Planet Nonado

radagast: Packt launches fifth annual Open Source Awards

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:21:58 +0000

Packt launches fifth annual Open Source Awards

The 2010 Open Source Awards was launched last month by Packt, inviting people to visit www.PacktPub.com and submit nominations for their favorite Open Source project. Now in its fifth year, the Award has been adapted from the established Open Source CMS Award with the wider aim of encouraging, supporting, recognizing and rewarding all Open Source projects.
WordPress won the 2009 Open Source Content Management System (CMS) Award in what was a very close contest with MODx and SilverStripe. While MODx was the first runner up, SilverStripe, a Most Promising CMS Award winner in 2008, made its way to the second runner up position in its first year in the Open Source CMS Award final.
The 2010 Award will feature a prize fund of $24,000 with several new categories introduced. While the Open Source CMS Award category will continue to recognize the best content management system, Packt is introducing categories for the Most Promising Open Source Project, Open Source E-Commerce Applications, Open Source JavaScript Libraries and Open Source Graphics Software. CMSes that won the Overall CMS Award in previous years will continue to compete against one another in the Hall of Fame CMS category.
These new categories will ensure that the Open Source Awards is the ultimate platform to recognise excellence within the community while supporting projects both new and old. “We believe that the adaption of the Award and the new categories will provide a new level of accessibility, with the Award recognizing a wider range of Open Source projects; both previous winners while at the same time, encouraging new projects” said Julian Copes, organizer of this year’s Awards.
Packt has opened up nominations for people to submit their favorite Open Source projects for each category at http://www.PacktPub.com/open-source-awards-home . The top five in each category will go through to the final, which begins in the last week of September. For more information on the categories, please visit Packt’s website http://www.PacktPub.com/blog/packt’s-2010-open-source-awards-announcement

noirin: A new world in the morning

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 20:31:06 +0000

As I write this, it’s a little over a fortnight since Stephen and I split up, and almost exactly a week since we told most of our friends. I’ve danced to remember and danced to forget. I’ve been taken care of by family, friends and acquaintances locally and across the world – truly, it’s been a 24hr support network, and to all of you, I am deeply grateful. In particular to all those in Zurich who have provided hugs, and to those at the top of my chat list who have been bombarded day and night, thank you.

Stephen has already published his take on what went wrong, and how it could have gone this badly. Many of you have responded, and I love and thank all of you who’ve supported him, publicly and privately. Some of you have also asked whether I’d write something similar from my own perspective, and a few of you have suggested that I should be taking more responsibility for the breakdown of our marriage.

With those latter few, I respectfully disagree. To me, taking responsibility suggests that blame should be assigned, and implicitly assumes that the breakdown is “bad news”. In fact, when I first shared the news with my family and a very small group of friends, in an e-mail written while I sat at the airport gate, that was the subject of the missive. But someone I trust deeply responded, saying:

I view these things as local minima that need to be overcome so you can reach global maxima.

It’s taken me a while to get my head around that, but I think it’s true. To help make sense of it, let me bring you on a whirlwind tour of the last three years.

Stephen was unwell before we got married. I knew that, and it affected our lives, but I was happy to make those sacrifices. We were a busy couple, and our lives weren’t without stress – my graduation ceremony was the week before the wedding, and our honeymoon brought us to Hong Kong expressly so that I could help out with a conference there. (That didn’t work out in the end, but we had a lovely time all the same!) I also had my moments – our first Christmas dinner was pasta bake with a special delivery of antibiotics for the shocking chest infection that had kept me out of the kitchen

Stephen’s memory had never been great, but when we moved to Zurich, things got harder. The trouble he had remembering things compounded the trouble he had learning German, which massively compounded the trouble he had with integrating (and Switzerland’s not easy to start with!). Combine that with having to start over on all of the medical care he needed, and it all caused a lot of stress, which didn’t help anyone. Where I had previously had to keep an eye on things (like our finances) that we managed together, I now had to single-handedly take care of all the details.

To give Stephen his due, over time, he stepped up on the things that he was able to do – but, like so many other things, the division of labour was always dictated by his health, and it left me feeling isolated and overworked.

Nine months ago, Stephen went into hospital for surgery that, we hoped, would make things drastically better. So much hope was poured into that operation. If it works, his bladder problems will get better. If his bladder problems get better, his sleep problems will get better. If his sleep problems get better, his memory will get better, our ability to do fun stuff/travel/share time will get better, and so on.

Day surgery turned into almost two weeks in hospital. A few days in, I left for the airport, and headed out to ApacheCon, straight from his bedside – having always planned that there would be plenty of time to get him home and help him recover before I had to leave. Our friends, as usual, filled the gap – and again, huge thanks to those who visited him daily while I was away.

We had planned to take our dream holiday, our second honeymoon, a couple of weeks later. Until pretty much the day we left, it wasn’t at all clear that Stephen would be able to do it – and I remain grateful that I never had to decide whether we should cancel it or whether I should go alone. As it was, we had a wonderful time – but many aspects of it still sucked. In fact, before we had even left Venice, we thought we would have to pack our bags and head to the hospital.

In all of that chaos, as we looked at plans we had made together and re-evaluated them in a context where we couldn’t simply wish things better, I started spending more time introspecting, thinking, trying to work out what was really important to me. And as 2009 turned into 2010, I started building more of those things into my life. After a year of a fairly serious “flight ban” (I took nine flights in 2009), I started to travel more – in fact, I spent the first six weeks of the year in San Francisco, three of them with Stephen.

It was during the latter three weeks, after he had gone home, that I had the epic swing-dancing/Superbowl weekend. But both before and after, as I tried new things or just did the things I wanted to do without having to worry about whether he’d be waiting up for me to get home, I was conscious of how much sacrifice our relationship required, from both of us.

“Life is pain, Highness” – this I know. And I truly understand the value of compromise. But I would say that I now understand it better than ever, having seen how far compromise can go before things break.

There were many compromises in our relationship. On his side and on mine, we settled and agreed and worked within our limitations. But ultimately, the things that had brought us and kept us together were no longer strong enough to make the sacrifices seem reasonable, desirable.

It’s easy to get into the game of “if-only”. If only Steve’s sleep hadn’t been so compromised, maybe we could have had more time to do things together, and maybe that would have seen us through the memory issues. If only I had faced less stress at work, maybe I could have given more energy to the relationship and kept things going more smoothly. If only Steve’s memory had not impaired his language learning, maybe he would have had an easier time integrating and been less likely to get depressed. If only I could have been more understanding and patient, maybe we could have found better ways to meet in the middle rather than relentlessly sacrificing. If only our sex life had not fallen by the wayside, or if only it had been possible to revive, maybe we could have relied on basic instinct to keep us together!

But none of that makes any difference, in the end.

I married Stephen because I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him, and to share in the rest of his. We have split up because those things are no longer true – for me, at least. And as I’ve learnt, slowly, but inexorably, my primary responsibility is to myself. I have dreams, and hopes, and ambitions, and I would willingly sacrifice many of them, but I can’t sacrifice all of them, and I can’t sacrifice the essence of who I am.

Some of you have asked about regrets. I don’t regret a minute of it. Not the worst days I can remember, nor the worse days I’ve tried to forget. I don’t bear any ill-will towards Stephen, I still think he’s great, and although things are hard right now, I hope and intend that we might remain friends.

I met a man who had a dream he had since he was twenty. I met that man when he was eighty-one. He said “too many people just stand and wait until the mornin’. Don’t they know tomorrow never comes?”

diamond: “Shall we?” “Let’s.”

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 08:57:39 +0000

On saturday 2010-07-31, at the security gate in zurich airport around 05:40, Noirin and i broke up. We were supposed to be boarding a flight to Sweden, to attend Herräng swing dance camp. Noirin went through, i went home.

This is an attempt to describe why, what happened, what went wrong, how could it go this badly. This is an attempt to understand. This is for the close friends and family members who had no idea (esp. for my brother, and younger sister). This is for me when i try to remember how things were.

Before we got married, many people told us that the first year is like an extended honeymoon period, everything is fantastic. That the second year is when reality would start to kick in. This was so far off truth as to seem like a sick joke in retrospect. The first year was Hard. The second year was Really Hard. The third year broke us. Nov 2010 will be the third anniversary of our wedding.

Two big things contributed to this, plus a multitude of smaller things. I’m going to try and outline the two major factors, as i currently see them.

Memory
I am a man who has made 1000 promises, remembered 5, kept 3. When i tell people i have a really really bad memory, they almost always say “Oh, me too!”. They ask for examples, i can rarely remember any, so they assume i’m exaggerating. They also tell me it can’t be as bad as i say if i’m able to hold down a job. Life, as usual, just isn’t that simple.

My memory is the single biggest factor in our relationship breakdown. Every day, i tell Noirin i’ll do X,Y,Z, i won’t do Q,R,S, my opinions on subjects L,M,O. And every day, i’ll have zero, zero idea that i’ve said i’d do things we talked about only yesterday; i’ll do things i promised i wouldn’t do; i’ll have a completely new opinion on various subjects, having no idea that i had a different opinion on the subject only a few hours ago. Sometimes i realise later that i’d changed my opinion. Most of the time, i don’t.

Every day i’ll watch Noirin look crestfallen time and time again as i’ve failed to live up to my word. And i’ll have no clue what i’ve done or not done. And after this happens for the hundredth time, she just can’t muster the energy to explain again. What’s the point? I haven’t remembered the last 100 times she told me how she feels about something. I’m hardly about to remember it this time.

We talk, she gives me information that changes my opinion on something. The next time we talk, i’ve reverted to my original opinion, oblivious to the reasons i changed my opinion previously, oblivious even to the fact that i did change my opinion. It’s not fair on her. Not even close.

From my side, i live in a relationship of arbitrary rules. It’s *incredibly* frustrating. But i can’t expect Noirin to endlessly explain herself. It’s not fair on me. Not even close.

Doctors haven’t been able to tell me why i have memory issues. I haven’t slept properly in somewhere between 7 and 9 years. But it’s not clear that that’s the issue. I’ve had blood tests, thyroid exams, MRI’s. Nothing. Maybe it’s all psychological. Even so, i’m not aware of it, i can’t just flick a switch.

I’ve tried lists, i’ve tried harder, i’ve tried leaving myself reminders. I forget to look at the lists. I forget what the reminders are about. I feel stressed all the time, from the moment i wake up, to the moment i fall asleep. Constantly stressing about all the stuff i’m forgetting. And it makes it worse. But how do you stop caring, when you see how much damage it’s doing to your relationship?

From the other side, how can you trust someone who is utterly unreliable? You can’t. You try again and again, giving them chance after chance. And they almost always let you down. How can you stay in a relationship where you cannot name a single area you can trust your partner in? Noirin ended up taking care of all the finances, all the health and other insurances (and my health insurance dealings are extensive). All of the planning. All of the responsibility.

How can i cope with work? I don’t know. The fact that it’s a structured environment means i can always read the docs, or ask someone, when i don’t remember something. But i don’t know.

I remember some stuff. It’s not amnesia. And this makes it harder. If someone never remembers anything, that’s tough, really tough to deal with. But at least it’s consistent. Someone who *mostly* doesn’t remember stuff, but does sometimes; that just comes across as not caring. Not giving a damn. It doesn’t matter how much they explain how they can’t help it. It doesn’t matter how much you tell yourself they don’t mean it. Eventually the evidence you see repeatedly is too much. Too hurtful.

Priorities
How do you define love? One of the definitions is putting the needs and wishes of your loved ones above your own needs and wishes. This led me to the following priority list:

Noirin
The relationship
Myself

The logic for the ordering of 1. vs 2. is simple; if Noirin isn’t doing well, the relationship can’t be doing well. Unfortunately, i never applied the same logic to 2. vs 3. until it was too late. Far too late.

How does this screw things up? I censored my emotions and opinions for the sake of the relationship. A simple example. Noirin likes cooking. When she cooks, she usually wants my company, so i sit in the kitchen while she cooks. I find this really tedious, and hence frustrating. But i would squash those feelings, would not allow myself to feel them. I would sit there, because i thought it was the loving thing to do.

It turns out, if you censor your emotions for a long enough time, you stop having any. You forget how to feel. You’re numb inside. You rarely feel anything, and when you do, you feel guilty about it. But over time, your subconscious gets filled to overflowing with frustration and resentment. And this shows through the numbness, through everything you do to be nice.

Noirin loves me, i tell Noirin that i love her, but it’s a purely rational gesture, it’s never heartfelt, it can never have emotion behind it. I talk based on commitment, not connection. It comes across as cold. And the emotions i do feel are destructive, negative, so i stop talking about them. Noirin can sense them anyway, and it hurts her.

I’m depressed, have been for years. I never realised. I saw a psychiatrist here for 6 months because of how badly the relationship was going. He said “well you’re clearly not depressed”. We went together to another psych for one session. He said “well you’re clearly chronically depressed”. Colour me confused. But the next tuesday, i was in work when i realised two things:

I’d spent most of monday and tuesday wanting to go home to bed, curl up into a little ball and cry.
This was normal for me.

So yeah, the second psych was absolutely right. I see him regularly now. I’m on 3 different antidepressants. I’m on the road to recovery. I’ve realised that i’ve been censoring emotion, and that’s what’s making me so angry inside. But these things take time to fix. A long time. And time is not infinite. Living with a depressed person is incredibly draining. And eventually it got to be too much.

Where does that leave us?
How Noirin lasted so long, i’ll never understand. She’s amazing. Towards the end, we finally got to the point where we understood each other, what we were both going through. The breakup was gentle. Noirin couldn’t go on any longer, i couldn’t ask her to sacrifice herself any more for the sake of the relationship that was so destructive for both of us. Living on the edge for so long has torn us both up, and Noirin has had a rougher time than me (partially because i simply don’t remember so much). If she’s at breaking point, and she is a higher priority than the relationship, then it’s over. It’s as simple as that.

I waited till the following thursday before i told my parents. I was hoping against all probability that something might happen, something might change, that Noirin would change her mind. Then i realised that this wasn’t fair on Noirin. Putting all the responsibility on her, yet again.

On friday, i realised something more. I couldn’t go back either. If Noirin returned on sunday and told me she wanted to try one more time, i’d have to tell her no. I need time to figure out how to be myself again. I need time to work through this depression. And i can’t do it inside a relationship. The stresses of trying to live up to a role i just can’t cope with is a big part of the problem that’s brought me to this point.

We’re still friends, we still talk to each other. It’s as amicable as it can be under the circumstances. The title of this blog post is from a comedy sketch we saw on our last cruise. The comedian was painting the picture of middle-aged couples separating with utmost civility and mutual understanding. It amused us greatly at the time, i look back on it as bitter-sweet.

I hope that in the future, where we’re both doing much much better, it’s possible we might get back together. But i can’t live my life centered around that hope. I spent the last 6 months of this relationship hoping things would get better, and it’s killed me. “Hope deferred makes the heart sick”. In the meantime, we’re working on being friends. And if we get that figured out, maybe we can work on being more than friends. But that’s a long way down the road.

***Update***
Noirin has just posted her own take on the situation.

noirin: Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock-Friends-Pie

Sun, 08 Aug 2010 12:14:19 +0000

By popular demand (no really, half a dozen requests or more!), I give you the hand shapes and rules for Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock-Friends-Pie:

Each player forms a fist, and swings it seven times swiftly, to the spoken count of “Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock-Friends-Pie”. After the final count, each player forms one of the following shapes with the same hand, and extends it towards her opponent.

Rock, Paper, Scissors: The classics. “Rock” is a clenched fist, “Paper” is an open hand with all fingers extended together, “Scissors” has index and middle finger extended and separated, with the other fingers held in the palm of the hand.

Lizard, Spock: Newer additions, invented by Sam Kass. “Lizard” has fingers extended together, straight, with the thumb brought up to touch the tips of the fingers. “Spock” is an open hand with index and middle fingers extended together, and ring and pinky fingers extended together, with a V-shaped gap between the middle and ring fingers.

Friends, Pie: The newest additions of which I am aware, invented by a sleep-deprived dancer with the encouragement of a pirate who has never had banoffi! “Friends” has the index and middle fingers extended, with the middle finger crossed over the index finger, and the other fingers held in the palm of the hand. “Pie” is a circle made with four fingers touching the thumb.

The precedence rules are as follows:

Rock:
+ Crushes scissors
+ Crushes lizard
+ Crushes friends
- Is covered by paper
- Is vaporized by Spock
- Is made sticky by pie

Paper:
+ Covers rock
+ Disproves Spock
+ Cuts friends
- Is cut by scissors
- Is eaten by lizard
- Is made messy by pie

Scissors:
+ Cut paper
+ Decapitate lizard
+ Stab friends
- Are crushed by rock
- Are crushed by Spock
- Are gummed up by pie

Lizard:
+ Eats paper
+ Poisons Spock
+ Eats pie
- Is decapitated by scissors
- Is crushed by rock
- Is tamed by friends

Spock:
+ Crushes scissors
+ Vaporizes rock
+ Eats pie
- Is disproven by paper
- Is poisoned by lizard
- Is confused by friends

Friends:
+ Eat pie
+ Confuse Spock
+ Tame lizard
- Are stabbed with scissors
- Are crushed by rock
- Are cut with paper

Pie:
+ Messes up paper
+ Gums up scissors
+ Makes rock icky-sticky!
- Is eaten by lizard
- Is eaten by Spock
- Is eaten by friends

Have fun!

bigbro: Adding the CACert root certificate to Google Chrome on Ubuntu

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 22:42:00 +0000

Google Chrome is Google's browser and provides a refreshingly fast interface to (in particular) Javascript heavy websites. It's also a pretty good general browser, but like many others presents dire warnings of doom if you attempt to view a https secured website which doesn't have a recognised certificate. (Or more correctly, doesn't have a certificate signed by an authority recognised by Google.)
Most other browsers provide a method of installing root certificates but Google decided that they would use an already established certificate management system external to the browser, the NSS Security Toolkit. So if you want to view websites secured by free CACert SSL certificates or have the need to browse to sites secured by self-signed SSL certs (like the https management interface for my Linksys WRT54g wireless router running Tomato firmware for example) then you'll want to add some certificates to your NSS database. Fortunately, it's pretty simple to do...
First, let's install the CACert root certificate. Installing this means that Google Chrome will trust the identity of sites signed by CACert issues certificates. This is a good thing and saves clicking the "Proceed anyway" button every time.

First, grab the root cert file from the CACert Root Cert page. You should verify that the file is correct and has not been tampered with; md5sums and SHA1 hashes are included, along with the fingerprint signed by the CACert GPG key. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader as to how authenticity should be verified, but for the moment let's assume we have a good, trusted copy of the CACert Root Certificate (PEM Format) saved as root.crt in your home directory.
If you've not already, you should install the NSS tool set - a simple sudo aptitude install libnss3-tools should work nicely. You will be asked for your login password to ensure you have permissions to install software.
Install the CACert root key by running certutil -d sql:$HOME/.pki/nssdb -A -t "C,," -n "CACert Root Certificate" -i root.crt
There is no step 4... you can now go to CACert secured web pages and Chrome will correctly verify that the SSL site cert has been signed by the CACert root certificate.

The second instance typically occurs where a device generates a self-signed key, so there is no CA (Certificate Authority) to be installed in the browser. Instead, we can install the self-signed cert, indicating that we know and trust it - and most importantly getting rid of the extra click and big red warning page of doom every time we try and access the web interface of our home router ;-)

If you've not done so above, you'll need to install the NSS tools, using sudo aptitude install libnss3-tools or similar.
Next you'll need to get a copy of the certificate. Particularly with embedded devices, the easiest way to do this is by pulling the key directly from the device by pretending you're a web client. Thanks to tgulacsi78 who suggested echo QUIT | openssl s_client -connect hostname:443 | sed -ne '/BEGIN CERT/,/END CERT/p' - replacing hostname with the name of the host. In my case, I might use echo QUIT | openssl s_client -connect eeyore.han.signal2noise.ie:443 | sed -ne '/BEGIN CERT/,/END CERT/p' to get the cert from eeyore, my wireless router.
Copy and paste the lines between 'BEGIN CERT' and 'END CERT' into a file and save it as (say) router.crt
Now we import the cert in exactly the same way as previously, using a command line something like certutil -d sql:$HOME/.pki/nssdb -A -t "C,," -n "My router web admin certificate" -i router.crt
Note that we have to use the C flag (i.e. mark it as a CA / Certificate Authority) due to a bug in NSS. Note also that you should replace the description after -n with something that means something to you, and the argument after the -i should be the file name and path to the file we created in step 3.
Test that everything has worked by using Chrome to access the site secured by the self-signed certificate again and notice that this time no warnings are given.

You can list the installed extra certificates by running certutil -d sql:$HOME/.pki/nssdb -L
Many thanks to the writers of the Google Chrome Certificate Management page and those who helpfully commented on it providing more information.

noirin: TransferSummit/UK

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 21:56:57 +0000

Last week, I enjoyed the beautiful environs of Keble College, Oxford, and the rather noisier hospitality of the University Club, to attend TransferSummit/UK, and the associated BarCampOxford.

What a show! It was a great freedom to be able to attend–and speak–without having to run around making sure everything was planned, organized, working. I love putting on the events I’m involved with; I had a fantastic time at the Retreat in Ireland, and we have a brilliant crew who come in to put on ApacheCon, but there’s still always a “background radiation” level of stress and tension that means it was a very different experience to just “show up” and get on stage

My talk was a lot of fun to give – I was delighted that my mum could attend, and it’s always a thrill to have a packed room, whether it’s big or small The audience were a mix – some friends for backup, others for mild heckling, and a whole lot of people, academics and engineers alike, who were completely new to Open Source. I’m too much of a perfectionist to ever be pleased with my presentations, but the feedback was universally positive, and I hope they’ll have me back next year! The organizers very kindly invited mum to share lunch with us before she had to head back home, and it was lovely to be able to introduce her to some of my “Apache friends”

The conference was unusual, in that it had essentially been assembled by a crack team who decided who they wanted to have speaking, wrote up the abstracts, and then asked those speakers to speak to the chosen topics It ended up being a really solid program, with lots of interesting talks from a great cross-section of the open-source and academic communities.

Once I’d gotten my talk done, it was much easier to relax, and Thursday night started off with a wee dram in my room. We had a variety of things to taste, and some excellent (and knowledgable!) company. We didn’t get too very far before it was time for the gala dinner, in an unmatchably beautiful setting – the Dining Hall at Keble College. It was a lot of fun, although I was eventually warned off dancing on the “precarious” floor, a little while after Paul brought out his whistle. The only thing for it, of course, was to move back to my room, where he kept the music going until well past bedtime! Happily all the neighbours were in attendance, and no one seemed to mind too much

The rest of the conference was, of course, of a standard – unsurprisingly! But the fun didn’t stop with the closing plenary, as we headed on for a pre-BarCamp dinner. I retired early, but sadly didn’t get much sleep – World Cup, a warm night, and accommodation above a bar with a great BBQ menu conspired to keep me awake rather longer than I’d wished. And there was no opportunity to sleep on in the morning, despite staying at the BarCamp venue – some tour organizer was wandering up and down the corridors from early morn, trying to determine where her charges were sleeping by yelling for them

The BarCamp more than made up though – a packed schedule, great content, fun presenters, and lots of audience participation. Robert of Bunnyfoot gave a particularly memorable talk about the use of eyetracking, and my sincere apologies to the Apache crew, on whom I completely accidentally bailed, and only turned up for the second half of the “Apache Way” talk I had intended to co-present.

We had a truly delicious Indian dinner afterwards, whereupon I discovered the first person I know who didn’t grow up in Dublin but has heard of “Jesus: The Guantanamo Years” Some of the Americans bailed on the Indian to have Whetherspoons fish & chips, so of course we had to rejoin them and provide appropriate mocking! By then, of course, USA/Ghana was kicking off, and we turned up in a (briefly!) very quiet pub to watch the match.

Much hilarity ensued, a good proportion of it stemming from those unaccustomed to the Irish style of sports supporter laughing at me The result didn’t work out as we hoped, but overall I think everyone had fun, and if they were truly traumatised, the Americans did a good job of hiding it.

Thanks to all involved for not one, but two great events! Hopefully, I’ll see you all again next year

artemis: Semi-tropical Police states are more fun when the booze is cheap

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 20:45:38 +0000

Singapore was once described to me as being a bit like a small version of London, but really fucking hot. I can now with some actual basis state that this is absolute and total bollocks. Singapore is what you would get if you reduced the size and population of Hong Kong by factors of respectively 4 and 40, taught everyone slightly better English, and did a really really thorough cleaning job. And by cleaning job I mean also getting rid of most of the more crammed in and unsightly buildings filled with live chickens and frogs, and somehow making the streets stop smelling like fried rice soaked in soy sauce. Into this new city you would drop a load more white people, 80% of whom work in banks, and a bunch of spacious apartment buildings with pools in order to accommodate said white people, whom you would then proceed to pay too much. And there, aside from the occasional monsoon and drug-trafficking related execution, you have Singapore.

Things to do in Singapore include sweating profusely and developing acute paranoia. Most of the cops are plain clothes, and instantly converge on law breakers with the fiery righteousness of a thousand suns, so you really don’t want to jaywalk, accidentally litter, or illegally import chewing gum. You cannot bring duty free cigarettes into Singapore, and should you by caught smoking said cigarettes the Singapore police can fine you not by the carton or packet, but by the individual stick. They can tell too, by the fact that every stick is stamped as duty free individually. Common sentences for a legal infraction in Singapore read like “30 days in jail and 10 lashes of the whip”. Which I am guessing at least intimidates the natives and puts the slightly incredulous fear of God into the westerners.

The city Is spotlessly clean, presumably due to fear. The crime rate is apparently very low, presumably due to abject terror. From what I have heard from the inhabitants though, the Singaporean government (in case this was not already glaringly obvious) are a rather scary bunch of sociopathic opportunists who have no qualms about obstructing the freedom of the press. So anything reported on to indicate Singapore might not be an oasis of harmonious crime-free living does not get reported on for long.

Of any Asian city, Singapore is the most westernized and the easiest, as it is quite evidently designed to be. The standard of living is very high if you can afford it, for the amount I pay to live in my apartment in NY you could share a bigger newer apartment complete with washer/dryer and outdoor pool. But you would be living in bloody Singapore, a city the size of an enthusiastic fart. Don’t even get me started on the weather. From what I can tell, Singapore has two settings for climate: extremely hot and humid, or extremely hot and humid in the pouring torrential rain.

Poor people exist here, but you can’t really tell from the outside. Local wages are a fraction of expat wages, but there are so many expats that the downtown areas cater to them almost exclusively. Personally I find any country where a wage like mine enables you to afford a live-in maid mildly worrying, and this is definitely one of them. Not that I can even imagine creating enough personal domestic mess to ever justify a maid.

I definitely don’t hate it here, in fact its rather an interesting place. But I can’t imagine living here for more than a few months. I think on the whole while I like Asia in general as a holiday destination I can’t imagine it as a home. Then again, you never know until you try.

artemis: Singapore from inside a hotel room at 4am. Fucking jetlag

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 18:24:01 +0000

Walking outside of Singapore airport was like walking into a New York august afternoon. With respect to heat and humidity anyway, I can’t say with any degree of accuracy that Singapore looks anything like NY except in the standard way that all airports look like all other airports. This is a problem. Because I still after 2 years have not acclimatized to being baked alive during the summer? No, actually I have gradually been working my way to finding it almost pleasant most of the time. It is a problem because this New York summer afternoon temperature is in fact a cool Singapore 2am. Oh how I fear the dawn.

Things I have observed about Singapore since my arrival about an hour ago include a complete lack of any buildings under 30 stories high, and an absolutely astonishing caliber of hotels. I am staying in the Hilton Conrad Centennial, and good god it is fantastic. I think perhaps the fact that people rarely travel to Singapore on anything but business has definitely had an effect. The logic runs something like this: All of the people who stay at our hotels are staying there on the company dime. Therefore, we will make the room exorbitantly expensive (because they are not paying and don’t care) and just provide lots of complimentary perks so that they will stay at our ludicrously expensive hotel instead of one of the other ludicrously expensive hotels available. It is a giant conspiracy to get big companies to spend a fortune, but it is from my perspective totally ok because it means I get free stuff. I may not have particularly elevated moral ground here, but I do have complimentary dry cleaning and a fruit basket. It’s the little things.

Things that have impressed me about this hotel include:

When you walk in the sound system is playing classical music at a pleasant but unobtrusive volume, it kind of makes you feel like you just walked into a state room in the Titanic.
Free food – Not just a mint, but a box of Godiva chocolates and selection of fruit
Doorbells. Yes, when the dude came to pick up clothes for my free dry cleaning, he rang the pleasantly melodic doorbell. Brilliant
All of the light switches are labeled. Why the hell does no-one else do this?
Toothbrushes! Hotels tend to provide absolutely everything necessary to clean oneself in small pre-packaged form except fucking toothbrushes, the one thing I will almost certainly forget if I am to forget any toiletry.
A fucking laser printer. How incredibly useful.
Universal sockets. No bullshit fiddling around with adaptors, the sockets themselves actually accept a variety of plugs.

And of course there are a couple of features that just made me laugh a bit. They provide you a knife, fork and napkin for consuming fruit (we are talking apples here, not sliced grapefruit or anything). The remote control comes in a leather case which you do not even have to extract it from to use it through the protective layer of plastic. I am not certain if they are protecting me or the remote. There is a small leaflet offering me my selection of 16 different types of pillow, delivered to my room with compliments should I desire one (when I was a kid I used to think “with compliments” meant that when they gave it to you they would tell you your hair looked great). And finally my absolute favourite thing in any hotel ever – The Conrad Centennial provide their guests with that most essential of bathroom amenities, a small yellow rubber duck. It squeaks.

It is astonishing how much joy an adult human can derive from the presence of a squeaky bath toy.

bigbro: BIND 9 DNS on Ubuntu with AppArmor

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 13:31:00 +0000

Like many people I run Ubuntu on a number of servers with DNS being just one of the services provided. Bind 9 has worked extremely well to date, though I recently came across a conflict between AppArmor (note American spelling) and bind which resulted in slave domains not being replicated correctly. This happened on my systems some time on or after 2009-07-29 (and I'm only getting around to writing up the blog post now... I know...) If you see lines similar to the following in the output of dmesg, or in your system log, you may have the same problem:


audit(1234567890.462:15891): type=1503 operation="inode_create" requested_mask="w::" denied_mask="w::" name="/etc/bind/zones/slave/tmp-bkTe208LbH" pid=123 profile="/usr/sbin/named" namespace="default"

audit(1234567890.460:15892): type=1503 operation="inode_create" requested_mask="w::" denied_mask="w::" name="/etc/bind/zones/slave/tmp-3VUN2uHFUI" pid=123 profile="/usr/sbin/named" namespace="default"

To explain briefly what this means: AppArmor is an extra layer of security which effectively makes sure that system programs are allowed only limited access to the system, even though they may run as root. This helps significantly in the case of a root escalation vulnerability being discovered, since if AppArmor is correctly configured your system is somewhat compartmentalised so damage should be limited. Without this, a root privilege escalation in a daemon would allow full read and write access to the entire system, with predictably bad results. Permissions for various daemons under AppArmor are configurable in files under /etc/apparmor/ and /etc/apparmor.d/ (on an Ubuntu system at least.)

Under Ubuntu it appears that AppArmor is misconfigured for BIND 9, specifically with regard to the default setting that slave zones - where your DNS server is acting as a secondary DNS server for some domain(s) - are stored under /etc/bind9/zones/slave/. From the log lines above it's clear that AppArmor is disallowing writes to this location for BIND, with the result that secondary / slave zones can never be updated. This is a bad thing.

Fortunately, there is an easy solution. Either update your BIND config to write slave zone files somewhere else, or update AppArmor to allow BIND to write to the slave zones directory. I chose the latter, accomplished by adding the following line to /etc/apparmor.d/usr.sbin/named


/etc/bind/zones/slave/** rw,

This allows bind to read and write to the slave directory, enabling it to create the files it needs to store updated zones coming via AXFR transfers from master DNS servers. You can test by running rndc reload and watching the syslog and file timestamps in the slave directory. You should also no longer see log writings with the denied_mask="W::" key-value pair as above.

Thanks to alphageek for the first clue as to what was going on and hopefully this blog entry will provide a more secure fix for the problem.

artemis: Rules for happiness – Long Haul Flight Survival

Sun, 27 Jun 2010 06:04:40 +0000

My company, for various reasons which presumably seemed like good ideas at the time, decided to send me to a client in Singapore this week. Now, it is my general policy when presented with the option of going somewhere I have never been to immediately accept and possibly jump up and down a bit depending on the destination. This one was slightly controversial however, because there was a bit of back and forth on how long I could stay, what kind of flights I could get etc. The trip being on very short notice, even when this was all decided finding a flight and accommodation proved slightly challenging. Upshot – no direct flights, and I have to change hotels once and rooms once in the second hotel. My life is a cornucopia of mild inconvenience.

I have just finished the epic 23 hour journey required to arrive here from NY, and my sleep pattern is how shall I put this… royally buggered? It is 3am and I am catching up on my blog entries because I am apparently wide awake. So I guess I may as well try to make some relevant observations while I am at it. Business class travel rocks. Ok, that was fairly obvious and probably did not require stating. However I am currently evaluating in terms of the relative shittiness of flying economy, because I am going to be doing pretty much the same trip to get my butt to Thailand for Christmas this year and you can bet your left leg I didn’t fork out for a business class seat.

I am pretty good at planes. By which I mean I am pretty good at suspending my consciousness for long stretches enabling me to sleep/fall into a trance-like state, ignore everyone around me, read a book etc, for time periods of anything up to 12 hours or more. However it’s a hell of a lot easier to do this when your personal space consists of a surface you can stretch full length on rather than 2 square feet of noisy cramped horribleness. So my 14 hour flight to Tokyo followed by a 7 hour flight to Singapore was from my point of view a fucking dream. The food was good, the booze was free, the blankets were warm, overall in comparison to my standard flying experience it was approximately king size bed compared to hammock which breaks occasionally. What I am trying to convey here is that it was really fucking easy. I hope I don’t get used to this or I will go soft. Anyway, here follows my list of recommendations for long haul flight survival, none of which I have had to use today:

Do not drink excessively in order to fall asleep. Classic rookie mistake. There are worse things than being exhausted after a flight and one of them is being exhausted and dehydrated with a headache after a flight. You’ll sleep eventually. Or you won’t, live with it.
If you can’t sleep, stop trying. You will just get annoyed. If you are tired and find it restful to lie back with your eyes closed then do that, sometimes you drift off without realizing and actually pack in some shut-eye without even being aware.
Sleep if you are tired. People sometimes try to adjust their sleep patterns en route to maximize enjoyment of their destination. This just leads to excessive grouchiness and misery, you re-adjust a lot better when sunrises and sunsets are involved again.
You do not have to use the inflight entertainment system. Sometimes its really great, sometimes its absolutely shit. Sometimes the unit for your seat breaks inexplicably, evoking zero sympathy from anyone. Do not rely on the plane to entertain you. Bring books, bring a DS, bring music. Try to bring things which have a battery life beyond the flight.
You do not have to be doing anything. I have spent 4 hour flights just thinking, processing. Its not a waste of time, plane time is dead time.
Do not plan to do anything on the flight. Whether its planning the trip or some work, you will probably not feel like it. Its important to just do what you feel like doing. Read when you feel like reading, sleep when you feel like sleeping.
Do not eat the food. Seriously. Bring your own. I have brought boiled eggs, chopped mushrooms and peppers, sliced cheese and prosciutto onto planes. Or gotten quesadillas in the airport just prior to boarding. Strictly speaking you are not meant to do this but no-one has ever complained. This only applies to economy, business class food is great.
Wear comfortable clothing, wear your hair down. It really does not matter at all what you look like when you get on or off the plane, everyone will be a damn zombie anyway. Anything that hinders sleeping at all is a bad thing.
I assume everyone in the universe knows this, but take off your shoes
Do not encroach on another person’s personal space, wear headphones that enable everyone around you to hear your horrible RnB music, bring a baby, have a loud conversation, or smell bad. All of these deserve the death penalty.
You do not have to be buddies with your neighbor. If they are disinclined to talk, shut the hell up. Not everyone wants a single serving friend.
It is ok to hate flying, it is not ok to whine about it. If its so goddamn awful don’t go, or take a boat/train/car/mule to wherever the fuck you are going. Don’t bitch about the food, the price of drinks, or the lack of available legroom. You have gotten what you bloody well paid for.

Air travel is conceptually an amazing, excellent thing. The implementation of air travel is a tad painful for those of us too cheap to fly anything but livestock class, but this does not make the speed and ease of flying any less amazing. 24 hours will get you round the damn world when one hour of walking only gets you a few miles. Marvel at it, appreciate it, and maybe it will see you through the agonizing ordeal that is long-haul flying.

Or hell, just take the sleeping pills. Let me know how that goes.

artemis: Texas y’all

Sat, 26 Jun 2010 03:09:01 +0000

At the end of the road trip of incredible length and foolish decisions (well one foolish decision, namely Shreveport. All other decisions were of practically genius level excellence) we finally arrived in Austin. Austin is like San Francisco, but in Texas. So its filled with hippies and vegan ice cream parlours, but also with people in cowboy hats wearing blue jeans and covered in tattoos. Personally, I find the combination most refreshing. Perhaps as a result of living in the wanky part of Brooklyn, which is filled with the kind of hippies that spend an hour on their hair to make it look suitably messy and live in dread of breaking a nail, and that’s just the men.

I have been informed by pretty much everyone who has spent time in Texas that Austin is the cool bit, and by all accounts resembles the rest of Texas about as much as Milton Keynes resembles a real city. I don’t know how true this is, as so far that is the limit of my Texas experience. But though I was in hippy central Texas-wise I still felt a very strong vibe, Texans are very proud of their state and definitely have their own idea about affiliation. As I was informed by multiple people, Texas used to be a country, and while in Austin there might be a lot more liberals that is still a popular statement.

I found people here absolutely amazing. Adjectives that come to mind include polite, hospitable, helpful and just generally incredibly friendly and considerate. These appear to be generally southern traits in any case, but frankly I just found everyone on the whole damn trip so charming I nearly puked. Contented charmed puke made of rainbows, naturally.

Mostly the GG and I just chilled here. We hung out, we ate, we went to bars, we ate more, went to more bars. The weather was mild but warm, the city was awesome, and personally I did not want to go home. We got the dueling piano dudes to play Bohemian Rhapsody, the German got hit on by a multitude of people she found unattractive (though I think this happens every day – why do I have so many attractive female friends? Couldn’t just one of them be less attractive than me?? Alas, my tastes in women are too discriminating for my own good), and we had great Mexican food and amazing Brazilian barbecue.

On my last night my traveling companion had already departed, and so I decided to venture out alone. My general policy of finding the dirtiest bar available and talking to random people until I get bored paid off handsomely, and I ended up drinking with a metal band, their girlfriends, and the Austin 6^th street sex shop employees. I also ended up with a rather compromised liver, as it was one of those nights when you just forget there is a tomorrow, that hangovers exist, or that you have a plane to catch. Some hours later these 3 forgotten pieces of data combined in a crashing symphony of suffering and despair – never have I been so close to fainting while standing in line to check my bag in. I vowed never to drink again, which lasted the 5 hours til I arrived back at home and found a branch of the Cuban’s extended family partying in my living room, which is not a recipe for abstinence.

Someday I will take a holiday from which I do not feel like I need to recover using another holiday.

artemis: The Road Trip Awards

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 01:08:22 +0000

I should mention first of all, that the adventure I and the German girl had in the south was overall pretty damn excellent. Many beautiful and fascinating things were seen and done, much excellent alcohol was consumed, many foolish and amusing conversations were had, and it was generally an experience most certainly worth repeating. However, there was one possible exception, and that is driving. Which since it was a road trip might well have been considered problematic.

Road trips in theory hold a huge fascination for me. The idea of just setting out and driving wherever you feel like going, travelling where the wind takes you etc sounds romantic, adventurous and intrepid. The actual execution of the driving part however is less romantic and exciting and more along the lines of mind-numbingly dull. Then you add to this the fact that I can’t actually drive and have a tendency to fall asleep in warm cars, thus effectively making me the worst travel companion imaginable – a set of facts I had not really considered beforehand due to my head being filled with images of singing Journey in a convertible for the approximately 5 minutes I mentally allotted to the process of driving from Louisiana to Texas. Yeah. It’s been said before, but I should probably reiterate it – I’m a fucking idiot.

Because of course the drive, even spaced out over two days of stopping off at a couple of potentially interesting places along the way, took approximately 8 million years. It should be noted for future reference that despite much of the American south consisting of stunning scenery, said scenery is best viewed from not-the-interstate. Agonizing stints in the car notwithstanding we had a pretty cool adventure which I am way too fucking lazy to recount at this point. So here are the highlights, which I hereby dub the Road Trip Awards for 2010. Enjoy.

Longest stretch of drive – Shreveport to Austin

Hottest day – 95 F

Most boring place – Shreveport

Stupidest part of plan – Shreveport

Most foolish assumption – There will surely be something to do in Shreveport

Most atrociously rendered musical number – That Prince song that goes “You don’t have be rich to be my girl” *shudder* No one can sing Prince, we are not an exception.

Most pointless detour – Driving 30 mins back to the plantation to retrieve the german’s smelly running gear.

Largest insect slaughtered – Some sort of giant flying thing on the porch in Fairfield. I courageously squished it with my foot.

Largest alligator seen – 8 feet (apparently they like marshmallows and speak French. Skepticism)

Largest alligator prodded – 4 feet (I am foolish, not suicidal)

Most ludicrously phallic hotel sign – Austin Motel (Check it out)

Most addictive food – Fresh chocolate fudge. Food of the gods.

Most ludicrous food – Deep fried corn on the cob.

Most physical effort exerted – Running 2 miles at 7am in southern Louisiana in a vain attempt not to feel like the disgusting slobs we had become after 4 days of dedicated eating.

Most clearly insane individual – Brian the bus driver. Best friends with Mike Bloomberg and a list of other celebrities I cannot recall. This man drove a bus like he was playing Grand Theft Auto and laughed like a hyena on cocaine. On the whole, I kind of liked him.

Highest concentration of corpses in immediate vicinity – New Orleans. It is apparently impossible to be more specific, this is merely based on the sheer volume of dead people buried absolutely everywhere there over the last 400 years. If there is a single New Orleans story or historical account of _anything_ that does not involve a dead body or twenty I have yet to hear it.

Oldest building – Some French thing.

Oldest interesting building – Haunted pirate bar.

Loudest air-conditioning – Austin Motel, aircon would have sounded like a plane taking off if planes continuously took off for 5 fucking hours.

Stupidest flight delay – Parking brake stuck on plane. Really.

Silliest item purchased – Giant Ascot worthy hat. It is 22 inches wide and has ribbons. It rocks.

Silliest service purchased – Having my fortune told in a bowl of water. Details upon request but at least one unrealistic prediction turned out to be correct.

Best meal – Brazilian barbecue place in Austin. One of the ones where they walk around with meat on skewers, fantastic.

On the whole, I have to come down in favour of road trips. But perhaps next time I can somehow eliminate the driving part.

artemis: Hurricanes are a truly destructive force of nature. I refer of course to the cocktail.

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 03:07:05 +0000

About a month ago I went on a trip to New Orleans and Austin with the German girl, and managed not to get around to posting about it until now. I suck, but we all knew that. Anyhow, Austin entry to follow, but this is pretty much what I wrote as my impressions after our 3 days in NOLA. What a city.

First and foremost – new and wondrous things I have eaten this week (note: all new, varying degrees of wonderful):

Grits
Eggs Dauphine
Fried Green Tomatoes
A Po’boy
Deep Fried Corn
Fresh Fudge (oh, the wonderful)
Gumbo
Jumbalaya
Charbroiled oysters
Hurricanes
Mint Julep
Beignets

As you might imagine from this list, in the course of 3 days I have become roughly spherical. Ok not quite, but it feels that way. If I do not do some significant exercise soon I will probably perish of some sort of caloric overdose. Or my intestines will explode, whichever.

New Orleans is made of magic. That’s really the best way I can say it. Maybe hundreds of years of voodoo queens and plagues and death and the fear of death has permeated the very ground, and can be felt. Or maybe it’s just the people that create the atmosphere. Admittedly we spent most of our time in the French Quarter, which is without question the most beautiful place I have found in urban America. But it’s not just the architecture. There is something about this place that engenders wonder.

Part of the reason cities in the US feel wrong to me is that nothing is old. Before I moved here I never knew that mattered, but apparently feeling the force of a thousand years behind a city is important for my ability to feel happy. It’s odd that I value the permanence of other things so much more than my own. Or maybe that’s the reason. If other things are static and permanent then I feel free to change, to leave knowing it will all be there when I come back. Whereas if something is fluid you feel compelled to stay and watch it change in case it somehow becomes perfect, or in case you can stop it from going a direction you don’t like.

I fell in love with London the first weekend I ever spent there, and since then have never really felt that same crashing instant passion for a place until I came to New Orleans. It is so rare to find a place so incredibly vibrant and alive, and somehow they are always the places that have faced the most destruction and hardship. New Orleans combines the intensity of an urban centre with beauty and antiquity, and somehow instead of seeming incongruous it blends together seamlessly. Plus a half hour’s travel outside the city centre will get you to the wetlands – a tour of which will make you feel like you’re in a movie, or maybe a Steve Irwin documentary. The combination of being extremely dangerous and weirdly beautiful is a compelling one, and the swamps are fascinating.

So far in my diatribe on how awesome this place is I have left out a major component – the people. I tend to like southerners anyway, they are a pleasant break from New Yorkers. Then again hiding under a rock would probably serve as a pleasant break from New Yorkers sometimes. But people in NO just seem to have an amazing attitude. Maybe they are more welcoming than in previous years due to the desperate need for tourism to rebuild parts of the city still wrecked after Katrina, but even so I found the level of friendliness and hospitality genuinely impressive.

As is probably evident by now, I loved New Orleans, possibly to an entirely irrational extent. But it has made me think differently about the states. I use New York as a barometer far too often, and I shouldn’t. There is more to America then New York and San Francisco, and I am just as guilty of willful cultural ignorance for not acknowledging that as Americans are when they tell me Ireland is in the UK.

Also, the bars don’t close, ever. I think I have made my point.

artemis: You know what? Fuck Israel. Seriously. Fuck it right in the ear.

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 22:15:13 +0000

I try not to write about things I don’t understand. It vexes me when idiots write about Northern Ireland and the associated conflicts without a firm grounding in its history and a healthy sprinkling of objectivity. Make that an entire bowl of objectivity. So I am not passing judgment here on whether Israel has a moral right to certain parts of the planet or not. Because frankly, I don’t feel qualified to make that judgment, and even more frankly I am not sure Israel is either.

However, this restraint does not mean I feel myself disqualified from having an opinion on any action Israel or any other country/government/gang of weirdos takes in defense or execution of whatever moral imperative it believes itself to be upholding. So for next few paragraphs I am going on a rant inhibited only by the laws of grammar and spelling which concerns this motherfucking convoy attack bullshit.

First of all, this rant is not anti-Semitic. I am not saying this because I particularly like or dislike jews, as an irish person who has only lived in the states for 2 years my main exposure to stupid Jew jokes was as a child on snippets of American TV, and it’s not like I even understood most of them. I have pretty much no opinion on Jews, they are people, they have a religion about as stupid as all other organized religions, and they mean more bacon for everyone else. The question however of my anti-Semitism or lack thereof is – and I feel I should emphasise this – nothing to do with my opinion of Israel.

Israel is a country. Judaism is a religion. Yes, the faith is heavily identified with its homeland etc. So fucking what? If I said I disapproved of the Italian mob, would I be accused of being anti-Catholic as a result? I somehow doubt it, but it’s an identical concept. Throughout history, religions have taken previous persecution (mass crucifixions, or being fed to the lions for all followers of Christ in the time of Rome for example) as a reason for holy wars and other such belligerent and determined idiocy (the Crusades and the witch hunts to name only the most widely known of Christian-perpetrated atrocities. See? Impartial).

The Jews had the worst and most effectively executed atrocity of all time perpetrated against them, no-one is denying that. But even leaving aside the fact that this mostly happened to people long gone from their native land or descended from converted Polish or German gentiles and therefore not exactly under the remit of Israel the country, why in the name of anyone at all would that make anything Israel does now acceptable? When did vengeance and petulance become justice? Two wrongs never have made or will make a right, but Israel have somehow gotten it into their heads that 2 million and one wrongs will somehow manage it.

Israel just attacked a convoy of ships bringing aid to the Gaza strip. Not armies, not weapons, but food and building materials. They boarded the ships and hijacked them, and now have the gall to claim they will send the contents by land? If that were the case they could have saved some time and their much be-laboured army budget by just leaving them the hell alone. Justifications I have seen include “There were materials aboard that could be used as weapons or to make weapons.” Yes, probably. Personally I am pretty confident I could kill someone with a pen, but that doesn’t mean they should be wrestled from my grasp at every meeting. “The soldiers were attacked when they boarded”. Riiight. Because if you were stopped at a traffic light and someone smashed your car window and climbed into the back seat it would never occur to you to slap the shit out of them, instead you would keep driving and ask if there was anywhere they’d like a ride to, and while they are here would they like to have a look through your groceries for a snack.

The Israeli army have published video footage of soldiers being beaten by lead pipes when they boarded the convoy. Em, yes? You expect sympathy for this? If I climbed a fence with a giant “Keep Out” to get into my neighbour’s yard I would feel pretty damn silly complaining to him about the bites I got from his dog. Particularly if I had climbed in there with a fucking gun. The Israelis claim their soldiers boarded with paintball guns and had no intention of killing anyone. So let’s review that statement. The soldiers have guns. The guns do not shoot real bullets. Presumably they also do not advertise that fact, who the fuck is intimidated by a soldier with a paintball gun. So they look like real guns, and In fact they are real guns because the same statement claims that when the violence escalated they swopped out the paint for live ammo.

News for you Israel – when faced with what appear to be armed soldiers attacking them with guns, people generally assume that armed soldiers are attacking them with guns. Overall, it’s an assumption you are safer making than not. Civil actions do not generally involve automatic weapons. They involve riot shields, they involve batons, they involve mace and pepper spray and tasers. If the Israeli army had given two tugs of a dead dogs cock whether they killed anyone or not there would not have been any goddamn guns on the boat. To the claim that shots were fired upon the soldiers I would say that the army’s own video evidence appears to contradict that. Maybe one or two of those aboard ship had guns, but clearly the majority didn’t, or surely believing themselves to be under deadly attack they would have used them before resorting to whatever was lying on the deck.

Should they have thrown down their lead pipes and surrendered to the scary-looking but actually secretly (temporarily) harmless and people-friendly guns? Perhaps. But Israel is not exactly known for its kindly treatment of those it decides are Palestinian sympathizers, so what kind of fate awaited these people if they gave themselves up? Had I been in their situation I hope I would have had the courage to defend myself. Not just to fight to stay out of an Israeli prison, but because they had no right.

Israel may have their self-proclaimed magic pass to heaven, and they are welcome to it. But they do not have one for this earth and for the life of me I cannot understand why they think that they do. They have no right whatsoever to that cargo, they have no right whatsoever to hold those people. They have been edging their toe over and back across the line for years and now they have firmly leaped across it. This was an act of piracy at best and war at worst. So enough with the get out of jail free cards. The Israeli government are acting like fucking assholes, and they should be held accountable for their actions. I don’t give a damn whose land they used to live on or who exterminated their ancestors.

bigbro: Studying...

Sun, 16 May 2010 18:11:00 +0000

...is really hard. Particularly when it's law and unlike engineering, for every rule there's at least one exception. I am not having fun here :-( That is all. I promise to be (marginally) less grumpy once exams are over.

drusilla: Currently on my nightstand/TV/iPod

Tue, 11 May 2010 09:14:07 +0000

Currently reading: The Virgin Suicides - Jeffrey Eugenides
Currently watching: The West Wing Season 2 (Two Cathedrals)
Currently listening to: Les Miserables Original Cast Recording

bigbro: Ubuntu 9.10 and suspending on a Dell D430

Sun, 02 May 2010 14:19:00 +0000

Since moving to Ubuntu 9.04 and 9.10 I've had repeated problems with my Dell D430 being able to suspend. One of the things that Apple got right with their laptops was that when you close the lid, the computer goes to sleep and it wakes up again ready for use upon opening the lid again. I used to enjoy similar functionality on my Dell D430 until moving to the more recent versions of Ubuntu - which is a real pity. I always hate to see regression instead of progression, particularly when it comes to open source.

I thought the issues were resolved finally until a large update was issued which my laptop installed on 1st May 2010, and now I'm back to a laptop that I have to shut down to move about again - no suspend for me. This makes the laptop significantly less useful and is pushing me (and others) towards replacing portable hardware with Apple products, since they just work. I can't speak for the world in general, but I and the people I regularly deal with don't have time to deal with intermittently faulty systems and laptops that may or may not lock up when you shut the lid (losing any work that was not saved.)

I'll try and provide a better bug report to Ubuntu, but as a reminder to myself, the following update was what has killed suspend again. Also, if you're a Dell D430 owner running Ubuntu 9.10, DO NOT grab the latest updates!

I have installed 10.04 (Lucid) on a D420 but I can't say I've tested it properly yet. I'll get around to putting it on the D430 shortly - and hopefully will be posting a good news story about how suspend works again and proper regression testing has been instituted such that it doesn't get broken again.

Aptitude 0.4.11.11: log report
Sat, May  1 2010 12:35:10 +0100

IMPORTANT: this log only lists intended actions; actions which fail due to
dpkg problems may not be completed.

Will install 34 packages, and remove 0 packages.
172MB of disk space will be used
===============================================================================
[INSTALL, DEPENDENCIES] linux-headers-2.6.31-21
[INSTALL, DEPENDENCIES] linux-headers-2.6.31-21-generic
[INSTALL] linux-image-2.6.31-21-generic
[UPGRADE] aisleriot 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu1 -> 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu3
[UPGRADE] compiz 1:0.8.4-0ubuntu2 -> 1:0.8.4-0ubuntu2.1
[UPGRADE] compiz-core 1:0.8.4-0ubuntu2 -> 1:0.8.4-0ubuntu2.1
[UPGRADE] compiz-gnome 1:0.8.4-0ubuntu2 -> 1:0.8.4-0ubuntu2.1
[UPGRADE] compiz-plugins 1:0.8.4-0ubuntu2 -> 1:0.8.4-0ubuntu2.1
[UPGRADE] compiz-wrapper 1:0.8.4-0ubuntu2 -> 1:0.8.4-0ubuntu2.1
[UPGRADE] glchess 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu1 -> 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu3
[UPGRADE] glines 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu1 -> 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu3
[UPGRADE] gnect 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu1 -> 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu3
[UPGRADE] gnibbles 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu1 -> 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu3
[UPGRADE] gnobots2 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu1 -> 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu3
[UPGRADE] gnome-blackjack 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu1 -> 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu3
[UPGRADE] gnome-games 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu1 -> 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu3
[UPGRADE] gnome-games-common 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu1 -> 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu3
[UPGRADE] gnome-mahjongg 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu1 -> 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu3
[UPGRADE] gnome-sudoku 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu1 -> 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu3
[UPGRADE] gnometris 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu1 -> 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu3
[UPGRADE] gnomine 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu1 -> 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu3
[UPGRADE] gnotravex 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu1 -> 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu3
[UPGRADE] gnotski 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu1 -> 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu3
[UPGRADE] gtali 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu1 -> 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu3
[UPGRADE] iagno 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu1 -> 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu3
[UPGRADE] libdecoration0 1:0.8.4-0ubuntu2 -> 1:0.8.4-0ubuntu2.1
[UPGRADE] libpq5 8.4.3-0ubuntu9.10 -> 8.4.3-0ubuntu9.10.1
[UPGRADE] linux-generic 2.6.31.20.33 -> 2.6.31.21.34
[UPGRADE] linux-headers-generic 2.6.31.20.33 -> 2.6.31.21.34
[UPGRADE] linux-image-generic 2.6.31.20.33 -> 2.6.31.21.34
[UPGRADE] linux-libc-dev 2.6.31-20.58 -> 2.6.31-21.59
[UPGRADE] same-gnome 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu1 -> 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu3
[UPGRADE] tzdata 2010h-0ubuntu0.9.10 -> 2010i-0ubuntu0.9.10
[UPGRADE] tzdata-java 2010h-0ubuntu0.9.10 -> 2010i-0ubuntu0.9.10
===============================================================================

Log complete.

noirin: Dear America

Sat, 01 May 2010 23:47:44 +0000

If you could just tell me how much you want for that product and/or service, that would be swell. I know it might be more fun for you to give me a number and then expect 10%-20% more, but I’m really rather tired and jetlagged, and it would be nice to know upfront which of the many incredibly-similar pieces of paper in my wallet you want.

While you’re at it, if you could make the incredibly-similar pieces of paper just a little bit more distinct from each other, that would be super-nice, and I would be your best friend forever.

Thanks,
Noirin

artemis: The end of the world as we know it?

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 20:34:42 +0000

As everyone in the entire world is probably aware by now (and if you are not aware, then you are on the wrong side of the internet – google “unpronouncable icelandic volcano” immediately please), western europe is grounded. Eyjafjallajokul – the smaller of two rather large volcanoes – has erupted, spewing tons of volcanic ash into the atmosphere and basically creating a massive cloud of thick volcanic ash in the air over the west of europe.

This has prompted the blanket shut down of all flights within the affected areas, basically eliminating air travel throughout Europe. Definitely a setback, definitely inconvenient for many people, what an unfortunate incident. That was my first reaction. My second reaction was slightly more paranoid, and was prompted by the realization that the damn volcano is still fucking erupting, and that no-one has any idea when it will stop. Right now everything seems to be pretty speculative, previous eruptions have lasted over a year, and weather conditions make the dust cloud unpredictable.

I cannot help but notice a tiny part of me that is squeaking “wow, thats actually a little bit fucking cool in a very medieval way, huh?” Practically I think this is a disaster, for Europe in general, for the world as a whole, and for me specifically. I can’t go home, my camp can’t come to Burning Man, airlines will choke to a fiscally horrendous death, the economy of europe will leap into the nearest toilet. I am perfectly aware of these things. Yet still some bit of my brain (presumably the bit that imagines post-apocalyptic earth scenarios and occasionally prods me to go backpacking in the wilderness) thinks this is an essentially romantic notion – no more planes means travel by trains, buses, boats. Real adventures, on which you might actually have to talk to people to stay sane, on which you might actually see the places you are passing through.

If getting places were a real effort, how much more worthwhile would it seem to make it around the world? One of the most fascinating evenings I had last year was when friends of friends showed us footage of their amazing travels all over the world – which they did almost entirely by bicycle or kayak. They’d been moving for 6 whole years, spending minuscule amounts, and having the adventure of a lifetime.

I think about that with some sort of extreme reverence and awe. I don’t know if I could handle that sort of total freedom despite it being the ultimate goal of my whole existence. There are drawbacks to a 6 year adventure – the most obvious being that we have to live after the adventure has ended, and that will be harder in a million ways. But do any of those really matter? Is there any real excuse for not launching yourself into the ether and seeing what happens? Or is aimless travel as bad as no travel at all? Maybe my excitement is prompted by the idea that there will be no other way to get home again, that it could be need and not frivolity that would send me on that adventure the long way round the world.

As I finish this, I realize that since I began writing it air travel restrictions have started to lift, Europe is mobile again. I am relieved and happy, but I have to admit I am also a tiny, minuscule, fractional bit well, disappointed.

For someone who values choice so highly, I amaze myself with how I react when it is restored to me.

bigbro: Walking at last

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 21:16:00 +0000

Today D decided that after months of tearing around the house pushing her buggy, she could walk all on her own. Nothing is safe any more - particularly the poor dog who is learning that his erstwhile relatively quiet life can now be disturbed by a screaming running infant. Comedy++

bigbro: Link(s) of the Day

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 18:09:00 +0000

I've not done a Link of the Day thing for ages... but perhapas that's because meebo.com is the first webapp to impress me in some time.

meebo.com: Meebo is an IM aggregator, allowing you to communicate with all your contacts on different IM networks, including Google Talk, Facebook and many others, from one place. Killer feature is that your conversations follow you around from machine to machine, and iPhone push support works well, allowing you to carry on IM'ing from the iPhone App.

bigbro: Indexing in Thunderbird 3...

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 17:15:00 +0000

...is a pile of epic fail (on Linux at least.) I like the idea of full-text searching - but I also like my laptop to not have the CPU at melting temperature all the time and the fans running at full speed as thunderbird burns through CPU indexing what I can only assume are the same messages over and over and over again. I also like to start blog posts with a hearty generalisation, even if the behaviour is something relatively specific to my situation - it grabs the reader's attention and makes sure they read the remainder of the article ;-)

Normal behaviour, and better use of your CPU can be restored by disabling full text search / indexing. You can do this by setting the advanced configuration option mailnews.database.global.indexer.enabled to false, or as this has obviously become a big enough problem for enough people, the Edit | Preferences | General tab now has a checkbox marked Enable Global Search and Indexer. Unchecking this will also turn off this feature.

More usefully, some exceptionally bright spark has made a plugin called GlodaQuilla available. It's experimental but has not yet set fire to my laptop or caused my pets to explode - your experience may be different of course and any use of experimental plugins is completely at your own risk. I did the following and now have a full indexed search of the subset of my mail that interests me, along with a much more responsive machine (and some 500MB of disk space no longer used by the full-text index)

Install GlodaQuilla in the usual fashion
Restart Thunderbird
Disable indexing completely (see above for how to do that)
Quit Thunderbird and wait a few moments to make sure it's definitely no longer running
Delete the old full-text database taking up space on your hard drive. It's a file called /home/$username/.thunderbird/random.default/global-messages-db.sqlite on my Ubuntu Linux machine. You'll need to find your own global-messages-db.sqlite yourself, but the path above should give you a clue as to where it is.
Start Thunderbird and right click on a folder containing mail you do not want indexed. (e.g. my Archive/ folders contain old mail that I don't really need searched or indexed.) Uncheck 'Inherit' and you can now individually enable or disable indexing of the mail folder.
Once you have set which folders you do and do not want indexed, remember to re-enable indexing and restart Thunderbird, just to be sure to be sure.
Leave your computer for a period of time, if possible, as Thunderbird will need to rebuild indices for those mail folders you left with indexing enabled. This may take some time. Expect performance to be poor during this time. You can track activity by selecting Tools | Activity Manager from the menu.
Enjoy a nice, fast, performant full text search of the mails you actually care about searching and indexing.

bigbro: eeePC SSD failure

Sat, 17 Apr 2010 22:33:00 +0000

I set up my eeePC 701 as a fileserver in the house over the Easter weekend. It runs Ubuntu and with a little configuration happily shared a few USB disks over the home network with SAMBA and NFS. Most importantly it ran pretty cool and didn't use a lot of power - important for something that was going to be left on all the time.

All worked well until the last couple of days when I noticed some pretty strange messages appearing in the logs. A reboot resulted in GRUB giving me the dreaded Error 17. Further investigation seems to indicate that the SSD has shed its mortal coil. Poo! Cue research to determine whether it's more cost and time efficient to get a replacement SSD or just buy a Mac Mini.

bigbro: Time Machine software...

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 23:46:00 +0000

...possibly some of the most delicate software in the known apple universe. Once again either it or something separate has caused corruption on the time machine backup disk, and once again nothing has recovered my machine short of 'reboot' typed at the command prompt. It seems that if anything goes wrong with Time Machine it just sits there consuming resources giving the user no clue that anything has even gone wrong. Thanks a bunch Apple. I'm hugely confident that my data is safe with you and your dubious software.

Fortunately, last weekend saw me set up a Linux based server solution which allows me to back up most data to a known working, safe solution that I can recover data from. And if there's an error with it, I'll find tons of info in /var/log/syslog most likely, instead of the cast canyon of nothingness that Apple seems to see fit to provide users with. I won't even mention the stupidity of Apple's Disk utility giving time estimates as to when it might be finished - I've seen Windows copy operations estimate time better.

Yes, this is a bitter article and yes, I find Apple's hardware and software to be generally of a decent standard - but I'm trusting my data to this backup solution and this is the second time I find myself putting the pieces back together. I have zero faith in Apple Time Machine any more.

bigbro: I was under the mistaken impression...

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 18:45:00 +0000

...that I had ordered the Disney channel on Sky for the benefit of my small child. Apparently I was almost right... ;)

bigbro: High speed upload with USB 3G mobile broadband dongles

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 09:08:00 +0000

We at HEAnet labs have been testing 3G mobile broadband USB dongles for some time now, and the key weakness identified is the problem that data download is asymmetric. This means that while you can download content at high speed, uploading content is much much slower. This means that 3G dongles are unsuitable for things like uploading large photographs or video information to the interwebs. This severely restricts their usefulness - or at least, it used to.

While the technology of 3G and in particular the USB dongles means you are limited to an asymmetric connection, by changing the polarity of the USB power feed you can alternate between high speed upload and high speed download. This means making up a USB cable yourself, but as John Beale helpfully demonstrates, this is pretty easy. Just (carefully) swap the black and red wires.

This still leaves us with the problem that the connection is asymmetric, but that's easily solved by using iptables and a second USB dongle with the polarity set to normal. Effectively, we want to configure iptables to route the download traffic through USB dongle A (which is wired normally) and route the upload traffic through USB dongle B (wired with the polarity reversed.) Thanks to PaulJ on the ILUG list for providing a basic config for iptables:

ip route add default \ nexthop via dev weight x \ nexthop via dev weight y change x and y so that x/y == bandwidth ISP1 / bandwidth ISP2

Thanks to all who helped investigate this technology, including Ghostbusters and the internets.

Note neither HEAnet labs - a made up organisation - your mobile provider nor I take any responsibility for your dongles, USB cables, laptops or pets if you try this, particularly given it's a blog post from April 1st. Seriously... ;)

noirin: Boston Tea Party – Swing Dance Extravaganza!

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 10:13:11 +0000

I’ve just counted back and realised that it wasn’t eight weeks ago that I started swing dancing, but seven. Just fifty days ago, almost to the hour (as I’m writing this), I was sitting in a San Francisco diner drinking a ~~gallon of ice-cream~~ milkshake, having thoroughly enjoyed my first taste of swing dancing.

Now, fifty days later, I’m sitting in an airport lounge, sipping pink champagne, having thoroughly enjoyed my first real swing dance event Once again, it was Tiarnan’s fault – I’m an impressionable young thing, and when he suggested at the beginning of the month that both the Atlanta Lindy Exchange and the Boston Tea Party were on this weekend, I started looking for flights.

The British Airways strike almost got in my way, but happily, I made it safe and sound to Boston late on Thursday night. After an early morning, a long day’s work, and 8+hrs travel (yay timezones!), I checked in to the hotel, then headed down to the Lindy Living Room. The bad taste lingered from my first social dance in Zurich (I asked someone to dance, and they responded with “Do I know you?”), and I was utterly exhausted, so I didn’t get out on the dance floor, but I very much enjoyed watching

Friday morning started very slowly, with my favourite American breakfast – a plate of French toast – served for lunch! I made no attempt to adjust to local time, but rather tried to fit in with the schedule of dancing, which seemed to work out pretty well over the weekend. I registered, got my wristband, and wandered around to find the various rooms and get a feel for the layout of the hotel. So far, so good (although even by Sunday, I was still turning the wrong direction when I came out of my room!).

At 3pm, the workshops started. I had planned to spend the whole day in the Lindy Beginners track, but the first hour only offered a limited selection, so I decided to try out some Hip Hop. It was a good warmup/work-out, and surprisingly increased my self-confidence – I really didn’t expect to be able to follow the choreography, but we had a great teacher and it actually went pretty well! I can only remember the routine in parts now, but at the time I had it pretty well down, only fudging one tiny bit of footwork to get it to work for me

Then it was in to the beginners room, where I was to spend much of the weekend. The first class was Lindy Basics – David’s usual partner was unavailable, so Karen Turman stepped in, and we had a thoroughly enjoyable introduction to the swingout. I think it was the last class of the weekend where I really felt like I knew what I was doing! Over the following three hours, we went through a huge array of skills, old and new, with three more sets of teachers.

You’d think after five hours, I’d have had enough of dancing, but I was only getting started Having met several leads in the classes, I was now all set up for the social dancing to follow. Lindy classes, in my (limited!) experience, all seem to involve rotating partners – so whether you come to the class with a partner or not, you’ll end up dancing with a variety of different people. It works well for learning the moves, it’s good practice for social dancing (where, hopefully, you can dance with anyone who’s willing ), and it’s a nice way to get to know people (which makes the social dancing a little easier, since you’ve already gotten over the basic introductions phase).

The “general dancing” got started, and I had a few slightly precarious whirls around the floor. It was jam-packed, but nonetheless fun. Once again, my American experience beat the Zurich one hands-down – anytime there was a collision, my lead said sorry to the other couple straight away, giving me just enough grace to regain my balance before I made my apologies and danced on The Strictly Swing competition heats cleared the floor for a while, and then it was back to busy again before the Invitational.

The “Strictly Swing” competitions involve a lead and follow who enter as a couple, as opposed to “Jack & Jill” competitions, where each lead and follow enters individually, and then they’re randomly paired up. The Invitational Strictly Swing began at 11pm, and featured a selection of the teachers, all professional dancers. It was, as expected, truly fabulous I’ve no idea what the social dancefloor looked like during this time, but based on what the competition ballrom was like, I imagine it must have been almost empty!

Tiarnan arrived in time for the midnight buffet, which was basically a cooked breakfast. It’s the first time I’ve been to a midnight buffet that actually started at midnight – like Midnight Mass, in my experience, they usually start earlier But having danced through lunchtime and the evening, it was really very welcome. And tasty!

Dinner turned into dancing, and dancing into more dancing. I was still a bit nervous about asking people to dance, but rarely had to sit one out when I felt like dancing – everyone was super-friendly, and there were more than enough leads to go around I wrenched my knee a little bit during one particularly fast dance, with a lead who had clearly discovered “momentum”, and was keen to test the limits of physical laws! But the endorphins kicked in pretty quickly, and cutting out the occasional triple-step was all that was needed to keep me on the dancefloor. By the time I got to bed it was almost 5am, and I had stopped counting after three clean t-shirts!

Saturday morning dawned while I was still fast asleep, but by 9:30 I was halfway through breakfast. Now, I’m not usually one to eat before lunchtime, no matter what the cereal commercials recommend, but there was only a very brief prevarication before heading in to the restaurant on this particular morning! The first workshops started at 10am, with “Footwork Fantastic”. An hour of triple-steps in a dizzying array of combinations was perhaps not exactly what the doctor had ordered for my knee, but it was still a great class!

For the second slot of the day, I headed out from the Lindy Beginner track to the Lindy Living Room. It was much busier up there, but I enjoyed a jam-packed session of Charleston variants, and worked on a fun routine to practice partner skills, all before lunch! I definitely felt at the bottom of the class, but was still more or less able to keep up.

Once I’d gotten some nutrition, I decided to go shopping – dance shoes! I ended up with a pair of super-simple Aris Allen plain white plimsolls, with suede soles. Style-wise I preferred the black ones, but this was time for instant gratification, and the white was all that was available on the day.

And gratified I was. Suddenly, the morning’s triple-steps actually made sense! I slipped and slid on any smooth surface I could find, and tried out some suddenly-simpler footwork in my social dances, before heading back upstairs for a nap. Having the dancing and accommodation in the same building was awesome, and the Tea Party is firmly on my list of must-dos for next year A white chocolate mocha at Starbucks woke me up, and somehow the caffeine didn’t give me the jitters, just powered me on for the next few hours!

First up were the Jack & Jill semi-finals, then time for a couple of dances before Nick & Carla’s fantastic “Mixing 6’s and 8’s” workshop. Although I’m pretty sure it was 6-count rhythms that Tiarnan had taught me seven weeks previous, once I’d started going to classes they all seemed to be 8-count rhythms. I had rapidly adapted to the 8-counts, and forgotten about the 6-counts, which led to some weird-feeling dances where I would have to keep skipping a triple to come back to the beat in time. It took the full hour to really get into the swing of just following the two rhythms, and I spent the rest of the night just practicing swapping between them when I wasn’t dancing My new shoes continued to prove fabulous, though, so it was truly no chore to keep rockstep-triplestep-triplestep’ing!

The Strictly Swing finals were great, but much overshadowed by the Crossover Jack & Jill that followed. Five pairs of pros from each discipline were randomly mixed and matched, so that there was a lead from one discipline dancing with a follow from the other. They danced one Westie song and one Lindy song, and they were outstanding The leads had obviously choreographed their arrival on stage, and the whole thing was just an absolute spectacle.

After the midnight buffet, Tiarnan gave me some pointers on how to improve my dancing, which mostly boiled down to “have some frame, or they will break your arms off”. Frame is slightly tricky to grok, more tricky to explain, and even more tricky to remember and maintain while you’re also trying to keep your footwork going and possibly stay in-time But he wasn’t wrong, and lack of frame almost did lead to my arm being snapped off when I danced with one truly excessively energetic lead. Still, when I did manage to include it, several things got suddenly easier/possible, including some fun turns

Several jam circles sprung up over the course of the evening, with some truly outstanding ~~showing-off~~ dancing, and the rowdy Baltimore crowd streaked across the dancefloor in their underwear, led by a roller-skater who made a very impressive job of getting up the stairs at the exit!

By three or four o’clock, the dance floor cleared out a little, and I enjoyed some really great dances – including one with a teacher, who had the most charming “sorry sweetie!” any time anything went wrong (although the problem was most often my failing to follow his lead)! I got my new favourite compliment after a spectacular blues dance – “I love your energetic slowness”. Blues was definitely a new experience, and a lot of good practice for following weight shifts etc.

It was barely an hour before dawn by the time I got to bed, and the next morning’s classes looked a little tenuous. But Max and Annie were doing an “Essential Swingout” workshop, and their unadulterated fabulous was enough to drag me out of bed. It was well worth it, but the balance workshop that came next almost made me ill with the infinite spinning, so I headed upstairs to pack up.

Then it was back down for more Max & Annie, and their Charleston variants – probably my favourite moves of the weekend. Again, back in the Lindy Living Room I was hovering near the bottom of the class, but had the routine pretty fluently by the top of the hour. After that, everything went by in a blitz – the Lindy Jack & Jill finals, lunch with some New Yorkers, several “just one last dance”s, including one with a charming if mildly confused Westie lead (there was music, there was a dancefloor, there was a lead. I asked him to dance, not noticing that his shirt still looked freshly pressed and he didn’t have a hair out of place. What do you want from me? ).

I hopped in with some of the Westie teachers for the ride back to the airport, had dinner in the lounge, practiced my triple-steps and Charleston on the smooth stone floor, was glad of my exit-row seat which gave me some room to stretch out, and Google suitcase to rest my feet on once I got on to the plan, and finally made it to London, where I flew through some more triple-steps, had a shower and a visit to the spa, then started writing this post.

Now it’s back to life, back to reality. But I had a complete blast at the Tea Party; I’m looking forward to Is There Hop?, Zurich’s weekend of workshops, this weekend; I’ve been inspired to start cutting out some of the things that drag me down to have more room in my life for the things I love; so really, all is well in the world

diamond: mounting usb drives at boot using udev on debian

Sat, 27 Mar 2010 11:31:39 +0000

I have an external 1.5TB usb hard disk that i use for backups. If i add it to /etc/fstab as normal, it will fail to mount on boot, as the usb subsystem won’t be initialized that early. This is unsatisfactory. So, here’s what i did to fix this.

I added the drive to /etc/fstab with this line:/dev/disk/by-label/bmopbackup1 /mnt/backup ext3 defaults,noauto 0 0
Note the noauto option (don’t mount this drive on boot), and the fsck pass number set to zero (don’t check this filesystem for errors on boot). As you can see, i labelled the external hard drive as bmopbackup1, using e2label. It just makes it a little easier to work with.
Next, i needed to check how udev can recognise my drive:
# udevadm info -q env -n /dev/disk/by-label/bmopbackup1 ID_VENDOR=WD ID_MODEL=15EADS_External ID_REVISION=1.75 ID_SERIAL=WD_15EADS_External_57442D574341565530323131333934-0:0 ID_SERIAL_SHORT=57442D574341565530323131333934 ID_TYPE=disk ID_INSTANCE=0:0 ID_BUS=usb ID_PATH=pci-0000:00:10.4-usb-0:4:1.0-scsi-0:0:0:0 ID_FS_USAGE=filesystem ID_FS_TYPE=ext3 ID_FS_VERSION=1.0 ID_FS_UUID=d519f829-eef8-4651-9a21-70a0552ad933 ID_FS_UUID_ENC=d519f829-eef8-4651-9a21-70a0552ad933 ID_FS_LABEL=bmopbackup1 ID_FS_LABEL_ENC=bmopbackup1 ID_FS_LABEL_SAFE=bmopbackup1
As you can see, udev sets ID_FS_LABEL to bmopbackup1, so i can use that to uniquely identify the device to udev. If you don’t have a label on the drive, you could just as easily use ID_FS_UUID.
So, here’s the magic part. I created a udev rules file /etc/udev/rules.d/99-bmopbackup.rules with the following line:
SUBSYSTEMS=="block", ENV{ID_FS_LABEL}=="bmopbackup1", RUN+="/etc/scripts/bmopbackup-connected"
This tells udev that when it sees a block device with the filesystem label bmopbackup1, run the specified script.
And finally, I created the /etc/scripts/bmopbackup-connected script:
#!/bin/bash { date fsck -aC /dev/disk/by-label/bmopbackup1 ret=$? date if [ $ret -eq 0 ]; then echo "Fsck succeeded, mounting" mount /dev/disk/by-label/bmopbackup1 else echo "Fsck failed, not mounting" fi } &> "/tmp/$(basename "$0").log" &
If i didn’t want to run fsck on the drive, i could just tell udev to run mount /mnt/backup directly. However, given that this drive is used for backups, i definitely want the drive checked every boot (if i was really paranoid, i’d add the -f to fsck, to force it to run a full filesystem check if it’s marked clean).

If you try something similar to the above and it doesn’t seem to be working, a useful check is to see what udev thinks it should run when a given device is connected:
# udevadm test /sys/block/sdb/sdb1 This program is for debugging only, it does not run any program, specified by a RUN key. It may show incorrect results, because some values may be different, or not available at a simulation run. ... udevtest: run: '/etc/scripts/bmopbackup-connected'
To run this test, you have to supply the sysfs path to where your device is currently connected. /dev/disk/by-label/bmopbackup1 is a symlink to /dev/sdb1, so /sys/block/sdb/sdb1 is the equivalent sysfs path.

radagast: OpenStreetMap posters

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 00:58:09 +0000

Here’s a little list of various posters/leaflets that I’ve found for evangelizing OpenStreetMap:

Open Street Map Fast Facts
There’s the recruitment poster; with other formats at http://svn.openstreetmap.org/misc/pr_material/recruitment_poster/ – there are quite a few shops along my commute-route with this on their noticeboard
The OSM Flyer
This OSM Licence Card appeared mid-February

If there are any others please let me know so I can update the list

noirin: Ada Lovelace Day – We love you Sheila, we do!

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 21:03:34 +0000

I almost didn’t take part in Ada Lovelace Day this year. Between recently taking up dancing, where I find myself suddenly in a pretty solid majority, and being bogged down with work (both $dayjob and Apache), the unicorn status has firmly lost any sheen it might ever have had. The performance is just exhausting.

But perhaps at times like this, it’s even more important to reflect and to celebrate those women whose achievements have inspired, have made possible, my own participation in technology and science.

Dr Sheila Gilheany was the first female lecturer in Astronomy at the Armagh Planetarium, a place I still remember visiting as a young girl. My first encounter with Sheila, however, came when she took up the directorship of the then-new Irish Centre for Talented Youth (CTYI). (Yes, I’ve heard all the jokes about the spelling of the acronym.)

In that role, Sheila was not only a vocal supporter of Ireland’s academically-gifted youth, but also an inspiring educator. I first learnt to program at CTYI, using Logo to learn simultaneously about geometry and angles, loops and variables Over the course of several summers, I studied everything from Visual Arts to Creative Writing, from Pharmacology to Psychology, from International Relations to Legal Studies.

When, at twelve, I was in bits trying to get my head around what exactly pH was, Sheila was there to cheerlead, and wipe away the tears if necessary! (I already knew pH was a measure of the acidity of a substance, but trying to calculate the anti-log of the hydrogen ion concentration should perhaps not have been introduced on Day 1!)

Later on, when I decided that Decision Maths just wasn’t what I wanted to spend my summer on, she let me switch to the International Relations class, which turned out to be even more bizarre than the discussions of Martians and umbrellas that I had left behind Sheila always expected the very best from everyone she worked with, but she provided support in abundance. From the Quaker we elected (democratically!) to office of God, to the girl who wore a Beanie Baby on her head for three weeks, if she was fazed, she never let on! (If any of you have pictures of the Beanie Baby, I want a copy!)

By the time I went back as a teaching assistant, the range of classes had grown vastly (I helped teach Forensic Science, as well as Computational Linguistics). Sheila had, by then, moved on, but her legacy was clearly thriving.

But Sheila’s infectious love for science benefitted not only the CTYI students. As Director of the Centre, she also oversaw the launch of the Pfizer Science Bus, possibly the coolest coach in the country The Science Bus contained a well-equipped mobile science lab, fully connected with gas, water, electricity and even an internet connection! The bus visited schools around the country, and students were invited to investigate everything from optics to satellite technology, from chromatography to the chemistry of food. Of course, there were also explosions, colourful experiments, shiny demonstrations, and much more!

Sheila is now a Policy Officer at the Institute of Physics, but it cheers me greatly to hear that she is still keenly involved in science education