Bagel Belly Blog

Wireless as it should be: an incentive

So, here I am sat in the historic Maid's Head hotel in central Norwich, making use of the free wireless networking on offer as a result of BTOpenzone's free wireless week (which I heard of via a tip-off on the ALUG mailing list).

I haven't been to the bar in this hotel in about 2 years. It's a nice enough place, but there's been no reason to before as it's a little out of the way compared to my usual stomping ground. The advent of wireless makes this place suddenly a contender again - a great place for business meetings, a good refuge to do a quick email check as I pass through Norwich, etc.

On Monday, BT will go back to their ludicrous pricing scheme for Openzone, and I'll probably not come back for another couple of years. I hope this gives the owners food for thought.

Hutton, BBC, Tony

The Hutton Enquiry is over, and the verdict is in. It seems to be that the blame is predominantly pinned upon the BBC. The result? Greg Dyke, a particularly effective and smart guy has quit.

I was going to get annoyed and depressed about this, and about how Tony Blair appears to have got away from the whole thing without any blame. And then I heard on the news that after all this, only 16% of people trust Tony. Hopefully he won't be around for much longer.

Update: A poll on Question Time got over 20,000 participants. 18% say Greg Dyke should have resigned. 82% say he should not.

Updated Update: More stuff via Jeremy:

• Hutton has created a political smokescreen behind which Blair is seeking to distract the British public from the harsh reality that his government went to war based on unsustained allegations that have yet to be backed up with a single piece of substantive fact. - 'The public must look to what is missing from the report'
• 45% of voters believe the prime minister lied over his claim that he did not authorise the leaking of Dr Kelly's name - New poll reveals public mistrust

And finally, I bring you this bagelbellyblog exclusive: a shocking BBC coverup of the whole Hutton affair:

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

So, we're getting a bit more snow today. It's been forecast to hit on and off for the last couple of days, and last night there was a light fall. I woke up this morning to an icing sugar dusting everywhere, mainly covering up a layer of treacherous ice that even my boots didn't want to stick to. I waited at the bus stop, part awed, part entertained, part horrified as busses slid to a stop and skidded back into motion opposite me. Apparently the gritting lorries didn't make it down the bus lanes.

And now this afternoon the weather is finally getting on with it and starting to snow properly. You can't really tell from the picture, but there's a bit of a blizzard going on outside. Nice! I don't mind when I'm in a warm, well-lit office. It'll be less enjoyable when it comes to time to go home. At least I'm on foot and not cycling. I quite like the crunch-crunch of walking through fresh snow.

Somehow the prospect of walking home in temperatures of -2 or -3 degrees doesn't worry me any more. The joys of perspective. David and I estimate it was closer to -15 when this photo was taken in March last year on our visit to Michigan. The quest for an IHOP and the pancakey joy therein has never been so fraught with frozen things. Mmmmm, blueberry sauce .....

Update: That didn't take long. 20 minutes later, things are starting to disappear beneath the snow.

Just tried videoing it. The phone's camera didn't do a very good job. Time to buy an iSight :-)

Set Theory

I'm a big fan of the "picture on the back of a business card" art of Hugh MacLeod. I get a semi-regular dose via Ben Hammersley's weblog. Today's is particularly excellent, so I've reproduced it here:

So very, very true.

A New Hope

For the first time in about four years I'm watching the original Star Wars. I used to have a copy recorded off the TV on an old betamax tape, but the player packed up years ago. I then bought the original box set when it came out. A few years later, I bought the special edition box set.

I'd have watched them more recently, but for the last few years since my lodgers moved out I haven't had a video recorder. I've not felt like buying one as I don't watch enough TV to want to record stuff, and VCRs are totally inferior to DVD players for viewing.

Thanks to the wonders of BitTorrent, I managed to download A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi special editions. It's not DVD quality, but it's quite acceptable played through the laptop onto the TV. Happy memories! I used to know almost every line in A New Hope. I also used to think the Fox fanfare (that plays over the fox logo with the searchlights) was part of the Star Wars soundtrack. To this day, whenever I hear it, I half expect the opening bars of the Star Wars theme to kick in right after.

It will be nice when I can legitimately own digital copies of the original three films. I've already bought Episode 1 and Episode 2 on DVD. I have it on good authority that 4, 5 and 6 will come out on DVD at the end of this year, but I'll believe it when I see it ...

I hate this world

On Friday night, I interrupted some thieves raiding the garden of a vacant house round the corner from me. I assume the old lady that lived there has passed away. The two eloquently spoken (in words of 4 letters) scruffy thugs were less than happy to be questioned when I asked them what they were doing and why they had just climbed over the low wall rather than using the gate into the garden. They made off with, of all things, some empty plastic hanging baskets. Pointless, mindless.

I was reading the Hunts Post over the weekend. About a third of the news items involved robbery, assault, drunk driving and racial attacks.

Yesterday, I returned to where I'd parked my bike in the city to find someone had taken my front wheel. It's not the first time I've lost a bike or part of a bike. I had mountain bikes stolen in 1992, 1996, 1997 and 2003. All were locked securely.

What is wrong with this place? Why do people think they can just take things? Why are more and more people resorting to shouting abuse and using their fists?

Stop the world, I want to get off.

That travel meme ...

I blame thom.

When I'm 64

Sometimes I stumble across stuff on the net (via blogs, or news, or random links, whatever) that is really interesting, but that I really wish I hadn't read.

Like this article which hits so many nails on the head that it's got to be breaking some sort of record.

The only thing it's wrong about is assuming you have to be old in order to reduce down into bitter, vinegary distillates of one's former self.

Time to try and get some of that oh-so-elusive sleep.

Time to depose the monarchy. Arise, Sir Bill.

There's a lot of things I dislike about the monarchy, but on the whole they are balanced out by a general feeling that they are good for tourism and they give the papers something to write about.

This time, however, they've gone too far. According to The Telegraph, the queen is going to knight Bill Gates. What's all the more amazing is that the fluffy article palms off any negative attitudes to Sir Bill as "hatred among his competitors". Excuse me? This is the head of a company that has been convicted of acting illegally, a company that is continually being investigated for misbehaving and that has a track record of going too far to ensure their dominance in an industry they have single-handedly set back a good 5-10 years. I think a little less pro-Bill-bias is called for.

LotR: RotK

Diego saw Return of the King today, and had some comments to make, which I agree with on the whole. Funnily enough, I took my 9-year-old nephew to see it today. That was the third time I've seen it, and it still made the hair on the back of my neck stand up when the riders of Rohan come over the top of the hill.

What's more - my nephew, who is physically incapable of sitting still for 5 minutes and ran around non-stop during the last film I took him to, remained spellbound and totally transfixed throughout. The whole three hours. Even the slow bit at the end. Now if that isn't the sign of a good film, I don't know what is!

Diego mentions missing "the effect of the Ent's drink". That's in The Two Towers extended edition. He also points out the omission of Gondor's Palantir, which is interesting - during Faramir's charge back to the river, I had to explain to my nephew why exactly the Steward was mad.

I think my favourite moment still has to be the sequence with the lighting of the beacons. I don't know why. I suspect the soundtrack has a lot to do with it. This might be the first film soundtrack I actually go out and buy. I think it's also because it's from this point onward that the movie stops plodding and starts racing along at a manic rate.

I can't wait for RotK extended edition to come out. While Fellowship only added a few bits here and there, Two Towers extended edition was practically a completely different film. If all they add to RotK is an extended battle scene and the end of Saruman, I'll be happy. Hopefully there'll be a lot more though ;-)

Shooting themselves in the foot

Lots of sites linking to this Reuters article on how the European iTunes Music Store is being held up by red tape:

A maze of licensing contracts, music release dates that differ by country and incompatible billing systems have combined to sidetrack the service, which many recording executives still hope will make its European debut in the first half of 2004.

To be honest, I'm not sure it's going to be worth it when it gets here. Two reasons:

1) So many people have had to wait so long for this that they've got used to downloading over the file sharing networks. Sorry, music industry - you were so damned worried about making sure you all got your cut of the money that you missed the boat. And suing people won't help, it just makes you look more evil than you already do.

2) People know when they are being screwed. In the States, iTunes songs are $0.99 per track. That's around £0.55 in the UK, and yet I have it on (very) good authority that the price will be more like £0.99 over here - almost twice the price. Apparently this is because the UK music industry is more complex, because song writers get a big slice as well as the artists, because it's a smaller market, and so on. But if there's one thing the internet has taught me, it's that we're now in a global marketplace. If the UK can't offer a competitive price, music buyers can, should and will go elsewhere.

That's enough rant for tonight.

Public transport sucks

I decided to take the train again today, rather than driving. Partly motivated by the difference in price, and partly because when I'm on the train I can get some work done on the laptop (I have real problems balancing the laptop on the steering wheel when I'm driving).

So I'm sat on the 10.03 from Norwich, which was 20 minutes late in departing. This means I miss my connection in Peterborough, so my overall journey time will be around three hours instead of two. Suddenly the car seems like a much better option.

The other day I was talking about cars with David and saying how I think they are nothing but a decadent luxury, environmentally unfriendly, antisocial and just all round bad things. But when you can't travel reliably by other means, I guess there's no choice.

I think I need to add a new category to my blog: "Public transport moans and gripes".

Social Friend-of-a-friend blah blah networking

Up until last night, I'd remained stoically unconvinced by the whole social networking / friend-of-a-friend phenomenon. Those cunning chaps at Google have managed to change my mind with the launch of Orkut.

I got my invitation yesterday evening. Apparently 12,000 invitations had been sent out earlier that day. I joined right away, and sent invitations to a few friends. Within about an hour, two of them had joined. This thing is going to grow exponentially, for sure. It's scary to see how quickly this thing is growing.

I really hope the Orkut people are planning on making statistics available, kind of like the Google Zeitgeist. I'd love to see how many people have joined, how fast they are joining, average number of friends, most connected person, and things like that.

The fens

The plus side to long train journeys is getting to pass through stunning countryside. The only problem with this journey is that it's through fenland, which is basically flat and characterless. I'll post a video when I've got time to add a 3gp mime type to apache.

Did you know that the fens are sinking by some scary amount each year?

Seems quite a bit of the fens are already flooded. I'll soon be living on Norwich island.

I really am very bored now ;-)

Rosy Apples

So, in contrast with my normally grumpy comments on Apple's horrific distribution network and awful logistics, I thought I'd post a glowing review.

I ordered iLife '04 late on Tuesday evening, following Steven's, uh, "recommendation".

On Thursday, it turned up. Hooray! I'm very impressed - less than 2 days to get it here, and it came from Dublin, too. Now that's what I call good customer service.

(Except I was in London at the time, and wouldn't get back in time to pick it up. Bastards.)

Travel

Here we go again. Another day, another trip to London. I thought I'd post a picture of David by way of revenge for him doing the same to me.

On this trip the realities of international travel are a stark reminder of just how much the UK infrastructure sucks. We're being joined by colleagues from Germany and Belgium, and whilst it's a really early (like, 2am) start for Guido in Paderborn, Steven is setting out around the same time as us. It's maddening to think that in the time it takes to travel from Norwich to London, you can get from Brussels to London.

Update: we got back into Norwich at 8.45pm, and thought to ourselves how remarkable it was for the train to be on time and to only take two hours. And then we realised that this particular journey (ie, the one that only stops at three or four stations en route) is supposed to take 1 hour and 40 minutes ....

Flying straight past the Planet

The next task on my list after installing the new version of MovableType this evening would have been setting up categorised feeds so I can participate in Planet Apache. Thankfully, Thom has saved me from that with his timely attitude adjustment.

I must admit the idea of the social side of Apache being exposed is quite amusing. It'll be interesting to see if people start to self-censor their weblogs as a result.

The other thing about the sudden surge in the number of Planet (aggregating people with a common interest) blogs is that this must really screw up Google, in a way that individual blogs could only dream about. The sheer concentration of links (oh, let's call it "the gravity"!) both within the Planets, and from those linking to the Planets is phenomenal. Pagerank is dead, long live Pagerank.

By the way Thom, your comments link doesn't work on your weblog...

What's on my laptop?

In honour of Sylvain's forthcoming Apple experience, I thought I'd revisit the list of essential software on my Mac. Without further ado:

• Azureus replaces BitTorrent as the preferred BitTorrent client.
• Better HTML Export makes it easy to use iPhoto without a .Mac account. You really need Template Manager as well.
• Combine PDFs is a fantastic tool for stitching separate PDF files into one file.
• Desktop Manager gives me virtual desktops, for Free. CodeTek VirtualDesktop does the same, but at a price.
• ecto I already mentioned. Worth a second mention.
• ganttproject is java so not strictly a Mac app, but with this fix it works like a charm. It supports webDAV-hosted project files, which is cool.
• ViewIt is a nice slideshow / image program.
• I still like jEdit. I haven't been convinced by native Mac editors. Yet.
• Limewire for OS X.
• Lynx is useful for testing or low-bandwidth moments.
• Logorrhea is great for browsing or searching iChat logs.
• NetNewsWire of course.
• NeoOffice has replaced OpenOffice for me. It's a version of OpenOffice that runs (mostly) natively - it looks and feels much better.
• RealPlayer is pretty much essential.
• Quinn (via Tim Bray). Tetris, useful for clearing your mind and de-stressing for a while.
• Steam (via Jeremy) - useful if you listen to BBC Radio a lot.
• WeatherPop (via Thom) provides a really nice icon and weather drop-down to the menu bar.
• XChat Aqua - I've not found a Mac IRC client that improves on this. I just find the tabbed interface intuitive.
• Virtual PC is probably a must-have if you still need some Windows apps.

Phew.

Cocoonery

While discussing Martin's New Year vacation to Dublin, I remembered this picture I'd taken when I was there. It struck me as amusing at the time. After the recent string of hiccups, I figure it's actually quite appropriate. (Cocoon in this case turned out to be a bar.)

I've been having a lot of fun with Cocoon recently, and with peripheral software, too. Jeremy's been coming up with some cool stuff (getting to use many of the features I've been wanting to try out for a long time), and it's fascinating to watch. In between fighting fires, I've also been rolling my sleeves up and getting some - gosh, gasp - actual java written, getting to grips with Hibernate, Apache 2, Jetty and so on. Feels like progress.

I've also had to roll my sleeves up and do some of the outstanding sysadmin jobs I've been putting off. I'm finding one of the benefits of having employees in addition to co-conspirators is that they don't let you get away with putting things off indefinitely! Today was Mailman and JSPWiki. Tomorrow, I need to upgrade MovableType to hopefully thwart the comment spammers that are plaguing me.

The little things

So, our faithful trusty reliable server decided to die many horrible fiery deaths recently, which meant I got the delightful duty of two trips to our hosting facility to diagnose and then fix the problem.

The cause turned out to be a CPU fan that was rather lackadaisical. Every now and then it got bored of spinning, and decided to sit around and watch while the processor overheated and the machine halted. And to think I was amused and entertained at Jeremy Zawodny's account of hardware failures.

On the plus side, whilst in London I took the opportunity to borrow West Wing series one from Tracey. Turns out I'd actually managed to see most of the series on terrestrial despite Channel 4's best efforts with bad scheduling, but it was still enjoyable to watch the whole lot in the space of a weekend.

Switching and resuming

According to a comment on Torsten's blog, Sylvain finally made the switch. I'm curious to know how much life Torsten gets out of his Centrino-based laptop.

According to Stefano's blog, he's finally sorted out his permit woes and is off to MIT. Nice to see things go full-circle. I hope he's able to achieve great things there. He's certainly got a nice bunch of people to work with.

I've switched to using ecto, which seems rather more stable than it's predecessor, kung-log.

As for the long hiatus ... a combination of lack of time, lack of sleep, and chaos in the lives of the people around me have left me somewhat wiped out. Things are going to get worse before they get better. Batten down the hatches.