Communal Capitalism

I watched the fall of the Berlin wall and the prediction of the fall of communism. I thought that this observation might end up as the high point of Western European and US capitalism. Why did I think this?

I remember reading an article about the battle of Agincourt which pointed out that this battle was the first documented occasion where someone was killed by a gun. The point of this observation is that Agincourt is considered to be the high point of the use of the longbow.

So, the high point of the longbow also pointed the way to its eventual successor. So it would seem with the Western world's system of capitalism.

Fedora 10 Video Driver

I downloaded and installed Fedora 10 yesterday. I've been playing with Linux, and specifically Red Hat, since about Red Hat 5 or 6. So, when a new release comes out, I have to grab it and have a play.

I got a MacBook Air back in April and around that time I messed up my installation of Fedora 9, so I stopped using it and started using my MacBook almost exclusively. The problems with Fedora 9 started when I decided to install the 64 bit version of the OS. It was only then that I discovered that Adobe do not provide a 64 bit version of Flash Player, so I had to install the 32 bit version of Firefox to get Flash to work. This seemed to drag loads of other 32 bit packages along for the ride, when I later added the Livna repository this just caused a nightmare and I ended up with a broken Firefox.

So, along comes Fedora 10 and now is the time to sort things out. I back up my home directory to a USB drive and perform a completely new install. First impressions is that it's a shorter process than before! That's because you don't get to make some of the choices that you had previously. One choice that you lose is the configuration of SELinux. I'm sure SELinux is great if security is a major concern, but to a casual tinkerer like me, it just adds to the possible list of OS things that stops other things working so, post install, I turned it off and rebooted. That was ok.

One of the first things I like to do is to get a DVD to play. This is one of Fedora's difficulties. Adding DVD support is sailing close to the wind with regards to patent encumbered software and, out of the box, Fedora doesn't support it. I seem to remember that Fedora 9 quickly took you off to the Fluendo website, where you could purchase additional codecs. This didn't happen this time. I decided to add the Livna repository to the package manager. Here I found out about RPM Fusion, which is combo of a number of Fedora repositories. Hopefully, this effort will produce less compatibility problems in the future. I installed a number of packages that I thought would enable DVD support, all without success. Eventually I downloaded and installed mplayer from their subversion repository and tried that. Still no luck! Although this time, mplayer read the disc and played a soundtrack. I seemed to be going (slightly) in the right direction.

After Fedora 10 was up and running, one of the first things I did was to try and enable 'Desktop Effects' but this did not work. In the past I could only get this feature to work if I installed the NVIDIA Linux driver from their website. So, I grabbed the driver and installed it. This time desktop effects worked AND the DVD players I installed all started to play DVDs! Hooray!

So, moral of the story, unless you are really hung up on open drivers best go and get the driver from the chip vendor's site and get the best out of your hardware.

Mounting ISOs in Linux

I posted about a Microsoft utility to allow you mount an ISO image directly, without the intermediate step of burning a CD or DVD.

Someone commented about how this scores points over Linux. Not so, Linux has this feature built in. No need for an extra download. Its part of the 'mount' command options. Check it out! Alright I'll spell it out: -

If you've got an iso image called image.iso and you want to put it at /place/to/mount then use:

mount -o loop image.iso /place/to/mount

In the Netherlands, Santa is Spanish and has a pal...

Er, don't really know what to say...

For any UK readers, no, that's not the Chuckle brothers. Thank God.

What were they thinking about in the kitchen?

Here's a dessert that got at a Chiquita's restaurant at Cardiff Bay a couple of months ago. I think that the chef must have been looking forward to some entertainment of some kind later in the evening while they were slapping the bits and pieces together on the plate.

Signs and Wonders!

This strange image was formed from condensation inside the glass panel of an empty bus shelter advertising panel near Amsterdam. I think the message is that rodent/human hybrids will inherit the Earth!

Time for a beard?

Wouldn't it be just so much fun to look like Hannibal Lecter while you're shaving and afterwards look really gay?

If that's really your secret desire that you really need to check out http://www.goateesaver.com

Could be the best $20 you ever spent!

No need to burn a DVD for using iso image files.

Check out this handy utility from Microsoft that allows you to mount an ISO file as a CD/DVD and use it without the need to burn it to a disk first - winxpvirtualcdcontrolpanel

Here's the README:
Readme for Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel v2.0.1.1

THIS TOOL IS UNSUPPORT BY MICROSOFT PRODUCT SUPPORT SERVICES


System Requirements
===================
- Windows XP Home or Windows XP Professional

Installation instructions
=========================
1. Copy VCdRom.sys to your %systemroot%\system32\drivers folder.
2. Execute VCdControlTool.exe
3. Click "Driver control"
4. If the "Install Driver" button is available, click it. Navigate to the %systemroot%\system32\drivers folder, select VCdRom.sys, and click Open.
5. Click "Start"
6. Click OK
7. Click "Add Drive" to add a drive to the drive list. Ensure that the drive added is not a local drive. If it is, continue to click "Add Drive" until an unused drive letter is available.
8. Select an unused drive letter from the drive list and click "Mount".
9. Navigate to the image file, select it, and click "OK". UNC naming conventions should not be used, however mapped network drives should be OK.

You may now use the drive letter as if it were a local CD-ROM device. When you are finished you may unmount, stop, and remove the driver from memory using the driver control.

Oh Dear! Tell me better things Mr. iPhone

I need to do some work in the garden this weekend. Then, next week, I'm off to Amsterdam on Wednesday and I'll be there Mon - Fri for the next 3 weeks. Looks like I'm going to get v. wet.

I'm going to level with you....

I just love the appstore for the iPhone. Many of the apps are just plain daft, but I actually made use of one that I downloaded last week. You never realise how important getting everything level is until you've always got a bubble level in your pocket where ever you go!

Talk Like a Pirate

I forgot about it. Whahhh! September was a crazy month and I forgot! Boo Hoo! Always next year I suppose.

Cyber-laundry!

These Dutch people are very inventive. Forget cybercafes, in Amsterdam you can surf and wash!

Why not!

Hard work these blog things

God! Over a month since I last posted something. Must get my finger out and punish the world more regularly. So, what exciting things have I discovered in the last month.

Well, don't judge a website by its address for one thing. Go and a have a look at http://twatface.com. Oh, and BTW - Peter Petrelli shot Nathan Petrelli. I'm watching series 3 of Heroes as I'm typing this. Dumbledore is gay, the woman in the Crying Game is a guy and Bruce Willis in 'The Sixth Sense' is dead from the start! And the only safe place to keep your money is the Bank of Pig.

Gone but not forgotten

Clive Grummet parted company with Applabs and its remarkable owner, Sashi Reddi, over 1 year ago and moved on. However, his opinion is obviously well respected, why else would they keep his profile page available for everyone to read: http://www.applabs.com/html/CliveGrummettInterview_267.html?

Does anyone want to know my opinion of Sashi Reddi?

Better not.....

Expert Handling

I'm spending my weekdays in South Wales performance testing a GIS (Geographical Information System). Today I noticed on the wall next to me a whole raft of training certificates. Of particular interest was a certificate for 'Handling Inanimate Objects'. I do that all the time. Where's my certificate?

Are we being tickled by His noodley appendages?

I've been keen to promote International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Why? Just because I like the idea. However, disturbing connections have arisen that leads me to think that the event is a covert operation to attract converts to the mysterious cult of the Flying Spagetthi Monster. Google your own opinion!

Cookie conundrum solved!

I've found out why I get requests to set cookies from sites I don't think I've visited. The reason is that I have visited the site, I just didn't know it!
It's a feature of Firefox that, as far as I can tell, only Google make use of. So, in the case of the previous example that I posted, the HTML returned from the Google search contains the following code:

link rel="prefetch" href="http://www.georgeproctor.co.uk/"

This tells Firefox to go and get the content from that URL as Google thinks that I am likely to actually want to visit that site. In most cases Google is wrong, but it makes Firefox go off and connect to that site anyway! If I'd let the handling of cookies to Firefox's default state then I'd have never noticed!

Seems to me that Firefox should default to not allowing prefetching. That way the user is more likely to know what is happening rather than unknowingly allowing cookies from sites that the user may not even be aware that they have visited.

What's with Google and the cookies?

I've changed the settings on Firefox so that sites that want to set cookies get flagged up with a dialog, then I can choose which sites get to set cookies on my machine.

Since I've done this I've noticed that Google searches that pop up a commercial website at the top of the results page seem to allow the top search to set a cookie without even visiting that site. (see image)

Can someone out there please tell me what Google is doing?

If you're looking, they will post...

Slashdot has a article about online security-
"A TJX employee was fired for an online post mentioning that TJX hasn't beefed up security after the recent, massive data breach that saw 94 million credit card numbers copied by criminals and money from their accounts stolen. The employee mentioned that, at first, their usernames were the same as their passwords. After they required stronger passwords, some managers complained, so they 'compromised' by allowing blank passwords. The whistleblower said he discussed his concerns with management, but that it was like talking to a brick wall. In spite of the weak internal security, TJX now has a firm that scours the internet to find bad things posted about them, which is how they found the message and fired him for it. Too bad they don't appear to have hired anyone to beef up operational security or to convince people to use strong passwords."

I was interested in the quote about TJX actively scanning the internet for bad press, so I think I'm doing them a favour by posting, it makes their effort worthwhile!

In the UK, TJX is best know for its TKMaxx stores. From the look of the customers I've seen coming and going, TJX's credit card problem must be confined to the USA. I can't believe that the typical TJMaxx customer could even get hold of (their own!) credit card. I walked past a TJMaxx store a couple of days ago. I must just go and check my wallet....

Tricky work

Close to where I live, the Glasgow Housing Association is demolishing some high rise flats. They are very close to some other accomodation, so they are removing one section of the flats prior to bringing them down with explosives some time in the next month or so. It still seems like a close call to me! They are not advertising the time when they will demolish the buildings but I hope I'm there to watch!

Handling '404 Not Found' errors

Were everything else working, you might not have to worry about these errors. However, there a any number of reasons that someone might request a missing resource from your website, so I think it should at least be testing for handling this condition gracefully. To see what I mean and - how you can get it wrong - goto the website of the (sic) "WORLD'S LARGEST INDEPENDENT SOFTWARE TESTING COMPANY" (yes, it's in shouty capitals on the site)
So, give it a try at the applabs site - http://www.applabs.com/whereisit.html - and see where the other links take you too (hint: nowhere!). Not a great showcase for the capabilities.

Try almost any other site and a message will inform you of the error, but at least the other links let you get out of the (small) hole you might find yourself in.

Actually a couple of the links will get you back to the homepage, but mostly you'll think you're stuck. If they ever get around to testing and fixing the site, perhaps someone could let me know and I'll update the blog!

NEWSFLASH: They fixed it around October 2008. Still a bit crap.

Twisted Fire Starter!

I had a visit from the local fire brigade last night. Full turnout with blue lights and big hoses! Turns out the neighbour called 999 (same as US 911). Obviously not wanting to have wasted their time getting all dressed up, the came into my garden and stuck their hose in my garden incinerator. It's a sticky black mess now.

There's no local rules to ban the use of garden incinerators (although the local council don't like them) and everything was contained within the incinerator, so it wasn't out of control. I think it was a bit heavy handed of them but you've got to consider the general good work they do so I'll leave it as an interesting experience.

The Excitement is too much.

He needs funding....will he get it....nail biting stuff.

Green Computing

There's a bit of talk nowadays about 'Green Computing' and what can be done to decrease the environmental impact of power hungry electronic devices. Actually, its another case of necessity being the mother of invention. If you look at the figures for the power output of modern silicon chips they are, per unit of surface area, more power hungry than the heating element of an electric fire! Datacenters groan under the weight of their cooling equipment and many now struggle to supply enough power to the racks. It's not that hardware vendors are environmental angels, its that the kit is about to burst into flames (literally in the case of some laptops!)

Perhaps we're just on the wrong place with regards to aggregating IT hardware. Maybe we should look to put as much together in one (or two or three for proper disaster recovery) place. I think the Moon is the best place to put it. Solar panels to generate electricity and just let the heat radiate way into space. The trick is to put as much kit in the same place as is possible and leave the minimum amount of information to be transferred between the Earth and the Moon. At the same time, people should have slightly more kit in their own homes, but it should be plumbed in properly so that in the winter the excess heat can contribute to heating the whole place. What we need is a global repository of soft objects, like digital photos, music and video which can be mega-cached locally and transferred via P2P processes around the globe and to and from the big MoonPuter.

Maybe I'm just going barking...

Live the message!

Aargh! Completely off the road now... but it was funny when I saw it so I had to take the picture!

Slightly off-topic...

... but it is about software.

I wish I'd got a Canon digital camera. I've got a Casio and don't get me wrong, I happy with it. But just look what some smart hackers have done with Canon cameras.

Doesn't work with all Canon cameras though. I think you need to have a Digic II processor. The current range has Digic III processors and I don't think it works for them. Although, given a little time and some specs....

Great little tool for documentation

There is a Firefox extension called FireShot that captures your browser window and allows you to edit the image very easily and quickly. It's great for annotating and documenting browser based apps. Go grab it!

Open Source, I could drink it all day long!

My current favourite programming language has to be python. I first became interested in python when I saw that it was the scripting language within Blender, the open source 3D animation package. Since then I discovered just how powerful python can be, with web development frameworks such as Zope delivering applications like Plone, an open source content management system (CMS).

OSS - TrueCrypt

Before my leaky brain drips this information away, I was reading about TrueCrypt. It is a powerful disk encryption package and is fully Open Source. I don't think I need it myself but you never know, so I'm making a note of it here. I'd love to hear from anyone that is a user and has an opinion about it.