mr-potter

This blog is dead....

2009-09-12T01:43:00.000-05:00

...long live the blog.

2009-01-19T17:53:00.003-06:00

The long weekend has given me the chance to do some stuff on my computer at home. Here are some of the things I have learned.

I spent some time looking for color profiles to use with the likes of GIMP. I went looking to see if I could find any for my digital camera. Turns out that my camera is so old that it is a museum piece. I spent a couple of hours with Google and could not find an icc or icm file anywhere.

I managed to find some profiles for my monitor by looking in the cab files that contain the software on the driver disc. I have them extracted now.

My monitor also has a non-standard aspect ratio. I tried to set up a new screen resolution but gave up. I did find that I actually have a clearer picture if I set the resolution to the optimum resolution and set the font size larger so I can read everything. I still end up using the compiz zoom feature a lot.

I spent so Christmas money on a new keyboard. The actual keyboard is really nice to use. The extra multimedia keys around the keyboard do not. Actually some of them do, but the one I would like to work does not. That is the zoom toggle on the left hand side. I cannot seem to get anything to register the key press. Even xev does not register it. I suspect there is a low-level something that is missing. Hopefully it will start working as new versions of kernels and other software are available. I am also hoping I can make it scroll, or compiz zoom. The original intention of the keyboard is to increase font sizes.

This keyboard also has an "F-lock" button. Took me ages to work out why the function keys did not work. I have no idea what useful purpose the "f-lock" key serves. If anyone knows, then pass it on.

The keyboard also has a wireless mouse with it too. I must say that I am not very impressed with it. The biggest annoyance has to be the flakiness of the middle button. The middle mouse button gets used a lot, and it is fast becoming annoying. I may end up ditching the mouse in favor of another.

cold and colder

2009-01-15T22:04:00.003-06:00

Today was a record breaker here in Bismarck. It was the coldest January 15th on record. This is from the NWS website. I'm going to quote it because I am not sure if the site has a permalink.

RECORD EVENT REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BISMARCK ND
737 AM CST THU JAN 15 2009

...RECORD DAILY MINIMUM TEMPERATURE BROKEN AT BISMARCK ND...

AT 734 AM CST THIS THURSDAY MORNING THE TEMPERATURE AT THE BISMARCK
AIRPORT DROPPED TO -44 DEGREES. THIS BREAKS THE RECORD LOW FOR JAN
15TH OF -36 PREVIOUSLY SET IN 1971.

At work we were discussing whether it was cold enough to spit and the saliva to freeze before it hit the ground. Unfortunately none of us thought to do it at that time. However, one of my colleagues did show me this.

Throwing hot coffee looks like more fun than spitting.

CentOS Security

2009-01-13T22:44:00.003-06:00

Over at Planet CentOS there has been a rash of posts about security, here, here and here. Wise words, check them out.

Reading this got me thinking about using the non-standard packages and compiling from source. I think one of the reasons why sys-admins do this is because they are more comfortable with the package they want to use. This may be personal preference, and the preference may be because it is what they know. As a sys-admin, you rarely get to run the software you want. You have to make do with what you have or what others want. The business wnats you to load this software, and thhis software needs this specific app server which is not your favorite, or one you know well.

Like it or not, that is part of the job. On the plus side, learning new softaer gives more knowledge and experience which is only a good thing.

New look for Suzuki

2008-12-23T20:07:00.002-06:00

One of the things I do on the side is support the Bismarck Suzuki School of Music by doing stuff on their web site.

When I inherited it, it was a static website. It meant that updating content was time consuming and, quite honestly, I would have made it look a lot worse.

So I installed Wordpress. It made adding content a lot simpler. Last summer Cheryl, the president of the school, spent hours putting up lots of content. It means that she does not need to know any HTML to add all this content.

When I originally set it up, I used roughly the same style as the previous site. Now I have a new theme up there. It was designed by my brother, and then Douglas Tschetter was kind enough to turn it in to a theme for me.

I think it looks pretty good. So thanks Ade and Doug.

Not again!

2008-12-18T16:17:00.004-06:00

Not content with serving us more snow this last month than we had the whole of last winter, the weather may have more in store for us....

URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE...CORRECTED
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BISMARCK ND
421 PM CST THU DEC 18 2008
...SIGNIFICANT WINTER STORM POSSIBLE THIS WEEKEND...
.A SIGNIFICANT WINTER STORM MAY IMPACT WEST AND CENTRAL NORTH
DAKOTA BEGINNING LATE FRIDAY AFTERNOON AND CONTINUING THROUGH LATE
SATURDAY NIGHT. SNOW WILL DEVELOP ACROSS WESTERN NORTH DAKOTA
FRIDAY AND FRIDAY NIGHT...AND MAY BECOME HEAVY BY SATURDAY. SNOW
AMOUNTS OF 6 TO 10 INCHES ARE POSSIBLE FROM THE TURTLE MOUNTAINS
IN THE NORTH CENTRAL...THROUGH JAMESTOWN AND SOUTH TO THE SOUTH
DAKOTA BORDER BY SUNDAY MORNING. FOUR TO SEVEN INCHES OF SNOW IS
POSSIBLE FROM MINOT TO BISMARCK...WITH 2 TO 4 INCHES OF SNOW
POSSIBLE ACROSS THE WEST. ALTHOUGH THE WEST WILL SEE LESS OF THE
SNOW...WIND CHILLS TO 50 BELOW AND STRONG WINDS WILL CAUSE VERY
HAZARDOUS CONDITIONS BY LATE SATURDAY AND SATURDAY NIGHT. NEAR
BLIZZARD CONDITIONS ARE POSSIBLE ACROSS PORTIONS OF CENTRAL NORTH
DAKOTA SATURDAY AFTERNOON AND SATURDAY NIGHT WHERE THE HEAVIER
SNOW AMOUNTS ARE EXPECTED

Past experience has shown that such messages are not always wholly accurate. Suffice to say somewhere in the state somebody is going to get snow this weekend.

yet more snow

2008-12-15T11:37:00.003-06:00

It looks like we will be measuring snow accumulations in feet and not inches this winter. I do not know what the running total is so far, but I now have a bank of snow beside my driveway that is as tall as I am. I do not think my boulevards can take much more snow. In fact the section of driveway between the side walk and the road is getting narrower because there is nowhere else to put the snow.

And it is cold! I wore so many clothes walking (more like wading) to work that my cube is full of outerwear.

And then to make matters worse, Kim has posted some photos of her modeling her latest shawls. While they are nice garments, I was more struck by the fact that they were taken outside in December and she is not wearing a coat. I wish I could stand outside like that without pulling on hats scarves, coats, etc.

not the light fantastic

2008-11-30T19:13:00.001-06:00

Now that Thanksgiving has been and gone, everyting turns to Christmas.

While we will not put the tree up for another week or two, we are starting to put up some decorations. In that vain, I decided to hang out the lights outside.

Sure it was about 28 degrees out there, but chances are it will not be any warmer in the next few weeks.

So I get out the string of lights, I test them and they all work. Next I hang them out. After what felt like a good long time perching on a ladder and messing with hooks and cables with gloves hampering dexterity, I fanally get the lights hung out. Now its time to turn them on.

So after all that, fifty of the one hundred work and fifty do not. Why does that always happen? You test them and they work, then when they are hung out they don't.

Next I go and reseat all the dark bulbs. I get to the very last bulb on the chain (the last possible bulb to test) and the bulb comes apart in my (very cold) hand. So I have the glass bit but the bulb casing is still in the socket. To make matters worse it ill nt come out. No amount of pulling at it with needle nosed pliers while cursing, perched on top of a ladder in the freezing cold helped.

This morning one of my freinds recounted a similar story. I smiled and said it was murphy. Whenshe hears this story I'm sure she will return the compliment.

electoral parrallels

2008-11-22T01:45:00.002-06:00

I am a fan of the now finished telly program "The West Wing". In the final season, the presidential election campaign was, in my mind, spookily similar to the one we have just experienced in real life. Let me point out some similarities:

In the West Wing, the Democratic candidate was a Latino, in real life, he is African american. So, both are non-white.
In both cases the Democratic candidates are young.
Both Republican Candidates were old men with centrist tendencies and who were dragged to the right by their parties.
Current events hampered the campaigns of both republican candidates (the nuclear power plant in the West Wing, and the financial crisis in real life).

I'm sure there are more.

In the West Wing, the Republican candidate becomes a member of the new Democratic cabinet. If I remember right, he became the secretary of state. So, if the parallels hold true, should we expect McCain getting a job in Obama's administration?

first snow of winter

2008-11-07T22:31:00.004-06:00

Winter came to North Dakota with a thud - well more of a whoosh and then a flump!

Snow came yesterday afternoon with high winds. Blizzard conditions ensued for pretty much the rest of the night. During the evening the wind started to gust up to 40-50 mph.

While we were eating our evening meal, the power started to blip off and back on again every so often. As the evening wore on the blips would start to be a couple of seconds then at 8:30 we lost power for about an hour.

Woke up in the morning to find that school was cancelled, and we had a waist high snow drift going all the way down the drive. I dug a trench through the snow to the roadside and then went back in and worked from home for the morning.

By lunchtime, the risk of more snow showers was pretty much gone and I started to shovel snow. After an hour and a half, all I had managed was to clear away the shallow drifts. I still had the big waist high drift to do. Time to call my father in law. He brought over his snow blower and an hour later he had the big drift cleared away too. It would not have been so hard if the bank of discarded snow at the side of the driveway was not taller than the outlet for his snow blower.

After all that I then tramped t work.

2008-11-02T21:41:00.002-06:00

Liferea 1.5 has this cool feature where you can read blogs you have subscribed to on Google Reader. Now that is a feature worth compiling source for.

So I did!

Not all that bad of an install - was expecting worse.

Feature kind of works right now but seg faults every 10 minutes. So it is back to version 1.4 for now and I will eagerly await the stabilising of 1.5

Open Solaris

2008-11-02T21:26:00.003-06:00

So I tried Open Solaris this week. I tried both the current release (2008.05) and the latest beta for 2008.11. I must say that they have done quite a nice job of it. It installed nicely and was quite simple to get a running system going.

What made me remove it after a couple of days was the lack of packages for it, and laziness on my part. In order to get Open Solaris up and running with all the extra stuff that I get from the Ubuntu community, I would have to spend a long time researching alternative package locations and probably compiling a bunch of stuff. Right now I am not willing to put in that much effort.

I have always had a soft spot for Solaris. I do want to use it and give it a decent shot. Its niche nature, underdog status and all those toys I want to play with make it a compelling thing. It flirts with me and every so often I install it. The thing is I am usually far too lazy and the draw of the seemingly effortless Ubuntu pulls me back.

2008-10-22T23:14:00.002-05:00

So I have been thinking I should maybe try and resurrect this whole blogging thing. I have been feeling the urge to write something quite a bit recently, so that is a good sign to start again.

I thought about starting a new blog. In fact I shopped around the free blog services with that intention. I eventually decided to resurrect this one. The other free services did not seem to offer much more than what I have here, and I thought maybe if I started posting here again, then the three people who read it before may come back.

2008-10-22T23:10:00.001-05:00

I took a look at Zim; a desktop wiki. In fact it is pretty much the same as Tomboy, only the one compelling difference was that Zim had in built subversion support.

The Subversion support should make it easy to do version control on your notes and potentially have a backup off-site. It would be really nice for things like sharing notes and documentation between people or computers.

The first big issue with this feature is that there is no documentation on how to get this to work. I went through the Zim website and found nothing that was helpful. I ended up having to do some digging around myself. Here is how I got SVN support to work with Zim:

1. First you need to create your subversion repository. Use

svnadmin create

to create your repository.

2. Create your notebook in Zim. Note where you told the files to be saved. Close down Zim completely (not even hanging around in your notification are)

3. In a terminal window, cd to the directory and then run

svn import

to get the initial files in to the repository.

4. Move the original directory out of the way, or delete it if you are feeling brave.

5. Check out the svn repository in to the location where Zim is expecting the files to be.

6. Start up Zim again and open the notebook.

You can now start working away in Zim, writing stuff and saving the changes. IF you create a new page, then it automatically does the svn add stuff for you. You should then pull down the Tools menu periodically and choose the "SVN Commit" option.

If you are nervous that it is not behaving as you expect, you can always check out another working copy and see what it looks like.

Another thing to note is that Zim logs stuff to you .xsession_errors file. tail that file to get

Reading about a road trip while on a raod trip

2007-09-03T22:11:00.000-05:00

So, I am sitting in a dark hotel room in Wisconsin Dells. The wife and kids are asleep, and I am catching up on some reading.

It has been a long time since posted anything here. There is only one real reason for that - laziness!

So I am reading about Doc Searl's road trip, and I am thinking that maybe I should do a travel blog of our trip from Bismarck to chicago and back again. It'll be a few days in the making because this laptop is barely powerfull enough to run a browser, and i have a bunc o f digital photo raws to process first. Expect more on Thursday when I am back home again.

The height of annoyance.

2007-04-15T20:53:00.001-05:00

IMG_2787, originally uploaded by mr-potter.

This is a pet peeve of mine.

Don't you just hate it when they put the power adapter as part of the bit you plug in to the wall. It is especially so when you will be plugging it in to a power strip. The chances are you will end up covering at least one more poser socket one the strip. The strip is now heavy and cumbersome, and is generally a downright nuisance.

There! I feel much better now.

Spring is on its way

2007-03-16T23:24:00.000-05:00

The snow all melted this last week, leaving muddy brown grass everywhere. The first half of the week was a lot warmer than of late. A sure sign that spring is on the way. Here are some others:

Flocks of honking geese flying North over our heads in big V's.
Birds singing, woodpeckers pecking.
A huge increase in people out walking, and dogs taking their owners for a walk.
Dry sandy roads, and torrents of water running down the gutters.
An increase in the number of motorcycles, and noisy, old pickup trucks that, quite frankly, should not be on the road whatever time of the year it is.

There was a noticeable lifting of moods with the rising of the temperature. That was tempered by the time change (I may rant about that later). All in all, sure signs that the cold winter is nearly over, and spring in on the way.

Atchooo!

Aerial Angels

2007-02-20T20:14:00.000-06:00

Pictures of the snow angel event from the air.

Snow Angels

2007-02-17T21:14:00.000-06:00

Today, Bismarck took back the world record for the most people making a snow angel at the same time. We were one of the 9,000 odd people there.

Here's the Bismarck Tribune's coverage - including a rather poor video.

I took a couple of pictures too - but not of us making snow angels. Thats because I was busy waving my arms and legs in the snow at the time.

I also took a movie with my point and shoot of one of the many snow-waves (kind of like a Mexican wave but with snow) that kept us amused during the half hour wait for the twenty second event.

Installing Oracle on 64bit Linux

2007-02-02T15:17:00.000-06:00

I have just installed Oracle DBMS server on RHEL (x86_64) for the first time. I have installed Oracle on Solaris and Windows tens of times, but this is my first real Linux install. I must say that I am not impressed. Installing on Solaris is a whole lot simpler. The two big issues were packages dependencies and poor documentation.

The installation would consistently fail during the linking process. Each time it failed required me to find out whay, install the required package, blow away the $ORACLE_HOME and oraInventory, and then start over. The list of required packages was well short. I also had to install both the 32 bit and 64 bit versions of all the libraries it needed. So my dependancy list is this:

rpm -q --qf '%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE} (%{ARCH})\n' binutils compat-db control-center gcc gcc-c++ glibc glibc-common glibc-devel gnome-libs libstdc++ libstdc++-devel make pdksh sysstat xscreensaver libaio libaio-devel
binutils-2.15.92.0.2-21 (x86_64)
compat-db-4.1.25-9 (x86_64)
compat-db-4.1.25-9 (i386)
control-center-2.8.0-12.rhel4.5 (x86_64)
gcc-3.4.6-3 (x86_64)
gcc-c++-3.4.6-3 (x86_64)
glibc-2.3.4-2.25 (x86_64)
glibc-2.3.4-2.25 (i686)
glibc-common-2.3.4-2.25 (x86_64)
glibc-devel-2.3.4-2.25 (x86_64)
glibc-devel-2.3.4-2.25 (i386)
gnome-libs-1.4.1.2.90-44.1 (x86_64)
libstdc++-3.4.6-3 (x86_64)
libstdc++-3.4.6-3 (i386)
libstdc++-devel-3.4.6-3 (i386)
make-3.80-6.EL4 (x86_64)
pdksh-5.2.14-30.3 (x86_64)
sysstat-5.0.5-11.rhel4 (x86_64)
xscreensaver-4.18-5.rhel4.11 (x86_64)
libaio-0.3.105-2 (i386)
libaio-0.3.105-2 (x86_64)
libaio-devel-0.3.105-2 (x86_64)

I even made a sym link to shut it up too. It's probably naughty, but it worked!

ln -s /usr/lib64/libstdc++.so.6.0.3 /usr/lib64/libstdc++.so.5

And that's what I had to do.

So, Oracle went down another notch in my estimation today. It shouldn't be that hard. The whole "Linux is a constantly moving target" line doesn't wash for me. Oracle will only install on certain, certified distro's. They have made themselves a manageable environment, yet they still make it hard.

US Daylight Saving Time 2007

2007-01-31T13:01:00.000-06:00

In North America, Daylight Saving Time is coming a few weeks early. You may need to update your computer to deal with it.

If your Linux is up to date then it's probably ready. Best way of testing that I have found is:

zdump -v /etc/localtime | grep 2007

and the output should look like this:

/etc/localtime Sun Mar 11 07:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 01:59:59 2007 CST isdst=0 gmtoff=-21600
/etc/localtime Sun Mar 11 08:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 03:00:00 2007 CDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-18000
/etc/localtime Sun Nov 4 06:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Nov 4 01:59:59 2007 CDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-18000
/etc/localtime Sun Nov 4 07:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Nov 4 01:00:00 2007 CST isdst=0 gmtoff=-21600

If not, then I suggest that you go read this thread.

Setting up Sun Rays on Solaris 10

2007-01-23T16:30:00.000-06:00

I am committing a bunch of notes to blog. Somebody, somewhere may find this useful, and they won't find it if it's locked away in my $HOME.

Install Solaris 10
Apply latest cluster patch
Install latest PC/SC SRCOM Bypass package (available to download from the Sun download Center http://www.sun.com/download/products.xml?id=42c5d3d9 ). This was not obvious in the supplied installation documentation. This must be installed for smartcards and hot-desking to work. This is only required for Solaris 10.
download and unzip the latest Sun Ray Server Software from http://www.sun.com/software/sunray/getit.jsp
run srss3.1/utinstall – this will install the software
reboot
connect up Sun Ray DTU's
It seems that if you only have one NIC on your server box then you can only do a shared network configuration. So run: /opt/SUNWut/sbin/utadm -A
The defaults values looked incomplete to me, so I suggest not accepting them. Instead, go through all the questions and answer them with the correct information.

bash-3.00# ./utadm -A bge0 Error: unable to resolve network name: "bge0"
bash-3.00# ./utadm -A 192.168.1.0
### Configuring /etc/nsswitch.conf
### Configuring Service information for Sun Ray
### Disabling Routing 
Selected values for subnetwork "192.168.1.0"
net mask:           255.255.255.0
no IP addresses offered
auth server list:   192.168.1.10
firmware server:    192.168.1.10
Accept as is? ([Y]/N): n
netmask: 255.255.255.0 (cannot be changed - system defined netmask)
Do you want to offer IP addresses for this subnet? (Y/[N]): y
new first Sun Ray address: [192.168.1.245] 192.168.1.100
number of Sun Ray addresses to allocate: [155] 10
auth server list:     192.168.1.10
To read auth server list from file, enter file name:
Auth server IP address (enter  to end list): 192.168.1.10
Auth server IP address (enter  to end list):
If no server in the auth server list responds,
should an auth server be located by broadcasting on the network? ([Y]/N):
new firmware server: [192.168.1.10]
new router: [192.168.1.1]
Selected values for subnetwork "192.168.1.0"
net mask:           255.255.255.0
first unit address: 192.168.1.100
last unit address:  192.168.1.109
auth server list:   192.168.1.10
firmware server:    192.168.1.10
router:             192.168.1.1
Accept as is? ([Y]/N): y
### Configuring firmware version for Sun Ray
### Successfully enabled tftp for firmware downloads
All the units served by "demo" on the 192.168.1.0
network interface, running firmware other than version
"3.1_32,REV=2005.08.24.08.55" will be upgraded at their next power-on.
### Configuring Sun Ray Logging Functions
### Turning on Sun Ray LAN connection NOTE:
utrestart must be run before LAN connections will be allowed
DHCP is not currently running, should I start it? ([Y]/N): y

run /opt/SUNWut/sbin/utconfig

bash-3.00# ./utconfig  Configuration of Sun Ray server Software
This script automates the configuration of the Sun Ray server software
and related software products.
Before proceeding, you should have read the Sun Ray server 3.1 Installation
Guide and filled out the Configuration Worksheet.
This script will prompt you for the values you filled out on the Worksheet.
For your convenience, default values (where applicable) are shown in brackets.
Continue ([y]/n)?
Enter Sun Ray admin password:
Re-enter Sun Ray admin password:

This script will automatically set up apache as the admikn console for you.
If you are already using apache for something else, then answer no here.

Configure Sun Ray Web Administration? ([y]/n)? y
An installation of Apache Web Server version  1.3 has been detected at /etc/apache.
This script can configure the Apache server on this server for you.
Warning: if you choose to configure Apache, the existing Apache configuration
file will be over-written.
If this server is presently configured as a Webserver and you want to preserve your
current configuration, you must answer "NO" and merge the configuration file manually
by following the instructions in the Administration Guide on how to configure the
Apache server.
Would you like to configure this server to host the Sun Ray Web Administration? ([y]/n)? y
Enter port number [1660]:
Enter CGI username [utwww]:
Enable remote server administration? (y/[n])?

Controlled Access Mode is the Sun Ray term for kiosk mode. If you wish to use it, you must say yes here. If you say no and change your mind, then you need to come back and rerun utconfig. Same goes for failover groups.

Configure Controlled Access Mode? (y/[n])? n
Configure this server for a failover group? (y/[n])? n
About to configure the following software products:
Sun Ray Data Store 2.1
Hostname: demo
Sun Ray root entry: o=utdata
Sun Ray root name: utdata
Sun Ray utdata admin password: (not shown)
SRDS 'rootdn': cn=admin,o=utdata
Apache Web Server 1.3
Apache Web Server port number: 1660
Remote server administration: no
CGI username: utwww  Sun Ray server 3.1
Failover group: no
Controlled Access Mode: no
Continue ([y]/n)? y
Updating Sun Ray Data Store schema ...
Updating Sun Ray Data Store ACL's ...
Creating Sun Ray Data Store Datastore ...
Restarting Sun Ray Data Store ...
Starting Sun Ray Data Store daemon .
Mon Oct 16 15:23 : utdsd starting
Loading Sun Ray Data Store ...
Executing '/usr/bin/ldapadd -p 7012 -D cn=admin,o=utdata' ...
adding new entry o=utdata  adding new entry o=v1,o=utdata
adding new entry utname=demo,o=v1,o=utdata
adding new entry utname=desktops,utname=demo,o=v1,o=utdata
adding new entry utname=users,utname=demo,o=v1,o=utdata
adding new entry utname=logicalTokens,utname=demo,o=v1,o=utdata
adding new entry utname=rawTokens,utname=demo,o=v1,o=utdata
adding new entry utname=multihead,utname=demo,o=v1,o=utdata
adding new entry utname=container,utname=demo,o=v1,o=utdata
adding new entry utname=properties,utname=demo,o=v1,o=utdata
adding new entry cn=utadmin,utname=demo,o=v1,o=utdata
adding new entry utname=smartCards,utname=demo,o=v1,o=utdata
adding new entry utordername=probeorder,utname=smartCards,utname=demo,o=v1,o=utdata
adding new entry utname=policy,utname=demo,o=v1,o=utdata
adding new entry utname=resDefs,utname=demo,o=v1,o=utdata
adding new entry utname=prefs,utname=demo,o=v1,o=utdata
adding new entry utPrefType=resolution,utname=prefs,utname=demo,o=v1,o=utdata
adding new entry utPrefClass=advisory,utPrefType=resolution,utname=prefs,utname=demo,o=v1,o=utdata
Added 18 new LDAP entries.
Creating Sun Ray server Configuration ...
Adding user account for 'utwww' (ut admin web server cgi user) ...
/usr/apache/bin/apachectl restart: httpd not running,
trying to start /usr/apache/bin/apachectl restart: httpd started
Unique "/etc/opt/SUNWut/gmSignature" has been generated.
Restarting Sun Ray Data Store ...
Stopping Sun Ray Data Store daemon .Sun Ray Data Store daemon stopped
Starting Sun Ray Data Store daemon .
Mon Oct 16 15:23 : utdsd starting
Adding user admin ...
User(s) added successfully!
***********************************************************
The current policy has been modified.
You must restart the authentication manager to activate the changes.
***********************************************************
Configuration of Sun Ray server has completed.
Please check the log file, /var/adm/log/utconfig.2006_10_16_15:16:55.log,
for errors.
bash-3.00#

Synchronise the firmwares on the DTU's.

bash-3.00# ./utfwsync
Stopping Authentication Managers on demo ...
Will restart Authentication Managers in 5 seconds
Restarting Authentication Managers ...
bash-3.00#

Reboot the server

Other points of Note

If you need to change anything in utconfig, then you get a cleaner change by unconfiguring and then reconfiguring from scratch:

/opt/SUNWut/sbin/utconfig -u /opt/SUNWut/sbin/utconfig

Setting up postfix with midco as a smarthost

2007-01-23T13:05:00.000-06:00

This is specifically for Midcontinent's ISP, but it should work for any place where the smarthost requires authentication, and is picky about your mail headers.

1. Install Postfix

Installed by default on Ubuntu. On centos, I di the yum install postfix before I did the yum remove sendmail as it meant yum wouldnt try to remove a whole bunch of stuff where an MTA is a dependancy.

2. Configure mail relaying

add the following to /etc/postfix/main.cf

relayhost = smtp.midco.net

Midco also require you to authenticate before it will receive mail. So you need to add the following. You also need to tell postfix a username and password - we'll see that later.

smtp_sasl_auth_enable=yes
smtp_sasl_password_maps=hash:/etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
smtp_sasl_security_options=

Next, midco rejects mail with a bad from address. So, you need to masqquerade all outgoing mail. Add this to /etc/postfix/main.cf:

smtp_generic_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/generic

3. Edit /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd

Put your midco mail username and password in here. Use the following format:

relayhost username:password

so it should look something like this:

smtp.midco.net your.mailbox@bis.midco.net:yourmailboxpassword

4. Edit /etc/postfix/generic

Here you make a list of what you want to masquerade from and to. So, we want everything going out to look like it is part of the midco happy family. I solved this problem for a trixbox installation, so my file looked like this:

@asterisk1.local my.mailbox@bis.midco.net

This tells postfix to replace anthing from the host asterisk1.local (which is the trixbox) with my midco email address. It may look confusing to the recipient, which is unfortunate. You may be able to mess with the bit before the @ sign, but the stuff after has to be a proper domain name.

5. Make these files readable by postfix.

You need to encode the files you have just created.

postmap /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
postmap /etc/postfix/generic

You should now see /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd.db and /etc/postfix/generic.db

6. Secure your files.

There are passwords in plaintext, so lets secure them.

chown root:root /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
chmod 600 /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd

7. Restart Postfix and test.

/etc/init.d/postfix restart

Now send an email somewhere. Watch the logs in /var/log/maillog. All being well, the mail should sail on through the mail system.

Winter Sun

2007-01-20T21:29:00.001-06:00

IMG_2974, originally uploaded by mr-potter.

It was quite warm today. The temperature reached the high 30's F (about 4C), which compared to -15F (-26C) at the beginning of the week, it felt pretty warm.

So, while the weather was balmy, we went barmy, and played outside. We had doors and windows open and aired the house out.

So here we are, sitting on deck chairs in the sunshine, with a snow drift behind us. Talk about crazy. Although, do bear in mind that if we were real North Dakotans, we would be sitting out there in short sleeves.

IT would be fun to be a train driver in Bismarck

2006-12-28T22:21:00.000-06:00

One of the curious things about Bismarck is that there is a train track that goes right through the centre of it. That in itself is not unusual. This track however crosses some of the main thoroughfares of Bismarck. Some are bridges, but there are many level crossings too.

The trains come through in a sporadic, yet steady stream all day and night. Every time they cross a bridge, or a road they hoot their horn. I bet the drivers derive great satisfaction at driving a train through town in the middle of the night hooting their horn for all they are worth.

It seems like the biggest impediment to the smooth flow of traffic in Bismarck is not cars, but trains. These trains are pretty long. I think 100 trucks is not unusual. So, when they come through town during a busy time, then they can stop traffic downtown for a good 5 minutes.

There was once, on my way home from work when a train crossed one of the main roads and then stopped with the train still blocking the road. They then fooled around for a few minutes doing I don't know what, then they very slowly reversed the train bac the way it came.

Holding up traffic while you shunt - that has to make the job a whole lot more fun.

2006-12-16T22:31:00.000-06:00

Starting Avahi Daemon in Edgy

OK, this has bitten me twice now, so I guess that makes it a good reason to blog it.

If you find that avahi daemon is not starting for you, then you probably need to set AVAHI_DAEMON_START=1 in /etc/default/avahi-daemon

Twice now I have found that an Ubuntu Edgy install has not started this and twice I have ended up reading init scripts to work out why. So, now we know.

Vultures

2006-09-04T21:32:00.000-05:00

CRW_2291,
originally uploaded by mr-potter.

We were reading in the Bismarck Tribune yesterday about a bunch of turkey vultures that have decided to roost on the water tower 2 blocks away from our house. I went to have a look last night. There were loads of them all perched on different bits of the twoer.

Just before we put the kids to bed this evening, we looked out that way, and we watched toem coming in to roost. There were tens of birds swooping in from all ditrections. They circled the water tower for a while and then they disappeared behind the trees. I tried to take a photo of that too, but the pictures didn't really turn out. If I get a better shot I will post it on flickr.

Check out some more of my vulture shots on flickr.

I have a job!

2006-09-03T22:15:00.000-05:00

I now have a job to go to. Starting Tuesday 5th September. I will be working for a local engineering firm as a developer in ther IT section.

I am looking forward to getting back to work after a three month break. It will be good to finally get back into real life again. I'm sure I am going to suffer some more culture shock in the next coming weeks. I think there are going to be some aspects of working in the private sector in Bismarck that are different to working in the public sector in Edinburgh.

2006-08-20T14:04:00.000-05:00

Somebody else is making a big move

Justin is moving to Florida. He is keeping a photo diary of the five day drive on Flickr.

Nice one Justin - keep it up, and good luck in Florida.

2006-08-19T11:14:00.000-05:00

and we're back

The cable guy came yesterday and hooked us up. So now we're back on line.

In other news, we heard from the movers (after giving them a poke) that our stuff will be loaded on to a boat on the 25th August. Hopefully we will see it sooner rather than later.

The house is coming together. The washer, dryer and freezer came Thursday, I fanally got the locks changed and the passage locks on the bedroom doors removed and replaced with shiny new door handles. We are still waiting for the lounge suite to arrive. It's all ready bar one arm chair. We may get them to deliver what they've got and pick up the chair once it is ready. Then we will have something to sit on and watch telly on.

More to follow...

signing off (again)

2006-08-13T13:29:00.000-05:00

We have moved into our new house. We don't have internet access yet. In the meantime I will be checking in as often as I can. More later.....

Our new house

2006-07-25T09:01:00.001-05:00

Front,
originally uploaded by twooldbobcats.

I think it is now safe enough to announce this...

We have bought a new house. We should get the keys on the 31st July.

The online schedule can be found here (while the detailos are still up.) and some photos taken by my Father in law are here

A Long Way Behind

2006-07-25T09:01:00.000-05:00

I just called the company who is moving our stuff over here. It seems that it's all still in the UK. I was hoping it would be further along than it is. So, it looks like our stuff is still weeks away.

I suppose the best we can hope for is that when it does start to move, then it travels to us quickly.

2006-07-12T14:51:00.000-05:00

It's Hot!

The thermometer out on the deck says it is 103 degrees Fahrenheit - which is about 30 - 40 Celsius. That's Hot! In fact, I would say that it is unpleasantly so.

Step one of naturalisation complete

2006-07-03T22:01:00.000-05:00

IMG_2911,
originally uploaded by mr-potter.

You may think this is a weird thing to blog about, but this is the first pair of trainers / sneakers/ tennis shoes/ whatever I have owned since high school. I don't remember ever owning white ones - although I'm sure my mum will put me right on that. I haven't owned white athletic socks since high school either.

So, now you know why I blogged this. It's quite a big step for me; but when in Rome and all that....

2006-06-30T11:28:00.000-05:00

We are still alive

Honest!

We have been in Bismarck 10 days now. We are settling in nicely. Believe me, there has been an awful lot of stuff happening; I just don't want to pre-announce anything that may fall through.

So, stay tuned, and things will start to happen over the next few weeks.

2006-06-22T19:36:00.000-05:00

Safely Arrived

It has been two days since we arrived, so I should talk about the trip while it is still relevant.

All in all it was a pretty smooth trip. The Amsterdam to Minneapolis leg was in a new Airbus A330. The seats were nice and wide, lots of leg room and each seat had a flat screen in the headrest of the seat in front. With the flat screen we had things like video on demand, etc. The kids watched cartoons and napped.

Immigration was also painless. We were advised to expect a wait of anything up to 2 hours. We waited 10 minutes.

The whole trip took 16 hours. Throw in the 6 hour time difference, and it all made for a long day.

2006-06-19T14:18:00.000-05:00

Readu to go

The house is cleared, the car is sold, the bads are packed, and we are ready to go.

We leave the house here are 4:30am tomorrow morning and we arrive in Bismarck at 5pm.

We'll see you on the other side

2006-06-12T17:08:00.000-05:00

signing off

This is our last night at this house. Cable modem is taken away tomorrow morning.

We go to stay with my mum for a week - I will mooch her wifi when I am there

The packers come tomorrow. They will have everything boxed and out of here in the next couple of days. We have been frantically sorting everything over the last few days, but we still don't feel ready. Just so long as they don't pack something we need to take on the plane with us we will be alright.

2006-06-10T15:11:00.000-05:00

LazyWeb

I like this LazyWeb idea.

Just need to get a few thousand more readers on this blog, and then I can leverage it all I want.

2006-06-09T16:16:00.000-05:00

It's amazing how your house goes from immaculate when you are trying to sell the house to quite the opposite when you are preparing to move. Here is a before and after shot of the office to illustrate the point:

before

and after.

2006-05-30T16:09:00.000-05:00

upgrade woes

My wife has been running Ubuntu Hoary on her laptop for over a year now. I intended to upgrade it to dapper and so I upgraded it today - to beat the rush.

It was a jump of two versions, so I decided the the best thing to do was to dist-upgrade to breezy, run all my wife's apps, then dist-upgrade to dapper. I first backed up her home directory to a usb hard drive and started.

The first dist-upgrade was started at about 7:30 in the morning. The laptop locked up solid about a third of the way in, so I ended up doing a bunch of package fixing before I could restart the upgrade. Once that was done, I rebooted, logged in and started all the applications. Everything worked fine.

Next was to upgrade to dapper, so I edited the sources file again, updated apt and then started the next dist-upgrade. This went with no hitches - although I did end up having to manually install some more packages later.

The real problem has been my wife's wireless card. It is a Belkin F5D5010 ver 2. It loads the atmel_cs modules as expected, but then you see a message in syslog that says:

ADDCONF (NETDEV_UP): eth1: link is not ready

It really has me stumped. I did both the dist-upgrades via the wireless card - so I can assume from that this is a new to dapper problem. iwconfig seems to work properly. I did get it to work once. I was messing around manually loading in firmwares and setting the essid with iwconfig. When I re booted and tried to repeat the process, it didn't work - so I'm not sure what I did to make it work - it certainly wasn't what I thought.

I will keep plugging away at this.

Blowing Bubbles

2006-05-28T07:07:00.000-05:00

,
originally uploaded
by Lostpup.

These photos are fantastic

Check out the reflections on this one. Well done Ade. His photography gets better all hte time.

2006-05-14T08:02:00.000-05:00

Update

It's been a while, so I thought an update is in order.

The house is sold. It was on the market for 12 days in all. We got the full asking price, and so we are very happy.

I have handed notice in at my job. My last day is 23rd May. I have been wanting to quit this job for over a year. It felt to to finally do it.

The movers are booked, the plane tickets are bought, and we are starting to do the final sort through our stuff. The closer you get to moving date, the more your thoughts change on what should go and what we should get rid of.

2006-04-20T09:58:00.000-05:00

The schedule for the house is now up on the espc web site - see it here.

Shame about the photos. The lounge one came out better than I thought, but the kitchen ones are all blurred. Also, we could have sorted the clutter in the kitchen ones easily.

House

2006-04-19T16:34:00.000-05:00

The house is now listed on the ESPC web site, here. No pictures yet, but Rome wasn't burnt in a day.

They screwed up the viewing times. They originally included Thursday evenings, despite our saying no to the agent who came to see us, by email, and in voice mail messages. They have sorted that out now. This week's ESPC paper will have the wrong viewing times, so we may get people turning up tomorrow night. If they do they will have to come back if they want to see the kids' room. The kids will be asleep by then.

Things have been busy this last week. Getting sucked into felling the neighbours trees, and clearing away their rotten fence did not help. Things are starting to take shape now.

It's all starting to happen

2006-04-14T14:16:00.000-05:00

IMG_1352,
originally uploaded by mr-potter.

The estate agent came this week. The house goes on the market on Easter Monday. The "For Sale" sign went up today.

We have had three of the four moving companies come and see us. They will send us quotes next week.

In between all that, we are trying to finish removing clutter around the house, and generally trying to make it look shiney. We have been doing lots of jobs that we meant to do months or years ago. Things are starting to look really nice.

Spring

2006-03-25T14:38:00.000-06:00

CRW_1137-p,
originally uploaded by mr-potter.

Well the weather may not be warming up as fast as I would like, but the flowers are coming out nicely. This photo was taken in our back garden.

Road Trip to France

2006-02-25T12:52:00.000-06:00

My brother just did a trip to France.

Here are some photos from the trip.

last.fm

2006-02-22T15:59:00.000-06:00

I have been idly poking last.fm with a stick. On the whole it is a fun toy. However, I am finding that when I do a similar artist search radio in the client, half the stuff I listen to is not there.

Still no RSS

2006-02-16T14:28:00.000-06:00

The Bismarck Tribune has redone its site. Still no RSS. Come on guys - it's not hard!

US-o-vision Song Contest

2006-02-11T17:19:00.000-06:00

It says here that NBC is planning a Eurovisionn Song Contest clone.

"Eurovision is the granddaddy of all talent shows and the Super Bowl of singing," said Ben Silverman, chairman of series producers Reveille.

Has this guy actually sat through a whole Eurovision? If he has, then he must not have realised that you watch Eurovision, nit for the music, but for Terry Wogan's contribution.

GAIM beta

2006-01-25T16:31:00.000-06:00

I have been using the Gaim 2.0 beta 1 realease for a few weeks now. I like it.

The project have said that "Gaim 2.0.0 beta 2 does not include voice or video ("vv") support". Shame - because to me, that would make the app complete. But good things come to those who wait.

Saved passwords as an anti-phishing measure

2006-01-19T14:44:00.000-06:00

My wife gets a lot of phishing emails - don't know why - but she does. Quite a lot of them are ebay ones. She can spot them a mile a way and she says that some of them are quite amusing with their bad spelling and grammar.

Well, this morning she found one that was almost believable. For reasons known only to her, she decided to click on the "log in" link in the email. She said that another clear sign that this was not ebay was because her browser did not auto-fill the login form for her.

We all have heard the arguments for and against using the saved passwords feature. But I had never considered before that it could be a good anti-phishing tool.

descpicable

2006-01-15T15:43:00.000-06:00

Sometime in the last 36 hours, my son's tricycle and scooter were stolen. They we taken from our front lawn - right outside our front door. Not only that, but they raked through the shed and found the parent bar.

Somebody who steals a child's toys is pretty low in my opinion.

Fighting fire with fire?

2006-01-08T15:51:00.000-06:00

http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=29962006

"Faced with the prospect of another year spent tackling the hundreds of tonnes of unwanted mail discarded in the Capital, the council has compiled an advice leaflet for residents."

Could an advice leaflet not be a euphemism for junk mail?

I do agree with the sentiment, and I hope they make a difference.

We were too early

2006-01-01T15:46:00.000-06:00

It turns out there was a positive leap second introduced between 2005 and 2006 to keep atomic clocks in sync with the rotation of the earth. There is a slashdot article about it which also references a couple of other articles on the matter.

So, does that mean that we who are in the UTC timezone celebrated New Year one second too early? Still I suppose being one second early for New Year is better than one year too early for the new millennium.

Feed Changed

2005-12-28T15:34:00.000-06:00

Please note that the URL for the RSS (okay - atom) feed has changed.The new link is now:

http://sasallys.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Other Stuff

2005-12-28T12:22:00.000-06:00

A lot of stuff has happened, so here is a quick update:

all the paperwork for my US immigration has now been sent to the US Embassy in London. I have had my medical too. That means all we can do now is wait for an interview date.

We have nad some decorating done in the house. We got the bathroom repapered, and we finally got our bedroom painted. The guy who did our bedroom also painted the doors upstairs. He put right the mess I made of them a couple of years ago. The fumes that night were pretty bad, so we all camped out on the living room floor that night.

Dan has been a busy boy stting up tow blogs - this one about his family, and this one about him, and so far, his go-kart. Still waiting for Macanthony to do something with his slice of web that he got a month ago.

Kim and Balint are coming back to Edinburgh for a week in January. It will be good to see them.

Recycling

2005-12-28T10:05:00.000-06:00

Today is the day of the week when they come and empty the bins. Usually, after Christmas, they are all stuffed full. Well, this year our bin was not. One of the advantages of having a full set of recycling bins right next to where we park our car is that recycling is no bother at all. So, all of our Christmas wrapping paper, and packaging from the kids toys, etc went into the recycling bins.

We put out our wheelie bin last night - half full. We only throw out waste food and disposable nappies. We then discovered this morning that our neighbours had filled our bin up for us. So now it was standing there with its lid up at a jaunty angle - just like everyone else. Now, what was the stuff that was filling our bin? It was black bags full of cardboard and glass bottles - all of which could easily have gone into the recycling bins. All they had to do was walk another ten paces.

Syncing my phone and my coputer

2005-11-12T16:51:00.000-06:00

phone,
originally uploaded by mr-potter.

After a year of trying on and off to get my phone to talk to my computer, I finally managed it.

I don't think it was anything that I did - more that the software now supports my phone. So, thanks to the synce guys, and thanks to the Ubuntu mob for getting the software packaged.

This pleases me a lot. I listen to podcasts on my phone on the way to and from work. Up until now, I have had to shut down the phone, pull hte card, plug it into a card reader and copy over the files. Now I will not need to do this.

What would be really cool would be to script the file transfer. If I were a programmer, then I would write a GNOME podcatcher that woould do that.

2005-10-24T15:23:00.000-05:00

I was reading this, which pointed to this at work. Being partially sighted, I have a CCTV system on my desk. SO, I put something I printed from the colour laser printer underneath and cranked up the magnification.

The system had a hard time finding something to focus on, but eventually would setlle down, and right enough: there are little yellow dots. If I had a UV light, I'm sure they would be much easier to see, but they were viewable.

Hoary is dead - long live Breezy!

2005-10-22T17:25:00.000-05:00

Ubuntu Linux have recently released their next version - this time nicknamed "Breezy Badger". I have installed it on my laptop and so far I like it a lot. They have a lot of the toys I like, and even some bleeding edge stuff.

Here are a few of my first impressions:

1. I like the inclusion of some zeroconf stuff. Unfortunately this laptop is the only thing that can do it at the moment. I will need to upgrade a couple of other computers to see how well it works. I spose another alternative is to hang around a few Macs and see what happens.

2. Beagle works well - better than I could ever get it to work by just compiling the code. This makes me think that the package maintainer did a lot more than just compile the code. There is also a preference applet to go with it. It seems to be a bit disconnected from beagle - and it does not start beagled for you.

3. My laptop is an IBM Thinkpad. Ubuntu said they had done a lot of work to improve things for laptops. I can see they have - my laptop now hibernates! However, we still have the usual Thinkpad grumbles of PCMCIA screwing things up, and sound not working after waking up. I think that is a hardware thing. On the whole I am pleased.

4. they have included this new toy called the "Deskbar Applet". It sits on your panel and you can type a word or phrase into it. It then presents you with a list of places where it can search for you. It includes beagle, all your search things in Firefox, and more. It then presents the results in the appropriate application. This is my kinda toy.

So, on the whole, I am liking Breezy a lot. There are bound to be some annoyances, so I might post a follow up later.

red leaves in edinburgh?

2005-09-26T16:34:00.000-05:00

red leaves in edinburgh 2 (see comment),
originally uploaded by lardus.

So, Alex thinks there might be nice red leaves in Edinburgh this year.

If todays windy weather continues, then there won't be many leaves left to turn red :-).

2005-08-28T14:25:00.000-05:00

Finally got around to listening to the most recent Linux Link Tech Show. They were talking with John Buckman of Magnatunes.

Very good show. The conversation before the interview about using music download sites and how it is next to impossible to do it easily with Linux.

So I am listening to a Magnatunes stream now. Some good stuff on it.

It's all happening at the zoo

2005-08-21T15:20:00.000-05:00

img_2382,
originally uploaded by mr-potter.

We got out zoo passes renewed. So, today being a nice day, we made a trip.

The kids were very taken with the penguins. We spent quite some time at the glass watching them swim under water. There are a few more photos over at my flickr page.

Bobbys wedding

2005-08-21T15:07:00.000-05:00

Bobbys wedding,
originally uploaded by mr-potter.

Bobby is now an (old) married man.

Congratulations to Bobby, and his new wife Jenny.

2005-07-21T15:46:00.000-05:00

We got the next set of forms for my visa/residency application to The States.

Compared to getting my wife into the UK, this is like beauracracy on drugs.

2005-07-02T15:23:00.000-05:00

Make Poverty History March Photos

There are loads of them on Flickr. The event finished a few hours ago - and there are currently 798 with that tag. I'm sure that number will rise.

Google satellite imagery

2005-06-25T17:22:00.000-05:00

Well, Google Maps did one better than I hoped and released satellite imagery of the whole world. I wasted an entire evening cruising around looking at stuff.

I must admit that the resolution of most of it isn't all the great - but it's free - and it's far more than what we had a month ago.

Aye - the nights are fair drawing in!

2005-06-25T12:45:00.000-05:00

summer sunset 5,
originally uploaded by mr-potter.

Red sky at night - yes the weather has been a delight. This was taken after the summer solstive - so the ttitle is kinda correct.

Flickr Fun

2005-05-20T13:48:00.000-05:00

img_2009,
originally uploaded by mr-potter.

So, after seeing and hearing a lot about Flickr, I thought I would sign up and have a play. This is one of the three photos I have uploaded so far. It was taken when we were on holiday. You can see all of my photos here.

2005-05-06T15:48:00.000-05:00

Just checked my yahoo mail box and it now says it has 1Gb of storage. Nice.

2005-04-30T15:55:00.000-05:00

I regularly check out the Bismarck Tribune website to see what is happening there. One of the things that intrigues me is that they have this bit where people blog, called Tri-blog.

So, they have this blog site going which is running Wordpress - so all the usual stuff you would expect from that software. The main news site itself has no RSS at all. Why?

It seems like in some way they get it, and yet in another way they don't. Anyway, I would love them to have and RSS feed for their news - then I would follow them every day.

Google Maps the UK

2005-04-23T15:56:00.000-05:00

I've just come across Google Maps for the UK. Looks pretty good. Hopefully soon we will have the satellite photos too.

2005-03-26T15:31:00.000-06:00

three colds in three weeks. I am feeling very annoyed and very under the weather.

I got over the last cold and then two days later I have a new one.

2005-03-19T07:21:00.000-06:00

Simple Versus Neat

At work, one of the things we are doing is preparing to replace a server with a more powerful one. As with all these things, there are always issues to talk through. One of the things I have noticed is that there are some people whose decisions are always different from what I would like them to choose.

After some thinking about this, I am coming to the conclusion that when it comes to such decisions, they choose the simple answer, when I would choose the neat answer.

so, for example, this server is multinetted, which means lots of static routing. It does not need to be like that, but currently it is. I would choose changing it so that the server is on only one network - it reduces complexity in the long run. My decision makers would chose the status quo - probably because it is the easy answer.

2005-03-01T17:03:00.000-06:00

At work, this morning, I was going to get a coffee - as I usually do. To get to the canteen, I must walk through the lobby. Very often the lobby has stands with the latest thing that they are promoting is being pushed - I usually ignore these things.

Well, today, it was a bunch of people who were getting anonymous input on how well the organisation is communicating, and seeking ideas on how it could be done better. A whole stream of stuff went through my head: Cluetrain, RSS, all sorts of stuff. The thing is, I could not think of anything practical that did not make me sound like Mr Miagi from Karate Kid.

One of the things I noticed straight away was the fact that all the idea that were on the ideas board were top down ideas. I was hoping to see more bottom up stuff. The prospect excited me, but I was unable to provide anything that I felt would not be dismissed.

So, tonight, I am washing the dishes and listening to Lawrence Lessig. He talks about the innovation commons and the creative commons. He gives a description of the internet as an "end to end network" which is reminiscent of the "World of Ends". But it got me thinking again.

Should the principle of the end to end network apply to corporate networks too? Is it fair to say that the act of limiting what people can do on their corporate desktops through security policies, etc, restricting their ability to innovate? Lots of questions floating around my head.

Tip Trip

2005-02-27T08:46:00.000-06:00

We have just come back from the tip.

I dumped a load of old computers. If they had worked, then the combined computing power of them all would have been less than my 1GHz laptop. The monitor from my first ever PC was dumped too.

2005-02-06T15:10:00.000-06:00

Darn!

According to the BBC, " Sir Paul vows 'no Janet' repeat".

It's just a shame the Paul McCartney is too nice a guy to have not given a smart answer to the journalist who asked him that question in the first place.

beagle extra

2005-02-05T15:55:00.000-06:00

I left my laptop with Beagle running for a few hours. When I cam e back, beagled had gobbled up all the memory it could possibly find. The machine ran like a dog.

So, as an experiment, I have edited the shell script that starts the daemon off, and taken out the --debug option. Best seems to run a lot faster now too. Lets see if it continues to eat up resources.

Beagle

2005-02-05T08:01:00.000-06:00

I really like beagle - Beagle is cool.

It takes a bit to install - you really need to go through the steps outlined in the wiki. But it does work quite well. It still is a bit ropey, and it can miss things out, but it is shaping up to be a very exciting product.

There are features I have not enabled yet, like the g-streaner stuff, and the network awareness (I think it will go and search Google for you). So far it can see my evolution stuff, and my aggregated news/blogs in liferia, my gaim chat logs, and my ordinary files. Somehow, it won't search my xchat logs, which is a real shame. Once I get the epiphany extensions compiled, then my browsing history and my bookmarks will be included too. I think it will soon be a really nice and useful desktop search tool.

Use it or lose it

2004-11-12T16:37:00.000-06:00

When I was on my usual lunch-time walk today, I heard a couple of women talking in Czech. It's always good to hear a language you recognise.

What it did bring home to me, though, is how much of it I have forgotten. I didn't know much to start with, and it has nearly all gone now. It just goes to show how quickly you forget things if you do not make use of them.

Smoking in public places

2004-11-12T16:29:00.000-06:00

The Scottish Parliament is looking at banning smoking in public places. Check out a BBC article here. So, by next spring, it may be law. Not a bad thing in my view.

I'm sure it won't stop those who still smoke on buses, and those who think it is their god given right to smoke wherever and whenever they please. I don't think that even lung cancer will stop them.

First Post

2004-09-18T16:56:00.000-05:00

Hi,

First post on this blog. Well, what more can I say?