I have blogged about this before, go get it here ,it is out of beta now. OpenSolaris kernel, GNU userland (most of Ubuntu’s packages).

I have mentioned before that Ian Murdock, the chap who started Debian, has joined Sun to work on Project Indiana. This is basically a binary distro using the OpenSolaris codebase and including a load of free software that folk have come to expect from a linux distro. This may work, but it’s not great now and the binary distros of Solaris, called Developer Preview and Community are dire.

In the great tradition of Debian + YOUR_FAVOURITE_KERNEL (a la Gnu/Hurd Gnu/FreeBSD and GNU/NetBSD) comes Nexenta. I use it and like it, ZFS + Samba were my goals I have that now, but I am looking forward to the new in-kernel CIFS server, expect benchmarks after I move house.

Desktop Data Manager is superb tool; providing a clipboard manager, a screenshot taking app that allows you to select regions and a reasonable download manager. I mainly use the screenshot tool at the moment.

From their page:

Clipboard Manager

• Clipboard history for a customized number of entries

• Separate list for CLIPBOARD (Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V) and PRIMARY (Middle Mouse Button)

• Displays text and images inline

• Converts HTML/FTP/… links (in fact any link that is supported through GnomeVFS) to images which can be pasted into any application

• Images can be pasted as a new file by simply using Ctrl+V

• Customizable keyboard shortcuts

• Extensible through plugins

Screenshot-Taking Applications

• Take screenshots of single window, single subwindow, selected rectangle or the whole desktop

• Seamless operation with the clipboard manager

** Download Manager**

• Continuation (Pause and Continue downloads)

• Threaded/Segmented downloading

• HTTP/HTTPS/FTP protocol support

• MD5/SHA1 checksum calculation

• Downloading from multiple mirrors

What sets DDM apart from Klipper/Glipper/…

• Inline display of images

• “Creators” enable Copy and Paste for files and their content in both direction (see screenshots page for details)

• Screenshot-Taking Application enables copy of mages out of e.g. a PDF files directly into any other application or in a file

Near where I currently live in Otley is very well mapped by OSM, here is a screenshot.

Compare this to google maps (Only when I did this comparison did I notice how much screen space is wasted on the left of the google maps).

My first experience with the OSM online editor was a bit frustrating, not as intuitive as I would have liked but it will get better I am sure. I am looking forward to contributing something more substantial at the weekend. I am going to take some traces near my Mums on Sat and then the WYLUG mapping meet on Sun after a party on Sat night in Chester. It’s good to be busy.

I have decided to get involved in OpenStreetMap.

When asked a little while ago by someone at WYLUG I poo-pooed it, thinking that it was too big a task and seeing the little progress they had made. I am glad to say I was wrong, it is taking shape nicely now. I guess Wikipedia, GNU and Linux all must have looked like quixotic endeavors in the early days; though the people with the vision, that seemed to be tilting at windmills, were proved right. I thought it a shame that we would have the skill to put together sat-nav software but no free access to map data. These slides helped convince me as well as a recent WYLUG talk.

The Leeds mapping is OK now, but some folk from WYLUG are going to get together and plug a few gaps next weekend. So obviously I need a GPS… … in a smartphone. Regardless of what some people claim, a GPS enabled S60 nokia is totally essential for the enterprise. Seriously though, I had been considering a new phone with a half decent camera and saw the N95 8G with its built in GPS and nice big screen. I went for the N82 though as it was slightly lighter, cheaper, has better GPS reception, has a xenon flash and had a lens cover (I cannot stand the thought of the lens not being covered when not in use). I think convergence has basically happened, that will give me better pics than the 2.8Mpixel camera I carried round for 3 years and will be an OK sat-nav device in the car, a phone and a reasonable mp3 player (with a normal size headphone socket on the phone). The downside is a smaller screen. S60 has a Python implementation too so I will be able to play with that a bit.

I have some friends that did 120,000 KM in a round the world trip , I hope they kept traces on the way as they may be incredibly useful.

In other good news, I am the 4th Tom Hall on google. I think I can get to 2nd as I should be able to beat a county and western singer from Texas.

As anyone who knows me even moderately well will know, I am an atheist. No, not an atheist. You should not describe yourself in terms of what you don’t believe. I do not believe in Father Christmas so I suppose you could call me an asantaist. I am probably a Secular Humanist or Naturalist and may start calling myself a Bright. Pretentious as it sounds (I am not saying I am bright), it is an attempt to turn the word into a noun to describe someone who worldview is entirely naturalistic. From their manifesto:

• A bright is a person who has a naturalistic worldview

• A bright’s worldview is free of supernatural and mystical elements

• The ethics and actions of a bright are based on a naturalistic worldview

Probably some redundancy there, item one would suffice in my view, but definitely hits the mark for me.

I am writing this now because I am extremly annoyed after seeing a psychic on Screenwipe that claims to read babys minds. In this appaling scene, after stumbling around and being off with a few of his guesses he stumbles on a history of abuse and tastlessly probes it, even swearing in front of the child claiming to be speaking for her. It would be funny if the woman was not so clearly upset.

Badpsychics is a site devoted to debunking all of this shit. James Randi has been at it for years, offering a million dollar prize to anyone who can demonstrate any powers under scientific conditions. Richard Dawkins did a great documentary on Channel 4 called Enemies of Reason about all the ridiculous stuff people believe and how dangerous it can be.

I was glad to see the government have responded to a petition started by Badpsychics to amend the Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951,

“The Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951 has rarely been used in the prosecution of mediums and psychics, who claim to contact the dead relatives of people. Yet there are increasingly more TV shows and live acts where people claiming to be mediums and psychics prey on vulnerable people who have lost loved ones, giving them spurious information and taking their money. We call upon the Government to revise the Fraudulent Mediums Act and make it easier to prosecute these people.”

The Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951 will be repealed from April 2008 by the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2007 (CPRs) which implement the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (UCPD).

The CPRs include rules prohibiting conduct which misleads the average consumer and thereby causes, or is likely to cause him to take a transactional decision he would not have taken otherwise.

Although the average consumer would arguably not be misled by a person who claims he is able to contact the dead, such conduct would still be unfair under the CPRs if it deceives the average member of (i) the group to which it is directed, or (ii) a clearly identifiable group of consumers who are particularly vulnerable to this type of practice.

Unlike the Act, there is no requirement in the CPRs to prove an “intent to deceive”. This means that where practices are aimed at vulnerable consumers or average members of particular groups, it should be easier to take action against fraudulent mediums than under the Act.

The CPRs will be enforced by both civil (injunctive) action and criminal sanctions.

I really hope someone uses the law straight away but would rather there was an All Mediums Are Frauds Act.

More worrying is the counter petition that has 1500 signatures, more than 3 times as many. Thank god the government pays no attention to these things.

I am just getting a talk ready for WYLUG on python.

I sent Dave the following blurb:

Why I love Python:

A talk on the programming language Python, in 3 parts (feel free to leave in the interludes if you have had enough)

Part 1: Past, Present, Future. A bit of history and the design of the language, a look at all the implementations available today, quick tour of built-in and commonly used modules and future plans.

Part 2: Language overview A quick tour of the language: builtin types, control structures, using modules etc

Part 3: Recent Magic. Some relatively recent changes that make programming Python even more pleasurable. Decorators, Generators, List comprehensions, Iterators, Functools and anything else I can fit in. Again a whirlwind tour, but you should be impressed and want to read up on these some more

I have been revisiting some of the Python talks I have watched over the last few years for ideas and will update my ComSci page with links.

I stumbled across some excellent video from RubyConf, particularly the Rubinius one. Rubinius is a ruby VM partially written in Ruby, taking some lessons from Python and Smalltalk. Some of the stuff he bigs up (compiling to bytecode automatically comes to mind) Python has had for ages, but the self hosting aspect is cool (not as cool as PyPy though). Rubinius seems to be doing what Avi Bryant suggested here, learn from the Smalltalk guys and the papers from the Self team that Sun spun off and later bought back to do the hotspot VM for Java. Interesting times for dynamic languages, target the JVM, CLR, self host and generate code in other languages while always writing in the same fun language. I say Ruby envy only because I think the Ruby community does a better job of looking cool and exciting people than the Python one.

Now Haskell joy. After describing working through Yet Another Haskell Tutorial to the 2 friends doing it with me as “not an obviously pleasurable experience” I had a great moment on the train the other day looking at partial application. (\y -> y*3) is Haskell for the anonymous function that takes y and multiplies it by 3 (I wish I had LaTeX here to draw the lamda calculus). What I like is that you can also write that as (*3) While this example is trivial, what is happening is interesting. The compiler knows * is an infix operator that takes 2 arguments and that is has been supplied one and “partially applies” the function, making (*3) (a function that takes one argument). One more thing is changing prefix and infix operators around using ( _ ) and ` _ ` , for example: 3 * 5 (*) 3 5 map (*2) [1,2,3] (*2) map [1,2,3] I hope this second example is clear, map usually is a prefix function that takes a function and a list and returns a list with the result of applying the function to each element (the return value here would be [2,4,6]). This flexibility is neat and is starting to make Haskell a joy to hack in.

Merry Christmas,

No blog post for a week, perhaps I am not as self important or tenacious as I think I am.

I have been meaning to read Muhammad Younus’s book “Banker to the Poor” for a while, I had not heard of him till he won the Nobel Peace Prize. He helped found the Grameen Bank, a bank that lends small amounts of money to poor people in Bangladesh who have no collateral (called Microfinance for obvious reasons), and later the Grameen Foundation. Access to collateral is obviously really significant in your success; I know a great way to have a guaranteed income of 80k a year (less tax), put a million quid in a savings account at 8%.

Peer Lending is another topic that is becoming popular, particularly as we experience the so called credit crunch. Zopa in the Uk and Prosper.com in the US are interesting ways for lending and borrowing money. This is often described as “cutting out the middle man” but obviously this is just being a middleman that skims rather than grabs. Sometimes you directly loan money to an individual, sometimes the risk is spread for you. This risk spreading reminds me of Collateralized Debt Obligations; the source of much of the cheap credit now available and an accelerant of the recent crunch, also claimed to be a big factor in the supposed Great Moderation we are experiencing (along with supply chain innovations like Just In Time Inventorying). The web is obviously an enabler for this sort of idea and I think the market forces mean users are getting a better deal than they otherwise would. This happened in gambling with BetFair and SpreadFair (which is owned by Cantor Fitzgerald and run out of Canary Wharf, a very good friend of mine works there).

Markets are good (at least sometimes).

A more traditional way for people to access capital and services are non profit organisations like credit unions and friendly societies. I recently joined the Leeds City Credit Union and am pleased to say I got a loan off them at 9% APR to consolidate the credit card debt I still have from my time at university, debt free in 5 years (I am going to overpay and try and clear it in 3). You can access cheaper credit if your credit history is pristine, but my time in India at the beginning of the year after quitting teaching made mine a little tarnished and I do not begrudge them the small difference as all profits are given to members as dividends. They provide a much needed service to less well off people banks could not care less about and help them avoid horrendous door-to-door lenders like Provident. “The Provvy” absolutly disgust me; I got a letter through the door with a picture of a christmas tree and an offer of £500 for only £15 per week. This is for 56 weeks though, so you pay them £840, which is an APR of 183.2% which they are not shy (due obviously to regulation) about telling you on their site. My first instinct was to feel sympathy for people for whom this is the only option, but clearly it never is; go to the credit union or start saving in June for Christmas. I am back onto my standard rant about whether people are undereducated or wilfully careless about their own wellbeing in the long-term in favour of instantaneous gratification, which I hope should stop in adulthood. One shit year while you paid off your loan and one shit year while you saved would allow you to spend twice as much each year, to me that is a no-brainer.

Quite link heavy today, may save you some googling.

I gave a talk at the second python user group in leeds on Wednesday. It was called “Anatomy Of A Python Program - How Much Can You Do In 0.1 KLOC?”. It is based on Peter Norvigs Sudoku solver. I had been thinking about doing it for WYLUG, possibly as a second talk after an intro to python. The slides were the same, but instead of looking at cool features of python that make the code so concise we critiqued it a bit and spoke about the style and possible speedups. The slides for the talk is here, but as I did not add any notes, you would be better off just reading Norvigs article (though the Javascript slideshow is cool, press t to toggle views)

The slideshow was made using rst2s5 and I am amazed how well it works. Restructuredtext is from Pythons Docutils and is a simple markup language designed to be readable as plain text, see here for details. Below is part of the code for my presentation

I have blogged about Nexenta before, Solaris kernel with Ubuntu userland. It is great if you are familiar with Debian/Ubuntu and want to play with the features in the solaris kernel (DTrace and ZFS got me excited). I was complaining that the www.gnusolaris.org site was quiet and then saw www.nexenta.com , their commercial offering (looks neat, but I prefer free). Turns out there is some work going on for a full release of Nexenta (GnuSolaris is a cool name but both are registered trademarks apparently, and it should probably be called Gnu/SunOS anyhow), see the Launchpad page.

If you want to experiment, this is your best bet (the homepage only has alpha7 from ages ago on there). I think this is exciting stuff and so does the new Debian project leader .

Come on Nexenta, go 1.0.

In the great tradition of minimising the barrior to only using free software the FSF have announced GNU PDF. This is a fully feartured PDF library for apps to view or create PDFs so you should see an Acrobat killer in your favourite distro sometime.

We use Acrobat in work and don’t get anything like our moneys worth, we basically use it to annotate PDFs that come back from translators and print to PDF. I have used PDFCreator for one of those tasks, but the other is more of a hurdle.

PDF is a pretty good open standard. I would be very glad to see a GPL3 library that fully implements all its features.