UK Linux User Groups

Wow, looks like the NSW conservatives have achieved two excellent outcomes for the state in one. Power privatisation is off (until the Tories do it themselves, that is) and Michael Costa says he's gonna leave politics. That's great news! Seeya Costa. You won't be missed. Reckon you could take the Minister for Ethnic Cleansing, Frank Sartor and your inept boss Iemma with you?

Contact me

Two interesting nearly-free-software articles about Free Software for Libraries:-

• May/June 2007 Library Technology Report: Open Source Software for Libraries, from ALA TechSource (recently republished under CC-By-SA)
• Open Source Business Resource, August 2008: Education, Is Open Source Right for your Library?, Carl Grant (published under CC-By)

Four more libraries upgrading to free software systems:-

• Delhi Public Library
• Northeast Kansas Library System
• Government of Kerala
• Falvey Memorial Library at Villanova University

I was just looking to buy some online classes.  I haven’t bought one yet and here’s three ideas I think online course sellers should follow to get more customers:-

• Telephone courses - it’s the world-wide web, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I want to make an international telephone call for the course.  If the course includes a teleconference, publish the area code(s) so I can include the cost of my calls when budgeting, please. Even better, offer a local (UK) number or Voice-Over-IP (VOIP, or internet phone) access for SIP phones, so it won’t cost me extra.
• Web classes - web browsers have plugins, but not all web browsers have all plugins and sometimes I’d prefer to watch your video stream on my TV instead.  That’s easy if it’s a video stream I can load in a standalone player (I can even remote-control some players with my bluetooth phone), but it’s a right pain if it requires Adobe Flash, locked down with javascript, DRM and so on.  Make video streams that can be used in Videolan or MPlayer, please.
• Web classes - if a class uses its own special downloadable program (even if it’s Java), then it’s not a web class.  Please make the class usable in a web browser and please publish a small test class so I can make sure my browser works before the class starts.
• Ordering systems - one site gave me no fewer than three big red error messages while I was trying to buy.  The first said the site requires Javascript.  I changed that setting, pressed back and re-ordered, then the second big red error said it requires cookies .  I changed that setting, then it said it needed Internet Explorer.  I closed the Firefox/Iceweasel window and gave up.  Please test your ordering system and show a full list of system requirements as soon as there’s an error, to avoid wasting my time.

Are there any good online course providers out there which do all of the above?

• space is the machine
  PDF version of Space Syntax text (via adamgreenfield)

Whats the difference between Noise Makers and Audio Filters - well, I would expect a level of control. A Noise Maker implies a lack of control - the difference between “din” and “music”. I’ll start this post off with this image, which is a Waterfall image. Waterfalls are spectrum over time - In this case, the frequency is up the side, and the time is across the bottom. The intensity of the colour indicates a voltage at that particular frequency.

Waterfall of Arduino Noise Maker

What we are seeing is how the frequencies are changing over time when the dials on the board are swizzled, and by comparing this with other audio projects, we are able to see how various features and code changes change the output.

The next stage of the project is Filters - Filters are basically devices which limit frequencies that go through them - there are essentially two types of filters, High pass (which allow high frequencies to go through) and Low Pass (which allow low frequencies through). By combining these together, you can generate Band Pass filters and Notch Filters (although you might make notch filters in a different way).

By adding filters together, you can make filters which let multiple bands (a comb shape) or ban multiple bands. If you have control of your filters, you can change them and manipulate them over time, and apparently, if you generate white noise on one side, and use two bandpass filters, you can make sounds which sound like words - by moving the two filters in and out and widen and narrow.

Anyways, when I was at Uni, I learnt how to build Digital Filters, that is I learnt the electronics behind the DSP, and its quite simple - well, its a little tricky to get them efficient, but a problem that’s been solved time and time again. The system works by multiplying a set of samples in a fashion. Unfortuantly, my choice of modules (50% electronics or low level computing, 25% maths, and about 20% computing theory) means that… I didn’t do the Signals and Systems module because my Maths skills are troubled. I loose the decimal place ok?

So I’ve had a crash course in Fourier Transforms, which are the very basics behind working out the numbers that you need in the sample multipliers… Which is what I’m about to build on this new circuit. So far, I have an analog input (which is my sampling system) and an 6 Bit R2R DAC shield. The first test will be to act as a buffer. The second will to act as an Echo Box, and the third, to Filter.

• Amazing slow motion lightning video

This and similar posts are just going to be me moaning about a minor tumble I took the other day and are mainly presented only for others to take amusment from.

On the morning of Tuesday 26th I was crossing the railway level crossing at Feltham when I did what I always reflexively do and looked both ways to see if a train was coming (which I know is a bit silly because the barriers wouldn’t be up if there was, but still). I saw a train in the station and as I was staring at it wondering if it was my train, I tripped up.

I had a bottle of orange juice in one hand and the remote control for my iRiver in the other and before I could decide what I was doing with those, my nose had smacked into the ground with a bit of a crunch. My vision went black for a second and I thought I had broken my nose. Touching it produced a lot of blood (both from the bridge and from the nostrils) but no blinding agony so at least I knew it wasn’t as bad as that. The image to the right is what it looked like by the time I’d got to dayjob and washed up a bit.

I also found out that the expensive sunglasses I bought about 10 days ago have a massive scratch across one lens, and my iRiver remote is even more broken than it was already.

In hindsight it was probably lucky that I was on the level crossing as most of my nose went into the groove of the track. If I hadn’t been and had smacked the flat ground I’m thinking it would be far more likely that it’d have broken my nose.

By Wednesday the throbbing in my nose had mostly gone away, but the bruising really started to show and it began to look a bit uglier. I must have landed on my left little finger as well, as that started to swell up during the night and by the morning was making it difficult to type properly or get the God-forsaken on-call phone out of my pocket.

More to come!

In the last year I have bought an Eee PC 900 and a Thinkpad R61 from laptopsdirect.co.uk. The purchase of the Eee PC went smoothly although I did get a call a few weeks later from someone who wanted to sell me an expensive additional warranty.

When I ordered the Thinkpad, I got a call back within a couple of hours saying that they had some “security problems” with my phone number. They claimed that my home phone number did not work. I knew I had input it correctly, and when I asked them to tell me what I had supposedly put in, I got a string of numbers that was too short to be a phone number and which I knew I had never put in myself. I gave them my correct number, and then immediately I was asked a number of sales questions.

They attempted to sell me Microsoft Office (I’m a Linux user), a “pre-delivery dead pixel check” for £39.99 (no thanks), a 3 year warranty for about £80 (I went with manufacturer’s warranty) and laptop insurance (covered by my home insurance). Each time I politely declined, the woman made comments like “oh, you’re just going to risk it then?” By the end of the call I was pretty annoyed and strongly got the impression that the original story about my phone number was a complete fabrication in order to get me on the phone for a hard sell.

Still, the goods were a fair price and arrived on time so apart from making a mental note to be wary of this in future, I forgot about it.

Today I have just received this email:

At no point did I give my permission to Laptops Direct to pass my email address around as I have no desire to receive these (completely unrelated) “offers”. I realise that they are owning up to why I am receiving the email and have therefore not done anything illegal, but it is exceptionally rude in my opinion.

This together with the routine with the phone call have ensured that I will never shop from Laptops Direct again, nor any of the other companies listed above. Fortunately I had the presence of mind to use a tagged email address so I can now send mails to that address into oblivion.

I attempted to complain to Laptops Direct about this, but their web site contains no contact email address. They do have a web form. Here’s what happened when I submitted it:

Clownshoes.

This from Joey Stanford..

"The #launchpad team leads just developed a roadmap to open source Launchpad by the next #oscon conference. Really cool stuff!"

No pressure there guys..

Blimey. I didn’t realise that Facebook are trending down support for IE6. The “new look” is disabled, and if you use the old look you get a big message complaining about your browser choice:

'You may want to upgrade your browser (from IE6)', says Facebook

Two interesting things here: first, they recommend that you try another browser, and give a list of Firefox, Safari, and Flock as well as “upgrade to Internet Explorer 7″. Flock? I bet the Opera people are a bit hacked off about that.

Second: there have been a few cases so far of people dropping support for IE6 (MobileMe, not that that really counts because all its users are Mac people, and 37 Signals, ditto), but nothing remotely as high-profile as Facebook. This is the boot starting to descend, I think. IE6 is already the bugbear of the industry (and has been for some time: I said “Internet Explorer is the new Netscape 4” in 2005 and I was hardly the first!); how long before we see support for it drop to Netscape 4 levels of “you get the unenhanced non-JavaScript version”?

I’d like to see more people publish browser stats for their websites. Yes, they’re unreliable, yes people change their user agent, blah blah blah. They’ll give us an indication, though; how many people out there are using IE6? Google Analytics tells me that 36% of my visitors are using IE, and 37% of those are using IE6, which means that IE6 visitors to my site are down to under 15%. (If you’re not using Analytics, analog -G -A +a +B <apache logfile> will give you a browser list, as will many other things.) Other people will doubtless differ, and I’d be thoroughly interested in seeing more of these percentages from sites with a different user-base to mine. If you’re a company, tell us what percentage of your users are using IE6! We’re not going to get stats out of Google or Yahoo or the BBC, but non-behemoths will do fine here. Everyone else, start thinking: where’s the cut-off point? How low does IE6’s market share need to go before it’s reasonable to not devote extra development time to it?

“Extra” is the keyword there — people thinking “hey, Opera/Safari/Firefox 3/IE8 has less than 15% market share in my statistics, let’s cut them off, Mr. Microsoft Hater” need to consider that modern browsers don’t (or at least shouldn’t) take any extra development time to work around their idiosyncrasies. (In practice, Safari does require more extra development time than I’d like, I find, but its market share is high enough (or the idiosyncracies are infrequent enough) that supporting it is broadly worth the effort.)

So: if you have IE6 stats, publish them. If you’re a web hacker: when should we cut off the ailing IE6’s life support? Speak now…

I've updated my simple Simple SDL based perl game, so that:

• It has a name.
• It has an intro screen which uses that name!
• It has multiple balls.
• It gets harder, ie. more balls are added.
• The collision detection is much improved.

I still need to work on the rebound-angle but otherwise it is as complete as it will probably ever become. It would also be nice if the balls could collide with each other, and be different colours..

Regardless it was a fun diversion for a few hours, and probably tells me that I shouldn't attempt to waste more time doing gamy things, and that maths is too hard for me these days.

ObQuote: Interview with the vampire

419 Eater always amuses me - it is a website scam-baiters follow through with those Nigerian scam emails. Today though I read a case where someone manages to persuade the scammer to tattoo Baited By Shiver on his leg.

Read it here.

Comedy.

DIGG THIS!

I am really pleased to see that Horseman Holbach has announced Ubuntu Developer Week.

Ubuntu Developer Week is a more detailed continuation of Ubuntu Open Week in which we have a week of IRC tuition sessions, but in this week very much focused on technical developer topics. The week runs from Mon Sep 1st to Fri Sep 5th and the fun happens in #ubuntu-classroom on irc.freenode.net.

The week is jammed with a range of incredible sessions, including Packaging 101, Upstream Bug Linkages, Introduction to MOTU, Soyuz and all that Jazz, Working with Ubuntu->GNOME QA (tips&tricks), How do I fix an Ubuntu bug, Introduction to BZR, Kernel module packaging with DKMS, Using the Launchpad Web Service API, Launchpad Hacks, bzr for packaging, How do I update a package properly, Introduction to PPA, Introduction to the Server Team, Various ways to patch a package, Automated Testing for the Desktop, A WebKit browser in PyKDE, Having fun with the Mozilla Team, How to avoid making Archive Admins unhappy, Ask Matt, Unit testing Python code, with code coverage measurement, Introduction to the Installer Team, Introduction to the Security Team, Kernel Discussion…

Daniel provides an overview of each session here.

Ubuntu Developer Week is just one of many initiatives that we have been working on to help the Ubuntu community grow and develop in the right direction. Others include Release Parties, Ubuntu Open Week, Global Bug Jam, Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase, 5-A-Day, Harvest, Brainstorm, Ubuntu Developer Summit and many more in the pipeline. I am really proud of the work the horsemen are doing, and I am looking forward to hiring the fourth horseman/woman - if you are excited at the prospect of working on my team and alongside Daniel and Jorge, do apply.

I look forward to seeing the new blood that comes into the project to join the existing, well-oiled, arse-kicking blood that we have right now. Rock and roll.

Some interesting events that I’ve heard about recently, with a bit of a focus on software, cooperatives and the South-West:-

• Bristol Knowledge Unconference: Friday 5th September 2008 *
• Tour of Britain, Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset, Tuesday 9th September - other UK locations 7-14 September, itv4 7pm highlights daily *
• NoseRub DevCamp, Cologne, 13.-14. September 2008
• BathCamp, Bath, Somerset, 13-14th September
• Bristol Anarchist Bookfair, St Werburgh’s Centre, Bristol, 13-14th September
• Software Freedom Day, Global, 20 September 2008
• Scripting Enabled, London, 19th and 20th September
• Listening to the Social Entrepreneur, London Docklands, 9 Oct 2008 *
• LinuxWorld, London Olympia, 23-25 Oct 2008 *
• enterprise week, UK, part of Global Entrepreneurship Week, 17-23 November
• Cooperatives-SW/RISE Trade Fair, Bristol, 1st December *

I’m pretty sure I’ll go to the *d ones - which others do you think I should go to? Will you be at any of these? Any comments to make on/to any of them? Any more to add to the list?

Also known as:

• our program starts too slowly
• advertising our product makes our customers happy
• we’ll cover up part of the screen so you can’t work whilst our bloated product loads
  

However today I was particularly pleased that despite Java _still_ not having standardised memory options, they have at least standardised the ability to set a splash image:

As an aside, why oh why can’t Java just grow memory usage when garbage collection is triggering too frequently - I’d _far_ rather have a program use too much memory than just fall over.

Lastly, when I talk to JMX, I want to use that IP address, not one it randomly chooses, heard of multi-homing? or NAT? The FAQ is crap - and no, adding Djava.rmi.server.hostname=ip.add.re.ss is also crap for the same reason.

Dear HMRC,

Thank you so much for including an envelope for me to reply to you with. I understand that I have to affix a stamp and that it’s not prepaid. That’s fine. However I thought you might like to know that in the country you server (in fact, across the entire continent of Europe) the standard size of paper is A4.

A4 measures 297mm by 210mm. Traditionally this is folded in three thus reducing it to around 100×210mm (allowing for the fold). So WHICH IDIOT decided to send out envelopes measuring 205mm wide.

Cheers,

Adrian

PS: the envelopes I use are 219×110mm thus allowing for number of sheets to be included. Your envelopes measure a mere 205×104mm, hence being unable to fit a single sheet of paper. This being tax related there is a strong likelihood that many supporting documents will be required.

So I got bored tonight and figured I'd write a game...

I'm genuinely not sure whether I've seen this concept before, or came up with it myself. I suspect the former. I know that I sat down with the intention of coding this game and knew how it would play and what the mechanics would be.

Having said that though I cannot think of a similar game I've played - though parts are obviously derivitive.

Anyway the aim of the game:

• A (single currently) ball bounces around the screen.
• You draw lines upon the screen, using the mouse, to influence the movement of the ball.
• The level (game) is over when the ball lands in the "exit box".

Thus far the game exists only in the skelital form with the minimum required functionality. There are two modes currently: "easy" & "hard". The hard mode was primarily added to prove to myself that the "leveling" system could work in a fun way.

Feedback welcome. Especially if it can tell me where I'm going wrong with the collision detection - but even if it is to critique my hacked-up SDL coding.

(The only other SDL coding I've done was in C, and was the mousetrap game.)

Obviously the game is written in perl, and I admit nasty perl at that. To play it you'll only need:

Code:

• http://www.steve.org.uk/Software/tmp/skx.pl

ObQuote: The Chronicles of Riddick

I’d been having problems connecting my laptop to my router to the Phone Coop using a new network cable that I laid under the floor just after the new heating system was installed. It’s a 1970s building - cat-5 wasn’t installed with the original wiring and mains homeplug networking is tricky on this wiring layout. The growing number of people with WiFi and video senders on my hillside (70% of UK users “never or rarely switch off their broadband wireless routers”) seems to be causing more interference and slow-downs, so it seemed worth installing a wired connection while the floors were up.

The connection seemed to work fine, but then kept stopping for 20 seconds at a time - that’s just long enough to break network connections, but barely long enough to start up debugging tools, let alone get useful output.

I was pretty sure the cable wasn’t at fault - Paul tested it with his fancy test gear when he completed the wiring for me. That left the hardware: my much-hated Belkin F5D7630 and the Realtek 8139 in the bizarre Compaq Evo N1015v. I’ve still not got around to replacing that Belkin and it’s been behaving itself well enough recently, while the Compaq has run smoothly once I actually got Linux onto it.

I found the end of this Ubuntu Forums thread which pointed to this archlinux bulletin board thread which suggested pnpbios=off pnpacpi=off in the boot options. After adding that, the 20-second network pauses have stopped. But why? The ACPI and BIOS in this laptop are generally troublesome (and it looks like this also happens on some Presarios), but what in particular is going wrong this time? Will I suffer ill effects from switching off PNP options? Time will tell, I guess.