UK Linux User Groups

For some time it has irritated me that launching URLs from my terminal would always launch Iceweasel/Firefox, rather than my default browser Chromium. If you’re running KDE or Gnome, then I accept that this would be governed from somewhere in the desktop environment’s control panel or settings, but I run PekWM, and assumed that setting the default browser in update-alternatives should be enough:

# update-alternatives --config x-www-browser

Unfortunately of course many of the applications that I am using are native to KDE or Gnome and probably are still respecting their environment’s settings. In the end it was simply a case of editing:

~/.local/share/applications/defaults.list

And adding the following line:

x-scheme-handler/http=chromium.desktop

Now opening links from my terminal is correctly opening a new tab in Chromium, or running Chromium if it isn’t already.

Joy.

Turnbuckle Boot Cap

I realise that I have made a number of posts on Google+, without posting first on my blog. This is the first of several posts that I will be making to correct that oversight…

Sailing boats typically have plastic or rubber cylindrical covers for the lower part of the shrouds and stays (the wires that hold up the mast). These covers are apparently called “Turnbuckle Boots”.

Turnbuckle boots should be topped off with caps, but it is quite common to see the caps broken or missing entirely.

Turnbuckle Boot Cap is a replacement for those caps. It is fully parametric and printed perfectly without support.

Matthew Astley just emailed me to say he has forked TechTalk and added support for markdown (the wiki-ish markup language).

53-55 Lichfield St
Wolverhampton
West Midlands
WV1 1EQ‎

Eat, Drink and talk Linux

Event Date and Time:  Wed, 06/03/2013 - 19:30 - 23:00

Tomorrow we will be running our very first online Ubuntu Developer Summit. The event will take place over two days and span a range of different tracks: Community, Client, Cloud & Server, App Developers, and Foundations. We have never run an event like this before, but we have prepared extensively to deliver the best online UDS experience we can. When UDS is complete we will then review any rough edges and fix those up for the next event in May.

With this being a new event, I wanted to share some key tips about how to get participate.

For Everyone

UDS takes place on Tues 5th – Wed 6th March 2013 from 2pm UTC. Please note: the original time was 4pm UTC, but we brought the event forward by two hours.

The full event is taking place online and everyone is welcome to join, irrespective of whether you are an active contributor to the community, a partner, a business, an enthusiast, or anyone else. We will be using Google+ Hangouts On Air to stream video from the active participants in the session, and we also provide quick embedded access to IRC, note-taking, and more.

The event will kick off on Tuesday at 2pm UTC with a keynote session. There will then be two hours of sessions, then an hour of plenaries, and then another two hours of sessions. On the Wednesday we will kick off into sessions at 2pm, and have lightning talks in the normal plenary slot. Jorge Castro is taking care of the plenary talks and lightning talks; reach out to him if you want to run a lightning talk.

There are five tracks, with each (apart from Foundations) having two video streams. Each track has two track leads:

• Client – Jason Warner, Sebastien Bacher
• Server and Cloud – Antonio Rosales, Daviey Walker
• Community – Jono Bacon, Daniel Holbach
• App Developers – Alan Pope, David Planella
• Foundations – Steve Langasek

You can find all sessions listed at summit.ubuntu.com. Just visit the session you are interested in at the time of the session to view it; everything is included on the session page. You don’t need anything other than a web browser to view sessions but you will need a Google+ account to actively participate in a hangout.

For Track Leads

You should have all received an email from me about how to schedule sessions and how to start and stop the video streams.

Remember to ensure your Google+ is verified (Michael Hall should have checked this with you).

You and your co-track lead should pick one of the two tracks you have for your track and take care of setting up those streams.

Five minutes before a session (e.g. 1.55pm) is due to begin you should start the video stream and update the session in summit.ubuntu.com with the hangout and broadcast URLS. Likewise, 55 minutes into a session (e.g. 2.55pm), be sure to stop the hangout. We need to start and stop the video streams to ensure the recordings are broken up into the different hour long chunks. Required participants will automatically see a link on the session page to invite them to join a hangout – this page does not auto-reload though, so you may want to ask them to refresh the page to join.

Please keep an eye on the sessions on your track and interact with the session leaders to ensure that any required participants can be invited to the session as needed. There may be times as the session is running that people will need to be invited to join the hangout (e.g. IRC participants) – you need to be available to do this when the session leader needs you. If you are not actively participating in the session, feel free to just mute your mic and keep an eye on IRC or listen for when you are needed.

Instructions for starting and stopping the streams is at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UDS/Sessions.

For Session Leaders

As a session leader your responsibility is to run a quality session, and to ensure that the topic gets a good level of discussion, work is planned and distributed, and the blueprint gets updated with the agreed work items.

Some tips:

• Make sure your Internet connection and computer are working well in advance of the session. We recommend you stop any software or services that is using your net connection (e.g. switch off any downloads or other video streaming).
• The video hangouts will be started and stopped by the track leads (see above) – if you need to invite a new person to a hangout, ask the track lead to invite them.
• In your session you will have people in the hangout speaking as well as people on IRC offering their contributions too. Be mindful of the IRC contributors, and repeat comments and statements of interest from IRC.
• Think of the hangout as the inner ring of the fishbowl at a physical UDS. Unfortunately there only 10 seats on the hangout, so we need to ensure the most active participants are in the hangout. People in the hangout should be speaking and actively participating. If you have an active participant on IRC and have free seats on the hangout, be sure to invite them to the hangout. Likewise, if you see someone who is not contributing on the hangout and there is someone active on IRC, ask the hangout person to move to IRC to open up a slot to invite the IRC person and bring them into the hangout.
• At the beginning of the session, explain the goals and purpose of the session and encourage people to take notes in the embedded etherpad.
• Have the discussion in the session, and be sure to help everyone participate as much as possible. Remember, you should try to keep the most active members in the hangout.
• 10 minutes before the end of the session summarize the key decisions and log work items on the blueprint that are assigned to people. This will provide a great set of next steps to move forward with that blueprint.

For Attendees

Joining a session is easy – just look at the schedule and click on a session to view it. On each session page you can see the video stream, the embedded IRC channel, and the embedded etherpad collaborative note taking. You can also see links to the blueprint and other related content.

You don’t need anything other than a web browser to view sessions but you will need a Google+ account to actively participate in a hangout.

If you want to chat to others in general about UDS, you can also join #ubuntu-uds on freenode.

All sessions will be recorded and available on the schedule when they are completed.

I just want to echo Tony’s appeal to help three year-old Sam who was diagnosed with high risk neuroblastoma, a particularly aggressive cancer. It has spread from the main tumor into his bones and bone marrow. That makes it a class 4 cancer, the most advanced on the scale. The long term survival rate for high risk neuroblastoma is 40%.

As Tony shares:

The good news is that Sam is responding well to chemotherapy. But Sam’s oncologist at Manchester Children’s Hospital has recommended that Sam receives immunotherapy treatment so that his own body can recognise and attack the neuroblastoma if it returns.

The most successful treatment is not available in the UK because some of the drugs are still being trialled. It costs over £250,000 in the US. Which is why Sam desperately needs your help. Carl and Christine are trying to raise the money to send Sam for treatment in the US.

If you would like to donate to help Sam, that would be brilliant. In the UK you can just text SAMS67 and the amount you’d like to donate (£1, £2 £3 £4 £5 or £10) to 70070. Alternatively you can donate on-line at the Sam Shaw Just Giving page. It’s Sam’s fourth birthday this week, so it would be a great birthday present to give him.

Also be sure to join the appeal’s Facebook page.

Your donation to Sam will have an incredible impact on his life as well as his parents, Christine and Carl, who must be having a hell of a time right now dealing with all of this. Let’s all show them that we care by helping them to cover their son’s treatment.

This week’s blog post is a bit different. It’s about Laura’s childhood friend Christine, her husband Carl and their three year old son, Sam.

In January, Sam was diagnosed with high risk neuroblastoma, a particularly aggressive cancer. It has spread from the main tumor into his bones and bone marrow. That makes it a class 4 cancer, the most advanced on the scale. The long term survival rate for high risk neuroblastoma is 40%.

The good news is that Sam is responding well to chemotherapy. But Sam’s oncologist at Manchester Children’s Hospital has recommended that Sam receives immunotherapy treatment so that his own body can recognise and attack the neuroblastoma if it returns.

The most successful treatment is not available in the UK because some of the drugs are still being trialled. It costs over £250,000 in the US. Which is why Sam desperately needs your help. Carl and Christine are trying to raise the money to send Sam for treatment in the US.

If you would like to donate to help Sam, that would be brilliant. In the UK you can just text SAMS67 and the amount you’d like to donate (£1, £2 £3 £4 £5 or £10) to 70070. Alternatively you can donate on-line at the Sam Shaw Just Giving page. It’s Sam’s fourth birthday this week, so it would be a great birthday present to give him.

If you would like to keep up-to-date with news about Sam and the appeal, please join join the Facebook group.

Thanks for reading.

Pin It

Why thank you, poorly-implemented VPN, for causing the loss of the last 30 minutes of work. Let’s just pipe to /dev/null, it’s more secure.

Dear National Car Parks,

As it seems the existence of your call centre is to goad people into a state of rage and you insist that everything has to be put in writing, I shall put my complaint to you in writing via my blog, before sending it to you in writing.

I am a season ticket holder for the station car park at Harold Wood.  My car is parked there on a daily basis.  On return to my vehicle on February 28th, I was surprised to find I had been ticketed.  Here’s the ticket:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note the contravention: “Parked on double yellow lines”.  This was a surprise to me because there were and are no double yellow lines present.  For the non-drivers reading this, and confused NCP parking attendants, double yellow lines tend to look like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is quite clear, right?  Two parallel yellow lines at specific distances from the side of the road with a crossing bar at each end.  Now, here’s a picture of where I was parked:

 

See the bay to the left of the red car? That’s where my car was, wholly within the confines of the white border.  You might want to check out the full size version of the photo but, looking at the example double yellow lines above, can you see where the double yellow lines I was ticketed for parking on are? I’ll sit here quietly while you check.

Done? Good.  You didn’t spot the double yellow lines, did you? Correct, that’s because there aren’t any to spot. I can read your mind.  “Ahhh, Martin, you silly boy.  You’ve parked on a restricted area, there are yellow hatchings. Tsk.”

That’s almost true, there are indeed yellow hatchings but that’s irrelevant.  Why so?  Just this:  When NCP took over the car park many years ago, they repainted all of the bays with fresh white markings.  Here’s a closeup of part of that bay:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note that the white line is painted over the yellow one.  Had NCP not intended for people to use this as a parking bay, why on earth would they specifically paint bay markings there?  The answer is, they wouldn’t.  Those markings used to denoted an area where you weren’t supposed to park because it’s where a fast food place used to have its bins.  Rather than scraping the old lines up, they just painted new ones over the top.

Add to this the fact that I have been parked in that exact same spot dozens of times over the past couple of years, and this is the first time my car has been ticketed, I think what we’re dealing with here is an overzealous or brainless parking attendant.I currently can’t even talk to you about this over the phone because even after 4 days, the ticket hasn’t appeared on your system. I now have to waste some of my life sorting this out.

No love whatsoever, merely tired rage,

Martin A. Brooks

 

Dear National Car Parks,

As it seems the existence of your call centre is to goad people into a state of rage and you insist that everything has to be put in writing, I shall put my complaint to you in writing via my blog, before sending it to you in writing.

I am a season ticket holder for the station car park at Harold Wood.  My car is parked there on a daily basis.  On return to my vehicle on February 28th, I was surprised to find I had been ticketed.  Here’s the ticket:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note the contravention: “Parked on double yellow lines”.  This was a surprise to me because there were and are no double yellow lines present.  For the non-drivers reading this, and confused NCP parking attendants, double yellow lines tend to look like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is quite clear, right?  Two parallel yellow lines at specific distances from the side of the road with a crossing bar at each end.  Now, here’s a picture of where I was parked:

 

See the bay to the left of the red car? That’s where my car was, wholly within the confines of the white border.  You might want to check out the full size version of the photo but, looking at the example double yellow lines above, can you see where the double yellow lines I was ticketed for parking on are? I’ll sit here quietly while you check.

Done? Good.  You didn’t spot the double yellow lines, did you? Correct, that’s because there aren’t any to spot. I can read your mind.  “Ahhh, Martin, you silly boy.  You’ve parked on a restricted area, there are yellow hatchings. Tsk.”

That’s almost true, there are indeed yellow hatchings but that’s irrelevant.  Why so?  Just this:  When NCP took over the car park many years ago, they repainted all of the bays with fresh white markings.  Here’s a closeup of part of that bay:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note that the white line is painted over the yellow one.  Had NCP not intended for people to use this as a parking bay, why on earth would they specifically paint bay markings there?  The answer is, they wouldn’t.  Those markings used to denoted an area where you weren’t supposed to park because it’s where a fast food place used to have its bins.  Rather than scraping the old lines up, they just painted new ones over the top.

Add to this the fact that I have been parked in that exact same spot dozens of times over the past couple of years, and this is the first time my car has been ticketed, I think what we’re dealing with here is an overzealous or brainless parking attendant.I currently can’t even talk to you about this over the phone because even after 4 days, the ticket hasn’t appeared on your system. I now have to waste some of my life sorting this out.

No love whatsoever, merely tired rage,

Martin A. Brooks

 

Having purchased my Novatech nFinity n1410, I thought that I would install Windows as a virtual machine. Nothing easier, I thought, and trotted off to my local Currys.

On entering Currys there was plenty of evidence of the new Windows 8, but I noticed that all the copies were upgrades from Windows 7 or Windows XP.  Currys explained that they do not stock full copies of Windows, only the upgrades, and stated that this was not a Curry’s issue, but that it was a Microsoft policy to only sell full versions of Windows via their website.

So I found myself searching online for “buy windows 8” and ended up on the Microsoft site, but, as with Currys, the only versions available were upgrades.

Starting to feel like I’d entered the Twilight Zone, I searched at BT Business Direct, this seemed to be much more successful and I found 4 choices available, but all the versions were OEM copies which I assumed that I was not legally permitted to install on a VM. It appeared that the only choices were OEM licences or Retail upgrade licences, on the face of it – leaving users like myself unable to legally buy Windows at all.

I thought perhaps that this was a short-term anomaly post-launch, but it seems not. Apparently the OEM version is all things to all people, being both a Retail copy for non-system builders, and an OEM copy for system builders (read more). If this is correct then this means that those 4 choices at BT Business Direct may be okay for me afterall.

And here is the word from Microsoft on the matter: “If you are building a computer for your personal use or installing an additional operating system in a virtual machine, you can now purchase OEM System Builder software using the Personal Use Licence.” After pouring over the text of EULAs, this is actually easy and unequivocal. Well done Microsoft.

Knowing my preference for all-things GNU/Linux and FLOSS, some of you may be wondering why I need Windows at all. The reasons are very few and I don’t use Windows from one month to the next, but I would find it difficult to eradicate completely:

1. Tax return: I know that it can be done under Linux, but I prefer to use TaxCalc.
2. Road Angel: I have found no way of updating my Dad’s Road Angel without Windows.
3. Inforad: Similarly I have found no way of updating my Inforad without Windows.
4. Leappad2: I have found no way of updating my childrens’ Leappad2′s without Windows.

So there we have it, we can now officially buy the OEM version for our VMs.

At least I think so.

Day 1

Me: "So as you can see the menu across the top already has six entries, I'm not sure there is room for a seventh one?
Customer: "It would be good if it was possible.
Me: "I'll try and see if it looks OK."

Day 2
Me: "OK the menu bar now has seven entries. We had to remove the language choice feature but it's done and amazingly does not look squashed.
Customer: "Brilliant."

Day 3
Customer: "Can you add three more entries please?

"Mummy, why is daddy smacking his face off the desk?"

This weekend I attempted the Be Broadband mandatory router firmware upgrade (which appears to be linked to Be’s sale to Sky ). I thought I’d relate my experience of that here so that folks have “all the information in one place”. The process was pretty much smooth but those of us geeky enough to have [...]

My previous entry, about templating, didn't make it into Planet Debian.

This entry is just a test to see if it is my fault.

The Southackton group had a pretty good meetup last thursday. Lots of fun things going on. There were walking robots, autonomous wheeled robots, RF hacking of LightWaveRF remote control systems, arduinos, raspberry pis and more. Also, there was cake!

Autonomous robots

Benjie RF hacking

Mark supplying cake

Hacking some android hardware

Our youngest attendee!

Wheeled robots

Arduino controlled robots

home-built portable server (raspberry pi)

The Southackton group had a pretty good meetup last thursday. Lots of fun things going on. There were walking robots, autonomous wheeled robots, RF hacking of LightWaveRF remote control systems, arduinos, raspberry pis and more. Also, there was cake!

Autonomous robots

Benjie RF hacking

Mark supplying cake

Hacking some android hardware

Our youngest attendee!

Wheeled robots

Arduino controlled robots

home-built portable server (raspberry pi)

I got a letter from HMRC this morning – to my company, not to me personally. It basically said “we’ve been looking at the PAYE you paid in 2010/11 and it looks like you’ve overpaid by [a surprisingly large number of pounds]“.

Now 2010/11 was the year that I was having some difficulties with my accountants. The difficulties eventually got so bad that I switched to my new accountants (who I’m still very happy with). So it doesn’t really surprise me that something went wrong that year, although the amount (it’s about 25% of the PAYE/NI I paid that year) is impressive.

What really surprises me is the tone of this letter. Having told me that I’ve overpaid (and, helpfully, pointed out the exact extra payment that I made) the letter goes on to say:

Before I can agree to either a refund or a credit, please let me the reason the overpayment has arisen

And:

Please complete the enclosed P35D giving a full explanation as to how the overpayment occurred.

Below are some example of reasons I cannot accept to justify an overpayment

• Duplicate payments with no evidence to explain why
• Statements such as ‘Payment(s) made in error’ with no further explanation
• The overpayment is due to monthly payments which do not match our records
• Any other explanation without evidence to support it

I’m finding it hard to read that in any way other than “we know we’ve got some of your money but you can’t have it back until you’ve explained in detail just how crap your record-keeping is”.

You’ve got my money. You know it’s my money. Either my accountants or I screwed up in some way. There’s no more detailed explanation than that. Just give it back to me, you bastards.

Related Posts:

• Chuggers
• Five Pounds and Twenty Pence
• Homeopathy Petition Response
• See Tickets
• Greens and Science