Category Archives: Technology

Virtual Geekery – Sun xVM VirtualBox

Posted on by

Been playing with Sun’s xVM VirtualBox software again for a couple of days.  I find virtual machines fascinating.  Clearly emulators have been around since the dawn of computing, and in fact, the whole concept of writing software is in some ways emulation.  But the complexity of emulating an entire PC, within a PC, just makes me giggle.

In the daylight hours that I’m obliged to work I spend a lot of time dealing with virtualisation as it’s an increasingly popular technology, and I’ve messed around with virtual machines at home, but VirtualBox really is pretty smooth.

And I’m using it to satisfy my other geekery interest – Linux.  Anyone unlucky enough to have read this blog for a few years will know that I used to have much more Linux in the house, handling web, mail and a bunch of other things.  Over time it became clear that I was just doing it for the sake of it and that open source and free Windows software really was enough to get me by.  This was even more true when we bought new PC’s with XP licenses (I’ll leave that statement hanging, so you get the implication).

I’d messed with Linux desktops for quite a while, originally with SUSE and a little Red Hat, but I’d never gotten on very well with the X Windows environment, it was always too painful to me.  So for a long time I stuck to a server implementation of Debian (never got X working on the graphics card that I used in that machine) and stuck to the server side.  Lately however the desktop distributions have come on in leaps and bounds and coupled with Linux versions of Firefox and Open Office, they really do provide a significant amount of functionality that I use day to day at home.

So I stuck Ubuntu on a virtual machine and it runs really well, very impressed.  Despite the fact that it’s a VM it runs pretty quickly, more than useable.  I suspect other than games I could quite easily live with Ubuntu as my main OS and these days WINE is pretty good at supporting most games (if I understand it correctly).  The reason I won’t move fully is that I have a legit version of XP on this machine, it works fine, does everything I need it to do and plays games.  Which is exactly why Linux is still the underdog in the desktop wars and why you find people so upset about the bundling of OS’s with hardware.

The reason I started looking at VirtualBox again was actually nothing to do with Linux, I wanted to see if I could build a little sandbox running XP, in which I could install and run software that I’d downloaded to make sure it worked as expected and didn’t cause any issues, before installing it on the real image.  VirtualBox provides really nice snapshotting which can ‘roll back’ any malicious installs.  I’m really not sure how the XP licensing works though.  Can I run the same licensed version of XP on my machine, and inside a VM on the same machine legitimately?

Is science fiction inevitable?

Posted on by

It appears to me, an uneducated sci-fi geek wannabe, that if the human mind can conceive of it, eventually we can bring it to fruition.  What was fiction in the early part of the last century is the reality of today.

I’ve just been watching a TV program which included robotic limbs, both as human limb replacements and as human limb extensions (for remote use in dangerous locations).  Limbs controlled by tiny electrical impulses from muscles, or by thought alone.  Semi-realistic limbs, with 4 or 5 mobile and flexible fingers.  Rather than guessing where we’ll be in 10 years, it’s easier to look back at where we were 10 years ago and imagine if we make the same rate of progress.

The same is true in so many areas of traditional sci-fi topics such as robotics, space travel, energy, communication.  I remember watching the black and white Flash Gordon and thinking how awesome it would be, to be able to see the person you were talking to on the phone.

Now video conferencing and videophone technology is increasingly commonplace.

It appears that at all scales (from space travel to the moon to the tiny elements of motors and computers), if sci-fi authors have imagined it, then science practitioners have brought it about and made it a reality.

I am sure that people more clever than me debate this all the time.  Asking questions about whether we make our own reality and hence anything we imagine can be made real, or that since sci-fi is based on a kernel of reality it’s bound to be possible to develop the ideas into real stuff.  But for me, I just like thinking about it.  Does sci-fi drive science research?  If you spent your youth watching C3-PO does that in turn result in your Robotics research taking the form of a large golden humanoid with a personality disorder?

Is it inevitable that most of the inventions of science fiction will become reality?

I’ve blessed my case with an offering of blood

Posted on by

Case fan has been noisy and getting worse (two big fans in the case, one front, one back, it’s the front one that’s been going).  Bought a couple of new ones a while back, but found that I could get by, by tapping the fan and the bearings would settle down so I never actually put the new one in.

But the last few days the tapping has only fixed it for a few minutes, so I finally got around to replacing it tonight.

Not as easy as I’d hoped.  Had to remove the hard disk cage to get to the back of the fan mountings.  The existing fan was wired into an adapter plugged into one of the power cords, all of which was nicely cable-tied together by the folk who built the machine, with about 50 other cables.  So I had to cut the ties and then sort out all the hanging wires and remove the fan.  Lucky for me I bought a fan with a 3-pin to 4-pin converter, because I needed it.  Picked the quieter of the two I bought, and lined it up to screw it to the front of the case.

The screws are self tapping into the plastic, but they’re not easy to put in, and while putting the second one in my left hand slipped and I dragged my thumb over some sharp metal on the case.  Nice 1 inch long, 2mm deep gash on my thumb.  I didn’t get a photo, we dressed the wound pretty quick.  Nice big splodge of blood in the case, I think I got most of it.

I was tempted to check my blood sugar since there was so much spare blood hanging around.

Finally got the screws in and the case sounds nice and quiet.

Wii Fit & Toys-r-Us

Posted on by

We got our Wii Fit from Toys-r-Us (not sure if I said that before).  We got it at the time by ringing up a few times, asking when / if they had deliveries.  The day they got a delivery Grete went over and queued with about 14 other people.  They handled that pretty well with tickets and assurances everyone would get one.

Anyway, about 14 days ago we noticed the Wii Fit had a fault.  If you stood in a specific place it would lose connection with the Wii.  It was either being power recycled or the Bluetooth was being reset, or it was causing a short.  It got steadily worse.  We rang Toys-r-Us and first of all they said we’d need to bring it back in, with our Wii (which we didn’t get from them) to test it and they would refund us.

We explained how hard it had been to get one in the first place, and could they not do an exchange when they got stock?  The person on that phone at that time said no.  Anyway, we rang back a day or two later, and this time the (more knowledgeable) staff member said oh yeh, no problem, they would do us a definite replacement when they got stock in, and they never mentioned taking in the Wii to do any testing.  And they said they aught to be getting some stock on Thursday or Friday.

So, Grete (who always gets to do this stuff because I’m a coward) took the Wii Fit in yesterday.  Initially the member of staff she spoke to said they couldn’t promise a replacement, but Grete explained the conversation she had on the phone, and a different staff member confirmed that was possible.  She got a slip of paper and came home.  Today, they called and Grete’s just returned with our new Wii Fit.  We were only without it for a couple of days in the end (although because of the fault, we’d stopped using it anyway).

So, Toys-r-Us, pretty good service in the end, but I think you need to educate your staff more consistently on your policy and processes.

Traffic and Open Wireless Networks

Posted on by

Around a mile from home we got stuck in traffic today.  Long queue, moving very slowly in fits and starts, along a main road off which the road we live is directly connected.  It took us about 20 minutes to travel that mile, maybe longer.

I jokingly said to Grete I’d get the laptop out, find an open wireless network and blog about the traffic to pass the time.  I didn’t quite go that far, but I did get the laptop out and click refresh regularly on the ‘find wireless network’ option.  It’s fun to see what people call their wireless networks.  Some people give their own names away, some people continue to give away the name of their kit (both of these provide room for abuse if you can work out which house the kit is in), and the majority of networks in the area near to where I live are secured.  But not all of them.

I can’t believe how many people still run unsecured wireless networks.  We were probably 20-30 feet from the houses we were passing, and I was getting signal strengths of around 15% to 65% from inside a car, with the laptop running on battery on my knee.  In the rain (not raining inside the car, obviously).  Do people not think, or do they think it won’t happen to them?  The best bits were where we passed side streets, and we’d go from 2 or 3 networks in range to 10.  There’s a massive amount of wireless traffic hanging around our streets.  Most of them are BT Home Hub or Sky devices (and identify themselves as such).  Here’s a selection of our favourites.

Amusing Wireless network name

Clearly someone with a sense of humour.

Need to keep their legs crossed

This person needs to secure their legs more carefully.

Random unsecured network (and default name)

Random unsecured network (and default name)

Don't be Nosy!

Don’t be Nosy! More polite than the first one.

Another default open connection

Another default open connection not far from where I live.

From my drive

That’s the view from my driveway.  That’s not my wireless network.

The one I didn’t get a screenshot of, but wish I had was the one with ~70% strength, called ‘default’ which was unsecured.  I’m guessing it’s unconfigured as well, and hence if you got connected you could probably also connect to the router in question and reconfigure it.

Friends don’t let friends run unsecured Wireless network devices.

D&D 4th edition more thoughts

Posted on by

We went through character creation last night with C&C and OneOther ((yeh, I hate when people use acronyms, nick names and aliases to hide identity as well, but I also like making sure I respect people’s privacy)) so I’ve got a little bit more experience with the 4th edition PHB now.  It feels a little chaotic and unordered, certainly during character creation you’re all over the place, reading stuff at the end of the book in the middle of character creation, etc.  Maybe it’s because we’ve come from D&D -> AD&D -> AD&D 2nd Edition -> D&D 3rd Edition and we just find the format sort of jars.

One thing that I did finally nail down – I keep thinking ‘bah I can’t find the rule on xxxxyism this rulebook sucks’, and then it dawns on me there is no rule[tm].  For example, I was really struggling to find the rules on multiple attacks – until of course it dawned on me you don’t get any.  Sure, if you have a power it may let you attack more than one thing at a time, but there’s no concept of native multiple basic attacks ((let me know if I’m wrong)).  Likewise haste, took me a while to realise it wasn’t there.  Two-weapon fighting, it looks like you just get a bonus to your damage, and you can swing whichever weapon you feel like, but never both in the same round.  So there’s a bunch of what I would consider core elements from 2nd and 3rd edition which have been removed (in the name of simplicity) and it takes a while to get used to it.

It also only dawned on me half way through character creation that during combat, you’re going to be using your at-will powers virtually all the time.  It’s going to be a rare moment that you decide (as a melee character) to make a basic attack.  For example, fighters get to pick two from four at will attacks which are basically all at least equal to their base attack but usually superior in some way.  There’s no reason you’d make a basic attack unless you’re forced to (opportunity attack for example).  As a fighter, you’re going to be cleaving (hit your regular mob, do small amount of damage to an adjacent-to-you target) or reaping strike (do damage even if you miss) for example.  I quite like this, but it’s clear where the source for this change comes from (more in a sec).

Without having fought any combat yet I can’t say how much I’m going to like the even more square-based positional tactical side of it.  A lot of the powers for melee characters (and some for casters) really exploit positional situations (adjacent creatures, moving targets around, swapping positions), and if you don’t run combat in a way that enforces and benefits from that positional element a lot of powers become substantially weaker ((DM’s are going to have to work hard during fights with lots of creatures to ensure the bad guys take full benefit of positional tactics, it’s a much tougher situation for the DM, imo)).  To me it feels like it takes away some of the freedom and imagination from combat; some people might say that it ensures everything is fair, but if the aim is to tell a collaborative story a good GM will ensure the combat is smooth, exciting, fair and still free.  However, we’ll see how it plays out.

The computer-based RPG (and MMORPG / MMOG) influences in 4th edition are clear.  Balanced classes, no absolute requirement for a cleric, the breakdown of classes into party roles (defender, leader, controller, striker, or tank, healer, crowd control and dps as most people know them), the idea of attacks based on powers rather than just swinging a weapon are all clearly derived from the recent popular MMOG’s.  This isn’t a complaint, it’s clear that Wizards are hoping players who have discovered roleplaying on-line will move to paper-based if they can find some common ground.  It’s just an observation.

The deep irony is that paper based RPG’s are really the grandfather of the modern online RPG.  It’s interesting to see that cross-fertilisation and see things come full circle.  Those of us who remember loading up The Bard’s Tale in 1987 on our Spectrums or C64’s will no doubt enjoy that.

Wii Fit high score thing – friend only beta

Posted on by

If you want to play with the (3/4’s done) Wii Fit high score thingy, drop me a note or post a comment (fill in your regular e-mail in the e-mail field, it won’t display) letting me know what username you want.  Only folk I know for the moment, so don’t go giving out the URL.

Friday at last

Posted on by

It’s been a long old week, but we finally made it to Friday.  I need to start doing more than 30 minutes on the Wii Fit, because I’m not out of breath after 30 now like I was at the start.  Or, start mixing it up a bit more (I tend to do mostly Aerobic stuff) and throw in some more Yoga.

I’m working on a little Wii Fit high score web-app thingy so that the folk I know with Wii Fit’s can see who’s the champion at Super Hula, but work over the last couple of days ate into my evening free time so it didn’t make much progress last night.

I think we may be about to start tabletop roleplaying again with Chris and Christine which would be fantastic, it’s always going be tougher at our age due to kids, jobs, lives, but hopefully we’ll be able to get together twice a month at least and get some games in.  Really looking forward to that (probably 4th Edition D&D at this stage).

I was reading some stuff about diabetes and the HbA1c test, and it suggested that morning glucose readings (basically, fasting readings) should give a good indication of where you are with your blood sugar control.  If the morning readings are high (consistently) then you’re probably not getting enough drugs, or your control is out, or you’re eating too much (or a combination).  Mine tend to be pretty good, I don’t check them all the time (it doesn’t really help to do that with type 2 diabetes), and at 4.8mmol/l this morning I was quite happy.  I had some low GI bread toast from a small bakery chain which I’ve not tried before, it was ok.  I’ll check in a bit and see how it affects my sugar, I had four slices so I should get a decent indication if it’s going to be worth buying or not.  (In fact, I just noticed it’s a couple of hours since I ate it, so off I go to finger-prick).

Hmm, 8.4mmol/l is a little higher than I’d like, I guess I’ll need to stick to less slices and/or the Bergen low GI bread although the strong flavour in that had started getting to me so I needed a break from it.

Abort, Retry, Ignore?

Posted on by

Loved this post over at Technologizer, certainly brought back some memories.

I saw this error a lot (from the article),

13. Abort, Retry, Fail? (MS-DOS)
In many ways, it remains an error message to judge other error messages by. It’s terse. (Three words.) It’s confusing. (What’s the difference between Abort and Fail?) It could indicate either a minor glitch (you forgot to put a floppy disk in the drive) or catastrophe (your hard drive had died). And by forcing you to choose between three options, none of which is likely to help, it throws the problem back in your face.

Ah, the glory days with my Amstrad PC 1512, dual 5 1/2inch floppy drives, and a 21MB hard-card.

One line movie reviews meets Twitter

Posted on by

I just realised that my one line movie review site (here) is exactly the kind of thing that would make sense on twitter, short movie reviews kept to a specific size (although I’m pretty sure plenty of mine on the site are over 140 characters).  So there’s one use for twitter I can understand.

You may return to your previously scheduled activity.