One .... well twice then

I use Ubuntu One for sending files up and down over multiple PC's and to share with other people any large files that would be difficult to email or send by the notoriously slow MSN link.

One works great from my server and always has done, with my notebook I noticed it was a little hit and miss but never gave it much thought to fix it.

Anyway, I had a rough idea what to do but as with all these things your always mindful in case you mess something up. Ubuntu one is installed with Ubuntu 9.10 as standard so the package on the One website is not for 9.10.

I removed it using apt-get package manager but couldn't re-install as it said I had broken package dependencies, obviously I hadn't removed it all - one reason I wanted to remove it was that I originally installed it when I had 9.04 and it might be when I upgraded to 9.10 something didn't quite update or similar.

This website helped - http://www.ion-box.org/wiki/index.php/Reconfigure_or_Reinstall_ubuntu_one

I opened a terminal and pasted the following in...

pkill ubuntuone
sudo rm -rf ~/.share/local/ubuntuone rm -rf ~/.cache/ubuntuone rm -rf ~/.config/ubuntuone mv ~/Ubuntu\ One/ ~/Ubuntu\ One_old

Opened the gnome keyring (Applications/accessories/passwords and encryption keys), locate the entry for Ubuntuone token and delete that.

Then back in the terminal I pasted the last few commands.
sudo apt-get purge ubuntuone*
sudo apt-get install ubuntuone*

It was just a case then of launching the Ubuntu one client , authorizing the notebook to access the Ubuntu one area and it's sorted.
Files synched up straight away so all in all about a 3 minute fix, I can now send and synch up to 2gb of files over multiple PC's from anywhere in the world, it even synchronizes your evolution email contacts.

Clear skies

Still no go in the UK for flights and much of Europe.
The ash cloud as seen on http://www.radarvirtuel.com (Virtual air traffic radar) is still over much of the continent and if the last eruption is anything to go by this could last years.

One good thing though, at least the BA strikers won't need to hold any more strikes over the next day or so.

Anyone wanting live web cam images of the volcano can go to http://eldgos.mila.is/eyjafjallajokull-fra-valahnjuk/
There are three camera links on the left hand side - Close up, mid range and Distant.

Going nowhere ...

Here's the real time flight information for UK and Europe 9:30 am on April 16th.
Whilst on my way to work I was hit by a frozen Pizza, 4 lasagne meals and a tub of ice cream - I found out it was fall out from Iceland.

It's very strange to look up and see no vapour trails at all or any sign of planes apart from military essentials or one person power gliding.

Obviously the point of canceling the flights is to prevent the odd plane plummeting 25,000 feet with an engine full of hardened glass so it's not a bad decision.

Speaking of going nowhere I was amused this week with some horrendous vehicles on the road, one chappie had a nice K registration Nova, kitted out in alloy wheels, blacked out side and rear windows (but with a give away non tinted front windscreen , tut tut) and an exhaust big enough to hide a bear in.

The racket from his exhaust was immense as he tried to impress the odd passer by with his handy foot work on the pedals, I probably upset him in my crappy 2 litre diesel when I hammered past and left him about 1/2 a mile behind in a mere couple of seconds.

He finally caught up at the next set of traffic lights and sat beside me revving his engine, exhaust burbling until they finally changed to green and gave the signal to GO GO GO.

My trusty (or is it Rusty) Avensis left him standing and he was overtaken by myself, at least 2 other cars behind me and an age old Land Rover that had seen more action than Tom Cruises bed sheets.
It was obviously well worth spending all that money on a car worth probably £250 on the open market.

On the way home tonight I saw the one thing that I absolutely totally hate, drivers who constantly turn to their passengers as they talk as if they need to face them or they won't hear them in a sealed car.
I've seen this many times and know how this leads to getting nowhere, once when I was in Leicester on a road called Melton Road I had some idiot behind me doing the same, constantly turning his head to one side to talk to his passenger, obviously he didn't see me put my brakes on at the red light and thumped into the rear of my car.

Had several close misses several other times so know it's stupid thing to do, in fact earlier this week someone in front of me was doing it big time and approaching a roundabout was too busy talking to his passenger (in the back so had his head turned right around to his rear) to see the large lorry that had just pulled out in front of him.

The words "emergency stop" came to mind but he was a little upset at the trucker giving him the dead eye for being an idiot and me laughing at him for being an idiot.

Anyway, the UK is going nowhere - nothing new there then...

The Scammers are out

Quite a few people at work (and my family) have had unsolicited calls from people saying they are Microsoft and they are calling to let them know they have detected a problem with their computer and will fix it (and extend their warranty) for £55.

The interesting thing is they then talk you through typing some commands which bring up event viewer and then they play on your fears by saying "look at all the errors, we can fix those now and your computer will run much better".

They then go to considerable lengths to ask for credit card details or bank details even asking for someone else in the house to give them if you say you don't have bank details.

It's quite clear these people are either not based in the UK or are simply fucking morons, one colleague led them on a bit but then told them he was a police officer with the anti fraud unit, they simply carried on talking and explained how they were Microsoft and they will fix all his problems.

If you ask them for a phone number you will most likely get a number in a hosting centre that leases lines out so you won't strike any success with that.

A few tips...

Ask for their FULL name and their business address (to confirm they are Microsoft).
Ask them for the Microsoft switchboard number
Ask them for their Employee number
Ask them how they can collect information on you of a personal nature without your permission in breach of European law
Ask them how they married your PC information to your phone number
Ask them what information they are gathering

If your still pissed off then simply tell them you DO NOT USE WINDOWS - tell them you USE LINUX.

Personally I would tell them to FUCK OFF

P.S I wouldn't tell Microsoft to Eff off, just the scammers so make sure it is them before you commit an offence under the wireless and telegraphy act (1949).

The time is right

I just did a couple of timings on Ubuntu 10.04 beta.
Installed on a 1.6ghz celeron with 512mb of ram.....

From BIOS passing control to the boot loader (grub)
On mains power - time to login prompt = 6 seconds, time to desktop = another 6 seconds.
On battery power - time to login prompt = 7 seconds, time to desktop = another 8 seconds.

Shutdown - 3 seconds !

Once you have typed your password at the login prompt you barely see the screen change, your then straight onto the desktop and off it all goes, quite staggering for speed.

Firefox 3.6 does not hang about either, it's more than a match for many a browser, pages flashing in front of your eyes - due to collaboration from Yahoo and Canonical the search page now defaults to Yahoo but that's easily sorted if you want google or something else.

I upgraded one machine from 9.10 to 10.04 and on another installed 10.04 from CD.

This looks like the definitive release for speed and features.

Nice touches:
Dell broadcom drivers, work easily (select restricted drivers and activate)
Disk utility checks your drive for any issues, allows simple formatting of volumes, integrity tests, performance monitoring etc.
Gwibber - allows you to update multiple social networking sites at the same time.
If you don't like the windows buttons being on the left "mac" style look for mwbuttons, this script can change them to any orientation you like.

I made a quick launch script in the applications menu (just paste the absolute path to mwbuttons i.e /home/kevin/mwbuttons and give the launcher a name).

Time to play a bit more on it.

Ready 2 Go ?

I've been using these new "Ready 2 Go" batteries for some time now, in my opinion this is the future of rechargeable batteries.

When you get them they are already charged, pop them in and fire up your camera or whatever and you'll get just as long as you would expect.
Due to the new technology in the batteries they are ideal for low use applications like remote controls or similar where normal rechargeable batteries would self discharge before you got much use from them.

We have a multimedia PC keyboard for example, normal rechargeables are almost useless as you need to charge them up almost every time, give them a week or two idle and they run down.
The same goes for battery packs like Wii remotes, unless you put them back on their cradles they self discharge and your back with normal batteries.

These ones though, charge them up and pop them inside something or just put them in a container to one side, 3 or 6 months later take then out and put them in the item you want to use them in and they are still charged.
Effectively you get the convenience of alkaline batteries with the cost savings of rechargeable.

Other advantages are the ability to retain charge even at low temperatures and better hi current ability.

Sanyo call their version"eneloop" - http://www.eneloop.info/home/technology.html, the ones I use are Camlink batteries as they are about 50% cheaper.

Although I get my batteries from "Bupak" - http://www.budpak.co.uk
I found our local Home Bargains store selling 2 x 2100mah batteries with a charger for just £2.99, not bad when I paid £5.99 for 4 batteries.

If you need flexible power handling and have a mix of low and high demand products then these are the future, I no longer use my 2800mah high performance batteries as amazing as it seems these ones last longer.

I can charge them, put them in a torch, use them then transfer to something like an Xbox controller and use them, then put them away for a month, take them out and they are good to go.

Its all a bit technical how they work but the Sanyo site has the technology papers on etc, all I know is that these batteries work from the moment you open the pack or several months after you originally charged them - apparently they still retain most of their charge 12 months later even though you have not used them.

Ubuntu 10.04 imminent

Now many people may think being a little excited about a new release is just plain daft.
However, having seen some fun and games with Windows 7 and the fact I've not used Windows now for a good 2 years and I'm happy this is providing me an alternative that suits my needs.

Even my own team at work who have had Windows 7 installed have had amusing fun, one lasted 10 minutes from turning on his newly built machine to find it blue screen in front of him, finger print readers fail to work, bit locker security is causing us issues so we've had to turn it off, security programs won't work properly, our Cisco soft phones won't work properly and so on.

Don't get me wrong, Windows 7 when it's all sorted should be fine but lots of hardware fails to work, drivers are not working and so on.

So keeping my home computers on Ubuntu is a good choice and one I'm going to stick with, I even got a HP mini note 2133 working on Ubuntu 9.10 last week including the wireless (which was a bit tricky to get working on 9.04) and it runs perfectly.

so 10.04 is imminent, I've installed it on a virtual machine but also ran the live CD on some units and it looks the best release so far.
Fast boot up times (not that 9.04/9.10 were slow), added features like Gwibber (a social networking client to connect you to twitter, facebook etc) and lots of bits just fiddled with and generally made all shiny.

My laptop running 9.10 has given no problems at all, originally it had 8.10, then 9.04 then 9.10 and not a single crash ever.
My file server runs 9.10 and again has never crashed or locked up, my media PC is running 9.10 and again no lock ups or problems and so on.

Compared to Windows the housekeeping is far less, the stability far higher and things like on line banking are less stressful.

If you have some older hardware that might not work well on Vista and Windows 7 is not running too well then this is the way to go, my next steps are to try OpenVZ, the virtualization software that can run as a modified Ubuntu core with better distribution of resources than VMware on PC etc, and perhaps make some virtual containers so I can try several virtual machines running at once.

One chap has even had 1000 virtual machines running at once on OpenVZ so it's worth a look.

I'll get the full 10.04 installed on April 10th then will rant and rave on here.

So far it looks like more fun than a bus full of 20 year old Nuns all high on alcohol and drugs.