Hardware

I may be a slow adopter but I've finally jumped on the Netbook bandwagon.

I've been toying with the idea of getting hold of one of these beasties for a little while, and today a deal on Zazz! came up I couldn't resist.

They have the Asus Eee PC S101 for an amazing $444AUD. I'd seen them around the $999 price tag only as recent as March this year. (I think they are $599 RRP currently).



So in went my order.



Now -- what Netbook distro should I run on it (Windows XP Home is coming off immediately when it arrives).
I've looked at gOS and the Ubuntu Netbook Remix.

Any ideas/thoughts on the preferred Linux OS to run on such a beastie are greatly welcomed!

Chris, a friend of mine has been able to do some fun electronics hacking for a worthy cause.

Chris has entered into The Great Brisbane Duck Race, a competition run by PA Foundation which sponsor the Prince Alfred Hospital. All monies raised will be used for Cancer research.

So what is the Great Brisbane Duck Race I hear you say?
Well it's not the infamous Ernie from Sesame Street rubber duckie:



In a nut-shell:

• Purchase a rubber duckie from PA Foundation


• Pimp your duck -- add a motor, jet engine, whatever you think is appropriate to make it the speediest duck around


• Go down to the competition on the day


• Navigate without sinking the 100m water course


• Ensure your duck passes the line first to win!

Chris has been making some good progress, and been blogging about the project.

In fact he even has a YouTube video showing his current results.



The competition is being held on Saturday 26^th September at 2:40pm on the Brisbane River (in front of South Bank where the new Brisbane Big Wheel is located).

Whilst I won't be there in person cheering Chris on, I will be one of his virtual supporters!
If you're in Brisbane, head down for a great day and support such a worthy cause.

Okay, any decent phone you purchase these days is a smart phone.

Finding the right one can be difficult. How can you be certain you're not following the hype of the iPhone, avoiding a WinCE device because it's WinCE or if a Symbian based OS is your flavour?

Does the phone have all the features you need/desire? How can you compare all the available models on the market?

The SmartPhone Grid takes all the guess work out of it for you. Answer the 30 simple questions, and then get a rating on what smart phone suits you.

Interestingly, I'm a Nokia N95 8GB owner, and it was the N95 and the 8GB model that scored highest for me. I did my research over a few months at the time, so it seems reasonably accurate.

In other news... Nokia's answer to the App Store has arrived -- in the form of the Ovi Store.
Tip: Use the web version instead of the one on the phone, it's faster and easier to navigate. You can then just have the apps sent directly to you.

FlashROM 0.90 has been released as part of the CoreBoot project.

That means you can read, write and verify almost all common BIOS chips now under Linux!
Gone of the days of needing to boot into DOS to Flash your BIOS.

So what does this mean?

• Flash a running system, without needing to reboot. The new BIOS comes effective after a reboot (you can verify it prior to bouncing it).
• Flash a remote system over SSH. No physical access required.
• No need for a boot floopy or bootable CD to flash a system.
• More than Linux is available. It is also available under FreeBSD, DragonFly BSD, Solaris, Mac OS X, and other Unix-like OSes.

Awesome work by the CoreBoot developers, and it means we're one step closer to removing any dependency on that other OS.

Ever wondered why PulseAudio sucks so bad?

Sick of the multiple Audio stacks in Linux? (OSS/ALSA/PulseAudio).
Ever wanted to make sense of items like JACK,ESD,aRts and NAS or just confused with either GStreamer or xine?

Here is a clever overview of the sound systems that is Linux. (click the image for a larger view)/

Linux audio like it or not is a mess. Multiple layers providing the same functionality. It's a house of cards that often falls down.
Things have been hidden well in OSS/ALSA and it's not until demanding audio like HD codecs have started to make their way across that some of these issues are starting to be uncovered (the infamous 'popping' sounds).

PulseAudio has been poking and pushing ALSA in recent times, and as a result unearthed a number of issues.

I'm hopefully eventually we'll get to a single, simple but powerful audio stack. I'm not holding my breath though.

Yesterday saw Sol Trujillo the CEO of Telstra resign to go and join his former exec mates (Greg Winn and Phil Burgess) back in the US of A. So come June 30, all of the 3 amigos will have left the country and resigned from their positions.

It will have been 4 years to the date when his last day at Telstra occurs. Let's take a look at what he's achieved in that time:

• Taken a company that had a shareprice above $5.06, to hover now around the $3.68 mark. (Shaving of over 25%)


• Earnt $13.4 AUD million dollars last financial year, and likely walk away with a golden handshake of $20AUD million dollars.
  


• Managed to be pig-headed over the NBN, and ultimately ensured the joke of a proposal Telstra submitted was thrown out. Sol by his own admissions, claims it probably cost the company around $2 AUD billion dollars.
  


• Consistently fought with the ACCC and both Liberal and Labour governments on regulation issues. The management style used in the states of bullying governments into submission didn't rub well with Australian federal politicians, and worked against Telstra in the end.
  


• Used their monopoly against competitors at the detriment of Australian consumers; with lock outs of Telephone exchanges (so they could install their own equipment), delayed the rollout of ADSL2+ (left equipment sitting there for at least 18 months), anti-competitive pricing of back-haul charges across the country, and over inflated prices at both wholesale and retail levels.
  


• Clashed relentlessly with the Communications, Electrical, Plumbing Union on his way to sacking 10,143 employees (he's still got 3 months to go, expect more heads to roll before then. He stated 12,000 to go in 5 years, and he's been pretty much on target there, not ideal in the current economic climate. Industrial action since Sol came on board has been ongoing. The majority of call centre staff and IT staff are now outsourced from cheap labour countries like India.
  


• Over simplified the business transformation process which will grossly exceed budget and stretch out for at least another 3 years. With the departure of the 3 amigos, the job they commenced will not be finished, and some poor bunny will be left with egg on their face when the true details of the projects emerge some years later.
  


• Disregarded a vote by shareholders at an AGM not to raise company execs salaries. They rose them anyway.

Surely we can find someone as dreadful in Australia to run this country and don't need to import another 'know-it-all' yank who thinks he knows what's best for us.

I wonder what Jodee Rich is doing these days?!
(Answer: Working on PeopleBrowsr)

Don't you love it when you find out your entire weekend is on the scrap-heap because you need to work.

I love hate the way projects are handled at this place.

1. Project is given 3 months from start to finish
2. Design Architects spend 2 months stuffing around with the design, which they always get wrong.
3. Cablers and networks take 2-4 weeks getting the infrastructure in place (most of the time).
4. You're left with whatever crumbs are left to actually build the OS, harden it, install your regular tools, configure users, configure up the SAN disk, and deploy the various host applications required.. (You can read this as normally (-1 day -> - ∞ days)
5. Project manager can't understand why he is now running behind schedule and decides that escalating you is the best solution to resolve the issue.
6. As a result someone high up thinks the best way to resolve the issue is to insist on bloody hourly updates... taking you 30 mins each hour to complete. No-one seems to realise that this only leaves 30 mins each our to actually do the work!

Right... I feel better I've got that off my chest.

Now back to the joys of this weekend.... I've already worked past midnight most nights this week and running on empty.

I dunno why I whinge, it's a process rinsed and repeated over and over. It's not like we get recognised for the crazy hours demanded of us (or even really compensated).

Huawei, the Chinese company that ruffled a number of Cisco feathers have been pushing out a number of wireless 3G devices for wireless broadband for some years. You can find the Huawei devices like the E220 and E169 available from several Australian telcos for 'mobile Internet'.

I personally own a E169 on a Optus Pre-Paid Mobile broadband connection as a 'backup' for when my ADSL connection goes down.

This week at the Mobile World Congress being held in Barcelona Spain, Huawei has announced the release of i-Mo; a combined 3G wireless modem and Wifi router unit. This means one connection can now support multiple people.

Many people are already dropping a dedicated telephone line and the cost of ongoing line rental, such a device is certainly only going to grow this market more, as it can now move from a single user device to a household device.

However, the biggest news from the Mobile gathering is that we're likely to finally see a universal power adapter for mobile devices (so no need for a new charger whenever you upgrade that mobile phone). They are also suggesting up to 50% power savings when charging your phone. Don't hold your breathe, it won't become active until 2012. If only they could do the same with damn data connectivity cables!

Ahh the good ol' days.

I distinctly remember the days when you would stick a printer on the network and then wrestle with the sucker getting the right settings so your printouts didn't look like Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Installing custom filters and weird control files were all the norm. Not so much now.

Thanks to Michael Fox advice, I purchased a Brother Mono Laser printer this week (that handles Duplex/Networking as well). The Brother HL-5250DN works 100% under Linux and just required installing the PPDs off LinuxPrinting.org (though it was working fine prior to that just via CUPS and the included driver). What's even more surprising is that they have a Linux section on the Brother website.

I had the printer uninstalled from the box, read the 'setup instructions' included (plug this, remove that, etc), and had it printing duplex in < 10 minutes!

Before Michael's advice -- I had avoided Brother printers -- mainly due to having a PoS Brother plain-paper Fax machine. It seems their printers are much better than their Faxes.

So a big thanks to Michael.

So I ask Linux developers... stop making it so easy to install hardware. Otherwise everyone will be running Linux before too long!

Now -- I only need a bookcase in my office, and I've completed my new office setup!

I was under the belief that most people were aware of the Dial before you dig service, particularly when digging up on public land.

How wrong I was.... a 'contractor' decided not to use the service and it resulted in taking most of Geelong and surrounding suburbs (50k-75k population) off the air for 24-48 hours earlier this week.

MY ADSL connection was effected in Bannockburn (approx 20kms out of Geelong).... meaning that the backhaul links from Geelong were severed (I guess those that go from Geelong <-> Melbourne). (ADSL Nazi said: "No ADSL Authentication for you!"). We were luckier than other however, we still had a working phone line, many residents didn't.

We lost service around midday on the 12^th and service appeared restored around 10:30am on the 13^th. In effect it was just under 24 hours. You don't realise how much you rely on the Internet until it's not there!

As I work mainly from home, it meant almost a full day I was not working... wouldn't you know it, I ran out to purchase a Wireless Pre-Paid Broadband kit -- and the silly thing came up not 10 minutes after I left the house. Anyone looking for good mobile coverage look at the E169 USB wireless from Optus. It works well under Linux, is pre-paid so it doesn't cost an arm and a leg every month, and coverage now using the 'YesG' areas is quite reasonable now. This will only improve with Optus claiming that 98% of the population will be covered by 2010 (and speeds upto 42Mbps). Today they already cover some 85% of the population. Optus 3G has certainly calmed down now that they hype around the iPhone has started to dissipate. (I suspect many Optus iPhone users have now got their first few months of bills!)


To complicate matters we were upgrading our Telstra ADSL1 8M link to the newly-on-offered ADSL2+ via Internode at the same time. (Was scheduled for the 13^th).

After returning from the Optus shop with a shiny pre-paid wireless broadband and thinking I would need to configure that (via Network Manager -- yaya Wireless Broadband support now), I discovered our ADSL connection was back.

Even better ADSL2+ was enabled. I am dragging down at about 1.6MB/sec now.

Line sync speeds are pretty decent as well: DownStream Connection Speed: 16445 kbps UpStream Connection Speed: 953 kbps

So it seems the outage for us at least was worth it! We've effectively doubled our speed.