2005 Blog
deb Package Brokenness
No doubt the following is all my own fault 
. I regularly
run apt-get dist-upgrade and on occasion allow the removal of some
packages where dependencies are no longer satisfied. This would only be for
apps I don't use on a regular (daily) basis. Typically the dependency issues
would be resolved fairly quickly and that's that. However, about 2 months ago
I did this with gnucash and it's been broken ever since. FYI this is with
debian unstable. Well that was perhaps 1.5months too long and I got fed up
last night and decided to get it working again - but how!?
I couldn't seem to find any specific documentation on this one. What would be really handy is some apt-get command such as apt-get install-last-version-that-works gnucash, although I couldn't seem to find one. In this case the problems were:
- gnucash requires gnucash-common but gnucash-common was a newer version
- requires guile-1.6-slib but slib wouldn't install with guile-1.6 and vice versa!
To solve this I downloaded the gnucash, gnucash-common (same version as gnucash), and the version of slib mentioned in the guile-1.6-slib dependencies. I then removed the newer version of slib and used dpkg to install the debs and now it's all working again - phew!
I'm happy the packages required to get this working weren't dependencies for other key applications or I could have found myself in a royal mess. If someone knows an easy answer to these situations then let me know. A similar use case is where I want to revert to a previous version (and fix all related dependencies) simply cause the new version is buggy etc...
Merry Christmas!
Another year is almost over already and this is the second time I miss out on Christmas with the family. With so many of us (kids) away, Tom was the only one left at the Allinson/Nicholls family dinner. Unfortunately I heard I missed out on his great cooking!
However, Ruwani and I had our own fantastic meal here in Seattle. Ruwani prepared a 100% vegan tofu turkey - and if you squint really hard it even looks like a (small) turkey too!
IBM to Acquire Micromuse!
This is the third time a company I'm working for is acquired
. From the press release:
International Business Machines Corp. said Wednesday it agreed to acquire Micromuse Inc., which makes software that manages video and voice traffic on computer networks, for about $865 million in cash.
Under the definitive agreement, Armonk-based IBM is paying shareholders $10 for each Micromuse share, almost a 40 percent premium to its closing price of $7.21 on Tuesday. Micromuse shares surged $2.71, or 37.6 percent, to close at $9.92 on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The stock had previously traded in a 52-week range of $3.97 to $8.13.
Backpack Page Dump Script
Backpack provides a way to export all pages into a single XML which we'd been using at work for backup purposes. We've now set up our own CMS system and wanted to import the content. Since the new system understands the textile formatting also used by Backpack we just needed a way to rip out the page contents from the XML export into a form ready to paste into the new CMS (or even automate that bit too).
Look and Feel Updates
I've updated the site look and feel once again. This time the visual
layout is much the same except I've moved to a serif font (georgia) and have a
fixed width set the content. I also moved from table layout
to div layout which proved to be a pain for the layout I
wanted.
NSS Team at Edge Technologies
This week the NSS team has been out in DC working with the Edge guys. So far we've come up with TROAD.
It's Snowing in Seattle
I ran out of food and headed up to Ranch99 around 2pm. I go up the I5 and exit at 179. It was snowing a lot in the city but not sticking. However, the further north I got the worse it was. I was only in Ranch99 for 10 minutes but when I came out the carpark was starting to build up with a snow-sludge.
Ruwani and My Wedding!
An incredibly big thankyou to the Lims and Ruwani for doing an awesome job. I really enjoyed the wedding, seeing everyone, and of course seeing Ruwani after so long apart (approx 6 weeks at that point). Everyone loved the first dance! All the praise should go to Ruwani there for the choreography and teaching me how not to look like a total loser dancing.
Another huge thanks to my sister for doing all the wedding photography including the pic above. More photos to come ...
NYC for NAUC with JP
I was in NYC for the annual North America Netcool Users Conference and asked JP to come stay with me while I was there.
The Meatrix
Review of my GTI
I've started an article on my GTI. It's mainly for me to have a place to keep track of mileage information.
Additional Comment Updates
- added comments to photo (groups)
- added editing profiles
- added authentication option for users that have a password set
- added notifications
- completed sync utilities
- decided against delete and edit capabilities
Comment Updates
- added comments to articles
- added support for URLs and images
- added preview support. AJAX style (inline), doesn't interrupt editing, nice
Comment System for web site
I've been meaning to add comment capability to my website for some time but haven't been motivated to carry it through. Well recently I had been reading about all this AJAX hype. A bit of research revealed that it wasn't something entirely new but a name put on existing technologies used a particular way.
I see some great advantages with making interactive web pages, going
beyond in-page javascript. You can actually send data back to the server, get
a response, and update the page. I also see, as a result of all the buzz, that
it'll be abused no-end .
Of course to try out anything I needed a project since I wasn't particularly interested in a trivial example. That's when the comment idea popped back into my head and I ran with it. My requirements are pretty simple and I've completed the minimum to put the system online.
- generic comment system that's will support comments for all areas of the web site. i.e. blog, photos, articles.
- remember users that comment. This turned out to be a big part of the implementation even though it's pretty invisible to the user.
- take an AJAX approach to viewing, adding, deleting, editing comments. This means using synchronous javascript to fetch the comment tree (or part-tree), add form, submitting the add form and updating the tree, deleting an entry (and updating the tree), and editing...
- fit everything into the Site Builder back-end
- email notification
I haven't delivered deleting, editing, or notifications yet. I also plan to provide a user profile editor where a user can set an email address (for notifications), icon, etc... I also need to create some utilities to keep the hosted copy and my dev copy of the comments in sync.
Implementation Details
- sb_comment.pm: used to handle comment requests. For displaying comments it builds a nested structure with SB-DB calls. Comments are then rendered by SB-DB with a standard template. For AJAX type calls the complete pages rendered are XHMTL fragments vs full pages (all done withing site_builder pages).
- sb_auth.pm: handles user authentication.
- sb_comment.js: supporting javascript based on the Simple AJAX Code-Kit (SACK) by Gregory Wild-Smith.
- a couple new DB tables and updates to existing tables.
- misc sb pages, sb page updates, and one sb-db template.
Vancouver
It's a long weekend so Roons and I headed up to Vancouver. As I type
this I'm looking out the window of the hotel over some water to mountains on
the other side. Finally my work travel and Marriott points pay off
.
- Granville Island
- Vegan/Vegetarian restaurants: The Foundation Lounge, Cafe Du Soleil, Naam
- Commercial Drive
- Stanley Park
- Public transport
Switching between wired and wireless on Netgear MR814v2
My Netgear MR814v2 wireless router provides a way to reserve IPs for
hosts based on MAC address. Unfortunately it doesn't allow multiple MACs to be
associated with the same IP. This is a little annoying because I like to
switch between wired and wireless and keep the same IP. Well thanks to good
old linux I can !. A little bit of "ifconfig eth1 hw ether
new_mac_address" to match my eth0 address (where eth0=wired,
eth1=wireless) and then it works fine. Remember to take down one interface
before bringing up the other! I can keep working on anything I was previously
too, like IM, file dl's etc...
Vonage Woes
To be fair, my Vonage service for the most part is fine. However, it's the times that it doesn't work properly that really get frustrating. For example, it's almost impossible for me to call a mobile phone in Australia. I don't know what happens but I don't think the call ever makes it to the phone, despite me listening to a "ring ring" for minutes. I did a test where I called via my vonage line (didn't work), then again with my cell phone (worked fine).
I called vonage about 5 months ago to complain and didn't hear anything back from them. So I filed a complaint online maybe a month after that. Again nothing until recently (yes, months later) when their response was "we're closing this ticket, let us know if it's still a problem." Hmmm, what the hell?
Other issues:
- Calls (domestic or International) just drop out. Nothing to do with my bandwidth.
- Huge delays sometimes when calling overseas. Unusable.
- Audio quality good enough for me, but using the num pad to key in a conf call ID, or phone banking etc.. doesn't work. Keys are missed. This is so annoying I sometimes give up and use my other phone.
- Same as above, not that reliable for faxing either.
Perhaps relying on the good old Internet for voice is asking a bit much. I'm sure part of it is whoever they are partnering with for calls to Australia too. It's time for me to start looking for a new provider...
Suicide Terrorism
I've come across a number of references to a book by Robert Pape, an Associate Professor of the University of Chicago, on suicide terrorism called Dying to Win. The following interview with the author: The Logic of Suicide Terrorism is an excellent read.
Here's a great piece from the interview:
TAC: So if Islamic fundamentalism is not necessarily a key variable behind these groups, what is?
RP: The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign - over 95 percent of all the incidents - has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.
The reality is that what the US and it's allies are doing is making things worse. And for what? For oil and/or power? I don't know what else it could be. Are we so selfish to think we're somehow more special than everyone else? The course of action being pursued is resulting in tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians getting killed, and remember Afghanistan - that wasn't good either and it's in a total mess now. Attacks in Spain, and the UK have been in direct response to their support for the US. How can we be so presumptuous that somehow we'll be able to wipe out terrorism? That there is some key individual or organisation or religion that's responsible and if we wipe them out or re-educate them then suddenly everything will be good again? The evidence from Robert Pape's work certainly suggests otherwise.
What's really scary is that a large portion of the general public is fed total lies and they eat it up without question. I recall a poll of FOX news listeners at the point where the search for weapons of mass destruction was pretty my complete in Iraq, yet somehow over 50% thought some were actually found!?
We also have governments wasting huge amounts of money "securing" various things all in the name of protecting us. I know I'd much rather the money going to humanitarian purposes or improving the country's infrastructure. Yes there are some good things to spend money on but in many cases it's been useless or near-useless and may introduce it's own problems. I've referenced this in the past but I recommend reading Cryptogram which is meant to be about computer security but since 9/11 the author is quite involved with real-world security. The author does an excellent job at reviewing security initiatives and determining what makes sense and what doesn't make sense.
Why is terrorism so frightening for people? More people die each year for stupid reasons in the US than all terrorism related deaths through its history. Vehicle accidents alone make up around 45000 deaths (2003) ¹ each year and many of those are preventable because of such a large number of people not using seatbelts. In 2002 the US had a seatbelt use rate of about 75% compared to that of 90% in most other industrialised nations like Australia, Canada, and Germany ². I haven't seen the US spend billions upon billions of dollars improving this situation?
Perhaps the reason people are so afraid of terrorism is because it has unknown potential and anyone is at risk. With the exception of minor changes the death rate due to car accidents is pretty steady over the years. In some circumstances I can also mitigate the issue, e.g. by wearing my seatbelt, or stop smoking, etc... On the other hand a terrorist attack might injure no-one or be as devastating as 9/11. With the media and the government hyping "what if" scenarios where terrorists get hold of dirty bombs, or biological weapons etc... only increases the potential in peoples mind. By also pushing that this level of attack is imminent (if nothing is done) then what you get is a public ready to accept anything the government does in the name of protecting you from the bad guys.
I don't have a solution, but conducting studies and looking at what history tells us works would be a good start. It's certainly better than going in with guns blazing. But really, are we just hopeless or is there some other reason for all this? I think so - it's all about power.
- Report on Injuries in America, 2003: National Safety Council
- Seatbelts: Current Issues: Prevention Institute
Zane's Last Weekend & Putt-Putt
It's Zane's last weekend in Seattle before he heads back to the UK.
So today we headed out to Cougar Mountain Park for a walk. The walk was pretty
tame but it's always nice to get out of the City and away from all the people
. It turns out the Park was very close to The Golf Club at
Newcastle. A 36-hole public golf course that also happens to have a 18-hole
mini-golf course too. So we headed up there for a game and boy was the view
and grounds beautiful!
Coldplay
Roons and I went to see Coldplay at the White River Amphitheatre last night. It was awesome! I didn't take my camera as cameras with detachable lenses were not allowed :(
Allyn in Town
Allyn came up on Thursday and stayed with us over the weekend. It was great to catch up. On Friday morning we went for a pretty lengthy run, longer than I had run in a long time, so I was interested to know the distance. A bit of searching revealed this site: Gmaps Pedometer. It's great, you can plot points on the map and it'll calculate the distance for you. Click on the image below to get a full size version.
Mt. Pilchuck Hike
Zane, Ruwani and I head out to Mt Pilchuck for the first hike of the summer. It was a little more than we bargained for but the views from the top were simply stunning!
Tom Jones
Ruwani bought us tickets to Tom Jones for my birthday. Not that either
of us are fans or anything but I joke about him now and then and Ruwani
surprised me . I was thinking about selling the tickets cause I
thought we may stick out (and we did), but I'm glad we went!
Even though the average age was somewhere near my parents, and there were much older people too, and despite this the women were still throwing their underware on stage - it was still good. The first hour we had this soul band called Tower of Power, awesome stuff. This was followed by a 30 min break for the more elderly to go to the bathroom and get some coffee, and then Tom Jones for an hour.
Thanks Roons!
Long Weekend
Ian came up from LA to spend the Memorial Day long weekend with me and Ruwani. We had beers downstairs at the Pike Place Brewery on friday night. On Saturday we hit the market early in the morning which turned out to be a good idea cause later in the day it was way too packed. Afterwards we headed to the Experience Music Project. This was interesting but they didn't seem to have as much "stuff" as I'd have thought. I have a sneaky suspicion they spent all the billions of dollars on the building any had little left over for content...
Ian had to visit a client at Sequim on Monday which is a fair distance from Seattle as you have to travel down to Tacoma and then back up on the other side of Puget Sound. We decided to make a trip of it and headed out to Port Angeles on Sunday morning. Sunday afternoon we went up to Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic National Park, see the picture below of Ruwani and Ian. On Monday we dropped in at Sequim then drove up to Port Townsend. Port Townsend was pretty cool, an old little town with plenty of small bookstores and very old books.
Ruwani & Baseball
Ruwani is back today, bearing chocolate gifts from the Margaret River!
I went to see the Seattle Mariners play the Boston Red Sox with the guys from work on Friday night. It happened to be an awesome game with the Mariners winning 14 to 7.
Happy Mothers Day
I walked past an enterprising homeless guy today. He had updated his piece of cardboard to include "Happy Mothers Day".
Hardware Issues
The hard drive on the Mac started making some awful sounds accompanied with IO errors in the system logs and general non-workiness. It didn't die immediately which gave me hope that I could salvage Ruwani's stuff on there but that didn't happen :(
While trying to get the Mac going again I had to burn a CD, so I go to turn on my old desktop and the power light blinks then goes off. Then nothing more from that point. PSU decided to go. It's been iffy for a long time so not too surprising.
The bad news is I wasn't expecting to have to deal with this, the good news is I managed to pick up a 160GB Seagate 7200RPM 8MB drive for ~$50 (after rebate if I manage to get it), and a 400W PSU for $29. Nice and cheap!
Yahoo Games: Collapse
I have been playing Collapse recently,
my dad got me onto it while I was back in Australia. I just need to post this
screeny with my highest score so far .
Congratulations Kirsty & Dave!
The wedding went off without a hitch and I was pleased my best-man speech didn't suck. All the best Dave, I hope you guys enjoy the honeymoon!
RSS Support
I have added RSS support to the blog section of my website. It actually turned out to be extremely easy since RSS output is basically just a new template for site-builder and SB-DB. Additional details:
- First step was to add support for XML document processing, this meant adjusting my script to accept ".xml" files in addition to ".html" files.
- Next I needed to build the appropriate XML formatted output and this just meant building a new site-builder template (rss.sb) the built the appropriate high level XML structure of a RSS 0.91 document. So within a matter of minutes I had a valid RSS response, just no actual items in it.
- Next I needed to format the SB-DB output as RSS <item>s. This required a new SB-DB template and some minor per-record processing in my script to format dates correctly and to escape the item content (description).
- The last step was to add support for viewing specific diary entries versus the current layout arranged around calendar year. Again this was relatively straight forward. I needed to build a new page and update my script to pass through the blog entry ID to SB-DB.
Adding RSS support also identified a bug with the way I was handling blog entry IDs which meant they kept changing. This hasn't been a problem up until now since it didn't matter whether they changed.
I also took the opportunity to do some maintenance on my script and removed SB-CGI support entirely since I'm not using it any longer. I also cleaned up some old code and added better input checking.
In Sydney
I'm in Sydney until April 10th on holidays to see the familiy and also for Dave's wedding. Ruwani is joining me on the 5th and then heading over to Perth for a month.
Whistler
I went up to Whistler with Spew for some snow action. It was awesome. (more to come...)
Port Angeles
Ruwani and I are driving around the Olympic Peninsula on the 101 this weekend. Tonight we're staying in Port Angeles.
Nokia 6820 GPRS & Palm Tungsten T2
Instructions for configuring a network connection on a Palm Tungsten T2 to connect over bluetooth to a Nokia 6820 phone. This allows you to use any of the Internet apps available for the Palm such as VersaMail, WebPro, PalmVNC, pssh, etc...
Ordered a Canon EOS 20D
My Canon Digital IXUS V (2.1MP) has been working well since I bought it in January 2002 but the quality just isn't there. That's not saying anything about my crappy photography skills, but I can't even blow up photo to A4 size without it looking a little pixelated. I bought my brother a Sony DSC-P100 a couple months back and did a few comparison shots and found the IXUS way behind when it came to sharpness, colour reproduction, accurate white balance, and contrast.
Since then I've been having these nagging thoughts about getting a new
digital camera. I've gone from something small with video capabilities (like
the Sony DSC-P1xx), or perhaps something better quality (like the Canon G6)
with a separate bargain Mini-DV camcorder, to just maybe the camcorder and
sticking with my IXUS, to a Digital SLR .
Man is the 20D expensive though! For me to get the most out of this camera I'm going to need to learn about photography (image composition, SLR technology, post-processing etc...) and use it - something I didn't do enough of with the IXUS. I'm hoping it will last me a long time too. The IXUS was never there with image quality and 2MP wasn't enough for high quality prints. The 20D should provide me a fantastic camera body and being part of the Canon EOS system I have a huge number of lenses to choose from.
To start I bought the 20D with EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 zoom lens (the 20D 'kit lens') and EF 50mm f/1.8 II. The kit lens will serve me well enough while I'm learning the ropes and at a price difference of only $60 over the camera body it's extremely cheap.
Now I only have to wait 1-2 weeks for it to arrive .
Article: What I Heard about Iraq
I came across and interesting article called What I Heard about Iraq that summarizes the war in Iraq up to now using quotes and snippets of info.
Work Travel Adventures
I flew to Chicago on Sunday to meet up with the NSS team. My flight was delayed about 2.5 hours before taking off. The lady sitting next to me on the plane was a nervous flyer which was worsened by our late departure since she was connecting through Chicago and couldn't bare the thought of missing it. This led to multiple outbursts of crying etc... She consumed lots of tablets and swigs of vodka telling me it'd calm her down. O.K. sure. BTW, we landed and while taxing to our gate she heard that her flight just departed - that didn't go down so well.
On Wednesday night I head back to the airport, running a toll booth in the process. Unfortunately I only had 25c and required 40c. My flight ends up taking off about 1.5 hours late and in bad weather. Things get worse when we're not allowed to land in St. Louis because of storms. We continue circling around for about an hour before diverting to Louisville with the promise to refuel and try again. We get to Louisville where they inform us "woopsy the flight crew have gone over their maximum number of hours so you're stuck here for the night - sorry not our problem sort it out yourself. And, to make sure we completely screw you, we'll sleep in and leave at midday tomorrow". Well, they didn't actually say that but you get the gist. And we ended up taking off around 12:40.
Heading into St. Louis the weather turned bad with thick fog and heavy snowing. We are turned away twice on landing approaches but, thankfully, our pilot persists and we make the third. Pretty amazing actually since I couldn't see anything until we virtually landed, and we landed in snow! The whole runway was covered.
This morning my rental car doors were frozen shut. I'm glad to be on my way
home
The District at Green Valley Ranch
We took a short trip from the Las Vegas strip out to Green Valley Ranch. This is the casino from the Discovery Channel reality series called American Casino. Unfortuatenly it was pretty much deserted and same with The District, a shopping and dinning area next to the casino.
2005 and Married!
Ruwani, Ian, Mel, and I transitioned into the new year on the strip in
Las Vegas. I was kind of expecting a big show, apparently this was Las Vegas'
100 year anniversary, but it didn't seem that flash. Perhaps we're spoilt with
the New Years fireworks in Sydney and Australia Day fireworks in Perth. Also,
they started the countdown 5 (YES FIVE) minutes early, then there was silence,
then at midnight the fireworks suddenly started (i.e. they didn't bother with
another countdown).
... and while in Las Vegas Ruwani and I took the opportunity to get married! Actually we even surprised Ian and Mel since we were off doing our own thing on New Years day and snuck in the marriage. It's official, but we still plan on having a proper wedding back in Australia toward the end of the year.
[ see entries for: 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, misc ]
