Planet Ubuntu-AU

Paul Schulz: RIAus 3D Printing Seminar

Paul Schulz (noreply@blogger.com) — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 06:54:41 +0000

Twitter: #3DPrintADL
Pictures can be found here: ANAT Blog Photos, Hackerspace Adelaide

On Monday (20 Jan 2012) I attended a 3D printing and rapid prototyping seminar at the RIAus, organised by the South Australian Education Department (DFEEST). I came along as an attendee and also as a member of the Adelaide Hackerspace. There were three of us from Hackerspace each with our Huxley Reprap machines. There was also a collection of other machines on display with the University of South Australia bringing five Makerbots, lit up in various colours and another commercial supplier.

The morning program of speakers was excellent and the organisers did very well covering the broad range of issues that this technology evokes. The panel and the more practical afternoon session, built further on these ideas. In no particular order:

Copyright, patents and intellectual property were mentioned a coupled of times, but other than emphasising that they are important and that the current legal framework fast enough, there really wasn't any consensus about how this area should be approached.
The problem of atoms. How are ideas and designs turned into useful objects. We heard from a couple of companies which are providing 3D prototyping as as service (Ponoko) and as part of their business process (Monkey Stack).
Design vs. Evolution. How will consumer items be created in the future? Will we still need designers or will the tools be so easy to use that anyone will be able to design and produce the items that they need? or will designers produce base/reference designs which individuals can then evolve to their own requirements?
Capturing the Innovation. It is recognised that much of the technical innovation that occurs doesn't take place in large corporate research and development groups. Industry wants access to innovations and they are going to need to look out into the wider community to do that. This is something that Intel are focused on via Intel Labs. In Australia we know we are an inventive lot, but we need to somehow throw the net wider then just the establishment of the Univerisities, Schools and Industry and include things like 'Mens Sheds', 'Community and Church Groups', and 'Intense Hobbies' (eg model train builders) etc. This was emphasised by Mark Thomson, Research Director for the Institute of Backyard Studies.

The afternoon continued with practical examples of how to use this technology, along with some valuable hints and tips (eg. remember to leave a hole if you need to remove material from inside an object). All-in-all and excellent, high quality informational session.

Sridhar Dhanapalan: Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-02-22

Sridhar Dhanapalan — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 06:15:00 +0000

Funny things kids say: http://t.co/bboiN5rd #
Laptops improving school attendance on Palm Island http://t.co/fqKniq54 #olpcau #olpc #

Quail: John Moyle Field Day 2012

Dale — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 03:41:42 +0000

Overview:
The contest takes place on the 3rd full weekend in March each year, and this year runs from 0100 UTC Saturday to 0059 UTC Sunday, 17 – 18 March 2012.

The aim is to encourage and provide familiarisation with portable operation, and provide training for emergency situations. The rules are therefore specifically designed to encourage field operation.

Contest Rules:
The contest is open to all VK, ZL and P2 stations. Other stations are welcome to participate, but can only claim points for contacts with VK, ZL and P2 stations. All VK, ZL, and P2 stations can claim points for all contacts, with any amateur station in world, as long as valid serial numbers are exchanged.

Single operator portable entries shall consist of ONE choice from each of the following (e.g. 6 hour, phone, VHF/UHF):
a 24 or 6 hour;
b Phone, CW, Digital or All modes;
c HF, VHF/UHF or All Bands.

Multi-operator portable entries shall consist of ONE choice from each of the following (e.g. 24 hour, phone, VHF/UHF):
a 24 or 6 hour;
b Phone, CW, Digital, or All modes;
c HF, VHF/UHF or All Bands.

Home and SWL entries may be either, 24 hour or 6 hours, but only all modes, and all bands. Multi operator stations are not permitted in the Home Category

Reference:
http://www.wia.org.au/members/contests/johnmoyle/

Sridhar Dhanapalan: OLPC Australia Education Newsletter

Sridhar Dhanapalan — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 13:08:57 +0000

Editions 7 and 8 of the OLPC Australia Education Newsletter have come out in the past few weeks. In each edition, we will provide news, tips and tricks and stories from the field.

To subscribe, send an e-mail to education-newsletter+subscribe@laptop.org.au.

Quail: MVPS 29-02-2012 Event

Dale — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 11:29:56 +0000

Today I had a good day out enjoying the event held at the MVPS museum and grounds for the 70th Anniversary of the Bombing of Darwin.

Image Gallery

Playing with the Tanks

Firing of the 25 pounder

Quail: Nouveau GLX problems

Dale — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 12:29:46 +0000

Well switching from nVidia propietry drivers to the open source Nouveau drivers for nVidia GPU’s I found I had no 3D acceleration, and when running glxinfo etc I was getting

Error: couldn't find RGB GLX visual or fbconfig

And in Xorg.log.0 output file I was seeing

Failed to load module "glx" (loader failed, 7)

Turns out after stuffing around trying to find a solution, I did a search to find the package that held libglx.so and that was in the xserver-xorg-core. Well I reinstalled xserver-xorg-core and it fixed the problem and I now have 3D goodness

# apt-get install --reinstall xserver-xorg-core

Sridhar Dhanapalan: Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-02-15

Sridhar Dhanapalan — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 06:15:00 +0000

Damn buskers on Pitt St are WAY TOO LOUD! #
Just when I thought Facebook couldn’t get any more useless– they bring out some dumb ‘timeline’ thing. No doubt they’ll foist it on everyone #
Just got home from the dentist with a splint. I feel like Ivan Drago: “YOU WILL LOSE!” #

Quail: Putting up a Dipole Antenna

Dale — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 14:52:44 +0000

Putting up a HF dipole is not very hard; all it takes is a little planning, and knowing the length of your dipole. For this I am going to use the OCFD I built as an example, it is 42m long and covers the 80-10m bands.

Firstly you need to find a suitable place to put up your dipole, such as a park or similar. Preferably you’d want to have a heavy-duty squid pole or the like to hold the balun/feed point and coax up in the air; as it is the heaviest point and there’s no point using the ends of the dipole to pull up dead weight, as this will over time cause stretching of the copper wire and you’ll end up with bad SWR. The reason for using squid pole or similar is you can get a rod holder from any fishing store, which you can push into the ground to support the squid pole if its not too windy. Additionally, if there are power lines around you do not want to run your dipole parallel to them, as you’ll pic up more noise off of then.

Once you have selected a place that is adequate for your needs of mounting the ends of the dipole – trees are ideal for this. It is time to put it all up in the air; starting with the squid pole (or similar). Once the balun/feed point coax is up in the air you can deal with the ends of the dipole.

The easiest way I found to deal with the dipole ends is to use a tennis ball and some strong string – such as is used for sewing leather – you drill a hole through the tennis ball, then poke the string through on a bit of wire, and tie the string off around the tennis ball. 10 metres of string should be enough, as you only need it to pull your 4mm diameter rope up into the tree. The reason for using the string and the tennis ball is it minimises the chances of snags and getting it all stuck in the tree – 9 times out 10 if you do get snagged the string will snap hopefully close to the tennis ball and you’ll get both back.

Remember:
Make sure you setup away from power and telephone lines.
It doesn’t matter if there is a little bit of droop in your dipole legs, just as long as where it droops it is 6 metres or more above the ground.

Quail: [How To] Nouveau Dualhead Setup

Dale — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 14:01:23 +0000

Well I thought I’d have another play with Nouveau the open source driver for nVidia GPU’s, as it been a while since played around with them. Since the last time I played with Nouveau it was very buggy and unstable and 3D support was even worse, but I very surprised that there is some 3D support via Gallium3D.

Anyways this how I setup my xorg.conf for dual head setup with nouveau under Debian testing (wheezy):

Section "Monitor"
          Identifier   "monitor0"
          Option       "PreferredMode" "1920x1080_60.00"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
          Identifier   "monitor1"
          Option       "PreferredMode" "1440x900_60.00"
          Option       "RightOf" "monitor0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier 	       "device0"
    VendorName         "nVidia Corporation"
    BoardName          "GeForce GT 220"
    Driver  	       "nouveau"
    Option  	       "Monitor-DVI-I-1" "monitor0"
    Option  	       "Monitor-VGA-1" "monitor1"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "screen0"
    DefaultDepth 24
      SubSection "Display"
        Depth      24
        Virtual 3360 1080
      EndSubSection
    Device "device0"
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier 			"layout0"
    Screen 			    "screen0"
EndSection

At the moment I am very happy with Nouveau and going to keep using it till it borks it again

Also if you not want to go through the hassle of xorg.conf you could run or put this in your session startup file, example this what I used for testing with ~/.fluxbox/startup

$ xrandr --output DVI-I-1 --mode 1920x1080 --pos 0x0 && xrandr --output VGA-1 --mode 1440x900 --pos 1920x0 &

The above does the same as the above xorg.conf configuration.

James Purser: I am a grown man and I am not a victim of your boobs

James Purser — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 06:19:02 +0000

Bettina Arndt has released another of her apologist opinion pieces proclaiming that men are poor tragic victims helpless in the light of the great and powerful boob.

According to Bettina, the women of today are

"stepping out dressed provocatively but bristling if the wrong man shows he enjoys the display."

Leaving us possessors of testicles

"in a total state of confusion"

We poor, defenceless men are apparently broken down into three groups:

"There are cocky, attractive, successful men, alpha males, revelling in this unexpected bounty, boldly eyeing off the assets of women they fancy as their prey."
"Sensitive males are wary, not knowing where to look. Afraid of causing offence."
"And there are angry men, the beta males who lack the looks, the trappings of success to tick these women's boxes. They know the goodies on display are not for them. These are the men most likely to behave badly, blatantly leering, grabbing and sneering. For them, the whole thing is a tease. They know it and resent it."

So there we have 50% of the population of the planet divided into alpha sleaze, wimp or potential rapist.

Seriously?

This whole article manages to demean both men and women.

For women, it paints them as painted harlots, using their bosoms of doom to confuse and bedazzle men. For the men it paints us as weak willed simpletons, too much a victim of our base desires to ever be trusted in polite company and in need of protection from the afore mentioned painted harlots.

Bullshit.

Last I checked, I had the required gear to be classified as a man, also, according to the law, I am considered responsible enough to participate in deciding who shall lead this country, pilot a one and a half tonne vehicle and guide young minds in their development. I am married to a woman, and in my daily life I am generally surrounded by people, half of which are of the female gender. Some of them even dress in ways that might be called daring.

You know what I do in situations like this?

I deal with it and move on. I am able, through the exercise of my thinking brain to move past the boob and deal with the person behind them.

Perhaps I am in the minority, thought I doubt it, I'm willing to bet there are many, many men out there (not counting the gay ones who have even less to fear from the boob) who are able to operate around women without drooling or pawing and groping their way through life. I'm also willing to bet that there are many, many men out there who are more than willing to take responsibility for their own actions and not blame them on the fatty milk producing glands of the opposite sex.

Paul Schulz: Part 5: Other Amateur Radio logging software, vkcl

Paul Schulz (noreply@blogger.com) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:18:01 +0000

This is probably a good time to have a look at some of the other Amateur Radio logging software that is around.The plan was to have made some modifications to xlog, so that it could be used the John Moyle Field Day (in 2011). Unfortunately this won't be the case, so I'll be using vkcl. This has the added advantage of getting some experience with other logging software, and seeing what features are particular useful.
vkcl is MS Windows based software and is available as a free download from the authors website. It is regularly updated with additional code as the rules for the Australian Amature Radio contests change over time. The author has also included some international contests, as he wants to use the same software with the contests that he is involved in.
One of good thing about vkcl is that the help (via Windows Help File) is complete and the software has features which make it a real pleasure to use during contests.

Quail: Debian 6.0.4 released

Dale — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:28:47 +0000

The Debian project is pleased to announce the fourth update of its stable distribution Debian (codename “squeeze”). This update mainly adds corrections for security problems to the stable release, along with a few adjustments to serious problems. Security advisories were already published separately and are referenced where available.

Read the full article

IKT: BlackHat USA 2011: SSL And The Future Of Authenticity

ikt — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:45:53 +0000

Speaker: MOXIE MARLINSPIKE

In the early 90′s, at the dawn of the World Wide Web, some engineers at Netscape developed a protocol for making secure HTTP requests, and what they came up with was called SSL. Given the relatively scarce body of knowledge concerning secure protocols at the time, as well the intense pressure that everyone at Netscape was working under, their efforts can only be seen as incredibly heroic. But while it’s amazing that SSL has endured for as long as it has, some parts of it — particularly those concerning Certificate Authorities — have always caused some friction, and have more recently started to cause real problems.

This talk will provide an in-depth examination of the current problems with authenticity in SSL, discuss some of the recent high-profile SSL infrastructure attacks in detail, and cover some potential strategies for the future. It will conclude with a software release that aims to definitively fix the disintegrating trust relationships at the core of this fundamental protocol.

For more information or download the video visit:http://bit.ly/BlackHat_USA_2011_information

Great watch!

Quail: Learning Morse Code (CW)

Dale — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:27:13 +0000

People have asked me often what the best way to go about learning CW, as there is many training programs and apps out there. IMHO the easiest way is to listen to the morse code trainer on 3.699MHz as that starts off at about 5 words per minute and slowly gets faster. Receiving CW is the hardest part of learning CW and once you have that down pat sending CW should almost come second nature.

Paul Gear: My essential Ubuntu applications

paul — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 05:08:28 +0000

A few times recently i've had to think about the essential applications i use on my desktop. The latest was Anthony Burke's tweet, but the recent churn in the Linux desktop world and my unhappiness with Unity means that i need to be prepared for moving away from Ubuntu when Unity becomes the only option. (I'm currently on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "lucid lynx", so this hopefully will be some time away.) So here's my list of desktop essentials, mostly for my benefit, but hopefully of use to others. Many of these are simply Ubuntu's default applications for their respective tasks and are provided in the base install.

Everyday essentials

Most of these applications are open all the time on my laptop:

Mozilla Firefox - recently updated to the fast-release versions on 10.04 LTS, which offers some great speed improvements.
Mozilla Thunderbird - I've been a Netscape/Thunderbird user for more than 10 years now, and i still can't understand why people put up with a less-capable email client.
Pidgin - instant messaging for IRC, XMPP (Jabber, Google Talk), and Twitter (via tweet.im)
Amarok 1.4 - music player. I use the older version because it pulls down my podcasts automatically, rescans my library automatically, and i can just type "198" into the search box and get a great selection of music from the 1980s, instead of having to write match queries (which the new version of Amarok seems to require).
Workrave - rest break software for preventing RSI
evince - the default PDF reader; it's rare that i don't have 2 or 3 PDF files open for reference, sometimes more like 20 or 30
Google Desktop - search for all of those local PDFs filling up my hard disk
OpenOffice - newer versions of Ubuntu & Debian have moved to LibreOffice now, but 10.04 LTS still uses the Sun/Oracle version
Tomboy - simple desktop notes
Getting Things Gnome (gtg) - my much-ignored todo list
icewm - I replace the default GNOME 2 window manager with icewm, which is a very simple, fast, customisable window manager
J-Pilot - my password database dates back to my PalmOS days, so J-Pilot is my password manager even though i don't use PalmOS devices any more. People starting fresh would more likely find KeePass or something similar a better choice.
By far the most-used applications on my laptop are gnome-terminal, ssh, vim, git, bash, and the suite of Linux/Unix shell script utilities. I do most of my coding in vim, and rarely have less than 10-15 shell sessions open to different servers or network devices. Most of my important work happens on the servers, not on the desktop.

Other applications

These are less frequently-used, and aren't open all the time:

Liferea - RSS feed reader
Opera - i use this to keep my finance-related web sites separate from my main browser
Google Picasa - photo organiser which offers automatic sync to Picasa Web, and simple export to Facebook & Gallery; runs as a Windows application under WINE
baobab (Disk Usage Analyser) - great for tracking down where i need to trim back on my disk usage; its exploded pie charts are outstanding (Users of other operating systems might like to check out JDiskReport, which offers the same type of chart.)
Unison - file synchronisation
gns3/dynamips - Cisco IOS emulator
dia - diagram editor; much more rudimentary than Microsoft Visio, but still very usable. I mostly work with pencil & paper when it comes to network diagrams and the like anyway.
GnuCash - double-entry accounting system; all of my business accounting happens here
Adobe Acrobat Reader 9 - for some reason, my bank produces PDFs that evince can't read but Acrobat Reader can
Eclipse - IDE for Java coding
Audacity - sound editor
grip - old-school CD ripper which gives complete control over MP3/OGG encoding options

Paul Gear: Debian versions infographic

liberty — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:07:58 +0000

Debian Project News recently linked to a helpful infographic of Debian versions. It doesn't include anything about backports, volatile/updates, or contrib, main, and non-free, but it's a great resource nonetheless. The main point i would disagree on is its suggestion that testing is appropriate for general users (and it seems that a number of the commenters on that post agree). I always recommend stable for all users unless there is a really good reason to do otherwise.

Wouldn't it be great if we had similar infographics for Ubuntu (including universe/multiverse) and Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS?