Author Archives: philip

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For some time, I have run my own mail server on the stuphi.co.uk domain. The idea was that I could offer email to my family as a service, and I would have full control. Spam filtering would also be under my control. One slight downside was that I did not like the available web interfaces to email. Roundcube and Squirrelmail both seamed a bit lacking.

In parallel to this, I have had a Gmail account for some time. The main reason for this was so that I could subscribe to multiple mailing lists, and avoid exposing my own address to them. Also, the web interface to Gmail and search facilities are the best I have used, in my opinion.

A little while ago, I found out about Google Apps for Domains. After a little reading, I decided to take the plunge, and sign up.

The end result is now I have handed over the email handling of my stuphi.co.uk domain to Google. I did check with my users that they were happy for this to happen, and they had no complaints. I can now have all my spam issues handled for me. A nice web interface for my mail, and I can still use my traditional mail clients using IMAP.

There are those that think that allowing a large American Corporation to handle all my email is not a wise idea. I have always considered email to be the electronic equivalent to a post card. It is not a suitable medium for secure communication, and therefore only use it for trivial matters that I am not concerned about keeping private.

So far I have been happy with the switch. I will keep the option of running my own server open, in case the situation changes in the future. I should have kept some notes on the transition, but in reality, it was not hard. If you all ready run an email server, then you will be able to follow the process with ease.

Should we drive on the right?

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As I live in the UK, I am used to driving on the left. For a long time, I considered anybody who thought that was not a good idea to be silly. However, I may have changed my mind.

I little while ago, I travelled to France, and I hired a car for the week. I was a little worried that I would struggle to get used to driving on the other side of the road. Junctions such as roundabouts and cross roads did require a little thought to make sure I understood who has priority. Within a very short period, it felt very natural.

Initially, I assumed that I adapted because I am obviously very clever. 🙂 When I returned to the UK, I received a bit of a rude awakening. I found it much harder to get used to driving on the left again than I did to driving on the right. That was a shock to me, and first made me think that driving on the right is possibly more natural for a right handed person.

More recently, I have been riding my bicycle a lot more. Now, as we are in the UK, when I approach another bicycle on a cycle path, I will always stay to the left hand side, as for roads as it is good to be consistent. What surprises me is that so many other cyclists will automatically try and sty to the right. Why? With no defined law on an un-marked cycle way, people make up there own judgement, and it seems to me that most would want to stick to the right.

Which is best? Driving on the left or the right? Should the UK switch? Would it even be possible to switch?

When will we go metric?

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A conversation at work reminded me of reading a report from a commons select comity of 1862. The best bit reads:-

For measures of capacity, we have 20 different bushels: we can scarcely tell what the hogshead means. For ale it is 54 gallons, for wine 63. Pipes of wine vary in many ways; each sort of wine seems to claim the privilege of a different sort of pipe. For measures of weight, we have about 10 different stones; a stone of wool at Darlington is 18 lbs.; a stone of flax at Downpatrick is 24 lbs.; a stone of flax at Belfast is only 16 3/4 lbs.; but it is also at Belfast 24 1/2 lbs., having in one place two values. The hundredweight may mean 100 lbs., 112 lbs., or 120 lbs. If you buy an ounce or pound of anything, you must inquire if it belongs to Dutch, troy, or avoirdupois weight.

I am glad that we have moved on from that situation, but why people still resist the move to a full metric system, I don’t know.

More fun with Povray

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From time to time, I get the the urge to play with Povray.

As can be seen, I am in the process of modeling my home. The idea was I could try out different arrangements of furniture and stuff, and get a view of what it looks like. We even may move some walls around, and this should help to give a feel for how it could look.

At the moment, I am still putting the walls in place. Two big gaps are the fire place, and the front door.

e17 on Ubuntu

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Having looked at gOS recently, I decided that it was time to re-visit e17 myself on my Ubuntu system. I have used e17 in the past on Debian before I switched to Ubuntu.

There is a really cool script called easy_e17.sh that does all the work, and here is a how to that details the use of the script.

Now, I followed the steps, and have installed e17. The problem is that I don’t like it. I really want to, but it just does not look right when first installed. Although the themes are easy to install and change, they only affect the e17 elements. Gnome and GTK applications don’t look right.

With some effort it would be possible to match themes in e17, gnome, gtk etc., but I can’t be bothered. Am I getting lazy, or am I just not interested any more in fluff? Either way, it was a relief to get back into Gnome and all that Human consistency.

I will now just wait and see if anybody does a good Ubuntu derivative that has a fully configured e17 desktop. Failing that, I may keep e17 and whenever I am bored, chip away at the configuration until it feels right.

gOS – Something to keep an eye on.

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Today I downloaded gOS so that I could have a look at it.

I was impressed. If you are a fan of Google™ then this could be right up your street.

I have no idea who is behind it, but it is based on Ubuntu and uses the excellent e17 version of the Enlightenment window manager. I have liked e17 for a long time, and it is great to see it used like this in a distribution.

The end result is a system that is lightweight, suitable as a portal to common web based services, particularity those provided by Google.

I will be keeping an eye on how this develops.

nuvexport – export files from Mythtv

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I installed the Myth-Archive package to be able to backup any shows that I had recorded that I may want to keep. However, it did not work first time, so I gave up with it. It would probably have been better ti fix that, but I could not be bothered, so I have tried a different approach. First I was going to simply query the database and find out which mpeg file is associated with which program, and then manually do the archiving.

What I noticed is that some of the files have a .nuv file extension. This is not very helpful, so I did a quick Google, and found Nuvexport. This looks like a great little program. When it is run, a number of options are presented to you, and it is possible to select a number of programs to process. Options are given for what format it is to be saved in. Once I have extracted the files from Mythtv with this utility, I will use some of these recipes to create some DVD archives.

Update: Nuvexport refused to recognise the aspect ratio. Instead, I am using mythtranscode directly to export the file from Mythtv. It may not be as intuitive, but it works.

Apple: the good, the bad and the ugly.

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My son has an 5th generation iPod. The other day he came in a little annoyed as the headphone socket had broken. When he checked the receipt, it was about five days past the twelve month warranty period. I suggested that he should go to the Apple store and see what they could do for him.

I went along for support, and to have a play with the latest toys. The good thing is that I do like the apply gear from an aesthetic point of view. They give a good impression of being well engineered products. The new metal cases are really cool. A quick play with the new iPod touch was fun. The interface worked well, and as a portable web browser, it was quite neat. That was all good.

For those who have not entered into an Apple store, and this was only my second time, it is not arranged like a conventional shop. The majority of the space is for product display, with lots of units setup and working to play with. At the back of the store is the rather cheesy named ‘Genius Bar’, where tech support can be had. To make a purchase, it would seem that you can talk to one of the assistants wearing a portable till in a holster. All very ‘Open Plan’.

When we got there, it was a bit busy. We spoke to one of the assistants, who then logged onto one of the demo computers, and made an appointment at the Genius Bar. Twenty minutes later, we were talking to one of the in store Genius’. He scanned the bar code from the original box and confirmed that it was now ten days since the warranty had run out. I was just about to get ready to start having a moan, when he added that as a general rule, if it is within fourteen days of the warranty running out, they will honor it. Result. That was good!

So far, from this experience, I should want to get some apple gear. But I can’t, for a number of reasons. I have often thought that I would like an iPod, but as I use Linux, there is no official support from Apple for this operating system. Until recently, it may have not been such a problem, as third party developers have provided a solution. Now with the latest range of products, it appears that Apple made a deliberate effort to raise the bar for these third part tools.

I know that one of the great features with Apple gear that it all just works together. For those that want the full Apple experience, this is great. Plug your iPod, iPhone or whatever into your Mac, and off you go. But for me, I don’t want Mac, nor do I want to run Windows. Therefore, I will only ever have a second rate experience with any Apple music player or other device. Having to rely on third part support is not good, it is bad, maybe even ugly.

WordPress upgrade

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I have just upgraded this blog to use the new WordPress 2.3 release. It was so easy, I thought that it had not worked! It is not exactly clear what has changed, but I do now have Tags and a funky tag cloud. Having only one plug-in installed, and a theme that is only a small modification of a standard theme probably helped.