techiturn

Part one: hardware and OS installation

I once again possess a desktop computer at home:

…and the packaging:

For a number of years I was convinced of the superiority of laptops. But finally the cramped typing and viewing made me reconsider.

I ordered a system built by Scorpion Technology, with a few modifications:

• plus keyboard
• plus monitor
• plus wireless card.

The keyboard is a Logitech Ultra Flat Keyboard and I naively thought there wouldn’t be too much different amongst keyboards, but that was before I realised some people might think it was a good idea to A) remove the empty area above the arrow keys, and B) move the page up/page down to the bottom row, and C) move the home/end above the numpad. Being able to find the arrow keys by feeling the empty space is a very useful part of psuedo-touch typing. Not sure if I will get used to it or if this keyboard will need to be moved-on.

The monitor is an LG Flatron W2053TQ, 20inch widescreen. It’s very nice; nice standard 16:9 ratio, and I can use it in a room with natural light coming in (not overly reflective, unlike my laptop). My desk is pretty narrow so anything bigger would be too big I think. It tilts back and forward but doesn’t move up and down. The controls are OK by me; I can swipe across the power without tilting the whole screen (unlike my Samsung monitor at work), but apparently not everyone agrees.

Under the “fun” option it can even display in 4:3, which I never thought would be useful, until I tried to install Ubuntu 9.04 and it didn’t recognise my monitor! At least putting it in 4:3 meant I could read stuff without getting a headache. More on that in a minute.

Neither the case nor the monitor come with built-in speakers, which is something I didn’t consider. My desk is fairly small to always have speakers on it. Also neither the keyboard nor monitor have USB ports, which can be nice, although at least this case has USB ports at the front! Unlike my last machine from 2002…

So I got all this and eagerly plugged it in and set about installing Ubuntu 9.10. I happen to have install disks for both 9.10 and 9.04 available. My laptop is still running Xubuntu 8.04 and while I thought at the time sticking to LTS releases would save me work, I think it only delayed it, so I now plan to upgrade progressively as releases come out.

So I popped in the install disk and went click-click-click, and it all seemed to go swimmingly. Until I logged in, and within seconds, the keyboard and mouse would stop responding.

Hmm. Time to fire up the laptop and hit Google. It seemed to be a known bug, relating to some ACPI setting. According to this, “Once the system is installed, a kernel from the updates will fix the problem.” So I learned how to jump to a terminal log-in from the GUI log-in page (Ctrl-Shift-F1) and back (Ctrl-Shift-F7). Based on this I modified /etc/default/grub

from

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=“quiet splash”

to

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=“acpi=off”

and then ran sudo update-grub. This meant I could login to the GUI without a freezing mouse and keyboard, and I could check that the screen resolution looked fine and the wireless worked (two Linux bugbears of mine). OK. So now all I needed to do was update the kernel and I could restore that ACPI setting, and all would be good.

Updating the kernel… easier said than done. My wireless broadband was having a particularly bad day, and in a fit of impatience, I decided to use the Ubuntu 9.04 disk and install that instead. And it worked, with no peripherals-freezing, and with wireless, but wrong display aspect ratio. I persevered along this route for a little while before realising it was even more silly, reinstalled 9.10, and went to bed hoping for better connectivity tomorrow. (That’s the great thing about a new machine. You feel unconcerned about installing new OSes on it at a whim.)

Luckily the next day internets were flowing much more freely, and I easily updated to kernel 2.6.31-19 (from -14). Rebooting gave me a new error about failing to contact the configuration server something-something gconf daemon. Sounds bad, but some more Googling showed there was an easy fix: delete some ~/.blah settings.

OK. Ready to go. All should be good. Except…the freezing returns. When I edit the grub commands explicitly, the “quiet splash” is still there, and the “acpi-off” is not, so it seems it is not reading my instructions, or something.

So more work is needed, but I at least feel confident enough to start installing my extra packages and copying over my data.

This arvo I went along to the Linux Users of Victoria (LUV) Beginners Workshop and had an enjoyable afternoon playing with shiny toys. The Beginners Workshop has been running for a year now and by all accounts is a success. It’s quite easy going and a great place to share advice and tips on all things Linux.

Scratch on the OLPC. Photo by Wayan Vota, licensed CC-BY-NC.

I didn’t bring my laptop today as it was rather hot, and I knew there would be some OLPCs there. So I spent some time trying most of the OLPC applications, TamTam being the most engaging but I couldn’t figure out how to put together my own sound sequence. Finally I turned to Scratch, which I have been intrigued by since seeing Tony Forster’s talk on it at Software Freedom Day 2009.

And thus I was able to create this:

(Oddly enough, I can’t view this directly on my own laptop, as (A) my distro is so out of date I can’t easily install Scratch, and (B) getting Java applets to actually work seems to be a task more difficult than… virtually everything else on Linux. Note to self: really REALLY need to update my OS. Now I’ve given up and installed it under Wine.)

So here is the “code” to make this:

Ghost:

Unicorn:

The “Share” function will lets you easily upload your project to the Scratch website, as above, is very very cool. It’s integrated very well.

After that I set to crocheting. (See Revisiting craft for the backstory.) Last week while I was waiting for MXUG to start, I wandered around in Clegs and started my stash (you will need a Ravelry account to see that I think). Last weekend Emma Jane gave me my first crochet lesson at KiwiFoo, and I wanted to get started before I forgot that tactile memory completely.

These are my first, second and third (in-progress) pieces. The second piece looks like a triangle, although it was intended to be square. I guess I kept dropping stitches. The natural colour pattern in the multi-colour wool is interesting. Maybe it is more noticable in small pieces. I will keep them because I guess later they can be tacked onto bigger pieces as decoration.

The third shows a distinct improvement in consistency. I will see if I can keep the stitches up for a few more rows before attempting anything “real”.

It was a fun afternoon of tinkering.

So said Kate Lundy last week. (The twitterverse is accustomed to reading backwards.)

Senator Lundy’s link goes to a PDF report called Meteorological and Related Data from the 2008-09 Annual Report, and it looks thusly:

So Senate estimates are on. The transcripts are available in, uh… convenient… PDF form. Oh well, at least it gets published in a timely fashion. The second link entitled Environment, Communications, and the Arts (PDF) has the second half of that committee’s questioning, which includes the Bureau of Meteorology.

pp22-23:

Senator LUNDY— As far as accessing information by citizens to weather is concerned, how does that place you when compared with other what I would describe as primary sources of weather information? Does that mean more and more people are coming to you to get it straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, rather than using secondary weather information services? Have you done much analysis on that?

Dr Ayers— No. I do not have that detail. I do not know that we have that detail. Another point I would make about the ACMA report is that these little phones that I am waving around in the air here that everybody has these days, in looking at the uses of those phones, if I remember those numbers correctly, 68 per cent of people use these things for browsing the web. The next most common was 50 per cent who use them for news, and then at 48 per cent was checking the weather. I think you are quite right in the direction of your question, that providing information to the public is important. I can not tell you how many of those sorts of uses come to the bureau compared with other providers of weather information but it is an area that we have been working on. We are providing more information on the web. We have restructured the shape of the web, and we will be doing some thinking in the future about the possibility of iPhone applications.

Senator LUNDY— I was going to ask you about your mobile applications.

Dr Ayers— We are beginning to think about that.

Senator LUNDY— So you do not have one at the moment?

Dr Ayers— No, but in particular relating to some of the developments in the water area and the provision of water information, that is one of the areas that we are looking at.

Senator LUNDY— Not just iPhone, of course, but other smart phones?

Dr Ayers— Yes.

Senator LUNDY— Just checking, to make sure it is an open platform.

Dr Ayers— I have a battle with the head of the water division. He has an iPhone and I do not.

Senator LUNDY— We are all just jealous of him, it is all right.

Dr Ayers— We are having a battle internally.

Senator LUNDY— In terms of the availability of your datasets about the historical record of weather patterns and the climate, what are your policies around making those datasets available to researchers, to enthusiastic students who want to mash up the data and use it for themselves? What is your general approach to making those datasets available?

Dr Ayers— They are available via the web now, so anybody who wants to look at the historical record can go to the national climate record as it is housed in the bureau’s databases. You can go and download datasets that you can then put into spreadsheets and do other work.

Senator LUNDY— How do you manage the ownership or copyright associated with those datasets? Do you put them under a Creative Commons licence or something like that?

Dr Ayers— That is the direction that we have been heading in terms of the way in which we are handling water information as well. That is an area that we are exploring at the moment.

Senator LUNDY— Are you familiar with the government’s commissioned Gov2.0 Taskforce report?

Dr Ayers— Yes.

Senator LUNDY— I understand that the government is currently considering its response to it, but it presses the point about the use of the Creative Commons style licensing to help facilitate access to that information, to lower the levels of bureaucracy in getting access to it. I am amazed at the numbers. As I said, I had heard that there were some big ones, but 2.4 billion hits is a pretty big number, so congratulations on what you have achieved with your website. I will make a point of trying to ask you questions about your web presence every single estimates.

Dr Ayers— I will be prepared, Senator.

(links and formatting added by me, obvs)

It’s kinda awesome having Kate Lundy as a Senator, no?

ps. I tried to look for this on Open Australia and couldn’t find anything that looked like Senate estimates. Does OA not cover Senate estimates, or will it appear there in time?

Message on signing up a new account in Bugzilla 3.4.4:

PRIVACY NOTICE: Bugzilla is an open bug tracking system. Activity on most bugs, including email addresses, will be visible to the public. We recommend using a secondary account or free web email service (such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, or similar) to avoid receiving spam at your primary email address.

OR, why not change Bugzilla accounts to have usernames, so users’ email addresses don’t need to be exposed to the world, like every other web-based software in the world??

RT doesn’t let you create accounts via the web interface by default.

Mantis doesn’t have any kind of report/summary in the core product at all.

If you aren’t logged in, Trac gives no indication of how to add a new bug, and it attracts a bucketload of spam.

I would have thought these things would have been figured out by now?!

I have recently developed a dabbling interest in what might be termed craftivism. Crafty things for surprising, unusual or subversive purposes.

It kinda started when my housemate wielded her hand-me-down sewing machine to do a shorter hem on some pants for me, and then made a Christmas hat out of the leftover material. I thought, “Hm, creating things from pure thought-stuff (and the odd bit of material)…that’s rather what I love about the power of programming! Except with sewing, you can hold something in your hand, or wear it.”

I’ve also had in the back of my mind, for quite a few months now, a vague idea that “learning how to do Arduino stuff would be cool.” Every time I see Andy around Melbourne tech events I am also reminded of this, as he is a keen Arduino evangelist, you could say. But not in an overbearing way. :)

Then I was reading Frankie, which is a crafty/fashiony magazine (a girl I went to high school with works for them now! just sayin’), and they mentioned a book called Yarn Bombing. I immediately saw that it was a cross between street art and craft, and it’s such a sweet, surprising, colourful idea that I immediately fell in love with it. It’s just so… wonderful. I love those little details in public places that make you smile and suddenly improve your day, and by extension I wanna hang out with the people who make those details exist, and be cool like them.

So I bought Yarn Bombing and just started reading it yesterday. And I was thinking, I’m sure I’ve seen Skud mention knitting... why were all these things off my radar? Why do I feel like there’s so much more “cred” to be had with Arduinos than sewing, even though they’re all maker activities?

Why have I felt the urge to shun or pooh-pooh traditional/stereotypical women’s hobbies? Why do I feel so perversely pleased in pursuing traditionally male-dominated things, like mathematics, programming and football?

Partly it’s that I have fumble fingers, and partly it’s that the women who pursue male-dominated activities are virtually without exception really freaking cool, but mostly it’s that… I have obviously internalised the value judgements that say Men’s Things are Important and Worthy, while women’s things are trivial, trifling, silly, harmless diversions.

Now it’s kind of annoying to consider yourself a feminist for some 10 odd years before realising that, but there you go. Better late than never I suppose. Succeeding at the status quo is a certain kind of success, but it’s not as good as broadening the idea of what success can look like. So, you know, is designing and building an Arduino so different to creating and making a knitting item?

In fact, one of the most fascinating Arduino products to me is the Lilypad range, which is designed to be sewn into clothing. Imagine the explosions of awesome to come when sewers and coders are united!