Is having a Routine good, bad or indifferent?

My mum said the other day, she felt she was a little out of touch with what me and my sister like and do. It was sad to hear this and I've promised to be more proactive about feeding back some of my work and personal stuff. But what was really interesting was when my mum asked if I was stressed at work. This came after I tried to explain what I do at work. I think what suprised my mum more that anything was the lack of a routine.

This got me thinking, is a routine a good or bad thing? Some would say, not having a routine means everyday brings new challenges and opputinities but at the same token, it also means you don't get to research, master, reflect, etc for long because who knows what will happen tomorrow? Having a routine can be as interesting and challenging but also means you can plan a little better and give things the time they need.

Don't get me wrong, I do have a slight routine to my life but its certainly not as tuned as others. My typical day includes getting up about 9am, going to work soon afterwards having lunch some time between 1-3pm, leaving work about 7pm-ish and going to bed about 1am. Recently I've been going out a lot after work, so typically in December I was eating out which meant eating at different times everyday. Work has very little routine, one moment I can be replying to emails next minute running around the city looking for a venue for our christmas party. I tend to have quite a few meetings off-site over coffee or even lunch-dinner. Events including Geekdinners and BarCamps are usually dependant on other peoples time, so there never regular. I do try and go to other regular events but due to the lack of routine in my calendar – I do miss some regular events like Minibar, Pubstandards, etc. I also tend to do things like food shopping, clothes shopping, computer bits when I can be bothered rather that on a schedule. I don't know if this is good or bad yet.

I have a lot of tools which help me manage the lack of routine in my life but they could be improved now I sit and think about it. However maybe its time to have a little more routine in my life, even if its just so my parents know which city I'm in that week… (*smile*)

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I bricked my windows mobile phone

Mobile data?

Mobile laptop data has always been a pain, in my mind it started when the phone companies started making those PCMCIA adapters where you could stick in a GSM/GPRS card. Before that you use to have to dialup via the infrared port or a serial cable. The GSM/GPRS cards would allow you to put in a sim card into the PC card and dialup on your laptop from anywhere. Then Vodafone came out with a 3G data card, others followed suit adding Wireless and even HSDPA (3.5g) to the mix.

But there was a few problems. Each card came with some propitery software, the card themselves were expensive and the data plans attached only suitable for business users. In America on the otherhand all you could get all you can eat data plans based on that weird standard called EVDO for a reasonable rate. Because of this Laptop makers started adding EVDO and other Mobile data options, which made the PC cards a little less important. But the huge break through (in the UK) came when Tmobile (to there credit) dropped there data plan to a all you can eat model. Vodafone and Orange followed soon afterwards. 3 the mobile operator in the UK started offering a cheap usb dongle to there users of mobile data. 10 pounds buys you the dongle and the data for a month. Well I thought this was a good idea and I know a few people are tempted with the offer but I think I found better.

Ok enough history – I bricked my new phone, no not actually killed it so it no long works but more like bricked it so it operates as a wireless modem. I was doing this over bluetooth at the start but for some reason while using the windows mobile internet sharing option the phone wants to be in bluetooth discovery mode too. This quickly kills the battery, so I started plugging it in over USB. Because the phone also charges over USB too, it might as well be like the USB dongle. My Data plan currently is 5 pounds for weekend and evening unlimited data (unlimited meaning 1gig fair use data a month). Orange offer for another 3 pounds a all day everyday option but limited to 30meg a month. This doesn't work for me, as I'm usually around a wireless or wired connection during the daytime. Anyway the point is that mobile laptop data is become cheap and easy. If I can get a windows mobile phone to talk to a linux laptop, then anyone running windows or mac must be able to get theres up and running in minutes. But like before the data rates are better that ever. HSDPA (3.5g) is also pretty impressive, I was getting 400k down and 200k up in a starbucks in central Bristol. I expect in London I might get even more. This makes it a serious contender to the rip off wireless hotspots you find in some hotels and cafes up and down the country. Now if only the mobile operators would sort out international roaming data charges!

Ah I forgot to mention one thing.The bricked nature also comes from WMstorage, which basiclly turns your phone into a mass storage device or usb memory stick. Because I can't use activesync on linux this has been perfect for dragging files back and forth. However its never been reliable till now. So my phone sits there as a mini flashdrive and bluetooth modem but can still receive calls and texts if needed. Next step really is to pass some of that functionality on to my laptop instead.

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Which VPN questions?

So I've been using Hamachi for my VPN for a while now but since switching to Ubuntu, its felt a bit out of place. First of all installing Hamachi is painful – you must compile it, theres no debs or universe repository support. The basic version is command line only and some people have created a couple of gui's including YAHG, Ghamachi and quamachi. But to be honest even with the guis it sometimes doesn't work as expected. For example right now I'm at my parents house on a broadband connection but can only access one of my 3 machines I have acttached to my Hamachi network. Two of the machines before I left for Christmas failed to connect to the Hamachi Medation server for some reason. Another reason why I'm a little down on Hamachi is the propitery nature of it. I know its been looked at deeply but if there was something like Hamachi which was actually open, I would switch.

So I've looked around and come across quite a few technologies like PPTP, Open VPN, IPsec, FreeSwan and OpenSwan. After reading this very long entry, I started understanding some of the VPN technologies a lot better. So it seems to me that PPTP is Microsoft driven and there is a couple of server versions for Linux. PPTP seems to be old and insecure? IPSec seems to be better but not as good as L2TP with IPsec? FreeSwan has forked into OpenSwan and StrongSwan. I still don't understand the whole Open VPN thing, as it seems to be part of everything rather that a complete solution (do correct me if I'm wrong).

So I looked into OpenSwan and StrongSwan and choose OpenSwan because it gets more mentions online and hey it was clearly documentated on the site – apt-get install openswan. I know strongswan is the same but hey i needed to start somewhere and the windowsmobile tutorial seemed straight forward (if someone knows other reasons why I should use strong over open please do say). Anyway as Hamachi is, I restarted the server after installing openswan to find its not quite started up correctly and I can't remember my standard ip address to talk directly to my smoothwall server. So anyone with some good tips for small time VPN usage let me know.

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Manipulation of women or just a upper hand in the game?

Rules Of The Game – Episode 1: Be A D–khead

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I'm sorry but as far as I'm concerned its manipulation and I really don't like it. What am I talking about? Well shows like the one above (cheers Dave for the link). The weird thing is its not exactly the show aspect which is the problem, its the pure social engineering aspect of it to trick women into giving out there numbers, going on a date or getting them into bed.

Yes I know its a bloody complex issue because you could say well we all use manipulation to a certain extent but this is something else and the reasoning behind it is for pure personal gain which in my book is not cool. What I don't get is what do these guys think will happen in the future? Are they expecting to keep up the act, show or persona forever? Maybe?

So yes I've opened a huge box of topics in this very short post. And I keep rewriting rants about social engineering, confiedence, social control and ultimatly Neuro-linguistic programming. We should be teaching this stuff in schools so everyone can protect themselves from con artists and social hackers like some people I know. I made reference to the real hustle in a previous blog post educating the masses about these such topics but we kind of need a show to talk about protecting yourself from the opposite sex (or same sex if you prefer). Don't get me wrong I'm not a player-hater as such but I don't feel it fair someone holds an advantage over someone else, specially when it comes to the painful world of mating or dating.

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Penetration testing on TV?

Tiger Team promotional photograph. Left to right: Ryan Jones, Chris Nickerson, Luke McOmie

I've heard some strange ideas for TV shows but whoever thought up this one must be barking mad. First heard on a NPR podcast then later on the register

Tiger Team follows a group of elite freelance security consultants hired to test organisations' security by using social engineering, hacking, and physically defeating security mechanisms. So we expect to see our heroes picking locks and going through the trash to get clues all the while maintaining an uneasy relationship with their clients and law enforcement officials.

Even the register are sniffing out this show long term appeal.

The plot elements have appeared before in films such as Sneakers, starring Robert Redford. It's hard to see how a story arc strong enough to sustain interest over the course of a TV series can be sustained from these elements.

The first programme is due to screen at 11pm on Christmas Day on CourtTV, which is hardly a recipe for a large audience. On the plus side, those watching will be probably too sozzled to notice any plot holes or technical errors.

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iPlayer on xbox media centre

xbox media centre

Streamng iplayer has certainly caught on well and everyone I've spoke to has good things to say about it. Although a supporter of the open-ish flash streaming player, I don't use it much right now. Yes not all the content is there yet but its also limited to my laptop and small computer screens. This is insane when I already consume all my media (tv, films, podcasts, etc) through xbox media centre and a nice large screen.

So whats going on? Well xbox media centre can already play native flash files, supports live streaming from day one and has a complete python backend for interacting with websites like youtube and the BBC radio player already . iPlayer should be a logical next step? And you know what if someone did create a script like the BBC Radio player one it would be perfectly legal, acceptable, promotable and great to use. I've been keeping an eye on the iplayers scripters forum but there still on about the download version. Phil really has everything needed for anyone to build the iplayer for xbmc.

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Dave’s thoughts on streaming iPlayer

So right now iplayer has no DRM but there is a fear with the latest Adobe flash communication server, DRM could be switched on in the near future. Now obviously I'm not going say either way as that would be confidental roadmap type stuff which gets me fired but I did think Dave's thoughts were interesting. Here's the best parts…

Sadly I don’t think that the rights holders or the BBC has been convinced that DRM does more harm than good, is unacceptable, and ought to be eliminated. I think they’ve just seen a lot of negative press about DRM, and want to avoid negative press. A streaming DRM-less alternative stops the majority of the criticism, but only partially solves the problem.

I won’t be surprised if the Adobe Flash DRM features are turned on in the future, because the BBC has not yet issued a policy stating that it rejects DRM technologies and refuses to foist them on people.

However, assuming that DRM is going out and will stay out of the iPlayer, what are the next issues the BBC faces in engaging with the free culture movement?

Redistribution is a hard problem for the BBC to tackle. It would mean that, if I download an iPlayer show, I am permitted to share copies with my friends.

Probably they will also be British license fee payers, since I live in the UK and most of my friends are too. But what about my non-British, non-license fee paying friends?

Currently they can’t access at all many BBC works directly from the BBC – even many BBC web pages. It does this with “GeoIP”: looking up the IP address of each user in a database that lists the geographic location of all registered IP address blocks. For a long time the BBC has discriminated against non-UK-registered IP addresses. serving them different and less HTTP data than is accessible from a UK IP address.

This is merely access control, not DRM. DRM mandates proprietary software and is supported by laws that prohibit the distribution of free software that can access DRM media – a serious social problem.

A social problem… very interesting choice of words Dave. I agree were not out of the woods theres lots more to be done. GeoIP is shakey ground to be standing on but unless there is a global licence fee or something. We will end up in big trouble with the government, trust, worldwide and of course the rights holders. Its a complex issue and requires more thought and time that the DRM debate maybe?

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When’s the eBook readers coming to the UK?

Amazon Kindle

I'm sorry but I'm fed up of hearing stupid people ranting about the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader. One because its not targeted at them, second because they rant about the price (although I would like them cheaper too) and third they just won't shut up about comparing them to books.

I'm honestly sick of people saying they prefer books to ebooks. Stop comparing them! Its really boring to hear I prefer books because there physical…blah blah blah. Stop it! If I can stop ranting about the Apple Iphone, you can stop moaning about ebooks. The fact is I prefer reading on screen because of the ability to change line lengths and text size. I would like to read a some what balanced review from someone simular.

Whats caused this little outburst? Well reading some of reviews from stupid people who don't actually own a Kindle yet on Amazon. I would link to them but they don't deserve it. The best review and most honest review of the Kindle so far has been this one and Steve Gibson's reviews. I would like one but there too expensive right now and I would perfer a version of the kindle with either wifi or bluetooth inside of it. Being tied to a mobile network is a no no but I can see the business case behind it. A while back I was excited with the Rex iLiad (yes its real name) but it seemed to have got stomped on by the Sony one which came out at the same time.

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How to have more sex?

How to have more sex?

Some of you may have thought you’d seen me on TV recently. The show was not exactly what I had signed up for but it was clear ITV were going to film the event for a show which may or may not get commisioned. Anyway the event was a speed dating event…. Before I go on, I feel the need to explain the reasons why I was there. So since my marriage broke-down I’ve been single and I was getting use to be single again. One of the off sets of this was that I had always wondered what it was like to speed date? I had never tried it and wondered if I would be any good at it. Some of you may say, oh Ian – this is very sad or maybe Ian this is too soon after a break up, but you know what I’ve moved on and i’m not going to sit at home all sad thinking about how things use to be. There may also be an aspect of sadness to speed dating but what better way to meet a load of people who you would never usually meet in one evening?

So being newly single, I decided to give it a try when I saw a advert for a cheap speed dating event in Clerkenwell on a Thursday night in September. The event was 5 pounds instead of the usual 20 plus pounds and all drinks would be free on the evening. The only deal is that we would be filmed, which didn’t bother me so much.

However the footage got used in a programme called How to get more Sex part 2, which was on last Thursday (hell you can even watch it on itv’s iplayer style service or bittorrent.

The lady at Table 13, Janice

Now assuming you watched the programme, you will remember at the first speed dating event the woman (Janice 30 or table 13 – geez should have known by the number) who was talking about plane tickets to america. Well I did give her a yes tick as she was good to talk to, plus she was my very first table. She also gave me a tick, which means that we should have hooked up later sometime but it never did happen. And now I know why. I did at the time think there was something strange about Janice because she was quite talkative before we hit the tables. This also applied to the 2nd guy plant. He was strange, I was following him in the table order and he would carry on pass the bell and a lot of the women I would talk to afterwards would mention the cheesy as hell chat up lines he would use. Now it all makes sense. What was weird was that some of the women thought me and the guy plant were friends because we entered the venue at the same time and we chatted for a while before. Even then he seemed to be very very up for the whole thing.

2nd plant guy or mr strange does his hair

Moving beyond the programme, I did end up going for food with 2 Australian women (who were friends – melissa 32 and
rachel 28) after the speed dating. They were the most normal people in the room and we kind of gravitated towards each other. Everyone else was super dressed up or as I now know, a plant. Us 3 looked like we worked in normal jobs and just came from there. Anyway we got talking about different people who we ticked and didn’t tick. Australian woman 1 (who is wearing a light green top in the filming) talked about the teacher guy (guy plant 2) and how he bored the life out of her. I mentioned Janice 30 but my big story was table 5 (shes on film, shes mixed race, black dress, long curly hair, stylish black glasses and little red bow around her neck). She asked me where I work and I was honest and said the BBC. She then she said quote Oh I heard the BBC don’t pay a lot of money. Taken a back by this comment, I quickly replied well it depends if you let money decide what you do in life?! As you can imagine the next 2mins 40secs were pretty thorny. There was another woman, who I think was there simply to shag someone that night. I can’t remember what table she was and shes not directly in the focus of the camera during the documentary, but she was very much up for going out that same night and something she said made it clear, going out and sex was all she was thinking about.

So would I do the whole thing again? Actually I would, it was pretty fun and enjoyable. I could imagine it being hell if your not talkative or enjoy meeting strangers but I’m pretty relaxed about this stuff. Anyway, hope the pop science experiment was good fun for people watching. I think I pop up 4 times during the segment. Here’s a review which I found amusing about the whole programme (sorry no permalink).

Mr strange using his chatup lines

It was just a jumbled piece of amateurish TV full of primary school experiments that proved nothing to nobody. Even Bravo would have been embarrassed to schedule this anywhere other than the very small hours, but this was 10pm on ITV1! 10pm! A prime time slot on a network station! How did this happen? Unbelievable. Shocking. Why aren’t people fired for commissioning crap like this? What are you doing, Michael Grade?

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BBC launches

Iplayer on Linux?

Rather that write a huge long blog post about the BBC launches recently, I thought I'd keep it short and sweet. James Cridland beat me to the boat on both anyway.

The much imporved BBC Home beta is now publicly available. How out dated does the current one look next to the new one? And thankful we've broken out of that 800 wide frame which drove me insane. Also not to be out done, iPlayer now has flash streaming using the new h.264 flash ability. It does work on Mac and GNU/Linux using the Adobe Flash Player (aka not using Gnash yet). I did try and get XBMC to play back the flash stream but it failed. More investivgation soon

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Ubuntu switch: If you ever want to sleep at night…

…don't try and create samba shares on top of NTFS formatted partitions.

Honestly it's been a ongoing problem for the last few months. My first lot of shares just worked on NTFS so I tried to duplicate the setup over other machines including my laptop and my ubuntu home server. Did it ever work? No. So I've finally juggled the data around and formatted all the drives in my ubuntu home server Ext3 (i was tempted with reiser3 but couldn't see the point) and now finally setup the shares. As expected, with some tweaking of my /etc/fstab file its all working correctly.

So hows the rest of my switch going? Well actually pretty well. I've not switched back into Windows for ages now. I actually deleted the virtualised image I had of Windows XP and although Wine is still installed, I have never really used it beyond seeing if particls will launch. Of course it didnt…

I'm now blogging using QTM and found a couple useful applications including Specto and Timevault. Timevault is like Timemachine on Mac OS 10.5 but without all the fancy crap and it can sync to a network drive. Yes this is very important and I realised after talking to Miles that Timemachine doesn't have this feature. Plus realisticlly Timemachine is actually just a app which allows unlimited undos, not really backup. Timevault on the other hand can back up to a local HD, Firewire drive or Network drive making it useful for real backup and with a VPN coonection very powerful.

My standby problems on my laptop are under control. I have a script which I can active via Natuitus Scripts to shutdown Gnome's Power manager control. Once the Gnome power manager is shutdown, the lid will put the machine to standby no problem. Sometimes I have to watch out because gnome will start the power manager again after a update. I had a problem a while back with my wireless card waking up afterwards but its all sorted now. I've also noticed my battery times have gone up again. Now I'm getting about 3.5 hours out of my 1 year old battery, so I'm not doing too bad. Maybe I'll get another battery later next year as a spare.

Another thing which got fixed recently was my calendaring solution. Now I'm using Google Calendar as a syncing tool between Mozilla lightning and Plaxo. My phone now talks directly to Plaxo and my work outlook calendar.

I'm glad I switched over and my next project is to get rsyncing working well with a couple of cron jobs. So for example my laptop will have the latest podcasts when I pick it up in the mornings. I'll also use it for backups in liu of amanda or bacula. I'm also still using Hamachi for my VPN solution and I'm finding it a pain on Linux, the gui version does crash a bit and the command line gives very little feedback. So I'm thinking about switching to OpenVPN as its got real Linux support and its highly recommended. Lastly I want to switch to Evolution and I need to upgrade my smoothwall server to version 3.0. Who knows a couple more late nights before Christmas and it might happen.

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SEMN IP Pitching event today

Just a quick mention that I will be at the SEMN IP Pitching event later today as one of the judges/dragons? Looking at the line up of companies pitching it should be an interesting event and I think anyone can come and watch?

You are warmly invited to the SEMN Pitching Event on the afternoon of Tuesday 11th December. This event is being run by SEMN in association with Wired Sussex. This is open to existing SEMN Digital Content Knowledge Network /images/emoticons/laugh.gifCKN) members and, more widely, to any digital content company, individual or university in the South East of England.

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Jury Service again

Jury Summons

Opened my mail to find this on Friday night. This is my 2nd time so I think I'm right in saying they can't ask me again. I actually don't mind being on Jury Service but this time instead of the criminals of Croydon and the surrounds areas, I've been summons to the old baily in London. Let's hope I don't get on one of those huge fraud cases or worst still a multiple murder case.

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