jcm's blog

Catching up on news (actually, I stream BBC News anyway), and I’m enjoying reading about the following little beauties from the past week:

• Fingerprinting people going into bars and clubs. The UK government are trialling this service because, if we put everything everybody does into a giant wankerbase then we can track them in every part of their lives.
• Monitoring your every movement. The UK government wants to add GPS-trackers into every car to calculate tax based on driving pattern. In theory, not a bad idea, but unfortunately another source for the government mega-wankerbase to track your life, citizen. No privacy guarantees being mentioned (and of course they won’t bother with that).
• Banning fireworks. Several MPs are looking into banning private firework sales in the UK, because a small number of people are fucking idiots. The feeling is that the little people should go to officially organized events (where I guess they can watch you more easily, too) instead of having a few fireworks at home. What a fucking stupid idea.
• Blair wants to fingerprint/DNA everyone at birth. Yup, this one came up again this week – the government wants a giant wankerbase storing records on every newborn citizen so that they can more easily track people from cradle to grave. And remember, if you start doing it from birth, you can brainwash people into thinking this is the status quo.

Anyway. Don’t worry, fellow Brittons. You can spend your time criticising the US and other countries – or you could wake up and smell the coffee (smell that liberty being burned all around you) and realise where the UK government is heading too all in the name of making us safe from ourselves.

Jon.

So I was just watching a Michael J Fox political advertisement on behalf of Missouri Senator candidate Claire McCaskill (YouTube rocks). In the years since Back To The Future, Mr. Fox has been diagnosed with young onset Parkinson’s and is now at quite an advanced stage. He’s one of a growing number of Hollywood celebrities who do more than just making headlines but actually do something useful – in his case speaking out against certain right-wing nutjobs who try to side with Bush in damaging the advancement of science in the United States (while trying to dumb-down the populous overall).

Like many sane people, I believe in the great potential of Stem Cell Research as a means to developing new cures to debilitating disease affecting millions of people. Yes, we need controls and processes in place to ensure a high standard of research – and we need to find more sociopolitically acceptable ways to obtain research stem cells – but we shouldn’t allow ourselves to get caught up in religious debate when it comes to advancing the state of scientific knowledge. Psuedo-religious crap has no place in politics anyway.

It’d be a nice side-effect of Bush losing his grasp over Congress if there were a little more sanity in areas such as these.

Jon.

Photo: Apartment building courtyard, complete with squirrels.

I moved into the apartment a week ago. The weekend before the one just gone, I made an emergency trip to Ikea (as I blogged about previously) to get a bed (3 hours of intensive not-designed-for-one-person-alone assembly required) and then went back a couple of days later with some (cool) friends to grab bits and pieces. I’m now at the point where (after a few trips to Ikea, CVS, Walgreens, and Target) I have a working kitchen and bathroom, partially complete bedroom and at least a coffee table and chair in the lounge…and 6Mbit business cable. Hopefully, my UK junk turns up in a couple weeks.

I’m in London right now (well, actually Reading, but I’m getting a train into London at some anti-social time this morning in order to get to the hotel I was booked into for breakfast – too busy fixing stuff at the moment to go down) at the UK franchise of LinuxWorld. If you’re around this week, ping me on my UK cellphone|mobile number (+44-777-613-1337) or email me and we’ll grab some coffee if there’s time to hook up.

Jon.

So I’m sitting here in Starbucks in Harvard Square drinking tea (and coffee) and hooking up various services for my new apartment. It’s on Harvard Street, just off Central Square. I ended up going for a 2 bed place because I wanted the space and because I got a pretty good deal – and because there’s a super cool courtyard view out of the window that helped me fall in love with the place. So, in summary, I like it, just a little bit.

The apartment is completely empty (well, except for minimal essentials I picked up in a 24 hour CVS down the street) and I don’t yet even have a bed to sleep on. Fortunately, davej was kind enough to let me crash with him for a few days while I figure that out. Yesterday, I took the commuter rail service out to Stoughton to visit Ikea and order a bed (should be delivered tomorrow). $1000 bucks later and I have something I like, but I wasn’t happy with the way they handled the delivery – they won’t deliver regular “warehouse” purchases, just furniture.

Ikea furniture goes out from a depot in the store right behind where I was standing with bedding, pillows, a quilt, and other crap that I then had to take on the train/T back to the apartment. Thanks Ikea, thanks a lot. Thanks for charging me $100 bucks for delivery and not delivering my other crap at the same time. Oh, and thanks for telling me twice on the phone that you could deliver this stuff before I turned up at the store – thanks. And yes, I did have words with store management, but it won’t make any difference.

Plan for the next week is to get hooked up with more than gas/electric. On Monday, I need to get some High Speed net access. I’m probably going to go with Comcast in the end because their business package is around the same cost as going with the high-end Speakeasy DSL option and I already have the cable in the place. But I might accept a higher charge and go with Speakeasy if I again have to explain to the Comcast technical support folks how to setup up reverse DNS entries… I’m not looking forward to trying to get them to combine business and residential packages for me either, but I’ll try.

I’ve got some photos of the apartment that I’ll upload in due course and I’ve also got a bunch of other things that I probably could comment upon on this blog, but first, I must get myself sorted out. I’m back in the UK for a week from next weekend and then I’ll get back to buying crap for my apartment ahead of my shipped junk turning up in a few weeks (well, here’s hoping). If you get board, you can call my new US cellphone:

+1-617-759-1337.

Jon.

I’m going to be in Cambridge later today ahead of the EMPEG enthusiasts meetup this weekend. I’m looking forward to hanging out with Hussein and my friend from Ottawa (actually from the maritimes) Mark Lord. Ahead of that, I decided that I’m leaving the UK in under 2 weeks and haven’t seen Toby and Sara (and the new baby!) in a billion years. So, I’m working from $generic_coffee_shop this afternoon and then having some dinner. If you’re also in Cambridge today and want a quick coffee – call me and I’ll see if I can’t grab a few minutes away from the laptop

Jon.

Yesterday’s random package of the day (man, these guys must love me now for all the ordering I’ve had to do in preparation for moving) was a Linksys PAP2. Like all other products from that (division of Cisco) company, I am impressed. So, ok, the supplier shipped me a US model with the wrong regional settings (the PAP2 has a fairly nifty DSP and can generate tones/support many countries in one model) and I had to locate some UK parameters (they seem to differ arbitrarily from what one person claimed was the BT “standard”[0]) but now it is configured and I can make test calls.

Unfortunately, the PAP2 didn’t come with a US->BT converter and the RJ11 I used here doesn’t seem to be wired right (on-hook detection doesn’t work) so it took a bit of fiddling to test. But I’ve ordered some adapters and hope that they’ll work out ok. Now, I just need to get my parents a large oversize red (very important) “bat phone” on which they can call me. Since it’s an international direct line over a secured network into a foreign territory, we’ll probably have to call it the hotline…the NSA will still be listening.

Once I have a place, I’m ordering one of these puppies for myself. Then I can hook up a DECT (recently approved for use in the US! wow! like 5 billion years later…) phone and use a variety of configured trunks to reach family and friends all over the world. The guys at Juntion Networks are still looking for a 31337 vanity DID number for the US. One day, oh one day, the FCC (or whoever) will nationalize the process of finding unallocated local area code numbers for this kind of vanity purpose. Until then, they’re very kindly doing a manual search for me through a variety of area codes so I can once again be l33t in my number (my UK mobile phone number being +44 7776 131337…). Oh, yes, I’m that vain…

Honerable mention goes to dotwaffle of #lugradio for his voicemail earlier. You too can check out my SIP service and get a mention here!

Jon.

[0] It’s not a proper standard if one company tells everyone else what to do, like BT historically did. Not that I’m claiming any telco with a historical monopoly is any better.

I’m testing out Asterisk at the moment. jonmasters.org got updated with the appropriate SRV records and so in due course, you’ll even be able to call me at jcm@jonmasters.org. Meanwhile, if you’re in the UK and feel like helping me test this puppy out, call me at +44 118 3218364 and leave a message – funniest one wins a mention (or just call my UK mobile number and it’ll redirect you whenever I don’t answer the call).

The service is running on a virtual machine at the moment, which causes some issues getting realtime playback, so you’ll occasionally notice glitches. I’m working on two possible solutions to this:

• mlock()ing asterisk in memory and hacking with the VM.
• or moving the setup onto a Xen DomU once we sort out one of our colo machines.

I’ve got a US SIP provider doing a vanity number search for me at the moment and I need to write a few more scripts. Eventually, I’ll have one UK and one US number of preference that I’ll publish. Calls will automatically redirect to my geographical location using a variety of services with a fallback to emailing me a voicemail message. All part of making it easier to reach me both now and in the future. Don’t say I never answer the phone!

Jon.

P.S. Family and close friends can optionally get an extension on my PBX. If you’d like one of these (presumably to call me more easily/cheaply) then send me mail.