jcm's blog

“The House of Peers made no pretence To intellectual eminence, Or scholarship sublime”

– When Britain Really Ruled The Waves

Continuing in my quest for self reform, and my penchant for reading about the brave people behind the American Revolutionary War, I’ve been watching a History Channel series (13 parts – ever wondered why the networks really like those multiples? ) while working out. I’ve got a stationary bike hooked up and I’m trying to cycle around 10-15 miles a day in addition to my new diet (healthy, with a mix of vitamins – wikipedia has great articles on things you should and should not take) and walking regimin that I’ve imposed upon myself recently. Earlier, I walked from my apartment into Boston again – I just love a stroll across the Charles down to Park Street and around the Common.

I might need to ban myself from Amazon or Ebay at some point. I’ve been looking at more revolutionary writings (just bought a copy of Thomas Paine’s American Crisis this evening) – especially the rare antique variety. That could get expensive, if I let it.

I’ve been listening to a lot of G&S lately, and in a similar cultural vain am sorely tempted to see Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker this season.

Jon.

Photo: My Living Room

I had a housewarming last night. I’d gotten my work done preparing this place just in time – worked through the night on Friday and all day Saturday unpacking boxes. But it was good to hang out in my own place – and kudos to cjb, mad, andyo, Konrad, pjones, and everyone else who came along to drink beer and hang out for a while. Afterward, I took the T to Park Street with some of the guys, with a view to seeing the Bond movie but that was sold (yes, even at midnight) so I wound up seeing Fast Food Nation. And that was a great movie – totally convinced me I could never eat mass produced meat even if I did eat meat (which I don’t) just because of how they treat the cattle and the workers who process it. It’s just a movie, but it’s got a basis in fact.

Anyway. I’m playing with AirTunes, listening to random 80s pop and slacking off for a while writing blog entries. My espresso machine is working again (on a very large transformer) so I expect I’ll be drinking a lot of coffee tonight.

Jon.

I was just catching up with the BBC News website, when I noticed that the Queen’s speech was today. This is an antiquated and pointless “speech” by the unelected Queen in which she reads from a script given to her by the (outgoing) Prime Minister of the day. She is obligated to read it from a first person perspective and make whatever outrageous statements that the government feel are justified for the next year.

I’ll go through the specifics of the speech when I have time, but I did notice that, yes, they have decided 2007 will be another year in which the British government won’t be bothering about basic human rights in favor of introducing yet more damaging and controlling legislation to keep tabs on the little people who elected them. Specifically, they’re going to push ahead with the following sheer folly:

• Identity Cards. Yes, they really do want to force you to carry a plasticated card with a unique serial number, your inside leg measurements, sexual preference, side of the bed you get up on and whether you’ve recently criticized the UK government. It’ll be stored in the “UK Wankerbase 9000″, a giant government information system.
• They can now forcefully evict you from your own home if you are anti-social. Anti-social behavior will now include speaking out against the folly of the British government and the fundamental failings of their entire system of governance.

There was various other horse shit in there, including yet more HM Department of Vague Paranoia (The Home Office) propaganda about the need to assume everyone is a criminal, outsource more of the HO to private enterprise and the need to write into a law a provision that Reid is not responsible for anything that goes wrong – that was all Mousey’s fault, and if that doesn’t work they can blame Blunkett and Straw.

Message to Blair: Orwell called, he wants your input on a new book.

Jon.

So, I got unhappy with the responsiveness of fremont.jonmasters.org and my other UML client (with slightly better performance) in London. I’ve decided UML is a nice hack but I really want to be using something that tries a bit harder to be “real” virtualization. At this moment, that’s Xen, though that might change in the future. Various Xen virtual hosting is now available, and both existing providers are planning to switch eventually.

I don’t want to wait all year though, so I signed up with RimU (what a fucking cool name that is) and am so far impressed with the performance of dallas.jonmasters.org. I moved my US asterisk server over and now am not getting audio dropouts – it’s probably never going to be 100% perfect (it’s VoIP running over SIP after all) but it’s now at the point where I can implement moh (music on hold) and have a fully interactive menu system. Don’t worry, I paid magnatune for a license to play some of their music – it is, after all, only $12/year for personal home office use.

Next, my plan is to move other stuff currenly on fremont over to dallas, and then ask Linode nicely if they plan to give me access to their Xen beta before I pull the plug on them. I like Bytemark, but I’m probably going to can them in favor of BlackCat if they don’t have a compelling offering pretty soon. Blackcat (or Mythic) probably will provide a better service than the UML solution I have in the UK now. Oh well.

Worked out that I’m spending about $50USD/month on additional hosting and SIP/IAX for my non-printk stuff. On the face of it, that sounds like a reasonable amount to be paying for email and telephony, but I don’t pay anything to Verizon or Comcast for telephone service and I don’t have huge per-minute charges to call e.g. the UK. So, overall I think this is a more fun way to spend roughly the same amount of money.

Jon.