…which is the state of my hearing after an annoying time with Sinusitis, and ear infection and an excess of ear wax.

For the first time since before Christmas I have full hearing in both ears! And seeing as the old Creative Jukebox will be fixed soon…

One thing I noticed when I came in to work this morning was the truly amazing level of background noise. With the ever-efficient air conditioning, the printers and the modems merrily dialling away it’s a small wonder that half the staff aren’t off with headaches.

Not that any of that matters. Nope, I’ve got my hearing back and soon I’ll have the MP3 player back. Ooh, I just couldn’t be happier.

Well, until the Lego Cloud City gets here I couldn’t be happier.

BigAl

Right, let’s see a show of hands. Who here likes Lego? And although I can’t see any actual hand raising, for the purposes of this post I’ll take it as read that you did raise you hand.

Preferably at work or college with people around about wondering what the hell you’re up to…

Anyway. Lego. Oh, it’s great isn’t it?

So much so that my sister’s shop has all my old Lego in it’s back room. And last night I just went and ordered the Lego Star Wars Cloud City set. Bwah ha ha.

This will join the Orient Expedition hot air balloon, the Knight’s Kingdom small castle and the Spiderman 2 “Spidey saves the train” set which Ruth and I have.

And just so you know, check the Lego website for the set due in September… Death Star II anyone?

BigAl

OK - I thought I would lay this out, after the disgraceful incident I had this morning.

Where you have 4 train seats in a 2×2 configuration, where 1 and 2 face 3 and 4 respectively, and 2 and 4 are next to the window, the order of occupation should be one of the following combinations:

• 4, 1, 2, 3
• 2, 3, 1, 4
• 4, 1, 3, 2
• 2, 3, 4, 1

There should be absolutely no reason why 2 people sitting with 2 spares seats should be in the situation where they are sitting opposite each other, thus denying both of them decent legroom. And the first person there gets the right to the window seat, thus the ability to lean on something to sleep.

Do not break these rules, and I won’t be forced to put your head down the chemical toilet. Understood?

mrBen

Well, after a little bit of hum-ing and haw-ing, I’ve grown myself a goatee. Only got a few days growth on it so far, but we’ll see how it goes.

I might even post a photo if you’re lucky

mrBen

Go to pretty much any website that takes personal details these days, and you’ll find a link to their privacy statement. This generally says something along the lines of ‘We won’t share your details’. My question, after an incident this week that I will relay, is: how the hell can you prove that they haven’t?

I had an email from a friend this week - it was from a service at Bebo.com, which is an address-book service, whereby your address-book is essentially stored online, and your friends can then update their details in the knowledge that you are immediately updated. Sounds good, eh? I suppose it might be, but all I know is this:

• I had to register in order to send my email address to my friend - why I had to register for his address-book service, I have no idea
• Almost immediately the amount of spam in my inbox increased noticeably

The problem is that I cannot prove that Bebo.com were the culprits. I only have circumstantial evidence to suggest that they were. Spam maillers don’t tend to tell you where they got your address from The only way, which is something I am considering, is to setup a unique email address and submit it to them, and see how quickly it gets spammed.

I’ll keep you posted

mrBen

OK - maybe you don’t think it’s cool, but I’m dead chuffed with myself. Following on from the installation of a Samba’d network RAID drive that I chronicled here I set myself another task - not much of one for all the ‘real’ sysadmins out there, but a new thing for me. I decided that I wanted secure external access to the network drive for additional users. This involves creating a Virtual Private Network (VPN) which essentially means that another machine becomes part of your network using a secure connection over the internet, as if they were actually there.

In my case, this meant getting to know OpenVPN, an open source option (surprise, surprise). A big hand here must go to Omahn, one of the #lugradio faithful, who answered all my n00b questions. Then I loaded up the OpenVPN Windows GUI and, with a bit of port shuffling and a load of hassle with the web interface of the ADSL modem in the church office, I was able to make a connection. And, as the main coup de gras, I was then able to map the network drive as if I was sitting in the office itself.

Not very exciting, really. But it was for me, I can guarantee. I guess you just had to be there…..

mrBen

Recently I, and more particularly Heather, have been enjoying the delights of Bomberclone, a clone of the classic Bomberman game. To be honest, it’s a great little game, with cool graphics, and funny sound effects. And it’s addictive as hell. To that end I thought that it would be an excellent opportunity for some husband/wife/machine bonding through the use of bomberclone network play. How wrong could I be To quote the manual:

If you are behind a firewall or a router and you expire some diffcults within the game with more as two players. You may enable the Firewall option. With this Option set on you are only able to join a game.

To paraphrase - if you’re behind a firewall, it ain’t gonna work. In fact, as far as I could see, it ain’t gonna work at all. The reason being that network play involves, from what I can tell, contacting their master server. Now - we could manage to connect and join to a game served on our local network, but couldn’t actually play. They’re welcome to correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the issue is that I don’t want port 11000 open to the whole internet (I don’t want any ports open to the whole internet, if I can help it).

Who, in this day and age, runs a computer on the internet without a firewall? (Actually, judging by some of the stats, quite a lot of people, but that doesn’t stop it from being a really stupid idea) So why, oh why, oh why, would such a quality game with a working network component, not allow itself to run properly on a local network behind a firewall. A connection to some sort of game server might be great for an online multiplayer game, or for a proprietary company to protect its assets, but I expected more from a piece of free software that, lets be honest, is niche enough that few people are going to play it online on a regular basis……

No need.

mrBen

I’m a bit low just now. It’s not enough that it’s Monday, I just found out that Hunter S. Thompson, famed American “Gonzo” journalist, died over the weekend.

I’m not sure but from the reports I’ve seen it looks like a suicide.

It’s a shame he’s gone. He was one of the world’s greatest counterculture journalists. And the world will seem a darker place now he’s not in it…

If you haven’t ever read any of his work, I’d recommend Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas, The Rum Diaries and Hells Angels. That’s just for starters.

Buy any Thompson, you’ll enjoy it.

BigAl

Those of you who read the blogmarks (over there ————> ) may have noticed some recent press about a ‘Firefox Exploit’ (which is neither a Firefox problem, nor an exploit - see workaround details here among other places).

A few thoughts/points about this problem:
- The issues resolves around using non-ASCII characters in a domain name, thus allowing (for instance) the Nordic countries to use their funny extra letters in domain names.
- For the first time ever that I can recall, IE isn’t affected by this issue. Why? Because they don’t support the new technology. Although you can get a plugin to add in, thus making them vulnerable.
- _Any_ browser that supports IDN is affected, including Firefox, Mozilla, Safari, Opera, as well as others.
- Operasoft have said that there is nothing wrong with their implementation, and so won’t be performing a ‘fix’.

And here’s my suggestion for a possible workaround - in a similar way that they do for https browsers should change the background colour of the addressbar for URLs that contain non-ASCII characters. While this may not be all-encompassing, it would seem to be a simple and effective way for this to be highlighted to the user. Perhaps there should also be a pop-up that is cancellable (’do not warn me about this again’) for those who are using these on a regular basis.

Just my £0.02

mrBen

I have to confess that I’ve avoided much of the press about the new ‘Cell’ processor that IBM, Sony and Toshiba have developed, and which is slated as the heart of the new PS3 console. However, when I came across this article, I decided it was time to put pen to paper, as it were. This was doubly fuelled by an interesting conversation with bigkevmcd on the ScotLUG IRC channel.

I am amazed, staggered even, that an article about a new processor, especially one that suggest that the success of a new processor will rely on the applications available, and the ease of development, has completely failed to mention Linux at all.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, this is just mrBen going off on one of his Linux rants again. And maybe you’re right. But consider this: Linux is the only (repeat, _only_) operating system that has managed to be completely cross-platform, working on virtually any hardware you can imagine, from tiny embedded chips in watches, all the way up to the biggest of IBM’s mainframes. As bigkev pointed out to me, 5 years ago it wouldn’t matter to a new processor whether or not it was Linux compatible, but these days it could be a make or break issue.

If the Cell chip does get a version of Linux on it, then it will immediately gain a huge base of applications, and a large developer community.

It would also make for an interesting scenario if PS3 games were Linux-compatible in some way….

mrBen

Bootnote: There are a large number of Operating Systems out there, and an even larger number of different processors (”architectures”) - here’s a flavour:

As a self-confessed open-source-ophile (I don’t yet class myself as a ‘zealot’…..) there are a number of projects that I keep an eye on, without necessarily being an active user. 2 such projects have been Mozilla Sunbird, the calendaring part of the Mozilla project, and Open-Xchange a groupware suite that was open sourced last year.

This week, however, saw the announcement of the Hula Project, a mail/calendaring/address book server/client. It was upon seeing this that I began to ask the following question:

Does anybody _really_ use a full groupware suite, or are we happy with small, interoperable applications? Open-Xchange is a very powerful piece of software - it has forums, document repositories, calendaring, mail, IM, to-do lists, knowledge base, project management, etc, etc. In some ways it reminds me of Lotus Notes for that reason. Similarly, OpenGroupware has features-abounding. But is that what the majority of people want? (We’re talking SOHO rather than enterprise, although SMB is possible too) Or is all they really want their email, a calendar with which they can create appointments, and a list of contacts?

One of Hula’s “killer features” (if and when it works) is the ability to invite _anybody_ to a meeting, as long as you have an email for them. If they do get this working fully, then this will be a major turning point in open-source calendaring, which is lacking in places.

So - what will I be voting for? I am hoping to set up a small test machine at home with one of my spare boxes quite soon, and I will try out both Open-Xchange and Hula at that point, and so may write a review. But until that point, lets take a small case-study with which I am familiar:

The church office is a workplace for 3 people, plus there are others within the church ‘organisation’ that don’t work physically in the office. They run a mix of email clients (mainly Outlook and Outlook Express, but let’s not go there). Calendaring is likewise done on various clients, but there is no Exchange server so this calendaring is not ’shared’ or ‘collaborative’ in any meaningful way. As I understand it, there is an online calendaring application provided by our web developer, but when I spoke to the administrator it became obvious that it was not being used, if, indeed, it was functional.
In an environment like this, a groupware suite like OpenXchange, or OpenGroupware (or even Lotus Notes) is unlikely to make any real difference to the working environment - it is too complicated - too much - for the needs of the users. Something like Hula, which provides 3 simple functions, but has advanced features within those functions, could be an absolute Godsend, and actually make a difference to the working environment.
For this reason, I will probably try Hula first, although I still like the idea of OX.

YMMV

[edit]Just seen this rant too - similar lines but probably more coherent[/edit]

mrBen

Welcome to the revolution.

mrBen

(see also Part One)

Ok - that game is now over, so it is time to write some final reflections in full reflecto-vision. To add to my cons list from before, I would add Zombies - they are particularly annoying, although the return of a few zombies in the last mission is eased massively by the fact that you have acquired a flame-thrower. This makes the whole thing much less painful, and zombies are, in my opinion, one of the most annoying (not necessarily the most challenging, mind, just the most annoying, and not in a good way) aspects of the game. I also experienced a couple of crashes during the last level, although I think that may have been a hardware issue, rather than the software itself.

I cannot stress enough the quality of the level design in this game - it is quite possible to play for 20 minutes, or for 2 hours, without getting overly frustrated, and each time feeling that you have achieved something new. I have played a number of first person shooters, and I have found this to be the best single player. Yes - even better than Half Life, IMO, and all because of the level design - HL has no levels, and so at times I felt I was getting nowhere.

Finishing the game was just as exciting as I had expected, and there was a nice bit of humour in the final cutscene. The final end-of-level boss was difficult to kill, although as with all the others there was a distinct technique to be learnt in order to succeed.

I suppose one question is whether or not there is any replayability in a game like this. I have to say that there are definitely a couple of levels that I would like to go back and play again, plus there are a whole load of secrets that I haven’t found and might go back and look for (or more likely use a walkthrough to find!).

In summary - if you’re a FPS fan and want a good single-player game, then you should be able to pick this up for £5-£10 and enjoy it thoroughly. If you’re a Linux games player, then this goes double for you.

The final question is - what will be the next game on my list. Well - I have a couple of ideas: I would quite like a copy of the Linux port of Soldier of Fortune, although it’s getting hard to find now - if you have a copy and would like to sell it, let me know. The other one that has peaked my interest is Postal 2, based on the Unreal engine, and recently released for Linux.

mrBen

Oh yes. I did it. Return to Castle Wolfenstein is now complete!!!!!

Part 2 of my review will arrive shortly (once my hands have stopped shaking).

mrBen

First things first. I believe in having a quality public transport system. I believe that, for the money we’re paying, the buses should be reliable and clean.

I don’t believe that money should instead be spent on wee television sets, like the ones on aeroplanes, which play music videos or other mince.

Which is what the bus I got on this morning to work had.

I couldn’t actually believe it. Even now I’m of the opinion that it was some kind of Weetabix-related hallucination.

But as much as I’d like to believe that Ruth would spike my breakfast cereal just for laughs, I don’t think she did this morning.

I don’t think the bus companies realise that what people want is regular, reliable services that are clean and safe. Piped second-rate music videos are not part of that experience.

I suppose what made it worse is that the two videos I caught on my way to work were by these people who nobody has heard of outside of cable music stations. I can’t see much of the way of Prog Rock making it’s way onto the bus…

BigAl

For a good while now I’ve been looking for a decent comic book database. I know I could probably rattle off some generic database but I didn’t really want to waste the time (which is precious enough).

So database hunting i went…

Now, you can spend a small fortune on professional comic tracking software but I’d rather spend the money on the comics themselves.

The first decent one that I was happy with was Phpmycomic and i’ll use that one eventually but I wanted something more straight forward initially to get a handle on what I actually had in my collection.

So I now use the Simple Comics Database. It’s not brilliant but it does the job for me.

And it’s helped me catalogue 1222 comics so far.

And I’m still not finished yet…

BigAl

You would think so.

Well, check out Michael Franti & Spearhead. I went to the concert last year (or was it the year before?) with the Edgemeister.

And it rocked.

So you can find the guys at the above link and check them out for yourselves. They helpfully put some mp3s on the site. My favourites are here and here.

BigAl

And I’m sure this means nothing to you but, for myself and Ruth, it’s a good excuse to show films that some people might not otherwise watch.

We had a select few last night, having only told people about it on Monday night.

So last night, just after 8pm, Ruth, me, Annie, Chris and Michael settled down for Metropolis. No, not the Fritz Lang version (which we will have to show at some point in our “incomprehensible films that go on for ever” along with the original of Solaris) but the Japanese animation version.

It very entertaining and quite moving. Certainly everyone there seemed to enjoy it.

In two weeks time I think we’re showing Spirited Away which just as good. Looking forward to it already…

BigAl

Oh, it was a challenge last night. The kids were marginally better behaved than last week but it was still difficult.

Yours truly was teaching “Jesus cares about us” telling the introduction of Matthew. By the end of the story I was of a mind to quote The Almighty (Scottish metal band, not God) with the lyric “Jesus loves you but I don’t”, but I thought better of it.

Laura was on games for the first time and she did well when they bothered to behave. And we had a quality coin-rubbing craft.

Whoo hoo! Will the excitement ever end?

Ah, it’s not that bad. But their behaviour is making it a struggle. And I suppose it IS worth it in the end.

BigAl