Random Comments from South London

Birkbeck and Ubuntu

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 19:17:31 GMT

I'm starting an MSc in Ethnicity, Migration and Policy at Birkbeck in October 2009. It'll be 2 evenings a week for the first term, and one evening after that.

As I use Ubuntu at home, and all the IT instructions are Windows or Mac I will write about how I solve various problems as it may be of use to someone.

Birkbeck has a VPN students can connect to. This gives you access to some electronic resources at home and allows you to access your College network N: drive.

If you right click on your network manager -> edit connections -> VPN you will see that the add button is greyed out. Bah!

To fix this you need to install:

sudo apt-get install network-manager-pptp

The IP address is 193.61.20.50, username and password are as normal for the College network.
NT domain: CCSACADEMIC

Go to the advanced tab and deselect everything except MSCHAP v2. Select MPPE and maximum (128 bit) encryption.

And.. it doesn't work! ARRGH.

Could be a bug. http://is.gd/2VBiq is looking likely.

Find me on twitter!

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 18:18:23 GMT

I'm never here - I'm always on twitter. http://twitter.com/secretlondon

Dreamwidth

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 23:08:50 GMT

I have two Dreamwidth codes if you want one.

First come first served!

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 22:31:12 GMT

If anyone wants a Christmas card and I don't have your address please send it to me. Thanks!

/me has the cards but not the addresses..

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 04:09:40 GMT

I've really been neglecting Live Journal. You are much more likely to find me on twitter or on google reader, or elsewhere..

I have some news:

I had an interview on Wednesday and I have a job starting on Monday 15th! Yay!

Advice wanted

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 23:25:20 GMT

I'm considering setting up a specialist linux blog. If I want to use something like wordpress I'll need php and mysql. My ISP's webpages provide neither.

Any recommendations for a suitable provider? How do other people do this?

Thanks.

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 23:04:35 GMT

My Live Journal paid account has expired - and I'm not going to renew. I'm back to basic but the snap things are annoying me. Is there anything I need to know re: the new basic accounts. What is the maximum of 25 thing in the docs?

"Subscribe to LiveJournal events on the Manage Message Settings page or use the "track" icon (or a "Track New Comments" link) on each entry, comment, and userinfo page. After subscribing to events, your notifications are listed in the Message Center; you can also choose to receive email notifications for all or individual events."

Does this mean I won't get emails on comments for more than 25 threads?

laptot

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 22:36:04 GMT

Laptot finally has Ubuntu Netbook Remix on. My external USB 1 CDRW died whilst I was trying to install from it, and doesn't work on Hardy anyway. uUsing a USB stick caused Hardy to install grub onto the mbr of the usb stick. This meant that neither the stick nor the laptot worked...

I bought an external dvdrw today which was extra cost I didn't need, but my life is much shinier now. I hope I get another job after my last day on Tuesday..

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 20:01:04 GMT

I've just suffered PC World and bought a netbook/laptot. I didn't get an eee, I got the Advent 4211 netbook.

It's very shiny! It is a Dixon's branded MSI Wind with an Intel Atom N270 CPU running at 1600 Mhz, an 80GB SATA drive and 1GB DDR2 (which is allegedly upgradeable).

The only drawback I can see is that it comes with WindowsXP! (which I'm just about to fix!)

I'm going to try the Ubuntu "Netbook Remix". This seems to be some extra packages for hardy designed for this hardware.

Police Arrest Batman

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:39:55 GMT

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:39:29 GMT

Found out today that I didn't get the perm job :( I've been given 2 weeks notice.

The feedback is all positive, there were just more experienced candidates :(

Saturday

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 21:48:22 GMT

Today I got my act together and went to one of the open days at Battersea Power Station, which has yet more developers and another scheme which won't come to anything.

Southwark Lido is a very expensive looking 3 day installation as part of the London Festival of Architecture. It's too small to swim in, and had some of the "London's Largest Livingroom" furniture.

It didn't flush, and there was no door. It was stupidly tempting though, and I only had one beer..

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 20:42:04 GMT

Had mega stress today which I'll write about later. I cheered myself by going wandering after work.

This is a ruined church near London Bridge, shot using the cameraphone of the phone I haven't yet got my number transferred to.

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 20:10:34 GMT

Been trying to go out every lunchtime to photo geek. This week has been with the camera phone for ease (and wetness), last week with the DSLR.

A bench from the London Festival of Architecture's London's Largest Living Room has appeared outside the Museum of London.

Apart from that it's just all building porn..

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:25:49 GMT

I survived the interview although I was a nervous wreck all morning. I'll find out at the end of next week.

Whatever happens it looks like I'll be working here for another month at least.

phone geekery

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 17:33:46 GMT

Yesterday's payday brought a replacement for my £20 phone with its terrible t9 support. (*)

I currently have a t-mobile pay-as-you-go thing, and a £30/month contract with Vodafone for HSDPA (which I'm not currently using).

So.. I bought a Vodafone pay-as-you go-phone yesterday. This has been given the dongle's sim card which is 3GB/month of data and no voice. The intension is to port my mobile number from t mobile back to Vodafone. The woman in the Vodafone shop said that I should ring up Vodafone customer services and get switched to a new contract. I don't know though, I quite like having unlimited data, although it has no voice at all (I can't even call customer services).

Phones seem to be selling themselves as MP3 players. As my entire collection is oggs (**) (and I'd rather be fully alert in the street) I've never used that feature. However I use the camera all the time, and sms.

I selected a Sony Ericsson K900i which has a 3 mp camera (with autofocus and stuff), a web browser, 3G, rss and email. This means I can email photos to flickr from my phone and check the travel information on the bus. It has J2ME for applications - I've already downloaded googlemaps and the googlemail reader and I'm looking for a twitter client.

I've tried Abiro Jitter but I don't get any data apart from the public timeline. It could be using the broken twitter IM service I suppose.

UTweetMe crashes almost immediately.

Any suggestions?

* anything you add to the custom dictionary is selected as first choice so that 'at' always becomes 'CV'
** That I've ripped myself.

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 18:20:30 GMT

I have an interview for the job I'm doing as a temp on Tuesday! Yay!

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:19:20 GMT

Rhythmbox crashed, I open it again and get gstreamer errors to do with pulse audio. This happens if I open totem more than once too :(

(rhythmbox:9892): GStreamer-CRITICAL **: 
Trying to dispose element fakesink, but it is not in the NULL state.
You need to explicitly set elements to the NULL state before
dropping the final reference, to allow them to clean up.

Pulseaudio, made of FAIL, on my hardware (audigy) and in hardy.

New Tuxpaint!

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 22:31:43 GMT

http://www.tuxpaint.org/latest/tuxpaint-0.9.20-press-release-en.php3

More of my stuff in it, including starters as well as stamps!

Update

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 22:16:05 GMT

Geek + money = shiny

I bought something I've wanted for ages, a digital slr camera (Nikon D40). Not taken it out yet.

Went to the Hide and Seek festival on Saturday with squirmelia, and went to the Oval on Sunday.

Still working, and fruitlessly chasing boys round the internet.

Not much else to report.

ADSL update

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 12:11:23 GMT

Ten days have passed since my ADSL max was installed so these should be the settings my line can handle:

BT Test XDSLStatusCheckTest:Pass OK. Circuit In Sync BRAS=7150Kb/s FTR=6502Kb/s MSR=8128Kb/s ServOpt=1 I/L=A
Up Sync=448KB/s LoopLoss=8dB SNR=25dB ErrSec=0 HECErr=0 Cells=11030
Down Sync=8128KB/s LoopLoss=16.5dB SNR=12dB ErrSec=0 HECErr=0 Cells=42352

This site says "This period (10 days) is used to determine the best possible speed for your line. Your router or modem will sync with the DSLAM at your telephone exchange and the two devices will send packets of data back and forth. Over the 10 day stabilization period you may experience drops in connection, the connection will also differ in speed, so one day you may get 6.5Mbs throughput and the next 3.5Mbs although the line will settle and stabilize as you near the end of the 10 day period to set a Maximum Stable Rate (MSR) and Fault Threshold Rate (FTR)."

Reading in conjunction with this it looks like I'm near enough the telephone exchange to get a very good line! The sync speed, BRAS and MSR are at the maximum!

Photos

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:38:47 GMT

Yesterday was busy! There was the annual Cart Marking ceremony in the Guildhall Yard at lunchtime. The marking involved the Lord Mayor and others raising their hats at a load of trucks as they went past. Afterwards they all went off to a champagne reception and a posh dinner.

Cart marking on flickr

That evening I went with squirmelia and fluffymark to dorkbot at Area 10 in Peckham. We reckoned Dorkbot was less dorky this time round, although I liked the dog webcam chats for money. Dodgy e-voting funded with regeneration money pissed me off and I said as much.

Area 10 and a little alcove. This analogue modem looked really cool but wasn't used for anything.

ADSL!

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 19:19:18 GMT

My ADSL was installed today!

Phone socket with wire out the bottom
Broadband control panel and monitoring info

I need to learn to grok ADSL Max. It's apparently rate adaptive and takes 10 days to stabilise. My current stats are:

BT Test XDSLStatusCheckTest:Pass OK. Circuit In Sync BRAS=Kb/s FTR=2272Kb/s MSR=2272Kb/s ServOpt=1 I/L=A
Up Sync=448KB/s LoopLoss=8dB SNR=25dB ErrSec=0 HECErr=0 Cells=44935
Down Sync=8128KB/s LoopLoss=16.5dB SNR=12dB ErrSec=0 HECErr=0 Cells=82073

I wonder if the FTR and MSR rates mean that my line will stop syncing at 8128KB/s?

This has info about how it all works..

This says that "The FTR is set at 30% of the MSR less 0.5Mbs." As my FTR==MSR I guess it hasn't set itself up yet.

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:59:57 GMT

I am due to have my ADSL installed tomorrow morning! Woo! etc. No the flat hasn't been tidied yet..

I'm playing with google reader, it's both an RSS reader (neither LJ nor Firefox are fit for this tbh) and a link sharer. My shared links are here.

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 16:59:06 GMT

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