UK Linux User Groups

Calvin once thought that his life would seem more interesting with a musical score and a laugh track. Today my son (who is not called Calvin, but does - by complete lack of coincidence - have a stuffed companion called Hobbes) decided that his life needed subtitles (or closed captions for non-UK readers). Here is an example of this.

To be fair, his handwriting has massively improved recently, and he is justifiably proud of this. He used to have to be asked to do any form of writing. Tonight we had to ask him to stop! :)

The First Weekend In February is when chess fanatics from all over England gather for the Kidlington Chess Congress. Unlike last year I had had much more practice and felt more confident of doing well this time.

Last year I played four games: I drew three and lost one. Not great, but OK for not having played competitively for so long.

This year I was playing the the Under-145 tournament: my last posted grade in the 1990’s was 139 and my performance last year was equivalent to about 130, so this seems reasonable. In fact, this year all of my opponents had grades in the 130s.

• Round One: As Black I managed to get a mediocre position out of the opening. I was definitely a little worse when my opponent made a mistake which meant he had to give up his Queen for a Rook and Bishop. This was good for me but, ultimately, the placing of the remaining pawns and accurate defence by my opponent meant that the game ended in a Draw. Score 0.5 out of 1.
• Round Two: As last year, I took this round (Saturday afternoon) as a pre-arranged bye, to avoid spending the entire weekend away from the family. So that was worth another half point; score 1.0 out of 2.
• Round Three: For the Saturday evening game, I played White against an elderly chap who made his moves incredibly quickly. He only used about 15 minutes for the entire game. I hoped that his rapid play would be his downfall, so I played carefully and looked for moves with deeper consequences than I thought he would see. Eventually he made a seemingly ‘natural’ reply which was in fact a blunder: I won a knight outright and from then it was only a matter of time before I Won. Of course I was absolutely delighted with this, given my failure to win a single game last year. As an extra bonus, his quick play meant that the game didn’t end too late, so I could get a good night’s sleep prior to the Sunday games. Score now 2.0 out of 3
• Round Four: Playing Black, I opened with the Caro-Kann defence, which I’ve never played before competitively. Without making any obvious errors I got into a position where my opponent had a huge amount of play and plenty of attacking options; I didn’t really have much choice other than to defend as carefully as possible. When his attack fizzled out, my opponent made a misjudged sacrifice of rook for bishop, hoping for compensation to continue his attack; this didn’t work and from then on, I was on the offensive. It was a long game, more than three hours, but I eventually managed a second Win. Score now 3.0 out of 4.
• Round Five: In the final round, I played the Morra Gambit as White, which I haven’t done before: he played the 4. … d3 line which is essentially the Morra Gambit Declined, which meant that I had a reasonable position out of the opening without having sacrificed a pawn. My opponent castled rather riskily into a Queen’s side attack and the game finished rather quickly, although I made a mistake right at the end which, fortunately, he missed. That was my third Win in a row and left me with a very respectable score of 4.0 out of 5.

My final round game finished fairly early, so I stuck around watching the other games play out: at some point it dawned on me that, depending on how these other games finished, there was a possibility I’d be in the first few places and be eligible for a prize. At one stage, there was a chance that I’d be part of a massive share of 2nd Place, but in the end I came equal 4th: the winner of the competition had 5/5 and two others had 4.5. There were three of us on 4/5, sharing the £40 prize, which the organisers very generously rounded-up to £14 each

My calculations show that my grade for this tournament was around 170, with which I’m very happy. I still haven’t played enough games in the last two years to get back on the ‘official’ English Chess Federation grading list, but maybe if I play again next year… ?

I just added this section to the libguestfs man page. Always good to be upfront about your mistakes.

LIBGUESTFS GOTCHAS Gotcha (programming): "A feature of a system [...] that works in the way it is documented but is counterintuitive and almost invites mistakes." Since we developed libguestfs and the associated tools, there are several things we would have designed differently, but are now stuck with for backwards compatibility or other reasons. If there is ever a libguestfs 2.0 release, you can expect these to change. Beware of them. Autosync / forgetting to sync. When modifying a filesystem from C or another language, you must unmount all filesystems and call "guestfs_sync" explicitly before you close the libguestfs handle. You can also call: guestfs_set_autosync (handle, 1); to have the unmount/sync done automatically for you when the handle is closed. (This feature is called "autosync", guestfs_set_autosync q.v.) If you forget to do this, then it is entirely possible that your changes won’t be written out, or will be partially written, or (very rarely) that you’ll get disk corruption. Note that in guestfish(3) autosync is the default. So quick and dirty guestfish scripts that forget to sync will work just fine, which can make this extra-puzzling if you are trying to debug a problem. Read-only should be the default. In guestfish(3), --ro should be the default, and you should have to specify --rw if you want to make changes to the image. This would reduce the potential to corrupt live VM images. Note that many filesystems change the disk when you just mount and unmount, even if you didn’t perform any writes. You need to use "guestfs_add_drive_ro" to guarantee that the disk is not changed. guestfish command line is hard to use. "guestfish disk.img" doesn’t do what people expect (open "disk.img" for examination). It tries to run a guestfish command "disk.img" which doesn’t exist, so it fails, and it fails with a strange and unintuitive error message. Like the Bourne shell, we should have used "guestfish -c command" to run commands.

Leading me down the garden path today, how to quickly display an XML document … graphically, from the command line?

This doesn’t work:

$ virt-inspector --xml RHEL54.img | firefox -

Creating a temporary file is possible, but ugly.

Then I was tipped off that you can create and pass a data: URI to Firefox.

There is no existing command line tool to generate data URIs, but we can write one in 3 lines of shell script:

#!/bin/sh - echo -n data:$1\; uuencode -m notused | tail -n +2 | tr -d '\n'

Example:

$ cat > /tmp/test.html <b>Hello,</b> <i>world!</i> $ datauri text/html < /tmp/test.html data:text/html;PGI+SGVsbG8sPC9iPgo8aT53b3JsZCE8L2k+Cg======

This also doesn’t work. There are two problems: the XML generated by virt-inspector is too long for a data URI, and in any case Firefox seems to ignore the data URI although I’m sure I’m constructing it correctly. Maybe it’s a security or configuration issue?

Well, good idea, but let’s go back to the temporary file idea. Bash process substitution might have worked:

$ firefox <(virt-inspector --xml RHEL54.img)

but Firefox’s frankly stupid session management crap gets in the way because this command expands to something like:

$ firefox /proc/self/fd/123

and the new firefox process passes the non-portable /proc/self path to the currently running instance of Firefox which doesn’t have the same view of /proc/self.

So we are finally left with:

$ firefox $(f=`mktemp -u`; virt-inspector --xml RHEL54.img > $f.xml; echo $f.xml)

which is fugly and unsafe.

If only there was a less insane tool to display XML, but being XML I guess insane goes with the territory.

Start: 10/02/2010 - 7:30pm End: 10/02/2010 - 11:00pm Timezone: Etc/GMT

Meeting At:

Moon Under Water
53-55 Lichfield St
Wolverhampton
West Midlands
WV1 1EQ‎

Eat, Drink and talk Linux

Its been a slow start today, I don't know why? A few of my friends seem to have the same feeling a sort of cant-be-bothered-to-get-out-of-bed mood. I've tried forcing myself to get enthusiastic but for the minute even studying belly button fluff is not holding any interest for me.

I've done a sort of montage of things I need or at least should be doing ho hum!
 

OggCamp10 is an unconference, which means that the schedule will be finalised on the day. So if you come along, you can not only have a say in that schedule but you can offer be part of that schedule.

What to expect…

OggCamp10 isn’t just about software. You can offer to talk about anything at all. And if people want to hear your talk, you’ll be able to give it. Even if your talk isn’t on the schedule, you can still meet up with like-minded people and discuss the things that are important and interesting to you.

At last year’s OggCamp, we had talks on how to hook your house up to Twitter (or Identica!), politics and geeks, online privacy and security, engaging young people in open source, how to explain programming to your grandmother, just what is Pokebook(!), and what your pig says about you (yes, really).

You can see the final schedule from OggCamp 2009, plus photos and Twitter/Identica feeds from the weekend, on the OggCamp 2009 website.

OggCamp is jointly organised by the Ubuntu-UK Podcast and Linux Outlaws podcast teams. OggCamp 2009 was a one-day event in Wolverhampton, UK and about 120 people turned up – which was fantastic! OggCamp10 will be a bigger and better two-day event in Liverpool, UK at The Black-e community arts centre.

Audio trailer…please play

Our resident Liverpudlian, Dan, has done this brilliant audio trailer for OggCamp10 (MP3 or OGG). Have a listen! If you produce your own podcast, we’d be eternally grateful if you’d play it for your listeners – thanks!

Sponsorship opportunity…

And finally, if you are interested in sponsoring OggCamp10 by contributing towards the cost of the venue hire, or by providing prizes for the event, or if you have any cool novel ways to support us, please email me: uupc@lauracowen.co.uk. Thanks.

In the continued interests of helping to make Ubuntu rock as a platform for scratching itches and making awesome apps, I am putting together a new online learning event: Ubuntu Opportunistic Developer Week, happening online between 1st – 6th March 2010.

The week will be just like our previous online learning events such as Ubuntu Developer Week and Ubuntu Open Week, but instead providing a week jam packed with awesome sessions about writing applications that scratch your itch, and predominantly focusing on Python tools and frameworks, Bazaar, Launchpad and infrastructure. The goal for the week is give attendees a head start on a given technology useful for applications.

So, I am looking for volunteers. If you feel you could give a tutorial about a given Python module or associated technology (e.g. Glade, Launchpad, Bazaar etc), please drop me an email at jono AT ubuntu DOT com and I will liaise with you to get it scheduled. I am also look for some showcase sessions: stories about how you put together an application, how it scratched your itch and what tools you used. Thanks to everyone who contributes to leading a session!

The week has already been added as a Lernid event and I am going to encourage session leaders to create slides for their sessions. As each session is confirmed it will appear in Lernid and on the wiki page. Rocking!

In the continued interests of helping to make Ubuntu rock as a platform for scratching itches and making awesome apps, I am putting together a new online learning event: Ubuntu Opportunistic Developer Week, happening online between 1st – 6th March 2010.

The week will be just like our previous online learning events such as Ubuntu Developer Week and Ubuntu Open Week, but instead providing a week jam packed with awesome sessions about writing applications that scratch your itch, and predominantly focusing on Python tools and frameworks, Bazaar, Launchpad and infrastructure. The goal for the week is give attendees a head start on a given technology useful for applications.

So, I am looking for volunteers. If you feel you could give a tutorial about a given Python module or associated technology (e.g. Glade, Launchpad, Bazaar etc), please drop me an email at jono AT ubuntu DOT com and I will liaise with you to get it scheduled. I am also look for some showcase sessions: stories about how you put together an application, how it scratched your itch and what tools you used. Thanks to everyone who contributes to leading a session!

The week has already been added as a Lernid event and I am going to encourage session leaders to create slides for their sessions. As each session is confirmed it will appear in Lernid and on the wiki page. Rocking!

I had a crack at creating some electronic music. I know, not metal. I figured I would share this, and I have never done this before, so be gentle.

Check out Master Of The Situation in MP3 and Ogg format.

Created in Cubase with Halion One, a KeyRig and Drumkit From Hell.

I had a crack at creating some electronic music. I know, not metal. I figured I would share this, and I have never done this before, so be gentle.

Check out Master Of The Situation in MP3 and Ogg format.

Created in Cubase with Halion One, a KeyRig and Drumkit From Hell.

Today I have:

1) Corrupted a student (male).

2) Come within a hairs breath of being kicked off campus and had to explain myself to the head of University security.

3) Used up an entire role of electrical tape.

4) Run with scissors.

And the day is only an hour and a half in.

So I've been using the Google Android phone for about six months now, and it's about time I reflected on how it's gone. Here's a bit of a rambling review.

The hardware

The G1 hardware is pretty limited. There's not enough RAM, and the default Android way of storing apps on the phone rather than on the removable flash storage means you run out of space pretty quickly. The latter is fixed by using a custom image like Cyanogen, which is awesome.

The buttons on the phone are kinda dumb. There's green and red buttons for call management, just like most phones. Then there's a home and a "back" button, which are kinda superfluous as they could easily be replaced by some sort of touch gesture. The "Menu" is kind of a universal interupt button, and I suppose might be useful. And the trackball is completely useless yet seems to be mandatory for all designs. I never use it. On the sides are the camera and volume buttons, which I suppose are handy.

The buttons that would be really useful are missing. I'd love a pause/play button for when I'm using the thing to play music.

The G1 has a built-in keyboard. This is great, but has been dropped on later releases. Given a decent touchscreen interface, I think I could live without it. Not convinced that the on-screen keyboard is good enough, but it will make the device smaller, lighter and sexier. Though the keyboard rocks for answering emails or using ssh.

Multistasking: good and bad

Multitasking, the key difference between Android and the iPhone, is a double edged sword. It means you can run cool third-party apps that need to run all the time, like apps that show your calendar and weather forecast on the home screen. It also means that crap stays running all the time, meaning performance can be glacial if you've got something hogging the CPU in the background, and memory fills up very quickly.

Some allowance for the slowdown of background apps could be incorporated into the OS. It'd be nice to have apps not slow down core phone functions. I'd even be willing to completely pause background apps while something important is going on, like an incoming phone call. I kid you not, I've missed incoming calls because the phone's CPU has been busy on some other crap. Many is the time I've given up taking a photo because after pressing the camera button, whatever I wanted to snap has long finished before the camera app is up and ready to take a photo.

Shitty memory manglement

Android takes the same "automatic" approach to memory management as Symbian: if it runs out of memory, it kills something random that's running in the background to make some space. Apps tend to run in the background unless you explicitly exit, or use a power user tool to kill the process. That means while you might have something cool running in the background, it could randomly and without notice be killed at any time because you opened something else that wants more memory. The usual excuse for this kind of thing is you don't want to make users of consumer devices think about things like memory. Try telling that to some angry consumer whose fancy alarm clock app got killed to make space for another app meaning the user overslept and was late for work! How much sense does it make to kill the music player when I'm listening to music just to make space for something else? I'd much rather have to explicitly manage the memory and be asked what should get killed.

None of this is helped by the miserly allowance of RAM on the G1, 192MB. The Nexus One's 512MB should make this much more useful, though it's going to make running a G1 or any of the first generation Android phones somewhat suckier, given developers will now be targetting the new, faster, roomier Nexus One.

How about event-driven OS callbacks?

I think many of the problems with multitasking could be solved by introducing some OS-level event-driven triggers. What I'm thinking is instead of apps having to hang around in memory and periodically using the CPU, they could register with an OS service that they want to be woken on specific events: an SMS is received, the phone's power source changes, it's a specific time, the phone's location gets within x metres of a coordinate. That way you wouldn't need, for example, to keep your alarm clock app in memory all the time, wasting RAM and CPU cycles. The app would register the events its interested in, then explicitly exit.

No idea how practical this idea would be once implemented, and whether the overhead of loading up the app to handle the event would kill performance, but I think something different to the always-running-but-could-be-killed-any-time approach needs to be looked into.

Integrated apps

If you've taken a good slug of the GoogleJuice Kool Aid and moved your whole life into the cloud, Android is a really easy integration. I've got my email, calendar and instant messaging all in my Google Apps cloud, and have done for a while now. Starting with Android was as simple as logging in and waiting for it to all sync up. Brilliant. Everything Just Works™.

The apps are good too. Email is just like you'd expect, all your contacts are right there where you expect. A live calendar is life-changing, especially if you sync your work calendars into the cloud too.

One area that could do with some improvement is the way the GTalk app works. When I'm sitting at my desk and someone opens a chat session with me, I get three notifications that this has happened: inside my current browser Gmail session, the desktop GTalk app, and on my phone. Surely the server can work out which one I use to handle the session and close the others for me? Instead I have to go in and close those sessions myself, which is kinda clunky.

It'd also be nice if the instant messaging apps were a bit smarter. Let's say I want to contact someone, and the contact record shows the person has GTalk and a mobile phone. Surely I shouldn't have to work out which one to use, it can instead use the user's presence to work it out. If the remote user is on an Android phone, it could be really clever about it and switch to SMS if that user isn't online. All these contacts should show up in the same interface, regardless of underlying mechanism.

My favourite apps

By far the finest app so far is SlideScreen, which replaces the default home screen. At the top are your "private" communications: phone calls, SMS, email, calendar. Below are your "public" comms: Google Reader, Twitter. In the middle you get some status info: date, time, network connection, current weather. You can slide the middle part up and down to give more space to one area at the expense of the other. You "throw" an item to the right to mark it as read and get rid of it.

It's a beautifully-designed app, and nearly completely suits my way of working. Unfortunately it's just too heavy for the poor little G1. It takes up pretty much the whole of the RAM, so if you run another app it gets killed, and you can't really run it and another app. Should be great on the Nexus One though!

Ever since I lived in London, I've read the Guardian as my newspaper and news source of choice. I subscribed to the Guardian Weekly until recently. Part of the reason I stopped subscribing is this app, which downloads the whole paper overnight and presents it in an awesome UI that doesn't require network access. If you're writing a newspaper app, you should copy the design of this app.

Conclusion

The Android OS is excellent and improving all the time. Its openness means you can swap out much of the bits you don't like, which contasts well with Apple and Nokia's smartphone efforts, where you're stuck doing things the way the vendor tells you.

The app marketplace started off pretty poor, with lots of not very good apps, but is improving fast. People point out the high quality of the iPhone apps, but it's worth also pointing out that a popular app there can easily pay for multiple full-time developers. Android isn't there yet, but the marketplace is expanding incredibly fast. Some stand out apps are appearing (like SlideScreen) and you can expect more with the hundreds of Android handsets that will be available by the end of this year.

I'm looking forward to upgrading to the Nexus One, especially since I dropped the G1 and now have a lovely big crack across the LCD. Just have to keep working on the boss to release the funding. It'd be really good if a version appeared that handles the 850MHz UMTS band, since I'll probably be scoring a work SIM soon and Telstra's network uses this slightly-unusual frequency range.

Good

• Multitasking means you can have awesome apps running all the time. The iPhone just can't do this unless Apple makes the app.
• Open platform makes for some very cool apps: custom home screens.
• Integration with Google apps is very slick.
• The app marketplace is awesome, and growing fast. Apps are getting slicker pretty quickly.

Bad

• Hardware on the G1 is very limited. Nexus One appears to solve this.
• Memory management is "automatic" which means "dumb and confusing".
• Multitasking means a background app can make the device glacially slow.
• Stock music app is awful.
• Buttons are kind of pointless. Trackball even more so.
• Integrated messaging is needed.
• Connectivity lost when you switch from 802.11 to GSM/3G.

Contact me

So today I've been playing with some new new software via PPA's, for all the guys doing this many thanks.Open up Software Sources. Click on add source. Type in ppa:name of ppa. Click on add.
Gnome-shell: 2.29.1~ Looks better, feels faster and more responsive much nicer than earlier attempts. ppa:vperetokin/unofficial-gnome-shell
Epiphany: 2.29.6 Wow is all I can say. As fast as Chrome/Chromium, open source, plugs into seahorse/gnome keyring for password storage, smaller font makes it much better for netbooks. ppa:webkit-team and ppa:webkit-team/epiphany
New Gwibber: Guys this is the release we want, this is awesome, everything is displayed sensibly, everything about it is pretty, great work. ppa:gwibber-daily
To all those involved in the creation of these apps and there improvements, many, many thanks. The work you do is really appriciated and I don't think thank you is said enough. Keep up the good work...

• Wondering where to run to tomorrow. #
• Rowan now has a facebook account to go with his Twitter @rowangoodwin and blog … (rowangoodwin.co.uk, Facebook.com/rowan.Goodwin) #
• Haha msnbot it appears you are enjoying indexing a customers server a bit much. Have you heard of being 'nice' ? #
• Today I did a total of 132 pushups thanks to the Hundred Pushups iPhone app. (Week 4, Day 3, Level 3) #100Pushups #
• Rowan is still asleep. Lie in ftw. #
• RT @loudmouthman What Woman will not tell you about pregancy is great breakfast reading http://bit.ly/caqaJL #
• RT @jzy: @codinghorror you should try "Outside" sometimes. http://bit.ly/dsbcos – looks like a great game…. Cost? Hardware/platform? #
• If only this developer knew database design. Adding (a) new table(s) for an additional dataset is just WRONG! #uneducated #heathen #
• Today I did a total of 119 pushups thanks to the Hundred Pushups iPhone app. (Week 4, Day 2, Level 3) #100Pushups #
• More sleep plz? Kthxzzzz #
• Hmm aroundme's augmented reality looks cool; @moobert might kill me if i ask him to do it on the food hygiene iPhone app we're planning tho #
• Don't you just hate it when you save data to a backend, only for it to silently vanish. (Apc + zend_cache. Perhaps apc needs more memory?) #
• I am now 200 grams heavier. #chocolate #
• Why do I need to FAX docs to apple to develop on the iPhone. FFS. What's wrong with email ? #fail #not1980sanylonger #
• Today I did a total of 121 situps thanks to the 200 Situps iPhone app. (Week 2, Day 3, Level 3) #200Situps #
• Interviewing possible php contractor this morning. I hope he's good – i've got work stacking up. #
• *ding dong* "Time to wake up chuggers!" #
• .RT @metofficeWMids ADVISORY of Heavy Snow for West Midlands valid from 0349 – 2359 Wed 03 Feb http://bit.ly/bBNkz0 #
• RT @scottmac: Announcing HipHop for PHP – http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=358 #
• RT @grifferz Impregnation via the proximal gastrointestinal tract in a patient with an aplastic distal vagina: http://is.gd/7wvbe (via @jwz) #
• Today I did a total of 102 pushups thanks to the Hundred Pushups iPhone app. (Week 4, Day 1, Level 3) #100Pushups #
• Sleep little toddler. Sleep. #
• Cold cold. Brrr. Snow melted tho #
• Well that was a crash course into learning mailscanner with exim on rhel. What next dear customers ? #
• Hmm 144 bus turns up an hour and a half late. Chances of getting to Birmingham before 1030 – near zero. #
• Bromsgrove looks a bit clogged up this morning. Stupid snow. Wondering if I'm going to make
  the train now. #
• Today I did a total of 108 situps thanks to the 200 Situps iPhone app. (Week 2, Day 2, Level 3) #200Situps #

• Wondering where to run to tomorrow. #
• Rowan now has a facebook account to go with his Twitter @rowangoodwin and blog … (rowangoodwin.co.uk, Facebook.com/rowan.Goodwin) #
• Haha msnbot it appears you are enjoying indexing a customers server a bit much. Have you heard of being 'nice' ? #
• Today I did a total of 132 pushups thanks to the Hundred Pushups iPhone app. (Week 4, Day 3, Level 3) #100Pushups #
• Rowan is still asleep. Lie in ftw. #
• RT @loudmouthman What Woman will not tell you about pregancy is great breakfast reading http://bit.ly/caqaJL #
• RT @jzy: @codinghorror you should try "Outside" sometimes. http://bit.ly/dsbcos – looks like a great game…. Cost? Hardware/platform? #
• If only this developer knew database design. Adding (a) new table(s) for an additional dataset is just WRONG! #uneducated #heathen #
• Today I did a total of 119 pushups thanks to the Hundred Pushups iPhone app. (Week 4, Day 2, Level 3) #100Pushups #
• More sleep plz? Kthxzzzz #
• Hmm aroundme's augmented reality looks cool; @moobert might kill me if i ask him to do it on the food hygiene iPhone app we're planning tho #
• Don't you just hate it when you save data to a backend, only for it to silently vanish. (Apc + zend_cache. Perhaps apc needs more memory?) #
• I am now 200 grams heavier. #chocolate #
• Why do I need to FAX docs to apple to develop on the iPhone. FFS. What's wrong with email ? #fail #not1980sanylonger #
• Today I did a total of 121 situps thanks to the 200 Situps iPhone app. (Week 2, Day 3, Level 3) #200Situps #
• Interviewing possible php contractor this morning. I hope he's good – i've got work stacking up. #
• *ding dong* "Time to wake up chuggers!" #
• .RT @metofficeWMids ADVISORY of Heavy Snow for West Midlands valid from 0349 – 2359 Wed 03 Feb http://bit.ly/bBNkz0 #
• RT @scottmac: Announcing HipHop for PHP – http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=358 #
• RT @grifferz Impregnation via the proximal gastrointestinal tract in a patient with an aplastic distal vagina: http://is.gd/7wvbe (via @jwz) #
• Today I did a total of 102 pushups thanks to the Hundred Pushups iPhone app. (Week 4, Day 1, Level 3) #100Pushups #
• Sleep little toddler. Sleep. #
• Cold cold. Brrr. Snow melted tho #
• Well that was a crash course into learning mailscanner with exim on rhel. What next dear customers ? #
• Hmm 144 bus turns up an hour and a half late. Chances of getting to Birmingham before 1030 – near zero. #
• Bromsgrove looks a bit clogged up this morning. Stupid snow. Wondering if I'm going to make
  the train now. #
• Today I did a total of 108 situps thanks to the 200 Situps iPhone app. (Week 2, Day 2, Level 3) #200Situps #

Ed Mayo talking to the Phone Co-op meeting

Yesterday I had the pleasure to be at the Phone Co-ops annual meeting, as those of you who follow me on identi.ca or elsewhere will already know. The proceedings included a speech from Cooperatives-UK Chief Exec Ed Mayo that included the co-op pub in Salford, spurning David Beckham’s gift and this summer’s Co-operatives Fortnight.

As ever, the bits I liked best were the lively question-and-answer sessions, both on Ed’s speech and the annual report. I took notes and reproduce them below, but I didn’t capture every question, or every answer and none of this is verbatim. Questions to Ed about UK cooperation included:

• Can people in the co-op pub smoke? – No, there’s a bit of drinking in meetings, but not smoking. Some heated debates in meetings are defused by a break to go refill the glasses.
• Gordon Brown and Labour are starting to talk about cooperatives more. What should we do? – We need to stand on our own two feet, but expect to be treated equally. A “Mutuals Manifesto” will be out online next month. In regulation, having the telecoms networks opened up to co-ops and not be so limited would help. One interesting possibility is with football co-ops / supporters trusts: it’s been suggested that a fan co-op should have the right to buy a club if supported by 75% of season ticket holders.
• With all the business collapses and Cadburys being bought, what is the temperature of interest in mutuals outside the movement? – Good. The only AAA-rated bank in the world is the Rabobank co-op, but remember that co-ops are not immune to failure. Cadburys is not a co-op and was always vulnerable to the current investor-led rules changing its ownership. People are not necessarily thinking of co-ops, so we need to reach out. It’s a cynical, apocalyptic age, so we need to prove what we’re doing. coops14 is an opportunity. The co-op bank saw a surge in new accounts after it was highlighted in one newspaper as an alternative to excessive banker bonuses. We need to encourage people to act. Reminded of a quote that “the trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat”. Research shows that Britain today is a brutal and competitive place to grow up in, with only 45% of children trusting their friends. People have heard of cooperatives. We should try to build a more cooperative nation.
• Comment from the floor that the private sector won’t take substantial cooperative competition lightly. We must look behind us and never give them a chance.
• Could the BBC become a co-op? – Yes.

Questions about the annual report asked about:

• What is our target profit %? – No hard target. This year’s reduction was planned and it is still a profit.
• Why are we using UKMail instead of the Royal Mail? – £10k price difference. It was a hard choice, debated by the board, but there is no co-op option and no particular preference for state ownership.
• Why are we considering energy supply? – Telecoms is a deflationary market, so diversification is a wise move and energy supply is a top customer request.
• What is our churn rate? – 1.5%/year, which is unsatisfactory to us, but still low by industry standards.
• Was the Avoco acquisition price too high? – a good price by usual industry measurement (multiple of sales)
• Will we support coops14 Free and Open Source Software events, because there is an overlap? – (I didn’t catch the answer)
• Can we put leaflets in the shops? – Matt Lane is working on this and other opportunities
• Can we encrypt bills and emails if customers want it? – exec will take and deliberate on that
• Can we get some sales materials to Scotland? – details taken to send them out next week

I've been trying to remember to post the pictures I like online for the past few months. So this is a reminder to myself.

This image below didn't turn out quite how I wanted it to:

• I was hoping for a nicer sihouet upon the lady's face.
• The tree-branch on the left irritates me.

But that said I keep on coming back to look at it. I like the lighting, and I love the way that the brick wall on the right hand side angles towards the building on the horizon.

Enjoy. Or not.

A similarly "not perfect" image is this outdoor shot. I have only one irritation with this shot - and that is that the trees are clipped at the top. Meh, such is life.

(I have two styles of photography; semi-random where I snap what is in front of me, and staged where I try to construct a particular picture - the two images above? One of each.)

ObFilm: Bound

I love being married, it has opened up an incredible sense of commitment and security in my life and my wife’s life. Love is love, and I would never want to prevent anyone from enjoying what I am afforded the privilage of enjoying. This includes gay people. As such, I have joined this Facebook group to get 1,000,000 who support same sex marriage. I usually hate these kinds of groups, but I think it could be interesting to visualize the support behind this issue. Worthy, methinks.

I love being married, it has opened up an incredible sense of commitment and security in my life and my wife’s life. Love is love, and I would never want to prevent anyone from enjoying what I am afforded the privilage of enjoying. This includes gay people. As such, I have joined this Facebook group to get 1,000,000 who support same sex marriage. I usually hate these kinds of groups, but I think it could be interesting to visualize the support behind this issue. Worthy, methinks.