UK Linux User Groups

Back in the day, when I grew up on my Liverpool council estate every member of Liverpool City council was Conservative. The city had eight Conservative MPs.

This is Nadine Dorries writing on Conservative Home a couple of days ago. She should really learn that if she doesn’t check her facts, then someone else will. You’ll be shocked, I suspect, to hear that this information is less than completely true. To me, it looks like Liverpool never had more than six Tory MPs while Dorries was growing up there.

Dorries was born in 1957. So let’s look at the 1955 general election and see which MPs were elected in Liverpool then. Liverpool has nine MPs, six of which are Tory. None of the seats changed hands in 1959. In 1964, however, the Tories lost four seats, taking their total down to two. This number remained constant in 1966 and 1970. The Tories lost another seat in February 1974 and remained steady on only one seat in October. Finally, in 1979 (when Dorries is 22 – so I’m not sure it still counts as while she was growing up) the Tories doubled their number of seats to a rather unimpressive two.

So Liverpool never had more than six Tory MPs – al least not while Dorries was growing up there. But she thinks that she can just throw a fact into an article like that and people will just accept it’s true.

You should never trust a word that Dorries writes. She has frequently been proven wrong on details like this.

p.s. Tim Fenton has run this analysis too and has reached similar conclusions. And, surprise surprise, he finds that her claims about the council are nonsense too.

Related Posts:

• She Writes Fiction
• Dorries on Humanism
• Dorries Round-Up
• Voting History
• Unelected Prime Ministers

Lewisham town centre: German sausages! sdrv.ms/YfBDhr

It’s always been possible, but clumsy, to access Network Block Device (NBD) disks from libguestfs, but starting in libguestfs 1.22 we hope to make this (and Gluster, Ceph and Sheepdog access) much simpler.

The first change is upstream in libguestfs 1.21.21. You can add an NBD disk directly.

To show this using guestfish, I’ll start an NBD server. This could be started on another machine, but to make things simple I’ll start this server on the same machine:

$ qemu-nbd f18x64.img -t

f18x64.img is the disk image that I want to export. The -t option makes the qemu-nbd server persistent (ie. it doesn’t just exit after serving the first client).

Now we can connect to this server using guestfish as follows:

$ guestfish Welcome to guestfish, the libguestfs filesystem interactive shell for editing virtual machine filesystems. Type: 'help' for help on commands 'man' to read the manual 'quit' to quit the shell ><fs> add-drive "" format:raw protocol:nbd server:localhost ><fs> run

The empty "" (quotes) are the export name. Since qemu-nbd doesn’t support export names, we can leave this empty. The main change is to specify the protocol (nbd) and the server that libguestfs should connect to (localhost, but a remote host would also work). I haven’t specified a port number here because both the client and server are using the standard NBD port (10809), but you could use server:localhost:NNN to use a different port number if needed.

Ordinary guestfish commands just work:

><fs> list-filesystems /dev/sda1: ext4 /dev/fedora/root: ext4 /dev/fedora/swap: swap ><fs> inspect-os /dev/fedora/root ><fs> inspect-get-product-name /dev/fedora/root Fedora release 18 (Spherical Cow)

The next steps are to:

1. Add support for more technologies. At least: Gluster, Ceph, Sheepdog and iSCSI, since those are all supported by qemu so we can easily leverage that support in libguestfs.
2. Change the guestfish -a option to make adding remote drives possible from the command line.

The obvious [but not yet implemented] way to change the -a option is to allow a URI to be specified. For example:

$ guestfish -a nbd://localhost/exportname

where the elements of the URI like protocol, transport, server, port number and export name translate naturally into parameters of the add-drive API.

I've a collection of about 500 bookmarks which I've barely touched for a few years. I started organizing them late the other night, because I'd been off work sick for two days and that was about the most I felt up for doing with a computer.

The intention was to "tidy" them, and then setup some way of syncing them across browsers/computers. In the end I didn't like any of the syncing plugins I could find - xmarks, etc - so I decided to take a step backwards.

I'd exported my bookmarks to HTML page, via firefox, before I started, and then later in a fit of pique I deleted the whole damn lot of them.

So now a few years worth of bookmarks are stored in a single HTML file. But wait, we can use revision control can't we? We can host that file on github/similar. We can rely upon merges to deal with conflicts - simple if we just add lines to the end, or delete lines.

Maybe that's the best way to store bookmarks? I updated the bookmark file to read:

<ul> <li tags="debian, personal"><a href="http://www.debian-administration.org/">Debian Admin</a></li> .. </ul>

Adding "tags" to the LI-container and then some simple jQuery code gave me the ability to search/filter the bookmarks and auto-populate tags.

A small example placed online here:

• http://www.steve.org.uk/Software/bookmarks/

The obvious comment is that this makes adding new bookmarks a bit harder, but we'll see.. The javascript works in the browsers I tested, and for those that have none the bookmarks will just be a simple unordered list which should be universal.

I expect the javascript could be improved by a real developer.

I went for a walk in the park with my family a couple of weeks ago; my beloved mp3 player was in my coat pocket. The next day, I put my coat on and noticed that the mp3 player was gone! (Tiredness is making me forgetful and not notice things very quickly). Now, after a couple more days, I'd accepted that I'd very likely dropped it while walking and would never see it again and went back to using my old mp3 player.

When I got home today, while opening the door to the back passage [not a euphemism], I happened to glance at the ground near my front door and there, just under the gas meter box right by the front door, was my mp3 player!

Two possibilities occur:

1. The player dropped out of my pocket either on the way in or out of my house.

2. I had dropped it somewhere near my house and some kind neighbour (or passerby), picked it up and put it under the gas meter box.

Either possibility has mysteries. If I dropped it near my front door, the chances of it happening to have found the very small gap necessary to nestle right under the gas meter box - conveniently sheltered from the elements - seem very small.

If it was put there for safe-keeping by another person who had noticed it dropped near my house, why not leave a note to let me know?!

Either way, I'm most pleased :)

And if option 2 is the one... thank you very much whoever it was!

Revelation: noise-cancelling headphones are awesome for working from home, as well as for flying on a plane.

ARGH. Just seen the floppy disk “save” icon in Windows Azure. img.ly/tqCv
Why, Microsoft, why?!

It started off by being a place that everyone could chat and talk about things that were happening in the QA cycles inside CentOS. But things have changed quite a lot - our QA cycles are a lot shorter, there is a lot more automation and there is almost no real security exposure to users.

And I think we can do this better. We can create a better end user experience that gives them direct access, easily, to the state of play within the testing. And we should be able to automate more to get better coverage.

To that aim, qaweb.dev.centos.org is now going away. And we are working on some alternatives. Starting with having a nightly QA cycle, that considers point releases and all updates upto that point. And adding more external tests as well, like the ltp content ( http://ltp.sourceforge.net/ ). If you wish to join in that effort, drop in on the centos-devel list ( http://lists.centos.org/ ) and jump right in. Ref threads: http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-devel/2013-March/009098.html and http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-devel/2013-March/009099.html

Here is a link to the official announcement that just went out : http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/2013-March/019649.html

See you there,

- KB

Notes made on the 22:30 from Euston to Birmingham, whilst returning home to the provinces after treating myself to an evening of presentations and discussion with Dan Hill, Jeremy Till and Wouter Vanstiphout under the title Institutionalised…

Housed in the Black Maria installation at St Martin’s by Richard Wentworth/GRUPPE we were split into eager registrants who’d secured a ‘seat’ and lazy laggards who just turned up to freeload by taking a chair outside the installation and behind the projection screen. Proceedings get underway with the barrier between us raised and the talk show hosts/guests in the middle, then at the appointed moment when sufficient teasing has taken place, the screen falls (to the sound of a jet aircraft landing) and we become the privileged few allowed sole rights to the speaker’s attention and slides that are the right way round, whilst the rest get only sound piped through speakers and reversed images and text. It’s a privilege that is later slightly sullied by the numbness of our arses as they complain about the unforgiving plywood steps we’re sitting on. The fact that Richard Wentworth himself chose to sit on the chairs outside should have told us something perhaps.

It’s a beautiful thing though, and perhaps the very embodiment of what would during the evening be discussed as the conflict between the teaching of craft and ethics. Carefully crafted as it is to disrupt the usual ethics of oratory; thereby straddling both concepts perfectly.

The evening is introduced by Shumi Bose and the speakers are described as one qualified architect (Till) and two people who inhabit the ‘extended field of architecture’ (Hill and Vanstiphout). It’s this extended field that is of course the primary focus for the evening and a topic ripe for exploration in the UK at the moment given the widely discussed/lamented state of the profession and it’s utter lack of direction or worth. How does a mindful awareness of this extended field allow architecture to work within, against or for institutions?

Here are some (crudely paraphrased) sound bites and notes from each:

Jeremy Till – institutional irritant

1) provides a short intro and begins by reading the founding definition of the RIBA (quoted in his book Architecture Depends), part of which can be paraphrased thus: ‘architects are to be the arbiters of taste’ and he then states that this institute’s position is only legitimised by the support of other institutes i.e. universities.

2) he criticises architecture for becoming a spatial projection of imagination (or does he? see footnote)

3) acknowledging his position in the large institute of St Martin’s he describes himself as the institutional irritant that seeks to disrupts from within, but acknowledges that the more effective position may be on the outside

Wouter Vanstiphout – architect as figurehead

4) describing background and past work Wouter talks of his Design as Politics course

5) which leads to later studies on the politics of urban riots and the question of whether the fabric of the city itself is an accessory to the violence with the architect ultimately to blame

6) he proposes that the reason for this is in fact because architecture has merely become the visible garnish/figurehead/tip of the iceberg for the (massive) process of (brutal) urban renewal
beneath or behind it driven by institutions such as the state or the market.

7) underlining the power of the market he shows a picture of a city skyline filled with large buildings by internationally renowned architects, highlighting that their existence/creation is/was
dependent not on the people who inhabit them but the market that requires investment objects

Dan Hill – boundary operator

8) Dan starts by reflecting Wouter’s iceberg by showing Papenek’s triangular diagram with the designer’s share taking only a small proportion of the real problem beneath

9) he questions the ability of yesterday’s institutions to produce the necessary outcome for tomorrow

10) showing examples of projects from his time at Sitra and HDL he explores various examples of the networked city

11) suggesting that activity undertaken by a city’s inhabitants are less important for the actions themselves rather than the ability to make networked decisions about what to do

12) in turn suggesting that the culture of public decision making is the design challenge

13) and that in this networked city the government now has competition

14) thus returning to the question of whether 19th century institutions are capable of facing 21st century problems

15) Dan suggests that the experience he’s had in three different organisations of different roles and scales could be described as inside, outside and (during his time at Sitra) at the boundary of key institutions

16) in summary the goal should be to design the conditions that allow institutions to address meaningful public issues

Each had touched on a question of position relative to the institution or institutions that determine one’s role. Jeremy began by questioning whether it’s better to disrupt from within or beyond, Wouter described the dangers of unwittingly becoming a figurehead for the institution behind you and Dan demonstrated what might be possible at the boundary between the two. I think these positions were further contextualised by comments during the discussion at the end of the evening when Wouter (expanding on his comments about market driven investment objects) questioned the possible conflict of loyalties between the direct source of funding from a client vs. the city in which the work is carried out. How do you maintain the balance between civic responsibility and client loyalty? Following that a question from a planner in the audience about the panel’s view on how the UK’s NPPF and debate on localism might impact the institution brought an acknowledgement of the value of the neighbourhood forum. In there somewhere there were also comments about the market of supply and demand that suggested that the profession concerns itself too much with the supply side, when in fact it should work harder to raise and support the demand.

Neighbourhoods – the demand market – are the boundaries to institutions in which an architect’s loyalties must be invested.

It’s fitting then that the following 24 hours of media coverage in the UK built environment has provided much coverage of a growing interest in the power of self build and co-housing ideas and it’s certainly helping me form ideas about which direction I’d like to head in future with my practice.

Finally, I’d like to end by recording a wonderfully succinct and compelling description of the perils of what Wouter described as the neo-liberal myth of the benefits of rolling back the state. Rather than the space left over being filled by the common man, it’s simply claimed by the private market instead.

Horse meat lasagne anyone?

* Note: I appear to have heard Jeremy’s comment on the projection of spatial imagination entirely differently to the fellow on my left, Charles Holland off of FAT who wrote it down properly:

Ever heard of a CoderDojo neither had I till a few months ago, but they seem to have really taken off in Ireland and it’s brilliant to see happening.  For those unaware what they are : CoderDojo is a global collaboration providing free and open learning to young people, especially in programming technology There are [...]

New blog post: Nokia Lumia 920 Day One @ andrewsavory.com/blog/2013/3227 //cc @Nokia_Connects #switchtolumia #nokialumia920

Earlier this week, Nokia Connects invited people to Trial a Nokia. I’ve not used Windows Phone 8 or the new Lumia devices, so I eagerly volunteered. Here’s what I pitched:

My idea is simply to live with Windows Phone as my primary handset, and to honestly and openly blog about it – like I did for the TouchPad and the Nokia N95 (part one, part two).

I’ll install apps. I’ll run my life from the phone. I’ll take the opportunity to try out the Windows Phone SDKs to get my simple proof-of-concept Tube Status app up and running. I’ll throw an Apache Cordova app together.

But first and foremost, I’ll see if this is finally the phone to bring me back to Nokia. It’s been six years since my N95. I’d like to see what’s changed since then.

The phone arrived yesterday – an incredibly fast turnaround by the Nokia folks. Here’s my first impressions, as they happened, stream-of-consciousness style.

Box is … meh. Same as every other mobile phone box. Nothing to judge, nothing to see here, move along. Opening it up…

OMG YELLOW

 

Actually, I love the metallic yellow plastic finish. It reminds me of a die-cast toy car.

OMG HEAVY. Actually not that heavy, similar to iPhone 4S, but the length of the phone makes it feel disproportionately top-heavy. I’ve also been using a Galaxy SIII recently, 

Plugged in to charge. Turned on! Weird. Powered off by holding down power off button. I like the visual style of the “goodbye”.

Oh, it’s on again.

I tested my other phones. The Samsung stays off when turned off whilst plugged in, but keeps a battery indicator on screen. The iPhone will stays off when turned off whilst plugged in.

I admit to reading about the phone that won’t stay off. Moving on.

Ok, time to do setup. Open up with the handy SIM removal tool. Take a deep breath. Turn off the iPhone. Remove the SIM. Stick it in the Lumia. Power on. Picked up network – good, this Lumia is not network-locked.

I’m not getting the full “first run” experience. That’s a shame – Nokia, you might want to ship these factory-reset.

While searching for “Lumia Factory Reset” I get a text from o2:

“O2: If you’d like to use Wap or Mms on this phone we’ll need to help, so please call us free on 08448090202.”

Urgh. Why, o2? Why not push the configs automatically, provide a URL with handy info, or “text HELP and we’ll call you“?

Found http://www.hard-reset.com/nokia-lumia-920-hard-reset.html

So, how to reset a Lumia:

• On the start screen, swipe in from the right-hand edge. Scroll down to Settings and select.
• In Settings, scroll to about Windows Phone and select.
• Scroll down and tap reset your phone, then confirm by tapping yes.

It took a minute or so to reset. I noticed curiously the phone settings aren’t alphabetical. Since they are a text list, it feels like they should be.

Ok, that’s better. “Let’s get started” – well, alright then! (Minus one point to the Microsoft designers for repetition of Windows Phone on that screen.)

Terms of use. Does anyone actually click on them? Did anyone notice it starts with “Thank you for choosing Windows Phone!“? Aww, the lawyers love me!

I’m on the Setup screen.

There’s lots of information on the “recommended” configuration, but not so much info on “custom”. What does custom mean? It would be nice to have some examples.

Given the dearth of information on the alternative, I select “recommended”.

Next is the Windows Live (or whatever it’s called this week) account page.

There’s a bit of a bug that on the signup page there’s no way to hide the keyboard (unless I missed it). Much scrolling of the remains of the screen to see checkboxes (which, when clicked, hide the keyboard). I had this same problem with Windows 8 on a tablet. Major design flaw. Astounding this hasn’t been picked up in user experience testing.

It’s funny to start with signing in to Windows Live and not setting up WiFi. I feel this will bite me later.

Ok, it’s later. Signing in didn’t work, it seems my mobile data connection isn’t working, so I had to skip adding my account and will then add it afterwards.

I want to fix my mobile data settings. Some googling shows up settings: http://getsettings.o2.co.uk/ It’s as easy as texting o2!

Nope: that’s iPhone only. Strike two for o2.

I find some o2 apn settings online, but decide to contact o2 instead, on the number they texted me. Remember, they said “If you’d like to use Wap or Mms on this phone we’ll need to help” so they should be able to assist. I dial the number. Wait, it’s a generic number. I’m in a menu (“press one for accounts, …”). That’s appalling service. o2 know why I am calling, why don’t they have a custom number that jumps straight to someone handing out APN details?

I’m recording the call (for quality and training purposes), so it’s on speakerphone. I notice the speakerphone is quieter than the S3.

o2 manage to help me by switching my APN from one o2 setting to another.

While I’m in settings, I set up wifi.

So time to add accounts. I add hotmail, google, Facebook, twitter … but then I notice I get an error:

It’s a rather disingenuous error! If you were to read it without thinking, you might assume there is a problem with twitter. There’s not – what it actually means is Windows Phone has a problem connecting to twitter. It’s pretty ugly behaviour to blame a third party service rather than being honest.

The design language of the phone feels familiar … very xbox.

I’m not sure I like the phone network status disappearing from the top-left. I’m too used to having permanent status indicators – the menu bar on my Mac has more than a dozen indicators.

I decide to make sure I’m on the latest and greatest version of Windows Phone. I go into Settings, and click on updates.

Checking for updates … takes … forever … and I lost patience. Time to try something else.

Time to add some apps.

The problem with a search button is it gets confusing when an app has search – like the Windows store.

There’s a big search button on-screen, but then another hardware search bottom-right. The on-screen search is for the store, the hardware search is for Bing. Since it’s always there, I want to use the hardware search in a context-sensitive fashion.

I install apps based on which ones I use on my iPhone.

Foursquare, British Airways, Battle.net authenticator, Flickr, Flixster, Tesco, Ocado, Last.fm, Netflix, RedLaser, The Guardian, Tube Map, Weather: boom. Found it, installed it.

Cyclemeter: http://forums.wpcentral.com/windows-phone-apps/191077-best-running-cycling-apps.html suggests endomondo or runkeeper. I grab both.

As I’m searching for apps, I’m abruptly interrupted by software update. Very abruptly: I’m taken out of the app store and confronted with an update button. I didn’t even know updates had been found.

During the update (which worked, and was painless), I’m shown two reminders of the Windows legacy:

This is rubbish.

Update completed! Update completed! Update completed! Update completed!

Someone at Microsoft should be hanging their head in shame.

Back to the app install.

I’m pleasantly surprised: my bank has an app. It works just as nicely as the iPhone app – maybe even better, as the extra screen real estate allows more information on-screen at once.

Foursquare works, but I don’t get the icons. I miss the textual cues from Android and iOS.

As I’m installing apps, I notice this:

That’s right – the app name isn’t available so the list of apps shows @C:\Data\Programs\….

Muscle memory says the bottom middle of the phone turns it on. I don’t like the switch on the side.

End of day one summary

Key points:

• I don’t hate the phone. I’m actually finding it usable. I haven’t done much with it yet though, so time will tell. It feels like a confident interpretation of what a phone should be. Between iOS, Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone it seems there’s now a real opportunity for innovation and differentiation.
• Having said that, so far I haven’t seen any real wow! differentiator over iOS or Android.
• Interestingly, the biggest problems with the Nokia experience so far are the network operator and the operating system provider.
• I’m happy with the smooth and responsive UI (better than Android, though I haven’t tried a stock Jelly Bean device without OEM/Operator cruft), not quite as smooth as iOS, but really incredible when you think this is Windows.
• I don’t like the bad practices carried over from Windows. Poorly-designed software updates.
• I quite like the hardware – great screen, and I love the curved shape.
• I’m puzzled by the UI:
• why is my corporate mail account the very bottom tile on the home screen, while there are other tiles that I’ve never used further up? This is a smart phone … shouldn’t it figure out what’s important to me?
• why hasn’t the phone picked up the photo attached to my live.com account, and used it everywhere to personalise the experience?
• why doesn’t it automatically pull stuff from my xbox account? scratch that – it got the xbox stuff, presumably after the software update.

I think I need to give this phone more time to grow on me.

This is basically a link-post to the Debian Project Leader election email discussions on GMANE’s blog-style interface to debian-vote. After only 3 days of the 21, there’s already a pageful, so if I don’t start collecting links now, I’ll probably miss some. Right or wrong, I’ve grouped these into three topics:

The Job

1. Why do you think you are a good candidate for DPL (10 Mar 2013)
2. How do you plan to represent Debian externally? (10 Mar 2013)
3. about a DPL board (12 Mar 2013)
4. DPL term duration (12 Mar 2013)
5. Work balance and traveling (12 Mar 2013)
6. trying to do awesome and risking to fail (11 Mar 2013)
7. To Lucas: how do you plan to push your ideas (12 Mar 2013)
8. All candidates – quotes for the press if you win (13 Mar 2013)

Money

1. using debian funds for Debian’s hardware infrastru (12 Mar 2013)
2. Usage of Debian’s Money (12 Mar 2013)
3. Debian’s relationship with money and the economy (12 Mar 2013)

Project Management

1. getting new people to Debian (10 Mar 2013)
2. Free Software challenges and Debian role (11 Mar 2013)
3. Development and technical issues and challenges (10 Mar 2013)
4. Are there problematic infrastructure or processes in Debian? (12 Mar 2013)
5. to Moray: encourage teams to take interns (11 Mar 2013)

So, what do you think are the key points or differences? Leave me a comment, or get involved in the discussions. Campaigning ends and voting begins 30/31 March.

My webserver of choice is nginx, it's resource friendly, fast, reliable and versitile.

I have a resource constrained Debian 6.0 "server" at home and wanted to deploy nginx on it for testing. Sadly, the nginx package in the squeeze repositories is very old. Fortunately, the Debian Backports has a fairly current version, 1.2.1 as the time of writing.

To enable the backports repository add the following line to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/backports.list.

deb http://backports.debian.org/debian-backports squeeze-backports main

Update the repositories.

sudo apt-get update

Install nginx. All backports are deactivated by default, so the apt-get use is somewhat different.

sudo apt-get -t squeeze-backports install nginx-full

nginx is now installed and can be configured in the usual way.

References

• http://backports-master.debian.org/
• http://packages.debian.org/squeeze-backports/nginx

Great oEmbed component for Adobe CQ from @zaphgod
youtube.com/watch?v=RF-mkF… and code: github.com/ugocei/oembed

Oh o2, where is the love? sdrv.ms/10S3F5V

Windows Phone showing it’s got a rich Microsoft Windows heritage behind it. sdrv.ms/XLsMEx

Windows Phone 8 mini-review:
A phone restart is required.
Goodbye.