jcm's blog

The UK has been named Internet villain of the year. Hardly surprising really. See, in the US they snoop on citizens too but it sparks consitutional debate – in the UK people just sit and have a cup of tea and put up with this shit through a combination of collective apathy and a lack of a constitution to protect them.

On a more fundamental level this story simply points out two things:

• The average person in the street has no understanding of technology
• This can be abused to push the concept of it being possible to track all people equally

Those of us who do have brains know that the bad guys have many ways around this trivial logging but that it does terrible things for the liberty of the average person. For me, I’ll just not use my ISP mail servers (which are unreliable and shit anyway) and if that becomes a problem, I’ll setup an account with a non-UK provider to shovel my mail someplace the UK government can’t do their evil thang.

If you don’t think this is a problem, I suggest:

• Buy a copy of The News Of The World
• Turn on the “footy”
• Watch Eastenders
• Join millions who let this stuff happen around them

Jon.

So, I’m over in Brussels for the FOSDEM this weekend. I decided to fly because it was actually cheaper than taking the train.

I got to Heathrow Terminal 4 this afternoon to discover that they’re trialling millimeter wave scanning devices on random people. A sign stated that this was a trial and that you can elect for a full body search instead. Of course, I was randomly selected to be scanned by the machine and was compelled to decline their offer as they weren’t offering any guarantees as to:

• Whether the machine is safe
• More importantly, what happens to the images? Are they stored in a centralised retrival system from which any government whackjob with a ID Cards buttplug installed can come take a look at pictures of people naked?

No thanks. I’ll take the hand search, which I did. They were pretty ok about it (though my bag was searched with an ion scanner) and even went as far as to agree with me that there were too many open questions about the new machine (cunningly named the “Secure 1000″ – you can’t make this crap up). Until it’s illegal not to be anally probed and have an impression of your arse stored in a government database, I’ll just be saying no. You should too.

Jon.

I quite enjoyed hearing Shaydid perform at the Heart and Crown in Ottawa last February. In fact, I went along a couple of times that they were there and met some other fans too – Jen and Lisa invited me to go with them to Toronto last weekend but I had some book commitments that had to come first and put pay to that plan.

Anyway, I decided it was about time to order their CD – Wrong Again. It’s good stuff – and available right now for a very reasonable price over on their website. Go buy it now. I submitted an entry to freedb so that when you buy your copy, all that shiney track information is available to you. And remember, you want to buy a copy now.

Jon.

I think I’ll get my left pinky properly looked at in due course. It’s really stopping me from playing some of the pieces that I want to play on the violin, though my technique is improving. Once I’ve picked up a car and settled over in Boston, I’ll get myself a tutor and see if I can work on the technique some more. But the finger will remain. I damaged it once and it’s not been quite the same since (fine for everyday use, just creaky if I push it too hard). It’s not worth having a surgical procedure carried out as that’ll possibly make it worse and would take me out of action for too long but there might be some gel or medication I can apply to help with my playing. In the meantime, I think it needs more exercise so I’ll see if I can find some good exercises for it while I’m travelling.

I figured out the fingering for “Running to the Light” by listening to the music and sitting with the violin. It’s in a horrible key, but it sounds good – I so need to brush up on my theory (Hannah “borrowed” my theory books a while ago – I’ll just pick up some more I think). But there’s plenty of time for this – I’ve already found one possible choir over in Littleton without putting any effort into that (thanks Jim) and would love to get my violin playing up to orchestra standard again – it’d be a bit of work to get there, but definately worth it.

I’m pulling an all nighter on Portability.

Jon.

[UPDATE] I found the following quote on the Mailbox website (rofl):

“Mailbox prides itself on having a human face. We are and have always been a company where customers can call for assistance or advice and be sure of speaking to someone who will appreciate their problems and provide workable solutions.”

I had another ADSL drop out last night, which affected my ability to get useful work done. I’m not getting the warm and fuzzies from Mailbox any more. It’s just so damned frustrating and annoying – they used to be so good and had staff like Alex to go beyond the call of duty. Now, they’re just being annoying.

For your amusement, check out the Mailbox website section on ADSL Guide, where they recommend that you check out the forum for posts about them. It’s a shame most of those posts are now filled by people who feel like I do about the situation. 186K might want to remove that link – if they’re not planning on improving their service – I’d be embarrased to link to that now.

I sent them a letter, where I bluntly asked them if they’re going to get better or worse, except I wasn’t quite so nice about it this time. I’ll let you know what they say.

Jon.

Photo: You meet some very cool monkey loving people in Massachusetts. I went wondering around the White Mountains up in New Hampshire with these two (kernelslacker and veebl).

I signed up to a Pro account on Flickr. This is intially a temporary measure (until I find more space for my gallery) and also good for backup – I’ll probably copy the rest of my photos over in due course. Check out my Flickr photos.

Jon.

It’s been an interesting week. Over the past week:

• I completed several chapters of my book.
• I signed a contract of employment with a large Linux vendor.
• I resigned from my job[0].
• I sent off the paperwork for my visa.
• Did some planning for the conference and for FOSDEM.
• Bought several books – including two on moving to the US.
• Bought some technology – including another iPod cable.
• Finally committed to getting rid of some redundant technology, and consolidating the stuff I have here into a more manageable quantity of reasonable kit.
• I hacked up some MTD code, played with OProfile, wrote some examples, discovered a few bugs, etc.

I also just got the guys at Advogato to sort out the login for my account over there (I last tried to get them to fix it back in 2004). Goodness, I used to be a much more pessimistic person back then. I’m still bothered by issues like randomly dying, but a better solution is to be successful enough to find a technological solution to that (I don’t believe I’m going to la la land). I’m probably even more opposed to organised religion than I was then, though I respect the right for others to believe they do good things that they do because they were told to rather than just because they happen to be a nice person.

Tonight, I went to see Final Destination 3 with Hussein. The movie was as crap as you’d expect, but still somehow enjoyable. If you’re at a loose end, or just keen to do something with a friend – then go see it. I’m up writing on the book at the moment, taking too much time out to write on this blog, but that’s life. I spent a while figuring out why cxoffice was broken earlier (very annoying – no OSX isn’t better, but Linux software really should always tell you why it’s failing) and had had a few cups of tea (in fact, I had breakfast at 03:00 this morning again). I’m going to make some progress today if it kills me – and if it does, tough. I’ll get it done anyway.

I’ll be hanging around Oxford on Thursday (I offered to help a friend out with some embedded problems in exchange for a curry and a chat) and now expect to swing by Cambridge sometime next month, probably after I get back from a couple of days/weeks in Germany.

Jon.

P.S. I think I now officially want to take up sailing again. I’ve become quite interested in one day having a cutter ship of my own – I’d call it the Cutty Sark and sail on the high seas. Ooooh Arrrrh!

[0] Which means working less with MVL and DevRocket. I’ll probably now buy an ML403 to hack on in my spare time, in addition to getting more involved in other cool projects.