Clug Park

The Website Is Down: Sales Guy vs. Web Dude - Hilarious!

More: continued here

A week of power-supply problems. Not Eskom's fault, this time, but more localised failures.

First the power-supply for the network server had a fan stop turning. I could have taken the chance on the unit working without cooling, since it is relatively lightly loaded -- no graphics cards, only a single disk -- but, since I had a spare power-supply unit handy it was a task of mere minutes to swap the faulty unit out and get the server back into action. It is a fairly key piece of our little home network, being a web-cache, local domain-name server and cache, Subversion repository and file-share space, so we miss it badly when it is down.

Then the power supply on my desktop machine decided to follow suit. Also a fan failure. I hate those crappy little fans! There's absolutely nothing wrong with the basic electronics of the power supply itself, but the ball bearings in the fan have died. Pricing for a new power-supply runs from a little over R100 if I were in Cape Town with easy access to wholesalers, through R200 from a web-shop, all the way to R300 from the local PC shops! This is for the most basic 350W PSU -- none of that fancy gaming-machine stuff for me. (Though I will confess to being tempted by a unit costing around R800, simply because it is alleged to be completely quiet! I'm a self-confessed anti-noise-maniac.)

My guess is I'm going to spend an hour messing about with the soldering iron, installing new fans (I have a couple just lying about) in the "faulty" power-supplies.

At the same time, several warnings from my server-supplier in London telling the story of a week-long tail-of-woe about power-supply into the datacentre. Apparently a failover switch failed to work correctly during a power-outage last Sunday, causing the battery-based UPS to take the entire load for about 10 minutes before the batteries were totally drained. All servers in the DC went down hard. It has taken them until Thursday to isolate the problem and replace the parts (electrical and mechanical) that were at fault.

During the whole affair, all server owners have been kept fully informed via RSS feeds and emails at every step of the way, since there is a risk (however slight) that servers might go down if there is a power-grid outage again and the on-site staff -- now fully briefed on managing a manual switch from grid power to the backup generator -- should get taken-up at just the wrong moment.

This is exactly the sort of thing I expect from server providers and datacentre operators. Everybody understand that, despite the best-laid plans, sometimes shit happens. It is how they respond, and how transparent and communicative they are in responding to the crisis that truly matters.

This is in very sharp contrast to Verizon's datacentre in Durban, where my other client's servers are housed. About 10 days ago they had some electrical work going on in the DC, which in turn made some server-moves necessary. They did all this without warning their clients that there might be some risk to their operations. Needless to say, my client's servers went down without warning in the wee hours of Sunday morning. No heartbeat monitoring in place, so it was Monday before anybody knew that something was wrong. No peep from Verizon to their customers. Half-arsed, I call it.

There's a lesson in all this about Single Points of Failure. I've been warning for over 8 months that having all the servers housed in a single DC, or even in a single city, is a risk. Maybe now the business will take some action, but, given the general lack of respect or attention to the fact that, like it or not, they are a technology business, I have my doubts.

Yes, it’s all the rage.

I’ve joined in on the hype as well:

http://identi.ca/highvoltage

What the heck, even got a page on whoisi:

http://whoisi.com/p/2755

I'm sure that most folks in the IT world have come across Joel Spolsky, and his blog, Joel on Software. Now Joel has some fantastic articles on recruitment, and I think he really knows his stuff when it comes to employment. However, every now and then he seems to have a delusions of grandeur and he thinks he's an expert on other things.

Today I went to Joel's blog to find some articles he's written on recruitment, and I saw his latest post, entitled Don't hide or disable menu items. I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree with him. I don't think he really knows that much about UI design and usability. I think the reason he has managed to sell a book on it is because he's an experienced software writer, and he knows a little more than most other developers.

However, this blog post shows me he doesn't truly understand the user's perspective. When it comes to usability (and I'm no expert either), your interface is about managing expectations. If your menu item is there, and enabled, they expect it to work. Users don't expect a dialog to pop up and say that the feature the want doesn't work.

Now, I don't go for the disabled thing either, but it's a darn sight better than a dialog box. The best option is probably to hide the disabled menu item, thereby removing the user's expectation completely.

The best way to test your application's usability is to  get a real pleb, sit them down in front of your app with a list of tasks to complete, and tell them to perform the tasks without telling them anything about your application. Then watch them, and note their difficulties and their successes.

I had an all-too-frequent argument this evening. This resulted (as it occasionally does) with the other person storming off in a huff, all offended. The conversations usually goes something like this:

Him: I like $broken_technology.
Me: $broken_technology is very seldom a good idea. Why do you like it?
Him: Because $common_misconception.
Me: Actually, that's a common misconception. $correction.
Him: But are there any $not_broken_technology things that do $common_misconception_thing.
Me: Yes, plenty. For example, $thing.
Him: Um, but $other_misconception.
Me: Actually, $other_correction.
Him: You people are a pack of technobigots! *storms off in a huff*.

Part of the problem is that I suffer from SIWOTI Syndrome. I find it incredibly difficult to just let people sabotage themselves because they believe something that is not true. Part of the problem is that I want to teach people to think rationally about their behaviours and motivations, because it's the only way to avoid muddling around in a fug of lies and excuses. Part of the problem is that I get too emotionally invested in trying to better the lives of strangers when I can see exactly where they are making their mistakes and have the data to back it up.

Also, to be perfectly honest, I like to be right. I like to dispense wisdom. I enjoy being the expert people come to when they have a programming problem. Being the authority is nice. It makes me all warm and fuzzy when people do something better because of advice I gave them.

The real problem is that people don't like to be wrong. Thinking is hard. The misconceptions are comfortable old friends. The work they have done under those misconceptions represents effort that they may need to throw away. This makes people defend their misconceptions. It also makes them see an attack on a misconception as an attack on them personally.

This is where the subject comes in. As soon as you take anything on the internet personally, you're opening yourself up to pain. It hurts me when my laboriously collected wisdom is written off as bigotry. It hurts you a lot more when you take a request for data backing up your assertions as "getting ganged by zealots".

I don't really have a good answer. I could probably be a bit more diplomatic, but it's difficult to say "you're not making sense" in a way that doesn't offend those with delicate sensibilities. I could just ignore people being wrong, but occasionally I do enlighten some poor soul who has merely been led astray by the propaganda machines and is capable of becoming a useful and productive member of the community. (That's not to say the others aren't, just that they need to shed some ego first.)

Another side effect of my SIWOTI is that I often come across as arrogant. Sometimes this is me misjudging the level at which to pitch my explanations and coming across as patronising (if I pitch too low) or elitist (if I pitch too high). Then if I ask a few questions to judge background, I'm interrogating instead of helping. Sometimes it's because I tell people they're wrong. If I kept quiet or only answered the questions asked, even when they pointed to deeper misunderstandings or flaws, I could avoid these issues. But then people would keep being wrong. And we can't have that.

A couple of days back I noticed that the Twitter Replies page has been closed down. In the meantime it has been reopened but here I got a chance to see a new error message I didn't see before. I'm pretty used to the "over capacity" screens but this one I haven't seen before (as far as I can recall).

It seems that I have inadvertently become a photo-blogger of late. Looking down the page, the last 4 entries are pictures. Other than that it’s been mostly quoted text or links. So, just for a change I’m mixing it up by spewing out some good old fashioned words. Just some random things floating around in my brain (bullet point format shamelessly cribbed from another blog)..

•  Today was a sad day: Lugradio, one of the best podcasts ever, announced in their latest episode that they are not going to be producing it any more beyond the end of this month.
• I’ve recently been reading the two part Commonwealth Saga (Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained) by Peter F. Hamilton. He’s a new author to me and absolutely superb! Ok, you have to enjoy Sci-Fi: But if you do, for me, he is to Sci-Fi what Tolkien is to fantasy. I’ve been engrossed.
• I had 3 other points I wanted to add, but I’ve been distracted by The Internet, music on Virgin Radio and chocolate so that writing this up has taken longer than expected. So they will have to be another forthcoming post. Maybe.

I got this output the other day:

Length: 139,285,753 (133M) [video/flv]

99% [================================================================================================================> ] 139,285,753   23.13K/s    ETA 00:06

18:51:46 (21.10 KB/s) - `pythondjangoapppengine.flv' saved [139285753/139285753]

99% but it's clearly done? Check the bytes, looks fine too. Strange...

Update: LOL! I had a typo "appp"!

Ok, the blog has not been migrated yet, but it seems like I had a bit less time than what I hoped and my blogging was just heaping up. Will still go through with the migration in about a week or two but now first need to get some stuff posted. Comments have been reopened as well. :)

Normally I would write a little thing about the upcoming geekdinner, but Jonathan Hitchcock said it better.

Hi,

The ancient Greeks thought that the rainbow was the messenger of the
gods, and named it “iris”. From this, we get the Iris flower (which
blooms in a variety of colours), and the iris in our eyes (which is
the coloured part). As happens in language, this word gave birth to a
daughter, “iridescent”, which means “brilliant, lustrous, or colourful
in appearance”.

The Iceplant, is, like, a sort of fig.

So, I’d like to announce the ninth Cape Town GeekDinner, named
Iridescent Iceplant, which will be held on Thursday the 31st of July,
at Da Capo Restaurant, in Green Market Square. I want to say that
it’s starting at 5:30, so that you tardy Capetonians will arrive at
6:30 for 7, because that’s when it’s really starting.

Those details are on the wiki page, where you can also see the logo
for this dinner, which should remind you of that time you saw Joseph
and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat:

http://wiki.geekdinner.org.za/wiki/Cape_Town_July_2008

Please sign up if you’re coming, and please remove yourself if you’re
not - the venue’s a little cosier than most, so seating will be
limited. Also, if you’ve got something interesting to talk about, let
us know, we always need talks. The page will be updated as we get
closer to the dinner.

Hoping to see you there,
Cheers,
-Jonathan

Ubuntu has been quite popular on DistroWatch for a long time now. Currently it is at the number 1 position for hits per day on the site over the last six months, 675 higher than it’s closest competition (OpenSUSE), and that doesn’t even count in the 1563 hits from Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Mythbuntu, Fluxbuntu, Ubuntu Studio and Ubuntu CE.

There’s a nice little Facebook app that’s called “Linux” that proudly displays which distribution you use on your profile page:

It also builds stats of which distributions and desktop environments people use, and which podcasts they listen to:

Once again, Ubuntu outranks them all. What’s even nicer is that Debian is second here. makes my theory feel stronger that all RPM based distros will probably become Debian-based within the next 5 years or so (or die out, unless something superior emerges (no pun intended)). I might be completely wrong… who knows, but, when you look at the trends (got this link from Mark Shuttleworth’s website), and if they continue the way they do, then things certainly don’t look good for the future popularity of RPM based systems:

Panorama Colours: Another gorgeous sunset spread across the sky.

More: continued here

• I made up an awesome pasta sauce based on “what we had around”:
  Put in a saucepan and mix:
  1. 1 can of tinned tomato and onion mix
  2. Two smoked chicken breasts cut into slices
  3. 1 can of tomato mix (Basically tomato and onion mix without the onion)
  4. One piquant pepper (thinly sliced)
  5. Handfull of chopped parsley
  6. Half a teaspoon of crushed garlic (More if you like)
  7. Half a teaspoon of chopped ginger
  8. A big handfull (or two) of a good quality grated mozzarella or gouda
  9. 25ml (table spoon) of Nandos Wild Herb Peri Peri (Double this if you like hot stuff)
  10. Salt and pepper to taste

  Serve with whichever pasta floats your boat and beer.

• It is amazing how long you can forgo the need to eat when you are busy hacking electronics in a cold garage.
• I saw two girls (12ish) in a bookshop, one was reading a book on Mayan Mythology and the other was reading an entire book about Zak Effron. This reminded me of a conversation I had with someone else about the hot girls from school who ended up nowhere in life.
• I distinctly despise being told to do something by someone who can not give me a rational reason for the intstruction. A Cape Union Mart manager dude told me to leave the shop because they had previously had a power cut. The power was back on, but apparently the policy was to close the shop anyway. “But the power is back on” I said… “Yes, but it’s procedure” he replied,  “Why?” I asked. “Because it’s procedure”. His procedure hadn’t been relayed to the rest of his staff because as we walked out they were happily standing by the door as more people walked in.
• Never watch a movie at Cape Gate. While the “common” people might be entertaining to watch as you walk around the mall, it is particularly NOT entertaining when you have to sit next to a kid who is loudly chewing on bubble gum with his mouth open the entire way through the movie, WITH his father sitting next to him doing absolutely nothing. Trailer trash.
• I met a girl I’ve heard about for about 4 years but never met. She is every bit as wonderful as I had heard. It’s awesome to see someone in a relationship with someone they were enfatuated with 4 years ago.
• It is very unawesome when one of your good friends starts to fall into the same stupid trap they’ve been in for the last 3 years… all over again. YES YOU! STOP IT!
• We had home made bread and tinned soup for supper last night. I guess weekend cuisine can be in the shape of a tin after all.

I have not been blogging much lately. Go figure. Weekly news summary as usual..

• I entered Amobia in a venture fund competition. Should have some feedback by mid July.
• Added a Crackbook page for Amobia.
• Watched Zeitgeist, 40 Year Old Virgin and Oceans Eleven.
• We had a Frogfoot company photo taken for 2008. Pics at the usual place.
• Completed the Extreme Networks ECSP training course.
• Made a fact sheet for WAPA.
• Walked up Lions Head three times this week. Helps me think.
• I’m getting back into a swimming routine. Helps me think.
• Friday, made a new friend by apologising to an old friend. We avoided each other for the last 3 years.
• Removed two ~nasty blog posts.
• I brewed up Joe’s famous thai green curry on Friday evening. Nice to cook.
• Visited Wellington on Saturday afternoon.
• Anton is in ZA for a week. Had a nice dinner with friends at the Fishmonger followed by drinks at the Akker.
• Saturday and Sunday was Mia time. We watched Babe today. Sweet movie.

(This is a repost of my entry "Be sure to wear a flower in your hair" to the South African Tech Leader technology group blog.  My next post, What is a geek?, has just been posted there, if you want to read it before a week or two from now when I'll repost it here.)

It’s really hard to summarise the experience of a first visit to San Francisco, assuming you’re at least somewhat a technology geek. San Francisco (and by that, one generally means the San Francisco Bay Area) is modern technology’s birthplace and still its hometown.

Xerox PARC (as in Palo Alto Research Centre) either created or popularised implementations of modern computing aspects such as the mouse, laser printers, Ethernet, GUI/WIMP interfaces, Object-Oriented Programming with the Smalltalk programming language, and the Integrated Development Environment. The Bay Area is home to the headquarters of technology giants such as Apple, Cisco, eBay, Google, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, and Yahoo!, as well as upstarts like Facebook, Mint.com, and SugarCRM. (And SynthaSite, of course.)

At times during my visit the technology industry seemed entirely pervasive — whether it was randomly walking past three people in the street arguing the merits of various memory allocation techniques (I kid you not) or hearing that one of your colleagues just moved into the apartment the CEO of a popular social media startup just moved out of. It is hard not to let your imagination loose with the idea of what can be achieved here, especially after seeing over 3000 developers, a large portion of them probably local to the area and most certainly at least as geeky as I am, at Google’s I/O conference. (I posted quite extensively about my Google I/O trip on my personal blog, if you want to check it out.)

If I sound a bit in love, it’s because I am. I challenge anyone in our industry to somehow not be a little in love with the vibe and pace and sense of belonging you will find in San Francisco. But this isn’t really about technology in San Francisco — it’s about it in South Africa.

Romance novels suggest that sometimes you need to discover (or be reminded of) what is out there to realise quite what you have, that while you find that there’s a lot of prettiness out there, you will also discover that there have been and always will be many and unassailable reasons for you being with the one you’re with.

I needed that a bit with South Africa. I’ve always wanted to be here for the long run, but it has been hard not to get worn down little by little over the past few years by the scarcity of interesting highly-skilled work and the similar scarcity of ambition in South African technology companies. Now, I have an updated and more accurate idea of what is out there, and while South Africa does fair poorly in some comparisons, there are other, more important, aspects to take into consideration. And those mean that leaving it to find some technology heaven elsewhere sounds like a bad swap.

And it’s not like you have to be in San Francisco to wear a flower in your hair — you can experience and help create your own slice of the San Franciscan vibe wherever you are. All it really takes is creating or finding a workplace you can be passionate about using technologies you’re passionate about with people who share that passion (am I saying “passion” enough?), and finding and building a community of similarly technology obsessed people who can help you, and who you can help, and to make you feel like you’re not alone (and who you can make dinner conversation with without resorting to the weather).

I lucked out on the first one — at SynthaSite I have an ambitious company that knows how to treat their employees well, great colleagues, and challenging work — and a pantry full of snacks, lunches materialising daily at my desk, games consoles, and 40-inch TVs. And there are at least a few similarly-enlightened workplaces around, and more can be created.

I already know a number of geeks who’d give a good argument on the merits of various memory allocation techniques. It takes work, but through efforts like GeekDinner and StarCamp, we come to know more, and different, people and benefit from that meeting as they introduce us to new perspectives and, hopefully, shake our preconceptions. And not only come to know people, but also come to know more about our trade through presentations and less formal conversations sparked by an interest that perhaps we didn’t know we had before others introduced the topic.

While it is easy to moan about the lacks we have here, it seems that by our attitudes and our actions we can create an ever-increasing slice of that seemingly far-away vibe. As we kick off planning for the next StarCamp in Cape Town, and a national web technology conference, I’m hoping we will find positive attitudes and actions in finding co-organisers, presenters, sponsors, and venues.

This is a floppy drive:

Plus a link to an article that explains how to turn a hard drive into a speaker.
http://www.hodcroft.net/?s=4&p=speaker
Lourens, I know you have hard drives lying around.

j

Just when you thought you had all the excitement you could handle.. WAM!

I found out last night that there were a few minor details she “neglected” to tell me about.. like, she’s pregnant and she’s getting married to the German in July.

Turns out she was also flirting with two ex’s and this photographer dude.. which, to give the dirty rat a single pellet for honesty, she did mention when she broke up with me initially.

Talk about backing the wrong horse ^6.

Yes, her sister knew but did not tell me even though we went for a long walk a day before and I was asking her for advice. Remember kids, communication is the key to honesty.

It’s like Chief Wiggum said after seeing the Simpson family (along with their house) disappear down the sinkhole: “Well… they’re China’s problem now boys.”

Nothing is more strange than real life.

ps. Thanks for that Simpsons gem WSE.

I read a story on IOL Technology today about Telkom increasing their rates again. In fact, I saw the double full page advert in the Cape Argus about their rate increase as well. There's one small, yet often overlooked fact about these increases: they have to be approved by ICASA.

Now here's the part I don't understand: If ICASA is supposed to be helping the consumer, and us consumers have complained to ICASA again and again about Telkom's high rates, then why does ICASA allow Telkom to increase their rates yet again?

I must be missing something. Howcome the body that apparently has authority over Telkom never does anything? And this is not the first time. If ICASA really was the competent body they claim to be, we wouldn't still be stuck in the situation we are in.

ICASA is to the Telkom situation what Mbeki is to the Zimbabwe situation: useless.

Joe’s news items..

• Random quote of the week: “What on earth would a man do with himself if something did not stand in his way?” — H. G. Wells
• Looks like Teraco raised its remaining funding.
• Tuesday, Georg’s home cooked veggie soup and red wine evening.
• Wednesday, downloaded Firefox 3.0 and moved some furniture.
• There seems to be good interest in a Cape Town peering point again. About 11 networks have responded positively so far, including Google.
• Finally found a use for the DMCA. Facebook is pretty quick with removing copyrighted material.
• Thursday, processed some iWeek paperwork. Amobia and Teraco are now Gold sponsors. WAPA will endorse the Thursday morning wireless session and will have a stand in the iWeek exhibition area. If you have not yet registered, go here.. it’s free.
• The Blio PBX passed 100% of the TBR-3 tests including the optional parts. This completes the 4th and final part of the ICASA requirements.
• I attended the 1st Cape Town Pecha Kucha night. The wine was crap. The Moscow Mules were good. The talks were pretty decent.
• Friday and Saturday was Mia time. We went for a swim again. She fell asleep in the car as we drove to go watch some rugby. Mia slept on my chest for most of the game. Not bothered by any of the excitement around her. It really is a magic feeling having her take a nap like that.
• Saturday night was Andy and Georg’s house warming party. Must be Andy’s 6th house warming in two years. All the usual suspects showed up, including my personal shrink, who’s birthday it is today.
• Sunday, had fish and chips at the Waterfront and watched Kung Fu Panda. A fun movie.
• Walked up Lions Head just before sunset and got some panoramic photos of clouds rolling into Camps Bay and Cape Town harbour. Cape Town is Rome.
• I now have a dinner table (again). Guess I’ll have to have a dinner party soon.
• I also have an Ubuntu PC and SIP phone at home now.. all I need is a big LCD screen for movies.

Peace.

Early last month, I blogged about changes that I’d like to see in my life. I received some questions via email from some people over the last week about them (and I appreciate that a lot), and thought I’d do an update, since it’s just a bit over half-way time-wise.

Current progress:

• At work: Stress levels have been greatly reduced, and it is going better. This might be due to an increase in staff, or a new project where things are going quite well. Either way, I’m not as stressed as I was a month and a half a go, and it’s great.

• MOTU membership: I’m continuing to learn at a steady but slow pace, not nearly fast enough to become a MOTU over the next 5 weeks though. I think this might be one goal that I’m going to miss, but the MOTU’s are really cool people. Several members have offered me assistance. I owe it to them to step up a bit, and I’ll have to make some further changes in order to do that (more about this a bit later in the post)

• Getting in shape: I lost 3KG’s, and gained 2KG’s again when I visited my home town last week! I think I lost most of that again, but in totality, I think I’m pretty much on target, and I’m satisfied with my progress here.

• Work through the Simply Guitar handbook/DVD: I’m just about on target here as well. I’ve actually done it, but I need to practise what I’ve learned so far a bit more and revise. I’m planning to go for guitar lessons in August. One of my previous colleges have also offered to give me lessons, I think I will take him up on that.

• Be less miserable: Oddly enough, this has been the easiest on the list. I can’t quite explain how, but since last week or so, I’ve just been feeling much better, and this just after I had a terrible flue. I guess I had some time to think a bit and make sense of the universe. I’d even go as far to say that I am happy at this stage.

There’s more…

• Change of Northern Base: For the last year or so, I’ve been staying on-and-off at a guest house in Jo’burg. It’s been good, but our offices have moved and driving out so far has become time consuming and a waste of money (considering our ever-rising fuel prices). Today, I moved closer to work, the guest house was about 33km from work, I’m now 7km from work. I’m actually staying on a cottage on a farm that feels like it’s in the middle of nowhere. There are actual sheep, bulls and cows walking around just behind my room here. If you told me a year ago that I would be living on a farm in Gauteng, I would have probably laughed at you :). This still doesn’t mean I’m staying here permanently. Home will always be in Cape Town. I can literally leave here any day. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

• Going vegeterian: I’ve gone vegeterian a few times in the past, just for short bursts, typically for a few days to a week at a time, can’t really remember why. About two weeks ago I decided to go vegeterian, or at least try, and see how far I can get. So far it’s been quite easy, I’ve eaten fish one evening, and ate some beef on a sandwich that someone made me, but besides that I managed to stay clear (I did say that I will allow fish now and again, especially in the beginning). I’ve been told that most vegetarians are so either because of moral or health reasons. I guess I tend to lean to the moral side, but I really don’t want to make it a moral issue. I suppose that officially, I don’t really have a reason. Hopefully, living amongst all these animals will help me keep on track

Thanks for the motivation from everyone who commented on the last post (and who sent emails). I even got a comment from my dad, I didn’t even know that he read my blog! At least it proves that apostrophe abuse is heriditary

So I did say I was going to both blog about my installation of the Huawei E272 and then post it on the CLUG wiki. My apologies for not having done this sooner, I've had a few other things on my plate.

My setup looks like this:

• Main server serving DNS, DHCP, etc on the network (see my other HowTo)
• Second server with Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron)
• Huawei E272 HSDPA modem

You'll also need:

• SIM card (Contract or prepaid, it doesn't really matter)
• About 20 minutes to spare

Preparation:

1. Make sure your SIM card is activated: Plug it into your phone and try to make a phone call.
2. Disable the SIM PIN while you've got the SIM card in your phone. It's a security measure, and since this SIM card is always going to be in your computer, there's no need for it.
3. If, like in my case, you have other computers on your network needing to access the Internet through your computer, make sure your computer is on the network and the computers can ping your computer.

Installing the modem:

1. The first thing you want to do is to put the SIM card into the modem. Make sure you've disabled that SIM PIN.
2. Before plugging your modem into your computer, type in

   tail -f /var/log/sys

   and watch your log. Then plug your modem in and watch the logs
3. Your computer should create 3 new devices: /dev/ttyUSB0/1/2
4. If you don't see these devices, you won't be able to do anything further. Google and see if you can find a solution.
5. Once the modem is plugged in, the little light on the side should flash green (twice per "flash"). Once the SIM is logged into the network the light should flash blue to indicate that you have 3G/HSDPA reception. If it flashes a single flash of green, it means that you only have GPRS reception.

Setting up your connection:

Note: A number of tutorials use wvdial. I prefer to use pppd directly. I find that while pppd is a little more technical, there's a lot less to do.

1.  Move to the /etc/ppp/peers directory:

   cd /etc/ppp/peers

2. Create and edit a new file called "hsdpa":

   sudo vi hsdpa

3. Put the following into that file:

   /dev/ttyUSB0 115200
   connect '/usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/chatscripts/hsdpa'
   crtscts
   modem -detach
   noccp
   nopcomp
   defaultroute
   usepeerdns
   noauth
   ipcp-accept-remote
   ipcp-accept-local
   :192.168.100.101 # For some reason, I never get the remote server's IP address. So I'm manually setting it to the actual IP address.

4. Now go to the /etc/chatscripts directory:

   cd /etc/chatscripts

5. Create and edit another new file called "hsdpa":

   sudo vi hsdpa

6. Put the following into that file:

   "" ATZ OK AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","internet"
   OK "ATD*99***1#"
   CONNECT

7. If your APN is not "internet", change the above to reflect your real APN.

Test your connection:

If all went well, you should be able to connect to the Internet now. Simply type

pon hsdpa

and watch the output for errors.

Install a firewall:

Once you've got a connection, you'll want to install a firewall. This both keeps unwanted elements out and allows your internal traffic to get out. I like Arno's IPTables Firewall as it is both simple and flexible.

sudo apt-get install arno-iptables-firewall

After it has installed, you will be asked a few questions, such as internal and external network connections. Remember that your external network device is "ppp+" not "ppp0" - Arno's IPTables Firewall will automatically detect your connection.

A few advanced things:

I found that my connection would drop about once a day. In order to make my connection redial automatically, I had to uncomment 2 things in the /etc/ppp/options file.

Look for the lines that say

# demand

and

# persistent

Remove the "# " from in front of both of those. "demand" makes the connection dial whenever there's a demand for traffic, and "persistent" makes pppd redial if the connection is dropped.

Conclusion:

Well, that's all that's really needed for the Huawei E272. It's a decent modem and it works well out the box. Enjoy your connection!

At the end of May in South Africa, a lot of violence erupted, apparently targeted against other black africans by fellow black South Africans. Meeting other Nigerians, almost all of them, given a little time, bring up the subject. I found myself having to apologise for the violence, and make some explanation of it.

I had left for Nigeria the week before, to install the computer network at the African University for Science and Technology.

Bobby, a System Administrator I have just hired at the University, was especially pained. He explained the efforts Nigeria had gone to to protest the Apartheid regime, and in strong support of black South Africans at that time, and the special place South Africa holds in their hearts because of the success of the campaign.

Though South Africa was at the other end of the continent, Nigeria was listed with the Frontline States due to its opposition to Apartheid. Almost to the exclusion of everything else, it made anti-Apartheid the cornerstone of its foreign policy in the '70s.

• Alhaji Tafawa Balewa, Nigeria’s Prime Minister, stopped the employment of White South Africans in the Nigerian Public Service.
• Nigeria sponsored the expulsion of South Africa from the Commonwealth in 1961.
• Nigeria gave scholarships to 200 South Africans to come to Nigerian universities and study.
• The Montreal Olympics were boycotted by many African countries including Nigeria, dashing the hopes of many Nigerians who had trained for four years hoping to carry away a medal. South Africa were not even present - the dispute was with New Zealand, whose national rugby union team (the All Blacks) continued to play rugby with South Africa.
• Nigeria nationalised British Petroleum in protest against British involvement with apartheid South Africa. BP became African Petroleum.
• The Federal State and Local governments closed all their accounts with British owned Barclays Bank, in protest against their links with the apartheid regime. Because of all the bad publicity, the bank had to change its name to Union Bank.
• The National Committee against Apartheid was set up. All Nigerian workers were made to contribute one Nigerian pound, which was deducted from their salaries, for the purposes of the liberation struggle in Southern Africa.

I picked these out because they are specifically about Nigeria. Other frontline states have their own records of defiance - I do not mean to elevate Nigeria above all the other nationalities that have suffered in the violence. Somalis in South Africa have a pattern of opening Spaza shops within the townships - reducing the need for residents to travel to town to do their shopping. They are successful - they work hard. They are attacked because of envy and greed - not because they are taking away employment. Why were there no shops in the townships in the first place ? Because financially successful township residents toss their heads and declare it is beneath them to do business there - they are going to town.

South Africa - shame on you. Those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it.

Just before I left for my San Francisco visit, I was approached by Nic on whether I'd like to write for Tech Leader, which is a South African "editorial" group blog about technology, edited and run by the Mail and Guardian Online.

My first post, Be sure to wear a flower in your hair, is on how my trip to San Francisco and the technology vibe and sense of "anything is possible" revitalised me a bit about South Africa and the potential future that could be if technology people stay and work for change (by which I mean in the industry, but it's also good to try change things outside it too).

I'm going to try write a post a week for Tech Leader on less nitty-gritty things, and try get back to a few posts a week here after my recent fortnight of silence dealing with post-travel jetlag and accumulated work responsibilities.  I'll post a pointer to Tech Leader when I post there, and post the full content here two weeks (or so) afterwards.

Since Open Letters to Management seem so flavour du jour, I thought I'd save the following fine rant from oblivion. Names and project details changed to protect the guilty, of course.

[DumbTribe] is a small startup in the mobile space. They have started seeing some good traction for their product, but are completely chaotic in their "management" of the company. The company is 100% reliant on IT, yet, whilst they're willing to spend an ordleplex of money on fancy new offices, they're astoundingly short of cash when it comes to things like buying another server to act as failover for their single server. Said server is the sole source of income for the business.

What [ManagerX] calls a "blogger tool" is really a form of Content Management system that ends up providing (among other things) Atom and RSS feeds...

[ManagerX] wrote:

> This has certainly taken longer than we initially thought it would. I
> think it was over a few of months back that we were expecting a
> finished blogger tool.

You seem to have forgotten that there were other tasks that YOU prioritised ahead of the "blog" tool -- development of the feed aggregator and the [BigClient] pilot, not to mention system administration tasks more numerous than I can recall, design and coding assistance to my colleague, installation and maintenance of essential technical infrastructure indispensable to organised development (some of which runs on my own servers, at no additional charge to [DumbTribe], simply because that was the fastest way to get the tools in place.) I regret that I am unable to work on more than one thing at a time, but these are rather complex systems dealing with some very erratic, "dirty" data coming-in, and, like most men, I don't multitask well.

> It is of zero use in it's present state(just like the blogger tool you
> created was in it’s 'unskinned' state(to me the level of things that
> fell under 'skinning' was surprising.

First: I warned right from the start that installation of the necessary software was the quick and easy part, but that changing templates -- "skinning" as you call it -- would take at least several days for someone expert in the templating system. I also made it clear that such templating was NOT in my sphere of competence. Evidently nobody was listening to the bits they didn't want to hear.

Second: I will not take responsibility for your inability to produce a coherent specification for the tool. Lack of any technical specification underlies the several misdirections and false starts. A powerpoint does not BEGIN to form a clear technical specification.

Example: I, at one stage, asked you how many "blogs" it is necessary for the system to support. At that time I had in mind to use a particular piece of software as the foundation infrastructure. Your answer to my question was "thousands!" which answer had a significant impact on my technical decision-making, since the tentatively-chosen solution is unsuited to such large volumes. I certainly made it clear that I was unfamiliar with the more suitable tool, and, indeed, the "skinning" -- the writing of custom templates -- turned out to be more problematic than I anticipated. I made a poor guess in the face of inadequate information, a misleading business requirement and insufficient time to evaluate alternative technical solutions.

In the long run it turned out that a "blog" system is just what [DumbTribe] does NOT need. What IS needed is an article/story management system for providing Atom/RSS feed output. This is in the final stages of development.

You seem to have forgotten that using a blog-system was initially mooted merely as a temporary stopgap solution to provide a mechanism for getting article content into feeds; it was never intended to be the "real" solution. What I have been developing is such solution. Assuming you don't sabotage delivery with yet another interruption.

I would have been finished 10 days ago had [my colleague] had enough spare hours to assist me on areas where I do not have the deep knowledge of data structures and code she already has in place, and if the "specification" had not been changed on a number of occasions. Unfortunately other more pressing issues have had to take precedence on her time, with resulting delays on the "blog" project. Furthermore the assistance I have (gladly) given [said colleague] on other projects has also had the effect of taking several days from "blog" development.

> I am sure you understand what this looks like from our end. It just
> feels like you can’t give us what we need.

Yes, I am pretty sure I DO understand. It seems to me that you think one of two things; either:

1. That I am incompetent to produce working software, or

2. That I am dishonest and lie to you about my activities.

I am neither, and find either accusation hurtful, denigrating, and completely unprofessional. Software development, unlike so many other jobs, does not allow one to delude oneself about the limits of ones knowledge or abilities, so the charge of incompetence is easier for me to dismiss when I consider its source; I know exactly how good I am.

Clearly you have absolutely no clue how software development works, nor what is a "normal" pace of production for software systems. The fact that your most-recent experience of software development is exemplified by [colleague], who is prepared, for reasons I cannot comprehend, to endanger her health and wellbeing by working outrageous hours in order to meet ridiculous, unrealistic and arbitrary deadlines does not alter the truth of what I am saying. Nor is it my place to attempt to teach you how software development works; for that sort of work I charge considerably more than you pay me.

The fact that you have badly under-resourced this area of the business is hardly my fault.

> I am so frustrated and feel if I have to explain what we need again I
> will go mad.

Unfortunately software is all about the detail. If you do not tell a developer all the detail that they need, they will guess, and likely guess wrong.

Therefore, where details are lacking I will ask again and again and again. I have on occasion asked users to describe their requirement from beginning to end as many as 8 times in a single day in order to be sure I understood the requirement. Then I asked them a couple more times the next day. I am deeply sorry if my need to know what you want in full detail drives you mad -- I certainly do not wish to cause such mental anguish.

> Please can you confirm that you understand and accept all the
> functionality that we need

No. I do not believe I understand what you need, particularly as you keep changing the requirements. I am not a mind-reader, and you have not produced a comprehensive technical specification.

Example: Your comment on Monday, "Make sure we can direct the 'see original story' link to a site of our choosing (e.g. [ClientA] sites or [ClientB] sites)" This directly CONTRADICTS the requirement laid out in your powerpoint that NO such link be present. What am I supposed to do with that? I can put such a link in (though linking to what, I have no idea, nor do you say -- another missing detail) or I can leave it out (as is done at present.) I am happy to do either, or to make any changes you require, since I understand that business requirements can and do change from time to time. However, changing what is already implemented does unfortunately take some time and cannot simply be done with a wave of a magic wand.

Example: The original requirement was for articles to have a single image attached. Then an image or a URL. Then multiple images or URLS. Then it became "unusable unless we can upload video". Then we didn't need video any longer. Then we were back to one image/URL. Currently I am informed that multiple images/URLS are a non-negotiable requirement. Every time a change such as this is introduced it costs me hours or days in the attempt to comply.

And you wonder why there have been delays.

My current aim is to get the system in place with the capability to upload ONE image or attach ONE URL, either of which shall appear at the tail-end of the feed content (another detail not specified.) It is my belief that it is better to get SOMETHING up and running, even though we all agree that it is NOT the end-product desired. Then we evolve it to the state we desire. After all, that is why it is called "soft"-ware.

> and let me know what *date* we can expect a working tool to start
> testing.

In the absence of a full, clear, comprehensive specification, no such estimate can be made by anybody. In effect you are waving your hands about, saying "build me a Tudor-style house over there" and then demanding that I tell you how long it is going to take without giving me the plans for the house, specifying the building materials, size of the house, number of bedrooms, etc. When you supply me with a proper User Requirement Specification -- for which I will gladly supply a Word template outlining all the necessary information it should contain -- I may consider beginning to make estimates.

> I don’t think it is unreasonable for me to ask you to commit to a
> deadline, the brief is surely clear now after all these emails back
> and forth and the very easily accessed example of blogger.com which I
> asked you to use as a starting point.

On the contrary I think it thoroughly unreasonable to make such demands. The "brief" (whatever THAT is) is non-existent. To point to blogger.com and claim that that is what you want is ridiculous, since blogger.com is totally unsuited to your needs. If it were suitable there would have been no need to build anything else and we would not be having this conversation.

I will remind you that I am contracted to deliver 40 to 80 hours per MONTH of work -- not per week. This was deliberately and clearly negotiated up front. Consequently I do not work full 8-hour days on [DumbTribe] activities, which, too has its effect on delivery schedules. The fact that I consistently seem to end up working more than the agreed number of hours per month seems to be taken for granted, or alternatively is regarded by you as an attempt to rip you off. On the contrary, it is a good-faith attempt to come some way further than I strictly, am contractually obliged, in an attempt to help [DumbTribe] meet its goals.

A lack of planning on your part does not constitute a crisis on my part.

In the extremely unlikely event that I elect to extend/renew my contract, should [DumbTribe] wish to do so, please be assured that I will require a considerable tightening-up of the conditions relating to all of these issues.

The band Atrina lives again! Here is their new website, where you can still download a bunch of their mp3s.

Marina Bychkova, who makes the most beautiful porcelain dolls in the world, has re-done her website. And her fans have started a forum for discussing her dolls and posting their own photos of dolls that they’ve bought. There’s also a Flickr group.

The fantasy webcomic Juathuur has a sequel, Gatecrash.

Interesting to be back in the Training Game. It is a Java 101 (Introduction to Java Programming for Programmers) course. With some differences.

Its all for one corporate client. My God, its been a long time since I had to deal with Corporate IT Thinking. There's some of it that exists for good reason. And then there's a whole lot of crap. Stuff that's more to do with politics, staking out of turf, ass-covering... The real downside for a Java 101 course is not so huge, but still... everybody is from the same organisation, though they might well be from different planets, considering the departments they're drawn from... But, there's still not a lot of cross-pollination of ideas. The whiff of groupthink.

I've taken the format of the "usual" 5-day course and adapted it somewhat to a 6-day format split over two 3-day sessions a couple of weeks apart, so there's a lot more breathing room, but, for any "Intro to X" course there is a certain body of knowledge that has to be covered, and there's a certain Logic to the order in which material has to be presented, so there's no escaping... There's just a bunch of stuff that has to get taught before people can realistically handle a tutorial (a.k.a. "homework".) All resulting in a pretty heavy First Three Days. I've just finished Day 3 ("Subscriber Trunk Dialing".) I'm exhausted.

Differences: In the usual "5-day" format I'd have to be really winding up my energy to stay the pace for Day 4. This time around I get a week-long break, and get to start fresh. Mmmmm... Gooooood!

Happily I have a fairly bright bunch. Quite a mix of backgrounds, all the way from a university graduates to "just-a-programmer-can-I-google-a-solution-and-cut-n-paste-the-code". The usual chirpy heckler who borders, at times, on irritating, but helps keep things alive. The usual "deeply tech" who catches all my mistakes and omissions, and keeps me on my toes.

I'll confess that I'm having a ball!

Cool stuff I have recently read or seen:

Books:
Glasshouse by Charles Stross — sf novel set in a world where human identities can easily be backed up and restored, psychosurgery can alter memories and identities, and the world is recovering from a war over identity-editing — the precise circumstances of which are unknown, because they have been edited out of the consciousness of the survivors.
A Shadow in Summer by Daniel Abraham (through Tor’s free e-book offer) — fantasy novel; pseudo-oriental setting; very cool worldbuilding, characterisation and magic system. The cities of a coastal empire are kept in power by their andat — ideas made flesh which are created and enslaved by Poets. Each andat has a power tied to the concept that it represents, and since andat disappear when their Poets die and it is very difficult to re-bind them, all the obvious ideas have been used up, and the existing andat have rather specific abilities. The book opens with a young man receiving a somewhat cliched harsh monastic education which is supposed to lead to Poethood after the appropriate trials by fire. In a pleasant break from the way this story usually goes, he rapidly rejects this as a cruel and misguided way of life, and runs away to find his fortune elsewhere. And then interesting things happen. There is an ensemble cast of interconnected protagonists, one of whom is an old lady. The best Tor e-book so far, I think.

Manga:
Naoki Urasawa! He is awesome! I have now read all of his manga that I have been able to get my hands on:

Monster — psychological horror mystery set in 90s Germany. A young surgeon saves the life of a little boy who has been shot in the head under mysterious circumstances. Many years later, he discovers that the boy is a psychopathic serial killer — and is framed for some of his murders. He sets out to track him down.
20th Century Boys (last chapter here) — sci-fi mystery set in Japan and other Asian countries during the 60s, the modern day and the future. In the modern day, a mysterious cult is gaining political power, and seems to be behind a number of sinister events. A young man realises that Friend, the mysterious leader of the cult, must have been in his close-knit group of friends in the 60s. But who is it?
Pluto — sci-fi murder mystery with robots, based on an Astroboy story. Very reminiscent of Asimov. Ongoing.

Later I found some other manga which are almost as good:

Vinland Saga by Makoto Yukimura — it’s about Vikings! A young Danish boy has joined the mercenary band of the ruthless, cunning man who killed his father — and performs dangerous missions for his nemesis in exchange for opportunities to duel him to the death. This all happens against the backdrop of various historical Viking invasions of Britain. Ongoing.
Ressentiment by Kengo Hanazawa — it’s about an unattractive loser who gives up on real women and immerses himself in a virtual dating sim. Then weird things start to happen. This doesn’t sound very good, but it actually is — it’s played completely straight, and for every scene which could be construed as cute girl fanservice, there’s a hairy, flabby man showing way too much skin as a counterbalance. There’s a crunchy cyberpunk-y plot, which has so far not made me want to stab myself with a fork, and I normally dislike cyberpunk. Ongoing.

Movies:
Children of Men — dystopia done very well.
Survive Style 5+ — this movie is bizarre and awesome, and has a really good soundtrack.

Series:
The Lost Room — a miniseries which has frequently been described to me as “very Unknown Armies”. It’s quite good, although major things are left unresolved at the end, probably in anticipation of a TV series extension. I thought the second episode had a few really creepy moments (subtle Lovecraftian horror; the kind with unnatural geometry, not the kind with tentacles).
ETA: Rome (season 1) — Backstabbing! Togas! Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo! Colourful expletives! Equal-opportunity nudity! Ciarán Hinds is hawt; it’s a pity that Caesar’s demise at the end of the season is historically inevitable. Best semi-historical series evar!