crw_5569.jpg Hursley Fireworks p1040709 crw_0309 img_15571 img_13225 img_16004 img_14055 crw_0021 Hursley Fireworks img_18783 img_16425 img_1445 The moon and the trees Hursley Model Railway img_15877 D1278-055 img_18328 Hursley Fireworks The moon and the trees

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Linux User Group @ Hursley

By Anton Piatek, on September 16th, 2009%

On Saturday I hosted a group for 30 people at IBM Hursley for a Hampshire Linux User Group meeting.

We had a good set of talks, including Andy Stanford-Clark talking about his twittering house and mousetraps as well as the twittering Red Funnel Ferries [telegraph.co.uk] and his energy monitoring via Current Cost devices.
I did a brief (although rather technical) introduction to Debian packages (which will turn into a blogpost soon with any luck).
Laura Cowen did a nice talk on InfoSplicer which was originally designed for the Sugar platform of the OLPC hardware.
Tony Whitmore gave a rather interesting talk on podcasting, from his experience in doing the Ubuntu UK Podcast
Adam Trickett talked about book reviews, and gave out a pile of free books for people to have in return for writing a review.

Laura Cowen also did an excellent writeup for eightbar

On Saturday, we were mostly in the Auditorium (where Spitfires were built during WWII), then when we led everyone down to the Clubhouse for lunch, we took the usual site tour scenic route via the Sunken Garden and fish pond. Although Hursley is out in the country, seemingly the middle of nowhere, it’s actually on the bus-route from Winchester so we had an excellent turnout of about 30 people. IBM Hursley also has a lot of cool people who do cool things that we can tell people about (although one piece of feedback I heard from a LUG person was that they thought we didn’t talk enough about what IBM does!).
…

It was a really enjoyable and relaxed day; kudos to Anton, Stephen, and John for organising it from the IBM end. Thanks also to the IBMers who came along and to the many HantsLUG members who turned up. I’d say it was a success and we should definitely do it again.
Linux Users descend on the House | eightbar

The day was terrific (at least for me) and I hope to organise another one in the near future, as it turned out to be nowhere near as hard as I thought it was going to be (I thought it was going to be difficult persuading security etc to let me bring 30 people on site over a weekend when the site only has minimal staff).

Thanks to all those that helped, particularly John Wesley and Stephen Godwin, and also thanks to all those who turned up!

Leave a comment   Debian, HantsLug, IBM, Linux   , , , ,  

Virgin Broadband and linux = pain

By Anton Piatek, on September 14th, 2009%

When I moved house in July, I decided to sign up for Virgin Broadband. Virgin was an obvious choice as they could connect me and have broadband available within about two days.

So I signed up and the modem arrived two days later. I plug it in, trying to follow their instructions, phone them up for activation and…. nothing happens. There is power on the modem, but the “link” light never comes up. After about an hour on the phone, they say they will open a tech request for it. The next day I get a call from Virigin (from India) asking if my modem is working. I explain that I am at work (as most people in the UK are between 9am-5pm) and will check when home – It was indeed working.

The next step, is to then register your connection with a computer, so I plug in my linux laptop and desperately try to make the web pages work. First it tells me I don’t have a new enough browser and unsupported OS. So I tell Konqueror to pretend it is some level of IE on windows. That works, and I am now declining offers of screensavers, setup exe’s and all sorts of downloads. Eventually it gets to a page that simply won’t load. There are several javascript errors popping up, so I wonder if I can see the addres in there. Stepping through the javascript in the debugger, over a invalid reference, and suddenly the next page loads – I am done!

I wish I had searched around first. Apparently there is a much simpler version of the website that does the basic job, without all the screensavers and browser checks:

“instead of doing what they tell you to do, you go to https://autoreg.autoregister.net/ you get prompted for whether you’re signing up for Broadband or Dialup, and on clicking Broadband, you’re lead through the sign-up procedure with no complaints about compatibility, and within 5 minutes he was online with his GNU/Linux (Ubuntu) system and Firefox browser.”

http://wiki.hands.com/chezfil/entry/virginmedia/

Leave a comment   Internet, Linux

liquid explosives on an aircraft

By Anton Piatek, on September 9th, 2009%

Found at schneier.com

BBC NEWS | UK | Detonation of liquid explosives
This video shows the damage caused by a liquid bomb to a commercial airliner.

The BBC used a qualified explosives engineer, Sidney Alford, to construct the devices to demonstrate their likely effect on an aircraft fuselage.

I am quite surprised – I didn’t think there was anything at all in this security idea that you can’t take liquids onto a plane. I suppose my next question is “does limiting to a clear bag full of liquids actually stop the risk?”

One comment   Science

Breath-test accuracy

By Anton Piatek, on September 9th, 2009%

It is just as well a roadside breath-test is not good enough to prosecute in the UK…

Leave a comment   News
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