jcm's blog

I’ve almost got 100 tracks by Runrig now and growing. I’ve bought most of the albums I care about and have even ventured into iTunes. I’m listening to an eclectic mix from both before and after Donnie Munro left the band – including some rarish live recordings made in 1997 when the band did a tour of Germany to mark the aforementioned departure. They’re very very good live and I think I’m going to have to swing by one of their concerts to see them in person. Incidentally, Sharpemusique looks to be a pretty cool way of paying for digital music on Linux. I don’t mind paying 0.79GBP for a single track (that’s reasonablish) but I don’t want to not be able to play the track on my Linux PC. Using a combination of Sharpemusique, DeDRMS, a CVS build of faad and lame, it’s finally possible to pay for music online and store it onto your ipod from Linux. Not easy, but possible. Reminds me of the old days back in 1999/2000 when I first started playing with nist and css-cat as a way to playback test DVDs on Linux – in glorious 50% framedrop mode (at a push a 400MHz PII managed 50% soft playback). Those were the days.

I swung by the GP surgery (in the UK, we call our general medical practitioner a “GP” and can turn up for prebooked appointments all on the NHS – National Health Service – it’s called a welfare state and it’s something the US government has never understood) for some vaccinations against Typhoid and Hepatitis A. With a racing pulse (I absolutely refuse to visit a doctor unless I’m desperately in need of doing so – something to do with being in hospital for months once and never getting over having two blood tests per day in my arms and hands) I waited until I was called (they’ve got a red LED display now that shows your name when you’re called up, but they’ve stopped announcing the name so I can only assume they have some way of coping with those who need such an announcement made) and then sat for another 5-10 minutes after telling the nurse I needed Typhoid and Hep. A, while she refigured that out. I got a super-combo jab in one arm for those two and she offered to give me flu while I was there. With an offer like that, who could refuse? So if the right strain of flu tries to get me, I’m ok. Still nothing for bird flu and the jabs I had probably won’t be effective by Thursday, but meh. I feel better for going through the motions. I also started the anti-Maleria drugs this evening.

We saw a TV show tonight called “Wife Swap” (I think that this also exists in other countries). Ordinarily, I don’t watch this shite, but I was drawn in by the whole benefits issue. You see, in this country, we have the aforementioned welfare state, which also provides those who cannot work with an income. There’s a slight issue of one or two bazillion people who think it’s a good idea to leech off the state and just not work (because they’ll get benefit) but on the whole it’s a good idea. My view is that I’d rather pay for those people and accept that as a wastage in the system – the government wastes 300 million GBP per year on failed IT projects and lots of other useless things like ID cards, so even a billion wasted on benefits for those amongst the populus who probably could just be forced to get a job isn’t an issue – this contrasts with the views of those who read the Daily Mail and have a warped and twisted view (conversative view) that this country is overrun with such people as well as asylum seekers, etc. etc.

Unfortunately, this show had a stereotypical example of a couple on benefit who claimed they were making the choice to be at home with their kids and not work (wouldn’t that be nice if everyone could do that?). I’m all for the genuine example of one parent not working or of single mothers who need to look after their children, but this wasn’t anything like that. In this case, one of the older kids looked after her siblings while the dad went to the betting shop and the mother did whatever else she did in between smoking a million tonnes of tobacco, eating and uttering the odd “football, innit, wot” type things you might stereotypically expect. I still think it’s better to provide a welfare state for these people too (in addition to those that actually need it) but I understand how some people are annoyed that those who push the system sit at home with nice 40 inch TVs while others pay for them. One solution I propose is that we have government consultants who offer those in such situations financial bribes in return for allowing them to do the equivalent of what happened on this TV show I was watching – go into the family environment and make some useful suggestions, stay for a week and help them get jobs. It’ll never float as an idea because it’s too invasive, but it might work.

Jon.

Photo: Bill Weinberg at the LinuxAwards 2005 ceremony.

The 2005 LinuxWorld Expo took place last week in London Kensington. I myself was there for both of the days and hosted several of the conference events, asked Microsoft people embarassing questions at the Great Debate, judged a number of the awards at this year’s ceremonial evening and even manned a stand for a while. On Tuesday evening, I was up talking to the organisers by phone until around 12:30 am and had met up with my friend Bill (after finishing work late – been using the BDI on MTD code quite a lot lately) and some friends for Thai food at a place near the conference hotel. Since I wasn’t staying that night, I had to get back to Reading (and a big thanks to the collective incapacity of the british railway network for cancelling all of the usual trains on that night so I had to get a 50GBP taxi to Reading) in the early hours in time to pack an overnight bag and return to the technical conference I was hosting by the morning. I managed it, just. Hosted a number of interesting talks from the likes of Alan Cox, Klaus Knopper and Mark Shuttleworth (and also introduced Bill on the second day at the business session).

Alan gave a talk on the Linux desktop, which I think went well. I added a few comments as the chair of the session and someone who has used Linux as his desktop since 1996. Wow, it’s changed a bit in that time, but it’s all fun. Klaus Knopper was talking about the cool stuff in Knoppix, about mergefs (I got him into a discussion of the relative merits of other approaches such as minifo aswell) and even libntfs and its limitation of not being able to rebalance the B-trees used by NTFS (but there should be some cool stuff happening there too in the next few months – I know Klaus was talking to the maintainers during the show). Microsoft made an appearance at the show in the lunchtime Great Linux Debate 2005 and I used the opportunity to have a nice little dig at Nick about how they can have all the money in the world and they’ll never have the passion which drives our community (and by extension drives some of us to go out of our way to see Microsoft fail). Mark Shuttleworth followed up on a few of my comments in the afternoon when I was talking to him after his talk on Ubuntu. Mark mentioned some cool features in Launchpad (enough that I should really go take a proper look now) and answered so many questions that the session overran quite substantially. Not that any of us cared – it was all pretty good stuff.

The Wednesday having been pretty damn busy, I tried checking into the Copthorne Tara for the night before going shopping for a last minute bow tie and cufflinks (the choice of a 27.50GBP set at Paddington station had seemed a little excessive – although I could have got two sets for 1GBP extra due to some pointless offer they were running in the store). The Copthorne had some computer issues so I ended up checking my luggage and walking over to a suit hire store with Daniel and grabbing some coffee on the way back along Kensington Highstreet. I ended up paying more by hiring some proper tousers aswell, but it saved having the ones I had brought with me dry cleaned. Not that I could find one of the suit jackets I wanted to wear with it – for all these suits I have here, I need to organise them properly and throw out the ones I don’t wear.

Photo: Alan Cox at the LinuxAwards.

The Wednesday evening ceremony went quite well. I had been one of the judges this year and proposed several of the entries – including at least one that we eventually voted to win. The Nokia 770 project was an example of an effort that I thought deserved some special recognition – not only do Nokia “get it” now, but they’re shipping a Debian based device to developers and have created a communicty project to help drive independent software development (so it’s all got a business motivation too – but they’re playing fair in the public perception). I enjoyed meeting Ari and Yannick, getting an invite to Helsinki, and especially having a 770 to play with. I’ve not taken it apart yet, but I’ve found what I presume to be a JTAG header and have done some analysis of the installed kernel – I’ve also got maemo and am pushing for kernel and toolchain sources for the model I have here so I hack on the VM and audio a little. Another special recognition went to Alan Cox (a liftetime achievement award) – I had them specially play “Rocket to the Moon” by Runrig when he went up to collect it, since I know he likes Runrig (he’s the one who got me into them).

Let see, I also took a bunch of photos of the awards on Wednesday night, wrote the voiceovers for people receving awards, had some interesting conversations with people like Alan (about ITE8212 “multicast” DMA type implementations of RAID1) and generally hung out with a load of really exciting people who made the evening fun. We had a characterturist draw the Linux User and Developer gang throughout the evening – he did what I figured he would with my large front teeth but it was pretty damn good – and I eventually popped in and out of the room once it got to Abba time (Becky tried to make me dance, but I’ll get my revenge by actually finding a pair of hot pants some time and turning up in the LU&D office with them). At 02:something, Bill and I started looking into the modifications of our book contract and borrowed the hotel business suite to print a few hundred pages of signables, a copier, and a stapler to collate them. That way, we could both get it done at the same time and I could ship 150 pages off to the publisher. I finally did get to sleep at around 04:00, just in time to be up late morning to return my suit and get over to the show for lunchtime cover of my friend’s business track and a bit of touring.

Thursday kind of involved lots of random things. There was a lot of coffee again, there was some sushi and a few businessy sessions. I reminded the Cyclades talk crowd that Cylades OOB infrastructure products are all the more cool because they’re powered by Linux and by the work of cool people like Marcello Tosatti and then hosted Bill’s session on VoIP as a disruptive technology of the future. He and I have just written an article on CE devices in the latest LU&D and once again paired as a team. I’m really looking forward to working with this guy on the book- and to hopefully visiting San Francisco again. I had some coffee with Richard and Daniel after the show and Kat and David joined us too. I then talked book stuff with the latter two over some rather enjoyable Wagamma and tea while they waited for their train.

I’ve been working all weekend on some backports from 2.6 to 2.4 and got into a fun debugging session at 04:00 on a Sunday morning. So I’ll be taking Monday off to chill out and get some vaccinations (managed to get an appointment from my surgery rather than the 77GBP private fee from my local travel clinic) for Typhoid and Hepatitis A. I’ll be travelling around bits of India for a week or so and then back here in time to give a talk in Manchester, visit a friend in Munich and some folks in Finland before planning some other more substantial trips. I’ve got to adjust my sleep pattern and do even more writing – especially as I have a new column and a few more articles in the pipeline in addition to my regular material and the book.

Jon.

Photo: An Air France advertisement on the London Underground. Still cheaper to buy with ATP.

I called up about all those annoying jabs I probably should have already had before going to Ahmedabad for my friend’s wedding. Apparently I need to get a shot of Hepatitis A and Typhoid as well as beginning a course of Chloroquine and Proguanil as soon as possible. Due to the potential for side effects, I’ll start the latter two later in the week. All in all, I’m looking forward to my first visit to India (and indeed my first visit to Asia) although I’m still in need of making some of the final arrangements, paying for an internal flight and that kind of thing.

I’ve been asked to give a few talks over the next couple of months and have just started yet another column, with hopefully some more writing coming. One of the guys also just backed out of my book, so I’m now in the wonderful position of having a lot to write about and needing to just get myself organised. I’ve just finished this month’s LU&D work with a column on USB hacking for Linux and another on the state of Linux Flash memory support. I’ve almost got the DVD materials put together and need to pull in a few last minute things. I’ll submit a proposal for writing a series on PowerPC porting in the next few days and then need to get cracking on this month’s two chapters for the book. Probably also should sort out having some photos taken of the two remaining authors (myself and a friend from the OSDL).

I have to get something ready for Wednesday’s LinuxWorld Expo as I am running the technical track at the conference and need to figure out how to introduce a bunch of really cool people. I’ll probably try not to be too annoying and just hand over to the speakers without a lot of prelude but will need to say something. Meh. I should think about that. This means I probably won’t have all day to wonder around the show, but I’ll have something I have to do. Wednesday evening will be taken up with the awards ceremony (I was one of the awards judges this time so I better not say much more about that yet) and I’ll have to dust off an actual suit for this grand occasion (or call up today and get something booked in the way of a hire outfit).

I’ve sorted out some stuff at home and figured out the next stage in this little life of mine. Project Canada is moving forward, via a little detour since I need to pay for the whole thing (so there are a few things I’m going to do there that I will mention when I do them) and the few folks I’ve spoken to about moving to Canada aren’t in a position to pay me through the whole process right now (but obviously, I’m very keen to speak to anyone who’d be interested in employing me to telework/relocate to Ontario). As always, I’m a random hacky type who’s very good at integration and kernel debugging – especially without a debugger – and you love me.

There were a few fun LKML posts lately. Did you see the one about having an XML generator in kernel? That’s right up there with the finest crack money can buy, but someone will do it. Yay! Why not swap out simple text files for pointless amounts of extra dead code and lots and lots of new bugs. But it would be another checkbox item on the buzzwordologist’s list of marketing terms. Someone else asked about process transactioning (they didn’t call it that, I did, but that’s what they meant). I pointed out a few things and I don’t think that’ll go anywhere – but it’d be cool if it did. It’s what I would have worked on if I’d done a PhD at some point. Maybe I will someday – but I’m more interested in emigrating now. On the subject of development, I figured out a few more things about the default NPTL/linuxthreads/whatever setup on Debian and on Linux in general. The LD_ASSUME_KERNEL hacks and all that crap make more sense once you read about the versioning support in ELF.

I managed to miss the deadline for filing my self assessment tax return because I was ill on Friday and then generally crap at getting it done beforehand (though the real deadline for tax returns isn’t until January if I undertake to calculate it myself), but I’ll get it done this week and hope for the best

Jon.

Photo: An example of some of the frightening posters on the underground now, citizen.

Put simply, the only choice an officer may have may be to shoot to kill in order to prevent the detonation of a device
— Sir Ian Blair (chief of the London Metropolitan police) in a letter to the Home Office.

I was watching the news this week when Mrs. Menezes, the mother of the 27-year-old Brazilian who was gunned down by our police forces as he went about his daily life, came to visit London. She was shown the underground station near Tulse Hill (I was at a party nearby earlier in the year) which police stormed and the platform where they entered the train before shotting Jean Charles in the head a total of 8 times. Her tour included the control room with many cameras which apparently were conveniently out of operation at the time of the event. Quite rightfully, her story has featured in the news this week (although not as much as it should have) as she calls for Sir Ian Blair to resign (he should). Ian Blair represents one of those dangerous elements in our paranoid society today and his many statements continue to bother me greatly. He states that it is somehow reasonable to expect to have to murder more innocent people in the fight against terrorism, something which until now I had only heard the US and certain Middle Eastern countries outwardly sanction. Certainly not something I expect where I live. I’d rather take my chances as a free person than live in a police state which thinks dangerously like this.

A question of sanity

I was in Germany again last weekend, as you perhaps saw from my writeup of the Oktoberfest. While that was all really enjoyable and I found the weekend to be wonderfully diverting, it wasn’t quite enough to prevent me from feeling angered by what happened at the airport. After going through airport security twice (once to get through to the gate, once to go back through and purchase a bottle of water because no provision was made for water beyond security – utterly disgraceful) at Hannover and almost completing my transfer at Frankfurt, I reached an extra security checkpoint. A sign before it stated that due to increased US security we would need to go through this extra check. I of course objected and approached one of the security personnel, stating that I was not planning to travel to the US on this occasion and so was uninclined to pander to their hysteria in order to get to my UK-bound flight. They told me I had no choice and must subject to the procedure regardless. When I then repeatedly asked who was reasonable for this farce and how I could put my compliant into writing, they were unable to tell me who was reasonable for the security measure. [Added clarification: what I'm getting at here is that I had a complaint and was not allowed to make it, not that I was interested in causing hassle for the people at the security point.]. Staff at the gate later agreed with me and told me that the UK had also asked for this – who in the UK? I hadn’t. I never elected anyone with the intention that they ask for special treatment. I certainly didn’t expect the UK to allow the US to take all blame – if we’re going to be nationalised fuckwits then we might as well have the UK take some of the credit.

The truth is, I didn’t need to go through security an extra time at Frankfurt. If the authorities are unhappy with the security checkpoints at other airports, then they should redress that particular issue and not make passengers suffer the indignity of a pat down (which I and everyone else also had to have on this occasion). I of course was as unhelpful as I could be without obstructing their process – if they won’t tell me who is in charge and allow me to make a complaint then I’m not inclined to make their job any easier. It’s as simple as saying “I don’t know, but I can call someone to come and speak to you about it” – but instead I’m expected to shutup, stand in line (like a good Briton) and just take whatever they throw at me without making any particular objection. No thanks. I don’t trust my government to make decisions which are to my general benefit and I really dislike it when they deem those decisions so important that nobody can question them. Call me whiney if you like.

Underground adventure

I went to the Indian embassy yesterday to pick up a visa for my friend’s wedding. On the way, I was on an underground train sitting opposite a Montreal guy who lives in Ottawa. Wondering what the chances are of having a random discussion about one of the best places I’ve been too, I gave the guy some advice on how to maximise the time he had available. When I got to the High Commision of India at India Place on Aldwych, I got my first exposure to a notorius beurocracy of which I have heard stories. Surprisingly then, it took only around an hour to get a visa sorted – not too bad really. As I waited in a musky old room filled with old metal furniture (some of questionable safety) I looked around and spoke to one or two people, trying to get a sample of the kinds of people who were there. You had travellers, businessmen, families, people visiting sick relatives, the whole cross-section one might expect. I learned a few things too – they have no change machines so when you’re waiting you’ll need change to use any of the facilities, they don’t take credit cards (luckily I had my 30GBP in cash) and they seem to default to 6 month visas for tourists like myself so there was really no point asking for 1 month and 1 entry.

After I left the embassy and had more sushi for lunch (I really quite like it now) at Kanton, I headed over to the British Museum and took a stroll around the Egyptian and Greecian permanent exhibts. I enjoyed seeing the Rosetta stone and must admit to generally being awestruck by such things, and found learning more about the questionable activies of Lord Elgin to be quite interesting. I have been to Athens, so seeing bits of the Parthenon at the Acropolis strewn all over the place was made even more interesting. I had decided not to spend long in the museum but would recommend popping by if you’re in the area – there’s also what looks like a nice little cafe there and the building itself is fascinating (I asked some of the curators about the building itself). There’s a recommended 3GBP donation when you leave but no entry fee for the main exhibits – and a BP sponsored Persia special exhibit which is discounted if you go buy enough coffee at Cafe Nero.

I headed over to Oxford Street, checked out the new ipod nano at an Apple reseller and went into Foyles for some book relief. I left the store having met another Linux person who is into some of the same things that I myself an in to. I also managed to leave with a couple of books – one copy of the 911 Commission Report (bedtime reading) and a Teach Yourself French Grammar title which I hope to use to improve my basic understanding ahead of any potential TEF I may take in the future to prove this. On the way back to Paddington, I boarded a train which was subsequently boarded by a few police officers. Got me thinking again about how I’d handle being one of their random search victims.

Jon.

UPDATE: What else is wrong with this country? Banning a radio advertisement because it has a “squish” sound of a man having a prostate exam. Some conservative British idiot probably made that judgment without bothering to exercise any particular level of thought.

Photo: Reading Evening Post report on my entry to University.

Ten years ago this week, I became student number 95173623 at Oxford Brookes University at the age of 13. I had completed my A-Level in Computing in the summer (and called up the school from holiday in France to find out my result – they made an exception for me and let me know by phone) and my father and I had spoken about taking this to the next logical step and applying to college. Few institutions will take students who are under the age of 18 these days and it was hard enough even at that point – but we did find an open minded institution willing to take me on. I was given an associate membership of the University in September 1995 under the condition that I must pass the two modules I was enrolled for in order to meet the requirements to become a proper student at the University. I took two courses (and wrote a paper on Mondex for one) and got an average somewhere around 80-85 percent, and in January 1996 was enrolled onto the degree.

On or around the 25th of September 1995, I turned up at the University for my first day of “college”. I was still a schoolboy, still going to regular lessons when not on day release from the school I was attending. This somewhat bizzare arrangement saw me studying with students a good deal older than myself on one-two days of every week (I usually picked modules which would co-incide with Art or Sports afternoons at school) and cutting my teeth on my first SunOS timesharing system. I would later intern at Comlab and discover Linux in summer of 1996 while writing test harnesses for the Bulk Synchronous Parallel programming libraries (the BSP International project has all but dried up since) and even getting my first long-distance look at a Cray T3D supercomputer when one of the guys let me near a keyboard.

Oxford Brookes represented some fun years in my life. I decided later to quit the University and go and do the “normal” thing by attending Nottingham – something I thought I regretted later but now realise was one of the best things I could have done with myself. I wouldn’t exactly recommend others do what I did, but it was quite an experience. The 15 minutes of fame was certainly pretty damn fun – for one day I was in every national newspaper and on TV! Look at the hair in that photo! There’s less of it to worry about now.

Jon.

Photo: Oktoberfest Hannover (photo uploaded to wikipedia).

I went to the Oktoberfest in Hannover last night. This is inspired by the famous Munich fair and is pretty good in its own right. There is an interesting mix of beer, rides and other attractions – and lots of different kinds of food. I rode some dogems (bumper cars), went to the funhouse, a hall of mirrors, and various things I never actually got around to doing when I was younger for whatever reason (though I’ve been on bumper cars). The beer was pretty damn good, as was the live entertainment which was laid on and the event probably is very suitable for family visitors (as they had claimed). There seemed to be some security on one of the biergartens but I don’t know if that was caution, keeping out underage drinkers, or whatever else it might have been about.

Photo: Live entertainment in one of the biergarten tents.

Looks like the Germans are considering having the government go half and half – one election “winner” gets to have 2 years, then the other does. Ok. I wonder if that could work in the US too – Bush could get two years to fuck everything up as much as possible, then the Democrats could have two years to try to undo it all. Ultimately they’d get nowhere and all would be good. In fact, one could extend this to most countries where there are two strong political parties and use it as a new model to keep government from doing damaging things (like passing many laws designed to inhibt my personal rights and freedoms to walk down the street without being unlawfully detained for 90 days, for example – thanks, Westminster, for being fucking stupid).

Photo: Bored? Lonely? Why not head to your nearest McCafe!

I can’t decide what’s more wrong: a McCafe, a McWalk (literally a walkthrough service) or a McClean (take a shit in a McToilet). Views on a postcard.

Jon.

I’m in Germany again this weekend, having been here during the week for work related reasons. I’m going to Hannover in a while and hope to have another reasonable weekend of touristy stuff combined with some writing. I need to get a bunch of articles written up soon and am looking for something fun to feature – so far it’s looking like a bit of debugging is going on in this month’s kernel column. I’m prolly gonna briefly look at Reiser 4 but much of that can wait. Spent last night (after some weissbier) going through airo.c on this Powerbook, looking for fucked up uses of ioports when the PCMCIA slot adapter goes away during suspend/resume. It’s a crash issue and I personally prefer my wifi working without random forced reboots. Also might look at the usb storage fuckup with my USB card media adapter.

I ended up knee deep in ARM VM recently, which was quite fun. I think I’m getting to like rmk’s weird sense of humour and the cleanness of the ARM code does really impress me. But still, there’s no documentation on some of this stuff. It took some figuring out to understand why modifying PHYS_OFFSET and hacking up virt_to_phys/phys_to_virt doesn’t allow me to build a kernel which can use memory at funky offsets. Turns out that another header (vmalloc.h) controls the board specific VMALLOC_START/VMALLOC_END and bases this on the offset of physical RAM (so you can have no virtual memory region if you’re not careful here). It’s all ok once you spend hours figuring it out (thanks Deepak for the IXP arch/arm/boot/Makefile entries for weird offsets – did you do that?) but the docs are painfully lacking. I will address some porting issues in a series of articles I’m proposing at the moment.

I had a McCafe last night and went for a McWalk around the industrial town I’m staying in. Then had a weird breakfast conversation with some guys who were discussing Reading (where I live in the UK) and Newbury (a town very nearby). They turn out to be hardware/software engineers and we ended up talking about all manner of crap while having our continental breakfast.

I am in my hotel room as I write this, listening to more American Idiot (Green Day). I am enjoying some of it, more for the message than the music. I need to charge my ipod (one side started to pop out the other night again – looks like a design defect to me) and head out. I could always listen to iFIRSTAID should I be really bored on the train to Hannover later on. I’ll be in Hannover until tomorrow and then I am flying back (via Frankfurt) at 14:mumble.

Jon.