Hmm, perhaps I'd use this blog thing [more] if the editor had cooler graduated enhancement.
I consider asking why Fictionwise's free ebooks are all "secure" (encrypted) formats.
I search for Cory Doctorows "Little Brother"
head asplode
Friday, 7 August 2009
Monday, 5 January 2009
Well, I'm still using Gmail as my primary account. Heh.
Tuffmail is more geared towards business than personal accounts. I can't switch back to it noew, because my email archive is bigger than my Tuffmail quota. Tuffmail don't provide an automatic way to buy more quota. So I'm waiting for the next tuffmail invoice (I still use the tuffmail _address_, but forwarded to Gmail). At that point I'll ask for more quota, or close my account.
GMail still sucks.
They still require periodic captcha unlocks for IMAP access, and they still don't include an explanation in the error message. Switching my Dad over to GMail IMAP (from the ISP's unreliable account) wasn't an unmitigated success. And he only uses Gmail from a single computer! Normal users should not have to bookmark a such page - which has the stupidly meaningless title "Google Accounts"... /rant.
GMail still works rather well.
If you use the web interface, I'm sure it's more reliable than most ISP accounts.
Plus, it's a cheap way to keep personal mailing list archives. I have a separate GMail account to cope with the fire-hose that is the linux kernel mailing list. For this, I actually use the web interface - I don't actually want to download the text of every message. GMane (no relation to GMail :-p) is great, but it's had some downtime recently, so I prefer to have a personal archive.
Tuffmail is more geared towards business than personal accounts. I can't switch back to it noew, because my email archive is bigger than my Tuffmail quota. Tuffmail don't provide an automatic way to buy more quota. So I'm waiting for the next tuffmail invoice (I still use the tuffmail _address_, but forwarded to Gmail). At that point I'll ask for more quota, or close my account.
GMail still sucks.
They still require periodic captcha unlocks for IMAP access, and they still don't include an explanation in the error message. Switching my Dad over to GMail IMAP (from the ISP's unreliable account) wasn't an unmitigated success. And he only uses Gmail from a single computer! Normal users should not have to bookmark a such page - which has the stupidly meaningless title "Google Accounts"... /rant.
GMail still works rather well.
If you use the web interface, I'm sure it's more reliable than most ISP accounts.
Plus, it's a cheap way to keep personal mailing list archives. I have a separate GMail account to cope with the fire-hose that is the linux kernel mailing list. For this, I actually use the web interface - I don't actually want to download the text of every message. GMane (no relation to GMail :-p) is great, but it's had some downtime recently, so I prefer to have a personal archive.
Monday, 14 July 2008
Reasons to wean myself off Gmail
I became addicted to Gmail soon after it was opened to the public. Web access, labels, conversation view, gigabytes of free storage and (more recently) IMAP access, yay! But I've come to the point where it's a bit too much magic and I need to look at moving elsewhere.
Email is very important to me. I appreciate Google for showing the world and I how powerful webmail can be, but I just can't rely on them to get it right. I have a couple of family members I'd like to convert to email-stored-on-the-server (IMAP and/or webmail), but I can't in conscience recommend Google. Both of them are used to desktop email clients, and Problem #1 above negates the advantage of being able to access email from multiple different computers.
I've been paying for what looks like a loss leader test account at Tuffmail.com for a few years now. It's time for me to review it again and see if I can make the switch. It's a smallish technical-oriented service. My only concern is it looks like a one-man company - I don't know what would happen if the guy left the business.
Phew. Links are tiring - but I don't like to moan without any citations. I need to start using Markdown.
- To import my email archive with accurate dates, I had to set up a box poll. Uploading over IMAP causes broken dates.
- To use Thunderbird on multiple computers I have to repeatedly unlock a CAPTCHA. Google said they were working on it... at the end of March.
- Spam and general filtering. I'd like to have as much control over spam filtering as possible. I'd like to be able to keep spam if I really want to. I definitely want to keep the spams I flag for training. And for general filtering, I'd like to at least be able to export my filters.
- Google like to think they use standards so people can control their data at will. But they don't provide Sieve or any other way to manage filters. They're not leading in the IMAP standardization effort, in particular on the mobile side. And while they provide contact import and export, they didn't quite go as far as providing LDAP.
- They don't support my favorite browser - KDE's Konqueror. Fortunately the "basic HTML" view is very usable, but it lacks support for e.g. changing settings and easily deleting lots of junk mail. This is not really graceful degradation, let alone progressive enhancement.
Email is very important to me. I appreciate Google for showing the world and I how powerful webmail can be, but I just can't rely on them to get it right. I have a couple of family members I'd like to convert to email-stored-on-the-server (IMAP and/or webmail), but I can't in conscience recommend Google. Both of them are used to desktop email clients, and Problem #1 above negates the advantage of being able to access email from multiple different computers.
I've been paying for what looks like a loss leader test account at Tuffmail.com for a few years now. It's time for me to review it again and see if I can make the switch. It's a smallish technical-oriented service. My only concern is it looks like a one-man company - I don't know what would happen if the guy left the business.
Phew. Links are tiring - but I don't like to moan without any citations. I need to start using Markdown.
Friday, 20 June 2008
Git (Guilt) followup
Aha! The Guilt docs say
"The patch directory can also be placed under revision control, so you can have a separate history of changes made to your patches."
I assumed this meant "git-add .git/patches/master". That's not possible though as Git doesn't believe you should be able to shoot yourself in the foot by tracking files under .git/. But it does let you do "cd .git/patches/master; git-init", and create a second repo under .git/. I guess this is what the doc means by a "separate history".
The advantage of this format is I can easily publish all my changes before I'm 100% happy with them. So I've now published the complete code for module-init-tools indexes, which shaves a whole second off my EeePC boot-time. It passes the testsuite, as well as my own "does it break my computer" test:
time grep MODALIAS /var/log/udev | cut -d = -f 2- | xargs -n1 /sbin/modprobe 2>&1|sort -o a
time grep MODALIAS /var/log/udev | cut -d = -f 2- | xargs -n1 ./modprobe 2>&1|sort -o b
diff a b
I just need to clean it up a little now and wait for the maintainer to get back in touch with me.
WARNING. It is not suitable as a drop-in replacement for module-init-tools. At least on Ubuntu/Debian, their module-init-tools package has been heavily customized with extra options, in particular -Q (--silent). Your Ubuntu will likely fail to boot if you build modprobe from scratch and install a binary which doesn't support the -Q option.
"The patch directory can also be placed under revision control, so you can have a separate history of changes made to your patches."
I assumed this meant "git-add .git/patches/master". That's not possible though as Git doesn't believe you should be able to shoot yourself in the foot by tracking files under .git/. But it does let you do "cd .git/patches/master; git-init", and create a second repo under .git/. I guess this is what the doc means by a "separate history".
The advantage of this format is I can easily publish all my changes before I'm 100% happy with them. So I've now published the complete code for module-init-tools indexes, which shaves a whole second off my EeePC boot-time. It passes the testsuite, as well as my own "does it break my computer" test:
time grep MODALIAS /var/log/udev | cut -d = -f 2- | xargs -n1 /sbin/modprobe 2>&1|sort -o a
time grep MODALIAS /var/log/udev | cut -d = -f 2- | xargs -n1 ./modprobe 2>&1|sort -o b
diff a b
I just need to clean it up a little now and wait for the maintainer to get back in touch with me.
WARNING. It is not suitable as a drop-in replacement for module-init-tools. At least on Ubuntu/Debian, their module-init-tools package has been heavily customized with extra options, in particular -Q (--silent). Your Ubuntu will likely fail to boot if you build modprobe from scratch and install a binary which doesn't support the -Q option.
Git: is not so great for managing patch queues actually
I found myself doing a bit more work on module-init-tools than planned. The good news was that it had a testsuite. The bad news is I had to fix the testsuite first to work on my computer, then to get it to use valgrind as documented.
I also ended up fixing a number of memory leaks. These are unlikely to important in module-init-tools where all the programs are short running commands. However, they make it much more difficult to use valgrind to check for leaks in my new code.
Plus, while I was grokking all this existing code it seemed a pity not to profile it and shave some time off the hotspots (again, using valgrind, also with wonderful profile graphics from kcachegrind).
As a result, I currently have 12 patches with just under 6000 lines. My first approach was to import all the changes into separate commits in Git - hence the GitHub account. This is, it turns out, the Wrong Thing To Do. It's very cumbersome to go back and correct a commit if you miss something, or as a response to feedback.
So I'm now using "guilt". This is much like Andrew Mortons "quilt" patch management system, except it lets you feel superior for using Git underneath and not having to type "quilt add" every time you edit a different file. I've already used it to reorder my patches and regroup them more logically, and it works great.
What I'm trying to say here is that all the history I published on GitHub is now obsolete, and I'm going to blow it away :-). Before I do that, hopefully I can work out what the murmerings about tracking your patches directory in Git mean - then I can publish my patch queue on GitHub.
But now I have to go collect my SDM open assessment feedback. I was hoping to meet with Niall at the same time but he's not replied. Oh, and maybe I should get some food in the house.
I also ended up fixing a number of memory leaks. These are unlikely to important in module-init-tools where all the programs are short running commands. However, they make it much more difficult to use valgrind to check for leaks in my new code.
Plus, while I was grokking all this existing code it seemed a pity not to profile it and shave some time off the hotspots (again, using valgrind, also with wonderful profile graphics from kcachegrind).
As a result, I currently have 12 patches with just under 6000 lines. My first approach was to import all the changes into separate commits in Git - hence the GitHub account. This is, it turns out, the Wrong Thing To Do. It's very cumbersome to go back and correct a commit if you miss something, or as a response to feedback.
So I'm now using "guilt". This is much like Andrew Mortons "quilt" patch management system, except it lets you feel superior for using Git underneath and not having to type "quilt add" every time you edit a different file. I've already used it to reorder my patches and regroup them more logically, and it works great.
What I'm trying to say here is that all the history I published on GitHub is now obsolete, and I'm going to blow it away :-). Before I do that, hopefully I can work out what the murmerings about tracking your patches directory in Git mean - then I can publish my patch queue on GitHub.
But now I have to go collect my SDM open assessment feedback. I was hoping to meet with Niall at the same time but he's not replied. Oh, and maybe I should get some food in the house.
Tuesday, 17 June 2008
Boot times revisited
I've been fiddling with boot time optimisations for a while now, but it's now born fruit.
If you look at GitHub sidebar on theleft right you'll see "my-module-init-tools". I've just published all my baseline fixes.
Coming soon: the module index (already implemented and tested) that speeds up stock Ubuntu boot times by 3 whole seconds! This is on my EEE, remember - a 630Mhz Celeron. But even my Core 2 Duo desktop takes a whole second faffing around reading these module configuration files!
The current maintainer Jon Masters is very interested, but apparently quite busy at the moment.
Next up: UDEV. I had one simple fix to speed rule execution (compute jump targets at load time, instead of scanning at run-time), but the main problem appears to be that it just forks too many processes. I spent ages squeezing the last drops out of string manipulation code etc, because the fork overhead isn't really clear on oprofile. I still don't have a good way to profile it. My planned fix is to move away from directly access to environment variables, use pthreads instead of multiple processes, and then only fork & set environment variables when udev needs to run a different program like modprobe or vol_id.
Altogether, we can expect a modest boot-time improvement for everyone. (Ignoring the few freaks who manage to run a functional system without udev).
Sorry, no convenient links - I've run out of time and need to sleep. You know where the search engine is. (No, it is so not extra effort. Use a proper GUI & browser with support for middle mouse button "paste URL", and default search, aka search from the address bar. Select a word or phrase on the page, middle click, and magic happens. I'm on Konqueror on X11).
If you look at GitHub sidebar on the
Coming soon: the module index (already implemented and tested) that speeds up stock Ubuntu boot times by 3 whole seconds! This is on my EEE, remember - a 630Mhz Celeron. But even my Core 2 Duo desktop takes a whole second faffing around reading these module configuration files!
The current maintainer Jon Masters is very interested, but apparently quite busy at the moment.
Next up: UDEV. I had one simple fix to speed rule execution (compute jump targets at load time, instead of scanning at run-time), but the main problem appears to be that it just forks too many processes. I spent ages squeezing the last drops out of string manipulation code etc, because the fork overhead isn't really clear on oprofile. I still don't have a good way to profile it. My planned fix is to move away from directly access to environment variables, use pthreads instead of multiple processes, and then only fork & set environment variables when udev needs to run a different program like modprobe or vol_id.
Altogether, we can expect a modest boot-time improvement for everyone. (Ignoring the few freaks who manage to run a functional system without udev).
Sorry, no convenient links - I've run out of time and need to sleep. You know where the search engine is. (No, it is so not extra effort. Use a proper GUI & browser with support for middle mouse button "paste URL", and default search, aka search from the address bar. Select a word or phrase on the page, middle click, and magic happens. I'm on Konqueror on X11).
Saturday, 10 May 2008
Reason #232 for bringing an EEE into your life
For the hypothetical readers of my previous post: the operation was a success :-). I now have an EEE running the vast majority of my favorite software (storage is a problem), based on Kubuntu (but with lots of packages I don't use thrown out). Installation was by an indirect route - I bootstrapped it using the eeeXubuntu install media, which worked great, and set me up with some hot-key scripts. (Unfortunately volume up/down isn't working right now). After switching to Kubuntu, I then upgraded to Hardy, which broke suspend somewhat.
Obviously there's a lot I've left out. Suffice it to say that I'm now using the EEE as a desktop replacement. Apart from storage, which is fixable, the only regrets I can think of are
1. Flash sucks so bad it can't manage full-screen video on a 630Mhz Celeron (and no, I don't use compiz or similar effects). Mplayer can do it! Unfortunately Mplayer loses audio sync on flv files.
2. KDE4 isn't ready for prime-time, so I don't have a dashboard equivalent. It would be really handy to have a clock with the full date I could bring to the fore with a single keypress.
Though it does help that I can plug in a set of larger peripherals -
screen (xrandr goodness!)
keyboard (I bought a nice USB keyboard with this in mind to replace the battered and ancient incumbent)
speakers (quirk: the eee causes a background hum on the speakers, which is really quite loud - but it's much improved if you plug in an external monitor)
For completeness: I also built my own kernel - which has it's upsides and downsides. (The webcam driver doesn't work for some reason, and obviously I miss out on a certain amount of Ubuntu / community support). Also, I'm now an even heavier user of hibernation than before, with uswsusp for compression - useful for both space and faster resume times. Unfortunately I had to hack ubuntu to use uswsusp.
Now I can get to the point of today's post! That would be the magic of wake-on-RTC-alarm, transforming my laptop into a (internet) radio alarm clock. All low level at the moment. Though pm-utils has some support for it, and I assume HAL has been wired up to it, there's no alarm-clock GUI yet. So here's a set of commands I'm trying today:
UPDATE: fixed date command so this actually works. Big caveat: this only seems to work on mains power - so unfortunately it's not a truly portable alarm clock. Probably not as eco-friendly as I was hoping for either.
Obviously there's a lot I've left out. Suffice it to say that I'm now using the EEE as a desktop replacement. Apart from storage, which is fixable, the only regrets I can think of are
1. Flash sucks so bad it can't manage full-screen video on a 630Mhz Celeron (and no, I don't use compiz or similar effects). Mplayer can do it! Unfortunately Mplayer loses audio sync on flv files.
2. KDE4 isn't ready for prime-time, so I don't have a dashboard equivalent. It would be really handy to have a clock with the full date I could bring to the fore with a single keypress.
Though it does help that I can plug in a set of larger peripherals -
screen (xrandr goodness!)
keyboard (I bought a nice USB keyboard with this in mind to replace the battered and ancient incumbent)
speakers (quirk: the eee causes a background hum on the speakers, which is really quite loud - but it's much improved if you plug in an external monitor)
For completeness: I also built my own kernel - which has it's upsides and downsides. (The webcam driver doesn't work for some reason, and obviously I miss out on a certain amount of Ubuntu / community support). Also, I'm now an even heavier user of hibernation than before, with uswsusp for compression - useful for both space and faster resume times. Unfortunately I had to hack ubuntu to use uswsusp.
Now I can get to the point of today's post! That would be the magic of wake-on-RTC-alarm, transforming my laptop into a (internet) radio alarm clock. All low level at the moment. Though pm-utils has some support for it, and I assume HAL has been wired up to it, there's no alarm-clock GUI yet. So here's a set of commands I'm trying today:
sudo -s # gain privs for echo
echo 0 > /sys/class/rtc/rtc0/wakealarm # must clear any existing alarm first
# Test alarm - resume in next 4 minutes (hibernation takes a _long_ time. TODO, non-blocker
#t=`date +%s`; w=`expr $t + 240`; echo $w > /sys/class/rtc/rtc0/wakealarm
# Real usage - Alarm clock
w=`date -d "tomorrow 7:55" +%s`; echo $w > /sys/class/rtc/rtc0/wakealarm
pm-hibernate # Now hibernate
exit # drop privs
# Play BBC Radio 4. Yes, theres no reason why mplayer shouldn't be able to play .ram files directly
mplayer `wget -O- http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/realplayer/media/fmg2.ram`
UPDATE: fixed date command so this actually works. Big caveat: this only seems to work on mains power - so unfortunately it's not a truly portable alarm clock. Probably not as eco-friendly as I was hoping for either.
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