Apps

Don't get me wrong... I love a bargain as much as the next guy or girl.

What I don't like however is when a computer system is implemented with little regard and isn't actively checked by a human.
It's one way to make your company look like a jack-ass.

Sorry Woolworths - you've landed yourself in such a category.

Most Australian supermarket shoppers are aware of the fuel discounts offered by Coles and Woolworths, which can slice anything from $0.03 - $0.20 per litre of the cost of your fuel. Something that's always welcome by motorists.

It's the only reason I have an everyday rewards card. Fuel discounts add up over time, even more so for myself, as I drive with LPG the majority of the time, so $0.20 off per litre on LPG is quite substantial.

During the months of April and May Woolies decided that for 8 weeks straight I would like to buy wine. I'm not talking 1 bottle either. Most 'deals' require a purchase of 6 or more bottles in a given purchase.

A sample of the Email contents is included below:

To be honest, I love a good drop of red. Probably more so than the average punter. (We normally have a few dozen on hand in the house). At the end of March I had let our stocks go down over a period of time so had restocked. This seems to have triggered their rewards system to pester me for the next 8 weeks straight. No fuel offers (which was the main selling point of the card), nor any other offer... just grog.

At 6 bottles minimum per Email over 8 weeks, anyone reading my Email from Woolworths, would think I'm an alcoholic!

The crazy thing... It backfired.
I didn't buy any wine during that period. (As I had just restocked my levels.) This form of marketing happens 'after the fact', and as such it fails. If I have already made a bulk purchase, why would I wish to repeat it shortly after, and every week for a period of 8 weeks?

Woolworths reward system needs looking at. (As does Coles for that matter). It would be more beneficial to flag such bulk purchases of your customers, then look at sending it out 'specials' say every 3,6 or 12 months... you're likely to have a bigger uptake. I can't see my car dealership sending out a "buy a brand new car" Emails if I had just taken delivery of a new vehicle.

Certainly for everyday staples, it would be nice to have these filter through regularly. However don't see these, like 25% off either Meat, Fruit or Vegies for a week. It seems to be items like Coca-Cola, Alcohol and other non-essentials. I'm not surprised though... the supermarkets know we need staples.. and are trying to increase our trolley sizes by teasing us into buying these non-basic item.

Certainly I do hope that Woolworths and Coles both learn that their average shopper has the intelligence above that of a broken trolley wheel, as the current marketing strategies to date are quite insulting.

Often changelogs have important information on why a package was updated. Other times, they are just humorous:

tzdata (2009n-0ubuntu0.9.04.1) jaunty-proposed; urgency=low

* Add argentinas-dst-2009.diff: Disable DST switch for Argentina tomorrow,
as the Argentina government decided yesterday. Careful planning is boring.
Thanks to Margarita Manterola for the patch! (LP: #453165)

-- Martin Pitt Sat, 17 Oct 2009 14:22:39 +0200

I've been in the process of migrating my parents photos off a Gallery2 installation on to Flickr.
Not normally a big task, but when it contains over 2,500 photos, some 120+ photo sets and over 1GB in image data.. it's no mean feat!

Searching online it appears there are a few tools for migrating from a Gallery V1 but not a Gallery v2 installation.
The ones I did come across also seemed half complete, and either failed outright or didn't work at all.

There was one saving grace however, the flickr_upload CPAN module and a bit of coding made it relatively easy.

All in all -- I'm happy with the results of their flickr import. You're welcome to take a look at their photos.
They have some wonderful photos from trips in recent years around both Australia and New Zealand.

Here is just a collection of some of my favourite photos of theirs:



Now -- the only job left is to update their blog so the images point to Flickr instead of the Gallery2 location!
Unfortunately due to the URLs created by flickr, it's a manual process.

The joys of being the family sysadmin!

Even as a Linux desktop user, I still have a need to run various pieces of legacy software under Windows.
Ideally, I would love to find a Linux alternative, but whilst the itch remains, I still need to scratch it.

As such, I run various Virtualbox Virtual Machines running Windows XP.

This gives me the added benefit of still being able to run my preferred operating system as my main desktop (Linux), whilst still using some legacy applications under Windows.

This is nothing new, and most people do this all the time. With most modern CPU chipsets from both AMD (AMD-V) and Intel (VT-x) providing hardware assisted virtualization solutions - it has become a simple task for many people.

One thing that has annoyed me, and any user that has ever had to reinstall a Windows machine (it happens to the best of us -- Windows often decides to eat it's own registry), is that whilst you might install straight from CD, it also means you have to then spend a good few hours applying all the service packs and then all the updates from the Microsoft website (and sit back and watch a dozen or so reboots between multiple updates). It's enough to send any sane person around the bend.

Once you've done it - you vow never to do it again, yet as Murphy would have it... it's bound to happen again. This is partly due to the fact that Windows Deteriorates over time, until one day the performance is so shoddy you can swear you saw a snail push the cursor on your screen. Once it comes to that, it's time to reinstall again.

Microsoft also recognised it's a problem, particularly in corporate environments that run many desktop PCs. As such they released WSUS. That's fine and well -- if you run a Microsoft Windows 2003/2008 Server. Unfortunately most home users don't.

Don't dispair! Some geeky German's have released a GPLv3 licensed utility that will pretty much undertake the task for you without the need for an expensive Microsoft Windows Server anywhere in sight. c't Offline Update, allows you to use either Linux or Windows to download all the updates for both Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows platforms. In addition it can handle different language versions, and even build a nice ISO off all the updates so you can take it on the road, hand it to friends, etc.

Why on earth would they code it to download the Windows Updates on Linux? Well, it makes it easier to install in a central location -- say on a Samba server so that all your desktop machines can then install the updates from a central location over your LAN. (Call it a poor man's WSUS!)

To run under Linux it couldn't be easier. Once you have downloaded c't Offline Update and extracted it... change into the sh subdirectory. It's then just a matter of running the DownloadUpdates.sh shell script with the right arguments:

$ ./DownloadUpdates.sh -help

**********************************************************
*** c't Offline Update Downloader ***
*** for Linux Systems ***
*** ***
*** http://www.heise.de/ct/projekte/offlineupdate/ ***
*** Authors: Tobias Breitling, Stefan Joehnke ***
**********************************************************

Usage: ./DownloadUpdates.sh [system] [language] [parameter]

Supported systems:
w2k, wxp, wxp-x64, w2k3, w2k3-x64, w60, w60-x64, oxp, o2k, o2k3, o2k7, all-x64, all-x86

Supported languages:
enu, deu, nld, esn, fra, ptg, ptb, ita, rus, plk, ell, csy
dan, nor, sve, fin, jpn, kor, chs, cht, hun, trk, ara, heb

Parameter:
/excludesp - do not download servicepacks
/makeiso - create ISO-Image
/dotnet - download .NET-Framework
/nocleanup - do not cleanup client directory
/proxy - define proxyserver( /proxy http://[username:password@]:)

Example: ./DownloadUpdates.sh wxp deu /dotnet /makeiso

$

c't Update also provides a simple Windows GUI to automate the task:

Installing the updates on the client.
Once you've downloaded the updates and either burnt them to a CD/DVD (for easy portability) or made them available on a network share (Tip: share the sub-directory called client) Windows users can then easily apply the updates.

A user can run UpdateInstaller.exe (in the root directory of the CD or the share). The UpdateInstaller will determine what you have installed already (and grey these options out). It's then just a case of selecting the options you want.Now for those family members who are in dire need of a 'computer fix' and need me to reinstall Windows for them, they'll be given burnt copies of the latest ISOs, so they can in future undertake the task themselves. I would rather educate someone how to undertake the rebuild themselves for future use. (That, and I really don't have the spare time/desire to rebuild dozens of Windows machines a year! )

Finally it's also worthwhile downloading and running the free Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer which will ensure you have all the updates applied (and inform you if you are missing any). It's also a good idea to disable any non-essential services the tool recommends.

Hopefully this tip will speed up the time it takes to fully patch a Windows desktop after a reinstall.

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.

OpenOffice 3.1 was recently released. It brings a range of new features and bugfixes.

Those of you on Ubuntu desktops who wish to upgrade can do so quite easily. It's been built for Jaunty, Intrepid and Hardy.

You can use the following apt repos to pick it up:

Jaunty:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

Intrepid:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main

Hardy:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ppa/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ppa/ubuntu hardy main

Once that's done, just add the signing key:
sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com D2BB86E0EBD0F0A43D4DB3A760D11217247D1CFF

Now it's a case of just running an update and you'll automatically be upgraded from OO.org 3.0 to OO.org 3.1.

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Happy Open-Officing!

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.

It would appear from the Email I have received that Yahoo Briefcase is closing their doors.




Whilst I haven't used it for many years, it was a useful service for transferring files around when I did use it (2000-2001 by the file stamps on the files I had in there).

There has been no indication given in the Email as to the reasons behind the closing of the service, however the Briefcase FAQ does give some indications:



It's a shame, and I suspect quite a number of people will be affected by the decision. Strange, for items like Office files (Documents, Spreadsheets, etc.) Briefcase was indeed a great site. Ditto for archives or backups. I wouldn't classify a webmail solution (as suggested) is a replacement. I never have been one to believe that Email is a file storage system.

Having said that, there are much better systems available that provide a lot more storage space these days. A quick search on free online storage, will give you a heap of storage solutions.

It does make sense from a Yahoo! business decision to start dropping off some of the services they do have on offer, and focus on their core business (apparently someone out there still use Yahoo! for searching!)

I'm a premium Flickr user, and use it pretty heavily to store photos. I would really hate to see this site go way of the dodo (like what will happen to Yahoo Briefcase come March 30). It does raise the issue -- what happens when a paid service 'disappears'. Just the thought of having to move all my Flickr collections and sets, with all the metadata attached is enough to add an additional dozen grey hairs.

With the ongoing strife that Yahoo is in financially - I'm not wanting to be caught out if they do go under. (I'm hoping not, but would rather err on the side of caution).

So lazy web, do you know of a solution to backup all your data from your Flickr account?

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).