jcm's blog

[ from the giant-pandas dept. ]

Bluetooth on my Powerbook G4 talking to a Nokia 6310i mobile phone

Hussein bought me a Bluetooth adapter for my birthday and so I stayed up late configuring that and doing an upgrade to sync up my version of the Debian Testing ppc tree. After inserting the USB adapter and figuring out that rfcomm required a single module which was not in the original kernel compile, I upgraded to 2.4.22-ben2 (remember to patch the two lines in mm/mmap.c in do_brk so that the recent security exploit does not bite – mail me if you read this and have trouble patching this file on powerpc or even on another platform.) and applied the necessary direct render module source updates to produce a working radeon driver for my card (as is the case each time I upgrade but hopefully this will be fixed in 2.6.).

Bluetooth support works using the BlueZ official Linux Bluetooth protocol stack and connects to my 6310i which with the aid of a script and an icon now makes connecting on the move reasonable. The Zaurus has similar scripts which I use to maintain connectivity on the go and I now need to work on data sync of my email as well as anything else I want to keep on the go. Perhaps something based upon CVS might be a good idea. Anyway the gnokii CVS archive available from the gnokii site supports the libbluetooth userspace access to my adapter and subsequently to the Nokia 6310i I have on Vodaphone.

I have to admit I even played with tones but only to see what was possible as I prefer the idea that phones ring or preferably chirp quietly whilst discretely vibrating or otherwise informing the user of a call. This is far better than having the latest pop tune played over and over on a busy train or bus (yes I did once have the Free Software song as a ring tone but I have learned through using silent mode that doing so is more polite.). Actually what happens is that people are pressured in to purchasing the latest mobile phone accessories and ring tones so as to keep up with everyone else in a sort of designer clothes kind of way. Still gnokii does seem to be very useful and I especially like the signal and battery meters it provides and which might be some time in a panel applet.

Nottingham trip is today

I am going to Nottingham later on today and am going to be around until Saturday at some point when I should return and do some cleaning up. Please do contact me if you are around and think we should meet up for coffee – I will probably be in town at some point during the afternoon.

I opened the Panda adaption kit [oops that should read Panda adoption kit - thanks trj ] I got from my parents as a birthday present. This is a good practical present offered by the WWF.

Jon.

[ from the have-you-updated-your... dept. ]

Well it has been a while since I updated this blog I suppose. I actually wrote an update about a week ago but it got eaten during submission which was again repeated just now. I think there is a bug somewhere in phpslash or Firebird which is causing me to not only get logged out but also drop the submission entered.

I have been having driving lessons with BSM for the past few weeks and thus far have driven around the Summertown and Headington areas in Oxford. Last week we went out on a dual carriageway and I tried to address the problems I am having with clutch control which result in stalling in traffic or at junctions. I had my first night time driving lesson during rush hour.

I met Simon Cozens again a couple of weeks ago and wet to oxgo for the first time. I have not yet been back in part because I have had other committments on a Tuesday. The food in Freuds looks quite good but last time I had already eaten at the Cafe Orient.
Tomorrow I am planning to be in Nottingham and on Friday I am at the EP Party. I hope to read more this week and in particular find time when I am in the right mindset for some Knuth to continue that.

We went via Eurostar on a trip to Brussels last weekend and met up with a friend. I met up with a fellow PowerPC developer and am planning to return for FOSDEM in the new year. I need to work out whether I am going to CEBIT. I was in Waterloo on Friday night at the Days Inn hotel following a trip to Nottingham on Thursday to visit friends. I need to visit Birmingham at some point.

I enjoyed Brussels very much and was impressed with the general efficiency – even when an overhead power line came down on the return journey. Once this side of the channel again there were many train signalling problems due to a madman cutting cables between Reading and Twyford or something. There were security staff on the platforms at Paddington though the others seemed to have hidden themselves quite nicely.

I have taken precautions following the kernel do_brk exploit in Linux and need to look at the PCI IDE controller card I still have which is waiting to have a few driver fixes made. I am now running Linux kernel 2.6.10-test11 [ that should read 2.6.0-test11 -- updated 11/12/2003 ] at home on perihelion and noticed a script fix for the Debian module-init-tools package.

J’ai 22 ans aujourd’hui.

Jon.

[ from the jonmasters.org-is-moving-server dept. ]

Well I finally got annoyed with the new and improved services from easyspace and decided not to pay them for hosting or email any more when I have a colo server available and broadband to do mail delivery directly rather than a third party.

If they decided to leave the service as it was then they probably would have got 160-something pounds in renewal fees…but no.

I began the process of upgrading the site as part of the move.

Jon.

[ from the not-in-my-name dept. ]

The National demonstration against the State visit of “President” Bush takes place on Thursday afternoon at 14:00 in Central London.
I am not anti-American (in fact I generally have no issues with most Americans – although I think we could all do with more people like Michael Moore to enlighten.) however I am very much not in favour of the actions of the POTUS such as drilling our Artic or renouncing the Kyoto treaty. War is just one issue I have with this guy – he is welcome to voice his opinions and millions of the Britisih public are free to tell him where to go.

Ordinarily I am not likely to go to National Demonstrations however I feel this is one which deserves as much support as possible.

Jon.

[ from the music-from-dave-loew dept. ]

I bought a copy of Safari in Classics and Safari in Classics 2 by Dave Loew having met him in W H Smiths in Reading yesterday. This was an impulse buy with a difference – the guy rules as far as his music is concerned. Very very very good.

I went to Cambridge on Thursday and saw Matrix Revolutions with friends. The film was interesting in that I am not really able to describe any particular ending nor deduce any great higher meaning from it. Did I miss something or is it that the film does not contain all of the answers fans have been seeking for several years? .

I think I am starting to finally understand slab allocation, the buddy memory system and virtual memory allocation in Linux. It is one thing to read about these things and quite another to sit in Starbucks for hours pouring over the code discussion in the book. I have been having my regular grapes and smoothie from Marks and Spencer or Tesco when the former is not available but have also started eating a lot more figs. I really like figs. I eat these things while sitting in various coffee houses pondering or reading whatever book I feel a need to read.

I have now had two driving lessons and drove in to Oxford City centre for the first time the other day. I think it will take some time though I hope to eventually be able to drive when it is not practical to travel by train. I still like travelling by train for the time and meeting of people.
For example most people seem to agree driving in to London is best done when train travel is somehow an issue.

On Tuesday I am planning to go to an Apple talk on Mac OS X UNIX. I really quite look forward to that. In the mean time I am attempting to make progress with my article on Embedded Systems and Star Office review.

Jon.

[ from the where-do-you-want-to-go-tomorrow-then? dept. ]

I have not done an update in a while. Sorry. Here is something random:

Since the Marriage of Figaro I have been in to London a bunch of times. The most recent was on Friday to meet Robin and Beckie for supper and fireworks back in Reading. I went to London last weekend too, with my dad for a change, and we visited Foyles, Borders, Blackwells (well I popped in there briefly while dad was still in Foyles, in search of a particular book by Barron on Electronics I could not find elsewhere and ended up not getting but did end up getting yet another one in Waterstones instead), and Waterstones. We went to Wagamama afterwards in Covent Garden. I have in the past few days discovered that the Yellow River Cafe in Reading do something similar to the famous Wagamama 42. There is also now another Starbucks in Reading but this time in the town centre. I walked in and said I would be living there.

That weekend we went to London (on Sunday 26th October at least I presume) was the latter part of the same weekend that I went to visit Tom in Congleton and ended up getting screwed over again by Virgin Trains. We saw Finding Nemo in Macclesfield and I was introduced to a very nice country pub which does great Greek Salads and real coffee.

This weekend we had some fireworks in Reading with Hannah and Joe Wrigley and Robin and Beckie along with the rest of my family. I went half way to Brighton with Robin and had some very nice pasta on Friday night. I also got my Birthday present a little over a month early since I had already guessed from the clues that I should check before buying books and that I had a boxed set coming, Hannah and Joe Wrigley bought me a copy of Volumes 1-3 of The Art Of Computer Programming. We had older editions somewhere but they are not handy and this set means that I can start reading the stuff on algorithms I have been wanting to look at.

I have been reading the Understanding The Linux Kernel book again because I need to fix a bug in mmap which seems to have been introduced in the stuff that I am doing and therefore necessitates that I really understand exactly how the memory management layer does in fact work. . I am also nearly finished on the Michael Moore Stupid White Men book which I picked up in the trip that I mentioned to bookshops in London.

I was in Cambridge at some point recently too and saw Kill Bill. That is an interesting film if you like that kind of thing. Whatever you do remember that Cabin Fever is one of those films which one finds funny for the wrong reasons. I am going to be in Cambridge this coming Thursday and having another driving lesson on Friday. Did I mention I am now finally learning to drive cars on road? I had my first lesson last week and was so impressed with the instructor that I booked 5 more with BSM.

I am writing a review of Star Office and working on a feature on Embedded Linux so welcome any input from people who randomly happen upon this page. I met a Gentoo Linux user on a train a couple of weeks ago and a Doctor who uses Linux too. The other evening I bumped in to another person reading a Michael Moore book and he told me he writes IOS Packet Forwarding code for Cisco.

Jon.

[ from the a-dose-of-culture dept. ]

I saw a performance of The Marriage Of Figaro by The Welsh National Opera in the New Theatre which is in Oxford this evening. This began at 19:15 and finished at 22:35 and was most enjoyable indeed. Figaro, Suzanna, and the Count were especially well performed, as was the rest of the cast. The Orchestra was very good indeed.

New Theatre as it is now called was formerly the Apollo and has been done up although they still ran out of soap in several places making an epic trying to wash my hands during the interval before having a drink. Navigating aroung the building is a little interesting. .

Skipped supper again so basically lived on grapes and smoothie and regular coffee though I should probably eat a nice rice or noodle dish later today. Several of us on OxLUG are meeting for a drink tonight perhaps resurrecting the mid-month meetings at some point.

I am continuing with the concept of reading several books at once and have now started reading a pocket sized book on 6502 machine code on the bus. This has the benefit that it requires less effort than the DSP book so at certain times of day that can be a good thing.

I spent some time looking at certain kinds of register alignment issues with particular ethernet configurations in a certain kernel. Tomorrow I will be travelling to Nottingham and probably in Manchester on Friday and possibly Saturday. Meeting people for coffee in London on Thursday morning too.

Jon.