 and this sugar coated 3964562569 and this
sugar coated 1160258022 and this sugar coated 953160567 and this sugar
coated 3193202383 and this sugar coated 887688300 and this sugar coated
3232508343 and this sugar coated 3380367581 and this sugar coated
1065670069 and this sugar coated 3041331479 and this sugar coated
2450970073 and this sugar coated 2306472731 Finally I have listed
all. That was all holdings.
Whilst ostensibly this appears to contribute only humor value it was actually written to circumvent the ruling of Judge Gwin of the Federal District Court of the Northern District of Ohio who stated "...software is not protected by the First Amendment because it is a 'functional device' like a telephone circuit...". So, your code isn't protected unless you turn it into a "story"?
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Fri, 03 Jun 2005
[15:02] Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter - * (1/5)
Date: 6/3/05 at 11:02PM
I just watched Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter. There's not really a lot to say but I do wonder how films like this would ever have "made it" without the power of the internet.
It's a Canadian effort, released in 2001 after two years of weekend shooting - I'd like to say "impressive" but I'm not sure it is.
See it for the kudos, I suspect not many people will be able to say they've endured it all.
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[06:55] Bread in the UK
Date: 6/3/05 at 2:55PM
I haven't worked it out yet but bread in the UK, or here in London anyway, DOES NOT GO STALE!!!! I've had a loaf of bread I bought on Wednesday (three days ago now) sitting half-eaten under my bed (don't ask). I pulled it out for lunch today and it was fine. If I heated it up so it was warm and steaming you'd swear it was freshly baked.
I've decided I'm not going to eat it anymore until I find out why. If only I had a mass spectrometer and any idea of how to use it.
UPDATE: I've been thinking about this and I suspected that humidity may have something to do with it - more moisture in the air leads to the bread sucking it up and staying nice and squishy. Going off the BBC WeatherChannel site we have London and we haveCanberraSydney.
I'm going off the relative humidity figures (relative humidity being "...expressed in percent, of the amount of atmospheric moisture present relative to the amount that would be present if the air were saturated.") and, for those who couldn't be bothered clicking, the June figures for London are 70 during the day and 58 at night. The same for Sydney (can't get Canberra on there, why would you anyway, it's only the CAPITAL CITY) is 77 daytime and 62 at night. This does not support my theory, nor does it support the average conception of English weather. It's a lot more humid in Australia (Canberra/Sydney) than London and I am rather surprised!
UPDATE II: I got figures for Canberra off BoM and they're even worse (for my theory) than the Sydney ones, daytime of 85 and evening 60!
UPDATE III: I'm back on the ingredient theme again. The packaging for my piece of, for want of a better name, "bread" says Bake 'n Bite - a little bit of internet trawling reveals The Bake 'n Bite Website. These guys seem to be a brand name extension of Country Choice, a "specialist supplier of frozen bakery products and bake-off systems to the retail market" who in turn are owned by Brakes Food Service Solutions. Armed with this information and the fact that I'm entitled to get an ingredient list according to the Food Labelling Regulations 1996 (I think) I'm going to find out what is in this thing. First I'm going to pop back down to the outlet I got it from and see if the ingredients were cunningly hidden on the container somewhere. If not I now have a number (0800 521366) and an e-mail address (country.choice@brake.co.uk) to harangue!
UPDATE IV: R.I.P. Bread. It seems I was little overzealous in my longevity predictions. My piece of bread is going hard. I went down and checked the stand (for those who are gripping their seats, knuckles white with anticipation) and the only ingredient listed is "Flour Treatment Agent". My research concluded that Flour Treatment Agent is usually Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C) or, in less regulated countries, Potassium Bromate.
I checked it out on the off-chance that Potassium Bromate would do magical things and it turns out it is a carcinogen and not a magical bread freshness ingredient. Fat fingered research also showed that Potassium Bromide is an anti-convulsant for dogs. I wish I knew the difference between an -ate and an -ide ending.
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[06:46] Business Bloodbath
Date: 6/3/05 at 2:46PM
I am now contracting to a company that I used to work for back in Australia. I spent a lot of time bad-mouthing the managerial structure and business nous of said company because of their frankly bizzare way of going about business (Hello Mr Customer! Can I....STAB YOU IN THE BACK? Muahahahahaha).
Anyway, after people found out I was going back for a second tour they pointed out that I was a) a hypocrite and b) loco. I defend my actions by pointing out that pounds convert into $A most favourably.
This is a "pay off the mortgage" move, not a grand career step.
I just thought I'd mention that the company in question work in EXACTLY the same fashion over here!
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[06:10] Welcome Back To Windows
Date: 6/3/05 at 2:10PM
Well, after primarily working on the Unix for the last 5 years (and running Gentoo on my personal machine) I'm heading back into the Windows badlands! I've setup my first Windows box since I left my last job a year and a half ago and it seems my habit of keeping my tool collection on my USB key up to date has paid off. I have everything set up as I like it with minimum of fuss.
Here's what I've got (note, all but one of these programs are Free (not necessarily OpenSource though):
- TweakUI : I really only use this for XMouse
- Firefox and a few extensions, All-In-One Gestures, SessionSaver, AdBlock, Ook
- Thunderbird and the WebMail extension. I love this! I've managed to move my mail from a linux box to a Windows box with 0% effort! All I did was tar up my mail directory and then point Thunderbird at the un-tarred directory on the Windows box. The Webmail extension is bliss! Once installed you can check multiple webmail accounts (I use it for hotmail) without resorting to other applications like MrPostman.
- Foobar2000 : I use this instead of Winamp because I don't give a stuff about skinning and it knows MPEG, FLAC and OGG out of the box (amongst others).
- Adobes Acrobat Reader : I love how it's 20Mb now (40 on linux), remember the good old days of version 4? It was only 8Mb. On a side note: If you're a Linux head looking for the Linux package is here, Adobe haven't stuck it on their download page yet.
- ext2fsd : This rocks! I have all my oggs on a 80Gb USB2IDE removable HDD. It is formatted as an ext3 filesystem and Windows can't see that....it can with this!
- IrfanView : a multimedia viewer (images and sounds).
- IzArc : compression utility
- PasswordSafe : A Blowfish encrypted password storage utility (Linux users, the format is compatible with MyPasswordSafe
- puTTY : SSH client
- Ultraedit : Hands down, the best editor out there. Don't get me wrong, I love vi but Ultraedit can do it with so much ease. One of the very few programs I have ever bought.
- TClock2 : This is pure frosting, but I can't help it. I like to make my startbar look like the startbar image in the gallery.
That's the majority, there are a few others that I've got on here that aren't on my USB key, things like Cygwin but that's about it. So far, I'm happy although I haven't started work yet.....
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Wed, 01 Jun 2005
[11:21] XBox Media Center
Date: 6/1/05 at 7:21PM
There's an XBox around that I'm going to update with the latest XBMC. If you don't have an IRC client and couldn't be bothered installing one there's a lovely Java based web client here: http://www.macsat.com/xbins/
Once it connects just type in /msg xbins !list and go get your stuff.
Very handy!
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[11:12] Fruity London
Date: 6/1/05 at 7:12PM
I don't know where it all comes from but it's great. All of the train stations seem to have fruitiers out the front selling what seems to me to be bizzarely cheap fruit. I have just availed myself of £3 worth of fruit which included two punnets of strawberries (about 16 strawbs per punnet) and a huge bag of cherries. This little cornucopia would have set me back about $20 back home. According to xe.com I have spent about $A7.40.
I've just check the Woolworths Homeshop website and Strawberries are $3.98 for 250g. I've just constructed some rudimentary scales using the chopping block and a wooden spoon and my strawberries seem to weigh in somewhere just over 500g (assuming that the container of salt I was using does actually weigh 500g like it says it does, I don't know it that includes packaging weight). That means my strawberries are worth about $A7.96. Unfortunately Woolies doesn't stock fresh cherries at the moment so I can't price check them but already going off the strawb prices I am getting the cherries for free!!! I wonder where they come from to be able to sell so cheaply. Maybe they're all GM and I'm going to mutate or something.
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[10:44] Nothing Changes
Date: 6/1/05 at 6:44PM
First day of work today, I went in and it seems that company I'm working for here is the same all over the world (I've worked for them previously in Australia). Their customer does not particularly like them, they are running under the belief that more meetings will fix EVERYTHING and red-tape stops ANYTHING from happening (my login for the network should be ready in about six weeks).
On the interesting side, everything is COE/SOE run and if you try to log in from a non-SOE build to the MS domain some magic happens to shutdown the port you are connected to on the Cisco switch. I think that's really cool and I shall be attempting to find out how that happens, SNMP is my guess for now.
I've been given lots of doco to go and read in the meantime, for those interested I'm working with CA Unicenter and shall be trying to make it do things it was never intended to do (like work).
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[10:37] London, The English, Customer Service & Technology
Date: 6/1/05 at 6:37PM
Wow, I've been a busy boy.
After getting off the plane in London I made it through Customs without even being stopped. I got on the Heathrow Express (cost me £14 but I was over travelling by then and the quickest was the best). I then succesfully navigated the tube with nary a problem. The instructions my friend gave me were uncannily clear and I managed to arrive at her house about an hour ahead of schedule...or so I thought. Turns out I was about 4 hours ahead of schedule. I sat on her front doorstep and read the rest of my magazine and newspaper collection and then watched the police arrest some of my new neighbours (that's right, I'm living on an estate in Stockwell). Finally, I got bored and dragged my 24 kg suitcase around the corner to get some hot chips. Naturally, it was at this point that my friend came home - I was happy 'cause I had chips :)
I was at this point quite knackered and went to bed - this was Monday in England and a Bank Holiday so everyone was out and about. Day Two of my London adventure was a "Real Day" but I'd scheduled work to start on the 1st of June ('cause it seemed nicer that way) so I had the day to sort out the notorious bugbears of antipodeans in London:
* National Insurance Number
* Bank Account
I'd have to say that of all the subjects people have felt inclined to tell me before I came the "Obtaining a Bank Account is impossible" story was the second most prevalent (right behind "It's quite expensive over there you know"). Funnily enough, it also happens to be true! Obstinate fool that I am I thought I'd try and, with my new flatmates squeals of laughter still ringing in my ears I departed to do battle with the banks. Then I gave up. You really can't do it....unless you're prepared. So, take note those of you thinking of attempting this in the future. You will need:
* Passport
* Proof Of Employment (Proof of Income really)
* A Bill with you CURRENT UK ADDRESS
That's all!!! I obviously didn't have the second item having moved here mere hours ago but I found a loophole of sorts. If you can get your bank back home to send a statement to you at your new address they will accept that (well NatWest will anyway). Do this before you go and you can set up your account the second you arrive. I didn't know this and didn't manage to get it set up just then. The reason it is so difficult is because after the September 11 terrorist attacks the UK put in place a series of knee-jerk schemes to prevent money laundering. This is one of them - you can't launder money if you can't put it anywhere.
I moved on to my second task, the NI number. I was also warned that this could be impossible. The story goes that the English hate foreigners and, in order to prevent them from invading they make it impossible to get an NI number so you can't work without being taxed out the wazoo. I thought, sounds like bollocks I'll give it a shot. Outside my second bank I got on the mobile and called the magic number. I talked to a lovely lady who said come on in and we'll sort you out, if you're one of the first 50 people in the door you're guaranteed to be served today. It was only 0930 so I wandered down the road thinking "That wasn't so hard" and being well impressed with my self. I arrived at JobCentrePlus and was greeted at the door by a burly security guard who asked me my business. I explained my phone call and he politely laughed until he cried. He then gave me a piece of paper with a phone number on it and informed me that an appointment must be made via the "Tooting HUB" (phone 020 8218 4417) and pointed me at the free phones. It was at this point that I ran into the British love of old technology. I called the number, it rang and was picked up by a robot. The robot said "Sorry, can't take your call right now, please ring back later". It then hung up on me. It wasn't a robot, it was an answering machine. "Odd" I thought, and rung back. This time I got an engaged signal. I tried again. This time it rung...and rung...and rung....and stopped. I was getting a little surprised now but, still undaunted, I tried again. I was hung up on again by the answering machine. In my mind I was contemplating the bizzare lack of a robotic answering service and queueing system. "Why would you not implement one" I thought as I mindlessly hit redial on the phone. I continued to ponder this for 20 minutes before I finally got someone to pick up the phone. She was very nice and made me a booking for next Saturday. I didn't yell at her about the phone system as a) it's probably not her fault and b) I'm sure a lot of people do and she books them appointments for Thursday coming, next year.
I returned home semi-triumphant. No bank account but an NI appointment. I talked to my friend and she said I should go and see 1st Contact. They basically provide a service to itinerant Aussies, Kiwis and Saffas (which apparently is a nickname for South Africans!) to get a bank account for the sum of £35. They also give you a £9 phone card so it's not that bad I guess. I called them and manged to book in for the 1100 meeting. I whizzed in and sat through 3 hours of bollocks (1.5 by 1st Contact and 1 by the bank where they try to sell you their £10 a month magical bank account). I opted for the £0 non-magical account and that should be sorted by Monday! It is < a href="http://www.maestrocard.com/wheretouse/"Maestro/Cirrus so money can be slurped out back home to pay the mortgage without extra fees.
I then went and visited my agency and signed my papers and I'm all sorted for the day!
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- Download Sunbird 0.2. This is the ZIP package, just unpack it somewhere