Defenestrated

UK government advocates open source

2009-03-03T10:01:56-05:00

This is truly fantastic. The UK government has decided that, where there is little price difference between open source and commercial products, open source should be selected due to its inherent flexibility. The initiative is also promoting re-use of product evaluations, and has created an open forum where the public can view and contribute to the action plan. Great stuff!

Watch "The Damned United"

2009-01-27T11:05:38-05:00

Even if you've never heard of Brian Clough or Leeds United, The Damned United promises to be as good as Frost/Nixon. Clough remains one of the most divisive figures in English football, even though he's been dead for years. This tells the story of his 44 days in charge of Leeds United and, written by Peter Morgan (who wrote The Queen and Frost/Nixon) and starring Michael Sheen, Timothy Spall, and Jim Broadbent, it's got the story and cast to be truly special. Just like Cloughie.

2008-11-10T13:32:51-05:00

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Medals medals medals

2008-09-17T16:58:27-04:00

Team Great Britain did fantastically well at this year's Summer Olympics, beating all expectations and winning an unprecedented number of medals....even if many were in "The sitting down sports," as our Australian cousins noted.

However, Team GB has also done extraordinarily well in the Paralympics, as this table shows, coming second only to China in the medal count.

I'm not sure what Brits are putting in their tea these days, but it's working.

Can We Have A Referee?

2008-08-05T13:51:22-04:00

The English Football Association has launched a campaign to improve how referees are treated in football. Part of that campaign is this fantastic video that features some very well-known ex-players and (some not so well-known) celebrities. Genius.

Mozy for Mac - backup does not start [updated]

2008-08-02T11:46:09-04:00

I've been a Mozy for Mac user for a couple of months now and my backup (which is admittedly very large) still hasn't completed for the first time, despite my machine being left on pretty much 24x7. I am backing up a LOT of data (over 85GB) so I knew it was going to take a while but one problem seems to have been recurring, preventing the backup even starting on many occasions. Here are two typical sections of the Mozy.log file.

2008-08-01 20:11:39.505 MozyBackup[41:601b] (backup) Starting backup
2008-08-01 20:11:39.582 MozyBackup[41:601b] (backup) Checking for update
2008-08-01 20:11:40.084 MozyBackup[41:601b] (backup) Connecting to r4165.mozy.client.ut1.berkeleydata.com (66.133.112.24)
2008-08-01 20:11:40.552 MozyBackup[41:601b] (backup) Version is up-to-date (1.0.1.0)
2008-08-01 20:12:52.035 MozyBackup[41:601b] (backup) User ID is [my user ID]
2008-08-01 20:12:52.036 MozyBackup[41:601b] (backup) Cleaning up temporary files
2008-08-01 20:12:52.055 MozyBackup[41:601b] (backup) Starting full scan
2008-08-01 20:13:09.846 MozyBackup[41:601b] (backup) Starting filesystem churn
2008-08-01 20:13:09.904 MozyBackup[41:601b] (backup) Waiting for filesystem churn to end
2008-08-01 20:22:50.694 MozyBackup[41:601b] (backup) Starting backup set churn
2008-08-01 20:22:50.765 MozyBackup[41:601b] (backup) Waiting for backup set churn to end
2008-08-01 22:47:40.910 MozyBackup[41:4603] (updater) Error adding changes to scan cache: database is locked
2008-08-01 23:47:40.935 MozyBackup[41:4603] (updater) Error adding changes to scan cache: database is locked
2008-08-02 00:34:48.026 MozyBackup[41:4603] (updater) Error adding changes to scan cache: database is locked

Another typical behavior is shown here:

2008-08-02 09:49:35.127 MozyBackup[42:5b23] (backup) Starting backup
2008-08-02 09:49:35.129 MozyBackup[42:5b23] (backup) Checking for update
2008-08-02 09:49:35.526 MozyBackup[42:5b23] (backup) Connecting to r4165.mozy.client.ut1.berkeleydata.com (66.133.112.24)
2008-08-02 09:49:36.069 MozyBackup[42:5b23] (backup) Version is up-to-date (1.0.1.0)
2008-08-02 09:49:42.297 MozyBackup[42:5b23] (backup) User ID is [my user ID]
2008-08-02 09:49:42.298 MozyBackup[42:5b23] (backup) Cleaning up temporary files
2008-08-02 09:49:42.300 MozyBackup[42:5b23] (backup) Starting full scan
2008-08-02 09:49:53.378 MozyBackup[42:5b23] (backup) Starting filesystem churn
2008-08-02 09:49:53.382 MozyBackup[42:5b23] (backup) Waiting for filesystem churn to end
2008-08-02 09:52:45.956 MozyBackup[42:5b23] (backup) Starting backup set churn
2008-08-02 09:52:45.957 MozyBackup[42:5b23] (backup) Waiting for backup set churn to end

It seems like either the backup set churn never ends, or the database is locked and the backup can't continue.

I've checked all permissions on my machine (using Disk Utility) and everything checks out. The Mozy support forums lean heavily toward Windows users, which is disappointing but somewhat typical. I can't see anything else that I should check to ensure the backup starts when I want. Has anyone else encountered this problem?

I've sent this report to Mozy support by e-mail, so I'll post their response here when I get it.

[Updated 8/4/08 20:45] I got an IM out of the blue today from Devin at Mozy, asking if I could work with him to diagnose the problem I'd written about here. Clearly someone at Mozy has some Google Alerts set up! Devin passed me on to Ben at Mozy (their resident Mac expert) and he and I have been exchanging information to try and diagnose the problem. Apparently this is a known but very rare issue that they haven't quite gotten to the bottom of yet. Hopefully this exercise will fix that. In the meantime, they've kindly extended my subscription by 3 months due to the inconvenience this problem has caused.

This is how customer service should be, people. Let's hope the product lives up to the (so far great) service...

[Updated 8/7/08 9:30] Over the past couple of days, Ben at Mozy has been working me with to try out various strategies to see how this problem can be eliminated. Uninstalling and re-installing the client doesn't seem to fix it, but we've found a couple of other oddnesses along the way, such as an incorrect number of MS Word files being detected by the Mozy backup client. The guys at Mozy are working to develop a new version of the client that aims to solve this issue. More as it happens...

[Updated 8/15/08 10:52] There's been no change in the status of this for a few days now, and I haven't seen a new version of the Mozy for Mac client yet. Some commenters on the blog note that attaching an external drive to the system seems to stymie Mozy completely, but that's not confirmed.

BBC's Olympics movie is fantastic

2008-07-24T10:54:46-04:00

The Beeb has collaborated with Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett (of Gorillaz fame) to produce this fantastic sequence to promote and introduce their Olympics coverage. Only the BBC could possibly have pulled this off with such aplomb. During my childhood, a dubbed-for-English broadcast Chinese series called "Monkey Magic!" was shown on BBC2 regularly. It's something of a cult hit. That show was inspired by the same story as this Olympics sequence, so it's doubly sweet for Brits like me.

Dr. Horrible

2008-07-15T09:16:15-04:00

This looks fun! A sci-fi, action hero musical, directed by Joss Whedon? Count me in.

Teaser from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.

Capitalism's evolution?

2008-07-14T17:09:13-04:00

The image of George Washington on the left, outside the Corcoran Gallery, has the title "American Evolution". That's Mao Tse Tung on the right. Is this suggesting that America will become more like China, or the other way around?

iPhone now up

2008-07-12T00:43:37-04:00

Seems like I suffered enough like everyone else, and my phone came back up and was restored with the luvverly version 2.0 software earlier this afternoon. It was definitely worth the hassle! If you're having trouble with either of the messages I posted earlier, stick at it; eventually you'll get through it.