Tobytes

Samsung HD204UI Firmware Upgrade

2011-09-21T15:40:00.000+10:00

Recently when I logged into my DS211j I was greeted with a message telling me that I the write cache was disabled on my SamsungHD204UI 2 TB drives due to a firmware issue. (Read here for background on my Synology Setup).

A notice on the Samsung website, worded as only someone with English as a second language could, indicated the issue and had installation instructions for the fix.

If identify commmand is issued from host during NCQ write command in the condition of PC ,
write condition is unstable.
So It can make the loss of written data.

I found some other instructions on how to perform the upgrade on various forums and the like, but the most clearly worded one was on trusty old Whirlpool, which I tend not to frequent because of the tendency towards Whingepool that it displays. It is however good for specific issues or Australian ISP related questions. I followed the instructions provided in this thread and it was a fairly straightforward process.

The most annoying part of this was that I had to both pull apart my NAS and my desktop computer and flash a USB key to achieve the firmware upgrade (which only took about 20 seconds per disk).

It seems that my DS211j NAS is happy again now and I can continue on my merry way.

Synology NAsterisk: Stage One Installing Ipkg and Asterisk

2011-06-23T15:40:00.002+10:00

Alrighty, so as you may have guessed it has been a little hectic over here but I am finally getting a chance to start on the glorious plan that I hatched in Synology NAS hosted home Asterisk Server: The plan.

Actually I should probably say I started doing this 3 months ago, before the wedding and all that and have almost zero spare time since then as I am now studying and travelling a lot for work at the same time.

I am basically following the instructions given on the Overview of modifying the Synology Server.

Enabling the CLI
The first step to getting ipkg installed is setting up the command line interface (check out this CLI overview from Synology for more info). There is a handy guide to Enabling the CLI on the Synology forums which has instructions for much older versions of DSM than I have, but no worries it is just as simple in DSM 3. Simply open up the Control Panel and select terminal from the second row. I'd always pick SSH for my systems but if you feel like using Telnet then go for it. Once enabled reboot.

Downloading IPKG
Once you're in via terminal you'll need to download the correct ipkg bootstrap for your Synology system, go to What kind of CPU does my NAS have to figure out which one you need, you can double check your NAS version on the System info page. In my case for the DS211J its the Marvell Kirkwood mv6281 1.2Ghz ARM Processor. This means I need to use http://ipkg.nslu2-linux.org/feeds/optware/cs08q1armel/cross/unstable/syno-mvkw-bootstrap_1.2-7_arm.xsh. Once it was downloaded I executed the script using the instructions provided and rebooted the system, then updated as instructed, unsurprisingly there was nothing new to install.

BackupCentre> ipkg update
Downloading http://ipkg.nslu2-linux.org/feeds/optware/cs08q1armel/cross/unstable/Packages.gz
Inflating http://ipkg.nslu2-linux.org/feeds/optware/cs08q1armel/cross/unstable/Packages.gz
Updated list of available packages in /opt/lib/ipkg/lists/cross
Successfully terminated.
BackupCentre> ipkg upgrade
Nothing to be done
Successfully terminated.
BackupCentre>

Installing Asterisk

After ipkg is installed and upgraded it is time to install Asterisk, outputting the list of available packages gives.

BackupCentre> ipkg list | grep asterisk
asterisk - 1.2.24-1 - Open Source VoIP PBX System
asterisk-gui - 2.0.4-1 - Asterisk-GUI is a framework for the creation of graphical interfaces for configuring Asterisk.
asterisk-sounds - 1.2.1-1 - Supplementary asterisk-sounds.
asterisk14 - 1.4.22.1-1 - Asterisk is an Open Source PBX and telephony toolkit.
asterisk14-chan-capi - 1.0.1-1 - capi module for asterisk
asterisk14-core-sounds-en-alaw - 1.4.19-1 - asterisk-core-sounds-en-alaw
asterisk14-core-sounds-en-g729 - 1.4.19-1 - asterisk-core-sounds-en-g729
asterisk14-core-sounds-en-gsm - 1.4.19-1 - asterisk-core-sounds-en-gsm
asterisk14-core-sounds-en-ulaw - 1.4.19-1 - asterisk-core-sounds-en-ulaw
asterisk14-extra-sounds-en-alaw - 1.4.11-1 - asterisk-extra-sounds-en-alaw
asterisk14-extra-sounds-en-g729 - 1.4.11-1 - asterisk-extra-sounds-en-g729
asterisk14-extra-sounds-en-gsm - 1.4.11-1 - asterisk-extra-sounds-en-gsm
asterisk14-extra-sounds-en-ulaw - 1.4.11-1 - asterisk-extra-sounds-en-ulaw
asterisk14-moh-freeplay-alaw - 0.0.0-1 - asterisk-moh-freeplay-alaw
asterisk14-moh-freeplay-g729 - 0.0.0-1 - asterisk-moh-freeplay-g729
asterisk14-moh-freeplay-gsm - 0.0.0-1 - asterisk-moh-freeplay-gsm
asterisk14-moh-freeplay-ulaw - 0.0.0-1 - asterisk-moh-freeplay-ulaw
asterisk14-moh-opsound-alaw - 2.03-1 - asterisk-moh-opsound-alaw
asterisk14-moh-opsound-g729 - 2.03-1 - asterisk-moh-opsound-g729
asterisk14-moh-opsound-gsm - 2.03-1 - asterisk-moh-opsound-gsm
asterisk14-moh-opsound-ulaw - 2.03-1 - asterisk-moh-opsound-ulaw
asterisk16 - 1.6.2.13-1 - Asterisk is an Open Source PBX and telephony toolkit.
asterisk16-addons - 1.6.2.2-2 - Asterisk extras
asterisk18 - 1.8.4-1 - Asterisk is an Open Source PBX and telephony toolkit.
BackupCentre>

I'm going to install version 1.6 and the GUI, I chose 1.6 because some people are having issues with getting the GUI working with 1.8.

Installation was as easy as ipkg install asterisk16 and ipkg install asterisk-gui.

Following that I attempted to start asterisk and was presented with the following error.

BackupCentre> cd /opt/etc/asterisk/
BackupCentre> asterisk -vvvvr
Asterisk 1.8.4, Copyright (C) 1999 - 2010 Digium, Inc. and others.
Created by Mark Spencer
Asterisk comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; type 'core show warranty' for details.
This is free software, with components licensed under the GNU General Public
License version 2 and other licenses; you are welcome to redistribute it under
certain conditions. Type 'core show license' for details.
=========================================================================
== Parsing '/opt/etc/asterisk/asterisk.conf': == Found
== Parsing '/opt/etc/asterisk/extconfig.conf': == Found
Unable to connect to remote asterisk (does /opt/var/run/asterisk/asterisk.ctl exist?)
BackupCentre>

I had to start it with asterisk first and then I can reconnect to it... duh!

Following that I made the changes suggested in this awesomely timely post from the Synology IPKG Forum and now, after a quick reboot, I can connect to the webpage front end.

Now all I have to do is determine the correct password..... :)

Until next time when I configure some extensions and start making test calls.

Synology NAS hosted home Asterisk Server: The plan

2011-02-10T17:28:00.001+11:00

Readers of this blog will be aware that I purchased and setup a Synology DS211J a few months back, if not you can check out the series of posts starting with "Finally getting a backup solution". Readers will also be aware that I have started a new job that involves equal parts sitting at home turning into a slob and travelling around meeting clients and working on site. So what I am currently trying to do is optimize my home office and communication solutions.

At home I've got a NodePhone account and it is currently connected to a base station and linked into a few wireless handsets. This works pretty well for a home phone, but none of the handsets have headsets or speaker phone so conference calls are going to be a killer. Unfortunately NodePhone doesn't support multiple registrations in its current guise so simply logging in on the laptop with a headset or something similar isn't going to work.... or is it!

The plan then is to have an Asterisk server log into the NodePhone account and then let my current router and it's inbuilt ATA log into the Asterisk server, plus also I will be able to have other computers and phones logging into the Asterisk server and sharing the line out and also allowing me to register to the Asterisk server remotely and call the home phone as well as make cheap international and other calls. Now the beauty of the plan is that I should be able to install Asterisk on my NAS creating a NAStrisk solution (terribly imaginative name) that means I don't need to have another server on the network and the associated upkeep.

So the stages for this (as far as I can tell are):

Install ipkg package manager on the DS211J
Install the Asterisk ipkg and its dependencies.
Configure Asterisk and make some local test calls.
Configure router to let SIP traffic through to the NAStrisk
Get NAStrisk connected to NodePhone account and forwarding calls to other sip accounts locally.
Connect routers ATA to the NAStrisk so that the WAF isn't affected.
....
Profit

Hopefully I'll have the time to get this going in the next week or two, of course I will be posting here as I go, so you can all ~~feel my pain~~ bask in my success!

New job, fewer updates

2011-01-25T04:19:00.001+11:00

So I started a new job on the 4th of January and to say things have been a little hectic would be an understatement! I have already traveled to Phoenix, Arizona for a conference, to a customer site in Sydney and now I am in Madrid for a training course. Needless to say that sort of travelling, plus the massive amount of stuff that I have to learn for the new job doesn't really leave that much time for posting. Unfortunately this means that new posts from me will probably be few and far between for a while (unless I am stuck somewhere and have a wave of inspiration wash over me when I miraculously have no work to do).

Hopefully when things slow down a little bit I will have the time and the inspiration to write some more posts but for now things will likely remain a little quiet.

Most Popular Posts of 2010

2011-01-02T18:54:00.000+11:00

Perhaps 2010 is a bit rich, as I only really started this blog in June. All the other blogs out there seem to be doing a most popular posts of the year past so I may as well join the crowd.

Overall I must say I am fairly happy with the traffic that I have been able to generate to the blog. I never really set out with the intent of attracting lots and lots of readers. However I must admit that I get a little thrill when I check the stats and see that people have been viewing my posts.

The most popular post, Synology Disk Station 211J Setup Part 1, has more views than my entire blog received in the first 5 months of its existence. The second and third most popular are the two follow up posts to the most popular post, Synology Disk Station 211J Setup Part 2 and Synology DS211J to Samsung Story 3 Backup. This is altogether not too surprising.

What does surprised me a little bit was how much search traffic I receive, indeed most of my site traffic is from google. I guess it shows the importance of getting the keywords and that sort of thing right if you intend to get a lot of traffic into a blog. It also showed to me why there are so many sites out there dedicated to new hardware reviews, it is all well and good for me to try and write about the things that I find interesting, Stuxnet, Memristors, employee performance evaluation and career development and self improvement, but what really pulls new readers into the site is content on new hardware and software.

I don't see these observations really changing what I post on here very much, I will continue to try and improve my writing style and hopefully find the time post longer posts with more detail and background. I find that I enjoy the writing, but at times struggle to think of good topics to talk about.

Over the coming weeks I'll either post a lot or not much at all depending on whether the mood strikes me. I have some plans for background posts, talking about my Theses for example but I haven't had the time to put them together yet.

I have a confession to make...

2010-12-27T11:20:00.000+11:00

I am not a coder!

Ah, that feels better, like a weight has been lifted from my chest.

Now, let me explain what I mean. I can code, I understand different design patterns, I can break a problem down into tiny little pieces, I can work out the sticking points. It just doesn't rock my world. I'd prefer to spend an hour reading about a new system, a new type of database, Apple's latest shiny new gadget.

At heart I guess I would prefer to spend my time fiddling with a large system and getting it running than staring at strings of characters and sword fighting while I wait for it to compile. Alright, maybe I wouldn't mind the odd sword fight in the office.

This is all well and good of course, I've got a new job that should help me do what I like, but in the past it has caused me a few problems. Firstly there was the boss that told me that I had to do programming for a while because every Systems guy worth his salt has done some programming. This led to a particularly painful part of my working life, where I slowly lost motivation as I repeatedly flung myself at the near vertical learning curve and slid back down to the bottom. Secondly there was the company I worked for that repeatedly told itself that it wanted quality software but didn't practice what they preached, it took a year of badgering from me to introduce code reviews. This was a problem because even though coding wasn't my Raison d'être I cared about whether the product I was working on was good and I know enough about coding to recognise bad code and coding practices when I see them.

Begrudgingly, I probably have to admit that my boss was right, I did need to spend a year or two trying to be a coder to come to the conclusion that I am, in fact, not. This lesson was important because I didn't really know what I was, and I was probably telling myself that I was a coder. There are several reasons for this I guess, I like creating things, doing something constructive and I once had the misguided impression that if you weren't crunching out lines of code then you weren't creating things, you where just assembling parts that someone else had built, not adding something new to the world. Now of course I realise that it is probably harder to be a full systems guy than a run of the mill coder. You need to understand a whole lot and see things that others probably wouldn't be able to see.

I guess the round about point that I am getting to is that, despite what you see around, there is plenty of space in IT for people who aren't coders at heart. Sure, I'm not going to Zuckerberg together a billion dollar website from my dorm room in the wee hours of the morning but equally no site like Facebook works without a whole lot os Systems guys in there doing the hard yards to keep the thing going.

And there concludes this holiday ramble.

So you have developers working for you

2010-12-17T18:45:00.000+11:00

They aren't like other people. Their best work may occur at midnight. They, usually, don't need to front up to a customer.

Don't put them on a clock. Don't have a go at them for being 10 minutes late. They may have just done their most constructive piece of work lying in bed between pushes of the snooze button. Developers (and other technical workers) are problem/task focussed so if they are late does it matter if they are completing their work?

Also, because they are problem and task focussed they don't switch off when they leave the office. They just don't think that way. The problem will be ticking away in the back of their mind even if they are doing something completely unrelated. It is not like doing manual labour or customer service, the work continues in the background. They can't 'turn it off'. Watching the clock is important for customer service, or a factory worker if the worker isn't there then the customer can't buy stuff and the widget can't get widgetted. But it's not so important for a developer.

I'm not saying don't make sure they are doing their work, just track it in a different way, use the problems solved, not the hours in front of a screen. Trust is important to developers even if they don't realise it. The subconscious can damage the productivity of someone like a developer a lot more than realised. They may take twice as long to do something and then do it in a less efficient and effective way, they'll get distracted from the task at hand more easily, they'll be thinking How about a cuppa? instead of how do I make this function more efficient/maintainable/reusable. They probably won't even realise this is what's happening but it'll happen none the less.

Also, if you make them think about time they'll also leave on time. I know what you're thinking. What's wrong with that? Well, because they are task and problem focussed when they are happy at work they'll often stay until the problem is solved. They won't be looking at the clock. They'll happily start a new problem with half an hour left in the day and spend an hour on it. On the other hand, one that is annoyed about being clock watched will procrastinate for half an hour, check their email or whatever.

Alright, so if you can't watch the clock on developers what should you be doing? How can you track their progress? How can you know if they are working hard enough?

Well this is where you might have to do a little bit more work as a manager or boss of a software company. It requires that you monitor their work, not just their hours. It also requires you to trust the team and the manager of the team. It's the managers job to track the tasks and make sure they get completed. It also requires constant frank feedback. It takes more than a semi-annual performance appraisal to get the most of a developer. Their minds need to be nurtured with feedback and training, they thirst for knowledge. If they think that you have their best interests at heart I guarantee that you'll get back more than you put in. I suggest you check out Atlassian's efforts in trying to get the most of of their employees which I talked about in an earlier post.

How to Apply for Jobs

2010-12-17T18:15:00.000+11:00

In the last 18 months I've gone through the process of applying for (and eventually getting) two separate jobs. I've also seen a few friends apply for jobs, some successful some not successful, and I'd like to think that I've built a little bit of an idea of how to get jobs.

Lets just say at the outset that the best time to be looking for a job is when you're already employed (or if there is no time pressure). Obviously, not everyone is in that situation, if you're in that situation my advice may not work the best, however I think a lot of it still applies.

If I have to be honest, 18 months ago was basically the first time that I've had to go through the formal application process for a job. Prior to that I had applied for and gotten a few part time jobs while at uni and the like but the process was simpler, and the outcome not as important. I basically flowed into my first full time job on the basis of part time work that I did while I was at uni.

Figure out what jobs to apply for.

One thing that I learnt from the job that I am currently in and the one that I will be moving to in the future is, as lame as this sounds, come up with a good career plan. You don't have to go crazy but you do need to sit down and think about what you like to do, what excites you at work and what brings you to tears. If you're a recent graduate you probably don't really know what excites you at work, if this is the case then I'd suggest finding somewhere that is flexible, that allows you to move between projects regularly, I was lucky enough to land a position like that 5 years ago and I am thankful for it. I think that I may have figured out what makes me want to go to work everyday and my new job will deliver that .... hopefully.

Anyway, the idea is to write down things that excite you. For me this was a job that had both a technical and a personal aspect to it, one that continually changed so that I was always learning and challenged and one with good scope for career progression. For you it'll probably be different, but I'd suggest that if you're young then you really do need to think about a role that has good progression paths. This is one of the key reasons I am leaving my current role, no hope of progressing unless I knock someone off.

Once you've got the ideas sorted and think you know what you want to do talk to someone about it. Find a mentor, someone willing to give you a couple of hours of time to chat to. I was fortunate to have several good contacts, a couple of my former bosses through in their 2 cents and I had a friend refer me to someone quite high up in my field that was willing to chat. It doesn't take heaps of time. A couple of chats to talk through what your thought processes where and to suggest other areas you may not have thought about, like similar roles in other industries.

Now you should have a good understanding of what type of roles you want to apply for and which companies and industries you want to work in.

Fix up Resume and get a decent draft cover letter together.

Ok, this is obvious, but I will say it anyway. Get your resume in order and up to date. There's plenty of information around on how to put together a good resume, so go off and read that. I will add that you should target it towards your chosen job and field. Also obvious I would say. But you'd be surprised how many people don't do this.

Cover letters, you should have a good cover letter aimed at your ideal role. But you won't use this, or rather you won't use this exact cover letter, every cover letter should be specifically targeted for every job application that you complete. More on this later.

Setup JobMail / Job Alerts

Set up job alerts/subscribe to job notifications, there are more places to do this than you think. Firstly use seek.com.au and mycareer.com.au, but also sign up on some of the bigger recruiters like hays.com.au. Then move onto LinkedIn, join groups in your area of interest as well as general job groups like Aussie IT Jobs. Obviously readers outside Australia will need to find other sites like monster.com.

Finally if there are big companies in your field then find their careers site and find there jobs alerts, for me Microsoft and Telstra had good job sites, but also check out consulting firms in your field like IBM. While you're on the sites have a look around as they usually have criteria listed and things that you should consider if you want to work there. Some of them also have the ability to submit a resume and "they'll review it" when they are looking at placing future people, however I never got a response back from doing these.

Hassle your mates

Use your networks, everyone of them that you can think of, chat to people in your footy club, email your old boss that you haven't spoken to for a year, chase up old colleagues. You never know if one of them knows a good role going if you don't ask them for it. Recently for me this didn't secure me the job, but after I applied for one they called someone I used to work with, that I'd already talked to so they where more prepared to talk about me and my suitability.

Which jobs to apply for

While setting up the job alerts you undoubtedly found some jobs that think you want to apply for. I found that reading the ads a couple of times was important, with a gap in between, to make sure that you've read it properly and like what the role has to offer. If you don't know the company then go off and read a bit about them, check if their size is right for you (large companies probably offer more career progression as an example), check to see if you can find good/bad news about them in the media, check where their offices are, how you could get to work everyday.

Also, aim up or at the very least sideways. What I mean is, don't apply for jobs that you think are 'below you', if you do get the job you'll probably want to leave shortly after and resent working there. I say aim high, apply for jobs above your qualifications. I say this for two reasons, a) you might just get that role, it'll be a stretch but worth the hard work b) they may have other roles that are more suited that you missed or weren't advertised.

Use recruiters to your advantage

Another thing to consider here is your 'recruiter spread', basically you want your details in the hands of as many recruiters as possible. You want to do this for a couple of reasons, the first is obvious getting your name out there in front of recruiters means that there is more chance they'll think of you when a new role lands on their desks. I got quite a few call backs from recruiters with different roles to the one(s) that I had applied for.

The second reason for this is not so obvious, getting advice out of the recruiter. If you do get a call back from a recruiter (or an email) talk to them about what they liked in your application and cover letter, talk to them about the roles you want and your experience. This conversation will work both ways, the recruiter wants the information to better find a role for you and you want to pick the recruiters brains about anything that could help your future applications.

How to actually apply

Ok, by this stage you should be getting your job alerts every morning or so. First thing every day is to sit and read through the jobs that have been sent your way. Do it instead of reading the paper or what ever you normally do in the morning. If you see one that you like apply for it then.

Now, to actually apply, tailor the cover letter exactly to the job requirements, pitch yourself for that exact role, figure out who to address the email to and personalise it. Make sure the date and all contact details are correct. Once you have done it a few times you should be able to fire off a good application in ten minutes or so. Use your draft cover letter from earlier as a starting point and go from there. Before you submit the role on Seek/My Career check if the company has a direct application form on their website, I got better responses going direct.

Apply for the jobs you like as soon as you can conceivably do it. Don't fart about, just get the application in! Unless it is a government role, they are probably trying to fill it as soon as possible so you want to get your application in as soon as possible.

Now what?

Alright, so you've done everything, applied for heaps of jobs and haven't got the response that you hoped for. Don't get discouraged, realistically you're looking at several months to find and interview for the perfect role. I found that job applications direct to companies (as opposed to via recruiters) tended to get more responses. It seems that recruiters only respond if they love you.

If you're not getting responses it is time to reassess. Are you applying for the correct jobs? Is your cover letter a good enough pitch? Is your resume a finally honed job acquiring machine?

Finally, make sure any correspondence is professional, no spelling mistakes, good grammar and punctuation, polite and courteous and so on. Oh and don't use slang!

Got an Interview?
Go and read Here Is The Main Reason Why You Suck At Interviews on Skorks and any other sites you can find that have stuff about interviews preparation is key here.

Remember that the interview (and the rest of the application process) is bidirectional. You're determining if the role and company are right for you as much as they are figuring out if you're right for them. If you get a second or third interview or even an offer it doesn't mean that you have to accept it. Evaluate the company and the role the whole time to determine your fit within it.

I'm sure there is more that I could say but I'll just leave you with this. Have fun and.....

Good Luck!

RPKI fix for BGP Coming

2010-12-09T18:30:00.000+11:00

I am glad there has been a bit of follow up to the incident that I discussed a while ago in China stole my packets, you can read more about it in this article. But basically the big problem with BGP is that its based on trust and one person can potentially poison the routing tables of all the high level routers, if this occurs then it's hard to revoke the table update and correct any issues quickly.

A potential solution, the Resource Public Key Infrastructure standard, is currently under review at the IETF.

"The intent of the overall work, which involves the RPKI as the underlying security platform and secure BGP as a way of introducing signed credentials into the routing system, is to make lies in the routing system automatically detectable and, therefore, automatically removable," Geoff Huston, chief scientist at the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) says. "It will eliminate a large class of problems…Such a system would directly address the [China Telecom] incident."

This will apparently go a long way to solving some of the issues but not all of them. There is more info on the specifics of RPKI in the original article. But the sooner we fix the BGP issues the sooner we'll have a more secure internet.

Death By Peanuts

2010-12-08T05:30:00.000+11:00

This is a tragedy for sure, but does it reflect a lack of training for the child about his allergy? I mean pretty much everyone knows that Satay has peanuts in it. Even if the average Joe doesn't know a parent of a child with a severe peanut allergy should have researched it and educated the kid. So when I see this article, Ration packs saved $40,000, inquest told and others that discuss the events and the inquest into the tragic death I can't help but think that the kid should have known better.

Now, I am not laying the blame squarely at the parents feet, the school and the teachers are partially responsible as is it would seem the Army (Where the ration packs clearly marked as containing Peanuts?), however despite the best intentions of schools and teachers that strive their hardest to do what it right for the pupils at their schools at some point the child should have thought, you know what this looks like Satay sauce and that has peanuts in it and I am allergic to peanuts.

Why didn't this occur? Honestly I don't know but surely a proper education of the child would have helped in this situation, by 13 they should be old enough to understand the consequences and smart enough to check their food.

Want to remote log out in Skype? Change your password

2010-12-08T00:45:00.000+11:00

What a crock! I mean seriously how could you not have a feature like this implemented better?

Here is the official word on how you remote log out another Skype client you left logged in.

Change your password to make remote Skype clients sign out

Go to File | Change Password

Follow the instructions to change your password.

Now sign out using File | Sign Out

Wait a minute or so

Then sign in again using your new password.

After a short period of time any remote Skype clients that were logged into your Skype username should stop working. They will require the new password in order to log in again.

Doesn't this strike you as kind crap? I mean have a look at Gmail's implementation, simple and effective. I think its an awesome feature that you can log in on multiple computers but also when you implement that feature you have to implement remote log out. The two really go hand in hand if you want a complete solution. It's like implementing login and not logout.

Skype should really get this sorted out in the future, particularly if they are interested in gaining corporate level clients. Just my two cents.

Open letter: To Julia Gillard, re Julian Assange

2010-12-07T18:27:00.001+11:00

Whatever you think of Wikileaks and their political efforts or Julian and his alleged crimes I think that you'll agree with this letter Open letter: To Julia Gillard, re Julian Assange - Unleashed (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

The Memristor Mind

2010-12-07T18:15:00.000+11:00

I'm a sucker for the Memristor for some reason, I guess it goes back to my roots as an Electrical Engineer and Theoretical Chemist. It has such potential for a new breed of electrical circuitry from new higher density memory to previously impossible computing systems. This brings me to the article behind today's post A Mind Made from Memristors from IEEE Spectrum.

This is awesome news, awesome because even if this latest effort, to mimic the human mind, is a complete failure it speaks to the exciting new possibilities that this breakthrough in fundamental circuit elements exposes. Furthermore this research can lead to newer better architectures for computing and while people often doubt that the power of computing needs to grow at the speed that it does no one can deny the impact (both good and bad) that such massive computing power has allowed to happen.

If you can spare ten minutes or so I highly suggest reading the article A Mind Made from Memristors, it is a solid read but very interesting and goes into some great detail about the difficulties faced in mimicking the mind in hardware and software, particularly interesting is the insight that in the mind, software, hardware and memories effectively coexist, which means the processing doesn't require transferring data around and the software is constantly morphing.

Problems with QE2: The US can't even print money properly.

2010-12-07T12:52:00.001+11:00

This gave a me a chuckle this morning, Government can’t print money properly.

What a totally balls up!

Its lucky that QE2 doesn't actually require physically printing money merely the Fed writing itself an IOU but really this doesn't bode well if you ask me.

The Name is Net, StuxNet

2010-12-03T05:00:00.002+11:00

This is the 007 of the Malware world.

I read today (in a surprisingly good piece of jornalism for FoxNews) that researches have become more and more intrigued with Stuxnet, Mystery Surrounds Cyber Missile That Crippled Iran's Nuclear Weapons Ambitions. I have briefly discussed Stuxnet in the past and as researchers discover more intriguing things about it I find it more and more interesting.

The most interesting part to me is how it was designed to stay hidden and jump the 'air gap' into the network of computers that control the reactors. None of the computers or devices within the plant have any internet connectivity, for obvious reasons, so Stuxnet was designed to infect plant workers private computers, get onto their USB drives and then onto the plants network.

The second most interesting part is that it was designed to do just enough damage, in an undetectable way, to take parts of the nuclear production line offline in such a way that it seemed like a normal maintenance or other problem.

Finally the specificity of the attack is quite amazing, it was designed to affect frequency converters on Uranium enrichment centrifuges operating in certain plants, made by certain manufacturers with particular control systems. In other words it was targeted directly at Iran's two nuclear plants.

Little doubt remains in my mind that it was constructed by a government agency or group of governments working in collaboration. In the end we'll probably never know who actually created it, but the power of this kind of attack has now been demonstrated and to be quite honest, its disturbingly powerful.

The article is definitely worth the read and goes into a lot more depth on the virus and how it operated.

Problems Running IIS 7 in Classic Mode

2010-12-02T00:45:00.003+11:00

Recently at work we ran into an issue where sites stopped working properly in Classic Mode in IIS7. All sorts of script mapping errors were occurring and the pages where loading incorrectly. When the sites where running in Integrated Mode everything was fine. However, switching the sites over to Integrated mode was not an option as some of our sites need to be run in Classic Mode to support older methods of gathering statistics from IIS.

Eventually I figured out that the problem occurred because we had added new handlers in the Web.Config, from the outset it appeared that this was a configuration problem. So after a bit of fruitless Googling (I think my Google Fu is weakening of late) I started poking around in the IIS settings and Web.config. That is when I noticed that a few of the handlers had precondition="integratedMode" blindly removing this precondition didn't do the trick. Nor did a few other tweaks that I tried.

Eventually it came to me and I must admit that it took me a little while before I realised that the solution was actually kind of obvious, use the IIS6 Web.Config instead of the IIS7 one. While this may seem counter intuitive it makes sense when you realise that Classic mode was designed to emulate the operation of IIS6 so that sites and server configurations would not need to be changed immediately.

So there you have it, if you must run in Classic Mode on IIS 7 you may just need to use an old school Web.config to go with the old school classic running mode.

What? The Labor party appears to be promoting the Nuclear Debate!

2010-12-01T18:15:00.001+11:00

Huzzah!

In the last couple of days I've seen various articles like this one about Labor planning to put the nuclear debate on the agenda. About friggin' time!

I mean seriously no political party has actually had a proper look at nuclear power, the Green's will probably never realise that it is probably the best answer to reducing the carbon cost of base load power and the other parties have been scared to raise the issue for fear of the political backlash from the uninformed masses.

The biggest problem is that people aren't even willing to discuss it. It's the hottest political potato around, whenever it is mentioned the issue gets tossed to the side. The recent moves by Senator Bishop and others to defy the 'official ban' on nuclear power within the Labor party and to raise awareness should be applauded.

Personally I am convinced that Nuclear Power is the best solution for Australia's base load power needs now and moving into the future. We have a significant portion of the worlds Uranium resources, the technological ability to build a plant and excellent places to store the minimal waste that is generated by nuclear power.

What we need from this debate is to realise that:

There are methods of nuclear power generation that don't lead to proliferation of nuclear weapons
There are methods of nuclear power generation that generate minimal nuclear waste
There is more radioactive material generated from the burning of coal than the equivalent waste for generating the same amount of power from nuclear energy.
Nuclear's weakness, that is the storage and disposal of waste, is its strength, the only output from a nuclear reactor is heat and a small amount of radioactive material, Coal spews forth large amounts of carbon dioxide, soot, etc that can not be efficiently captured and stored.

I believe that eventually Australia will have nuclear power stations but it may take many years and lots of ill conceived wind farms before we get there. To encourage the debate and hopefully educate some people to the benefits and not just the downsides of nuclear power is a great step in the right direction. Now if only we could dial back the political point scoring from baseless scaremongering we may be on the right track.

After I wrote this post the 7PM Project posted a story discussing the issue, looks like they are planning to talk about it tonight.

Oh and in answer to their question.

Would you like a power station in the neighbourhood?

I would be fine with living near a Nuclear power plant, however as I chose to live in the inner city I doubt that its going to happen.

The best investment advice you'll never get

2010-11-30T12:36:00.000+11:00

This is a great article from San Francisco online "The best investment advice you'll never get", if you can spare ten minutes or so and are at all interested in earning steady investment income (and who isn't?) then I highly recommend giving this a read.

Basically, unless you're a gun investor and you have heaps of time to invest you're not going to beat the index and you're better off putting your cash into low cost index funds that mimic the company spread of the major indices. There are some good quotes through out.

“Invest in nonprofit index funds,” David Swensen says unequivocally. “Your odds of beating the market in an actively managed fund are less than 1 in 100.”

“Buy an index fund. This is the most actionable, most mathematically supported, short-form investment advice ever.”, the Motley Fool.

And plenty of good arguments to back up the points made by the various professionals and experts that are quoted. Interestingly enough the article actually begins by describing what the people at Google did just before the IPO in 2005, knowing that with the IPO a whole bunch of programmers and engineers where going to get their hands on a lot of cash they thought it prudent to get them some advice.

Rather than letting in the rabid hordes of fund managers and the like that were gathering outside like flies around a trash can, they brought in impartial investment advisors, lecturers and fund managers that weren't there to get a profit out of the pundits.

None of the companies that I have worked for have offered advice like this to me, so I have to find it the hard way, by trawling the internet. It would be great if more people where taught sound investment and monetary practices but alas I don't see that happening and besides if you're not the investment fool then you're the one prying the money from the fools hands right?

Vetta RT 77 Cycle computer Follow Up

2010-11-29T18:10:00.000+11:00

Since my earlier review of the Vetta RT 77, I've been using it on my commute to and from work. Overall I am pretty happy with the purchase, especially as I got it for the princely sum of $17.

It does however have a couple of foibles, the slightly hidden cadence functionality and the left button doesn't always work properly. Obviously you get what you pay for I guess so I am not really disappointed with the quality at all and as I continue to use it the buttons seem to be getting better.

Overall I am still very happy with my purchase but if you want your computer to be perfect from the get go I recommend spending more that $20.

Synology DS211J to Samsung Story 3 Backup

2010-11-27T11:13:00.000+11:00

After getting my Disk Station setup as detailed in a couple of earlier posts (part 1 and part 2) it is time to complete the final part of my backup solution, which is to get the drive backing up to a external drive, that I will store somewhere else (like in the office). I plan on doing this once a month or so at this stage but probably more often in the future depending on how much data I am adding and needing to back up.

First impressions are that this thing is sexy, but then again it did win a design award so that is no surprise, no fuss nice solid case, with a nice big rotary switch on the front that makes a solid clunk when turned. Love it! Much better than all the cheap enclosures that I have used in the past. If you want to read a review with performance figures and all that stuff you can check out this one from the guys at StorageReview.

Anyway it does USB 3 which for me at this stage doesn't mean much as I don't have anything else that supports it the only question it does lead to is: Do I need a funky cable to connect to a USB 2 host? Well thanks to this easy to follow picture from this page which provides backwards compatibility info.

I still need the USB 3 cable to fit in the socket on the back of the drive but it is fine for me to use an old extension cable I had lying around which is great because it means that I can keep the NAS hidden away in the cupboard but still back up easily.

On the Synology side of things it could be much easier, although I did have a slight mental blank and lose the local backup option. Simply fire up the "Backup and Restore" section of the control panel and select "Create" to create a new back up type. This wil fire up the Backup Wizard.

This presents options to back up the NAS to 3 different destinations.

Local Backup: Which backs up to a local USB drive. This is the option that I'm using.
Network Backup: Where you can select anywhere on the network as a destination and it uses rsync or rsh to copy files.
Amazon S3 Backup: Where you can back up to the Amazon Storage cloud and chose between encrypted or unencrypted storage, with a trade off in backup times with the encrypted option.

Once you select the backup type you pick which folders you want and the destination drive for the backup. You can also schedule the back up, which I will not be doing as I am not sure how often I will be connecting the external drive and will have to do the backups manually.

After the wizard completes you click go and the backup begins. In terms of backup speeds obviously we're restricted here by the USB speed. I am writing this while I wait for the backup to complete, currently it has completed 15 Gb in around half an hour giving a copy speed of a couple of minutes per gigabyte. I am not pressed for time or anything so the speed doesn't really concern me. I imagine that once the first full backup has complete I should be able to specify an incremental backup but I am not sure at the moment.

Anyway, once again I am quite pleased with the ease of setup and use of this NAS and I have no complaints whatsoever about the external drive. In the future I'll get into setting up external, that is remote, access over the internet of the NAS and using the Torrent client.

How To Be The Dumbest Guy In The Room

2010-11-27T05:07:00.000+11:00

How To Be The Dumbest Guy In The Room is a great post that kind of fits into my whole professional/personal development stint that I have been embarking on of late. Continuing on from my earlier post Do unto others as Carnegie would do unto you the linked post encourages you to be the 'dumbest' guy in the room so that you learn the most.

There are two parts to this really, surround your self with smart people and extend yourself to the point where you can fail and potentially look dumb. These are covered pretty well in Greg's post. I can kind of see a third part as well, that is not so much acting dumb but asking a lot of questions. Of course when you ask a lot of questions there is the potential that you appear dumb, but that is a risk worth taking. This is also what Carnegie would have you do, the asking a lot of questions that is. Getting to know the person that you are talking to. While the aims here are slightly different they use the same means.

As you encourage the other people to talk through lots of, potentially dumb sounding, questions you absorb some of their knowledge about whatever it is you're talking about and as long as you retain a bit of this knowledge you will be smarter because of it.

The aim is to be the dumbest guy in the room so that you end up being smarter.

Software Patents... still crap

2010-11-26T18:00:00.001+11:00

Today I read on Dairy of an x264 Developer that Tandberg had patented, or rather applied for a patent on, some algorithmic techniques that Jason had used in his work on x264 and ffmpeg. While interesting, to me at least, the real point of this is to point out that it is really the flawed patent system that leads to this sort of application being made.

Not even entering into the idea that software patents are a bad idea, there is plenty in the media about that already, this illustrates some inherent flaws in the system. While obviously Tandberg in this instance have acted in a very bad manner, they have done so because the patent system not only allows such actions but even goes some way to encourage it. It is only because the developer working on this area, had the patent application brought to his attention that it was noticed.

The problem, I feel, really lies in both the prior art and obviousness determinations made by the USPTO and the cost of challenging them. While I do believe that this patent will be stopped, similar patents copied from other peoples work have been granted in the past and have gotten through the approval process. The fact that the infringing patents have not been picked up is related to how prior art and obviousness are assessed. Ideas that are completely obvious, to the point of not being deemed worthy of patenting, to someone in a particular field, may not be at all obvious to someone outside that particular field.

How is it then that the USPTO is supposed to ensure that obviousness is tested thoroughly? Well, in all honesty they can't possibly ensure that some don't fall through the cracks. This is where the second and more insidious problem comes into the fore. A big company with a scary team of lawyers is basically always going to win against the little. If Joe Bloggs from Farmville Tennessee comes up with an idea that is stolen by a large company his small amount of funds to fight a patent battle will be swallowed in briefs and other such things from the large company. To the point where he can no longer challenge the validity of the patent for fear of not being able to feed his family.

The excessive cost of challenging patents has led to a situation where large companies, like Tandberg, feel comfortable attempting to patent things like this. The risk reward payoff is worth it for them. They are going to get a slap on the wrist at worst and at best they have a patent. This patent will then be used primarily as a negotiation tool with other big companies that think Tandberg has stolen some of their technology.

Basically, they come up and say, 'hey you're using this which we patented', then Tandberg comes back and says 'well you're using this which we've patented' and then they both agree to license the other to use their ideas and they live happily ever after.

Companies are willing to patent obvious things (touch screen computer anyone?) so they have a drawful of patents to wave at their competitors should the need arise and when they get desperate to start suing people in a vague attempt at perpetuating the companies existence. However, the big patent wars never really get anywhere in the long run and just seem to hinder the growth of new and exciting technologies.

So I'd written this whole ramble and then stumbled across a thread on Slashdot which was started by another coder that had the same thing happen to him. There is some pretty good discussion in there as well.

Killing IIS Zombie Processors

2010-11-26T12:45:00.003+11:00

We've all been there! Well all developers and testers are least. You've got a process that is hung and you just can't kill the blasted thing. On *nix its as easy as getting the Process ID (PID) of the process and running 'kill -9' which is about as close as you're going to get to travelling back in time and killing the processes grandparents back when they lived on a pig farm.

Anyway, in Windows there is nothing that is there available to all and sundry to do this. But thankfully when I encountered this problem today I used some Google Fu to get to How To Kill Windows Processes That Won't Die which led me to the good folks at SysInternals and their PsTools suite.

PsTools is a collection of tools to help with system management, included within it is PsKill which, by all rights should solve my problem which is a pesky IIS worker process that refuses to roll over and play dead. So following the instructions I tried to kill the process.

No dice, access is denied. Hmm okay I guess I need to run it as administrator.

D:\Downloads\PsTools>pskill.exe 3256
PsKill v1.13 - Terminates processes on local or remote systems
Copyright (C) 1999-2009 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com
Unable to kill process 3256:
Access is denied.

Are you kidding me? WTF? Damn it. This is going to be harder than expected. Off to poke around some more. There are a couple of tricks to try in the comments of the first post I found but none of them seem to work.

Sysinternals Forums? Nope, they only seem to contain Access Denied errors for remote computers. File locked by something? I'll give Unlocker a go. No dice!

Oh man I feel like I idiot! I thought I had tried 'iisreset' but apparently not because I just tried it again and it worked.

Son of a... well that was a waste of 15 minutes.

I think PsKill wanted me to kill it as the user that had started the process, which was a user that IIS created, so I didn't have the password. Lesson learned, my google fu isn't as fu-tastic as it should be. A more specific initial searched would've killed the process sooner.

Election Junk Mail is giving me the shits!

2010-11-25T12:45:00.000+11:00

I don't know if you other Victorians are affected like me but so far in this "Election Campaign" I have received way to much personally addressed propaganda for my liking. The optimal amount of course being none. I am quite capable of using the internet and the media saturation to find out everything I need about your polices.

If you're worried about your particular message not getting through perhaps you should consider using your TV and newspaper spots to actually talk about your policy and not just slander the opposition!

In the last month by my count I have received:

2 letters from my local Liberal candidate @clemnewtonbrown
2 letters from my local Labor candidate Tony Lupton
2 letters from the Victorian Electoral Commission politely implying I am to dumb to figure out how to vote.

My Fiancée has also received her fair share as well, for 5 of the 6 letters above we both received the same letter on the same day, with the same pamphlet in it. Such as waste of resources, if you really want to send the things (and you really don't) how about just sending one to the household?

So, lets say that there are 5.5 million Victorians at this point based on there being 5,473,266 in March. Lets assume that around 80% of them are of voting age and lets say that each of them receives 5 letters. That is 22 Million letters that have been sent.

Each letter I've received had a least one A4 sheet within it and of course the envelope, so lets call that 2 sheets of paper, which means 250 letters per ream of paper. So we are using 88 000 reams of paper. Then based on the estimate that each ream of paper uses around 6% of a tree we can estimate that this whole election debacle in this month alone, purely on direct mailed propaganda has consumed 5280 trees.

What a freaking waste! And this doesn't take into account all the other printed election material that piles up all over the place, the how to vote cards that nobody actually uses etc etc.

Domain.com.au is just Stupid!

2010-11-22T18:38:00.000+11:00

Or perhaps it is the Real Estate agents managing the ads. Either way it is a frustrating, annoying and above all stupid.

Ummm, perhaps I should explain what I am talking about.

I am currently, sort of, looking for a place to buy in Melbourne. I am attempting to do the sitting back and waiting to pounce thing, which basically means that I have signed up to alerts from the various real estate sites including domain.com.au. So today, as is usual for a Monday morning, I am sent an email with "New and updated" properties that meet my criteria. In todays email a good looking property popped up.

In the right price range looks to be about the right size and close to a good shopping area and railway station.

Sweet!

So I click through to the page for the house, looks reasonably promising from the site of that. But I notice that there is sale type or inspection times. Thats a bit weird, no matter I'll do my usual things, loading up Google Earth and Street view and checking how it looks, calculating the land area, do a quick search for anything about the house.

It all looks pretty good, so I inquire when the inspections are on. I actually get a call pretty quick from the agent.

It was sold yesterday at Auction.

What the fuuuuuuuuuu...............

Why the hell am I getting it highlighted to me as an updated property? It sure looks like the update should be that it has sold! But it would seem that the update is simply removing the sale type and date etc. If I'd gone there and seen the auction date as yesterday I wouldn't have bothered looking any more. Assuming they just hadn't updated it yet.

Why wouldn't you just delete the whole ad? Or update it to say sold! Which is what they have done on realeastateview.com.

I notice that Domain isn't the only site that has done it is is the same way on realestate.com.au, that is no sale type or date shown.

Ahh I feel better now, I'd just wish they'd sort the site out (but I will admit that they do have a lot of problems to fix....).