Bill's stuff

Cutting pages out of pdf files

2008-12-23T02:45:00.000-08:00

Just discovered PDF toolkit. Makes it really easy to cut pages and do many other things with a pdf file in one easy command line.

Useful examples on Linux.com.

Zotero - bibliography management in firefox

2008-07-23T07:56:00.000-07:00

For a while now I have been saving the academic papers I read on line on my laptop in folders by journal wih names like author_title.pdf. I have a little bit of automation: a bash script converts pdf to text, then spits the first few lines of the file, typically containing the title and authors, in to an html file with a link to the local copy of the file. The advantage is that it is minimal trouble. I look at a lot of papers on line and my memory is not so good, this is quite fast and does the job. Of course what I really want is this automated so with one click in my browser the pdf is saved and an entry saved in a database which can export to BibTeX for use in papers I write.

Well fortunately someone has done all of that. Zotero is a Firefox extension that scrapes bibliographic information from journal web pages, Google Scholar, ISI Web of Science, MathSci, etc

If the full text is available, and "automatically attach pdfs" setting selected in preferences it saves a copy of the paper in a directory that can be accessed from the database (or otherwise). references can be saved in a number of formats including of course BibTeX, but also RIS which is popular eg with Endnote.

My own university library, the John Ryland University Library at the University of Manchester has an OpenURL server called "FindItatJRUL", this can be linked to the Zotero database. To do this go to "preferences" OpenURL, custom and paste http://openurl.man.ac.uk/sfxlcl3 in the box. Goodness knows how this works. I just made an informed guess. But it does. My work for your library too.

I did try EndNote a while ago and dint find it very useful. In any case I do not use Windows or Macs, only Linux (Suse 10.3), and it did nor seem worth to trouble to run it in Wine or CrossoverOffice. Strangely though in Web of Knowledge clicking the "Export to EndNote RefMan or ProCite" icon, then ignoring the option to save a file, but then clicking on the little zotero icon in url box of Firefox does the trick. In Google Scholar clicking on "Import into Endnote" does the job with no fiddling.

It remains to be seen how well this works out. For example how easy it is to restore the database after say reinstalling Firefox and Zotero or other possible nasties, or if any other annoyances crop up. It does seem to be under active development though, so I expect bugs will be ironed out rather than get worse, and integration with popular databases will probably get better.

For MathsSciNet I found I had to use the main www.ams.org/mathscinet/ site rather than the german mirror I normally use. Also it fails for older MathRev records starting with zero until that is fixed. Of course off campus, instead of using the crappy University (ie cisco) VPN, I use "ssh -ND some-port me@somecomputeroncampus" (see also a better way to proxy" and then the FoxyProxy Firefox extension to route requests to places like MathSciNet that are not authenticated by "athens" or "shibboleth".

Firefox wrong flash player version?

2008-04-20T11:16:00.000-07:00

For some reason my Mozilla Firefox on Linux seemed to have an old version of Adobe (was Macromedia) Flash Player. I checked this on the adobe web site which claimed I was running an old version on Windows rather than version 9 under linux.

Installing the rpm version of flash and checking the plugins directory where firefox was installed did not help.

Typing "about:plugins" in the location box in firefox listed the plugin gave me a clue it was something to do with
NPSWF32.dll.so, and that souds windowsey so I susspected Crossover Office.

However I had tried uninstalling flash in crossover, but it either hung or crashed. Seems my windows flash installation was broken.

I found the problem in my home directory

~/.cxoffice/win2000/desktopdata/cxnsplugin/linux/npcxoffice-8be57157-dcc2-49ef-988f-3a73a6023181.linux.npqtplugin.dll.so

and lost of similarly named files linked to

~/.cxoffice/win2000/desktopdata/cxnsplugin/linux/npqtplugin.dll.so

I deleted the links and it works fine.

A better way to proxy

2008-04-19T06:13:00.000-07:00

Following on from the post My little Proxy a few years ago there is now a much easier way to do this.

So the problem that I want to access on line journals and databases like MathSciNet that we have a subscription for at work, but despite the wonders of Athens, Shibboleth and other "single login" methods to access on line resources there are still some things that stubbornly insist checking your ip address.

Running squid on my desktop machine worked up to a point but I found there were some sites I needed that for some reason did not work with that.

The "Official" solution was to use the University's proprietary and highly flaky VPN service. As well as being unreliable the damn thing also disables access to the local network (on both adapters). This obviously a complete load of pants if you want to download a paper then print it out on your printer on your home network. Oh dear don't let me get started on another rant about "worst practice" software procurement!

Anyway a nice chap from information systems gave me a "completely unsupported" (nudge nudge wink wink) work around: ssh -D.

Here is how it is meant to work. Choose a typical proxy port like 8080, and a sever you can ssh in to on campus (preferably your own of course, but it works with our departmental linux cluster. Lets call the machine fred.fun.ac.uk (its not his real name). My username on fred is assumed to be me.

Now form a terminal run ssh -D 8080 me@fred.fun.ac.uk

This now means that on your local machine (my laptop s running Mandriva 2006, but expect the same works for other proper operating systems) it looks like there is a socks 5 proxy running on port 8080.

Now I configured a proxy in Firefix Edit> Preferences>Advanced>Network Connection Settings.
I chose localhost and 8080. Now that did not work. In the terminal where ssh is running I get the error message

channel 3: open failed: administratively prohibited: open failed

Not sure exactly what is going on here, but it seems necessary in firefox at least to use the ip address 127.0.0.1 instead of localhost for your own computer (could be something in etc/hosts?) and you need to click the SOCKS 5 radio button (my depend how new your ssh is I suppose?)

Finally switching the proxy on and off is a bit of a pain without a nice Firefox add on called FoxyProxy. This makes it easy to for example switch the proxy on and off by clicking on the status bar or only using the proxy for certain websites.

On some of our machines we set the sshd to listen on a port other than 22. This can be helpful for example when you are using a public wireless connection in a cafe or one of the University's cobbled wireless access points that blocks port 22. Just change the line in /etc/ssh/sshd_config.

One thing I would like now is a script that reconnects the ssh -D when the connection drops, eg using wireless.

Some links

This
arstechnica discussion also diagnosed my problem.

SOCKS on Wikipedia in case you wondered what it was.

OpenSsh manual page for ssh

Another blog doing this on Mac OSX

FoxyProxy

Check the ip address you are browsing from here for example.

Apparently it can be done on Microsoft Windows to here
using PuTty. (duh I like that, windows, putty, get it?)

You probably want to set it up so you don't need to type a password when you log in to ssh. Here is how to do it

KDE to Mozilla migration

2008-03-02T02:02:00.000-08:00

I love KDE, or at least I am so used to it that I find it really convenient. While I only use Linux, at home, office, laptop in a way its not so much Linux that I like. If all the software I want was available on another 'nix: BSD*, Hurd, whatever, I would n't notice so much aslong as the interface was the same.

Konqueror has lots going for it as well as desktop integration, embedded applications that just work, man:, fish: etc as protocls. I love doing Alt-F2 gg whatever to google for whatever and other KDE standard shortcuts.

However konquerer is a standards compliant browser and lots of websites, especially gmail, google calendar, blogspot, youtube as well as some I use for work are not standards compliant and test to check you are using a browser implementing their favorite bugs.

Kontact: Kmail and Korganizer have server me well but I could not get korganizer to sync with google calender, kmail didnt agee with the universities imap server and did not let me read folders off line. Reluctantly I switched to Mozilla alternatives.

So how to easy the pain and recover some of the functionality of KDE with the mozilla apps.

The most annoying thing about Mozilla (at least on my Linux implementation Mandriva 2006) is the extremely annoying file save open menus. You cant even type the path and have it auto cmplete. Its all tedious clicking. Worst when the file you want to open is a program you want to run to associate with a file you are downloading, and it goes looking in all the wrong places. Another big pain is the non-standard printing menu.

Many of these irritations can be fixed by changing hidden settings in the about:config obscure settings sections.

Much help can be found on the Gentoo wiki.

File download can be configured more flexibly with firefox extension Flashgot. I downloaded the latest binary version of Firefox as it is needed for the latest extensions, and having checked all the bookmarks and settings worked I uninstalled the older rpm version.

Now for Thunderbird. There is an about config hidden in the Edit->Preferences dialogue box. Go to the advanced tab then "config editor". Then same as Firefox for the kde print menu.

Sunbird, the Mozilla Calender, is the weakest of the three suites. And the three are not tightly integrated. The configuration menu can be found in the same place as in Thunderbird.

There are two ways to connect Sunbird to google calendar. Provider for Google calendar synchronises it while on line. But for a laptop this does not work as the calendar goes blank when disconnected. In this case GCALDaemon is a sync daemon written in Java that sits their in the background syncing your google calendars ical file with a local copy that Sunbird can view and edit.

Skype not installing on Linux

2008-03-01T16:26:00.000-08:00

Although I had it working before the last time I reinstalled Mandriva Linux 2006, this time I cannot install the old package

skype-1.4.0.99-mdv.i586.rpm

nor the one currently on the download site

skype-1.4.0.118-mdv.i586.rpm
skype-1.4.0.99-mdv.i586.rpm

They both have a missing Qt library
Some package requested cannot be installed:

urpmi skype-1.4.0.99-mdv.i586.rpm
skype-1.4.0.99-mdv.i586 (due to unsatisfied libQtDBus.so.4)
Continue? (Y/n)

I could nt find libQtDBus.so.4 in any Mandriva rpm.

I seem to have got around it by downloading the static version. Listed on the Skype download website as
"linux static"

I downloaded it, unzipped it with

bzip -d skype_static-1.4.0.118.tar.bz2
tar xvf skype_static-1.4.0.118.tar

I then found that running skype_static-1.4.0.118/skype
complained about a missing library

urpmi libsigc++2.0_0-devel

seems to fix that. So far so good

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX33 and linux: first test

2007-12-20T11:52:00.000-08:00

Sarah just came home with a Panasonic Lumix DMC FX33, a replacement for her stolen Canon IXY. So the first trepidation: does it work with Linux? I did n't put the SD card in at first but I just plugged it in to my Sony Vaio PCG V505. Actually I just used the cable from my own cheapy Tesco Technica. I took a picture on the build-in strage then plugged it in. Mandriva 2006 happily automounted it as a USB mass storage device 26.9MBytes. No problem. Phew. Then I put in an SD memory card. That works fine too, and like many cameras the internal memory does not mount when you have the card in. So thats ok. It will not have to go back to the shop!

How do I get the kde printer dialogue box in soffice

2007-11-22T11:54:00.000-08:00

I don't so much like linux, what I really like is kde. To some extent wouldnt mind if I had to switch OS to BSD or Hurd, or whatever, it is the consistent userinterface of KDE that I am most attached to.. Anyway it annoys me when I have to use applications that are not integrated with KDE. Sometimes I have to use Mozilla (yuk!) instead of konqueror for non-standard compliant web sites (ARE YOU LISTENING BLOGGER.COM I SAID NON-STANDARD!)and then you get that yukky mozilla file dialogue box to save files. Anyway I digress. OpenOffice on my Mandriva 2006 laptop is not KDE integrated, and it is ok picking up the local printer, but sometimes, especially as I use it on different networks, it is handy to go to the KDE print dialoge, which can see more printers (eg from a remote cups server).

Anyway the way to do it is with a little tool called spadmin that lets you setup kprinter as though it was another pdf converter. Full instructions for example are
here

Same trick could be adapted for your other non-standard print needs. Some network printers have a charming feature that they postscript files you just ftp to them, often a handy way to bypass those irritating printer queues.... maybe something like

ncftpput -c myprinteripaddress

Technika SH-Z265 6M pixel digital Camera

2007-07-21T03:35:00.000-07:00

Technika SH-Z265 6M pixel digital Camera, about £65 from Tesco. Works fine in Linux: I have Mandriva 2006, running on my Sony Via PCG V505. Just plug un the USB lead and the SD card mounts as USB mass storage and appears under Devices on the desktop. just like a memory stick. The AVI movies play fine in Kaffine. Nice cheap camera that "just works". Like the big on-screen menus I don't need my reading glasses to read.

Namesecure are they the worst domain name registrar?

2007-01-14T03:59:00.000-08:00

I have several domains registered with Namessecure.com, including heartandmind.org, eidors.org, and sarahlionheart.com. I wonder if they are the worst place to register or host a domain? A few years ago when my friend Rick Booth recommended them they were good value and easy to use. Over the last year or two the service has degraded, especially email forwarding. This has been extremely inconvenient for my wife Sarah as she relies on the email address for business.

I am currently trying to move heartandmind.org to a UK hosting company fasthosts.co.uk. I selected them from several economically priced hosting services as they had a human being who answered the phone, in an accent I could understand (slightly West Country I think, and that fits as their address is Gloucester), and who could reply intelligently to my questions. We will see how it goes, my problem now is to actually get the ironically named namesecure to actually do their part to transfer the domain. Google threw up a litany of complaints from other namesecure customers and former customers, including someone who lost the domain completely while trying to transfer it out of namesecure!

Here are some examples of complaints

namesecure not answering phone for 4 weeks
Mail forwarding not working
This press release by namesecure is followed by a long list of user complaints about their service, including "
VERY BAD CUSTOMER SERVICE !! I have been using NameSecure since 2000. However their customer service is practically non-existent" and "Ron Lautmann wrote:
Namesecure is a fraud. They refused to transfer my domain before it expired and then when it expired they say it can't be transferred until I renew. Catch 22? My advice, don't use Namesecure. "

Anyone else out there care to share their experience about namesecure? Has anyone managed to contact customer services? Do you have a phone or fax number for them? Has anyone managed to transfer their domain out, or recover their losses? Please add a comment below.

Yogafont

2007-01-14T02:54:00.000-08:00

My wife Sarah Lionheart is a yoga teacher and she has been on the look out for pictures she could use in her handouts to illustrates sequences of yoga ansas (poses). Yogafont provides the answer. Simply a TrueType font where each character is a simple picture of a person in each pose. Its creator Bill Grainger has made the font freely available, with with windows and Mac versions. Both are zip files, but the windows one extracts to and exe file. So for Linux I unzipped the Mac version, and then changed yogafont.TTF to yogafont.ttf. If was then easy (at least in Mandriva 2006) to import the font for use in Linux by going to MandrivaControl centre, chooseing "system", "Manage add.. etc ...fonts", "Import" then navigate to where I had unzipped the font. It worked fine in OpenOffice writer.

iPod nano on Mandriva 2006

2006-12-26T10:00:00.000-08:00

We got my daughter got an iPod nano for Christmas, and on Christmas day I was busy trying to get it to work on Linux. Currently the whole family use Mandriva 2006. The version of the nano we have is the PC+Mac version. According to a ZoneO-tips it is better to get the PC only version, but in this case it is not a problem. Plug it in and it automatically mounts as a USB mass storage device (give it a few seconds to work) and pops up as a disk drive in "Devices". It also automatically mounted as /mnt/IPOD without any intervention. This is only part of the story as you need to put mp3 files in the database not just in the right folder. To do this you need a linux equivalent of "iTunes" such as gtkpod or Banshee. My problem was I could not find binary packages for these for Mandriva 2006 (I would be ok with 2007, but I don't feel like upgrading yet).

I whiled away a happy 40mins while half watching Christmas TV and stroking the new kitten trying to install from source or source rpm either gtkpod or banshee, or the binary rpm for 2007. I got tangled in a quagmire of dependencies. In the end, in hope rather than expectation I tried a binary rpm for Fedora Core.
gtkpod-0.88-1.1.fc2.rf.i386.rpm. This worked fine. The only tweak was to go in to Setup on gtkpod and change /mnt/ipod to /mnt/IPOD.

TuxMobil lists this, as well as lots of other sites with Linux/iPod related information. In particular there are plenty of other alternatives to iTunes for linux I could have tried.

Watching file fails in kghostview?

2006-11-28T03:22:00.000-08:00

I got very annoyed with a bug in kghostview. So typically I am writing a paper or slides in LaTeX and running something like

latex mypaper; dvipdf mypaper

I have a kghostview window open on mypaper.pdf with the "watch file" setting so it automatically updates. Even the latest acrobat reader lacks such a simple and useful feature so that is of no use. Now maybe my computer is faster, or my files bigger, but for whatever reason on my laptop running Mandriva Linux 2006 kghostview generates several annoying message boxes telling me it can't find "myfile.pdf". All of which have to be closed manually.

As a quick fix I do something like

latex mypaper; dvipdf mypaper temp.pdf; mv -u -f temp.pdf mypaper.pdf

no of course I don't have to keep typing the line. I "up arrow" in the shell, or you can automate in a script or in your favorite editor. The -f is so it does not ask me to overwrite but the -u is so it only updates if newer (just in case something has gone wrong). Anyone any better ideas? If I knew where to set it I could change the interval kghostview waits before checking the file.

More on blackboards....

2006-10-06T13:03:00.002-07:00

This post has moved to Bill's Science

Mathematics and Blackboards

2006-10-01T10:59:00.000-07:00

I loved Sasha Borovik's blog entry entitled
Psychophysiology of Blackboard Teaching . Using Blackboards is really important to the way the mathematics is transmitted from person to person. I especially loved the pictures of teachers carrying blackboards across an arrid landscape, from Samira Makhmalbaf film Takhté siah "The Blackboard". (Internet Movie Database). Hopefully the new Mathematics Building at the University of Manchester will have a large selection of excellent blackboards and manchester mathematicians will not have to travel around campus thus equipped!

CoPilot Sat Nav software on the Motorola A780 linux smartphone

2006-09-30T23:49:00.000-07:00

I have been trying out the satellite Navigation software built in to my Linux-based Motorola A780 mobile phone. It is ALK Technologies CoPilot Live, and comes preinstalled on the European model complete with maps of Europe. The installation CD's are required for adding extra maps and points of interest to the microSD card. Unfortunately I could not install this on my laptop using CrossOver as it failed to find the second installation CD. Maybe there is a way around this but I just borrowed a windows machine to do the installation. Its a shame that a Linux based phone has windows only supporting software!

On the whole I find it in some ways superior to
Directions on my laptop. The routing is fast and accurate, the directions more accurate for difficult junctions, and the route recalculation fast. It can be slow to acquire the position on start-up. Entry of way-points is OK, but does not use the last two letters of the post code, relying instead on you picking the "cross street". Unfortunately cross streets are not widely used in the UK when giving directions (more a US thing) so you can end up miles from where you want to be. Actually English used is generally of the US variety in the text for points of interest, rather ironic as it is not sold with US maps. The voice, thank goodness, is English and pleasant. There is no facility to input or display OS grid references. Instead it works in Lat and Long. It is not clear what survey datum is used.

I was able to download a database of LPG stations in the UK from here as a comma separated text file, and the windows software that came with copilot live was able to import it as custom points of interest using an "import wizard". Speed and red light cameras are available on the CD as "safety cameras", and while they were not already installed on the phone's microSD it was easily done.

On the whole it is a good piece of kit, and I would recommend considering buying a smartphone fitted with CoPilot as a serous alternative to a dedicated in-car "Sat Nav" system.

Blogging a mile over the Urals

2006-09-02T06:19:00.000-07:00

I am on a Lufthansa flight from Korea to Frankfurt and the amazing thing is thanks to "Connexion by Boeing" (WP) my Sony vaio is connected to the internet via wifi and some satellites. A bit strange it is by Boeing as I am on an Airbus A340. Anyway I am taking a break from filling in on-line forms for referee's reports and stuff like that that is tedious to do and needs the internet, so a good way to while away a long flight. Any yes of course it works with linux.

It is not the fastest internet connection I have had, and it has lost the connection once in about three hours, but not bad. I tried Skype-out to call home and got the answering machine. It was a bit broken up but just about usable. Might be better to another computer running Skype. "Hello I'm on a plane".

Tesco Internet Phone with Skype/Linux

2006-08-22T13:43:00.000-07:00

I have been watching the price of the Tesco internet phone USB internet phone pack drop. It has now gone down to £9.98 so I bought one. I also bought their headset - a mono headset with a boom mike for £9.97. You both from Tesco on line.

My aim was to get get them working on my Sony Vaio PCG V505CP running Mandriva 2006 with Skype Voice over IP service.

First the headset. This has two stereo jack plugs and plugs in the audio sockets on the viao. When I tried this the performance of the mic was disapointing and when I called home it was hard to hear anything. It may work better with careful adjusting of the mixer settings but it easily went in to a feedback squeal.

The usb handset turns out to be a "Yealink Network Technology Ltd. VOIP USB Phone". A visual comparison confirms it looks the same as the "USB Hand Phone MODEL: USB-P1K" listed on the Yealink web site. The download page shows an RPM for Fedora Core 3 but that is just skype which is already installed. There is a zip file for SkypeMate for linux. Leaving SkypeMate aside for the moment

I plugged it in while running tail -f /var/log/messages and got this
Aug 22 21:11:52 mycomputer kernel: usbcore: registered new driver snd-usb-audio
Aug 22 21:11:52 mycomputer kernel: usbcore: registered new driver xpad
Aug 22 21:11:52 mycomputer kernel: drivers/usb/input/xpad-core.c: driver for Xbox controllers with mouse emulation v0.1.4
Aug 22 21:11:52 mycomputer kernel: usbcore: registered new driver audio
Aug 22 21:11:52 mycomputer kernel: drivers/usb/class/audio.c: v1.0.0:USB Audio Class driver
Aug 22 21:11:52 mycomputer udev[8939]: run_program: exec of program failed
Aug 22 21:11:52 mycomputer kernel: usbcore: registered new driver hiddev
Aug 22 21:11:52 mycomputer kernel: hiddev0: USB HID v1.00 Device [Yealink Network Technology Ltd. VOIP USB Phone ] on usb-0000:00:1d.0-1
Aug 22 21:11:52 mycomputer kernel: usbcore: registered new driver usbhid
Aug 22 21:11:52 mycomputer kernel: drivers/usb/input/hid-core.c: v2.01:USB HID core driver
Aug 22 21:11:52 mycomputer udev[8962]: run_program: exec of program failed
Aug 22 21:11:52 mycomputer pam_console.dev[8942]: Restoring console permissions for /dev/dsp1 /dev/sound/dsp1
Aug 22 21:11:52 mycomputer pam_console.dev[8945]: Restoring console permissions for /dev/audio1 /dev/sound/audio1
Aug 22 21:11:52 mycomputer pam_console.dev[8967]: Restoring console permissions for /dev/mixer1 /dev/sound/mixer1
Aug 22 21:11:52 mycomputer pam_console.dev[8959]: Restoring console permissions for /dev/snd/pcmC1D0p
Aug 22 21:11:52 mycomputer pam_console.dev[8971]: Restoring console permissions for /dev/snd/pcmC1D0c
Aug 22 21:11:52 mycomputer udev[9007]: run_program: exec of program failed
Aug 22 21:11:52 mycomputer pam_console.dev[9010]: Restoring console permissions for /dev/hiddev0
Aug 22 21:11:52 mycomputer pam_console.dev[9017]: Restoring console permissions for /dev/snd/controlC1

Humm.. not so sure about that "udev[8962]: run_program: exec of program failed", But the rest looks ok.

Now restarting skype (but not rebooting) tools>options>head/handsets lists two devices for Audio devices: calls /dev/dsp and /dev/dsp1. Selecting dsp1 and ringing my answering machine it works fine as an audio device. So far the green light comes on and it says VO IP-PHONE on the screen but the buttons don't do anything (except beep), so I had to dial using the screen or keyboard. Still its a start. Anyone got any further than that?

Later... Well I spoke for an hour to my colleague in the US and it worked fine. Now for the SkpeMate thing. Download and unzip. Also download the user manual. Up until now you just get VO IP-PHONE on the phone's screen. Now if you run SkypeMate from the desktop short cut (not from the command line it seems, or maybe not as root), you get the date and time on the screen. Now it works up to a point. You have to dial 0 for the initial +. It comes up as + on the computer screen and 0 on the phone (!). It sort of says that in the manual. Also the display doesnt scroll and didnt show the last digit I dialed on the phone. So it is best still to watch the computer screen. I was not able to scroll through my contacts list.

Overall still good value!

Acorn Adventure Holidays Ardèche and Aosta Valley

2006-08-19T04:44:00.000-07:00

We chose to go on an Acorn Adventure Holiday in August 2006. For us it is important on a family holiday that our children (8 and 13 years old) have other children to play with. So short of bringing their friends with us the best thing is to chose a holiday where they are likely to meet kids of a similar age and make friends.

We chose a two centre holiday at Labeaume in the Ardeche region of France and Villeneuve in the Aosta valley in Italy.

Having just got back I have not got time to write much so here, in no special order are good an bad things.

Good points:

Instructors generally good and safety paramount
The children made friends and were happy, generally people got on and were friendly.
The Aosta Valley and Ardeche are beautiful locations
You can leave the kids to go on the activities and do your own thing: hiking, swimming, or nothing.
The two day canoe descent on the Ardeche river was great fun
We saw wild boar while bivouacing, and lots of other wildlife
The coach drivers on the European part (from Eddie Brown) were highly experienced and knew the areas well. They took us on nonscheduled excursions shopping etc and were pleasant and helpful.
At Labaume the staff were very good at adapting to different dietary requirements. I am vegan and they even packed special food for me on the river descent.

Bad things

The coach trip in the UK was the worst thing by far. On both outward and return journey the M6 was closed near Stoke on Trent. On the outward journey resulting in a five hour delay. Of course some disruption was unavoidable bu the coach drivers did not listen to radio or other traffic reports, did not use sat-nav, and failed to anticipate the problem or find the best route to minimise delay. They also failed to tell Acorn how long the delay was likely to be, resulting in passengers waiting unnecessarily at the roadside at pick up locations when they could have gone somewhere more comfortable for three hours.
The coach trip from France to Italy took about 10 hours, whereas Acorn had given us the impression that it was very short when we had talked on the phone.
The food at Villeneuve was pretty bad, and the dinning area was not cleaned.
The camp site at Villeneuve included a large electricity pylon and was right next to a building site in what felt like an industrial area. Although it did have nice long range views. It was also crowded compared to Labeaume.
The instructors and Acorn staff encouraged the children to shout unnecessarily spoiling the tranquility of peaceful river and mountain areas. This often annoyed local French and Italian holiday makers whose complaints were unheard by the Acorn staff. Either because they did not speak French or Italian or simply because they were totally insensitive the Acorn staff did not even notice. This was the single most annoying feature of the holiday and plays to the stereotype of English yob culture abroad.
Perhaps by way of payback, a nearby French establishment played cheesy pop music so loud that it sounded like it was inside your head until 11 or 12 at night at Labeaume. Bring ear plugs!

On the whole the holiday was good value, and the children had a great time, and we had some fun most of all enjoyed seeing them have fun. If you were really unhappy with the food, it might have
still been good value if you went out for a few meals, and given the food varies between centres you might be luckier than we were. Don't expect much in the way of canoe, climbing etc instruction, just the basics for safety and fun. If you can't stand long coach journeys you can do the same holiday in your own car. I expect Acorn, if it stays in business, will respond to these criticisms as no doubt they will be getting a lot of feedback along the same lines.most annoying feature of the holiday and plays to the stereotype of English yob culture abroad.

If you do the river decent bring a sleeping mat (such as a Therm-a-Rest) to sleep on. Most adults find it hard to sleep on hard ground! If you have climbing or walking boots bring them too.

Links: Other reviews of Acorn Adventure Holidays on RealHolidayReports (Note that others we met on the coach back were very positive about Narbonne and said the food was great). My review posted also on reviewcentre.com.

Google maps: Villneuve, Labeaume

iRiver H120D multi-format juke box

2006-08-05T05:59:00.000-07:00

I recently aquired an iRiver HD120D juke box. Mainly it is intended for Mrs Billlion to record talks. I liked the fact that it interfaced well with Linux (readers will know that Mrs B uses a Philips X51 laptop running Mandriva), it simply mounts as a USB external drive. Other good things are that it plays ogg-vorbis files and records to mp3 from line in or internal or external microphone. Also it doesnt have digital rights management bol***ks!

The big downside is the user interface is about as bad as vi. In perticular the functions of the buttons are not consistent, it is hard to tell what state it is in (like vi).

Mrs B is very p****d off as her first attempt to record using it was unsucessful. And it was an important talk by her Tibetian Buddist teacher Lama Yeshe Losal.

I'm afraid we will either have to sell it, or perhaps try the alternative firmware RockBox.

Line to microphone input.

2006-04-21T05:37:00.000-07:00

While in India we had been recording talks by Tibetan Buddhist teachers, both with a mini-disk recorder and a video camera. To transfer these to our laptop for editing with Audacity we had a problem. The Philips X51 only has a micrphone input not a line in, whereas the mini disk and camcorder produce "domestic line out" voltage levels. I knew enough about electronics to know I had an impedance matching problem. My friend Charles, knowledgable about such things was confident that a 100 k Ohm resistor in parallel would do the trick. I set out on my quest to find such a thing in McLeoad Gange (Upper Dharamasala).

Eventually way up near the Taxi stand at the top of town I found a small shed that served as a shop for a man who fixed electronics. He was doing an improvised repair on an old tape recorder. On the way, asking in other stalls selling electrical and electronic bits and pieces I had aquired a lead with a stereo jack plug on both ends and a one male to two female stereo jack adapter. So as not to mess up the moulded plus I got the man in the shed to solder a 100kOhm resistor across between the line and ground pins of another jack plug. It took two of them a quater of an hour to hunt down a suitable resistor from decrepid and dirty circuit boards from broken TVs. This was inserted in one of the holes in the adapter so as to put the resistor in parallel.

Anyway the up shot was that it works, and we were able to get an audable recording of Lama Tenam's talk on the meaning of the Red Crown Ceremony, and Tai Situ Rinpoche's talk on the Four Noble Truths converted to digital form, to the accompniment of many drums and horns playing in the background.

Now back home I could have been more sophisticated, and if you have to solve a similar problem I suggest you consult this helpful page.

Linux on a Philips freevents X51 laptop

2006-04-01T15:20:00.000-08:00

I am in the process of installing Mandriva 2006 Linux on a very cute
little laptop. Its a Philips freevents X51. We bought it from Currys
for the princely sum of £799. Actually they had run out, but
a very nice sales man called Simon let us have the display model.
So far it works. The installation from DVD went smoothly enough. It
resized the Windoze partition for me, autodetected most things, and
then failed to reboot! Well there was one little trick, I had to go in
in rescue mode, and edit /etc/lilo.conf to remove the resume=/dev/?????
flag. Obviously I have not yet mastered the resume from disk! To be
honest not yet tried it in Windoze.
The wireless adapter uses the Intel ProWireless 2200 BG chipset. I
downloaded the rpm from mandriva club. Subscription required but well
worth it. If you are tight you can get the files from sourceforge and
figure out where to put them.
So far so good as I am posting over the wireless connection right now.
I will update this post when I have tested everything else.
Here is a brief specification of the X51

Specification:
Dimensions	32 x 275 x 225 mm
Battery Type	LI-ION	see below
Processor Type	INTEL PENTIUM M 1.73GHz
Optical Drive	Double Layer DVD±RW drive
Screen Size/Type	12.1 TFT XGA	1024x768 24 bit
Graphics Card Type	INTEL GMA900 (Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller)	Xfree drive works fine
Sound card	AC97 16bit	works fine
Modem	56k Fax modem	Not tested
Wireless adapter	Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network adapter	Needed driver rpm from Mandriva club or can also get from ipw2200.sourceforge.net/
Ethernet adapter	RTL-88139 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. CPP Div. (Advance Logic)	Not tested

Had a bit of a problem with the power management at first. Basically if you install acpi and reboot the computer freezes. But with the acpi=ht some funny things happen with audio files playing at the wrong rates. Weird. Anyway I think I have fixed this, although not sure exactly why this works. I have the battery monitor working (in klaptop), but not yet tried the hibernate . Here is the relevant section from /etc/lilo.conf

image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux"
root=/dev/hda5
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="splash=silent noapic acpi=noirq nolapci"

See also this posting on a French linux forum

Directions Navigator 4 for Linux

2006-03-27T10:16:00.000-08:00

Time to retire my Clevo 2700C laptop. I bought it ages age from Digital Networks UK for work, back in the days when laptops didn't work easily with linux and buying one preinstalled and with support was a good idea. It has had a broken case hinge and for a while and its second battery is caput. So wher is it going for its retirement? Its going to have a new life as the carputer for my Land Rover (The Beast).

So I needed some navigation software. Of course there is GPSDrive. I like it, and thanks to Expedia Germany has some useful road maps. However Billlion is not endowed with a great sense of direction as Mrs Billlion will redily testify. So I want something like TomTom navigator. But those little cheap navigator jobbies are going to be no good for me. Too small to see. So I am having a go with "Navigator 4" from Directions You an buy a license for UK maps for linux and windows for about £38 including postage. The maps go down to street level and the routing software seems to work well. The linux installation is rpm based and seems ok on either Mandrake 10.1 Community or Mandriva 2006. Only one extra installation is required and that is NAS the Network Audio Stystem. The only teething troubles with the isnsatllation was that two files in ~/.mpfc_navigator (does not tell you this in the instructions). Both default_settings_2.sfs and album_2.sty need to lose the "_2".

The family bundleed in The Beast with my Garmin Geko 201 connected via the serial cable, and a usb to serial adapter to my Sony vaio (Clevo not yet installed). I asked it to navigate to Hope (that is Hope, Derbyshire. We set of merily along the main road about 100m to the right. Well the Beast is capable of driving through muddy fields but on this occasion we were not! When we got to Castleton the directions got a little crazy. "Turn left". There is no left!. The voice then calmly informed us "You are lost". Mrs Billlion was offended. She never gets lost.

I emailed customer support and got an email straight back, even though it was the weekend. It probably helps I askded the right question. What datum should the Geko be set to? It was set to the default for OS maps but it needsWGS84 . Probably that explains it!

Bluetooth USB adapter on Linux

2006-01-14T00:35:00.000-08:00

What a pain that the Bluetooth SIG have claimed that is illegal to list bluetooth devices that work under linux! Marcel Holtmann maintained a list.

Sounds like Bluetooth protocol shooting itself in the foot. Anyway I am about to buy a bluetooth USB adapter to connect my Sony Vaio PCG V505 CP to my new Treo 650 smart phone. But thanks to the Way Back Machine the censors have been thwarted an I can see the March 2005 list of working devices on the Way Back Machine, and take this list with me when I go shopping.

Later, so I went shopping to Maplin and ended up buying the cheapest unbranded USB bluetooth dongle in the shop. The point was that none of the range of bluetooth dongles they had had any indication of their make or model on them, but the advantage of going to a real shop is that I could plug it in to the computer. I had kbluetoothd running and a shell open with

tail -f /var/log/syslog

running. Plugged it in an a helpful little message box poped up near the bluetooth icon in the system tray telling me it had been recognised.

Pleased with my new toy I went next door for a cup of coffee and to try it out. It has a very bright blue (appropriately) LED on it that flashes. I was able to get a list of at least a dozen bluetooth devices nearby. Mostly NOKIA phones. I was rather surprised so many people leave their phones with bluetooth enabled and discoverable. Tentatively, and feeling rather as though I was being naughty I clicked on the first device. It was a Nokia 7200 and it came up with a list of services it offered including folders with virtual modem to connect to the internet at someone else's expense! I wonder if I had got any further if it would have flashed a warning message on the phone, or asked for a pass word. I didnt try. A student at the next table had just reaached in her handbag and looked quisickly at her phone. I wonder what a Nokia 7200 looks like?

Anyway the verdict is a generic bluetooth dongle worked fine with Mandriva 2006's bluez driver and like most things linux these days you plug it in and it just works. I can now happily send files to my Palm Treo and the next job is get the Treo working as a modem.

The details I have of the dongle are the description on the reciept

A84CT B/Tooth Dong Clvl.2 W002

It is listed at the time of writing on the Maplin web site
and the FCC ID RU5AWBC1U which the FCC data base indicates as being made by Asia Pacific Microsystems, Inc, Taiwan, The Maplin page lists its features as

Class I (up to 100m range)
High efficiency chip antenna
Bluetooth v1.2 for improved features
Plug-and-play installation and easy configuration
USB 2.0 Interface and compliant with USB 1.1
Full piconet connectivity with support up 7 active and 8 parked slaves
Satternet compatible with Microsoft HID devices
Runs under Windows 98SE/2000/ME/XP

Well they can add runs under Mandriva linux 2006!

I wonder if bluetooth USB devices, ulike for example USB to serial converters, mp3 players and USB flash drives, Bluetooth USB dongles are sufficiently standard that they all work. I have not heard any reports of ones that don't work.

Richard Dawkins' "Root of all Evil"

2006-01-09T14:22:00.000-08:00

In tonight's Channel 4 documentary Richard_Dawkins presents the irrational belief implicit in religious faith as the "Root of all Evil".

It is interesting first to note one's emotional reaction to this program. I am the son of a geneticist, and suffered aged five a Christian school where the teachers told me despite what I thought at the time was overwhelming evidence of evolution that the world was made in 7 days and all the creatures made rather than evolved. This kind of experience left its scars and I am attached to my rationalist atheist upbringing. So I find it easy to side with Dawkins finding religious idiots who (perhaps with careful editing) pillory themselves on camera by expounding their incredible views.

On reflection though it is not just ignorance that is the cause of suffering. I preffer suffering to Evil in this context, as it is somewhat more objective, and I share Peter Mullen's surprise at Dawkins' use of the term Evil. (Of course it is because "Root of all Evil" is a well known phrase, presumably from Timothy 6:10. 'For the love of money is the root of all evil'). According to the Buddha the "mental poisons" Greed, Hatred and Ignorance are the cause of suffering. In these religious fanatics and the wars they cause and perpetuate one sees plenty of hate and some greed (or at least grasping) as well as ignorance.

Does religious faith cause more suffering than a lack of religious faith? There seems to be a hypothesis here that we can at least test against the evidence.

In history there are plenty of atrocities in which the actions of small numbers of individuals have caused vast suffering.

Plenty of the perpetrators held irrational religious beliefs, here are some examples.

On the otherhand, while it can be argued that Mao Zedong held irrational beliefs, it was not irrational strictly religious beliefs that lead to the 25-60 Chinese and Tibetan casualties of the Great Leap Forward. Possibly the cause was more ignorance than hatred, while in the case of the Nazi genocide the cause on balance was probably more hatred.

I think we can agree that one must combat ignorance by objective enquiry, but also conquer our tendency towards greed and hatred as well if we are to reduce suffering. The fruits of scientific enquiry have had both positive and negative effects on suffering, however little scientific progress has been made so far as to methods by which we might reduce our hatred and greed.