*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.
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?
It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction…
Just ran 4.64 miles in 49 minutes, 18 seconds (according to my X300 - I’ve managed to mess up the calibration on my Forerunner 50 
) at a pace of 10:37.
Very happy with that.
The Art Of Running Slowly
Well, I’m complete wuss. After my previous post I didn’t run for the rest of the week due to bad weather, low temperatures and complete I-can’t-be-bothered-ness. So, as the next week rolled around I decided to do something about and go to the gym.
Running With Dogs
…and ice.
(or why we invented treadmills.)
I got up early (before 7AM!) this morning and went for a run. In the dark.
The first problem was that it was cold. Very cold. So I had about two extra layers on top of my usual running gear.
The second problem was that it was cold. Very cold. This, combined with a warmish day yesterday, results in ice - both the traditional and black variety. Imaginary traction control light kept going off in my head!
The third problem was that I took my (neurotic) dog Leo with me. I thought I’d learnt my lesson about taking him, especially on a lead (essential), but I thought the situation would be improved with the fancy extending lead we’d bought over Christmas. I was wrong. You see the dogs like to run, but they also like to stop. A lot. This means my pace gets shot. I thought the extending lead would improve things, but in fact it just delays the inevitable. Combine this with the black ice, and the adrenaline was sure pumping by the time I got home!
Lessons learnt: don’t take the dog - it’s just a bad idea.
Now traditionally I dive in at the deep end, push myself too hard, injure or strain myself in some way and end up giving up running for a while, so this morning - seeing as it’s the first time I’ve run seriously since last September - I deliberately took it easy: 1.41 miles in 14m 39s. Very slow compared to my normal pace, but I’ll blame that on the dog. And the ice. And I was taking it easy. 
I’ll repeat the same sort of distance for the next week then start ramping it up again.
In the meantime, I’ve got a real hankering for a heart rate monitor…
Brave New (Digital) World
My brother-in-law John (on the right on the album cover) plays bass in a band - Monkeytin - who released their new album Brave
Before I bought the album I decided to check out Amazon, and I was pleased to see that it’s also availble through their MP3 download service from both the UK
Since I’ve never tried Amazon’s download service (and I’m a cheapskate!) I decided to go with them. A brief download/install of their helper application, the purchase of the album and subsequent download later and all was good. Very impressed, both with the price and the service. I’ll be using them again.
Album review coming soon.
New Year, New Me…
…yeah, right.
New Year resolutions and I have a chequered history, so my plan for this year is to “just do it” (and probably get sued for trademark infringement while I’m at it!).
One of the things I struggle with is procrastinating, and social networks are a great way to waste time. On the other hand, there’s very few people I want to catch up with from school and I prefer the “old fashioned” tools of e-mail and RSS for keeping abreast of what my friends are up to, so without any further ado I have kissed goobye to:
Note that I have actually deleted the account, not just stopped using them.
identi.ca is on its way as well out as soon as I can figure out how to delete the account. You never know - dumping these might give me more time/inspiration for updating this site!
Happy New Year!
Baking and Wooden Spoons
In other, non-technical related, news…
Baking
For the past week I’ve been re-discovering the joys of baking. Numerous loaves of bread have baked and eaten (it’s very difficult to let warm bread go untouched), Flapjack has been enjoyed (although I need to get the quantities right - both batches have had Red Bull style effects!), and yesterday saw Schwuklet #2 and I baking a batch of 50-odd chocolate chip cookies. Currently only 1 remains…
Wooden Spoons
Earlier this year I was given a crook knife (mine happens to be a double-sided one) in exchange for a paracord watch strap. At the time I had a quick go with it and made something that resembled a spoon, but I wasn’t really that happy with - in particular the bowl was far too…chunky.
Yesterday (prior to baking the cookies) whilst laying a fire a piece of wood caught my eye as being perfect for whittling a (slightly short) spoon. I roughed out the shape using my mora and dug out the crook knife to make the bowl, and I’m very pleased with the result. As said, the handle is quite short, so it will be more of an “eater” as opposed to a “stirrer”. I need to sand and oil it, then sort out some pictures.
look good
