Sitsofe's diary for September 2002

30 September, 2002

RSS feed

Yesterday I spent quite some time hacking support for an RSS feed of the diary. My initial effort was created by using an XSLT transformation. The result was a feed that was very basic, displaying only a link to each day and the headings within that day. After viewing some other RSS fees I wanted a small excerpt of what came after each heading so that readers would have a better idea of what was being written about. This was a bit beyond what could be done with XSLT so I turned to Python and set about learning how I could navigate the XML DOM in Python. I had a unicode related mishap though because XML entities were turned into characters that could not be represented in ASCII but after reading the documentation more carefully I learned that I could use the encode('utf-8') method of strings to work around this.

If you actually want to find the syndicated feed of the diary it is available here: http://sucs.org/~sits/diary/rss.xml (it won't look like much in regular browsers though). If you are looking for an RSS aggregator I can recommended AmphetaDesk. I installed it yesterday and it works with my RSS feed so that makes it OK with me :).

29 September, 2002

Which BSD?

I've just finished reading this article about the the BSD distributions (found via Slashdot) and while it offers a reasonable account of the history and features of "the BSDs" it does contain some rather confusing statements (mostly non BSD related). Personally, I used OpenBSD quite a lot when I set up the house firewall last year and found it to be interesting learning experience (although having to recompile programs when there was a security alert was wearing given the limitations of the 486 I was using).

The article led me to think about differing software licences out there. While I have not written much free software myself I have had to look at the licences that accompany them since the mid 90s (when I bought my Amiga). So let me just detail what I feel are the important points of the GPL and BSD licences along with what they mean to developers and users.

The BSD licence

This effectively allows both the user and developer to do anything they like with the code but you must keep all copyright notices and disclaimers (i.e. no passing off other people's work as your own). There is also a disclaimer absolving the author of liability.

A few examples of what this licence allows are:

• Permission to copy/sell the binaries and source code.
• Permission to make changes to the source and distribute your changes (with or without your source changes so only giving away the changed binaries is OK) so long as all copyright notices are maintained.

The GPL licence

From a user perspective this licence allows a similar sort of free copying that the BSD does. However, it imposes a few restrictions on the developer to ensure that source code stays publicly accessible. You can copy and change the source code but whoever you distribute your program to can demand to have the source code for it at a reasonable cost. In addition your derived programs must also be distributed under the GPL. Finally there is the disclaimer absolving the author of liability.

A few examples of what it allows:

• Permission to copy/sell the binaries.
• Permission to copy the source.
• Guarantee that you can obtain access to the source code for any binaries you receive.
• Permission to make changes to the source code so long as your derived work also abides by (and includes) the GPL (i.e. users can request the source code and your program must be distributed under the GPL).

To my mind the BSD licence is the least restrictive/prohibitive from a developer's point of view (here's the source code, do whatever you like with it but don't sue me) since there are so few clauses. However, I would argue that the GPL ensures forced freedom and guarantees that one way or another (in theory at least) everyone will benefit from good changes made by third parties by forcing the source code to be available to those who use the programs.

The above is a simplification of the situation but serves as a small introduction to the world of software licences. However it provides me enough of a basis to disprove the following statement:

Consider its [the BSD operating systems] licensing policies versus Linux, for example. When code is licensed under the GNU General Public License or GPL (as is Linux), the license effectively eliminates any financial rewards anyone — whether an individual or a corporation — might hope to gain from improving upon it. It does this by compelling an author who uses any part of the code to give up the right to charge a license fee for the finished product.

The above statement quote muddies the waters to make its point. The GPL allows you to change the source and charge for any derived binaries should you wish to — this is precisely what companies like RedHat, Mandrake and SUSE do! Nowhere does it state you must give up the right to request a fee for your work. The catch is that whoever you sell the binary to can request the source code and may freely distribute that source code, build their own binaries from it and sell/distribute them under the terms of the GPL. So it is not the licence that is stopping you (although common sense might — if you are not providing some sort of extra service why would people pay you if a free alternative is created/derived). Perhaps by providing timely updates or distributing on a media not initially available elsewhere you can afford to provide a licence fee.

28 September, 2002

Rsyncing a mirror

I have been trying to grab a copy of the Mandrake-devel directory over the past few weeks so I can build my own ISOs. Why would I want to do this? Because Mandrake have switched to 700Mb ISOs and the rewritable CDs I bought only store 650Mb.

The snag has been that the whole downloading process was very slow. Too slow given that in a network topology sense UK Mirror Service is on the same road as SUCS. First I thought it could be due to an old version of lftp, so I upgraded and it was still slow. So I tried using ftpcopy but that was also slow with the added disadvantage that it wanted to download everything all over again because the timestamps were not to its liking (grr). So I went off and read the UK Mirror service Userguides and learned they now provide Rsync access. Rsync is a wonderful program/protocol that transfers the difference between local and remote files when they differ (rather than downloading the entire remote file as something like FTP). What was previously taking over an hour and involved a lot of unnecessary strife was reduced to ten minutes as Rsync noticed that although the timestamps differed the remote files and local files were pretty much the same.

In fact I'm so pleased with its performance I moved my diary generation script out of the public_html directory so I can now use it for uploading my diary to SUCS. The following command line is all I need (given that I use public key for authentication): rsync -rvt -e ssh public_html/diary/ sucs:public_html/diary/
I used to use scp but using rsync with ssh is considerably faster even though it checks for changes on all the months rather than just uploading all of the current month.

27 September, 2002

Spamassassin on SUCS installation notes

A while back I mentioned that I installed the spam filtering program Spamassassin on SUCS. What I forgot to mention was the half a day I spent looking for instructions on how to use it once it was installed. So for the benefit of others here's what I use and a note on it's limitations:

In your home directory you will need a file called .procmailrc which contains the following lines: :0:
* ^X-Spam-Status: Yes
mail/spam
(if you do not wish to type in the above use cp /usr/share/doc/procmail-3.21/examples/spamassassin ~/.procmailrc
instead)

If you use mail forwarding (e.g. if you have .forward file in your home directory) you will have to do a bit more work to do. Having a .forward file will bypass the procmail processing instructions and not check for spam. The solution is to remove the .forward file and add the following to the end of the .procmail file :0:
! account@domain.com
where account@domain.com is the address that you want your mail forwarded to.

The above will run all your mail through Spamassassin and put the ones flagged as spam into a folder called spam on SUCS. This means that mail flagged as spam will not be left in the mail queue (or forwarded) for you to pick up. Thus you will have to check the spam folder manually on SUCS (you could log in and use pine for this).

A brief aside: I'm certain it is possible to not have a .procmailrc and to get the mail client (e.g. Outlook) to do the filtering itself but since I do not do this myself I cannot give instructions.

If you find that mailing lists and the like are being flagged as spam you can edit your ~/.spamassassin/user_prefs file and add lines such as the following to it (this example was borrowed from Dom Rushbrook): whitelist_from Radio_Times_*@dotmailer.co.uk


The above will presume that all mail that come from an address that starts with Radio_Times_ and ends in @dotmailer.co.uk is not spam.

26 September, 2002

I'm getting sloppy — I didn't notice that David "theraven" Chisnall has started a weblog. I think I'll rebut his rebuttal about PHP though. While interesting for C lovers everywhere (and C has plenty of staunch supporters) it suffers the indignity of feeling almost as messy as Perl but without all the really cool shortcuts (like $_). It misses out on the true objects of something like Python (or Java) and if you do not wish to use mod_php you are forced to recompile the thing from scratch on RedHat systems (I'm still not exactly sure why). Coupled with a never ending stream of bugs and exploits, several pain in the neck race conditions and lacking the ubiquity of something like Perl it's not my favourite scripting language but it does nicely fulfil the niche of database driven web sites.

Mandrake 9.0 has been released and can be downloaded from the mirrors. Actually, I've already mirrored the ISOs on SUCS.

RC5-64 cracked!

Or more precisely after four years of searching the key containing the phrase "The unknown message is: some things are better left unread" was finally decrypted and verified. The final ranking amongst the people I know who were cracking keys is as follows:

• 1st place: Jason Bees with 281,215 blocks
• 2nd place: Me (Sitsofe Wheeler) with 239,902 blocks
• 3rd place: Domonic Rushbrook with 98,447 blocks
• 4th place: David Brooks with 91,940 blocks
• 5th place: Foeh Mannay with 90,916 blocks

25 September, 2002

BBC radio Ogg Vorbis streams

Looks like the BBC's Ogg streams might be coming back.

Eye strain

My eyes have been really sore both yesterday and today to the extent I'm going to try and avoid using computers for the rest of the day.

24 September, 2002

Instead of computers augmenting our skills what about humans augmenting a computer's skills?

Well the washing machine repair man came round again today. As he came up the very steep house steps he asked me how we got the washing machine to the top of the house. The truth is I have absolutely no idea — I've never been around when stuff is being moved into the house. Anyhow he replaced the door switch and... the washing machine still didn't work. It now looks like the programmer has gone (burned up apparently) and replacements cost £80. However, there is no guarantee that is the cause of the problem so we are probably better off getting a new machine.

Later I took my washing down to the launderette and found that the machines there had been vandalised. It appears that all the money holders have been forcefully ripped out of all the machines and the dryers with bits of twisted left in their wake. The machines still work though but only by key which makes life that bit more complicated.

23 September, 2002

There's an interesting experiment involving the creation of a font by public consensus over on typophile (found via kuro5hin).

22 September, 2002

Yesterday I met up with Kim (and his girlfriend), Jon and Nathan over in Bristol. The usual console gaming shenanigans started on the dead and nearly forgotten Dreamcast.

Ikaruga

Kim recently imported the vertically scrolling shot-em up Ikaruga which is the unofficial follow up to eBay darling Radiant Silvergun. The most distinctive feature about the game is the introduction of a flip button which changes your ship between light and dark. While your ship is light coloured your ship does double damage to dark enemies while absorbing light coloured attacks (vice versa when your ship is dark). Thus you can scythe your way through waves of bullets while destroying the said hordes by switching to the appropriate colour with only one snag — the game is hard. Very very hard. Even on easy with two players. As you progress through the levels the bullets (and lasers) become ever smaller and more plentiful until inevitable Game Over message appears.

A load of old super monkey balls

After Ikaruga, play switched to the Gamecube's superb Super Monkey Ball. As a written description it sounds terrible — you are a monkey in a hamster ball making your way through levels. Oh and there are some extras like Monkey Golf (crazy golf), Monkey Billiards, Monkey Bowling, Monkey Gliding (a la the hand gliding parts of Pilotwings), Monkey Race, Monkey Fight (Knockout with a boxing glove) and probably some more I've forgotten. Actually it sounds pretty fantastic now doesn't it? I can assure you it's one of the greatest party games ever made (up there with the likes of Death Tank, Hi-ten Bomberman, Super Bishi Bashi, Knockout, Worms and pretty much any other group based party game you can think of). All I can say is that I'm going to have to get a copy of the GBA version (and a link cable) when it's released.

Insomnia

When we finally managed to tear ourselves away from that it was off to the cinema to see Insomnia (which was directed by the same person as Memento). After seeing it I originally described it as competent but this criticism was criticised by everyone else. So instead I'll say that it's a good, well paced film with great casting (both Al Pacino and Robin Williams puts in a good performance) and instils an underlying uneasiness concerning the means being used (cover ups and misdirection) to get to the end (catching and putting away a killer).

Frogs go "kwak kwak"

After going back to Kim's and looking at his photos the conversation turned to the onomatopoetic expressions of sounds that animals make in the different languages. A web search eventually led to Sounds of the World's Animals which delivers a language by language comparison of those sounds (like the one a frog makes).

21 September, 2002

Someone has taken a look at the soon to be released XHTML 2.0 draft and it looks like it will be the first HTML standard to actively break backwards compatibility with the removal of tags like <b> and <br>. For my part I could change all my pages into XHTML 1.1 (or even 2.0) tomorrow since they are stored as XML (I just apply a transformation). However, I want my pages to be at least coherent in older browsers even if the presentation is not the same as that of modern browsers.

20 September, 2002

Strange dreams

This morning I remembered two of my dreams. For the past year or so I haven't really remembered any of them. The first one involved me having to get a white suit to go to a wedding. The second involved me signing some form which would allow me to buy a car on higher purchase at a later date. I didn't actually give the salesperson any money, I just signed the form and became incredibly worried about what I had just signed. I was told that it would allow me to go back at some later date and if I wanted a car I would be able to buy it on instalments at a cheaper price than I could have done. It turned out that the car salesman had been sold this weird scheme by a third party (in fact he was the first one to take it up) who was still at the parking lot. The salesman and the third party then had an argument and the third party got in a Zanussi brand truck and drove away.

From OpenWriter to HTML... the long way

Today mostly involved hacking on XSL (eXtensible Stylesheet Language) stylesheets. You see I've been typing up my CV and want to put it up in a variety of formats (HTML, PDF, OpenOffice Writer, text and MS Word doc). However when I used OpenOffice's writer to convert the document into an HTML file the result was quite frankly abominable. Numbers had sprung up from the middle of nowhere, the font was too small, the files were bigger than necessary and the whole thing just looked ugly.

Now the nice thing about programs that use open well supported standards is that it allows you a quick route to do your own thing. OpenOffice saves it's files into ZIP archives of XML files which allows me to use my existing XML tools to transform the document in a style I prefer. After a few hours of hacking I now have a script that will take my OpenOffice CV and convert it into HTML 4 Strict compliant HTML. The layout is simple (I can make it more complicated if I wish) but pretty much what I wanted.

Quick, to the GNU-mobile!

From Slashdot's Are United Linux violating the GPL post - The adventures of RMS: Defender of the GPL.

The industry wants to prevent them playing in computers...

Tonight I introduced my Mum to playing CDs on her computer. She has never really used CDs preferring cassettes. Anyhow after a few false starts she is now listening to the classical music CDs I bought her a few Christmases ago. Tomorrow we move on to encoding CDs into Ogg files and how to make a collection of music that will play non-stop for hours on end :).

19 September, 2002

A day in the life of...

I am occasionally asked what I do all day. Rather than giving my usual answer of "not a lot" I will attempt to give some detail of its constituent parts:

I generally wake up some time between 6.30am and 8.30am. My radio turns itself on at 7.00am for ten minutes so I can listen to the current affairs on Radio 4.

After getting up I will tend to go upstairs and have a wash providing the bath room is not being used. A breakfast of malty flakes cereal follows the wash.

At some point during the morning I will turn my computer on and read various pages on the web. There are currently fourteen sites (Sluggy, User Friendly, Wired News, The Register, Scripting News, Slashdot, Hack the Planet, Dave Jones' diary, Backburner, mpt, Happiest Geek on Earth, kottke.org, McCusker and Doc Searls Weblog) that I read every day and because Galeon supports the bookmarking of groups of pages I can start it going and come back in five minutes when they have all loaded.

After doing this if there are some links I particularly like I paste them into my diary ready for putting up later.

While browsing I may log on to SUCS and start chatting to other SUCS members on the Milliways talker. I also check my mail and browse through the Mandrake Cooker mailing list.

If things have gone quickly I finish all the above by about 9.30am. I may chat on Milliways until I get kicked off the phone or the two hour disconnect turns up.

The rest of the day is usually spent tinkering with software. This may be learning how to use something I have downloaded the night before (like something to make backups easier) or experimenting with a program or my web pages. This may also include writing various documents (like things I wish I had known) in the hope that I will eventually put them up on my web site. This is the most absorbing part of the day and can easily chew up the rest of the day.

Obviously not all days go exactly like this. Friends may phone up for a chat and occasionally I go down to Bristol to see what's on at the cinema. I have been known to leave the house when essentials like food run out...

If I'm at home in the evening I will usually watch the news and flick through the various TV channels to see if there is anything decent on. If not I may browse the net to see what's changed since the morning.

The day usually ends at around 10.00pm at which point I prepare for bed and perhaps read a few more pages of Trigger Happy or try to finish a few more levels on Advance Wars.

18 September, 2002

Via Kottke — came across a Computational complexity weblog (you know Turing machines, computability theory and that sort of thing)

Nintendo are releasing old NES games on microdot printed cards for the GBA.

I've been sending emails back and forth with one of the people up at Mandrakesoft called Warly and he has now fixed MakeCD on non Mandrake systems. Hurrah!

17 September, 2002

My friend Kim got back from Australia the other week and has uploaded his various photos of his trip to the web.

The washing machine repair man also turned up today while I was having lunch. After taking a brief look he reckoned that it was the door mechanism that had gone (another one?) but since the machine is so old the required component is classified obsolete by Hotpoint (the manufacturer). Still, he thought he would be able to get a replacement by Thursday.

Today my Mum speculated that both her father and grandfather died of heart attacks (both died suddenly) but it's difficult to know for sure. I don't think the tests were done to ascertain cause of death so there is no conclusive proof. To think, I always believed that my family had no history of heart disease... Looks like crisps are going to be the next thing vanishing off the menu.

16 September, 2002

Uh? When did Richard and Judy get moved to Channel 4 (I am presuming they were pushed rather than jumping)?

Fought with "mother" over application form. Was (not for the first time) accused of repeatedly not listening to what was said me. This accusation was later changed to misinterpreting everything (which I admit does happen but certainly is different to ignoring everything).

In the afternoon one of the neighbours fixed the broken coaxial cable outside my window (so now I can watch TV in my room again). I was kind of wondering what had inspired his repair when he told me that my Mum had told him that she thought it had been broken by a workman who was fixing something on the neighbours house. Now I'm pretty certain that I'm the one who told my Mum it was broken in the first place (around eight months ago) and I never remember saying it had been broken by workmen (more likely just wear did it in). It appears that the neighbour also thought that this was the only aerial into the house and that we had been without TV all this time.

15 September, 2002

My relaxing day was ruined in the evening by repeated calls by my Mum to finish filling in the application form I had received yesterday.

The washing machine mysteriously broke while I was on the phone. At least it had finished draining and the door would open before this happened...

14 September, 2002

Received another job application form. I have decided to replicate the exact layout on computer rather than risk accusations of spoiling the application with shoddy handwriting and abbreviations (my Mum took grievance with my abbreviation of quality assurance to QA on a previous application form).

Went along for check-up at the Yatton Family Practice (who doesn't have a web site these days eh?). Well the good news is that my blood pressure is healthy, I am neither under nor overweight nor am I diabetic. So all things considered, I'm pretty healthy (although I would not disagree that I could do with taking more exercise).

13 September, 2002

Yesterday I watched the autobiographical A Beautiful Mind with Simon. Whereas I was entertained by the eccentric habits of the lead character Simon was so bored by the first half he was practically falling asleep. In fact I had to keep rewinding the video so he could catch vital bits of plot he missed. However the film's initial appearances were deceptive and gave way to a second half describing a completely different (yet connected) world to the one at the outset. Simon even had the last laugh though when I was called away at the end and missed the prologue describing how it was all resolved.

12 September, 2002

Two nights ago I booted into Windows to test a CD I had burned and briefly popped on to the net to check that the changes I made to this site still worked in IE 5.5 SP2. A few minutes after I connected I received notice that there was a new critical update out which was not too much of surprise given that I have been putting back the download of the Windows Media Player update due to the changes in its EULA. Today's list had an additional surprise — the 17Mb download that is IE 6. I guess MS are tired of patching IE 5.5 to keep it secure and find it easier to shuffle us all off to IE 6. Since IE 6 doesn't support Windows 95, such machines (like my mother's) are now left with an insecure browser. It's so tempting to migrate her to Mozilla/Netscape 7...

Making CDs from Mandrake's Cooker with MakeCD

After a lot of fiddling I have found that I had to add the following to the end of line 18 (the line that starts with export PERL5LIB=) Mandrake's MakeCD before it would work on RedHat 7.3: $REP/Mandrake/mdkinst/usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/


Without the above it will bring up an error not too dissimilar to the following: Can't locate MDK/Common.pm in @INC (list of paths it looked in)


I used the following command line to try and create the first ISO: lftp -c 'open ftp://mirror.ac.uk/sites/sunsite.uio.no/pub/unix/Linux/Mandrake/Mandrake-devel/cooker/; mirror -ec --parallel=2 --use-cache --exclude "^(alpha|ia64|ppc).*"'

/extra/mandrake/cooker/i586/misc/MakeCD -t /tmp/mkcd/ -a
/extra/mandrake/cooker/i586/ --discsize 681574400 -m 1 >& ~/mkcd.log


Unfortunately something still appears to be going wrong because no ISO is created...

11 September, 2002

10 September, 2002

Evening Session cast off into the night?

The other day Gareth emailed me the news that the Evening Session is going to get the chop at the end of the year. The Evening Session is a music programme broadcast on Radio 1 and tends to play the less mainstream (yet more diverse) types of music rather than the pop that Radio 1 plays throughout the daytime.

I was a little saddened to hear this as I started listening to the "Session" when it was still presented by both Jo Whiley and Steve Lamacq while I was preparing for GCSEs in 1995. I remained a very regular listener for many years taping off shows on to cassette so that I had something decent to listen to on the hour coach journey to and from school. However, by around late 2000 I kind of drifted away but even now it is still filling a neglected musical niche.

I checked about on the net and the exact story is slightly unclear. It is certain that the chain smoking Lamacq will no longer be presenting the Evening Session from the end of the year but there has not yet been word as to what will replace it. However, Lamacq still has a contract with Radio 1 though and will continue to present Lamacq Live.

As I said earlier I no longer regularly listen to the Session but this is no surprise since I shockingly seem to spend more time tuned to Radio 4 than Radio 1 nowadays. As such, I am not willing to petition for it to be saved, since it is not even clear whether the show is going to go entirely or whether it will be merely presented by a different DJ. Lamacq doesn't seem to upset and he has had a good run of around nine years on the show.

Gareth also pointed out the Session's rise in listeners and the fall in listeners to Sara Cox's mildly irritating Breakfast Show. The irony isn't lost on me and I hope Radio 1 note this well when considering what programmes to produce and which DJs to replace in the future.

9 September, 2002

Watched the acid bath killer dramatisation A is for Acid in fascinated horror with my Mum. She initially said she was going to bed but fifteen minutes later she had to stay to find out how the murderer was caught.

8 September, 2002

Is that a GameBoy in your pocket?

Imagine the scene: I'm going to Greece to visit a friend. While at the airport I am stopped and my luggage is searched...

Greek customs officer: Could we just stop you a moment sir...

Me: (Looking nervous) Uh, I'm in a bit of a hurry...

GCO: This won't take a moment (luggage is taken for inspection).

Me: So, er, busy day then?

GCO: Yes. More and more people have been trying to smuggle illegal items into the country.

Me: Gosh that's terrible. I wonder what drives them to it?

GCO: Addiction. It seems to affect people from all walks of life with altogether too much free time on their hands. Some even entice others into their vice, leading to two or more people indulging at the same time.

Me: Crickey. Nasty stuff. On another note, your English is better than mine. Funny how Europeans speak English better than the Brits eh (laughs nervously).

GCO: Yes, a curious phenomenon. Well you're free to go. Enjoy your stay.

As I pick up my luggage and stroll off to the arrivals lounge, I walk past a sniffer dog. The dog barks as I pass and tears a hole in one of the cases I was carrying, spilling carefully ironed T-shirts and copies of Edge (a videogame magazine so pretentious it purports to be the "future of interactive entertainment") on to the floor. The officer rushes over and rummages through the mess. He picks up a small electronic device from the rubble.

GCO: (mutters something unintelligible in Greek). A GameBoy Advance? Security!

Me: (stammering) I've never, I don't know what you're talking about! It's not mine!

GCO: Please step this way.

I make a dash for freedom and start sprinting across the room only to trip over trolley that the dog mysteriously pushed behind me while my back was turned. The trolley races across the room before coming to an abrupt halt at a rotating baggage rack.

As I am hauled off I see another person being interrogated. A customs officer is pointing to a mobile phone. The beleaguered tourist sobs "I never knew that playing Snake was a crime..."

"They're trying to destroy fun! Can't you see?", I shout as I'm dragged past. "This is just the beginning!"

Ok so the above hasn't actually happened to me, but it's not as far fetched as it sounds — Gamers face jail in Greece (via Captain Cursor). Personally I think that banning videogames outright is far too extreme but I would say that wouldn't I?

7 September, 2002

Don't say a word

Well Simon finally managed to make it back to Yatton (I think we originally planned to meet up on Thursday but various things kept cropping up). After looking at some photos of him and his mates when they went to Cardiff (he's the one with the bleached hair), Adam also popped over to watch Don't say a word. It's a reasonable enough psychological thriller about institutionalised woman who has a number in her head that a gang of good-fer-nuttin jewel thieves (headed up by Sean Bean) want. Said thieves take the daughter of a leading psychotherapist (Michael Douglas) hostage and will only return her if he can get said number within eight hours. While not too spectacular (driving fast in a Range Rover doesn't quite have the panache as other cars) it was still enjoyable.

6 September, 2002

Every now and then Alfie uses the Unix talk program to chat to me when I'm online. Unfortunately, I am sitting on the end of a very slow (and unreliable) phone connection and I'm forced to disconnect or wait whilst it catches up. By the time I get back, Alfie has inevitably disappeared offline. The only rational explanation for the recurrence of this event is that there is some conspiracy going on between her and my Internet connection. Admittedly, on some extremely rare occasions when there is a break in the conversation I will briefly switch to another screen to do something and forget to check the original screen for a few minutes seconds but I think we can discount such situations as statistical anomalies.

5 September, 2002

Wow the last few diary entries have been practically incomprehensible. I need to take a bit more care over them. Perhaps if I don't write them last thing at night they won't be so shabby.

Since about 9am there have been builders sawing bits of wood and generally making lots of noise outside my window. It appears that they are reroofing a house nearby... Ah now there's a taste of noxious fumes filling my room. Yum.

OpenOffice English British dictionaries revisited

After exchanging some emails I now know there were actually two efforts to make a better English British myspell dictionary for OpenOffice.

• The one I saw first was by David Bartlett and is consists of entirely new wordlist, and largely new affix file. This was also the one I had problems with. It can be found on the Praxium site. OpenOffice had a few problems with the version released in August.
• The other is by Andrew Brown and contains parts of the David Barlett affix file but is mostly a cleaned up version of the originally nasty OpenOffice default dictionary. As such, it appears to be the "official" OpenOffice British dictionary and will probably be included in new versions. It can be found on the darwinwars website (along with the official OpenOffice dictionaries site). This is the one I'm currently using.

I am currently using Andrew's dictionary as I had problems with OpenOffice locking up when trying to use David's dictionary. Either way, both these dictionaries are vast improvements over the default one.

4 September, 2002

I obviously haven't been getting been enough sleep recently because I've got a cold sore on my lip today. They only ever turn up when I'm over tired.

Spiders and flies

Enough with the grim details. As it happens I actually quite like spiders. Not so much the tarantulas and Black Widows but your common house spiders. The reason is simple — the enemy of your enemy is your friend, with the foe in question being flies. The housefly, green fly, mosquitos the list of the irritating suckers goes on and on so anything that aids the fight against them can only be a good thing.

I know a friend who actually used to use hair spray on them. Because this was the stuff that was designed to hold hair in place the flies would seize up and his parents wondered how he managed to get so many unsquashed flies on his mantelpiece.

To get back to spiders, the other week I had left my window open and a mosquito had got in and was buzzing around in the dark. When I turned the bedside light on, it, of course, stopped moving. I thought "might as well be merciful" and retired to bed. The buzzing started again but this time I was having none of it, so after flicking the light on and picking up a thin PC catalogue I smacked the beast against wall and watched it fall into the shadows below.

I directed the bedside light to the area of carnage and was pleased to note that the fly had fallen dazed into a conveniently placed spiders web below. As the fly began to struggle and the spider crept out across the web I went back to bed for some undisturbed sleep.

Well last week, I went and saw the movie Eight Legged Freaks with Simon in the hope it was going to be some sort of fly Armageddon with the huge spiders mowing down and terrifying the populace after eating all the flies. Instead of being frightening, the whole thing come across as a family film, for that is what it was. The spiders even made squeaky squably sound effects which removes any vestige of fear that you might have had of them. Disappointingly, there was not a single showing of a fly being killed. I feel as ripped off as a spider's leg that was sucked into a vacuum cleaner.

2 September, 2002

Off to Swansea.

Train slow. Rush bus. In time. Too short. Short talk. Good chat. Mmm food.

Why?

Taxi cab. Banned swan. Train back. GameBoy good.

And now I'm back home (in Yatton).

More graduation photos - this time from Alfie. In passing, Alfie mentioned that the official graduation photo was of a low quality — I wonder why this happened? I appear to have misquoted Alfie. In an email Alfie commented:

"I did not say the picture was low quality, it's just that I do not like it."

The taxi I caught to the train station was being driven by the person who plays Swansea football team's mascot "Cyril the swan". This came up after I mentioned that I lived in Yatton, and he said he'd heard of the place when he was up here watching Swansea City face Bristol Rovers. Apparently the Rovers board had banned any performances by Cyril because the person playing the mascot last year displayed bad behaviour (the BBC reports that Cyril faced assault charges in October 2001).

1 September, 2002

Let's kick off with the Mandrake thread concerning whether MP3 decoders (such as the one used by XMMS) could be bundled after it looked like Thompson Multimedia had changed their licence. By this stage RedHat had already pulled it from RawHide (the development version of the RedHat distro). "Can we have a button that compiles it since that gets round the law" was the gist of one of the solutions.

And then there's this Ogg Vorbis open letter thanking Thomson Multimedia for making the change and boosting uptake of the Ogg format.

Add to that this spokesman from Thomson Multimedia stating that everyone's got it wrong (the change was only for hardware players) and the whole thing was a publicity stunt by Ogg Vorbis advocates.

The Official Ninja web page: REAL Ultimate Power!!!!. Even sillier than licence changes.