So I missed blogging the whole iran twittering election because my blog was down for a while but I did find this which gives the background to the whole thing. I picked up most of this from my time working at the World Service, I had wondered how many other people actually fully understand the past and how much of a revolution this is?
Bypass Windows & Linux Passwords via hak.5
I love hak.5, its the perfect example of niche content. Every episode has something new and interesting in it for someone like myself. The ESXi virtualisation stuff has been pretty good, and the WPA hacking (i mean) self-evaluating almost got me writing. But what killed me was Kon-boot. I looked it up on darknet.org.uk and found this.
Kon-Boot is an prototype piece of software which allows to change contents of a Linux kernel (and now Windows kernel also!!!) on the fly (while booting).
In the current compilation state it allows to log into a Linux system as ’root’ user without typing the correct password or to elevate privileges from current user to root. For Windows systems it allows to enter any password protected profile without any knowledge of the password.
It was mainly created for Ubuntu, later the author has made a few add-ons to cover some other Linux distributions.
Entire Kon-Boot was written in pure x86 assembly, using old grandpa-geezer TASM 4.0.
How do you stop this happening? Add a BIOS password and Encrypt your hard drive. But look out, the cold boot hack is becoming actually possible for the seasoned IT professional. Shocking stuff, well done to the hak.5 guys for covering this stuff well.
Filmriot: Where the adverts are worth watching
I watch a lot of the Revision3 programmes such as Diggnation, Tekzilla, Scam School and of course my old favourite Hak.5. But I've also been getting into some of there newer programmes too. Co-op, Diggreel, ROFL and finally Filmriot.
Filmriot is a strange one, it shows budding film makers how to do some of those film effects you've seen around. Everything from doing decent head gunshots to shooting dusk shots in bright sunshine. A lot of the stuff is done outside the computer using clever camera tricks and I'm sure most of it is learned on a film makers course within the first few months, but its actually very well put together and looks great in HD.
But what gets me is the inline adverts within the show. I think the Co-op guys started the trend of adverts which match in with the style of the show but these guys at Film Riot have taken it to another level. The adverts are actually worth watching just to see what the guys have done this time around. It may have taken them a while to do it and they may recycle them a few times but it certainly beats the standard adverts. I'm not saying this is the future of advertising or anything, just interesting. I posted the another one here.
Tomboy notes, be afraid evernote
I can't even remember when this was mentioned. It might have been at BarCampSheffield or a event before that. But the news that someone was working on a web front end/web application for tomboy notes totally shook my world.
Snowy is a online service that syncs with Tomboy notes to allow complete access to your notes online. Its uses Django to create a REST API for Tomboy notes, so other applications beyond Snowy can take advantage of your notes too. This means you can easily create a web app for your mobile phone or other devices. Hell, you could consume your notes into yahoo pipes or other mashup tools. Unfortunately its still early days for Snowy and so isn't all there quite yet. However its GNU's Affero General Public License (AGPL) and built to take advantage of developments like HTML5. So you can imagine how easy it would be to build this into google wave and many other clients. Being AGPL also means it will take a similar route to software like la.conica. I expect there will be services which will host snowy for you such as Canonical's Ubuntu One service (lets not go there now about it) and Apple's dot mac. But you can also host it yourself too, which may work better if your worried about privacy or want to share between a small group of people.
I had no idea Tomboy Notes was available on Windows and Mac too. I had only come across it when I switched to Ubuntu. I also had no idea that there was already a Firefox addon for tomboynotes but I had heard of the Tomboy Android app (which might have been the thing which got me looking a little deeper into snowy). I like Evernote, it works but I'm frankly pissed off with the evernote attitude to the Linux platform. They refuse to create a application because theres not a big enough market, but they create a windows mobile version? They also seem to be about the shiny shiny, I mean a palm pre version but not a symbian or android version? I also expect the Windows mobile version will be dropped soon as version 3 is rolled out. Anyway, I'm also getting frankly fed up of the single nature of it too. You can't share notes and its engineered that way, its part of the evernote philosophy (till a few days ago). I just think although I like evernote, somewhere along the line my relationship with there service is going to get even more broken that it is now. Its bad enough having to run Evernote through Wine or Prism, neither work well and theres no way its just a app which you can leave open.
This is why I think I should just convert to Tomboy notes now and dump evernote. The client is on almost every machine I use, its seemless on the gnome desktop. Theres already API, good syncing and the ability to get linking data versions of the notes. More and more applications are intergrating with tomboynotes. For example Gnome-Do searches and allows me to write notes super fast, Conduit can sync notes and Gwibber now allows you to save messages out to Tomboy. I have seen all types of addons for tomboynotes including the ability to even blog from Tomboynotes (which if it works, will solve one of my long running problems with linux). If I could get Evolution to work with Tomboy, I'll be dancing around the room.
So the long and short of it is that the alternative to evernote via tomboynotes is certainly possible. Some would say, well your missing lots of things evernote does but I'm sure you can either write a plugin for it or even provide a online service for it.
Those flats in New Islington
So when I wrote the entry about the flats, it was late and I didn't go into much detail about the flats themselves. Its hard to because for example islington wharf doesn't yet have the floor plans up yet and its worth noting that theres 20 different types of styled apartments. Chips I do have the floor plans for but again theres many different types. A couple of friends did comment on Facebook about the entry which I noticed in Gwibber.
Rachel Clarke –
I'm quite liking the quirkiness of Chips, at least from those 2 sites which don't give a lot away.
Sheila Thomson –
Both buildings look amazing! Am green with envy
As Rachel says, there's very little info to go on here though, so based purely on architectural style, I'd say Chips.
So from memory here's the deal
Islington Wharf – The flats I was looking at have two bedrooms and two bathrooms. The view is looking north towards the Manchester City ground and the rest of Ancoats (its 25k extra for the same looking south into Manchester Central). From memory the 2nd bedroom is slightly bigger that what I have now for a 2nd bedroom, so it holds a double bed and wardrobe and not a lot more. The 1st bedroom is the same as what I have now. The living room is open plan and includes the kitchen which has everything including dishwasher, fridge freezer, etc. There's no balcony space but there is a huge communal grass covered area bigger that the size of a couple basketball courts. On top of that there is a large decking area, for when the grass is wet or you want to do a bbq or something. Its on the 2nd floor above the carpark, so its residents only. The carpark is secure and comes with the flat, I think theres even bike parking space, so I could rent out my space to someone else. The windows on the living room are huge and I can choose between a 2nd floor and 9th floor apartment. Of course it has two lifts and only about 6 flats per floor. Each floor has sound proofing between the floors and the general build quality is very good. Generally this is a great flat with some good views and a standard formation.
Chips – There is only one flat I'm really considering to buy and its on the 4th floor. Two bedrooms and one bathroom, on the east side of the Chips building. I can see the City ground again from the living room. This flat has a thin balcony which you can stand on but not much else. Like Islington Wharf there is a communal outdoor area and its on the back of chips. Its about quite large but no where near the size of the space in Islington Wharf. There is a carpark but its going to cost extra or you can park on the wasteland for free which is outside chips right now. Chips looks pretty impressive and its super styled inside too. Pink and Black walls with bear stone work ceilings. Inside the apts its white but theres elements of bright colours. For example the kitchen covers are cherry red and the sliding door for the 2nd bedroom is Green. Yes you heard me right, sliding door. Its a odd layout too, like a ring with a bedroom off one end. If like me your not using the 2nd bedroom as a bedroom, you can pull the door back and make the living room much larger. and to be honest it needs extending because the space is small. The bedrooms are smaller that islington wharf again but rooms do have those great european windows which open 2 ways and there huge. The general build quality isn't as good as the other one and you don't get a washing machine or dishwasher but you do get a quirky layout and a bit of cupboard space in one of the most known developments in Manchester.
So a couple of other things. Urbansplash the maker of Chips are well known for quirky designs and to be fair there not for everyone. So the resale value maybe very different. I also heard from someone that Urban Splash's development in Sheffield had fallen through and that the company might be experiencing a few problems. Islington Wharf is sometimes refered to as the fishbowl because you can see directly in and theres no curtains/blinds when you buy the flat. So which one would you choose if you were in my position?
Gdgt: The data siloed web
So I've been checking out Gdgt.com which is written and created by Peter Rojas and Ryan Block previously of Engadget fame. Its a small social network around a database of user inputted data. Its not bad but 2 things urks me a little.
The inputting of data is painful, one because its too american centric so for example you need to put the release dates in the US. I tried to add the pacemaker to the list but it was rejected because it was already submitted to the database by another user, however when search for the pacemaker I still get nothing except the option to add it the database again.
The second thing for me is the data portability of the data. There's no API and although theres rss feeds I was expecting RSS feeds across the whole site no matter what type of view or cut I choose. I also kind of expected very rich rss feeds more like RDF linking data.
For the GDGT guys this is all good stuff, with their reputation and expert knowledge they could pull off the biggest database of gadgets online. It would be so much more easier if you could pull in gadgets from else where such as Amazon.com. It would also make population of the database so much quicker and with added information not elsewhere. I would have liked them to do something a little more radical like the use of DBpedia or even Freebase. Right now, I feel there in a lesser place that even Techcrunch's Crunchbase. At least Crunchbase has a API and licences all its data under creative commons attribution. Once GDGT allow much deep access into the data for purposes beyond listing what gadgets I have, want to own or have owned. Good luck guys, i'm sure you'll pull it off soon.
A home in New Islington?
The flat hunting is coming close to the end now. I've seen some amazing places and almost bought a couple but now its come down to two very different developments on the same plot of land. The plot of land is the much talked about New Islington or Ancoats. If you say Ancoats to most people who live in Manchester and they shudder and I see why. Its got a bit of crime problem, no where near most of the places in London I've lived in (such as Woolwich). Actually when I took this picture I had 6 youth come up close and tell me to stop taking pictures of them. Not afraid, I made it clear that I was not taking picture of them. To which I was called a prick while they walked away of course. Anyway that aside, the place is having a major redevelopment and the new tram stop and other things do make it a first time buyers ideal location. Its also just a short walk from Manchester Piccadilly Station and the trendy Northern Quarter.
Question is which development is the one for me? Chips or Islington Wharf?
Obama kills a fly and PETA goes nuts?
I have no words to explain how silly it is that PETA are worried about this…
So what happened to my blog?
The blog went down back in June and only went back up a few days ago. So what happened? Well I'll spare you the long story.
Hub.org did a upgrade on the Operating System and other bits and pieces, and broke the frankly weird setup I have for my blog. Now normally I would say they should fix it but the truth is that I've been hosting my blog on there lovely servers for years for free. Well I say free but I did do some work on the hub.org website a while back. So we have a gentlemans agreement that I don't bug them and they let me have a nice virtual private server, which is needed to run the Blojsom blogging server. So I needed to fix why Resin would start then stop. It ended up being a problem with the change of configuration in later versions of Resin.
The reason it took so long was because I tried a few things along the way to fix it and move my blog elsewhere. My previous setup was Apache running on port 80 in front of Resin on port 8080 (always worth checking port 8080 to see if my blog is actually down or not). Previously I was running Pound in front of Tomcat, now I'm using Pound again in front of Resin. Apache isn't really needed because Resin is fast enough to serve up static files along side dynamic processes.
When things went wrong, I did decide to finally move my blog from Blojsom to WordPress. To get stuff out of blojsom I needed to get the server up and running again. I won't explain how but theres ways to get every single entry out of blojsom in a xml/atom/rdf feed. Hell you can even filter between 2 dates and get those entries out in any format you like. Once blojsom was up and running on port 8080 I was able to get all my entries. I also discovered that Blojsom creator had created a export plugin which is now standard and very useful. The problem is WordPress, wordpress fails to import anything I get from Blojsom. I double checked the blojsom files and there all well formed. I've even tried importing into Blogger.com but none of them work, I think its mainly the size of the import file (almost 10meg). Ultimately I do want to move to WordPress because although Blojsom is great, its not quite as actively being developed. Also moving to WordPress will mean I can switch to a cheaper hosting plan and get full support. Hub are great but I think its worth paying for my blog to be up as much as possible. Maybe I'd host my blog somewhere else and I'd use the hub account for my experiments with Cocoon. Although with Google App engine supporting Java servelets now, even that might be a little mute.
For now, the blog will stay where it is but I may be doing some stuff else where in the background. Expect lots of entries from now on.
BarCampSheffield (UnSheffield)
Warning this post is mainly insider baseball politics, aka its not of much interest to most people, just those involved and those who are interested in the movement of BarCamp.
So I asked Emma Persky what she thought after the whole thing had finished as few moments ago. She said, she's not made up her mind. And you know what she's right. I can't quite make my mind up about BarCampSheffield either. For a lot of people reading this, they maybe thinking a barcamp is a barcamp what is all this about. Well running up to the event, there has been a lively discussion surround BarCampSheffield. The event was officially named UnSheffield and the barcamp part dropped, but it kept the barcamp fireball logo. Jag Gill one of the organisers of the Sheffield event had this to say about the change.
BarCamp Sheffield has evolved to Unsheffield. We’re taking the technology unconference format to a broader public. We pushed some of the boundaries of BarCamps last year, and we’re continuing to do so this year under our new name, which is intended to reflect its broader content, format and appeal.
The principles of participant-generated content still remain at the heart of the event, and we’re encouraging a strong focus around the event theme – Future Users of Cool Technology. Integral with the unconference will be public workshops that create a bridge between local and regional talent and the international event and its contributors.
At the GeekUp Sheffield birthday party we laid out some of the plans for this year’s flagship grassroots digital event. In keeping with the Future Users theme, we’re looking for public spaces to extend the unconference to public workshops and symposia, thereby spreading the joy of techs to non-geeks in the city and region.
Emma Persky picked up on this and pointed out, and have to say quite rightly that BarCamp isn't exclusively about technology. And wrote this quite sting reply on her blog.
I’m fed up of people perpetuating the myth that BarCamps are just for techies. Seriously fed up. Yes, there are a bunch of technical folk who attend these events, and yes they may be the majority, but that majority is not large. Out of all of the many BarCamps I have ever been to I have rarely been to a “technical” talk, and only myself given one that was in any way technical (that was demonstrating my dissertation project and was seriously cool).
By segregating “geeks, hackers and core techies” from regular people you are only diving apart the community of people who desire to “share and learn in an open environment.” And yes, we are one community, with members from all sorts of backgrounds. Our community is defined by our desire to share and learn, and not by the types of activities we do (hack, paint, fish, etc.). Anyone, from any walk of life, any background, and profession and or any experience level should be comfortable being a member of this community.
Emma is right, but the way she says it alienates people. On Saturday there was a point when there felt to be a standoff betwen Emma and others. This doesn't help anyone let alone those caught up in the debate as such. Alistar tried to defend some of the positions of the Sheffield crew, but it was no real use because Emma was after all, right.
So how did it pan out? Well I didn't make Friday night or the Saturday welcome talk. But everything I experienced was exactly like a barcamp with noteworthy exception. One of those exceptions was the end talk/Inspired Ideas Surgery. Everyone was gently pushed into attending this session at the end of Sunday. The session was a chance for a few voted for ideas to be put forward in front of a small panel. To me this felt a little forced and to be honest by 5pm on a Sunday I had just wanted to have a couple of drinks and chat with people. Instead I started falling a sleep in the warm room. Emma also pointed out that some of the panelist were sponsors. Talking about giving sponsors room, Evernote were giving time on a Saturday to “show us” Evernote. What was funny was that, it wasn't actually Evernote, instead it was some company which works with Evernote and frankly, I knew about more about Evernote that they did.
At this point I want to stop and say, the event was enjoyable and I want to give the guys a huge amount of respect for what they have worked on and achieved. I never went to the previous barcamps in Sheffield but have to say, last weekend for me was a better described as a festival. Imran Ali created the Leeds Web Festival which included in the middle of it BarCampLeeds. This made sense, he didn't mess with BarCamp, just put it in the middle of a range of events. No one battered an eyelid. However Sheffield decided to follow suit and build/extend/evolve BarCamp which caused all the comments and high feelings. Imran's approach is better thought out and celebrates each event as a part and whole of the bigger picture. From a sponsorship/support point of view, he's also put together something which is easy to understand, follow and ultimately sponsor/support. While to support something like Unsheffield would be a hard sell. Theres a lot of value in the BarCamp brand and its a event which the BBC has supported across the UK including recently BarCampLondon6, BarCampNorthEast2, BarCampLiverpool, etc. If someone pitched UnSheffield to me, I would say its too confusing and ultimately would not benefit from any sponsorship because its a confusing message to back. Now to be fair they did secure a lot of sponsorship elsewhere, which is great but I'm just saying from my perspective looking at everything.
So ultimately I did have a good time and I wish the guys luck in there next event. Team work alone was excellent, the venue was ok if a little noisy sometimes. Food and drink was all good (cooked breakfast on Sunday morning, was lovely even if I did miss the eggs). The turn out on Saturday seemed to be quite large and diverse while Sunday was quieter there still seemed to be about 40+ people floating around. Saturday was closer to 80-90, so I've heard. The sessions were as you'd expect at a barcamp, varied and some better that others. I gave two talks of my own, one about social engineering a nd scamming, the other was titled the state of the nation, and involved a talk about the digital britain report and how to it enable it ourselves. The comments and discussion are not meant to be some kind of attack, instead I would like to help with the next one.