MatStace

Is it a post-PC world yet?

April 2 2012 by Mat in Daily Wibbles |No Comments

So I’m now up to two weeks using only the ipad, and I think I’ve just about had enough time to decide on whether or not we really are in a post-pc world.

My conclusion – it could be, depending on what your requirements are (mmm, obvious statement is obvious). Put it this way, I haven’t ordered a new laptop yet. Mainly because I’m waiting a couple more weeks to see if Apple really are going to announce a new revision of the air with the ivy bridge processor (battery life ++) at some point in April. Although I can pretty much guarantee that the day I give up waiting, and take delivery of a macbook air, fifteen days later, Apple will announce the new one (as Apple have a fourteen day return period).

I’ve been happy with my podcast solution of RSSRadio, which syncs played status/position between devices, and have worked out that with dropbox, and the camera connection kit, it would even be possible to manage photos from a camera, assuming you’re paying dropbox the money for an appropriately large amount of storage. Personally, I’m waiting for pogoplug to release their 4th generation pogo plug, which I can leave plugged in at home with a 2TB hard drive in it, giving me plenty of storage for photos. That and the control of my own data, which I’m finding myself being more and more concerned about.

I haven’t just been using the ipad as a media consumption/web browsing device, it’s been my ‘on-call’ tool for the last week, and has, using the built in VPN client, and the iSSH app, performed very well. The only weakness I have found on that front is that iSSH can only support one RDP session at a time, although this is probably a benefit when doing a rolling restart across a cluster, to make sure that I only restart one machine at a time

I would quite like to find a better RDP client though, preferable one which supports multiple sessions at once.

Disclaimer – I did grab the wife’s laptop at half four in the morning, when a combination of an odd thing going on, and it being such a silly time in the morning, conspired to make me fall back to the default, I know how to use this laptop, rather than having to expend precious brain cycles on working out how to do what I wanted on the ipad. This may or may not be part of why I’m not going to live in a fully post-pc world, and will be picking me up a laptop again.

What is fair, anyway?

March 22 2012 by Mat in Daily Wibbles |No Comments

Ouch, that was painful. Having the TV on as a bit of background noise can be dangerous sometimes. I looked up, and Question Time was on. A bunch of politicians, being politicians, and doing the ridiculous political willy-waving bollocks.

Obviously, they were prattling on and trying to score political points over yesterday’s budget, and the whole “ooh, no, robbing from the little old ladies” thing, and somebody mentioned the concept of fairness in the taxation system.

Now, this is something that has annoyed me, in that when I hear the word fair, I’d like to think I have a grasp of the meaning of the word. The current income tax personal allowance system doesn’t actually seem that fair to me. I’d be much more willing to listen to people talking about income tax being fair if there was a single rate.

Now, I don’t know the numbers that would work, but if there’s a £10,000 tax free personal allowance, and a flat rate of 20% for everyone, then a person who earns £30,000 will pay twice as much tax as someone who earns £20,000. And a person who earns £110,000 will pay ten times as much tax as someone who earns £20,000. To me, that seems fair.

Not having a higher rate of 40%, which means that someone who earns twice as much taxable income as someone else might end up paying three times as much tax.

Obviously, I don’t know the numbers, but something like a £20,000 personal tax free allowance, and then a 25% flat rate on whatever you earn above that. Go on, tell me that isn’t fair, and that once you earn a high amount, you should pay a higher percentage of your taxable income is fair. I dare you.

In other non-news, I’m actually still feeling quite happy at being laptop-free, and using the tablet only. RSSRadio seems to be doing the job for my podcasts, although I am going to have to plug into a real computer and get some old, not yet listened to, podcasts off the hard drive image I took before selling the laptop. That and actually try and keep up with the podcasts, as the ipad has a lot less space than a laptop with a decent sized SSD, and an even larger HDD inside.

Giving myself a little challenge

March 19 2012 by Mat in Daily Wibbles |No Comments

I took advantage of a little bit of serendipity (a friend looking for a second hand laptop) to give myself the excuse of selling the macbook pro, and buying an eleven inch macbook air. At the same time, I was already going through the motions of selling my first generation ipad, and picking up an ipad 3/”the new ipad”/whatever they want to call it.

Having wiped and reinstalled the MBP (after pulling my SSD and reinstalling the original HDD, sorry bud, I gave you a bargain already, I’m keeping the SSD ), and being too lazy to drag myself over to an apple store/not wanting to put up with the piss-taking about my being an apple-tart if I had it delivered to the office, I’ve been using the ipad all weekend, and I began to wonder…

Having reviewed what I actually used the macbook for, I’ve decided to give myself a little challenge, and see if I can ‘survive’ until at least April on a tablet alone. Time to see if we really are living in a post-PC world.

Well, a tablet, my home server, and my vps that I host my bloggy website on. So not exactly using only a tablet, but, you know, one less computer than I previously had

So far I seem to be managing, I’ve found what I think will be a solution to fact that ios podcast handling is, to be honest, cack, and I’m also giving lastpass a go, for my password management needs. No doubt, more to come on those.

The only problem is that sat here typing this on a bluetooth keyboard, while streaming a 720p video podcast over airplay to the apple TV, I can just about see the battery meter going down as I watch.

Now, I wonder how well it will hold up to on-call duties.

Giving RetroShare a try

February 7 2012 by Mat in Daily Wibbles |No Comments

With my “must try all the things” geek hat on, when I saw a thing called RetroShare mentioned, I had to download it and give it a try. Or more accurately, when I read the wikipedia page for retroshare, I had to download it and give it a try.

So far, it looks good. If it delivers everything the wiki page says it does, then I like it. As far as I can tell though, there are even fewer people using it than there are using Diaspora*, and that isn’t exactly flush with users at the moment. (NB – that may just be that I haven’t managed to find the right circle of people to get in with, I recall the early days of twitter were similar, and I struggled to get up to following twenty or thirty people, and I now follow, erm, well over seven hundred.)

Apparently this link should allow you to add me as a friend on there, but I’m guessing that depends on if your browser knows what to do with a retroshare:// link or not. If not, here’s my public key

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (Darwin)

mQENBE8xrUwBCADMV5YyaI8AGiVErQozR6w5DRQOHt8CIv5LCOTqJQcYusIyJiW8 RdhequZn/Id2FA2AmLSjew7brnQ4jfJzBcia3LseXeouaEZuEh0ZIPd3XmqWRZrW z/NDPax06qZp+apfRVUxsd8Gd2/mBfh+gRbRjFZV9oUuCDxg0vo3eMvFngcrZrXh 1/gAOK4rwRoDfTcvGKMGniiKbZS53jR+yhTrc7hlm3X0t+lFk28F3tdFldGc3hqy o2d5hf+0xONhZ7rqCvSW7nR2uWhP2mZfGt8B6qv5Wh56b3wyXsI5ub2cjR+bVAiZ +3o9WvzPi+7Pi8DF6HrBGXBsAEjuGTiSLBWjABEBAAG0RU1hdCBTdGFjZSAoZ2Vu ZXJhdGVkIGJ5IFJldHJvc2hhcmUpIDxlbWFpbCtyZXRyb3NoYXJlQG1hdHN0YWNl Lm1lLnVrPokBNgQTAQIAIAUCTzGtTAIbLwYLCQgHAwIEFQIIAwQWAgMBAh4BAheA AAoJEC8Dkozy5Z+Z7UUIAIcnJ09d6uerCWWHgr8C7XrcHbnx87AwCjpwiKF/ezxK o3WrDNnyGBc/LJn7ZmY69PVTuYp5L+8mX4Wx2BzpE8VLzfpvG+0Mr3ERdRIkof37 uY2vuNL2LJ9HeaA2X6dEMeaQo1lH78kXbrbgcrwKtL0GmUWtAkHCDmgUl56ZVqE8 UkwnlluG3MWnx4dmTlZK8w5fKQLCHnf0xcb0kOGaCXjHrBlYetw+0UnCX49ZUJZw hLdG9ZBAFjbSGN4c/JapJseChENRIPLCuNaYMXyYMS0E9IvdcZIlmVA6du+DjfIN vg1VcuJOorIjsFgfq1mVHXTzro/P1JQUXdJhE3ZB4i4= =VwXS -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- --SSLID--bd6cbc71a291c70de9a167621205f664;--LOCATION--MBP; --LOCAL--192.168.168.206:22901;--EXT--94.195.123.152:22901;

Apparently you add this, then send me your public key, then we’re connected and can chat/message/share files/various other things in a full on decentralised way. I’m not sure how it copes with machines that are not on full time – I assume that when you’re using it on a laptop/home desktop that is rarely on, it is somewhat like ships passing in the night.

Now if only I could find someone else who is using it to test that assumption.

There are some Olympics over there #blog

December 22 2011 by autopost in Phone Photos |No Comments

via Instagram http://instagr.am/p/arKH5/

Selling the XBox 360

December 10 2011 by Mat in Daily Wibbles |No Comments

As twitter is somewhat limited in characters for explaining things, I thought it worth typing this up in a slightly longer form, so interested people can see what’s what.
Continue reading »

OK, I take it back. Maybe the future actually is here.

December 3 2011 by Mat in Daily Wibbles |No Comments

Yup, I said it. Let’s ignore the fact that when you go the toilet on a train, it still flushes onto the tracks (wait, are there still any trains which flush onto the tracks?), and welcome the future.

There’s a saying, that goes something like “whatever is invented before you’re 18 has alway been there, if it’s invented when you’re between the ages of 18 and mid-thirties, it’s amazing technology, and anything invented after your mid-thirties is witchcraft and should be banned”.

I’m not sure I’d agree with those age ranges, but I definitely feel like I’m now moving into the middle age band, where new bits of tech are making me think “Ooh, wow”, rather than just “well, yes, of course someone sells a box to do that”.
Continue reading »

Let’s get ready to grumble…

November 22 2011 by Mat in Daily Wibbles |No Comments

…or “why I sometimes get to close a ticket with the minimum of work.”

At work, we have a ticket system. This is a good thing. It allows different people to pick up a task, and (in theory), there doesn’t have to be a lengthy handover. All relevant information is in the ticket. It also means that people are more likely to get their task done. OK, maybe it might not happen today, or this week, but it’s logged, it will happen. If you tell me in passing, or come to my desk while I’m in the middle of something (pro-tip, I’m always in the middle of something ;-p ), then there’s a high chance that it may just slip my mind. The same if you email it to me. I get lots of emails, and occasionally, despite my best efforts, I can miss things (or Google can think it knows best, and mark it as spam).

When submitting a ticket though, apart from trying to send it to the right people, it’s usually good to have some substance to the ticket. For example, a ticket with the subject “check config on www.example.com” and a body of “has something changed?” is likely to get a response in the style of those (possibly not entirely true) airport mechanic repair log sheets, for example

P: Evidence of leak on right main landing gear.
S: Evidence removed.

Or in the case of this ticket “yes, something changed”.

Please, when you raise a ticket for a problem, try to describe the problem, and if you don’t know exactly what the problem is (hey, I’ve taken a car to garage and said “Broken, please fix it”), then please try and describe what is currently happening, and what you are expecting to happen, and if that used to happen, when did it last happen, or rather, when did you first notice it not happening. Actually, when I took the car into the garage I didn’t just pull in, say “Is something wrong with this” and walk out, I explained that it used to do X, now it’s doing Y, can it be made to do X again. It turned out that no, not without spending three times what the car was worth, but that’s what happens when you’re a student driving an old knacker of a car

Anyway, please remember that your sys admin loves you (sometimes), and isn’t there to make your life hell (occasionally), and anything you can do to make their life more easy is definitely appreciated.

And if you can’t make their life easy, make it better by buying them a beer

London, E1, Rural Backwater

November 17 2011 by Mat in Daily Wibbles |No Comments

A comment on a mailing list I’m on about a measure of non-ruralness being that Dominos delivers there got me thinking.

I live in E1, which is pretty damn central in London, and yet I can’t get a delivery from Dominos. I’m stuck in ADSL land (ADSL2+ is available, but it’s not worth having as I get no speed gains), and although there are cable TV cabinets around, they are just lumps on the pavement, as the digital cable TV (and therefore Virgin’s high-speed cable internet) was never available here. Continue reading »

Just about a bargain

November 16 2011 by Mat in Daily Wibbles |No Comments

Last week a colleague spotted that Amazon is selling a TP-Link 150Mbps wireless-n access point for a penny shy of £15. A quick look at the description, and I saw that they can be used as a client, which made it worth a shot to replace my homeplug, which works, but is pegged down at around eleven megabits per second. It took a whole load of faffing around, and generally clicking on things randomly, but I managed to get it hooked up to my wireless LAN, and passing the packets through nicely. I haven’t bothered to do a speed test yet, but it’s certainly speedier than the homeplugs were. Even if there was no speed increase, it is probably worth it just so I can stop using the homeplug which I snapped the earth pin off, and can finally retrieve the earth pin from the socket. Mmmmm, electric safety, I can haz it.

Well played to the people selling them on ebay for £35 though.

Oh, and here’s a link. moustair.tumblr.com – don’t have nightmares