Archive for the 'General' Category

Hello

Published
by
Kirrus
on August 20, 2008
in General
. 0 Comments

Sorry for the large gap in my posting. I’ve just moved to London and whilst my work is internet-related, did not feel it right for me to use the office PCs & net connection to blog, whilst I await a broadband service to be connected at home :)

I do like to keep some separation between home and work.

Anyway, I finally signed out the office 3G USB stick, so that I can have internet access at home. (To check it works, when I go on-call this weekend and get woken up at stupid hours in the morning when servers go down, because trust me. They will. Of course. That is the only reason. Being able to blog again is only a happy side effect. *ahem* ;) )

So far, it seems to work ok. I’ve not had any problems really, apart from having to add a new section in my firewall configuration so that the relevant holes will be opened in my laptop’s defence. If you’re interested (comment) I’ll post the version of the stick we’ve got, and how to make it work in Hardy.

Also, this connection is of course, compressed like nothing by Vodaphone. So much so that images coming down look… well very bad. Anyway, as most of what I do online is text based, I’m not crying too much. Just one question, for those of you with 3G compressed data-sticks: Is the upstream also compressed to corruption? I’m asking, as I have a set of images from my camera, that I really should look at uploading, but I don’t want them to be compressed on the way to flikr, or this site.

Right. Its late, and I want to go to bed. Night all :)

Time, privacy and its lack thereof

Published
by
Kirrus
on July 7, 2008
in General and Internet
. 0 Comments

Over the weekend I watched “V for Vendetta”. Its come up recently in a forum I frequent, specifically the quote at the beginning - about ideas being impossible to kill.

Its wrong.

Ideas can be killed. Eventually. It takes time, patience, and willingness on the part of those whose minds you are changing.

I wonder, do you ever worry about this country? (I’m talking to the Brits here. Sorry everyone else, this post is aimed at the UK, our laws and situation though you may find parallels about where you live.) We have a government that (almost) no-one likes. We have a leader, who at best could be termed ignorant. At worst a devious schemer.

Not worked out what I’m talking about yet? This is what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the erosion of our privacy. I’m talking about the surveillance state we are in. Do you even know what powers our oh so wonderful government has over us now? Read some of the above links. Heck even the Information Commissioner, the guy supposed to be looking after our privacy as relating to computers is saying its here!

I’ve been reading all these news items one by one, slowly, over a period of the three or so years that I’ve been watching and reading all articles that come up in BBC News’s tech section. As I’ve read them one by one, and not put them together, I haven’t worried too much. Till now. Apart, each are only merely slightly worrying. Together, we’ve got a problem. If you’ve not already, I recommend you now go and watch “V for Vendetta“, and then read “The Traveller“. Then continue reading below the line.

———————————————————————————-

You think the technologies to create this don’t exist? As someone who sits on the edge (or maybe inside) of geek-dom, I can say with knowledge and certainty, they do. We could be living in George Orwell’s 1984’s level of observation in a simple matter of 6 months. Heck, if you’re in London, you’re probably already carrying at least one unique ID tracker, most of which can be read remotely at 30 feet (or more). Your RFID Oyster card. Your mobile phone. Your RFID chipped passport. Your RFID credit/debit card.

Don’t believe me? Read up on RFID and RFID skimming.

Literally, all we have to do now is wait, as our last safeguards are removed or bypassed, and before too long all it will take to bring us to the societies depicted in “1984″, “V for Vendetta” and “The Traveller” is one crack pot power maniac in government. Need I mention, I don’t have a high opinion of Gordon Brown?

Its not as if it hasn’t happened before in history, one man taking over a democratic country and turning it into a dictatorship. But much worse, as in our country is all the tools needed to *keep* our country in a dictatorship and aid its passage to one.

Now, I can say all this, as we’re not there yet. However, I see the day fast approaching when I would be arrested for what I have written here, and asked to relinquish my encryption key’s pass phrase. (You’ll have to torture me before that happens.)

Someone once told me, that we’d never get to the point where the EU constitution comes into play. The treaty that was ratified by the UK merely a few weeks ago, was basically the EU constitution.

I have heard many times, “I’ve got nothing to hide”. No, not yet. Until you have to hide your sexuality. Your Race. Your religious beliefs. Your musical preferences. Your secrets.

I leave you with a link and this old, poem. How long before it becomes relevant once more?

=======================

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn’t a Jew.

When they came for me,

there was no one left to speak out.

=======================

Click Here to talk to others worried about this

Want to know more? Click the image.

Want to fight? Click the image.

Will you remain silent?

Hancock, Books and photographs

Published
by
Kirrus
on July 5, 2008
in General and Reading
. 2 Comments

Hancock

I went and saw this film with my brother and a couple of mates today. Was good, up to a point. Certainly, Will Smith is getting better - he appeared to play the part flawlessly, at a level I’ve not seen him act at before.

My one, slight moan, is that they included a brief, guarded and pointless sex scene. I guess, it *may* have been included to make a point, but it felt more like a box-tick exercise than anything else. Apart from that, an enjoyable way to while away a bit of time.

Books

Stack of booksBooks, I finished a Colin Forbes book this week. Awful. I had to put it down mid-way, and read a completely different book as a break before I picked up again. It felt so rough! And to think, I used to like his books. Fit his usual formula to a T, felt contrived, with a few instances of what PBEM RPG players call “SuperHero Syndrome“. In a Matthew Reily book, I can forgive SuperHero syndrome: he does it with such flair! However, it is not forgiveable in a Colin Forbes book. Which is a shame.

I started to read a Clive Cussler book “Dark Watch” a few weeks back. I got half way through, an OK book, till I got to a line of pure placement advertisement, which put me off completely and utterly. Here’s an extract. (For the copyright fiends out there, this is fair use!)

“Juan found a parking spot a few blocks from the court and spent the next two hours walking the neighborhood, sipping black coffee from a Starbucks. He felt he should have bought his coffee from a local vendor instead of an international franchise, but it had been months since he’d had a taste of his favourite brew. He made a mental note to contact the company’s Seattle headquarters and see if it was possible to buy their special equipment for the Oregon.” [Oregon is the wet-merc ship he captains.]

Oh dear. What an abysmal excuse for an advert. At the very least, it could have been subtle! Stopping at “it had been months..” would have been fine. I have stopped reading the book. I’ll finish it sometime, but not yet. When I’m not so irritated at that advert. At least on the web, it is generally fairly easy to spot, and ignore, them. A bit harder to when you’re engrossed in a story.

Photographs

I’ve been trying to use F-Spot on my laptop to manage photos. Unfortionately, it has a nasty habit of freezing my laptop totally, when I click “OK” on certain dialog boxes. Quite frustrating. So, another question for those reading, what image management software would you recommend ? It has to run nativly on Ubuntu Hardy, but apart from that, pick whatever you like (including web-software). I have a large collection of photos (my camera’s counter recently went over the 1,000 mark), which I want to tag and organise. An effective search function is a must, so that I can add relevant photos to my blogs from my collections.

Books going free!

Published
by
Kirrus
on June 22, 2008
in General and Reading
. 0 Comments

Hello all. I seem to be gaining books at an alarming rate, what with my current commute. So, I am going to give you first refusal (before I put these up on Bookmooch) on two sets of Elizabeth Moon books. Both of which I would love to be able to keep, but which I don’t have the space to.

So without further ado, I am offering these books to the first person who emails/comments for them. Full postal addresses if you please, UK preferred, but I will send to the US if asked.

The Serrano Legacy - 3 compendiums (paperback)

Vatta’s War - 5 books (paperback)

I also have Kevin J Anderson’s the Saga of the Seven suns, collection or close only (All 7 books. Its big. I live near London. Email for more info)

James Patterson’s Four Blind Mice. As this came from the US, I’d be quite happy to ship it back there.

My Email address is: kirrus@kirrus.co.uk

In unrelated stuff, I let my 5-a-day launchpad group subscription expire this weekend. Boy, it doesn’t half nag you! I got an email every day for _7_ days, saying “you’ll get one more email, when its expired”. Annoying by half. Unfortionatly with my nasty commute, I’ve not got the energy required for triage :(

Irony

Published
by
Kirrus
on June 13, 2008
in General
. 4 Comments

Now, this is what I call irony.

Currently, I’m going past this poster every time I go through a certain underground station.

(Cookie for the first person who guesses which station *).

As you can see, its an advert for the John Twelve Hawks book “The Dark River”, which apart from being a good read, contains a insightful set of images about our current existence in a surveillance state.


Almost directly opposite this poster, almost staring at it, is this delightful example of exactly that surveillance state:

In other news, I still think that Daviey (of  Ubuntu-UK Podcast, amongst other achievements, fame) sounds almost like one of the London Victoria Tube station announcers. Something in the inflection of the voice…

Work is going well. I’m quite tired and haven’t had much time spare to do much I like. I’m coming to realise that I can’t afford to run a car, and live close to work. Great. Sell the car, or put up with 2 to 2 and a half hour commute. Wonderful.

Lazyweb, whats your advice?

* Note, cookie is entirely virtual and is a figment of our collective imaginations.
As long as you don't actually want to look at it, feel it or eat it, its exists and can be won...

Trains

Published
by
Kirrus
on May 28, 2008
in General
. 2 Comments

I’ve been running around on the Train & Underground system recently for my daily commute into work. (Currently 2 1/2 hours each way… I need to move closer ;))

Firstly, I much prefer Welsh trains. They have a conductor, who’s nice. The best experience I’ve had of a train in Wales, was of the conductor holding the train a couple of seconds to allow the ticket machine to finish processing my debit card and spit out my tickets. The best experience I’ve had in England, was a train that was on time.

I’ve not had a bad experience in Wales, but in England, I was once accosted by 5 toughs, whilst on the train and told to hand them my ticket. At this point I was travelling on a “Permit to Travel”, as there’s no ticket machine or office at my starting station. From the outset, they made me feel like I was a criminal. They phased me enough that I managed to miss my stop. I was late to work that day. Thanks, Southern Trains.

Last week, I had the lovely experience on the Tube, of having a guy sitting next to me lean across/against the seat divider enough that I couldn’t avoid him touching me. I find human contact uncomfortable in the extreeme unless I’m expecting it and I know whom its from well.

The photo is one I dug out of my archive. I will upload the full-size version to my flikr account if requested.

Another Meme

Published
by
Kirrus
on May 16, 2008
in General
. 0 Comments

Stolen from http://dannimatzk.co.uk/?p=245

1. What time did you get up this morning?
7:20 am

2. Diamonds or pearls?
Diamonds

3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema?
Iron Man.

4. Favourite TV show?
Firefly, Startrek, Doctor Who.

5. What do you usually have for breakfast?
Cereal

6. What is your middle name?
Paul

7. What food do you dislike?
Raw tomatoes.

8. What is your favourite CD at the moment?
ZOEgirl - room to breathe.

9. Favourite sandwich?
Chicken, sweetcorn and mayonnaise.

10. What characteristic do you despise?
Selfishness

11. Favourite item of clothing?
Jumpers.

12. If you could go anywhere in the world on holiday, where would it be?
Germany

13. What colour is your bathroom?
White

14. Do you make friends easily?
No

15. Where would you retire to?
Somewhere warm.

16. What was your most recent memorable birthday?
21st

17. Favourite sport to watch?
Snooker.

18. How many towns have you lived in?
Three

19. How many do you think will send this back?
0

20. What’s on your bedroom floor right now?
Books. Wires. Multigangs. Some clothes. Bag of Books. Some computer parts.

21. Favourite saying?
Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time. Terry Pratchet - The Hogfather

22. When is your birthday?
1987

23. Are you a morning person or a night person?
Night.

24. What is your shoe size?
Size seven and a half

25. Pets?
none

26. Any new and exciting news you’d like to share with us?
I’ve managed to process one photo out of the nine I wanted to.

27. What did you want to be when you were little?
A firefighter.

28. Which talent would you most like to have?
To be able to pick up different languages quickly.

29. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
Aye.

30. What is your favourite flower?
Bluebells.

31. What is a day on the calendar you are looking forward to?
Monday 19th. End of Phase 3 of a project we’re working on at work.

32. What colour are your eyes?
Brown.

33. What was your favourite toy as a child?
Woofy. A teddy. Quite small and fragile. Still got it, somewhere, although its falling apart.

34. Summer or winter?
Summer. I hate the cold.

35. Hugs or kisses?
Hugs.

36. Chocolate or Vanilla?
Chocolate.

37. Do you want your friends to send this back to you?
It would be nice.

38. When was the last time you cried?
A month and a bit ago. Old memories.

39. What is under your bed?
No idea.

40. Who is the friend you have had the longest in SL?
Not played in SL.

41. What did you do last night?
Ate. Read my email. Slept.

42. Favourite smell?
Lavender.

43. What are you afraid of?
Needles. Strangers. Lots of people in a room. Not knowing where I’ll be tomorrow.

44. Plain, sweet, or salted Popcorn?
Salted.

45. How many keys on your key ring?
9.

46. How many years at your current job?
0.1 ish.

47. Do you have any scars?
One on my cheek, and one on my tummy.

48. Favourite day of the week?
Sunday.

You are quite welcome to do this, and please trackback so I can see :)

Move Complete :)

Published
by
Kirrus
on May 4, 2008
in General
. 0 Comments

My blog’s move is finally complete :)
As I said, my new RSS feed is available from http://kirrus.co.uk/feed/

With the move, my commenting system is now open, and does not require registration. Be patient for comments to be posted - the first time you post, your comment will be moderated. Also, I have a set of spam filters that may be a little too exacting; if a comment hasn’t gone up after a while feel free to contact me.

As well as the blog move to Wordpress, had all three interviews. On the final interview I was offered the job and I accepted it. I started two days after the interview (thursday). Yay! Currently, my commuting time is a total of 5 hours a day, so I’m already thinking about moving closer to the office.

Interview - I had to take a brief test, which was interesting. The first section was grammar, one of which we had to find what was wrong with “LCD Display” and “PIN number”. Later, it turned out, that the website of the company which I’m now working at has a very similar error, with “ZDR reboot”. Fun fun.

I will be working on a theme for this blog shortly - this is a stock “K2″ theme. I saw that elwoodicious is using K2, and it seems to be quite handy :) (Look at the footer for a link to info about K2)

Photographs - My memory card reader is ready and waiting next to my laptop for me to download another batch of photos from my camera, so the next post will be the best out of that batch.

Computer - I’m back on my laptop, because my new hard-drive has failed in a very similar way to the old one. I’m guessing that theres’ a problem with the PSU or SATA PCI control card.

General Update Ramble

Published
by
Kirrus
on April 25, 2008
in General
. 0 Comments

The following is a random update, covering everything from my explorations of Linux to life stuff. Feel free to skip if you don’t care :)

Hardy Release Party

Was really nice, once I’d got past my initial reluctance to go and the butterflies in my stomach as I traveled to it. I said on IRC before I left, that the first person to recognise me, would get a drink on me. Daviey failed, he was outside having a cigarette when I finally arrived. To be fair, he wasn’t on the IRC channel when I said about the free drink… I managed to get lost, walking from the tube (Embankment) on the way to the pub - asked directions three times. Had the obligatory chat with Daviey about asterisk (I like asterisk!) and some of the pros and cons of the FreePBX interface add-on. (As suggested by Popey on the mailing list. Thanks!)

I went in with Daviey, and saw Alan Pope. He was in the middle of a conversation, but was about to say “hello Kirrus” to get his free drink, when Josh (Jerichokb) popped up, and nabbed it first :). Funnily enough, we had this conversation on IRC before I left:

<jerichokb>    Kirrus: thank you in advance for the beer :) <Kirrus>       jerichokb, don't count your chickens...

Heh… I guess he can count them after all :)
I had a really nice time, which is *really* unusual for me in a room with that many people in it. (I don’t do lots of people… I normally can’t cope, and leave asap, or sit in a corner hiding…). Sad to leave at 9, but I got lost 4 times(!) on my way back to the tube station, (asking for directions each time… one guy gave me dogy ones…).  Next time I find a good map. Missed the train I was aiming for, and ended up taking the last train, got home midnight. (Yes, three hours travel. Missing the train will do that for you.)

Distro Experimentation / Hard Drive Failure

Well, my CentOS install died with my harddrive, about 2 days after my posting about it. CentOS is useable, and is quite nice, though I didn’t reinstall it when my new drive arrived. Unfortionatly, it turns out that my new drive has some bad blocks on it. Repaired the filesystem using “e2fsck -c” on the live cd, and reinstalled gutsy. Upgraded to Hardy RC. A lot of work. I’m going to have to boot back into the LiveCD sometime and check the filesystem again, to see if there’s any more corruption. If so, I’m going to have to get another Harddrive, and RMA this one. Just what I didn’t need with my dwindling savings and no job. Update:(Thanks, as always, to the Ubuntu-UK irc guys for the help and advise as I tried to repair my partitions)

Jobs

I’ve had 2 interviews so far, one at Codian, one at Canonical. I’d  really like to get the Canonical one (working in a datacentre, looking after servers), as it sounds like an enjoyable thing to do, that and giving me plenty to learn. But, I don’t think I will. (Heh - my natural state after any interview. Then getting the job is a pleasent surprise rather than a disappointment.) Millbank tower is NICE, and the commute into Vauxhall fairly simple.. I just take a slow train from a town about 3 and a half miles away… an hours walk, or 15/30 minutes cycle depending on the traffic, and which way you’re going. (To is easier. One big hill up, then mostly downhill to the station.) I’m still awaiting a reply from Canonical HR about blogging guidelines as applied to interviewees, so I won’t go into too much detail about that interview here. Suffice to say, it was interesting.
The Codian interview was by far the most difficult, I was asked a tonn of questions by three different people, over 2 hours. Decimal to binary (on a whiteboard).. I’m a bit rusty at, not having done it much before, but got there in the eventual end. Decimal to Hexadecimal, mathmatics is not my strong point, but again, got there in the end. (6E == 110).Very friendly receptionist :)
I’ve one interview/meeting left, at Positive Internet. Sounds interesting…

If you know of any Junior/Trainee Linux/Ubuntu-Based jobs in London going around, let me know.

To Do:

  • Process, upload and blog photos. Recharge camera’s battery (rarely need to do!)
  • Continue Job Hunting.
  • Look at the feasibility of moving onto a new blogging platform, but staying with my current email and domain host.
  • Hunt for jobs.
  • Bug Triage.
  • Think about applying for temp work to tide me over.
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 UK: England & Wales
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 UK: England & Wales