Since everyone else is at it…
I’d love a better connection, but I’ll settle for having no neighbours.
A New Approach
Although I’ve previously mastered (some) distance in my running, my speed was distinctly average at a pace of 10:10.
Over the past couple of months my running has been patchy with the odd illness, general apathy, new tattoos (I’m up to five now), and - most recently - UDS Karmic and AllHands.
But yesterday seemed like a good day to start again, and I repeated it again today. Instead of my usual route of 4.6 miles, I opted for a shorter one of 2.4 miles and pushed myself. So far my average pace is 08:53 - a big improvement. I’ll keep going at this pace/distance until I can do it comfortably (or even faster), then add some more miles on.
It’s made me realise how much I missed running though.
*Yawn*. *Stretch*.
I have decided that when I am king, everyone shall have a sunny garden and a trampoline upon which to lie.
Compaq Mini 700
Those of you who have seen my previous laptop will surely remember it’s ridiculous dimensions. You see when I took my job with Canonical, I wasn’t sure how much travel there would be and since I had to give back all my hardware to my previous employer (whose generosity had prevented me from buying hardware for years) I decided to get the best bang of my money. The “desktop replacement” - since the term portable barely applied - I chose (an Acer Aspire 9303WSMi for the record) suited my needs wonderfully whilst stationary, but was somewhat lacking when I ventured beyond the reach of my power socket, or had to carry it for prolonged periods of time.
The size I could put up with, but the (lack of) battery life (I could get 45 minutes on a good day) was crippling, combined with the fact that under Ubuntu 9.04 it will lock up randomly, yet frequently requiring a power cycle to recover. After trying to figure it out for a while I gave up and bought a proper desktop instead.
Which works great, until you want to go somewhere…
Now, having a reasonably powered desktop means I couldn’t justify a powerful laptop. Nor did I want one. So once I finally tore myself away from the Apple Store a netbook seemed the sensible choice. However I had my concerns - the keyboard on my daughter’s EeePC (900A, for the record) was uncomfortable for anything besides hunt’n'peck typing unless you have really small - i.e. child sized - fingers, and the SSD seemed very slow, in turn making the device itself sluggish at times. Yet the battery life could not be ignored, so off I went searching for a better netbook.
My choices were narrowed down to the Samsung NC10, and the Compaq Mini 700. The former balanced it’s bland looks with phenomenal battery life of 6.5 hours, but it does seem to have some (at moment unresolvable) issues with Ubuntu regarding hibernation. Not great for a portable device. The latter looks gorgeous, has one of the best netbook keyboards I’ve tried, works almost flawlessly with Ubuntu, yet is let down by poorer battery life of just over 2 hours.
I was already leaning towards the Compaq, but I was convinced by recommendations from both friends and colleagues who have similar devices (it is, afterall, virtually the same as the HP Mini 1000).
Alongside the device itself, I also ordered a slipcase (since they chose not to include one), 2GB of RAM (it ships with 1GB, and officially cannot be upgraded, but it can), and a 6-cell battery. This battery, while considerably larger than the stock one, gives me 5-6 hours usage. My unscientific measurements show that it adds ~150g to the weight, and some bulk (but nothing compared to a 17″ laptop!), and it gives the netbook a nice tilt when used on a table.
Unsurprisingly, I installed Ubuntu immediately without even trying whatever was pre-installed. I went with 9.04 Netbook Remix, and personally I love the interface on the small screen. With the exception of the speakers, everything worked “out of the box”, and the speakers can be fixed with a little know how.
So far, very happy with it. Let’s see how it copes with two weeks work of travelling/work.
Shiny New Keys
Like others, it seems that now is a good time to be updating your GPG keys. I’ have always maintained at least two sets of keys - personal and professional - and I had already generated the new ones before I realised that it is probably no longer an ideal setup since the two have become more entwined with my work on Ubuntu for Canonical. However, if it is not broken (or compromised)…
Both keys are cross-signed with each other, and with the keys they are replacing.
Like everyone else, the old keys will remain active for a bit, but I will start using the new ones straight away.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256
My new personal key is 860CFBD3, and it replaces 36816D1D.
The fingerprint of the new key is:
E6CD C442 9264 66B7 D7B6 9B6D 81C5 77C6 860C FBD3
You can obtain the new key with:
gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 860CFBD3
This text has been signed with the new key, and the resulting text signed with the old key.
- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
iQEcBAEBCAAGBQJKDAzPAAoJEIHFd8aGDPvTgH8H/jpBRnk94r+0kjFASaVdJhwK
QoRthlUSoi5NTxbXgD8sJfSRxqvwB7OkWXGQp9hfUpNaaEh6EVnbJvn1bTMdwKrA
39DDNMcbvsnX6OtsCOJn+G1lu7wVhlsas+TCpA1OeB8zoTdw/gWpy36BZ6QYGHv7
Al+6PRXrKag5AxFBvttTjBHZ9uuNEVIaI65odOMs7JLdrv7GXFUUBqeFAQ8JP0rV
vsRS9AMX/LFIOImPtdZ4+v7/ovOIixaf2k14TTVuriJLoEJyvTZJEBMhzcpYRL3W
8vwKMw09nzgoruwtD43RATFCl3qLYrNVGsBpwoGtLMxuSlz0ucNCFcTPqrAd2d0=
=DrlB
- -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
iEYEARECAAYFAkoMDPMACgkQUKCB1TaBbR0iSwCeMTp3LYa6jg41b1y1zxUoQyBZ
WnkAoNJELJDpyMcb132oQZZfp6kE3IiV
=1Sof
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256
My new professional key is AAE29F31, and it replaces 09B7D2A8.
The fingerprint of the new key is:
3408 914E 446C 63B1 3848 A233 843E DF5A AAE2 9F31
You can obtain the new key with:
gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys AAE29F31
This text has been signed with the new key, and the resulting text signed with the old key.
- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
iQEcBAEBCAAGBQJKDA3YAAoJEIQ+31qq4p8x/GgH/i07tmP1TJeSn1pzDPpLUg8S
gKrPQnWsteYfVnnXux2qpEy+j9RFSMJQOTGbk6TYnCHJ7UO8+El/sq0yNRQBYHTA
LLk/3UCTX5xD2C7zyJLtesX9lF/8napHwx9svH6bLHn06m1w6I561vui4AFME59A
849NKhXvPP7LzOFPPAt2J6eHuTPt9M6ut+XVgKhNq77EpCuxMqe4bE/c+IC2hjmJ
pORqe1wbgIDAGgSThFnAmGFzFgxjTFXWP0/nmQrqyVgLfiV/GO7inlfpSsyO1j1t
GulXcQxUaK5N6fBjUc03q2MSNziio9uLITlBrYvYad/g/N6uNIJ2GxjZA9JNGVY=
=hsS0
- -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
iEYEARECAAYFAkoMDgIACgkQbXiLjAm30qhliQCgpIv9bf3mot0KbuC09uDuI6mZ
20UAoIBTyHHZPS1+q0pOZ58hu6tdf4M4
=BiAI
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
If you’re using FireGPG, it will get confused by the nested signatures. To verify it, you should save the text locally and verify it with gpg --verify.
Missing the good old days?
Last week I popped down to London for the Ubuntu Jaunty release party (congratulations, by the way, to all involved). Even though it’s practically the opposite end of the country, I can still use the term ‘popped’ because the journey was less that 3.5 hours. Coolness #1.
I thought I’d be productive on the way down (and back) and took along my old Nokia N95 with Pay As You Go SIM. Turn it on, plug it in, a short configuration procedure (i.e. pick your provider) and I was online. What happened to hacking PPP files and AT commands? Coolness #2.
It didn’t take long to burn through my credit on the SIM, after which I discovered that Virgin now offer T-Mobile WiFi on their west coast trains. Coolness #3.
Today I picked up a T-Mobile PAYG mobile broadband dongle (for days when I want a bit more social interaction than the numerous animals that inhabit our house, and Chai Tea Lattes of course!) and, unsurprisingly, it just worked - like my N95.
We’ve come a long way baby.
SSiS (Surprisingly Still In Shape)
After not running at all (discounting a couple of goes on the jogging in Wii Fit!) for 5 whole weeks, I finally stopped making excuses and made the most of our good weather for a 4.5 miler today and - surprisingly - I’m still in reasonable shape. I ran only slightly slower that I did in my half marathon - which I blame entirely on having to wait for the dog to catch me up every so often 
- with only a couple of stops and one brief walk. Not bad IMO.
Now to keep up the training and look for some races post-UDS.
The reason for my break in training - which resulted in me skipping my second planned race - was that I was waiting for my new tattoo to heal. I’ve only recently (i.e. the last year-and-a-bit) started getting tattooed (any comments about a mid-life crisis will be directed to /dev/null - but it’s true what they say: it’s extremely addictive. I’ve already got about 4 more planned!
Photo of my tattoo at about 1.5 weeks old - the bruising is still evident!
The tattoo I’ve had done is a stylised Eye Of Ra, also known as the Eye of Horus. The design comes from Tattoo Tribes, and the basic meaning is protection although there are lots of other interpretations and meanings. I also have a few personal reasons for using this particular symbol.
Dear Lazyweb: Software for groups and organisations
I’ve been involved with various organisations and charities over the past few years, and the two main problems they have all faced are:
Whilst 1) can only truly be overcome by having the right people, both can be improved by collaboration - something which is tackled by many pieces of software.
A charitable organisation I run at the moment - an after school club at my children’s school - suffers from both these problems, and one way we are seeking to address them is by becoming a virtual or shudder egroup. Physical meetings will always be required, but things like distributing minutes, drafting and review of documents etc. are perfect candidates for solving online.
However the options on offer aren’t that great. Google Apps is the main one, but complete overkill for what we want which is a mailing list and document sharing/editing/review capabilities. Google Docs is perfect for the latter, but we don’t really want hosted e-mail, calendar, chat etc. I know you can turn them off, but the mailing list requirement still isn’t met. Even if I keep e-mail enabled, people don’t always want yet another e-mail address/account to worry about.
Personally I would just set up a wiki and mailing list and be done, but while this is perfect for a technical project e.g. software (that’s how Ubuntu got started), there are more problems:
Of course there’s a learning curve to anything new. Google Docs gets rid of some of this by behaving in similar way to other applications, but it is still a new way of working. A wiki - although completely natural to me - will be completely alien to some if not all the other members. Compounding this problem is that I intend to step back from the organisation this autumn (after three years), and don’t really want to remain as sysadmin.
Having written all this, I’m now coming to the conclusion that for this particular problem sticking to the old way is the best solution, but I’m still interested if any decent (and hosted) solutions that help run groups exist, or if you help run a non-technical group (i.e. LUGs don’t count!), what do you use?
Financially Viable?
Recently, and probably unsurprisingly, I’ve been playing with Amazon EC2 and in particular the Ubuntu Server beta. So far I’ve been thoroughly impressed with its flexibility and power - especially the new management interface - although I’ve not really explored beyond short lived test instances. I did wonder about migrating this server over to a long running instance, but my back-of-a-napkin calculations showed that I would be spending at least four times what I am currently paying for my Linode.
Now Dustin Kirkland has made that job much easier using his ec2-cost utility in screen-profiles (use the PPA if you’re not on Jaunty). It can be used with screen-profiles, or used directly:
$ /usr/share/screen-profiles/bin/ec2-cost --detail ================================================ Estimated cost in Amazon's EC2 since last reboot ================================================ Network sent: 0.420872 GB @ $0.10/GB Network recv: 0.327810 GB @ $0.17/GB Network cost: 0.104329 ------------------------------------------------ Uptime: 141 hr @ $0.400000/hr Uptime cost: $56.400000 ------------------------------------------------ Total cost: ~$56.50 ================================================
Hmm - $56.50 for 141 hours? Doesn’t really compare to $19.95 for ~720 hours (+ lots of transfer) in an average month, but it won’t stop me from using for short tasks/tests.
How much would you have spent?
Just for clarification, I know comparing EC2 to traditional hosting is akin to apples and oranges - I had no intention of moving my own server over after my napkin calculations, but I just wanted to share Dustin’s useful script.
13.1 Miles Later…
Remember I mentioned previously about my “Delusions of Grandeur” having entered myself for a half marathon? Well, this time last week I was nursing aching muscles (and knees, and arches) having completed the Haweswater Half Marathon in 2 hours 13 minutes and 10 seconds. I placed 477 out of 511 finishers, and 328 out of 342 males. However I never entered expecting to place particularly highly - I’m happy to a) finished it and b) finished it in a time better than I expected (based on my training runs, I expected to finish around 2:14 and I set myself a goal of 2:20).
The race atmosphere is fantastic, and the course itself was beautiful running alongside Haweswater. I’ll definitely be entering another - I’m thinking about the Keswick Half Marathon, and considering the Brathay Windermere Marathon(!) over the next few months.
My longest training run before the race was 10.6 miles, so I was really feeling the last couple of miles, but I ran the majority of the race alongside a nice guy from Durham - John - who kept me going.
These Shoes Are Made For Running
I’d already been thinking about some new running shoes, but David’s comment reminded to actually do something about it, so I went to Lakes Runner in Ambleside to do the whole gait analysis thing (apparently I’m neutral) and came away with a pair of Brooks Glycerin 6 which are definitely more comfortable than my old Asics.
Let Down By Technology
Unfortunately my Garmin Forerunner 50 let me down 4.5 miles into the race, or rather the Footpod did, so I had no instant pace/distance readout and had to rely on the mile markers. Not a bad thing, but I did miss it. I believe it was the battery, because it has been working since I replaced it, but I don’t believe I’d used it enough to drain the old one. Ho hum.
Lessons Learnt
look good
