Author: Ianforrester

Senior firestarter at BBC R&D, emergent technology expert and serial social geek event organiser. Can be found at cubicgarden@mas.to, cubicgarden@twit.social and cubicgarden@blacktwitter.io

What on earth is going on in the states

Welcome to Packing.org. This is a great place to find out how to legally carry a concealed weapon, if it is possible in your state – HELLO What on earth is goind on! I spent some time in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis / St Paul) and in the state of Minnesota, you may carry a concealed gun around. You do not need to notify the police and the gun does not need to be registered with the police.

Places off-limits while carrying a gun?
Public or Private Elementary, Middle or Secondary Schools, School Buses, Child/Day Care Centers, Private establishments – if posted that establishment bans guns on premises. Places of employment, public or private, if employer restricts the carry or possession of firearms by its employees. Yes thats right, unless the establishments says no, you may carry a gun into a bar, a club, a restuarant, etc…
I cant seem to find my picture of the no guns signs on most of the doors in the twin cities…

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PVR Linux TV

Screenshot of MythTV

Still thinking about what I should do with the linux box I currently have. Its too much machine to be a smoothwall firewall and its not quite good enough to be a full on server. See I'm thinking once I get to the point of running a linux server I could easily convert the current server. So why not turn the current box into a PVR? Just a thought and a link right now. MythTV

More useful links…from a guy who built his own Linux PVR box.

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Finally seen real HDTV

Letterbox view of a film

Watched High Definition NBA basketball on ESPN HD via DirectTV while in Chicago. Part of my wifes family are well into technology and own multiple Hard drive recorders and a High-Definition Television setup. It was super crystal clear, more like a monitor picture than a television picture. It was ever-so very vivid too, almost too slick to watch. The picture was at long last in widescreen format which is still odd because no one owns a widescreen set only 4:3. When will we get HDTV in the uk? maybe 2008 on sky and 2010 on Digital TV. At least the new settop boxes now support 5.1 surrond sound through optical or coxial outputs now as standard.

Oh by the way, i am now thinking about not buying a cheap digital tv box and instead getting one of the previously mentioned PVRs because there getting much cheaper now. The Humax pvr is going for 190 pounds on Empire direct. Even the Pace twin view is going for around the same price now. Swap the hard drives out for something more like 120 gig and I'm laughing.

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Webdav calendar share

At long last my wife has given up on Outlook and Internet explorer. So I set her laptop up with Opera, Mozilla and Neos Jabber client. And shes loving the calendar in Mozilla 1.5, she loves the idea you can actually share calendars and see others.

So now I really need to sort out a webdav server so I can actually get our calendars working in each others clients. Saw this after a short search. Oh spotted this too…Yum

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Blojsom upgrade and permalinks

Serving more as a note for myself. I really need to make changes to blojsom because the new features are something else. If I do a upgrade on my blog I will do one on the interaction blog too. so fear not my students. Webbased blogging is coming to you all soon…

Plus a load of permas to check out sometime soon from my feeds…

Blog on Blogs- excellent educational example of weblog use (ebnWL News)

Blogtalk 2004 – July 2004
Who needs a phone? Infosync
Can You Sell More WiFi With Content? (Techdirt Corporate Intelligence/images/emoticons/happy.gif

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Moblogging

For ages now, I've been thinking of setting up a moblog, which is basicly a blog of interesting or not so interesting pictures which I snap with my camera phone through-out the day. Its kind of like my picture gallarys but less structured and pictures are uploaded via mms so they appear instantaly online no matter where you are. Which would have been extra nice when I was in America, except MMS didnt work on either Tmobile or AT&T while I was there.

The other thing which seems to becoming possible is vidblogs as operators allow for video messaging. Obvioulsy Orange havent yet launched there video service, but there on the brink and my SPV2 phone supports it. So realisticly I could send it over GPRS as a email instead.

Anyway, I've been meaning to look at textamerica for ages and have signed up now. Didnt like all there terms though.

14. Textamerica.com may use, sell and/or share with its affiliates any information provided by you on this website, including your name, e-mail address, usage patterns, and uploaded images and text

The URL is http://cubicgarde.textamerica.com and yes it looks pretty shite at the moment. But I'm thinking about writing my own moblog now rather than using text america as it seems very limited and ASP buggy. Then again i need to check out the other moblogging apps out there too.

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International GPRS roaming

Yes it works and I was so shocked when I saw the GPRS logo on my phone when I left Chicago Ohare airport, I just had to try it out on Tmobile and it didnt work too well. But worked perfectly on AT&T wireless through-out most of my holiday. Even Tmobile started working once I got outside of Chicago.
So at long last GPRS has come of age? Now if only 3g also worked…

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Installing Linux

So finally I got my act together and got a old machine from college. It was a Pentium 2 233MX with 192meg of PC133 memory and 3 gig of Hard drive space. So I ripped out the old motherboard and chip put in my old Asus A7V with the servers old Athlon 800 into it (put in a 1.33ghz Athlon into the server now). Used the same PC133 memory as I'm not sure where my old stuff has gone and the old Hard drive. And tried to install Debian using the net install version. Oh my, took me ages to work out how to install the network card and download more of what was needed. So its working but I have no idea what the default login is… So I'm kinda of stuck at the moment…HELP

Quick update – Finally got Dynebolic to work when I downloaded version 1.1.1 as version 1.1 didnt support the Award Bios. Also downloaded Smoothwall, Knoppix and Mepis, so will try those out sooner or later too. For now Debian can wait. And I'm thinking about using the old Pentium2 as a smoothwall firewall if I can get another ATX case.

http://www.linuxmigration.com/quickref – almost forgot about it.

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