Planet Birmingham

Use Readline shortcuts

At the bash prompt, you can use the default readline keybindings, these are similar to Emacs ones. Many of these are also available within other programs that use readline, such as the Python interpreter.

Here are some useful ones:

Ctrl-A Beginning of Line
Ctrl-E End of Line

Ctrl-U Kill (cut) everything left of cursor
Ctrl-K Kill (cut) everything right of cursor
Ctrl-W Kill (cut) the single word before the cursor
Ctrl-Y Yank (paste) the text back

Ctrl-L Clear Screen
Ctrl-D Exit
Ctrl-R Reverse interactive-search, (attempt to complete what is currently being typed using the history file)

SSH without Passwords

If you login to a remote machine often and you get bored of typing the password, then you can use public key cryptography instead.

The way it works is that the remote machine has a copy of your local machine's public key, it can then use that to check that your local machine is really your machine, and so let you in.

To start with, on the local machine, see if you already have a key pair:

ls ~/.ssh/id_?sa.pub

If not, then make one:

ssh-keygen -t dsa

Now you need to copy your public key to the remote host. On the local machine run:

scp ~/.ssh/id_?sa.pub remotehost:

Now we login to the remote server:

ssh remotehost

Append the public key to your authorized keys file

cat id_?sa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Now you can login without passwords. Make sure the security of your machines is well thought out. Use disk encyption if possible.

Create a script directory in home directory

I often talk about random Python or bash scripts. The easy way to use them on Linux is to make a dedicated script directory for these.

mkdir ~/bin

Add it to your shell's path. Edit ~/.bashrc and add:

export PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH

Now all the scripts that you add to ~/bin are always available. This makes things a lot more flexible and fun as you can try out various scripts by dropping them in ~/bin and then deleting them when you are bored of them.

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Many trans people view being trans as a medical condition or a birth defect, which they had fixed. Why would run around telling people that you used to have an embarrassing medical problem? Most of these folks are stealth. Their trans history is nobody's business.

Other trans people, especially genderqueers, see their trans status as a big part of their sense of self. These folks are usually out. This is a new phenomenon. Not long ago, trans people were instructed to change their name, move out of town and lie about their past. Genderqueers did not have access to transition in that era.

Fortunately, thanks to the work of trans activists and also feminism, normativity is much less emphasized and I don't need to go into hiding. I've got the moving far, far away part covered, but composing is a high-profile occupation. If you have to be stealth, it's incompatible. I'm not willing to walk away from the years I spent learning my craft and "paying my dues" as they say. So from a practical standpoint, I've got to be out. From an emotional standpoint, I do terribly at being stealth anything. Secrets eat at me. So I'm out. Which means coming out.

Thus far, I've mostly been telling people who knew me before. That's stressful enough. My strategy has been to try to tell the biggest gossips that I know, preferably via email, and hope they spread it around everywhere. They fill in all my other friends, and then I am spared awkward conversations. There's undoubtedly extra commentary that goes with the news, but that would happen anyway. I imagine that in many cases, it's a sarcastic, "big surprise!"

But I also meet new people. And I'm at kind of a loss on how to proceed. Do I want to be out? Probably. I mean, I've been in transition for less than 6 months. I don't want to lie about the previous 31 years of my life. And it's kind of a big deal. On the other hand, it's a lot to lay on somebody the first time I meet them. I had gotten in the habit of subtly slipping my girlfriend into conversations to let people know that I'm queer, but that doesn't work at all anymore. Also, people who knew me before are still tripping over pronouns and I can't grow any more than the most very pathetic moustache. I'm passing, but not overwhelmingly, if you know what I mean.

Passing is great, by the way. But not without it's own issues. I keep worrying that somebody is going to read me. The last time I was out with a crowd of strangers, I was gripped by a sudden fear that somebody would suddenly stand, point, and shout "fraud!" But this is Britain. People are so very polite. Maybe they had already worked it out and were just humoring me and I wasn't passing at all? How could it be that my interactions with men were so totally unchanged if I was actually passing?

I've always gotten on well with men older than myself. I find it easy to establish a rapport. When I started to transition, I worried that I would lose this. But then I started talking to a bloke who seemed to be 5 or 10 years older than myself and it was the same as always. Exactly the same. How could this be? What was going on? Had he somehow read me? Was he gay and flirting with me? Had I always been acting like and treated like a guy? Was I acting like a girl and him responding to that without consciously following? I was completely unnerved.

Another bloke I was talking to kept bringing up balls. He didn't know why he kept talking about them. His unconscious mind was nudging him. I guess I could have taken the opportunities to mention that (like Harry Partch) I don't have any. But I was already unnerved. Also, is that something I really want to disclose the first time I meet somebody? I have no idea - probably not in those terms. A straight friend suggested that I "just be a guy" and not tell anybody. But then, that's 31 years of my life. That's this blog. That's the last piece I posted to my podcast. That's a whole lot of hiding.

I gave the ball bloke my card. He didn't write. Maybe he lost my card. Maybe I should take it all down: the blog, the podcast, everything. Just be a guy. People who google me can know and people who don't won't. Is that what I want?

Some people tell me that I'm brave. I don't follow their logic at all. I'm just trying to survive the best I can. If that's brave, so is getting out of bed in the morning. Maybe we're all brave. Maybe we're all passing. We pretend to be the person we wish we were and come to create and inhabit that reality. So what is coming out, in that case? I used to be kind of an asshole? I used to be a software engineer? I used to be a girl?

Here's a quick moan.

I'm in the pub, celebrating Granny-out-law's 21st* birthday and enjoying my £1.09/pint pedigree (and £1.29/pint abbott ale) courtesy of Mr Wetherspoons putting silly offers in the local free rag. Suddenly my phone goes off. Expecting my mother, I was a little surprised to see $customer_x ... "I wonder why they are phoning now?", asks my slightly frazzed brain.

"Help, our application is broken, it's monthly cron job runs on the 28th, and it looks like some tables weren't created".

"Err... well, I'm in the pub, and won't be home for ~ 3 hours."

[Some hours later I look in $database, and create a few tables which seem to be missing, and eventually discover the one they're looking for is in a seperate database which I wasn't aware of before]

*sigh*

People say it's bad. Pick up a newspaper, that says it's bad. turn on a TV, that says it's bad. But seriously folks, when is the last time the mass media said anything even remotely accurate about progressives in America? (I hear crickets chirping).

First of all, why not ask the voters in states with late primaries? I bet they're not unhappy to be making important votes. I bet they're pleased as heck. For years, everybody only cares about New Hampshire. Now, suddenly, somebody is paying attention to them! More democracy is good! Let the late voters have their say.

Secondly, Clinton and Obama are vying for the Democratic vote. If the Democratic nominee were already selected, ze would be vying for the mythical swing voter. Or worse, Republican voters. Instead, the Democratic candidates are forced to talk about issues that actually matter to their party. They have to define themselves in opposition to each other, not just as slightly less-bad Republicans.

There are more Democrats than Republicans in America. If you look at party registration, you can see that. If you go out as a pollster and start asking people, "Are you a Republican or a Democrat?" the gap gets really wide, more than 10%. Most people don't vote. A huge number of eligible voters aren't registered. But, even unregistered, they consider them selves to be Democrats. It's sad. Why don't they vote? Well, in a normal election cycle, their issues are completely ignored in the mad rush for swing voters. Why should they vote if they get offered nothing?

So, suddenly, the left exists. The left's issues exist. The majority of people in America suddenly exist. Clinton and Obama are forced to talk about issues important to the left. And as this drags on, they become associated with their pledges to the left. They can't just suddenly forget about us. We made them address the Pentagon's illegal domestic disinformation campaign to sell the war. Every issues that they address, which McCain ignores, that's an issue that they well might have stayed silent on. And maybe they force him to address it. The political discourse in America is being pulled in a direction which appeals to Democrats.

I hope this goes all the way up to the convention. I hope they have to keep paying attention to the party they represent all the way through it, through November, through two terms in office. Progressive issues matter! Progressive issues are vital to the health of the country and the planet.

Of course, I write all this from a distant land, where I don't get inundated with it. But every time I see the candidates jockeying for progressive votes I smile. And then I change the channel.

Edit

Nevermind. Arg. This is why I don't pay attention. And moved across an ocean.

This news page (or 'blog') will keep you up to date with the run-up to PyCon UK 2008 which will happen on the 12th/14th September 2008 at the Birmingham Conservatoire.

Its pretty early days but we are already planning talks, lightning talks and tutorials as well as social events, and sprints.

So if you think you might be able to give a talk then you need to start thinking about it now.

Perhaps you are part of a distributed programming project in the UK, such as an open-source project that uses Python, but have never met your co-developers, then consider meeting up at PyCon UK.

If you use an RSS reader, then please do subscribe to our RSS feed so you can stay right up to date with what we are doing.

Did you know that Firefox has a built in RSS reader called 'Live Bookmarks'? Just click on the red RSS button , then click subscribe. Then when we make a new post, you will see it in your bookmarks.

Did you know that Internet Explorer 7 also has an RSS reader? Just whack the button on the Internet Explorer toolbar that looks like this:

You can also read the instructions if you prefer.

Just in case you are unaware, a planet in the blogging context is an aggregation of content from a list of individual sources such as blogs, journals, articles etcetera. Some examples of planets in no particular order:

• Planet Debian
• Planet Ubuntu UK
• Planet BitFolk
• Planet SysAdmin

Over the last couple of weeks there have been some heated words on various planets about what is acceptable content for that planet. I don’t run any of those planets so I’m not going to comment on specifics. I’ve also seen people who operate planets asking for people to join them, but only if they will post on a particular topic — in fact I’ve recently seen a request on a mailing list, which itself receives off-topic personal posts from members of its community, for bloggers who will only write on-topic posts on that community’s planet. And I’ve been added to planets which then later ask me to obey posting guidelines.

To me all this is very odd. I personally read various planets because I want to know more about the people who are in those communities and what they are up to. I appreciate the on topic posts they write but often I appreciate the slightly more personal ones even more. I like to see what people are interested in and what their values are, so to then restrict the posts to a particular topic to me seems to be counter-productive.

For the one planet that I do run, when I ask people if I can add them to it I sometimes receive the response, “Do you want me to use a tag?” or, “I’m sorry I don’t have a tag set up for this, you might get a lot of non-technical posts.” Great! If I was going to have expectations over what you are writing about then I would expect to be paying you to be a technical author for me. I don’t want that; I’m interested in what you are about.

Someone else said something like “in this day and age we have the technology to have the aggregator provide custom feeds with some people removed, and this is the way forward in dealing with people you really can’t stand to read”. I’m paraphrasing that, and I don’t remember who said it or where, but I couldn’t agree more. To me the planet is a view in to the community it represents and being a member of that community is usually all that is required to have a feed included. It does not mean that the planet operator endorses everything they say, that the reader should agree with their viewpoints or that the reader will find them an interesting person! We are presumably all grown-ups here and we can decide what to read or not.

If you are a paid blogger or if you want to make a name for yourself writing articles about a given subject then fair enough, I can understand why you might want to mark only certain articles for publication to a certain audience.

I don’t write much of value or anything contentious. I don’t write much at all, except links to strange things. I haven’t ever had a planet operator tell me that something I wrote wasn’t appropriate for their planet, but that’s probably because I’m not syndicated to many of them. But I would definitely ask to be removed before I would agree to tag posts.

Is it ever healthy to run an aggregator of personal blogs and then expect to exert editorial control over that?

I’m getting increasingly disturbed by reports of members of the public being harassed whilst innocently taking photos. I’m going to start keeping a list of links to this sort of thing here.

• 2008-03-24, South Shields, UK

Well, I've been doing this commission project for over a year now. There were a few months of it that I wasn't pushing it very actively. Most of the people who got commissions from me, though, were people with whom I already had a connection. This is not surprising. You wouldn't buy a CD from a band that you'd never heard, so why would you buy a commission from somebody whose music you didn't know at all.

Still, I wanted to get the idea of the project farther out. I think the best way to spread is organically, by word of mouth and via social networking. But the idea of direct-to-consumer advertising is also compelling. So I approached the writer of the Comics Curmudgeon, which is rated as one of the top 100 American blogs. His blog has nothing to do with music. I asked him if I could trade a week long banner ad for a commission. Josh was extremely enthusiastic about the idea, so I made a one minute piece for him.

So far, everybody that's gotten a piece has been happy with it, Josh included. I think that people are more likely to like a piece of music that they feel a connection to. Personally, I'm more likely to think positively of music written by bands I already like or by my friends. Everybody has that. This seems to be especially true for people who commission pieces. In this case, Josh was happy enough that he dedicated a blog post in which he recommended me and embedded a YouTube video I made of the piece.

It's been a couple of weeks and the banner ad has timed out. The number of people watching the video has slowed to a trickle. I don't know how many thousands of people saw the post, or subsequently subscribed to my podcast, but I know that more than 3800 watched the video, which is a fantastic reach for me. I got zero new commissions.

This is exactly why my career in marketing was so short (no really). While it's true that I want to reach everybody, a one-off ad in a totally unrelated medium is not the way to do it. So my failure to get any new commissions is not necessarily an indication that the project is doomed. Most people have to hear about something three times before it clicks. Commissioning music is a totally new idea to many people. So if I want to get people to understand the idea, I need to make certain they hear about it multiple times. This effort was, therefore, much too small to work. However, there's another problem in that I can't do 100 commissions in a week. I can do maybe three. If four thousand people suddenly understood what I was up to and thought it was cool, if less than 1% of them tried to commission me, I'd be swamped.

However, one thing that I learned when I worked in marketing is that competition is correlated with growth of the category. For example, if there was just one time of sugary, fizzy water, the manufacturer might have to explain to people why they would want to drink such a thing (I, for one, am unconvinced it's a good idea). However, having multiple pop companies means that more people have heard of pop and the overall demand is higher. Is this cause or effect? Who knows. However, in the case of commissioning music, every other composer who starts doing this is also letting people know that such a category of goods exists. So I want more people to start doing this. I can't say for certain that it's going to work, but the startup costs are low.

I wonder, also, if I should retreat to a lower cost. At a time when people are losing their houses and the price of food is rising, commissioning noise music is definitely going to seem like a luxury.

Finally, while my advertisement experiment failed to gather me any new business, I'm still quite pleased with the number of ears that I reached. A number of them probably considered it to be a novelty, but that's the path musical genres take to reach popular acceptance. One small step for noise music, one giant leap for my hit counter.

Problem
Having a large collection of images that need resizing or rotating.

Old solution
Open Gimp, re-size, re-save. A very slow method.

New solution
Gnome Nautilus plugin. Here you highlight all the photos you want to resize and an option comes up in the right-click menu for "Resize Images..." and "Rotate Images...."

How to install

On Ubuntu it's very easy.


sudo apt-get install nautilus-image-converter

nautilus -q


The "nautilus -q" command should quit nautilus, and Gnome should restart it. If that doesn't happen, just log out and log back in again. Then you should have the new plugin installed.

I recently became interested in the OpenStreetMap project, and did some mapping for them. I was fortunate enough to be able to borrow a GPS device, but to do mapping on my own I needed to find my own.

Being eternally short of cash my planned solution was to use a "smartphone" and bluetooth GPS device borrowed from my mum, that I could install a piece of software and record my GPS tracks. The software exists, and is called TrekBuddy. Unfortunately my use of Ubuntu and free software in general has made me compliant with the ideal that when I install something on a device, I expect it to work as long as I have fulfilled the technical requirements. As far as I could see I had a compatible phone, GPS device, and java virtual machine installed, but the software would not work correctly. All because of the arbitrary will of a company.

Now the sense of confusion I have when it comes to mobile phones is what I imagine it is like for those who are unfamiliar with computers. There are a myriad of acronyms companies and products that overwhelm the novice user. Hence why I stick to my trusty Nokia 1100. So finding a solution was frustrating, only to be confronted with the problem of "Branding".

Now many people are familiar with the concept of "unlocking" where you can remove the software block that only allows one companies sim cards to be used in the phone. Unlocking is ubiquitous in the UK, the service is provided by many outlets and and can be done in a matter of minutes. Usually for around a tenner. I have had this done to all the phones that I ever inherited from contracts. It is much more useful to have a phone that can be swapped between networks, that it is to have one crippled and limping due to one provider.

"Branding" is a different matter entirely. "Branding" on mobile phones goes beyond painting your companies logo on the outside of the case, it now goes to the very core of the phone itself. Smartphones run full blown operating systems, this is what allows them to be "smart". But mobile telecommunications companies however are not, they will request that a manufacturer add extra customisations to the phones software. Superficially this is making the secondary button on the front go to your iTunes-a-like service or load up a browser pointing at your website. But it goes deeper, in my case the Java virtual machine would not allow java apps to write or read to memory unless they had been signed by the appropriate certificate authority. As far as I could see TrekBuddy had been signed, and the certificate was installed, but the certificate was not trusted enough to allow programs access to phone memory. A frustrating experience. This is all due to mobile manufacturers being paranoid about malware etc, but this seems to be to the detriment of users, and profit of certification companies.

A phone can be "unbranded" by flashing with the generic firmware of the manufacturer. I had this done, only to find the market stall where I had done it installed an old version of the firmware, and that the only place I could get an up-to-date version was from an official vendor, for even more money! Although this is due to the phone being so buggy it doesn't work with the official Windows updating software. Still there is no easy way to install certificates on the phone without a contract for 3G internet browsing.

Getting a smartphone to do what I wanted didn't seem like it should be difficult, but now its going to start costing me more in time and money to continue. The only conclusion I can come to is that in the future buying a product that supports a sensible development model, and recommend that others stay away from restricted mobiles. Unfortunately there are not many products on the market that fulfil my criteria, although there is hope.

The Neo1973 is based on work done by the OpenMoko project, a GPL mobile OS, and looks very promising. Fingers crossed!

Thomas David (nemphis) has expressed this in an amazing and cool picture at his blog

Living Code

David Parker famously said that texts are living, once they leave the pen of the author then they have a life of their own, you never know where the text will end up or how it will be modified. For Python code that is even more true.

The beauty of Python is that you can write code fast, share code and modify code. For this to work, your code needs to be readable. Writing code is easy, reading other people's code is much harder, or even reading your own code after a few months or years has past.

Therefore the aim is to make code as readable as possible, even if it causes a little more work when you write it. The way to make your Python code most readable is to keep to the Style Guide for Python Code, also known as PEP8.

Pylint for the Win

It is far easier to keep your code valid to PEP8 as you go along, than to try to move a large codebase to PEP8 at the end. I recommend the use of a tool called pylint.

Pylint is available from all Linux distributions' package managers (e.g. apt-get install pylint or emerge pylint). Here are some instructions for Windows.

If you have ever made a webpage you probably know about HTML-tidy or the online W3C Validator tool. These tell you everything wrong with your HTML.

Pylint is similar, it goes through and tells you both syntax errors and also how your code differs from the PEP8 standard.

There are some corner cases in which you will need to give pylint the finger, but doing it consciously for good reason is better than because you are sloppy.

PEP8 is better than your crappy style

People often don't use PEP8. This is for a variety of (bad) reasons.

Firstly, sometimes people are tourists from another programming language, they do not know any better so they write their Python code like it was Java or C code.

Secondly, Sometimes people think their (cl)own style is better than PEP8 in some technical way. Well that does not matter. I might have a better way to design a plug socket, but if I implemented my better plug socket, I would not be able to buy any electrical devices.

There can only be one standard, and PEP8 is that standard. If you want to change that standard then bribe, sleep with or kill Guido Van Rossum.

Not following the standard makes your code less readable to others, this prevents the quick reuse that Python is designed for (see above).

If you are a free-software/open-source project, then you particularly should be ashamed if you write hard to read code, because allowing other people to read, understand and modify your code is the whole point.

Lastly, some people don't use PEP8 because the document is too circular and verbose for them to remember. I feel your pain, below are the main points in 12 easy rules.

The 12 commandments

Guido, who brought you out of the land of Visual Basic, out of the land of slavery, spake all these words to thee:

• Module names should be in all lowercase - hello.py.
• Top level variables (variables that are not in a function or class) should be in BLOCKCAPITALS.
• Class names should be in CamelCase.
• Methods and functions should be in lower_with_underscores
• Implementation-specific 'private' methods _single_underscore_prefix
• Especially private non-subclassable methods __double_underscore_prefix
• If a variable inside a function or method is so temporary and disposable that you cannot give it a name, then use i for the first one, j for the second and k for third.
• Indentation is four spaces per level. No tabs. If you break this rule then you must be stoned in the village square.
• Lines are never more that 80 characters wide. Tip, break lines with a backward slash \. You do not need to do this if there are parentheses, brackets or braces. Don't add extra parentheses just to break lines, use \ instead.
• Spaces after commas, (green, eggs, and, ham)
• Spaces around operators i = i + 1
• Write docstrings for all public modules, functions, classes, and methods. Python is an international community, so use English for docstrings, object names and comments. If you want to provide local translations then use a proper localisation library.

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I’m not sure whether it’s because I’m becoming more immersed technically in technology, rather than ‘functionally’ as I was previously, but it appears as though issues at the political level are clouding achievements at the technical level.

Zeth has posted before on a Social Networking protocol. That is to say that applications such as facebook, myspace and bebo share alot of similar datafields. Standardising these global fields and setting up a new social networking protocol would allow greater freedom of data-sharing, and enable more powerful “mash-ups” of data.

Tim Berners-Lee’s book, “Weaving the Web” (which I am currently reading) is opening my eyes to just how self-deprecating his work has been. Not only would his work have normally afforded him a very wealthy lifestyle should he have chosen to ‘close’ the development of the project and put restrictions on his work - but he actively encouraged other people to benefit from his work - even when the way in which they were taking his idea was contrary to his own.

Now, nearly twenty years after the ‘World Wide Web’ started to gain momentum into something recognisable as what we use today, we’ve not yet got to a point which has fulfilled Berners-Lee’s vision. He envisaged an open mine of information and collaboration. Wikified browsers were the original intention - where collaboration and editing was a key as browsing.

Another example of a good application that would work better as a protocol is twitter. I think the reason most people don’t get twitter is that in essence its just an RSS feed. Today, paulbradshaw suggested that there be a twitter feed created purely for football scores - not chatter, just results. An RSS feed would have the same functionality - but a different interface.

In the same way that programmers have now begun to separate the content from the design with the advent of Content Management Systems and ‘Blogs - so should things like twitter be more transparent about the platform on which it is built. RSS is expandable and usable - twitter has released an open API to allow integration and collaboration - yet it’s still hindered by having a Central Point of Control. The initial design of the Web implied there was no central point necessary. By manufacturing applications and functions so that a central point is necessary is to lose part of the magic and scalability of the Web.

All in all, I think today's coworking crawl was a big success. After the last post, which I wrote in Jibbering Records in Moseley (nice coffee), we took the number 50 bus up into Digbeth and set up camp in Rooty Frooty (£1 pastries and lightening fast internet) at the Custard Factory. Despite the initial confusion about which electric sockets worked and which didn't, it was actually a pretty good place to work, with plenty of space and comfortable seating. We all settled down to some decent work at Rooty's, and stayed there for the rest of the day. Despite allegations of "coslacking" in the comments on my previous post, work did in fact take place; I managed to get a decent chunk of coding done.

Five of us took part over the day; Simon Hammond and Pete Ashton had already met up by the time I arrived in the morning, and stuck around all day. Mike Voong joined us for an hour or so at Jibbering Records, then we later met up with Stef Lewandowski, who was already at Rooty's when we arrived

.

There's already talk of more events such as today, and some discussions took place about more semi-permanent homes for future coworking sessions. Keep tracking the #brumcoworking tag on Twitter and keep your eye on the Birmingham coworking wiki for future occasions. All welcome!

I was able to try Google Docs Offline for the first time today and it's extremely cool.

The offline function uses the Google Gears web browser plugin which I talked about last June to keep an offline copy of all your documents. If you find yourself outside "the cloud" with no Internet access you simply point your web browser at the docs.google.com domain and your browser reverts to the offline version. You can view documents and spreadhseets and even edit your documents offline and it automatically syncs your changes when your conection is re-established.

It was a tiny bit buggy for me when I first used it, but I think this is a significant step forward for web applications. I really hope that open standards emerge so that this kind of thing becomes commonplace, there are certainly efforts to make this happen.

Hardy Heron is here!

This is the long term support release so will be supported on the desktop for three years. I'm downloading it now.

Now is a great time to get into GNU/Linux on the desktop. Find out more about Ubuntu here.

Following the idea being mooted at the recent Birmingham bloggers meet-ups, today is the first decent attempt at coworking in Birmingham. I haven't blogged about the bloggers meet-ups myself, mainly since everyone else seems to have done a pretty good job themselves. I've only been to two out of the four meets so far, but they've been a nice informal gatherings of bloggers, social media people, journalists, techies and artists.

The basic idea of co-working is that people who often work alone from their laptops, from home or an office, get out, go somewhere else together and work in proximity to each other. Instigated with Simon Hammond, today we're having a co-working crawl of various cafes and other places offering free wireless internet around the city. We began over a hearty breakfast at the Kitchen Garden Cafe in King's Heath, and are currently enjoying tea, coffee, chilled Afro music and free wifi at Jibbering Records in Moseley (who incidentially have computers running Ubuntu). Rooty Frooty at the Custard Factory is next...

If you want to track us, or come and join in, then follow the #brumcoworking tag on Twitter and take a look at the Birmingham coworking wiki. I'll also be streaming the occasional live video on my newly created Bambuser channel.

"Lactivist" is a popular term for an advocate (generally quite a militant one) of breastfeeding. When I got pregnant I presumed I would breastfeed but didn't think it would be the end of the world if we went on formula, although I knew it would be annoying to do all the faff with bottles.

3 months after Rowan was born, we're happily and successfully breastfeeding, with the occasional bottle so I can help David, and (although we do this rarely) so I can get some extra sleep. During this time I seem to have gotten somewhat more enthusiastic about the whole thing for a variety of reasons. Firstly, I've read lots of stuff about the benefits of breastmilk, and without wanting to be judgmental, the risks of formula feeding your baby. A good example is this article

I've also noticed how terribly uneducated mothers are about this - we're not given the facts and statistics of the matter before birth, not told about the risks to your supply of mixed feeding - certainly not told how to manage expressing and bottle/cup feeding if we want to leave our baby elsewhere. We're not told how milk production works, so many breastfeeding mothers worry terribly that their breasts are empty, that they're not making enough milk - that they can't manage to feed their baby properly, when in most cases this is simply not true.

However, although I try to encourage people gently, I seem to be becoming a ranting militant mother, which does not help. Its effectively too late for the mothers I see that have already made the decision to switch (its not really but it would take a lot of work to return to breastfeeding - far more than just sticking in the first place). Those who are mixed-feeding or considering it are prime targets, but it seems that they're defensive about their decisions and my advice to try to help them to stick, or give expressed milk instead of formula often seems to be drowned out by the formula feeders discussing different brands and suchlike.

I really wish I could do more to help these women, but it seems that advice is not really welcome from someone with no more baby experience than them - who has just read as much as she can. I don't want to judge them as I don't blame them for making decisions based on the (small amount of) information they have been given and an aggressive marketing campaign from the formula manufacturers.

Anyway, I am managing to do something positive. I've volunteered to attend a pro-breastfeeding exhibition in London next Friday with Rowan - presumably to answer questions etc. I'm looking forward to it, although I worry that to some extent I'll be preaching to the converted (although I have deliberately volunteered when a school group is due in in an attempt to influence some young minds)

I am considering training as a breast feeding peer supporter, but am not sure how much help I could be as a non-driver.

I don't expect our normal audience to find this very interesting, but hopefully someone else will find this post, and the other similar ones that I am sure will follow.

I've been quite busy over the last few days working on this site and have made a few improvements. Firstly, and perhaps most notably, I've toned down the design slightly. Its now less gradient intensive and I've made a new banner/logo for the top. I've also done a few other tweeks to the design make it more accessible, mostly related to the way divs are used with backgrounds. The site is now completely useable without the CSS turned on. I actually tried it on my phone using Opera Mini the other day and it rendered quite nicely.

When I first built the site I purposely kept the security on forms quite minimal. The contact form has no spam-protection, and all that I had on the comments form was a silent fail if an IP attempts to post twice within a minute - this was only to save me having to manually delete hundreds of spammed comments, I didn't mind getting the odd one or two. The main reason for this approach is because I'm actually interested to see how the spamming bots work and want to investigate the various ways which I can prevent spam without directly affecting my visitors. This worked fairly well, but still I have begun to get spammed with comments. My new line of defense is a honey-pot put on the comment form, hopefully that will reduce the small amount of spam that is trickling in.

The idea of a honey-pot is quite simple. Additional input fields can be added to a form and then hidden using CSS. Any legitimate user should therefore never see that field, whereas a bot will see the invisible field and enter data. I chose to create a zip_code field as its the most unlikely 'standard' form field to ever be needed on this site. If the form is submitted with a value in this box it will fail silently hopefully preventing any spam. Of course, users with CSS turned off will still see this field, hence why it needs an appropriate label to inform any users who do see it not to enter any data. Sadly this does put a slight burden on some users, but I still feel its a more user-friendly option than asking a question, or displaying some obscure text.

Last week Adam from work showed me about XFN, the social graphing API. To help with my social profile I've redesigned the home page to serve a more "portal" role on the site, linking out to my profiles and network. Sorry if its still a little messy, as I add more content I'll swap and change the design about until I'm happy.

The final thing worth mentioning is my switch over to Subversion. There are a number of reasons for this, but I won't bore anyone with why I chose to use SVN instead of bazaar. The repository is now centralised on the server and can be accessed over http if anyone wishes to poke at the code.

Over the next week I've got some other improvements planned - I want to have a look at making more use of RSS (I've quite a few ideas here which I think will be fun) and how I can use Symfony's cache to reduce overhead. I'm sure an update will be posted once both are done.

This is just a quick note, incase it helps someone else in the future.

It seems that MySQL server, when using MyISAM tables doesn't truncate the index file when you run "ALTER TABLE x DISABLE KEYS", so when running "ALTER TABLE x ENABLE KEYS" you end up with an MyISAM index file (xxxx.myi) which keeps growing. In my case this hit 90gb on a customer's server.

Ways to fix this :

1. Upgrade to MySQL 5.0.52 (apparently ... see
   http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=4692 )
2. Run "optimize table xxxx"
3. Run "repair table xxxx quick use_frm"
4. Nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.

I think that the production of compost has to be one of the nearest things to magic that exists in the world.

I was lucky enough that upon moving into my house, nine months ago, the previous owners left two almost empty compost bins behind in the garden. Ever since then I've been adding my raw vegetable scraps, tea bags, coffee and the odd bit of paper and cardboard too. One of the bins had filled up by late last year, and except for a bit of turning with a fork, I've left it be since. This week, I opened it up to see what was going on inside.

And wow, all those onion peel scraps and carrot heads have completely dissapeared. There wasn't a single tea bag in sight. Instead - and to be honest I wasn't really expecting the whole thing to work - was some rather good looking brown compost, all evenly mixed up!

Until now I've been buying compost to add to the soil in my vegetable patch but this was an opportunity too good to waste. So this evening, taking advantage of the ever increasing hours of daylight, I knocked together a compost sieve out of some old wood and a bit of mesh (instructions here), and started sieving the compost out into the wheelbarrow.

The result... lovely fine warm compost.

Considering that this stuff costs a fair bit of money at the garden centre, this is a rather cool way of getting it for free I think!

There are a couple of things I've found out about recently which I think are significant developments in the 3D web.

Second Life Architecture Working Group

The Second Life Architecture Working Group are publicly working on a defining a set of protocols which will open up the next generation of the Second Life "grid" to allow others to host Second Life style worlds. Second Life is a popular (the most popular?) online virtual world and currently has an open source client and closed source server. All servers are currently run by Linden Labs, but the company recognises that if Second Life is to become as ubiquitous as the World Wide Web, they have to open up the technology.

What I find interesting about this standardisation effort is the willigness of the group to investigate the use of existing open Internet standards where possible. Examples include HTTP, REST APIs, XMPP, FOAF, XFN and OpenID. I think this is a much more sensible approach than trying to define new protocols for every part of the technology.

The basic approach of the group currently appears to be to take each feature of Second Life and either match it to an existing open standard, or if none applies then define a new one. Meetings happen online, even inside Second Life itself, and the chat logs are available to view on their wiki.

Vivaty

Vivaty were previously known as MediaMachines who created the FluxPlayer for X3D viewing and FluxStudio for X3D authoring. Under their new brand they have recently launched a beta of a new 3D social networking service which uses X3D technology to provide online virtual worlds similar to Second Life, but with a greater emphasis on social networking. This is really a flagship for the X3D standard and it will be interesting to see how well it performs.

This new direction for the company appears to be an evolution from creating developer tools and implementations of Web3D standards, to providing end user web services which use those standards. I think this speaks volumes about the maturity of the technology.

3D Internet vs. 3D Web

What's interesting about contrasting these two developments is that they are both working towards building distributed online virtual worlds, but going about it in different ways. One is creating a 3D Internet and one is creating a 3D Web. Also, one is taking a commercial service and turning it into an open technology, the other is taking an open technology and turning it into a commercial service.

Here's my question. Are virtual worlds and the web different uses of the Internet in the same way that email clients and web browsers are different, or are virtual worlds one possible application of the 3D Web? It could be that both are true, similar to the fact that both email clients and webmail exist. In which case, the 3D Web is a web interface to virtual worlds. This then strays into the much wider debate of desktop vs. web browser as a software platform.

The Second Life client includes not only the real time rendering of interactive 3D vector graphics, but also a huge array of other technologies including authentication, instant messaging, prescense, friends lists and even currency. I would call this a rich Internet client, because it involves much more than just a web browser. It's something which implements many different protocols over the Internet and is designed to be installed on a desktop PC, separate from a web browser.

The pure 3D Web approach I envisage would be slightly different. The client (web user agent) would include only the downloading/uploading (over HTTP) and rendering of 3D scenes (in X3D), with a client-side scripting engine (ECMAScript). HTTP authenticaion might also be included, as it is currently included in web browsers, but application specific protocols like instant messaging, exchange of currency and friends lists would be left to server-side web services. An instant messenger client may well use the Jabber protocol (XMPP), but would not require the user to download an IM client, it would simply be used via a web interface much like Meebo. Currency? 3D PayPal perhaps.

The pure 3D Web option fits very neatly in the context of other web standards - we already have XHTML and the start of SVG implementations in web browsers, X3D could be the next step, with CSS and ECMAScript playing their parts.

XMPP for the 3D Web?

As an aside, one interesting idea which has been mentioned in the Second Life Architecture Working Group discussions is the idea of using XMPP not only as an instant messaging protocol but as a general purpose point-to-point protocol. I've thought about this before - the idea of using XMPP in place of HTTP to overcome the limitations and synchronous nature of HTTP. I know XMPP is extensible, but I don't know enough about it to know whether this would work. The 3D Web is surely going to be a big stretch for the hack that is AJAX and XMPP could hold the answer to truly interactive 3D scenes.

Internship 

After two years of trying and five interviews, I've finally got an internship with Google this summer. I'll be working as a Technical Solutions Engineer in the Partner Solutions Organisation at Google London and the work I do will hopefully ultimately improve the results you get when you carry out a local search on Google Maps. I've been to visit the team I'll be working with and had lunch at Google, with a tour of the building. All I'm going to say is, I can't wait to start!

Flat 

I'm currently looking for short term accommodation in London over the summer. I'm looking for a 3 month let of a studio flat (or potentially a flat share) from mid-June to mid-September. I need somewhere in the range of £100-200 per week which is in easy reach of London Victoria station, somewhere on the District, Circle or Victoria tube lines would probably be ideal. My basic requirements are a double bed, a shower, an Internet connection and basic kitchen facilities.

If anyone has or knows of something suitable, I'd be extremely grateful if you could contact me by email (ben at tola.me.uk). So far I've been looking on rightmove.co.uk and gumtree.com and I'm not having a huge amount of success. There's lots out there, but I keep coming across problems.

• Mad hair thing (via Why, That’s Delightful!)
• “Luckily, the butter knife that became lodged in his head did not pierce skull”

OpenStreetMap is for geographic data what the Linux kernel is for operating systems. The aim is to eventually have a complete map of the world, this is a monumental effort and one that I believe is worthwhile. For in the UK the only mapping authority available is Ordnance Survey, a government funded body, who own copyright to the maps they produce and charge a fortune to those who wish to use them.

This situation is morally wrong, as this prevents academics and individuals using the data in new and possibly very beneficial ways. Or even the more mundane ways such as publishing a map to your business, without incurring a huge license fee.

The volunteers of OpenStreetMap are very enthusiastic about what they do, and gain a great enjoyment from wandering and discovering places they have never been, or better yet finding nooks and crannies of places they have!

Most data seems to come from individual volunteers working independently, but last weekend (12/13th April) there was a "Mapping Party" for the south Birmingham area. It was organised by Andy Robinson as OSM data for the south of Birmingham city centre consists of only main roads and vast void areas.

This was my first time doing actual mapping for OSM, I had before spent a good hour figuring out how to name some roads in Selly Oak and that's where it ended. The mapping party was due to start around 9:00 at the Kitchen Garden Cafe, and the majority had arrived by 10:00.

As soon as Andy Robinson arrived the event was kick started, with projectors and maps being set up around the small office that had been hired out for our use. Soon we had huge A0 posters of the area on the walls, so that people could mark the area they would like to map.

The OpenStreetMap foundation had even brought around a dozen, compact Gecko 201 Garmins for the volunteers, like me, who did not posses their own GPS equipment. But more importantly they had people who were willing to show me the ropes. So I spent the morning mapping with Brian, whose advice was invaluable. He gave me some basic lessons in mapping, what the do's and don't do's were etc.

The afternoon I took out to Kings Heath by myself, with a Garmin GPS gaffa taped to the handle bars of my bike. It is the common consensus that the best way to map is by bicycle. A bike had the advantage of being allowed pretty much anywhere unlike a car, and you can cover large distances, unlike just walking. It was great fun exploring all the back roads and pathways, but it gets you a few strange looks stopping and writing down road names.

The standard method for collecting road names and other features is to carry a GPS device that logs your position every second, and a pad and pen. That's it! The simple joy of OSM is the very low level of entry. The easy bit is getting the GPS trace, the hard part is making decent notes as later on you will be referring to them to construct the map data. As this is a grassroots project how many notes you make is up to you. Nearly everyone will record roads, but then there are foot paths, canals, and cycle lanes which you could record. Or you could go into more detail such as bus stops, hospitals, crossings, traffic lights, post codes! The list is almost endless.

As you can imagine this can make note taking slow and very messy. Even my simple mapping got complicated very quickly.



But the OSM mappers are an inventive bunch. This is a group of people so dedicated that they wrote their own software to map the planet, and some of the features and plugins for it are very clever. You can carry along a digital camera with you, and take pictures of road names, etc, and then use that as your reference when you return. This is done by taking a photograph of the GPS device showing the current time. Then later the JOSM software will calculate the difference between the first photograph's time stamp and the given GPS time, and then overlay all the subsequent photos on top of your GPS data! There is even a plugin to do the same with audio recordings. Truly an example of "Necessity being the mother of invention"!

There were a few hic-cups during the day, rain being one of them, but also the police and bemused members of the public. To a cynic it was of little surprise that the only asian member of our group was stopped by the police in what appears to be an "Statutory Power or Street Encounter", but the general feeling of the group was to laugh it off. In fact others seems slightly jealous that they had not got one!



All in all a very enjoyable day, and it was unfortunate that I could not attend the second day. And the product of our work can now be seen on the OSM website, in the form of a much more feature rich South Birmingham!

When I was last at the Tate Modern, I saw some video by Francesca Woodman from the 1970's. She had a piece where she had stretched butcher paper in front of the large window of her loft. Light was shining through the window and through the paper. She stood naked behind the paper, so that her silhouette was visible and drew on the paper from behind. Then she tore the paper in a kind of provocative way, revealing increasing sexualized parts of her own body, until finally she stepped through it, tearing it all away and walking off frame.

I've been thinking about this piece a lot. I was first drawn to it because of the attractiveness of the artist, but the viewer is being asked to consider several things. By drawing on the paper, I think she was trying to create an idea of it as a canvas. We have a cultural idea that artists express themselves in a pure, cerebral form through their art. The canvas becomes almost an extension of self - but specifically, a very dualist kind of self. The canvas is not about the body, but about the mind.

Hélène Cixous argues that all binary oppositions eventually come back to gender. So when we put mind and body into opposition, immediately, we assign one of them to male. And, indeed, historically (and currently, alas) men are mind and women are body. These oppositions are also an implicit comparison, so the mind is more noble and pure than the body. The (male) artist is thus a triumph of masculinity. He expresses the true, the valuable and the pure of himself through his canvas. But if this is implicitly masculine, then women have greatly reduced access. They're not artists, they're women artists and that's something different. Their body is thus always made visible, not just because it's a site of difference, but because women are presumed to entirely be of and about the body.

By allowing light to filter around her naked body and through the canvas, Woodman makes this explicit in her work. The strip-tease aspect of her tearing makes a connection to sex and femininity even more explicit and invites a feminist analysis. Her drawings are torn to bits to reveal her body / herself, which / who then leaves. She breaks down the mind/body dichotomy, and, in so doing, her work is placed in the male gaze, which is not a site of empowerment. But she remains in control. There is no operator behind the camera. She controls what we see and when we see it, as much as she can, since the paper tears in unpredictable ways. By working within the male gaze, she makes it visible to the viewer.

I was also drawn to the aesthetics of the piece. It's shot in her home. The attachment of the paper is ad hoc. The video is actually a series of takes. She tried this multiple times and put several of them on the finished tape. I like the experimental nature of it. I like that it's about process. I think the aspect of it being in her home, which is an intimate setting (I mean that the way that small chamber music venues are described as intimate). She lets us into her life in a small way to make a statement about herself, her art and art in general.

I also admire her courage. There's no metaphor for being naked on camera because it is the metaphor. She is actually uncovered, but never uncomfortable. It's amazing.

So as I begin to think about making little films, I keep thinking of hers. I also think of her relationship to her body and the camera. I've spent most of my life striving to remain covered, living in my head. I don't think I have the "wrong body," but I think my identity was at odds with aspects of my body - not even in a way that I've been fully aware of. Which is to say, being naked on camera is not something I would ever have considered in a million years. No. No. No. What are you kidding? It's another door that was closed - right next to all the doors that disallow crossdressing. These doors are starting to open for me. (Note that they should never have been closed in the first place.)

I'm working on a video of me giving myself a shot. It is uncovering. I thought of her video for courage to continue. My nakedness, though, is metaphorical. Do I want to put out there a picture of me in my bed room? Hesitating? Pausing? Failing?

Why do I want to do it? I have no idea. I try to get things out of my head sometimes and if you that with art, then how you do it is by putting it in other people's heads. What does it feel like to have your identity hinge on an injection when you have a fear of needles? Well, here's one answer.

I'm considering doing a piece with a bunch of still photos, slowly fading from one to another. In them I would be in the same location, in the same pose. I would start wearing a suit, hat and jacket and in each picture, remove one item until I was wearing nothing. (Why do I want to do it? I have no idea.)

I pass when I'm clothed. People see me as a man, which is what I want. But I've only done hormones and only for a few months. My body is ambiguous. Not even as ambiguous as I would like. It would be a stripping away of identity and of self. (Why do I want to do it? I have no idea.)

What is sex? What is gender? They're both culturally constructed. My very body is queer now. I call all of these oppositions into question just by existing. My queer self is inscribed on my person, on my physical being.

I don't want to be a shock value, though. I don't want to be daytime TV. I don't want to be a women's glossy mag. I don't want to be a bad joke. I want to be a person, clothed or unclothed. Woodman was dealing with the same sort of issues in her work, about how her image is transmitted and received. She can't control what the perceiver thinks. Somebody like me could come up to it and think , "ooh, hot woman." But if that person engages the work, they walk away with more than that. She does with pacing, timing, repetition of the same scenario. She's got some advantage over me in that we, as a culture, acknowledge that cisgender women's bodies exist.

So, I don't know if it's a good idea. I'm looking for thoughts.

Nonsense laws are socially divisive

In Saudi Arabia, ownership of a Bible is illegal. If you are found in the possession of a Bible, at the very least you will have it confiscated, you may be given corporal punishment. If you are found in possession of many bibles, then you can be executed (source).

We do not have that law in UK, or any laws like it. Not only is the UK a Christian country, (in name at least), but also because the majority of the people in the UK think that laws against owning books are stupid, only barbarians have such laws. In Britain you can own the Bible, the Koran, Harry Potter, whatever the heck book you want.

No matter what legal arguments you make for a law, if the majority of the public think it is stupid then it won't work.

A lot of countries used to have laws against "Nightwalking", i.e. walking around at night, because people out at night are obviously up to no good. Most countries have abolished such laws. Make laws about soliciting maybe, but wandering around at night? That was just silly.

Silly laws should be abolished. If you just leave silly laws on the statue book, expecting everyone to just ignore these laws, then you are undermining the law itself and making a mockery of the institutions charged with enforcing the law.

How many million people file share?

An study in 2005 claimed than 9.2 million people in Britain were involved in filesharing, which represented an annual 50% increase from the 4.3 million people that were involved in filesharing in 2003. Source 1, Source 2.

What is the number now? If a 50% annual increase was maintained, then it would have been 13.8 million people in 2006, 20.7 million people in 2007, and 31 million by the end of this year, 2008.

By the end of next year, it would be 46.6 million, and by 2010, it would be 70 million. That can't be possible of course as the population of the UK is only 60.6 Million.

So we can be pretty sure the number of people file-sharing is within the range of 10 million to 60.6 million. If you have more accurate figures please let me know. For sake of discussion, lets choose an arbitrary number - 20 million.

Filesharing is normal behaviour

Lets say that 20 million people in the UK have been or are involved in filesharing. With 20 million people, filesharing is not a crime, it is a mandate.

Labour achieved 9.5 million votes at the 2005 general election, for this it received 356 out of 646 possible seats, and became the government.

If 20 million people in the UK are filesharing then it cannot be considered a crime, or a bad act, it is the democratic will of the nation.

The majority of people have decided that previewing a song by downloading it is fair, the majority of people have decided that sharing a file with your friends is not the same as stealing a car.

Therefore, the government must stop trying to make 20 million British people into criminals, but instead should try to understand the cultural changes happening here and then frame the policy agenda accordingly.

The public are not interested in the police spending time in a futile mission to stop kids sharing music with other in order to prop up dying foreign companies. Instead spend the scarce resources on stopping organised drug crime, or on solving murders or on confiscating illegal guns from urban street gangs.

If the government cannot see this, and wants to waste our money on misadventures, then we will throw you lot out and get a government that does represent our values. That is democracy.

The old music companies are not important to the economic future of Britain

Likewise, the music and film industries also need to wake up and smell the coffee, their potential customers like sharing music and film on the web with each other. It is too late, they need to just get over it.

Suing their own customers is not going to help them manage decline. It is not going to turn back the clock. The old companies that represent yesterday's music industry cannot burn down the Internet, however hard it tries. The Internet has become far bigger and far more important economically and socially than the old music or film companies.

Google is one of the biggest web companies, alone it makes $10 billion in annual profit, that is double the profit for the whole music industry. To put it another way, all of these old music companies are worth, economically speaking, half a Google.

Things change, that is life, get on with it. The arrival of electric refrigeration killed off the ice storage companies. Tough luck, no one made a law protecting the old ice storage companies against people using freezers in their homes to make ice.

These old music and film companies if yesterday must be told to just live with it, get on with it, embrace it. Make services that appeal to these people, or cease to exist. Governments must not kill the Internet golden goose for some old dying companies.

The old ice storage companies going to the wall did not end cold drinks in the summer, in fact electronic refrigeration led to a massive increase in the number of cold drinks available.

Likewise if the old music companies are too slow to adapt and go to the wall, it will not be the end of music, or the beginning of the end of music, it will be, as Churchill famously said, the end of the beginning.

Politicians, this is your final warning

If you are a politician, be aware, we are watching you like never before. In the past you might have taken party contributions from special interests and then given them special treatment.

Now we, the public, have our own communication channels and this time, we will punish you for it. You will represent us, the people, or we will remove you.

Discuss this post - Leave a comment

Entry at Digg

Is open source recession proof? by ZDNet’s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes — So, how might a recession affect open source software?

Interesting discussion tonight on whether a cat can survive falling out of a plane.

Seriously.

Not one for boring discussions, this was initially proposed by me and -a first- seconded by another friend.  With two people objecting to the idea that a cat could survive, and lively debate ensued.  For survival TEAM A (indented). versus  “PETA’s not going to be happy” (TEAM B).

The first bone of contention was the terminal velocity.  TEAM B reckoned that the cat would hit the ground so fast it’s die for definate on impact.  TEAM A came up with the following:

The cat has a terminal velocity of 60mph, compared to a human’s T.V. of 120mph.

Ok, so we’ve got our first ‘fact’ agreed upon.  However, 60mph is still reckoned to be too fast for a cat to survive.

When the cat reaches it’s terminal velocity, it no longer sense that there are forces acting upon it and so relaxes.  We then end up with a ’spread eagled cat.’  This increases air resistance, so the cat does in fact slow down.

In what was probably a fair comment, TEAM B reckoned that even at 60mph a spread-eagled cat would have horrific internal injuries and still die.  Especially a spread-eagled cat whose stomach would hit the floor first.

TEAM A suggested that a spread eagled cat would infact be in a very good position to absorb alot of the impact.  The assumption by TEAM B that the spread eagled cat’s stomach would hit the ground first we hypothesised to be incorrect.  As the cat would not be able to put it’s legs perpendicular to the angle of descent (i.e. horizontal) they would provide the first point of contact, and absorb energy (unfortunately, likely breaking bones/tendons/muscle tissue) in the process.

TEAM B pounced at this point and suggested that a broken bone could quite easily be severe enough to cut an artery and kill the cat.

TEAM A responded saying that if the cat’s leg muscles were to absorb 20mph of velocity on impact (and not break), then there would be only a 30-40mph impact on the cat as a whole. Which spread out over the surface area of the cat should be enough to leave it stunned but not dead.

The night ended in a stalemate, with neither team wanting to concede defeat.  None of the debaters were prepared to test the hypothesis empirically, as none of us are interesting in cruelty to animals.  This debate was purely about the physical ability of a cat’s muscular and skeletal structure.  Something which is pretty amazing.

Please feel free to add your voice to the debate in the comment box below:

I did, however, find this rather shocking video.. I guess only the russians could get away with this.

Cat Jumps off a Plane and Lands on it’s legs

I was having a discussion with a few mates in the pub this evening about my blogging ‘antics.’ They’ve berated me for blogging before, but as it’s becoming more and more widespread I can see them getting more interested in my motivations for ‘blogging.’

One of the friends commented that it was purely the fact that he knew me that made the blog interesting. For someone that didn’t know me, the blog would be pretty dull and of no consequence. At this point, another chipped in saying - “Only bloggers read blogs.” Is this true? I don’t know, but I don’t think so.

My motivation for starting the blog was that it was a place where I could share my technical insights. Not profound insights such as the advent of structural-object-abstract programming methods that I’ve just decided are going to be the Web 3.0 - but short howto’s and the like, and to publish a few ‘Gotchas’ - problems that have few symptoms and a nice easy solution - but take hours of work to solve. I blog advice - There’s nothing quite comparable experience.

(un)Fortunately, which ever way you personally look at it - my blogging has branched out to cover all sorts of things. From the time when some guy smashed the window of my car, to re-living and walking through my car accident in 1999, to a short article on why to avoid Red Hat’s bundled openLDAP implementation because it’s crap.

I think it’s an interesting concept, for non-bloggers and bloggers alike. Who reads blogs? If you have a regular commentator on your blog, do you add him to your blogroll as a thanks for lifting your self-esteem by having him visit your blog? Do you think you have a regular readership, or just random visitors popping in and out after being directed from Google?

I don’t think it’s a negative thing that bloggers read blogs. It’s great. From the attendance at the spontaneous meet-up last Friday, it’s clear to me that there’s a nice little community of bloggers in Birmingham. However, this is a meeting of a cross-section of the readership who it’s worth meeting face-to-face in order to better your own blog.

Is blogging journalism? Is it art? Is it a cry for help from some pathetic moron wanting to share his story with the world? Is it ‘new media’? Does it matter?

I blog tech because I think some people read it and it helps them - and also as an easy reference for me. I blog ‘about me’ as a way to vent some thoughts and get some feedback from an audience who I think would be interested. This audience is dynamic, therefore I categorise my posts different to respect that.

When doing my Psychology degree, one of the things we covered was ‘online personalities and freedom of information.’ This blog is in the public domain. If it were a diary, having it leaked would immediately bring headlines of ’scandal and gossip.’ My blog is sort of a base for my online identity. ‘andylockran’ lives here. I happen to pop up on a mailing list or a forum or IRC and you want to know more about me. Much of it is here. It’s a bit like ‘CV 2.0.’ The web is my field - if I don’t market myself well on the web, how the hell can I expect anyone to be able to trust me to market their products on the web?

The best thing about it for me is the feedback, both positive and negative. Setting up a blog exposes you to both - and it gives you the opportunity to have a voice.

I’ve just started using VirtualBox on my freshly installed Debian PC to do my Virtual Machines, as the kernel support from VMware was just not up to date with my recent kernel.  If I wait a few weeks, it’ll probably be there, but the ship has sailed for me.

VirtualBox is a nice qt styled Virtual Machine Server, being free and open source.  It’s nice and simple to set up a new machine, and can cope with a variety of hosts and guest Operating Systems.

However, one drawback was the networking support.  In vmware-server - I could just tick a box and it’d bridge over my  host computer’s network card to make it appear like it was on the same network as all the other machines.  With VirtualBox it isn’t quite so simple.

Run the command:

echo 1 >> /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

If you’re running Debian/Ubuntu add the following to /etc/network/interfaces

 # This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# setting up the bridge #######
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet manual
up ifconfig $IFACE 0.0.0.0 up
down ifconfig $IFACE down

auto br0
iface br0 inet dhcp
bridge_ports eth0
# End setting up the bridge ###

I commented out (rather than deleted) my current setup, so that it’s easy to go back to if you move away from VirtualBox

That will set your PC up to have a bridged network for eth0.

You then need to give VirtualBox an interface to connect to:

Run:

 sudo VBoxAddIF vbox0 <user> br0
VBoxManage modifyvm “My VM” -hostifdev1 vbox0

In you VirtualBox Machine settings, make sure the VM is powered off and selected.

Click on the ‘details’ tab.

Click on ‘network.’

Make sure the network adapter is enabled.

Select the ‘attached to: HOST INTERFACT’option in the top box, and enter vbox0 as the Host Interface Name in the bottom box.

Click ‘OK’  - and restart the computer to allow the bridge settings to take effect.

You should have the desired setup now :)  Enjoy!

Fellow Birmingham blogger Andy Pryke has recently written about the right to photograph in the UK. He points out that this BBC News article, including its quite interesting comments I might add, describes a worrying increase in the number of mis-informed police officers attempting to illegally stop photographers from taking pictures in public places. In some cases, officers even demanded that the photographer delete their images.

As pointed out by Linda MacPherson, a lecturer in law at Heriot Watt University, taking photographs in public is, except for a few specific exceptions, a right guaranteed by law in the UK. She has produced this rather useful factsheet for photographers, which can be carried around and checked up on if and when the police start making demands.

Austin Mitchell MP has tabled an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons calling on the government to clarify to police the law on the right to photograph, according to the BBC article. Andy Pryke also points out that there is an online petition in support of such a clarification, which can be signed here.

I went to a noise show tonight. It was really really fucking loud. That was probably the primary adjective: loud. It was brilliant. I mean, most of my classmates did not fully agree with this assessment, but I think there's a certain value to just hearing really fucking loud noise once in a while.

Also, there was a full room of people in the audience. A whole bunch of people turned out to hear really fucking loud noise. And there was a table selling records. I talked to the record people. There's a local record company that just does noise music and dark ambient. Brilliant. I decided to purchase a record with the headline act on it. (It's less fucking loud on my home system, but it would still be a wall 'o noise.)

The record table was lit by candle light. The kind in those red glass containers you see at nightclubs and cabarets. I got the wrong CD. I didn't notice until I got home. So I was slightly disappointed, but still popped it into my computer to put it into my itunes library. I started typing in the track names. "iii. is it wrong to love a transexual"

. . .

You know, I was in a really good mood. I had a couple of pints of beer. I hung out with people. I had some really good chips. I heard fucking loud noise.

. . .

It's like somebody hit the pause button on my enthusiasm. I stopped breathing for a minute. I typed in the rest of the track names. And then I hit eject.

so if anybody wants a CD of dark ambient or noise, it could be yours. Unless I drop it in the trash first. I don't think I have the energy to try to get a refund from the record company. Alas, I've had this conversation before.

It's always, like, I'm excited about something and then all of the sudden, wham.

I was reading a scifi webzine. And wham. I spoke up. The editor literally told me not to worry my pretty face. The writer gave me a little lecture on what "passing" means, as if, possibly, I might not know (where would minorities be without white straight men informing of us of our own subculture?). And then explained he couldn't transphobic because he'd had a transgender girlfriend once. Just like I could never possibly write or say anything racist because of my girlfriend. And why no straight guy could ever possibly be sexist.

I feel like the ur-queer lately. Somebody says something about gay men, and hey, I'm a queer man. Somebody says something about lesbians, and I was a lesbian. Somebody says something about about women, and I was a woman. I'm noticing sexism more than I used to. The scifi story I worried my little head about . . .. I got as far as a minor character sketch in which the main baddie was shown to be bad because he owned a woman that he used for sex. Your worst nightmare is just an aside.

Sci-fi can be dystopian. My favorites are. Sci-fi can contain slurs. Again, Man in a High Castle is slur-filled and completely dystopian. And it's fantastic. But they're not asides. If you're going to have the third person narrator use a slur that's currently in common usage and just throw in as an aside human trafficking, well, it's fair to assume that the writer hasn't really thought things out.

But, being ur-queer isn't not all negative. I feel solidarity with everybody too. I feel like I can kind of fit in with any group of people. Well, as much as an Esperanto-speaking transsexual is ever going to fit in, if you know what I mean. I feel more at ease around people than I've ever felt. It's a weird transition, to being much, much happier and at ease and, at the same time, a gigantic target for hate. So alien other as to not really even be a person anymore. And yet, I can go to the pub, have a pint and chat with anybody.

I need to toughen up and not let the little shit get to me. And I need to be prepared for it coming from any direction at any time from any one under any circumstance.

It's a lot to get used to.

When last I posed about my adventures with the NHS, I had just gotten a prescription from a completely uncertain doctor. She had no idea if she'd written me the right amount of the right type of T nor whether or not I should have to pay for it. She didn't even know what kind of needles I would need. She went to ask a nurse but couldn't find one. She promised me a referral to an endocrinologist, so that somebody with experience could be checking on things. I agreed this was for the best.

If I had stayed in the states, I would have 10 weeks of testosterone left on my initial prescription, so as long as I'm getting an equivalent amount to what I was first prescribed, it's ok that nobody has checked up on me yet. And I went asking around on the internet and the doctor had, indeed, given me an equivalent amount. So I took my prescription note to the chemist (British word for "pharmacy") to get it filled, the day before I was due for my shot. They had to order it.

I find injecting to be stressful as hell, so I didn't actually hurry to pick it up the next day. I arrived on Friday, a day late, to get my T. The pharmacist gave me 3 ampoules and 30 needles! But they were insulin needles. They only held 1 CC and the needle part was about half the length needed for intramuscular injections. And, I mean, I like to have spare needles, so I can practice on oranges a few times before I stab myself, but ten per shot is a little excessive. Ten per shot of totally the wrong needle is beyond useless. The pharmacist (chemist?) said he could order 2 CC needles for me . . . in a case of 100 for £20. That's a fairly major investment on my part, not just economically. If I stay on the same kind of T, instead of switching to the once every three week formulation most frequently used by European ftms, that's enough needles to last me 4 years. If I practice with an orange every time, that's 2 years worth of needles. I was kind of hoping to switch from injecting to some other form, like a patch or implant or whatever. That's a hell of a lot of needles. He promised to order them. They would arrive on Saturday. Two days late for my shot.

I got home and found I had one needle left from before. yay. Obviously, I'd prefer to have an extra (one time I took the cover off of a needle and promptly gouged into my thumb. So much for that needle.), but if I only have one, then I only have one. I watched a youtube video about how to DIY it, just to double check that I'm doing it right (more or less, I'm fine) and I put on some Steve Reich phasing music to feel happy and relaxed. I did the prep. Wash my hands. Figure out where I'm going to stab myself (left leg). Clean it. Clean the top of the ampoule before . . wha? What's this? It's made entirely of hard plastic. Where do I stab it? How do I get the T out of this thing?

I looked at the clock. 17:15. I looked at the web page for my Doctor's Surgery (British word for "office"). Oh christ, they're closed until Monday morning.

I was already a day late.

I don't know how to describe what this feels like. People who have taken the pill or whatever can probably relate, on some level, since they're messing around with their hormones also. The goal of the T dose taken by an FTM is to cause masculinization, but also to overwhelm his ovaries so they just give up. It's early menopause. Which is fine, because he's got new artificial hormones to keep him going. It's better living through chemistry! Except that's only as good as the pipeline coming to you.

When I started T, I still had a fair amount of anxiety, so I'd never typed the name of my drug into google. I thought reading the information might freak me out, since, you know, I got freaked out kind of easily. Oh my god, this is the most sought after steroid for weightlifters. There are body builders who take more every day than I take in two weeks. Well, I guess I don't need to worry about dying of an overdose or something. They all report the same effect I did. More energy. More stamina. Easier to make muscles. All this physical energy and strength.

Missing a dose for several days, though, isn't just going back to baselines levels. My baselines hormone levels have been shut down. It's going to zero. Not only am I below the normal male range, I'm below the normal femal