jcm's blog

[ from the uml-host dept. ]

I configured jcm.printk.net which is a User Mode Linux host. Markus updated www.printk.net with the flashy graphic “printk”. I need to finish configuration today. Photos soon.

Jon.

[ from the more-machines dept. ]

We got a colo box in Telehouse Docklands. dmesg.printk.net. I just got back from a geek trip down, in which 8 of us went to install the machine in a TFM4 rack. I will post some more when I have caught up with various important things, such as some sleep. Good night!

Jon.

[ from the gotta-catch-them-all dept. ]

When will those fuckwits in government learn that they are doing far more damage than any terrorist ever could. We should be supporting our allys – France, Russia, Germany, etc. etc. and not the wills of a distorted American administration – would you like Freedom Fries with that, Mr. Bush? Mr. Blair?

Jon.

[ from the that-time-of-year dept. ]

Project deadlines are looming on the horizon so it is time to get enough of the coding done before that date. I have set aside the entire weekend to make some progress on that front and have ordered a copy of “A Specification For A New Family Of RISC Processor”, the definitive guide to Power PC. I am currently wading through some Motorola documentation on the MPC7455 and hope to have a minimal boot running on my Powerbook this coming week.

Jon.

[ from the just-say-no-please dept. ]

Once again I am annoyed at the inability of the music industry to understand how to combat the issue of CD copying, file distribution, etc. Of course the answer is: Make a product people want to buy, at a price that is reasonable and offer it through a suitable medium. Rather than investing in annoying methods for breaking the Compact Disc audio standard, they could consider allowing people such as you and I to download music tracks for a sane price in a sane format to save everyone some hassle.

I thought I would mention this as I discovered another site which advocates the rights of consumers and how the music industry is screwing people over: it’s on the UKCDR site.

[ from the cool-stuff-for-jcm dept. ]

I am writing a review of SIP services for Linux, and have decided to setup a SIP gateway/registrar on the forthcoming colo box. I will very soon be reachable using sip:jcm@jonmasters.org or a similar address. The cool thing is that this is location independent and as I move location the registrar will automatically handle passing requests through to the local proxy whether in Nottingham, Reading, London or Oxford.

Jon.

[ from the Music-Of-The-Night dept. ]

Finally my housemates prodded me in to upgrading the routing within the house – I stuck MRTG and a bunch of other things in place for the sake of it, so we now have pretty graphs showing bandwidth use. There is a bug (yes, yes, there are many bugs…) in NTL’s dhcp servers protocol implementation – or there is a bug in the Linux clients, but in any case I will try to track it down sometime as it is very annoying when trying to automatically discover that one cannot renew an old lease, etc.

I am doing some project work, but it is starting to annoy me that I am not moving faster – though other things are happening of course. I am going to meet a few people soon to discuss research ideas and I think if I can sort it out then a PhD is probably going to be a good idea for me at the moment. Ideally I will continue with part time consultation on the weekend/spare time to keep my knowledge of current technologies up to date and do fun stuff like porting Linux to new hardware (hopefully that’s still happening).

I got “Music Of The Night”, a CD recorded by an old friend of mine. I enjoy listening to the tracks very much (especially the track called “Promise Me”) and wish the artist every success with her musical persuits.

Jon.