Today, an episode of The Gadget Show aired in which they compared PC and Mac to put on their wall of fame . I was shocked that there was no mention of Linux at all in their rundown. Here is the email I just sent to them in response to the show:-

Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:16:28 +0000
From: Martin Meredith <mez AT debian DOT org>
To: gadget.show AT northonetv DOT com
Subject: PC vs Mac Yes, you mention windows But both PC s and Mac s have the ability to run a little thing called Linux Linux is the base of an operating system that s been around for years, often
making innovations BEFORE Windows or Mac are able to. It s an Operating system that s written by the people, for the people, which
shows in the fact that there are hundreds (if not thousands) of distributions
available to download and use for FREE!!!! A large motive behind the Linux movement is the fact that it s completely free.
Both in the sense of Free Speech, and in the sense of Free Beer. You don t have to pay for it, and you can do what you like with it. Compare the above to a Mac. With a mac, you re limited to the hardware you can use, you re limited in the functionality, etc etc. Comparing to Windows, you can see the benefit of the price. Constantly upgrading windows can cost a LOT of money. Ok, Linux does have it s flaws. Some hardware isn t supported correctly, and a lot of the software you ll find on the shelves of your local shop probably won t work with it. But, nowadays, with the advent of the iPhone, and to a lesser extent, Android based Mobile Phones, people are coming to expect easily available software. Enter the package Manager. Most distributions of Linux now offer an easy way to find and install applications, and some go a step further and give you an application that makes life even easier (See attached screenshot) Linux also has the benefit that, like the Mac, the fact that it s not Windows,
and something that 90%+ of people use, it s not a target for Viruses. Add that
to the fact that it has Least Privileged Access built in (Think Windows Vista
are you sure that you want to run this program as an admin? ), and has done
since the very beginning, and it makes it one of the most secure operating
systems you can find. Linux has come along in leaps and bounds in recent years, and is surely a
competitor for any operating system out there. While it may be unfamiliar,
with the advent of new technology, it s perfectly placed. This has been shown
by the fact that until Microsoft made a sly move to relicence Windows XP for
netbooks, it was hard to find a netbook with anything but a Linux based OS on it (and all those who tried out my eeePC 701 when it was new and shiny out of the box tended to prefer what was on that than Windows!)
Regards,
Martin Meredith Freelance Writer for Future Publishing
Debian Developer http://www.debian.org/
Ubuntu Developer http://www.ubuntu.com/
Deputy IT Manager for Mobile Fun Ltd. http://www.mobilefun.co.uk/

• Christmas Songs on the Radio
• 64-bit Flash Support (edit: or lack thereof)
• Blog posts discouraging people from contributing to Debian

Freaking out the freaks on Omegle.

Random plea for free stuff. If anyone out there has any geeky stickers (or anything a bit random for a sticker) lying around, please send them to me! I d rather not put my address on the intarwebs, so please feel free to email me on martin AT sourceguru DOT net if you have something to send me, and I will happily send you out a Stamped Addressed Envelope. The stickers will be put to good use decorating my laptop Edit:- I ve just realised that sending a SASE to another country really doesn t work particularly well, different countries use different stamps after all!!!!
I m trying to think up a solution, but please let it be known that I am in the U.K., so if you re outside and want to send me stickers, you may have to help me come up with a solution for getting round the whole stamp thing!

If this product should fail in your lifetime, we will replace it at no charge. If the proeducts is damaged by aggressive music listeners sliding a rail, sliding down the emergency ramp of your aircraft, slammed in your locker, slammed in your car door, run over by a car, running into a wall, getting run out of town, mountain biking, road biking, sky diving, beating your boyfriend unmercifully, getting beat down by the man, blown up in an accidental experimentation with flammable substances or damaged in any other every day experience, it means you are living your life the way we want our product used! In these, or any other damaging events, we will replace the product for a 50% discount from retail.

Skullcandy rock! I m loving my new headphones

I m an avid reader, and normally curl up in bed at the end of a long day with a book. However, since I ve been in my current flat, I ve had a bit of a problem, as I don t like to leave a light on while I m sleeping. So, seeing as my bed is at the opposite end of the room than my light switch, and I also tend to sleep on the side furthest from the light switch, my night-time habit would be something like this:-

• Turn on light
• Walk to other side of room.
• Walk round bed
• Turn on bedside lamp
• Walk back around bed
• Walk back to light switch
• Turn off light
• Walk back to bed, and around it
• Get into bed
• Read
• Turn off bedside lamp
• Sleep

Not exactly good when you ve had a hard days work, and just want to curl up and read a book until you fall asleep. On Wednesday however, I stumbled across a range of products on the net, and ordered a remote control light switch, and also a remote to go with it. My bedtime arrangements are now:-

• Turn on light
• Walk to bed
• Get into bed
• Read
• Turn off light with remote control
• Sleep

A lot more easier! Have been playing with the remote from my office, and I think that if I were to order more switches, I d be able to turn on/off all the lights in my flat from my desk. Another neat feature about these lights? They can be programmed to use any button on any remote control! Oh, and also, The Birmingham Jam is going pretty well!

Today, I reinstalled my laptop to use a fresh install of Karmic. My laptop s one of those annoying ones that have problems, however, it seems Karmic has fixed a fair chunk of those. My wireless now works (though still only with WPA networks for some reason), I no longer have to boot with nolapic_timer (urgh!) and those annoying little niggles have gone. Also, Karmic is looking pretty swish. It s new notification icons are stylish and minimal, and the xsplash looks good. Also, I ve noticed that shut down time is drastically reduced! (2 seconds vs my old 10-15 seconds).
Boot time isn t amazing, but it s pretty nippy. I m lovin it.

There was a recent post by Martin Meredith asking about dotfile management. This inspired me to put together a simple hack which allows several operations to be carried out:

dotfile-manager update [directory]

Update the contents of the named directory to the most recent version, via "hg pull" or HTTP fetch. This could be trivially updated to allow git/subversion/CVS to be used instead. (directory defaults to ~/.dotfiles/ if not specified.)

dotfile-manager link [directory]

For each file in the named directory link _foo to ~/.foo. (directory defaults to ~/.dotfiles/ if not specified.) e.g. directory/_screenrc will be linked to from ~/.screenrc. But hostnames count too! So you can create directory/_screenrc.gold and that will be the target of ~/.screenrc on the host gold.my.flat

dotfile-manager tidy

This removes any dangling ~/.* symlinks.

dotfile-manager report

Report on any file ~/.* which isn't a symlink - those files might be added in the future.

Right now that lets me update my own dotfiles via:

dotfile-manager update ~/.dotfiles
dotfile-manager update ~/.dotfiles-private
dotfile-manager link ~/.dotfiles
dotfile-manager link ~/.dotfiles-private

It could be updated a little more, but it already supports profiles - if you assume "profile" means "input directory". To be honest it probably needs to be perlified, rather than being hoky shell script. But otherwise I can see it being useful - much more so than my existing solution which is ~/.dotfiles/fixup.sh inside my dotfiles repository. ObFilm: Forever Knight

Is there a decent dotfile manager packaged in Ubuntu/Debian? I need something that ll let me have a repository of my dotfiles and manage them easily amongst multiple locations. I ve seen a lot of homebrew implementations of something like this, I m just wondering if there s something that s worth using already out there!

The Ubuntu Global Bug Jam is just around the corner, and once again, the kind folks at the Linux Emporium have kindly offered the use of their offices to the Ubuntu UK team. Last time, we focused on bugs, and this time it s only slightly different. Instead of it being a Bug Jam it s just going to be a Jam . There will be people on hand to talk to about Bug Triaging, packaging, translating (and I hope we ll get the whole of Ubuntu translated into English by the end of the Jam), and anything else you can think of. So, if you re interested in helping make Ubuntu a better distro, and live in (or can travel to) the Birmingham Area in the UK, then you re welcome to come along. The Jam is on the 2nd-4th October, and we ll be around on all three days. If you need more info, please feel free to email me on <mez AT ubuntu DOT com>. Last year we had a great time, with refreshments (including beer) provided. Juggling penguins, and one person sleeping underneath the conference room table overnight. Hopefully we ll also have the live Video Streams up and running again for anyone who can t make it (or other Ubuntu Jams) to join in with! You can also find some blog posts about our last bug jam

So, anyone watching the show was actually pretty much told (although indirectly) how it was done. (Potential spoilers see full post for my take) Ok, the image with the flashing and the stuff, pretty noticable. From what I know of the subject, it was meant to be. What noone seems to have mentioned was the fact that as it flashed, there was a brief tone. I believe that the image wasn t meant to actually be subliminal as he mentioned, subliminal images are invisible . It was meant to be noticed, but only to assosciate the tone with the image. I also feel that the video did play a part. From what I can tell, an image (or text) was over/underlayed over the image of the rotating (fuzzy) lines, but had a very high transparency. This meant, that like the UV pen, you couldn t pick up the image conciously, but you could unconciously. (UV pens leave a small residue behind that makes visible light reflect slightly differently. Try it, get a UV pen and write on a shiny surface. (like the back of a playing card). Looking head on at it, you don t notice, but if you tilt the card, you can see the writing at some angles the mind subconciously picks this up). Tie this in with things like the wording used before the video, the trailers, and hidden wording/images throughout the show, and you have your whole thing. No sublimilal messages were used, but there were many uses of whatever that term that he used was (SVP?)

After long deliberation (a good few months!), I today came to the decision that I no longer felt that I could be part of the Ubuntu IRC Team. I have felt for a long time that the Ubuntu IRC team has become an elitist crowd, with a very cliquey inner circle, and those who are not in the inner circle being treated on multiple levels like second class citizens. There are a lot of things that have pushed me to make this decision, and I ve not made it lightly. I ve voiced my concerns to the IRC Council previously, (via individual emails), and had no response. I don t see the situation getting any better. In fact, more and more, I see it getting worse. I know that I m not the only person who s thinking this way, though I may be one of the only ones that feels that I need to lay down my cinnamon roll. I ve discussed these issues on multiple occassions with various members of the community (both in and out of the team), and with people linked to the Ubuntu IRC community in one way or another (Debian Developers, Freenode Staff, etc etc). There are also other people who ve come out of the woodwork after I posted my resignation. Within minutes of doing so, one member forwarded my mail onto the community council, and another replied with his thoughts and feelings regarding the matter. I m glad to see that there are other people out there who ve seen what I ve seen, and like me, also dislike it. I will however, retain my @ in #ubuntu-uk. This is a channel I participate regularly in, and the ops there are chosen by the LoCo Team, rather than the IRC council.

My latest blog post about PPA Keys has had a few comments already. Having just returned from visiting my parents, I ve noticed an email asking me to approve a Pingback. The pingback was to a Portuguese site which had taken my post and written it into a tutorial. I ve got to say, my portuguese may not be up to scratch, but it s obvious that this is a well written tutorial. I m very impressed by this site, and the way that they ve written, and illustrated this tutorial. All I can say is, great site Claudio! Keep up the good work! Something like this site in English would be an asset to the ubuntu community. It s well thought out, and well written

After reading Alan Pope s recent post on installing GPG keys for PPAs easily, I thought I d have a bit of a hack around. Personally, I regularly add PPAs to my system, whether it be for Chromium Daily Builds, Bazaar, Gwibber, or anything else. I ve found the most annoying thing is the installation of the GPG keys. Now, I wouldn t reccomend this for everyone, but, for some, it might be exactly what you ve been looking for. Here s what I did:- Firstly, I saved the Script that Alan linked to as /usr/local/bin/ppakeys and chmod d it to 755. I then created a new file, /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/05ppa containing the following line

APT::Update::Pre-Invoke "if [ -x /usr/local/bin/ppakeys ]; then /usr/local/bin/ppakeys; fi ; ;

Now, every time I do a sudo apt-get update - it ll check for new keys that I need, and install them as neccessary. Magic! <edit> Please make sure the quotes are correct if you copy and paste this!</edit>

So, SHA-1 has potential exploits, but you know what? I only use it for signing plain text things. Email, change files I ve no reason to use it for encryption, as I don t encrypt things Surely, if anyone is going to make something that collides with a valid signature of mine, it s going to either a) be noticable to the person reading it (random characters in an email?) or b) not be processable by whatever automated sytem is using it. I ve yet to hear of any exploit that could affect the way I use SHA-1 in a meaningful way. Ok, yes, I m not going to be using it to hash passwords in future (well, GPG uses it to hash passwords, but generally, to be able to crack that, someone would have to have my secret key anyway, which I would count as being compromised!) If someone can give me a real world example of how this can be used against me, I might go out of my way to replace my key, but for now, I don t see the need. Ok, I might take the next time I meet up with a fellow Debian Developer as a chance to replace my key, but I m not going to go out of my way to do so (as I had to for getting my key signed by my first Debian/Ubuntu Developer in the first place)

When Kubuntu switched to KDE4 as it s main desktop, I was disheartened. KDE 4, at the time was just, well, pretty unusable for me. It kept crashing, I couldn t do the things that I wanted to, and I spent more time fighting with KDE than I did actually doing work. After about a week, I d had enough, and I switched to Gnome. Now, a lot of people are probably going to respond to this with Gnome vs KDE flames, but let me explain my viewpoint on the whole Desktop Environment war I prefer KDE, but if a desktop will let me do the work I need to do without getting in my way and causing issues, then I can learn to use it. The above is possibly the reason that I can get along ok with Windows XP, but if I have to use Vista, I ll end up wanting to throw the machine out of the window. So, for possibly the last year or so (I m not too sure on the timescale!) I ve been using Gnome in Ubuntu, and I must say, I ve liked it. the fact that I can login, and instantly get access to my servers without having to type in my SSH key password (yes, insecure I know!), and that everything seems to integrate in a nice way, well.. it s been fun. But still, my heart lies with KDE, and I ve been flipping back to it to see how KDE4 is coming along on a regular basis. So far, I ve seen it gradually improving, and well, it looks damned sexy to be honest, but there were a few things that I felt it was missing. The ability to have multiple rows of apps on the task switcher was a big one for me. I generally have a lot of windows open, and I don t like the Grouping functionality. So when I get more than a few apps open, I could only see the icons. That s been fixed in KDE4.2, and it does it in a nicer way than Gnome does it (only switching to two rows once there are a certain amount of windows open. Next on the list is the whole password management thing. Gnome does a GREAT job at this. I login, and it unlocks the default keyring, sets up the SSH agent, adds my key, unlocking it from the keyring, and I don t have to do anything but login with my normal user and password (though I intend to switch that to biometric login once I can be bothered to setup the fingerprint reader). I ve fixed that little issue (well, for SSH) by setting up an autostart script using ksshaskpass to add my SSH key when I login. So far, KDE seems pretty usable for me now, but then, I m quite happy to plod along on my Laptop and try things out. I m feeling a bit lost with all the new functionality, and wishing that the Ubuntu Gnome Notifications (from pidgin, which I use as my IM client) didn t look so ugly in the new sexy KDE Desktop (in fact, if anyone knows a way to get pidgin to use the Jaunty style notifications in KDE, let me know, as they d fit in quite well under the new KDE look :D) - I d like to see some sort of common ground for notifications across the desktops, but who knows when that s going to happen! I ll also try using it at work, if I can use it there without it getting in the way, then I will happily switch back permanently, but that s the ultimate test. I m pretty sure that KDE 4 will be usable for me soon, and I ll let you know if that s now

Ok, so at work, pretty much the whole company uses Windows, of some sort. The web team, however, are pretty adamant that they use the best tools available for them, and we use Ubuntu because of this (because it s the easiest option that we all have the same distro, and as long as it s Linux, we don t mind) Anyway, at the moment we re working through the process of moving all our internal business applications from Visual Basic.NET (urgh!) to PHP + a web based app. The Product Owner for this is one of the bosses, who currently uses Windows Vista. He has, however, seen us all using Ubuntu and it s got him interested in using it. He s said that he wants to try using Ubuntu, and see whether he can get his work done on that, and slowly transition to it, as obviously, he needs to be able to use Windows for the .NET stuff (which sadly, doesn t work well under WINE). So, we set him up a Virtual Machine, and he got to grips with what he was doing, great. Except for the fact that he had to allocate memory to it, switching back and forth between windows and Ubuntu was a pain. He eventually gave up on this idea, and got a spare machine, a spare monitor, and set it up next to his machine. Still, however, it was a bit of a pain, he d have to switch position on his desk, start using a different keyboard and mouse, and i was all a bit of hassle. Recently, we ve gotten a big screen (which isn t actually that big!) for the Web Team to monitor the servers, our order download service, etc etc. We were showing our manager some of the stuff we could do with it, and he asked the question So, how do you control it - to which my response was to move my mouse off of the edge of my screen, and onto the big screen. So is that a third monitor? he asked. No I replied, it s another machine. Enter Synergy So this is the point where I explained to our manager exactly what synergy is. Trying to explain it however, is a bit of a hassle, so I ll try my best here. Synergy is an application that allows you to control another machine s keyboard and mouse from your own PC. It s a bit of a mix between a KVM switch, and Remote Desktop, but it doesn t require extra hardware, and you dont have to relay the video across the network to show it on your screen too. At this point, our boss got a glint in his eye Does it work in Windows? he asked. At this point, I didn t realise that he had a seperate machine for Ubuntu. I told him it did anyway, but I wasn t too sure whether it worked with Vista Lets give it a go anyway So we went over to his machine, and I installed quicksynergy on his ubuntu box, while he downloaded the Windows installer for Synergy. 5 minutes later, he was grinning like a maniac as he moved his mouse from one machine to another. Now he s happily using Ubuntu without any hassle, it s just a third screen to him - with different stuff on it. I think the moral here is, there are different ways to get people to be able to use Linux, and Synergy is one of those great tools that enable people to use Linux without having all the hassle that comes with switching over. I think also, a quote from m manager sums it up.

This is one of the best things I ve seen all year. I thought it d take forever to setup, but it was so quick. I can be so much more productive now

I hope that this will be one of the turning points for my manager, and we ll have another convert by the end of the year

Ok, so, today, I started using vim. I ve never really had the time before to learn how to use it. I think the most I d learned before today was just how to get out of vim if I ever accidentally got into it. Now, however, I m quite happy to do basic editing of files with it. I ve got to say, I m impressed with it s code highlighting features. I hope to eventually switch to vim permanently, but I m not that confident with it yet - my first command was nano ~/.vimrc *chuckles* Anyway, next comes cherokee. I m actually loving this webserver. It s so simplistic, yet so powerful, and it s admin interface is a dream. If anyone out there is interested in having a lightweight server, have a look at cherokee before you go and install lighttpd ! The most exciting new thing that I ve been using of late is etckeeper. (ok, maybe exciting isn t the word - but I like it!). This hooks into a RCS and basically keeps a track of your /etc/ folder. It will automagically commit changes made to it when using apt-get (or similar) and I ve actually set mine up to have bound branches. Meaning that my /etc/ is kept on a remote server. All my machines are now using etckeeper (with the exception of the eeePC, which is tucked away in a corner with a network lead plugged into the back, being used as a playground machine) and I m happy that if I ever have a hard disk crash, I can always get my configuration back from my server in a simple manner (which is massively useful for stuff like X). Anyway, just some stuff I ve been playing with of late. It seems I m switching more and more to the command line
Maybe I should start using w3m instead of Firefox?

So, fanatical readers of my blog (are there any?) may remember a long time back that I got bored and wrote a little script that amused me. While testing something out yesterday, I needed to find a domain that I wasn t using in production so I could test on it. I stumbled across Cheese Nibbles which had a lovely We ll be back with something cool soon message on it. So, I did my tests, and they worked. Everything s good. I d actually forgotten what was on Cheese Nibbles in the first place, so I started rooting round in the code. I found the old site, and I decided to resurrect it. I posted in a couple of IRC channels, to see if other people found the site amusing, and got the following back in response

<Daviey> neat
<Daviey> Mez: rss feed needed
<Mez> Daviey: *chuckles*
<Mez> but then it d be twitter
<Daviey> sure, but a shared account
<Daviey> Or.. make it twitter when changed

So, well, thanks to Dave Walker s suggestion, I did a quick google, and within 6 minutes, had it working. You can find the twitter feed at http://twitter.com/cheesenibbles Also, over the last couple of weeks I ve been working with Zeth from my local LUG (and the tech, who shall remain anonymous, like The Stig ) on a podcast, which we are, for now calling The Podcast (imaginative I know). I was interviewed in the first podcast (which Zeth did alone, and I (apparently) provided the comedy element for) and presented with Zeth for the second one. Also, as the second one was recorded during the Ubuntu Global Bug Jam, of which I was running one of the venues, I actually allowed myself to be interviewed for it aswell. The podcast is very rough around the edges at the moment, and well, we haven t got a website, or an RSS feed yet, but you can find the show notes here, and download the podcast episode in either MP3 Format, or OGG Format All comments/thoughts/suggestions welcome!

Now, It s probably obvious to anyone reading this blog what my thoughts on Open Source and Licencing are, so I won t go into that. However, I ve recently found a new author, who I m liking a LOT. His name is Cory Doctorow, and after reading some of his short stories, I thought I d look into his longer stuff. As I ve mentioned before, I m a fan of feedbooks.com - and, as an author who s releasing his works under a Creative Commons licence, his stuff is also there. I started reading one of his books called Little Brother (http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2466). I read the intro, and I was hooked. It s kind of hard to explain what I mean, so I d suggest if you re interested, goto the link above, and click on the PDF link, then read pages 4 through 12 (the introduction/foreword to the book) and you ll see what I mean. I ll probably review the book once I ve finished it (curled up in bed with my trusty eeePC), but from what I ve read, and that intro, Cory Doctorow is fast becoming one of my favourite authors. You can find more about Cory Doctorow, and his works at http://craphound.com/