Bend in the Weather

The Linux Conference Australia starts on Monday!

Imagine 600+ odd Linux geeks all huddled into rooms to discuss passionately their favourite topics.  In a  nutshell, that's pretty much what you get at a LCA!

I've wanted to get off to the conference for years, but I've always had pressing work commitments that has kept me away.  This year, I decided to take some leave and make it a reality.   Even better, it's at Melbourne University this year, so it's nice and local.

The programme lined up looks great and covers some interesting topics that I'm keen to hear more about.

The conference runs from Monday 28^th Jan - Saturday 2^nd Feb.

Saturday there is an Open Day that is free for all to attend (even those not going to the conference).
If you've never experienced Linux up close or personal, or just mildly interested in what all the fuss is about, I highly recommend coming to the Open Day.

The Open Day will have booths from suppliers, various Linux communities and freebies for all.
In addition there will be many 'hands-on' displays where you can get to play and interact with some of the funky stuff being produced under Linux.

Again, if you haven't had a squiz at Linux....  take a look here to wet your appetite:

• What is Linux?
• Seeing a Linux Desktop.  Two popular ones are Gnome and KDE.
• Wish to test out Linux?   Take a look at Ubuntu.  It's an easy to use Linux distribution that can co-exist easily with Windows (you elect either Linux or Windows at boot time!)  Download their Desktop Edition, or request a CD to be sent to you for free!

If you've never used Linux before - the Ubuntu CD is great.  You can boot directly off it and run it from the CD.    This way you won't overwrite your existing Windows system.  If you don't like it... remove the CD and reboot.  You'll come straight back into Windows.  If you do like it, hit the 'Install' icon on the desktop and it will walk you through the installation.

So I'll be floating around the next week, but may not be around as much as usual.  Have fun -- I know I will! 

Update: It looks like we're in for good weather for most of the conference!
Weather for Melbourne during the LCA conference

Mon	Fine.	Min 16	Max 27
Tue	Fine.	Min 15	Max 27
Wed	Late change.	Min 18	Max 34
Thu	Shower or two.	Min 15	Max 24
Fri	Fine.	Min 14	Max 26
Sat	Fine.	Min 14	Max 30

Anyone who's played with Linux has come across the mixed bag that is wireless Ethernet cards under Linux.

Wireless chipset makers have been slow on the uptake supporting Linux.  This is through decent hardware specs so coders can put together a decent open-source driver to releasing their own proprietary  object blob that doesn't confirm with the kernel wireless framework; thus ensuing a range of flaming hoops need to be jumped through in order to get it to work.

Add to the pain the much discussed often loved/hated Network Manager to the list, and your sure to create pain for the majority of ordinary 'Ma and Pa Kettle' users.    Linux forums and mailing lists are full of frustrated people attempting to get wireless networking going successfully and stable under Linux, particularly after it was pretty much a no-brainer under Windows. 

I was well aware of the grief many had experienced, and treaded carefully when entering into the mix.   I really wanted to have our MythTV box that connects to our Plasma TV running wirelessly to avoid the pain of running Ether into the lounge.  (The house we are building will have the entire house wired for Gigabyte Ether -- so this won't be a problem moving forward!).

After a few weeks of researching I settled on a D-Link DWL-510.   It was supposed to have reasonable good Linux support. 

This is where the story gets interesting...

The D-Link returns the following useful information from lspci:

05:06.0 Network controller: RaLink RT2561/RT61 rev B 802.11g
        Subsystem: D-Link System Inc DWL-G510 Rev C
        Flags: bus master, slow devsel, latency 32, IRQ 20
        Memory at d5000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32K]
        Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2

Recent Linux 2.6.x series kernels have been shipping a module called rt61pci.ko   This is apparantly this 'new' module is to support 'newer' chipsets.  (The DWL-510 has been around for several years).

The crazy thing is that the module recognizes the card and auto-loads.   This confuses the hell outta people, as they end up seeing the module load cleanly, but unable to do anything with it.

By default most modern distros ship the driver... so people assume because the driver loaded without error it will work.  Unfortunately this is not the case, and normally send people  down the wrong path of trying to debug/resolve an issue that won't be fixed with that driver.  Do a search on "Linux RT61" on Google and you'll see what I mean!




More on this and how it was resolved another day...

Our Billion 7300G has been on it's last legs for a while.

It slowly been dying a slow and painful death for anyone that came in contact with it. 

Slowly but surely most of it's functionality was dying.

• The wireless AP would drop a wireless client that hadn't sent any data for more than 5 minutes.  The only way to avoid that was to login a remote SSH session and use the keep-alive option.
• Transfers across Wireless that went longer than 10 minutes would hang the modem.  (Not really good when ya trying to do a dist-upgrade!)
• Any form of P2P would lock the thing up after about 20 minutes


• Whenever the unit had it's firmware upgraded (often) you would need to manually reenter all the configuration, you couldn't 'restore' anything without fear of it stuffing up!
• Over the past week it's decided that I need to be restart approximately every 7 hours as it would overheat.  You would need to leave the thing down for about 30 minutes before it became usable again!
  

The total lockup every 7 hours was the final straw...

I should have realized something was up by the comments on the Billion Support website, and the amount of firmware upgrades the thing required.  (1.35 and at RC48 and counting!)
Many people complained about the wireless issues, but they were told by support, 'do this, do that', yet nothing really resulting in fixing it.

Lock-ups were also common, and it was known to have problems with many VOIP providers as well as fail miserably at P2P.

Really, in the end there wasn't much good you could say of the modem.

---

I had a whinge to David Gillies, who mentioned he's been extremely happy with his NetGear DG834G.

Home Automation is something I'm looking seriously at in our new house.

Many people have seen those sci-fci movies where virtual holographic  screens appear with a  humanoid  taking instructions verbally.. and then turn evil.

Unfortunately Home Automation isn't about this. 

What home automation is about automating simple repetitive tasks that makes your living experience better for it.

It may be items like:

• Adjusting the room temperature 15 minutes before you arrive home, so you don't come home to a cold/hot house.  Normally known as HVAC or more commonly referred to as climate control.
  
• Opening the garage door, disabling the alarm and unlocking an internal door so you can come in quickly (handy on a cold and wet night!)
• Automating items like blinds (open/close) and lights (on/off/dim) at particular times (very handy when away on leave).
• Having your security system SMS you when an alert triggers, and allow you to respond to it via SMS.  The system may then take corrective action.
  
• Hitting the 'watch movie' button on a remote, having the TV, surround sound and DVD player all turn on and select the right channel, whilst setting mood lighting and closing the curtains.
• Integrating a CCTV into a sensor at your front door, and recording someone as they walk up and press your front door bell.
  An internal security station can then let you view/talk to the individual and even unlock the door and ask them to enter (if permitted).
• Monitor a baby in it's cot/outside swimming pool via CCTV and display the video/audio whilst you are in another room.
  

Whilst none of these things are not must have items, but they do enhance your quality of lifestyle and simplify an often overly busy modern life.

Home Automation is not new.  In fact it's been around since the early 70's but has traditionally been reserved for those with loads of money to spare (anywhere from $100k - $20k).  

Historically these systems have been quite closed and proprietary; however with the adoption of Linux Home Automation solutions it's become the ultimate hacker play ground!

Standards in the area has also seen a wider adoption of various devices that can be chained to provide you with your desired system, without the lock-in that original systems provided.

Whilst traditionally with systems like C-BUS you were required to run a separate isolated cabling loop throughout the area being controlled, many more solutions now use existing IP networks and the electrical outlets in your use.

These days, a little research, some clever intergrated controllers, Linux and a few opensource applications can tie it all together for a couple of thousand dollars.  Like anything, you can elect how much you do, and this will ultimately determine the pricing.

As we're building, it's a great time to investigate all this and look at implementing such a system.

Over the next few weeks and several posts, I'll be sharing my initial research on the topic over the past 12 months.
From them you will see what can be achieved with a little bit of creative thinking, your favourite Linux distribution and a bit of spare time.

If all goes to plan, I'll be implementing this in the new house (if the finances allow), and I'll take you through the journey from design, configuration, installation and operation. 

Well it's been a long time between blogs.

Loads has happened since last time I posted.

• I moved jobs and am now working on contract at IBM in the Linux Support team.  I've been there now for over a year!
  
• I switched Linux distros, after OpenSuse 10.1 was quite a disaster (their update system on that version was a total flop - recent versions are much better).
  I'm now quite happy running Ubuntu Linux... it's everything one would want in a desktop Linux distribution.  You can take a peek of what it looks like by viewing the Ubuntu Screenshots.
• We've purchased some land and have commenced building our first home.
  We got a nice parcel of land (some 931sqm) in Bannockburn, which is about 60kms south-west of Melbourne (as the crow flies).   It's a nice rural setting of about 7,000 and is expected to grow to about 14,000 in 5 years time.
  It's about 20 mins out of Geelong.
  
  
  View Larger Map
  
• We're commencing building a house (plan of what we're building is here; though we're making a few minor adjustments) If all goes well, we should be in there somewhere between July-September of this year!

I'll start blogging quite a bit more now, as I've missed it.   So expect to see a few posts each week. 

Each year my family do a Kris-Kringle for Christmas.  This saves us all ending up with a bunch of presents we don't want and one present we all desire.  All the names are drawn and everyone knows who is getting for each other.

Individuals can then 'request' the present they want.
We set a limit of $50 on each present, so whilst it won't break any banks, you do end up with a reasonable present.

This works well on my side of the family, as we're all adults with the exception of my cousin Joshua who's still under 10.  For Josh...we all still buy for him.

This year I wanted a reasonable set of headphones to listen to music/videos and anything else making sound from my computer.  The main reason is that I share the office with Pauline, and as you can imagine, it annoys the hell outta her when I've got something cheesey or crazy off YouTube playing.

I elected to get some Sennheiser headphones.     I originally requested the HD201's.. as they were under the allocated $50.
What I didn't realise at the time.... is that they are no longer on the market, and have been replaced by the more expensive HD202s.

They were almost double the price of the ones I originally asked for...  But after listening to 'em...you'll be lucky to prize them from my hands/ears.
These little beasties pack a real punch, and are very comfortable to wear for long ours at a time (not like those annoying iPod ear buds that hurt your ear canal after an hour!)

Even better, it comes with a 3m cable, so it easily plugs into my PC, without having my head flattened against the desk to listen (due to short-chord syndrome found on the iPod ear buds).

The sound range they produce has to be heard to be believed!  Those flakey 160kbps MP3 files now sound like you're sitting in front of the royal orchestra.   The sound is crisp, rich and full.   I dare not stick a CD in for fear the sound depth will blow off my head!
For those that love classic/jazz, the ambience and clariry of the strings is crisp and sharp, whilst those bass-heads will love the chest thumping that the deep bass volumes produce.

These beauties have ensured none of my bad tasting music effects Pauline now.. and saved hours of frustration.. (though they don't solve my tapping my feet however -- which now seems to be the problem!) 

If you're in the need for some decent headphones, you can't look past Sennheiser's range.   They produce headphones for any price range and situation.

So if you need to speak to me, make sure you wave your hands... I probably can't hear you over my headphones!