15June2008
Posted by Christopher under: Linux & Open Source.
No Monkey Dance … yet … but this is the closest you’ll get.
Greg Kroah Hartman gives an excellent talk on the development processes, contributors etc. to the Linux kernel. There’s some really stirring stuff in there, particularly the page referring to changes that have gone into 2.6.26 - you can’t really make out the individual items but its kind of awesome all the same.
The kernel has always held a special fascination for me and I harbour a slightly childish ambition to contribute a single patch to the Linux kernel. Given that a Google employee has contributed seven spelling fixes, maybe I might just be able to fulfill it. :)
24May2008
Posted by Christopher under: Linux & Open Source.
When videoing people for use in marketing videos, zooming in and out, moving the camera about randomly and putting people in front who talk in monotone only serves to make the viewer seasick and sleepy. Please stop it.
Exhibit number one. Bad.
Exhibit number two. A bit better.
Exhibit number three. - (OGG) Awesome.
24May2008
Posted by Christopher under: Linux & Open Source.
So of course I wanted to watch carpet tube for the 20th time after installing Fedora 9. But couldn’t. Firefox 3 beta 5 ships with Fedora 9 but the built in flash installer doesn’t work for $REASON. After futzing around with swfdec (interesting results but not _quite_ ready, qv. ath5k) I headed back to the proprietary realm. Post rpm install, video worked, just not sound. Fiddled, poked, temporarily blamed pulseaudio. Sorry Mr Poettering. Googled, hit this then installed libflashsupport. Then discovered Flash 10 is on the horizon with support for the aforementioned pulseaudio etc.
I don’t even need to browse Fedora-devel to read the latest round of:
“Why do we ship borkened Fedora, I want puppies plz k thnx”.
For a good reply of why not I direct you to Yaakov Nemoy’s take.
23May2008
Posted by Christopher under: Linux & Open Source.
So …. NetworkManager in Fedora 9. Its been fascinating to watch the progression of this through subsequent releases. It was unusable in Fedora 7, intermittent in Fedora 8 so I was keen to see what had changed. Static IP addressing but most importantly, support for 3G/HSDPA modems such as the huwaei e220, of which I have one through work.
This works, out of the box. So well, in fact, that I use it in preference to my house WLAN when ath5k eventually grinds to a halt. As in:
Fedora experience: Plug in modem, wait 5 seconds, use internet.
Windows experience: Plug in modem. Wait for drive to mount. Wait for hardware detection to complete. Get confused when Windows says it is installed a CD-ROM drive. Run through software installation (must be Administrator to do this). Load up software. Watch as software declares SIM to be invalid. Restart software. Use internet.
That’s not the end of the tale though dear readers. I have an itouch dual mobile phone. On Fedora 8 when connected via USB the system speaker emits a squawk, prints a kernel bug to systems logs and charges. On Fedora 9 it identifies it as a networking device and makes it available for connection.
You mean I don’t have to type:
sudo iwconfig wlan0 essid “My Home Lan” anymore?
13April2008
Posted by Christopher under: Linux & Open Source.
[chris@stig ~]$ history|awk ‘{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] ” ” i}}’|sort -rn|head
170 ls
119 cd
72 rpmbuild
72 emacs
58 less
52 diff
42 sudo
32 ssh
29 exit
28 rm
13April2008
Posted by Christopher under: Family & Friends; House; Linux & Open Source; Travel & Leisure; White Noise.
Sometimes people conspire to make you feel like you live in a nation of Very Bad People.
Incident One - A few days ago the house was broken into. I was away visiting older brother and so the house must have looked deserted. Said intruder got a surprise when younger brother greeted him when he walked into his room at around 11pm. He left taking with him one of my old mobile phones and leaving us with a hefty bill to replace the windows frame he had used as his entrance.
Incident Two - I was involved in a minor collision (my fault entirely) a week or so ago. I have received a letter claiming personal injury and GBP £1k plus in damages. Err, no.
Incident Three - Two snotty emails at work, one sent late Friday, just in time for the weekend. Thanks!
Not great. Still, here’s the bright side.
Wordpress 2.5 (on which this blog is written) is awesome. Upgrade was a cinch too.
Metal Michael continues his awesome adventures and I continue my persual of travel sites.
Tomorrow is another day.
26March2008
Posted by Christopher under: Linux & Open Source.
For those who haven’t had the pleasure, one of the great things about running linux is that all your software sits in (pretty much) one place. This is called a repository and new in Fedora 9 is a bit of software that, for the first time, paves the way for an identical package management frontend across all distributions. Its called PackageKit and here are some rather nice screenshots
In other news it isn’t often this happens but when it does its a shock:
24March2008
Posted by Christopher under: Linux & Open Source; Travel & Leisure.
Spent most of the day prodding around in various languages, mainly c++ and python and submitting various trivial patches. I’m getting more comfortable with light tinkering and patch-submission, though the level of feedback varies from project to project. I’ve get to receive any “Argh, that makes my eyes bleed!” responses though. :)
Easter egg count ran to 3 in the end so am content to have had a glutton-free season. There’s snow on the ground outside and due to lack of youngest brother for work transport and lack of car insurance I am once again taking to the cold steel rails of doom to get me to Sheffield tomorrow!
11March2008
Posted by Christopher under: Linux & Open Source.
So today I had to call Microsoft. Except it wasn’t Microsoft it was an automated voice as I tried to activate 5 additional client licenses for a copy of Windows Server 2003. No internet access so it had to be telephone. Windows Server comes with 5 CALs (Client Access Licenses) which allows 5 clients to connect, no more. Some software folks were running their fancy stuff which uses Windows file and print sharing to talk to the server app which ran, unsurprisingly, on the server. Only it stopped when the sixth PC tried to connect - this happened to be the PC which was being used to demo the software to the client. I have to drop everything and add in the 5 CALs. Only when I request a text of the activation code it doesn’t arrive. I wait and still nothing. So I call the number again. After refusing to enter any numbers on my phone I’m eventually transferred to a CSR, somewhere in Asia. I’m not racist - I just have difficulty understanding the numbers he is reading back to me - there is about 40 of them.
Eventually I have the key and the CALs are added, everything starts working and we’re happy. I’d like to note at this point that a Linux-based PBX with 7 telephone extensions took less than two hours to set up. This is an entire telephone exchange. I have then spent two days dealing with seven Windows clients and two servers, activating this, uninstalling cruft and agreeing to that. For $DEITY’s sake Microsoft, get with the program.
I got the activation code text five hours later. This was not a network issue either - The Girl had texted me to let me know she was in A&E. Die, foul beast of Redmond, just die already.
10March2008
Posted by Christopher under: Linux & Open Source.
You can read the horrifically long release notes here. We are still running an old svn checkout from ATrpms at home at the moment but I will update on my return. It really is a most incredible piece of Free software.
