Since everyone else is at it…

I’d love a better connection, but I’ll settle for having no neighbours.

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.

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.

Fixed my Gwibber

Since I got back from UDS, Gwibber has been broken on my main machine. I knew it was something to do with WebKit, but I just didn’t get around to looking any further into it until today.

…and I didn’t have to look far - there’s a question and bug for exactly this problem, with a simple 2-step fix:

That’s it - restart Gwibber, and it should be working again.

Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) is out!

It’s official - it’s out:


= 14:07:11 -!- mode/#ubuntu-release-party [+o slangasek] by ChanServ
= 14:09:03 <@slangasek> good morning, everyone! I’m pleased to announce that our menagerie of Ubuntu releases has a new member today
= 14:09:28 <@slangasek> the Ibex you’ve all been waiting for has capered its way over the gate - Ubuntu 8.10 is now out


Congratulations to all of the Ubuntu team.

Head on over to http://releases.ubuntu.com/releases/8.10/ and grab your copy. Oh, and don’t forget to seed!

What’s in my encrypted ~/Private directory?

I’m not sure what Dustin has done to his feed but a bunch of his old posts showed up again in Google Reader this morning. His post “What’s in my Encrypted ~/Private directory?” struck a chord since I’ve only just set mine up, so I thought I’d breathe some life into his idea of making it into a meme.

Here’s what’s in mine:


dave@treebeard:~/Private$ ls -alF
total 44










drwxr-xr-x 7 dave dave 4096 2008-10-22 20:16 .tomboy/ drwxr-xr-x 2 dave dave 4096 2008-10-17 11:59 .ssh/ drwxr-xr-x 6 dave dave 4096 2008-10-16 10:43 .purple/ drwxr-xr-x 11 dave dave 4096 2008-10-29 13:50 .opera/ drwxr-xr-x 8 dave dave 4096 2008-10-03 13:27 .mozilla/ drwxr-xr-x 3 dave dave 4096 2008-10-15 11:03 .irssi/ drwxr-xr-x 13 dave dave 4096 2008-10-27 10:09 Documents/ drwxr-xr-x 14 dave dave 4096 2008-10-29 14:59 .claws-mail/ drwxr-xr-x 81 dave dave 4096 2008-10-29 15:07 ../ drwx------ 11 dave dave 4096 2008-10-29 15:07 ./

Just the usual culprits: documents, e-mail and anything that might have passwords/identity information in it.

So what’s in yours?

Netbooks and Ignorance

Netbooks

I’ve been thinking about getting a netbook since I first laid eyes on the Eee PC, and with the next UDS fast approaching the thought of lugging my current laptop (I’ll give you a clue as to why - it’s called Treebeard for a reason) has moved me from just thinking about it to deciding which one will become “my precious” soon. (Sorry - I’ve been watching the extended Lord of the Rings box set.)

Current favourites are:

I was this close to picking up an Aspire One (this morning after calling into PC World on the way back from fixing my mother’s wireless card. They have the A110AB in store for £179.99 - very, very tempting if it wasn’t for the incompatibilities listed on the Ubuntu wiki.

Ignorance

Unsurprisingly the netbook “aisle” (more of a large shelf really) was very popular, with a number of families looking at the various offerings, and one guy testing his phone with an Eee PC to see if mobile internet worked (it did, but he was testing on a Microsoft Windows model).

There were various conversations about which make/model was best and whether they should go for the Linux or Microsoft Windows version, and  - of course - I couldn’t help being drawn into these. Fortunately the Schwuklets were kept busy with Frozen Bubble on one of the display Eee PCs.

Nuggets of wisdom being imparted from the PC World staff to potential purchasers:

Whilst the last one might be true, it would presumably only apply to bought copies of Microsoft Windows - I’m almost certain OEM licenses are non-transferable, and I’d be surprised if any were (especially with the activation rigmarole). This seems particularly bad advice to be giving to people, especially the sort who are shopping in PC World in the first place, as they have probably never bought an operating system in their life!

It was disappointing to see most of the interest in the Linux models were purely based on price and usually followed up with the inevitable “can I get Microsoft on it?”. For the vast majority of people buying these types of devices Linux will more than meet their requirements, but it seems like we have a ways to go on convincing people of that.

The fun part was when I was getting involved in these discussions, one of the “assistants” had the cheek to ask “what makes [me] such an expert?”. If only PC World still had a decent section of books…

Note to self: I must not bait staff in computer shops. I must not bait staff in computer shops. I must not…