Thanks to Kyle.

In a vision John sees Jesus speaking to seven different churches.

I happen to just be back from an Alpha meeting, and so the closest book was Questions of Life by Nicky Gumbel.

The rules for this meme thing are :

* Grab the nearest book.
* Open it to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
* Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

And now I get to tag 5 other people with the meme

Heather
Al
Jono
Aq
Phil

Enjoy, folks.

mrBen

Wow, it’s been a long time since I posted. And there’s _loads_ of things I could say, but I’ll make do with a few catch ups:

• New phone - got myself a Nokia 6500 Slide phone on a contract from Orange, after my previous phone (an aging Motorola V220) lost the ability to put sound through the earpiece. First impressions of the new phone are good, although the keys feel quite small at times. And the preinstalled Golf Tour game is really addictive!
• Severed Fifth, which I have blogged about before finally released their debut album, Denied by Reign. If you’re into chugging heavy metal, then you might like it, although, in a weird twist, I find that some of the “clean” vocals sound a bit weird.
• Ubuntu have released their 8.10 edition, the Intrepid Ibex release. Came out yesterday - get it while it’s hot (or wait a couple of weeks for the servers to cool down, and initial bugfixes to be released )
• Classic Yak continues to chug along nicely. Episode 4 came out last Monday (just). We’re getting about 60-ish downloads for most of the episodes, which is not too bad. And the editing quality is getting better. Mostly
• Heather and I continue on the Invest course. But more of that to come at a later date.
• I’m finally getting round to building the relatively huge Django project that is the church website. Also more of that when there are things to actually see in production

That’s probably enough for now.

mrBen

There’s a small games studio in the UK called Introversion Software who have, over the past couple of years, quietly produced some of the most interesting games around. Moreover, their games all run not just on Windows, but Mac and (most importantly) Linux. There are 3 titles in their history, Uplink, Darwinia and Defcon (you can buy all 3 for only £20 for the download edition at the moment, or £10 for Uplink on its own). I have, in fact, talked about Uplink and Darwinia before.

Anyway, enough of the blurb. I got hold of a copy of Uplink the other day, and was a little concerned about how difficult it would be to install under Ubuntu Hardy. I needn’t have worried - it was so easy. But I thought it would be best to lay out how I did it for Google to find. All of this info can also be found on the Uplink Forums which are still active.

How to do it:

1. Download the latest patch. I used the Loki installer version of 1.55 (get it here) but it’s probably worth checking the Patch forum in case there’s a new release out
2. Run the installer - sudo sh uplink-patch-1.55.sh which installs the patch to /usr/local/games/uplink although you can install it to your home directory if you like.
3. Pop in the CD, and unzip the linux version somewhere convenient ( unzip /media/cdrom/linux/uplink.zip )
4. Copy the .dat files into the /usr/local/games/uplink/lib folder. ( cp *.dat /usr/local/games/uplink/lib )
5. Profit!

Once you’ve done all that, you should be able to run uplink just by typing uplink from the command line, or clicking Applications -> Other -> uplink.

Hope that helps someone enjoy the game as much as I do.

mrBen

(culled from The Resurgence)

A truly fascinating video (particularly the Q&A session at the end) of Tim Keller, a Christian author and apologist, speaking at the Google campus, as part of their Authors@Google series. He’s talking a bit about his book “The Reason for God”.

(or click here if it’s not embedding where you’re reading)

mrBen

Classic Yak Episode 1 (”Things to Sing in Lakeland When You’re Dead”) is now available!

You can download it direct from ClassicYak.org or listen from the streaming media player.

You can subscribe using your podcasting software from one of the links at the bottom of the main page.

You can find it on iTunes at http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=286589056

You can sign up for the forums or email us.

If you’re in church on Sunday, you can get a free sticker!

For those who missed my original post, CY is a monthly podcast aimed at discussion real-world issues from a Christian perspective. Hope you like it.

mrBen

OK - it’s been a bit late coming, but I thought I really ought to pen some words about LRL this year.

This was originally billed as the end of LugRadio. However, while the podcast has now finished, it was announced at the event that there will be an LRL 2009, which is brilliant. The only downside was that it meant that I completely failed to mourn the passing of LR properly.

If I was to sum up this years event in one word, it would be FUN. This was the most fun I have had in a long time. Not that the other LRLs weren’t fun (quite the contrary), just that this year was, well, “funner”.

I didn’t get to many talks this year, but I was involved in a fair few bits and pieces. The only talk I saw was Bruno’s “Baguette on Snails” talk, which was, as expected, hilarious, but also conveyed a serious point. I did my own talk on Saturday afternoon, which went well, and seemed to get some good response. I also got commissioned into the “Mass Debate” on Sunday afternoon - sitting on the stage with Jeremy Allison, Matthew Garrett and Max Spevack was, I admit, a little daunting. While they probably wouldn’t see it, I would regard them as “celebrities” of the open source world, and I felt a little, well, insignificant beside them. I managed to say some stuff - hopefully it was insightful

My main occupation during the weekend was to stroll around while dressed in a large chinny raccoon suit. It was swelteringly hot, but I had a brilliant time. It was like being Mickey Mouse at Disneyland. I was originally worried that it would be a 1 joke wonder, but it seemed to be immensely popular with everyone, and I got my photo taken loads. Oh, and got involved in a little stunt during Neuro’s talk

Socially, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights were all great. The Karaoke on Saturday night was much better than I expected, and everyone seemed to have a good time.

I suppose I had better say a quick word about the Gong-a-Thong Lightbulb Talk Extravaganza this year, mostly because I ended up presenting it. I’d say that I would leave it to your imagination, but there are enough photos on the internet should you wish to corrupt your innocent young minds. There isn’t a proper explanation for this bizarre aberration in my otherwise normal behaviour, other than I was asked on the Thursday before, and agreed when it became obvious that they needed someone and it would require a hero to step forward. And I guess that’s the ultimate thing - the LR community has always made me _feel_ like a hero. The fact that it was, apparently, the funniest one ever (sorry Drinky and Aaron) was an added bonus. Oh, and the raccoon puppet on the front was there for additional coverage - the large, furry, stripey penis effect was just an added bonus.

A few thankyous need to go in here too - a number of people really made the weekend work for me:

• Heather - for letting me go in the first place.
• neuro - for driving me there and back
• Jono - for letting me sleep on his sofa/floor over the weekend
• MrsRon - for giving the crew breakfast and lunch
• Steph (aka babyRon) - for helping me in and out of my costume, and keeping me hydrated through the day
• Xalior - for buying the Chinnysuit, and helping out with the display stuff

(Hopefully I’ve not missed anyone)

Roll on LRL 2009

mrBen

That is all

mrBen

PS - Why did no-one tell me about this sooner?

I’ve been a long time user of the irssi IRC client, and for a while now I’ve been wondering if I could log all my private messages without having to log all the channel history as well. I log all my instant messaging in Pidgin, because it often has useful information that I want to check back for, but I’ve lost a lot of stuff by not having logging in irssi.

So here’s how you do it, in 2 simple commands:

/set autolog on
/set autolog_level MSGS -crap -clientcrap -ctcps


This will set up a log structure something like this:
~/irclogs/<network>/<nick>.log
for instance ~/irclogs/freenode/mrben.log if I had PMed you on the Freenode network (where I hang out).

Anyway - I thought this was really useful, and not as easy to find on Google as it should have been. Enjoy.

mrBen

OK, so I’m a bit late blogging about this, but I wanted to do justice to the subject. Other people have written great posts on their blogs (not least Jono, Aq and Adam from the presenting team, and community luminaries kNo and davee) but I felt that I had to add something of my own.

Jono phoned me on the Thursday night before the release (which luckily meant I found out before I went on holiday, rather than a week after the show was released). LugRadio was finishing. I have to admit, I was quite choked up on the train home - it was as if someone close to me had died. I know that sounds melodramatic, but you have to understand that LugRadio has been a huge part of my life over the last 4.5 years. I’ve contributed (to date) 3193 posts to the forum, or over 2 posts a day for every day between March 10th 2004 (when I joined the forums) and today.

I’m not saying this to make me sound good. But the LugRadio community has been a real home for me over the last few years. And it’s been a community where I have become (rightly or wrongly) known and (dis)respected. I know that the community will not die, but I think it will become a very different place when the show stops being released.

So, for me at least, it is the end of an era. LugRadio has, to all intents and purposes, changed my life in many ways. Having that end is an extremely sad thing for me, but at least we have LRL in 10 days (10!) to celebrate everything that LR has become known for and done.

mrBen

[Footnote] I completely understand the reasons for the team stopping the show. I don’t blame them at all, or hold any grudge. This wasn’t supposed to be a moan - hopefully you won’t read it as such.

Got this in my inbox recently, but it’s so full of basic errors that it’s just not funny anymore. Hints in bold:

from London Metropolitan Police Dept.
OK - it’s a good start, but you should’ve checked that metropolice.gov.uk actually existed first…..
reply-to boc1473@gmail.com
And give a convincing reply-to address….
to undisclosed-recipients
Write to _me_ otherwise it sounds like you’re sending it to loads of people.
date Sun, Jul 6, 2008 at 7:34 AM
subject Special Investigation Bureau (SIB)

At least host your fake image somewhere impressive. A url of http://onin.com/fp/fmiru/london_met_police_crest.jpg isn’t exactly convincing
Working together for a safer London

ANTI-MONEY LAUNDERING UNIT
Wellington House 67-73 Buckingham Gate
London SW1E 6BE

Attention: Sir/Madam,
Dated: 05/07/08

RE: AN IN-DEPT INVESTIGATION INTO YOUR DELAYED PAYMENT

We wish to inform you that it has come to our notice through our online security service that a huge amount of United States Dollars was scheduled to be remitted into your bank account a few months ago.

According to the report we received from the paying bank here in London, it states expressly that you have been dealing with the wrong people who have used several fake documents to obtain money from you for payment of charges/fees which we consider to be obnoxious.

We have been mandated to step into your transaction and put a STOP ORDER pending until you revert to us for clarification why your money is been delayed more than is necessary. You are hereby advised to stop further communications with your partners in Africa and Europe and co-operate with us to assist you get your payment in record time.
Since when did the Police assist me in getting money?

The government of the United Kingdom will not hesitate to bring you to book if you ignore this notice as your payment is causing so much embarassment to our government and global financial Institutions who repose so much trust in the British banking sector for competence and accountability.
Hahahahahahaha

We look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.

My direct telephone number is:+44 70457 17275
Direct fax:+44 8709 743597

We are glad to be of services to you.

Yours faithfully,
Inspector Donald Boldman
Metropolitan Police Department
London, England

CC: British Home Office Logistics Department
CC: United States Financial Action Task Force (FATF)
if you’re going to include CCs on the bottom, you should probably CC someone in the email….

mrBen

OK - I’m back from a week away at my parents, and I have 2 big things I want to talk about. The announcement of the end of LugRadio could, I guess, be rolled up in this post, but I think it deserves a post of it’s own, so I’ll get to that soon.

However, my last post hinted at the arrival of something new, and then I completely failed at setting up a post to be published on Monday.

So - what was it all about. Well, the answer is Classic Yak. Classic Yak is a brand new project, put together by myself and Al and a couple of other guys in our church. It’s a monthly, discussion based podcast (definite LugRadio influence there) aimed at tackling real-world issues from a Christian viewpoint (less of an LR influence ). We released the pilot show last Monday, and will be releasing on the last Monday of each month for at least the next 6 months.

We hope that it will be an entertaining listen, and will stimulate some useful discussion. There doesn’t appear to be anything quite like it in the Christian podcast market, so hopefully there is a niche there we can fill. Our first episode talked about Big Brother, but we’re aiming on having a full blooded discussion about the Lakeland Revival as the main segment in Episode One (due out 28th July).

Feel free to take a listen (apologies for the odd audio glitch in the pilot) and give us some feedback on show@classicyak.org.

mrBen

There’s a HP printer in the church office. One of those fax/scan/print jobs. And it hasn’t been working properly. Bad printer.

The error of choice is “supply expired”. I think it’s a empty ink cartridge, so I check the levels and it’s showing plenty of ink in both. But the colour cartridge is a compatible one, and we’ve had trouble with them in the past. Hmmm.

Anyway, after faffing around with cartridges I do something I should have done in the beginning. I check the error online.

It seems those cheeky chaps at HP put an expiry date on their cartridges. And the printer will not use it after that date. Bad call.

Feeling a bit dubious about this, I follow the instructions and whip out the internal battery and lo and behold the printer prints!

BigAl

Frequent readers of this blog will know that I spend a huge proportion of my time talking about computers, but every now and then I venture out into other subjects. I’ve talked in the past about Digital Rights Management (DRM) - the stuff that means that you can’t listen to the CD you bought on your mp3 player, or transfer your paid-for iTunes music when you get to your 4th iPod - and Creative Commons, the license for creative-types to release their works under to protect their authorship, but allow their works to be distributed.

Into this mix comes Jono Bacon, one of the LugRadio presenters, who also doubles as a heavy metal musician. He has just embarked on a new project called Severed Fifth, an experiment into seeing how far you can get by bypassing the existing music industry, and leveraging a little bit of internet and popular culture savvy. This will, of course, involve him releasing a load of music, but it’s about a lot more than that.

Take a listen to his introductory message over at SeveredFith.com, and, even if you’re not into heavy metal, if you’re into music at all then this is a project worth taking an interest in.

mrBen

I spent 7 happy years of my life living in the Bletchley area (now part of Milton Keynes), but now, as a full-grown geek (and also currently reading Cryptonomicon) I’m sad that I’ve never visited Bletchley Park, home of the Allied codebreaking team, not least Alan Turing one of the founding fathers of computing, and also the home of Colossus, the world’s first programmable, digital, electronic, computing devices. The Park also features in the film Enigma, because they were responsible for the breaking of the German Enigma machine codes.

Anyway, there’s talk of having to close Bletchley Park (which is now a museum), which I think is a Bad Thing (TM). And it seems I’m not the only one, so go and sign the petition.

mrBen

Now that it’s been formally announced, I can confirm that I will be speaking at this year’s LugRadio Live UK

This is going to be a new thing for me. I’m going to be pulling together a lot of my thoughts on the future of Linux, user support and advocacy and I’m more than a little nervous. Still - hope to see you there

mrBen

(Oh, and Digg It too)

My last post (Inoffensive Advocacy) made it in as a segment on the most recent episode of LugRadio. Hurrah!

(Apologies to the Planet LugRadio folk, who will already know this )

mrBen

This morning I had a really long and interesting conversation with Aq on IRC. One of the ideas I was discussing with him was using technology to cleverly, and inoffensively, promote Free software within Linux. (For those of you who haven’t listened to the latest episode of LugRadio, Aq had been bemoaning the continuing issue of people who use Linux but aren’t necessarily using or interested in the concepts of Free Software as a whole - but more on that another time).

A good example of what I am talking about is the Restricted Drivers manager in Ubuntu. If Ubuntu has to install proprietary drivers during installation, most likely either for a graphics card, or a wifi card, then it pops up this box to inform you that it has done so. There are 3 points to note with this dialog:

1. It still works - it’s not forcing you not to use them (unobtrusive)
2. It informs - it gives you the reason _why_ proprietary drivers are bad (informative)
3. It only appears _if_ you have the (in)appropriate hardware (relevant)

I think we could use similar prompts for other areas, and one area I thought might be good would be the area of closed media formats. (I have talked a bit about this in the past - I’m not going to go into the reasons why closed media formats are bad here, but a good starting point if you’re interested would be this video about DRM (although DRM != closed formats, it’s still a hot topic ))

Thus, I propose an additional script to go into Linux that works in the following way:

1. When you plug in your media player (iPod, iRiver, Archos, some random Korean player, whatever), as part of the auto-detection it scans a database of media players to discover if it has support for Ogg Vorbis
2. If Yes, then it pops up a window (see below) confirming that Ogg is supported, and offering to convert any existing media folders from MP3 to Ogg, while giving a reason why this is a preferred option.
3. If No, then it just does the normal operations for when you plugin a media player

Note that the box has a “Never ask again for this device” option, so that it doesn’t nag you - the idea is that, like the restricted drivers manager, you only ever see this box once (per device). It also fulfills the 3 points I gave above - unobtrusive, informative, and relevant.

The table view is supposed to contain a list of folders which contain MP3 files (or other proprietary formats) and checkboxes for you to select if you want to convert them.

[edit]Oops - the image is a bit wide for my theme. Click on it to see the full thing[/edit]

Also note that this is just a mockup - there are probably a few things that could be improved upon/changed. But hopefully you get the idea.

mrBen

Firstly, apologies for a distinct lack of posting in the last few weeks (months? ). I hope to improve on this. I do have a few projects in the works, which will be revealed here hopefully within the next couple of weeks.

Quick pimp for an excellent piece of software called Zattoo - it basically allows you to watch terrestrial TV on your PC over the internet (no TV card required, but you should have a TV license). A great way to add another TV to your house.

mrBen

Or why some things just don’t age well at all…

On a recent Internet trawl I happened upon this.

That’s right kiddies. Glen Michael’s Cavalcade.

Wow.

I don’t know how long it’s going to available on that link so enjoy it while you can.

This particular episode, one I’m sure I remember (although I would have been seven at the time and I can barely remember what happened last week…), has The Krankies, The Priesthill Puppet Group and the usual selection of quality cartoons.

I recommend that everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) checks this out.

BigAl

FoxMarks is a handy tool for FireFox that allows you to use your bookmarks over several machines while keeping them synchronised.

Currently I’m using it on my Win XP & Ubuntu machines, my login on Ruthy’s laptop and my machine at work.

Very Handy.

Almost as good as the Wiki on a Stick and portable yWriter setups I have.

Dang, dontcha just love technology?

BigAl