Planet HUMBUG

James McPherson: Slight kink in the road bike plans

2010-02-08T12:43:29+00:00

For most of Saturday's ride I kept hearing a rather annoying clunk, and couldn't quite figure out where it was coming from. Eventually I realised it was probably within or closely associated with the rear hub, and was sad -- servicing would be Required, and sooner rather than later.

Took the roadsteed off to Chain Gang for a service. Fortunately or unfortunately they are all backed up until Thursday, so I just asked LBSG what he could think of as possible causes for the clunking. He spun the wheel a few times, noticed that some of the spokes were loose (that'll have been killing the wheel true), saw that there was more play in the freehub than he would have expected, that the smallest cog on the cassette was badly worn, and then another LBSG came over and looked at the shifters.

"Oh, those are the 8speed RSXs [wiggle wiggle, with force].... they're buggered, you'll need new ones. Cost you about $400."

[insert sadface here]

As it happens, I had noticed that it took more and more wiggling to get them to shift for the cassette, and they just weren't moving enough for the chainrings either. A bit of googling later and it seems pretty obvious that these have a design lifespan, and 11 years post-installation is pretty much past it.

I'm hoping Scott's buddy Rohan can give me a second opinion, but I'm now starting to look into whether I can move to a 9 or even 10 speed cassette and shifter set. All that will just have to remain on hold, though, until I move past ENOCASH (for bike bits at least). Just when I was starting to get things going! Guess I'll have to put the slicks back on the mtbsteed and keep trundling.

Pat Nichols: p220

2010-02-08T09:21:00+00:00

Do not use.

Clinton Roy: Ignite Brisbane

2010-02-08T03:55:09+00:00

Ignite talks are five minute lightning talks hosted by popular
technology publishers O’Reilly. Brisbane’s first Ignite night is
coming up in March and I’m giving a talk on Open Source.

I see this as an excellent opportunity to advertise all the different open source groups in Brisbane, as well as our premier upcoming event, Linux.Conf.Au 2011.

My talk is based on the all the reasons everyone should know and like the open source ideals. It’ll be based on the keynotes at this years lca. I’ve got time for twenty slides, I’m thinking one slide with the logos of all the different open source groups in Brisbane, and one slide for lca.

If you’ve got ideas for one of the slides, or an open source group
based in Brisbane, please mail me the details.

Filed under: oss

Pat Nichols: p221

2010-02-07T11:47:00+00:00

A crochet pattern Bek will try and copy.

Pat Nichols: p222

2010-02-07T11:46:00+00:00

My new car.

Pat Nichols: p223

2010-02-07T11:42:00+00:00

The gate sign at Lang Park.

James McPherson: 1st week of making the km target

2010-02-06T13:01:22+00:00

I did a 57km ride today, with Chip, Tim, Ingrid and Elspeth. Took a bit longer than I wanted - made some wrong turns trying to remember the route we took on Australia Day, but we got there in the end.

Managed to sustain a decent pace (about 35km/h by the handlebar computer) along Brisbane Corso, and really enjoyed the espresso (Guatamalan single orchard) from Cup on Russell St in West End. Really enjoyed it.

The new year goal was to be riding at least 70km every week, and this week (Sunday to Saturday) I've actually managed it. Tuesday was the day my tyre blew out, so that was a bare 6.5km (half was walking home), then Wednesday 20.24, Thursday 23.55, Friday 17.03 and today 57.17. Total: 124.49km.

I'm expecting that to radically improve starting in about a week, because Elissa got a job based in West End and is planning to ride to and from several days every week, and asked whether I'd like to join her. Of course I would! Every day I do one of those will be at least 36km, possibly even 40. Should be able to get my stamina up very quickly as a result.

Then there's the small matter of the Coottha Challenge, but now Tim has his bike back from the fixitman, that shouldn't be such of a problem to get out and train for. I hope!

Sarah Smith: Hot, Flat and Upgefscked

2010-02-06T11:55:00+00:00

A day or two ago I donated to GetUp's campaign to fund billboards on Abbot's "business as usual" climate policy.

I hope the campaign is successful not just in shaming the coalition into action, but also in waking up our elected representatives; currently making a hash of their only marginally better policy on climate change.

The opposition keep name-calling, hoping that their slinging of the dread word "tax" will stick to Rudd's cap-and-trade policy.

The irony is that a tax would be the best policy of the lot - David Victor, Stanford University Professor and expert on international coal markets:

I think we have vastly oversold the role of the market in the solution to this problem...

As Dr Victor grudgingly admits, ETS schemes are failing and only a tax would be a strong and clear signal - fixed and away from the vagaries of the market, so that Australian clean technology entrepreneurs, as well as all other green innovations and measures are actually economically viable.

Why would you catch a clean green bus, when your car is cheap to run on petrol? Why would you pay much more for an electric vehicle, when your gas guzzler is so cheap to buy and register by comparison?

This is 2010 - the year of the electric car, but we won't see any of them in numbers Australia because our governments are completely failing to create policies to make it attractive to manufacturers to ship them here. In the UK tax on new cars is figured based on their emissions ratings and thus EV's are very attractive there - zero emissions vehicles finally competing on a level playing field. In the USA tax credits are available for zero emissions vehicles - for example resulting in a $7500 saving on the Chevy Volt.

Why are electric vehicle entrepreneurs in Australia struggling to get off the ground?

Because here we just dig stuff out of the ground and ship it over seas. That's what we do, that's our plan for the future.

The Smart State? The lucky country? Nope, we're the Idiocracy. If it wasn't bad enough that we have Senator Fielding, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy and Attorney-General Michael Atkinson. Now we have Abbot and his ludicrous non-policy.

The problem for Australia with regards to climate change is that we've completely failed to realize the urgency, and the Abbott's of this nation are just lowering the average climate intelligence quotient right across Australia.

The heatwave conditions in Feb 2009 which filled the morgue in Victoria and spread wildfires were the pre-saging of more to come, according to the Australian Bureau of Meterology, thanks to climate change.

But more heatwaves when they come will not be our biggest problem here in Australia.

I've just read (on pg 80 of) Thomas L Friedman's "Hot, Flat & Crowded" (2009 edition) that the Sigma Xi group, commissioned by the UN to report on climate change, said in their February 2007 document "Confronting Climate Change" that the relatively small increase of 0.8 degrees C since 1750 has been "accompanied by significant increases in the incidence of floods, droughts, heat waves and wildfires".

But more fires and droughts when they come will not be our biggest problem here in Australia either.

Our bigger problem is that when the effects of climate change hit the countries most vulnerable to its effects, when their crops fail and disease spreads and generally things are looking like the four horsemen of the apocalypse have moved in for good: where do you think those refugees are going to go?

Here is where they'll go: the lucky country. While we battle bushfires, and raging ignorance, and compete to see how far we can stick our heads in the sand, desperate refugees will be arriving here in force. At the same time, our armed forces will be called on for international relief efforts, much as they were for the tsunami disaster in Banda Aceh in 2004.

While we turn up our air-conditioners, and argue that climate change is bogus because of some emails from East Anglia, the evidence of climate change will be arriving on our doorstep in ever-increasing numbers.

Oh, and Tony, good luck reanimating some the policies of our old dark lords with a return to "turn back the boats" policies - these people will have no country to go back to.

Apart from refugees, the other problem dwarfing fires, drought and heat that climate change will bring for Australia is that if we keep being as backward as we are regarding clean technologies is that soon no-one will want the stuff we're digging out of the ground.

China is investing massively in clean technologies, and indeed some of our top talent in solar technologies have gone there - others to the USA - due to the clear state commitment to controlling climate change with high-tech solutions, especially compared to the dismal picture here.

When these large Chinese plants come on line in the next 5 to 10 years their own local reserves of coal will be more than adequate to meet the needs of their dwindling coal plants.

By then it will be too late for Australia to turn around and beg those scientists to come back and start trying to foster a clean tech industry - we'll be sitting on a pile of worthless black dirt that no-one wants, and lagging so far behind the technology race that we don't have a hope of catching up.

Swamped with refugees and becoming a backward third-world country. That's not what I want for my Australia.

Come on K Rudd - show Abbot what a real forward thinking climate policy looks like, and make us the lucky country once again.

Greg Black: Another Look at Version Control Systems

2010-02-04T08:10:00+00:00

I’ve been using version control systems for ever—well, back to the days of SCCS anyway. Every few years, I survey the scene to see if there’s something that better fits my current needs. That way I came to use RCS instead of SCCS. Then I found CVS and, after some hesitation, migrated all my RCS repos to CVS. And then I found I hated some of the weaknesses of CVS and migrated back to RCS.

There things stayed until Subversion was ready for real world use. I chose not to migrate old work, but just started using svn for new projects and then for new work on old RCS-managed projects. That went pretty well and served me for some years.

But, as Subversion was hitting its stride, other people were working on distributed revision control systems and I started watching those projects. From time to time, I would spend a few days having a good look at the obvious contenders. A couple of years ago I felt there were a few that were ready to be considered: Git, Mercurial, Darcs, Bazaar all seemed interesting. After some consideration, I chose Mercurial and I have been happy with it.

But Bazaar, or bzr as it’s called on the command line, had been a close second in my assessment. Bzr was let down by some performance issues and also appeared to have a few other minor concerns.

Recently, I’ve had another look at the various DVCSes as part of another project and I think there’s very little to choose between Git, Mercurial and Bazaar. It comes down to comfort with the command structure and support for the workflows that you might want to adopt. For me, Git is still too clunky to use—it takes more typing to get the same result. But I think Bazaar has just moved ahead of Mercurial in terms of workflow options and it seems to have caught up in the performance area.

So I’m going to use Bazaar for a couple of new projects and I’m also going to convert a couple of active Mercurial projects over to Bazaar. And, in a few months, I’ll have an opinion about the wisdom of that choice and I’ll write about that in due course. I know I haven’t exactly explained my choice, but that’s deliberate because it really is a fine distinction and I’m pretty certain that Git, Mercurial and Bazaar are all fine systems.

Greg Black: OS X Fails to Please

2010-02-04T07:41:00+00:00

I’ve been using Apple laptops for a number of years in order to have access to some specific capabilities, but I have always found it hard to come to terms with the limited functionality of OS X as a work environment. Nevertheless, when I acquired my MacBook Pro recently, I decided to just go with the flow and learn to use Snow Leopard as it was meant to be used. And that has worked out quite well for the purposes that I normally use the MacBook for—email, IRC and web browsing while on the road.

But I recently had a reason to use it for my normal work stuff. I had needed to visit a Mac retailer for some minor item and stopped to look at the 27-inch iMac, where I became entranced by the display and, to a lesser extent, by the neat overall package.

This led to thoughts of possibly buying one of these things, which in turn led to thoughts of discomfort with OS X.

So I decided to try out OS X on a decent-sized display instead of the teensy thing on the 13-inch MacBook. I hooked the MacBook up to a 24-inch display to see how things might work. This brought me into contact with Apple Fail Number 1—the ability to get stuff onto the display you want it on is a black art and in some cases it’s only possible to start an application, see where it lands and then drag it to the desired display. That was hugely unimpressive, but wasn’t the point of the exercise, so I tried to ignore it while doing my testing.

I believe I succeeded in applying my attention to the factors that would be relevant with a single large display running OS X. To give it a fair go, I used this setup for three days as my desktop environment. But that was as much as I could stomach. Gnome—whether under FreeBSD, or OpenSolaris, or Linux—is just so much better to work with than OS X that it’s really not even a contest.

The upside of this is that I’ve saved $3k that I had put aside for the iMac which I could now partly apply to the bicycle that I’ve been thinking about buying as part of my fitness program. Another upside is that I won’t be constantly chafing against all the annoying little restrictions that Apple impose on their customers. So, although I will slightly regret the decision not to add something shiny to my desk, I think I’m probably more pleased than sad.

Ben Fowler: President Obama Cancels Project Constellation

2010-02-01T17:03:00+00:00

Damn. So where to next? Gotta wonder if he's drunk the space libertoon Kool-aid, and bought the idea that private enterprise has what it takes to safely get humans into orbit. So far, the private sector have all promises -- and very little bent metal.