BinaryJam

This morning on radio 4 I heard more about the Conway case.  I don’t have a problem with him employing relatives, its the only sensible thing to do in situations like this.

I’m not really writing about him what has annoyed me more is the remarks made by Roger Gale MP.  Complaining about justice and being guilty until proven innocent.

Well for a start, Conway stood up in the House of Commons and apologised, sure sign of innocence there.

But mainly Gale seems to have no idea about so-called British Justice. 

Conway has not been arrested.  He has not been questioned by the Police (yet anyway), he has not been led away in handcuffs.  An investigating body discovered some possible impropriety and gave him a slap on the wrist.  Gale is ranting on about a witch-hunt and this poor sod being labeled guilty.

I’ve seen British Justice in action.  I saw my brother led off in handcuffs due to an untrue accusation which later came out and he was eventually released.  He was innocent yet led off in handcuffs by the police and treated pretty poorly, well like an absolute git is a better statement.  Where was justice for him? no wasting police time charges arose from this event.

I have a friend who committed white collar crime, yes he was guilty, yes he went to jail, he got what was coming to him some might say.  What he also go was almost a year  if not longer under virtual house arrest until his court case came up.  During this time he was not allowed to leave town except to go to and from work, he had to sleep at his own house every night, his bank accounts were frozen and all transactions had to be done in cash an allowance was paid from his wages in cash for him to do this, so no Direct Debit discounts for him.  None of this was taken into account during sentencing.  It might not sound much here, but it was one step above electronic tagging at home.  During this whole period he was innocent, he was only guilty when proven in court, yet treated to great British Justice.  Had he been proven innocent in court there is no compensation for being treated like he was. 

So Mr Gale.  Don’t harp on about innocent till proven guilty unless you know what the hell you are on about.  Conway has it easy at the moment, a lot of press coverage and a fine, perhaps 10 days away from the house of commons.  The amount of times I’ve seen an empty house of commons I doubt this is a big deal.  He can be conducting surgeries instead.

/Rant

Its time I dipped my feet into learning Powershell, I know its going to figure a lot more in my new role, well my old role I’m going back to.

So fire up Powershell and here we go,

ll – that works

cat – that work

mv/cp – that works too

grep – Hmm no

sed – nope

awk – nope

Ok, Ok its not UNIX, might need some help here.  Lots of examples lets paste them in and see what happens.  First I need an editor

vi – damn done it again

Really don’t fancy editing in a separate window.

I did find a pretty little Powershell tool though “PowerGui“.  The main tool I find pretty pointless, when you have gone to the lengths of creating a script language why stick the output in a GUI again, It’s not my cup of tea but others might like it.  What I do like is the Script editor that comes with it. 

Now this is a good tool.  Its a script editor, you can just cut and paste your examples for leaning then press play (or step, built in debugger!)  and the output appears in a little output window.  Much more Vis Studio and more of what I’ve been used to.

So in the absence of vi, here is something much better, lovely, this should help quicken the pace.

Well yesterday I got the xbox back.  Two weeks and one day since they received the parcel, total turnaround from leaving my hands was 18 days.  Under the 3 weeks but only just.  Internal processing took two weeks examining the UPS info, there must be a lot of repairs going on.

In my comments of a previous post it was suggested that I might get the new version with hdmi ports and better fans, well no such luck.  This is now my fourth xbox 360 and two Christmas holidays curtailed,  I could be a drama queen and say ruined but it is only a console, but my son was not chuffed by a long shot, to him it was pretty dire.  Taking that into consideration it would be the least that they could do. 

Apparently not the least they could do is repair it, (new mother board, new dvd drive) and give me a months subscription to Xbox live gold.  Big Whoop!  I already have a gold subscription to live.

The design of the 360 is at fault, instead of fixing it and doing right by customers an endless stream of recycling repairs seems to be going on as its probably cheaper than issuing proper replacements with new MB layouts.

Xbox tech peeps feel free to complain about my harshness in the comments, then just remember I’m on my 4th, two work colleagues are on their 5th and 7th. 

So what can I do about it, well nowt it would appear as it is guaranteed to 2009, but what about after that ?  So far it would seem a repaired xbox has a single year lifespan before breaking down again. I have one more year of repairs and then I’m on my own. 

What am I going to do, well I’m still not sure, there are games on the xbox that my son loves, Kameo for one, well done Rare this is a corker and we revisit it over and over again.  This prevents me from just selling the thing on eBay.  So I’m stuck with it for a while a least.

However I decided that I can no longer invest in anything else for such an unreliable product.  In march my subscription to live will be cancelled.  I will not buy any more games for this console, if I do they will be second hand pre-owned games after a long enough period so that they are as cheap as possible.

Any one else having similar problems, consider doing the same, you may not wish to cancel your live subscription, but choose to buy second hand games from a reliable source (one that guarantees they work).

I gave serious thought to getting a PS3, but I can only get hold of a 40gb version which does not do backwards compatibility (xbox makes don’t feel smug about this your backwards compatibility sucks too), Europe was severely screwed by Sony in not delivering a unit with the emotion chip in it, but at least they are screwing the rest of the world now.  So until a version is released with backwards compatibility to PS1/PS2 with a larger storage capacity, 40gb come on, 1/2 gig drives are cheap as chips nowadays, I ain’t buying one.

I cancelled my OneCare account too, not just out of spite but cos I never really felt it worked.

It would appear that I am suffering from a similar problem that many others have encountered.  Some more digging and exact wording in google has found my particular problem.

The documentation is lying.

Xubuntu requires a 192mb to install.  I have 192mb.  It’s just that some of it is running linux.  Its because of this I get the system install hanging at 15%.

Apparently the installer for [X]Ubuntu, ubiquity, disables the swap files to install, a sensible precaution if you are about to rebuild the whole disk, however in my situation in a manual partitioning case, the swap could have been left alone, in fact some clever so and so edited the perl scripts to stop it disabling a swap he created on a USB key, I could not find those scripts as they had been relocated in the new version else I’d have give it a go.

Unfortunately the text-installation is not included in the primary ISO’s and the alternate CD is required.  This is good news for me and other with even less ram as the Alternate CD only requires 64mb to install.  Just what it will install I am curious about.  I’m hoping that a text only version of linux is not on the cards, that’s so 1988*.

*Xwindows may have been about in 1988 but not in the commercial sector of the SME’s it was VT220′s as far as the eye could see, with some really bad terminfo and termcap entries, I had to rewrite them for our installations.

Well I’ve tried to avoid them as long as possible. But I have finally come round to using regex’s.

Considering that I came from a Unix background to Windows world you’d think that it would be second nature to me, but no. If ever there was a “sed” script that needed writing, I’d do it in awk, giving me power and less reliance on the old regex element of things.

I can’t avoid it any longer.  I would dabble now and again, I had Chris Sell’s Regex tool installed to help out now and again, and of course Stuart to ask and say “Hey how do I do this in this damn regex nonsense again ?”. 

But now there is truly a tool that is helpful.  Expresso, from ultrapico,  is just great at creating regexes.  Now there are many good tools out there but they have to fit the brain of the user and this one fits mine.  It was down to this tool I finally got it, it introduced names groups and replacement section or whatever they are called enabling me to do complex search and replaces that I wanted but couldn’t figure out.

So if your still a ludite after all this time then take a look at this tool, complete with a great help file which is actually the test data  as well.  Brilliant, just brilliant.

Considering great advancements have been made in linux installs, why is it so hard when it goes wrong.

My ubuntu attempt failed miserably, I admit I’m trying to install it on an old old machine, but if it boots into ubuntu, which is full blown linux from CD why does it fail miserably to install.

Were I not familiar with windows and linux and partitions I would have a dead machine by now, had I been a normal user trying this I would be stuck.  Having tried googling problems all I find are forums filled with fanboys slaggin off each others distro.  The level of support I have found in the community for linux is abysmal compared to windows.  At least MS has support.microsoft, ubuntu’s equiv was pitiful.

Now after clearing down the disks and doing a Suse install, which went great until reboot time, I find myself in the same old situation.

I’m confronted with a white screen.  Completely blank. The forums are of no use whatsoever, again.  If I were a normal user then again I have a dead box with nowhere to turn because I didn’t buy this thing.  The linux boys would have you believe that linux is a great alternative for everyone to windows, but it aint, its a long long way from being an end user product.  It’s great for techies like me with a bit of knowledge but not for the rest of the world.

In case your wondering how I fixed the white screen. Here’s how.

Its a window manager problem.  It’s trying to display at a resolution or color depth or sync rate not compatible with your monitor.

First you need to get to a normal Terminal Window, this can be done by pressing ctrl-alt 1 or 2 and will switch from the white screen to a text login.  Login using “root” as the user and the password you gave during the install.

I tried running a program called Sax2 but as the window manager was already running it said could not open device.

So I ran “mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.old”

Then “cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf.install /etc/X11/xorg.conf”

Switched back to the window manager screen with Ctrl-Alt-F8 and hit Ctrl-Alt-Backspace twice, this kills the windows manager and restarts it in the nastiest way possible.

But hey presto it worked, it started in a low-res mode.  Then I could use the interface and programs to set it up properly.

If you are thinking of having a go on linux, do it on an old machine so you can at least do stuff whilst the linux machine is dead.  Buy a book complete with Distro, it wil help you no end in trying to fix your problems,  I relied on an old RHat7 book I had to gain the knowledge, its transferable knowledge for most of it. 

Give it a go but tread lightly.

Apparently Ubuntu – Just Works.

Well I thought I’d find out.  I have an Old Laptop its a Sony Vaio PCG-F403, basically it is 450Mhz and has 192mb of memory.  Its old and slow. 

So I start with the ISO, downloaded it eventually from a mirror and burned away.

Here goes.  It opened with a pretty Ubuntu logo did some linuxy things, more linux things, then a sample from the Lion King before opening into, Linux. 

That was a surprise, no horrible stand-alone installer, straight into Ubuntu Linux and you can use it there and then.  This looked promising.  So I started the Installer, an icon on the desktop saying Install with an icon of a drive and an arrow going into it, fairly self explanatory.

The installer starts and I pick my country etc then get to the Partitioning, the bit that always went wrong before, the bit I end up having to go into dos, delete partitions, then back in use something called disk druid to manually partition things.  Only this time no disk druid, just three radio buttons.  Guided – resize, Guided – whole disk and manual.  So I selected Guided whole disk.  Enter some login details and away it goes.

Or rather it doesn’t.

I had tried to install Suse before, it had decided that the 5gb drive was all swap space and took that leaving nothing for anything else.  Now Ubuntu decided to use that swap space and could not install as it was using it.  Well it all fell in a heap.

Unlike Suse I had the power of linux behind me so could halt the installer and manually edit the partitions with GParted a partition editor.  So I deleted everything and created a small swap partition.  Having done all this I started the installation again.  Again I let it do Whole disk, hoping that this time it could delete partitions correctly and cope.  Its taking some time.  Its crashed.

Ideally I would just nuke the drive, but then because the memory is low it needs to swap to do the install.

Time to try again, my partitions are still intact so its a manual partition installation this time.

Crashed.  Again.

So thus far, Ubuntu “doesnt just work”.  Well not on my system.  Perhaps I need the Xubuntu version instead for teeeny tiny systems. 

Shame it was looking really good and the bits I came across were really good, if you ignore all the crashing.

Found this on the interweb.

http://www.cynergysystems.com/blogs/page/rickbarraza?entry=connecting_to_the_wii_control 

It’s a video of some chap whose created a Minority Report interface using

WPF

.NET

WiiMote

Fancy Custom pair of gloves (with leds in the fingers I reckon)

A piece of string

It’s quite impressive, It uses Brian Peeks .Net library for interaction with the WiiMote.(Other Article in case your websense blocks it). 

Then using the custom hardware (gloves) can control the items on screen.   The Wiimote can track up to four infra-red LED items at a time, the rest is all software.

This should be possible in Silverlight 2.0 as well.,

**UPDATE** : reading the forums its unlikely this is the case.  Silverlight reacts to the keys and the mouse specifically, people are saying the sway silverlight is built, is that is is not possible.

Technorati tags: Silverlight, WPF, Wiimote

Considering just how bad the view is, there are some high spots.  Like today a lovely pair of bullfinches decided to sit outside the window in the woodland beyond.

Despite living near countryside I had not seen bullfinches or Goldfinches until I started working here.

Lovely ain’t they.

Last night I was tired and wanted to watch T.V. but nowt was on. Undeterred and rather than do something constructive I plundered the depths of Sky.

I found “Conspiracy Theory – Did we land on the moon”.  Now normally I don’t go in for nonsense like this, I like evidence based Science programs.  The evidence came from the conspiracy side and the nasa guy was just stating that it was bad science but not explaining why ?

This was down to the nature of the program, much of what was said in this program is refuted. A good source, one I think is trustworthy is here.

But can someone explain why a telescope can get great photo’s of distant galaxies but not see the surface of the moon in detail ?  Not understanding telescope optics would love to hear a scientific reason as to why.  Would be good to just point it at an abandoned lander and go, see there it is.

Edit – And here it is, even hubble is not powerful enough only showing things of 20-30 metres big.