Julian's Blog

Step 1 - Cut a hole in a box

Swift Rock compilation

Edgy Eft released last week.. March of the wooden soldiers

Ubuntu 6.10 "Edgy Eft" was officially released last week. There's also a quick overview (release notes) with the main new features and screenshots. Most notably is the new init system, Upstart.

The local Hawaiian download mirror is provided by HOSEF.

Personally, I prefer Fedora but I did use Ubuntu for a while and it's definitely the distribution I recommend to people.

Ubuntu 7.04 "Feisty Fawn" will be released in April next year.

Hawaii shaken by an earthquake yesterday

We had an earthquake yesterday that hit around 7am, Sunday morning.

It went for around 20 seconds or so. I was in sleepy mode and I didn't think it was going to be a big quake so I didn't bother moving out of bed.

Maybe if it shook harder right at the start then I would have done something.

In Australia, I only felt one earthquake. Nothing much happens in Australia. It was only a really small one that lasted like 1 second where I saw the room move left.

Earlier this year in Hawaii, I felt one similar so when the quake yesterday came around, I thought nothing of it. But then it kept going.

15 or so minutes later there was a similar sized aftershock and that took out the power.

Power was out in my area of the island from around 7:30am and only came on late at night at 11:30pm. It was kind of disappointing as the radio reports said they expected all the power on the island to be back on by early evening.

Throughout the power-outage, LavaNet's internet service stayed online as we have backup power and run generator tests once a month.

Our customers in the outer islands (who didn't have power outages) were still able to use their internet service.

When power came back I checked to see if I had internet connectivity at home. Mostly to check the news. Disappointment as the cable light blinked constantly showing a lack of connection from Oceanic's cable service... And they expect us to use their digital phone service in cases of emergencies?

It made me realize that it's pretty important to have a standard phone service in Hawaii. And it helps to have an ISP which is dedicated enough to keep their servers up and running, providing uninterrupted service during a major natural disaster.

What becomes of the The Departed

A saw The Departed with my wife on Saturday.

They didn't really promote this movie at all even though it was a Scorsese movie with a big cast.

I did see a short trailer for it on the television but just thought it was another gangster movie. But then my wife told me it was THE remake of the Hong Kong movie Infernal Affairs. All I knew long ago was that Brad Pitt had bought the rights to the movie but I didn't know it had already been made.

It's a really good movie. Violent, which I like. Lots of blam blam. Blam. Blam Blam Blam.

Having seen the Hong Kong version, I pretty much knew the outcome to the set pieces but there's much more character development. The original is a lot more subtle in the way the 'gangsterisms' and double talk are played out.

There's a part in the original where a criminal 'phones home' to warn his homies which went over my head at the time but made more sense having watched The Departed.

Stars of night turned deep to dust

Those who do not understand UNIX...

Some pics from the Slack Key Guitar Festival 2006

Road test. Failed. OK, that was annoying... Driving into a brick wall.

Yesterday I took a Hawaii road test. I'd already passed the written test a couple of months ago.

I was considering going down to the testing center on the weekend and driving around the side streets to see how it was like. It probably would have been a waste of time because I failed on 3 aspects.

Speed. "You actually sped up while driving on residential roads."

Head checks. There's a bike lane, probably the only one on Oahu. It's hardly even noticeable before you indicate to turn right.

Stopping before the stop lines. "You're not stopping for other cars but you're stopping for pedestrians." I didn't want to explain that I already checked for pedestrians.

There was this extra gotcha where apparently there's this sign where you need to slow down to 10 miles before turning right.

So I'll need to wait a week before I can take another driving test.

Clickety clack, clickety clack

Who killed the electric car?

This looks like an interesting documentary that is coming out this year. Look out for it.

Hawaii needs to do more recycling and to be more environmentally friendly. Maybe people don't realize that we live on a very small island and where the rubbish (and hazardous waste) actually goes.

In my local district (back in Oz), we had a weekly rubbish collection in a bin that looked like this:

The fortnighly recycling bin is twice the size and looks like this. There's a lot of items that could go in there:

Images from here and here.

Tim Berners-Lee "Net Neutrality: This is serious"

Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web.

He writes in a recent blog post:

When I invented the Web, I didn't have to ask anyone's permission. Now, hundreds of millions of people are using it freely. I am worried that that is going end in the USA.

Knee deep in the hoopla

The basis of the internet is that it is not a 'pay per play' medium. A 5 person start up can compete with a billion dollar company on a level playing field.

It's what makes the internet great and bases on meritocracy. If you don't like a certain search engine, use another one.

The political buzz word for it is Net Neutrality. "With Net Neutrality, the network's only job is to move data — not choose which data to privilege with higher quality service."

Don't let the larger internet providers mess with the internet. They want to own it. Save the internet. We built this city.

It's the same way with Telecommunications providers. The larger Interner providers are spending millions lobbying congress to break Net Neutrality. The top executives get bonuses whenever a law is passed which is in their favor.

Then there's nothing left to threaten with, is there?

When you open up and expose the inner workings of a machine. What do you reveal?

Some fear that opening up, exposes the inner workings of the machine. That weak spots are detected.

More so the fear is that you are considered irrelevant. That no is talking about you and that no one cares.

Better to have no facade. Less paranoia. Gets things happening.