I moved over to WordPress. Drupal is cool, but I’m not using about 90% of it. Also upgrading sucks on Drupal. You have to use a bunch of plugins to get things like a wysiwyg editor, then every time each one updates you have to manually copy the files up and run the update script. So this should be basically the same as the old site. I’ve even tried to make sure all the links still work! So xoke.org/python/1 still takes you to the first HPR episode on Programming 101 that I did.
Some of the older posts will be missing. I upped the RSS in the old site and grabbed as much as I could (30 posts, excluding this one) and all the tips and similar are here also. All in all it should be everything people want anyway.
I’m sure I will have missed something, so just let me know. Apart from that, enjoy!
Just received this from my mother and thought I had better warn people.
Thank goodness – a diagnosis at last for my recurrent flu-like symptoms!
I’m so glad it’s finally been recognized… I’ve been knocked around by this flu so many times over the years, it’s one of those ones that just hits you suddenly and for some reason it’s more infectious on a weekend… bizarre I know!
I went to a dinner party last night, where I and other guests enjoyed copious amounts of alcohol. I awoke this morning not feeling well, with what could be described as flu-like symptoms; headache, nausea, chills, sore eyes etc.
From the results of some initial testing, I have unfortunately tested positive for what experts are now calling Wine Flu. This debilitating condition is very serious and it appears this is not an isolated case.
Reports are flooding in from all around the neighbourhood of others diagnosed with Wine Flu.
To anyone that starts to exhibit the aforementioned tell-tale signs, experts are recommending a cup of tea and a bit of a lie down.
However, should your condition worsen, you should immediately hire a DVD and take some Nurofen [Nurofen seems to be the only drug available that has been proven to help combat this unusual type of flu]. Others are reporting a McDonald’s Happy Meal can also help in some cases, but I’m not so sure about that one.
Wine Flu does not need to be life threatening, and if treated early can be eradicated within a 24-48 hour period. If not, then further application of the original liquid in similar quantities to the original dose has been shown to do the trick
For the latest Ten Buck Review, Lord Drachenblut asked me to read the “Hackers Manifesto”. A few people have liked it and were going to grab the segment from the file. Well to save you the trouble I have the Ogg file here.
I’m still playing around with Google Voice and have just set it up to connect to Gizmo. You just add a new phone and select ‘gizmo’ as the type. Google will call you and you have to enter a number to prove you have the phone and so you can’t use it to prank call people, for example. I found Google wouldn’t accept the numbers until I said ‘out of band’ under preferences -> advanced within Gizmo like so:
Once I did that Google recognised the number immediately (no need to reboot or even close that window down!)
I recommend putting it back to IN-BAND as I believe Talkshoe requires in-band though.
So in theory using this you can call anyone in the US for free from anywhere in the world. I am going to continue to try this out. I did make a test call to MrsXoke and there was a half second delay, but for free phone calls I can live with that!
I received my Google Voice invite a few hours ago and have set one up for me. So far I'm the only one to call it (I was playing) and have found that the transcription is REALLY bad. Maybe it is my accent, but so far it hasn't been close.
I said: Errr lets test something. Testing testing testing, Xoke, something or else, something or other, that'll do.
It transcribed: idon'tknowifthat'ssomethingtestingtestingtestingisthatsomethingrowsowe'reallofthose
I didn't expect it to get 'Xoke', but it had many problems.
So maybe it was my accent. So I asked MiniXoke to try calling it.
MiniXoke said: erm, hi I'm just testing to make sure this isn't because he has an English accent. Alright bye.
It transcribed: hii'mjusttestingthetruthandagainthingsaccentalrightbye
This wasn't too bad actually. It got about half of it right!
I said: And testing again. Oh I am the very model of a modern major-general, I've information animal and vegatable and mineral. And lets try that a little slower. Oh I am the very model of a modern major-general, I've information animal, vegatable and mineral. And lets see how that works. Actually whilst I'm still on the line lets see if it does actually mention something there… oh no, alright, never mind.
It transcribed: Transcript not available
I said: Testing on speakerphone, lets try to slow the speech down a little and see how the transcription works.
It transcribed: thisafternoonbecauseinlet'stryandslavesbeachdownalittleandseehowitsoundsgoodtoworks
Wow. Almost completely wrong!
I said: And this is through the er web thing.
It transcribed: hernandeztheokay <long silent period>
So overall… the transcription sucks. Maybe it's just the accent. It did do significantly better with MiniXoke's American accent. But the transcription isn't the whole thing about Google Voice, it is for a single number and voicemail and so on and for that it seems to work as it should.
If you want to call me and give it a try:
Update
Ron K Jeffries called in! I checked and he didn't mind me posting it here (in fact he wants to know how well it worked).
Ron: Hello this is Ron Je.. K Jeffries from Identica and I saw that you were playing with Google Voice and thought what the hell, I'd try your little widget. Again it's Ron Jeffries, Good Luck, Bye
This worked a lot better. Looks like it is the accent that is throwing it off (or a child's voice). It didn't get a few things right like his name first off all but Ron started to say Ron Jeffries and then added his middle initial. Still not sure how COOK came up. Widget to Which it… I can see why that had a problem. Overall I am now far more impressed as it is about 80% accurate*
I would like more tests though, so if anyone else fancied calling in go for it! I plan on manually transcribing them up, at least until I get bored of this anyway!
Jennifer Leggio just called me. She is mediaphyter on twitter.
Mediaphyter: Hi it's Jennifer Leggio mediaphyter. I'm calling to test the Google Voice. I found your transcription blog post, hysterical so um, of course i had a call i'll try and see what it did to garble what I had to say so I hope you're having a great day and i'll talk to you soon bye
Transcription: hi it's jennifer let you know media fighter i'm calling to test the group of away i found your transcription bloggers it's terrible so of course i had a call i'll try and see what it said to grable what i had to say so i hope you're having a great day and i'll talk to you soon bye
I should point out that it does show how confident it is in the transcription and the bits it got wrong it thought were probably not quite right. It didn't get Leggio right (fair enough, not that common a surname) and Mediaphyter (again, no surprise there). Odd it didn't recognise 'Google Voice' and why 'grable' and not garble? Overall though about 90% accurate*
I am going to try to grab a video of it reading to show how that works and will update when I get that working (no sound currently!)
* Statistics calculated by me eyeballing it and pulling a figure out of my arse.
In fact I have been around on the internet for quite some time now. My first modem was a 1200/2400 baud thing that is larger then this laptop! I still have it somewhere (well it's stored at my parents house) and I will have to get pictures sometime.
Anyway, I received this email just now, slightly edited as I mention below:
From: Google Promotions [winners@google.co.uk]
Reply To: Google Promotions [mrg_benfield@msn.com]
Subject: GOOGLE GIVE-AWAY WINNING NOTIFICATION!!! GOOGLE GIVE-AWAY WINNING NOTIFICATION!!!
This E-mail is to inform you that your e-mail emerged as a winner of £850,000.00 GBP (Eight Hundred And Fifty Thousand British Pounds) in our online Give-away draws. Over £20,000,000.00 (Twenty Million British pounds) is to be given out for this Draws. No purchases of tickets were required. Participants for the draws were randomly selected from a world wide range of web searchers who use the Google search engine (Googler) and other Google ancillary services. Google is now the biggest search engine worldwide and in an effort to make sure that it remains the most widely used search engine, Google is running an e-mail beta test.
Your email address was linked with our Computer Generated Profile Numbers(CGPN) and attached to the following details: Computer Generated Profile Numbers (CGPN):[REMOVED], Ticket number: [REMOVED], Serial numbers:[REMOVED], Lucky numbers: [REMOVED], was picked among our lucky winners to receive £500, 000.00 British pounds. Winners were selected randomly through a computer ballot system from worldwide users of the Google search engine.
YOUR WINNING DETAILS ARE AS FOLLOW:
Computer Generated Profile Numbers (CGPN):[REMOVED]
Ticket number: [REMOVED]
Lucky numbers: [REMOVED]
Serial numbers: [REMOVED]
To claim your give-away prize, send the following. Your full names................. , sex...............................,Location............................Alternate e-mail address..................Your winning details.................
To your processing agent (Mr Grahams Benfield) who have been assigned to handle your winning file and payment processing.
Your Processing Agent contact:
Mr. Mr Grahams Benfield,
Email: mr.g.benfield@gmail.com
Sincerely,
Mrs Lisa James.
For the benefit of anyone who Googled this page, this is fake.
We can see this fairly easily from several things.
Seriously, why would google just give away money to you without actually making a huge deal about it. They would have ads everywhere saying 'in September, win a million bucks just by Googling' or whatever. I haven't heard anything about it, so they didn't.
The 'from' email address is Google.co.uk. This ties in with the prize being in GBP, but 'from' email addresses are way too easy to fake so we will ignore this.
The 'reply to' email address is an MSN account! Google would have an @google.com or @google.co.uk account (see 2 above) and would never use a competitor's email account!
The email at the bottom is a gmail account, again a free email account and not a real Google account. This is different from the earlier email address.
Grammar. Mr. Mr Grahams Benfield. Mr Mr? Grahams? Many other things are wrong also so this looks like it's not a proper company communication.
There are more reasons I'm sure, I could dig through the headers. But basically it's a scam, they will try to get all your details (bank details also) from you and then probably even say that taxes have to be paid, so can you send them the money. Don't fall for this.
Yes, my regular readers are unlikely to, but I figured people will Google for this and I'd make it sure.
Just installed Piwik an Open Source Web stats program. Going to keep Google Analytics for a little bit longer to compare them, but it's all looking good for now :)
Was trying to edit something and borked the themes up… so please bear with me whilst I fix it back the way it was!
** Update **
Actually partly it was my fault and partly my hosting company had some issues. They had a borked /tmp directory which was causing me issues as well. At least it seems coincidental that I didn't change a new theme I uploaded but the menus on the left didn't appear, but the moment the tmp dir was fixed the menus came back!
Stop freaking out. Keep washing your hands. Don't sneeze on people. Normal flu kills 36K people in the US a year (according to CDC stats). Only a SINGLE person has died in the US so far from 'swine flu', and they were a 2 year old visiting from Mexico. Stop worrying!
Anyway here are the jokes, curtosy of my mother.
I called the Swine Flu hotline today but I couldn't get through … all I got was crackling.
How do you know if you have Swine Flu? You keep getting these rashers!
Doctor, Doctor. I think I have Swine Flu! Don't worry, just rub in this oinkment.
Oinkment won't work for Mexican Swine Flu. You need Juantibiotics!
Doctor, Doctor. I've just eaten a bacon sandwich, am I going to die? Depends if the bacon was cured or not.
Doctor, Doctor. My daughter woke up this morning in pigtails. Should I be worried?
A woman runs out of petrol and phones her husband "I've run out of petrol but I daren't go to fill up because of this Swine Flu". The husband says "you daft ayputh, it's in Mexico, not Texaco!"
I won a holiday to Mexico, but I can't go and I'm pig sick about it.
Feeling bored on the bus/train/underground? Take out your mobile phone and pretend to have a conversation with an imaginary caller all about your recent holiday in Mexico. Hang up. Then sneeze…
News Flash …. this just in. The world's religious leaders have issued a joint declaration that the Swine Flu pandemic is the start of the a-pork-alypse!
This little piggy went to market
This little piggy stayed at home
This little piggy had roast beef
This little piggy had none
And this little piggy went "cough, sneeze" and the whole world's media went mad over the imminent destruction of the human race, and every journalist found ut that they didn't have to do too much work if they just did "Find 'bird', replace with 'swine'" on all their saved articles from a year ago, er, all the way home.
The World Health Organisation has confirmed that a Swine Flu pandemic is now imminent, raising fears that millions of people obviously have no idea what a pandemic is.
Swine Flu is caused by exposure to Gammon Rays.
Apparently over 6 billion emails have been sent out in the last week about Swine Flu. Duh! Didn't you know spam comes from pigs.
A lion, a bear and a pig are in the pub, showing off.
The lion claims, "I'm the mightiest creature on the planet, I roar and the plains shake."
The bear claims, "I'm the mightiest creature on the planet, I roar and the forests shake."
The pig replied, "Nah, I'm the mightiest creature on the planet, I cough and the whole world wets itself…"
Watch out for the following:
• Look out for any unusual blemishes or rashers.
• Unusual behaviour: doing things you would normally find a complete boar.
• Bad temper: things start to very easily rind you up.
• Overheating: Feeling that you are absolutely bacon hot.
• Chills; Feeling like you need to hog the duvet or curl up in front of a crackling fire.
• Wanting a fight: Shouting out things like “Gammon have a go if you think you’re hard enough…”
If any of these symptoms show, then immediately call a hambulance, and go to the hogspital for treatment. Smokers please note it is a non smoking facility, so you won’t be able to have a snout.
Of course all of this could be a false alarm, in which case you will return home shamefaced with your curly tail between your legs, but if the symptoms return, try going to your local pharmacy for some oinkment.
So it appears Swine Flu has replaced the fears about bird flu. I guess bird flu just never took off…
FIFA has banned Mexican Waves to prevent the spread of infection.
This Swine Flu is bad, I must have had it for about a Weeeeeeeeeeeeeek!!!
Apparently, the BBC reports that the symptoms of Swine Flu are intense sweating, incoherent speech, pungent body odour and fatigue. I always knew there as something odd about Gordon Brown…
Anyone else awaiting the first Policeman to be diagnosed with Swine Flu?
You've got to hand it to the Mexicans. Even Osama Bin Laden didn't scare this many Americans.
Mad Cow Disease: Named after my wife. Swine Flu: Named after her mother.
Swine Flu is like Susan Boyle. It hasn't really done much, but anyone with an internet connection has heard of it.
Apparently my mate's got Swine Flu, I think he's just telling porkies, though.
Funny how 90 people get the Swine Flu and everyone wears face masks, but millions get Aids and no-one wears condoms.
Half price on return flights to Mexico, Its not like you're coming back is it?
The pigs are giving people the 'flu. As if arresting you on jumped up charges isn't bad enough…
I just heard on the news that, "Swine flu could potentially be a threat to every single person in England". Well it’s a good thing I’m married then isn’t it.
Apparently the first symptom of Swine Flu is that you get the trotts.
All of this makes me feel like America will view the term "Pigging Out" very differently from now on.
El Paso Fah…..Fahhhhh………Faaaajita!
Swine flu has been reported in Israel. Oh the irony!
Looks like I'm going to have to cancel my salsa lessons.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
I have Swine Flu
And now so do you
… but I'm going to have to comment on the latest piece by Bwyan. No I'm not going to spell his name right so google can find it. But the 'comic book' guy. You know who I mean.
He did a talk at the LinuxFest North West entitled 'Linux Sucks". Just to try to enrage people to turning up by using that title. He basically says there are some issues with Linux and here is how to fix (some of) them.
I watched it (it's on his website if you want to look) and have some thoughts on what he said. I tried to make notes on everything he said, although I skipped the Q&A at the end. Onwards!
Projector Issues. First up, the projector doesn't work right and he needs help from someone else. He goes on about how he tested it but then says "hey it was working at home". That is NOT testing it. Even if you bring your own projector (which I doubt – someone in the audience said it was giving issues to everyone) you STILL test when you set up at the new place. You try to get in the room 15 minutes early or so and set up in readyness. Maybe that's just me, but if he codes the same way I don't want any of his stuff because he'll just tell you it works on his home machine!
OO Issues. He asks if anyone has had an issue and fixed it with Open Office. Only two people say they have, so he says everyone else must therefor think Linux and OO suck. That is a non-sequitor. I haven't fixed anything in OO, but then again I so rarely use it. When I do it's just to open a Microsoft Office doc my mother has sent me. So I don't have any issues with it so I don't NEED to fix it. I have no itch, so I don't scratch it. He did not ask how many people in the room even use OO, and of that how many have a problem with it and of those ask how many fixed a problem. So you can't use the statistics for anything. I think this is specious reasoning.
Kernal Issues. Kernel updates bork NVidia drivers. Yes we know. They won't release the source, just a binary that has to have some weird compile for each new kernel version. Some woman in the crowd complained about every month when a new kernel comes out it messes her up at work for a couple of days. Why the hell are you downloading and installing software without testing it at work then? Get a test environment set up and test the damn software, just like everyone should do for Microsoft. It's a business, and things do break sometimes. You have the one piece of hardware this update doesn't work on, or similar, and it breaks your stuff. Test it first! Yes I would love not having the NVidia issues. But this is also NVidia's problem and not purely a linux issue.
XOrg Issues. He calls it old and clunky. Then admits they know it is and are fixing it. Why is this an issue then? Because they haven't fixed it yet?
Kernel and Xorg update issues. Then don't update! Of course you won't have any security fixes either, but you don't have to update the second an update happens. Why do people always bitch about the new stuff breaking things. Then don't update and don't get the new stuff and keep something that works. Windows users haven't all updated to vista just because it's out, and many have paid to downgrade just to keep the old one that works. Then keep the old one. It doesn't cost either way in linux. If you are going to always update then yes there will be issues. Whenever you get the latest and greatest there will be. Give it some time for the bugs to be ironed out and then upgrade.
Hardware issues. Can't drop support of hardware apparently. Actually I'm not aware of anything that has been dropped. I know my NVidia driver is old and NVidia themselves have stopped support of it so the linux drivers are just repackages of older ones basically, but I've never heard of something that was dropped and suddenly didn't work for people. Windows does do this though all the time. Mrs Xoke has a scanner that she has never used. She had a machine with Win 2000 or something on it that got spyware infected. She ended up getting a new computer (long story there) with XP and now the scanner doesn't have XP drivers. I tried it out under Linux thinking I could get it working easily however the power has gone dead on it. Either the power supply or a wire somewhere. I've not heard of anyone complaing how a scanner worked in Ubuntu 8.10 but was dropped in 9.04. Yes sometimes things get broken (see above) but they get fixed again. It was never broken on purpose because they dropped support.
Package Issues. Yes there are too many types of packages out there. Yes it is a hassle for developers making each one. I would love to have a single type of package management out there, but of course I would want it to be deb files. Try and get everyone to agree on what type of package though and I don't think you will.
Audio Issues. He goes on about how we a good audio editor. He doesn't mention Ardour here (although he does a lot later on in the Q&A). But in the Linux way of if you have an itch then scratch it why on earth didn't he make an audio editor or improve an existing one instead of making a comic book reader! One word though – Bounties. See after this all for my final thoughts for more info here.
Video Issues. Yes we need a good video editor. He doesn't give any solutions. I do. Bounties! (See below again).
"The current open source development model has failed to deliver these advanced and neccersary tools". I believe that is a direct quote from him. He follows this up with "This is just simply true". Well glad you explained that one. Yes there are some gaps. Considering how much has been done shows the open source development model does work. It could be improved, as everything could. That is what the bounties is for (See below).
What you can do on Linux is less then mid-90s Windows and Macs. Err… do I even have to argue against that one? Mid 90s, so Windows 95? I can plug a USB device in and it gets detected which Windows 95 didn't do (that was Win 98 SE I believe).
"We need to fund these apps". Yes I agree. That is what the bounties are for. It doesn't have to be commercial software!
"We need photoshop". Why? You say that there are all these people that will only run photoshop, but they are going to jump onto the linux bandwagon if there was a linux version? Rubbish. Yes there must be some Linux geeks out there that also use photoshop, but I don't believe that all these companies that are running Windows and Photoshop are just itching to move over to linux but can't because of photoshop. If they are that ingrained that they have to use photoshop I imagine they will only use windows either becaue they don't want to learn / try something else. Also given that you are blowing a grand or whatever the current cost for the top of the line photoshop is, the extra cost of a windows license isn't that much more! Yes I would like to see photoshop on linux, just because it gives more credibility to Linux as the big Adobe company is doing stuff there. But I don't believe we will gain widespread adoption overnight just because photoshop gets ported!
Funding issues. Various things mentioned here, none of which I disagree with (yes they are funding methods – can't argue with that). But I want to add the bounties on there. And please stop saying "Developers need to eat". So does everyone. Bounties is one way of offering this and a very good one I believe.
Now a lot of these issues can be fixed by bounties. I have mentioned bounties before. If you don't know, go read up on them. But they will fix a lot of these issues. The others I have tried to redress myself. The upshot is, I understand what Bwyan is trying to do, but I completely disagree. I think he is very self-centered here, thinking he is the only person that knows how to fix these problems. Get over yourself and accept other people have cool ideas. Yes, say that you don't like this or that, or this could be improved. Admit if you aren't sure how to do something. I would respect you for that. Coming across like you are the only person that knows how to fix it makes me think you're just an arrogant prick just out for the publicity. It reminds me of David Icke all over again (just google if you don'y know).
