David Morris – brassedoff.net

Ok, so last week I was in Paris for a couple of days on business – all that way for a meeting, and the flights cost around half what it would cost to fly to the US. Supply and demand I guess.

On the way from the airport (CdeG) to the office, we swung past the Palace of Versailles. On the odd occasions I’ve been to Paris before, it’s been on business and dark, and on the major roads, so I’ve never had a chance to see any of the touristy bits. This photo is what’s known in geographing circles as a “drive-by bagging”. Basically, you stick the camera out of the window of a speeding car. Never the less, Versailles it is.

Well, that’s one of the subjects out of the way. What about Cisco?

That refers to our new Cisco 877 router that’s powering the internet access at chez Morris.

In an effort to get better stability, potentially faster access (although we run at 2Mbits/s and I’m mostly very happy at that speed), we were getting poor signal to noise ratios with the Linux-based firewall (IPCop) box, possibly due to the Conexant ADSL card. As I needed something which would support VPN tunnels back to work, I bit the bullet. There’s no doubting a £50 box would do the job for most households, but for what I wanted, the 877 fitted the bill. It also (supposedly – I’ve not tried that bit yet) supports incoming VPN connections, so I can connect straight to home when I’m out on the road. It’s smaller than the old PC I was using as a firewall, and presumably uses less energy. There are also no moving parts, so it’s quieter in the study as a result. I temporarily incurred the wrath of Mrs Woolforbrains who accused me of having “broken the internet” as at the time, it truly was lying all over our study floor.
Finally Beryl. Who’s she?

Well, over the weekend, I upgraded the main Linux server to OpenSuSE10.2. I’ve been running it on my Dell 410 laptop for a couple of weeks with no real problems – in fact there are more working features now on the Dell, including suspend to RAM which didn’t work on 10.0

Now I’ve got it on the server, whilst I was picking up my new 877 router from my friends at Oxspring networks (before anyone asks, I paid probably a bit over the odds for the router compared with what I could have picked it up for from eBuyer, so there’s no evidence of impropriety), Colin was showing me Beryl. It’s a new compositing window manager for X. It’s flashy, cool and probably out Vistas Vista’s new Aero interface. You can do cool things like this with multiple desktops:

Looks good, doesn’t it?

Here I am, sat in a hotel restaurant eating breakfast just outside Versaille in Paris.

I’m not over keen on France, but the Eiffel Tower last night, lit with thousands of little sparkley lights looked spectacular.

The meal in a typical French restaurant last night was beautiful as well. I had a rare rump steak – the rest of my colleagues had slow cooked lamb shoulder.

Home tonight – a whistle-stop trip, this one!

Well I never. Who would have thought? I wonder how much money it cost to determine that 50% of users don’t change the default passwords on home networking equipment?

I refer to this article spotted on the BBC technology pages yesterday.

Ok, they wenty a bit further than I did, suggesting that a nicely crafted bit of Javascript could be used to hack into someone’s router and change passwords or redirect them to a malicious site, but it’s hardly ground-breaking, is it? I’ve just had a trawl through earlier postings on here – I thought I’d commented about this before, but can’t find the post – I probably wrongly categorised it if I did write about it. Never mind… I’ll regurgitate it now…

From my sofa in Killamarsh, I can see five wireless networks including my own.

At least two of these are unprotected. No security at all on the network and they run DHCP servers, so all anyone needs to do is associate with them for a free session. At least one hasn’t changed the default router password. I know – I’ve been logged on it their router. I don’t need a carefully crafted bit of Javascript. Ok, I have to be in range of their access point, but do you see what I’m getting at?

Obviously, if you can get a session on their LAN, you can see anything else that’s on there. This includes desktops and laptops, and if they’ve got more than one PC, the chances are that they share files. Files which may contain more than they bargained for. Personal details. Bank account information for instance.

If you’re not savvy enough to put some security on your wireless LAN, why should you be equally savvy enough to realise you’ve got a security hole elsewhere on your network and plug it?

I’ve got WEP and MAC filtering on mine, so even if you do work out the WEP key, you’ll still have to spoof a MAC address. It’s not impossible, but the likelihood of someone doing it whilst driving up the road is unlikely.

Wise up, people.

I’ve spent the day in Birmingham today. To quote Mike Harding (no reflection on the people in the Birmingham office, it’s just that I’ve been listening to the Rochdale Cowboy recently) “Birmingham: three million people with a speech impediment”.

So, the US last week, Birmingham today, and guess what? Yes, I’m on my travels again next week: on Wednesday, I’m off to Paris for a meeting, back on Thursday.

In an effort to be green, I priced up Eurostar for the trip compared with flying to Paris CdeG from Manchester. No comparison. One way on Eurostar is nearly the same as the return trip by plane. By the time you’ve factored in the cost of the return train fare from Sheffield to London St Pancras, it’s over £100 more – significantly more.

Sometimes, although you want to be green, it’s difficult.

At least now we’ve got a green dustbin though… somewhere to put the cardboard from all those Amazon and eBuyer boxes :-)

Speaking of which, I’ve ordered a digital photo frame for the office from eBuyer. £40 or there abouts. not the highest resolution; 16:9 format and just over 400px wide, but it will do… I’ll let you know what it looks like after the weekend (assuming in comes in time for Saturday).

TTFN, and if you get chance, stop by Anna’s blog to see how she got on in her new job (link on the right).

I had the long-awaited meeting tonight with Councillor Bob Harper and Paul Harding, both from Killamarsh Parish Counil regarding the state of the Parish Council’s web presence (which includes www.killamarsh.com for those who haven’t been here before). Without banging on all night about it, they want me to work with them to redress the issues regarding the above site. We chatted about ways of moving forward and it appears that Bob, Paul and myself are all “singing off the same hymn sheet” with respect to what we think the web site should be used for.

It turns out, again on a positive note, that Bob owns the domain on behalf of the Council and has the authentication details needed to upload changes etc. The Council are also prepared to meet all expenses incurred as a result of running the site. I’ve made it clear I’m not looking to make anything out of the venture. All I want to do is make sure Killamarsh is properly represented. Bob and Paul are going to put an agenda item to the next Council meeting in early March after which I should get the official go-ahead to sort something out.

On a second front, after the meeting with Bob and Paul, I popped in to introduce myself to the Killamarsh Tenants And Residents Association (TARA). I’ve been corresponding with a District Council officer who was looking to get a little bit of publicity for TARA through the auspices of the Killamarsh Forum (which I administer) and seeing as I was in the building, it seemed opportune to stick my head around the door of their meeting. I am, after all, a resident!

As a result of this, I’ve changed the format of the TARA section on the forum to create an area which they can ultimately use to upload meeting announcements etc. I suspect my contact at the District Council may also be putting someone else in touch with me regarding this. It should also drum up some publicity for the forum as I’ve left them URL’s, email addresses etc.

Let’s see what happens, eh?

…and glad to be there! The flight back was fairly uneventful. I managed to get a complete row to myself on the trip home and crashed out for a few hours, so for once, I did actually manage to sleep. Consequently, I actually saw some of Saturday at home!

I was contacted last week by someone to let me know they’d used one of my Geograph images on a local web site which I’m quite pleased about, especially as they’d gone to the lengths of properly crediting the image. Bonus points all around!

I’ve just been through the database of spam comments and identified where most of the tramadol and phenterimine (?) adverts are coming from. You don’t get to see them, but there’s 100’s a day. Askismet catches them all, but I’d rather not have to delete them at all. Consequently, I’m going to edit the Apache configs on this web server and deny those IP addresses. For the record, these are currently:

72.52.143.186
72.3.253.183
72.249.33.179
69.64.51.47
67.159.5.254
209.126.148.50

I suspect they’re all open proxies, not that it really matters. What it does mean is that the post (spam) is actually coming from somewhere else other than that IP address or server. The couple I’ve just looked at servers in the US, but there’s nothing necessarily significant about that. The abuse itself could be coming from China, Nigeria, the UK, the US…

I’m still here, I’m still inthe good ol’ U S of A.

It’s cold here, but it’s a dry cold, not the miserable damp cold we tend to get at home. It’s snowed back home as well. It snowed here last week, but there’s been nothing since.

I really hope that the snow doesn’t cause us any problems when it comes to getting home. The lasst thing I want is to get stranded here, or even worse, in Philadelphia.

Worse, the only sport I’ve seen on the TV this week has been the Superbowel and basketball. The former was interesting; you can have the latter. Team A scores. Everyone runs up to the other end of the court. Team B scores. Everyone runs up to the other end of the court. Team A scores…

It only ever seems to get interesting in the last five minutes or so when someone misses.

We ha d asuperb meal last night at one of the better local restaurants – the Bonefish Grill. I’d not been there prior to my last visit here, and I”d been missing out on a treat. It’s a seafood restaurant as its name suggests. We had a couple of starters between us – the signature Bang Bang shrimp and deep fried calamari. JP had never had calamari before. For the main course, I had tuna, JP had Mahi mahi in a cheese sauce. Bothj were superb.

Straight after work tonight, I think we’re going to South Park Mall again. JP has some trainers to exchange for someone at work and forgot to take them on Sunday. They’re the wrong size – she apparently tried some on that were UK size five  and when the assistant came back with a boxed pair, they were US size five, and guess what? Yes. they are different sizes.

I’ve found out how to scare an American. I drove when we out out to lunch today. I don’t think they were that comfortable, and I had three back seat drivers.

I’ve also found out some of the local “Highway Code”.

• Stop at stop signs, despite what the locals do, in case the local police are parked behind the next bush
• You can turn right on a red light in North Carolina (I always end up typing Caroline instead of Carolina then going back with the backspace key!), but don’t try it in South Carolina unless you want a ticket

• Objects in the rear view mirror appear further away than the really are

(I only included the last one because it says it on the mirror and every time I see it, it reminds me of a Meat Loaf song!)

(If I make reference to travelling with someone, it’s because one of the guys that works for me – Jon-Paul Williams – is travelling with me this trip. If you look for an earlier post on here about fishing – the last fishing post, JP’s commented on that).

As I write this, we’re somewhere over the Atlantic. We’re also over two hours behind where we shoudl be. Talk about a catalogue of c***ups. As we got closer to Manchester in the taxi, I mentioned to Steve (the taxi driver) that the fog was building. “No problem” he said, “it’s not foggy enough to cause a delay”. I thought about those words after we boarded the plane (on time) and the pilot informed us that due to adverse weather conditions, the airport was operating with a single runway (for safety reasons I presume) and it would be another 50 minutes or so before we could take off. After about 30 minutes, it was still 45 minutes before we could push back, then the taxi would take around another 40 minutes.Then, an appeal came over the intercom for a doctor or medical person. There was some frantic action up the front of the plane; emergency medical equipment disappeared up front and some guy in a turban, presumably a medical person, disappeared up the front, returning after the panic. It turns out that a member of the cabin crew had suffered an allergic reaction to something (the pilot informed us later) but as the plane carried a “spare” member of cabin crew, they were still legal to set off. Phew.

So, two hours after our scheduled departure time, we were off the ground. The only concern now is whether we’ll make our connection at Philadelphia. If we hit the times the pilot reckons, we should be OK. If not, we’re on for a rescheduled flight down to Charlotte from Philly.

Anna: did you say you wish you were on this trip?

(after the event, here’s what a fog-bound Manchester airport looks like)

…time passes…

Well, immigration at Philly was much better that the same experience at Newark, although the queues were horrendous. Queues are something you’ve got to expect with international travel now though I suppose. We were two hours late by the time we’d cleared immigration and customs. In fact, our connecting flight was probably taking off as we were on final approach to Philly.

Despite having had conversations with several people who’d had reservations about US Airways’ customer service, we had no problem. They got us booked on to a different connecting flight with the minimum of fuss and we arrived in Charloote slighthly travel weary, but at least we got there in one piece. I should have added earlier that travelling on a A330 (or was it a A320) from the UK rather than a 757 is infinitely better.

When we wnet to pick up the hire car (another pleasant experience and better than previous thanks to the guy on the Avis rental desk – he had a sense of humour!), we were told that there were no “sub-compact” cars available. A sub-compact equates to something about the size of an Astra or a Focus. For an extra $30 per day, we could upgrade to a “full sized car” (probably something with a 19 litre engine that did 2 miles to the gallon and needed binoculars to see the dashboard from the back seat) or a “minivan” for the same price. We opted for the minivan, thinking it would be about the same size as Mrs Woolforbrain’s Picasso. It’s actally a seven or eight seater more like a Renault Espace.

It’s also got a column gear shift (though fortunately it’s automatic). So, another first for me. I’ve never drived anything that didn’t have a gearstick generally in the floor area (I know the Picasso has the gear stiock coming out of the dash, but it feels like it’s floor mounted).

We got lost as well, due in no small part to the fact I’ve never made the journey from the airport in the dark, and we were were both tired. A bit of good map reading from JP got us out of that hole though (I’m glad I bought that detailed map last trip!).

Once we’d checked in to the hotel, we got freshened up and went out to get something to eat. We walked past Starz – the sports bar next door to the hotel but it was busy. Pecadilos – the “deli bar” at the end of the road was fairly quiet though and we got a table there. Whilst we were deciding what to eat, we ordered some hot wings and a pitcher of Bud. The pitcher of Bud was $4.99 (about £2.50) and the wings the same for 12 – and they were absolutely gorgeous. We both followed up with burgers. in the end, the beer, wings and burgers for the two of us cost £17… not a bad price. The USD / UKP exchange rate is very in our favour at the moment. I can see that there will be less US people holidaying in the UK this year because of it. the UK isn’t particularly cheap at the best of times, and with the exchange rate doing what it is, it’s even less attractive.

Anyway, I think that’s enought for today. We’ve had breakfast and the sun’s shining (although it’s around 0′C), so it’s probably time to go for a little drive around. We’re going up to South Park mall later.

…just remembered something…

I’ve had several accusations that the last posting about my ADSL woes is the most unintelligable blog posting ever. Do I apologise? Not on your nelly!!

Akismet caught all last night’s spam. Why didn’t I think of this earlier?!

On the negative side, our ADSL connection still looks dodgy. The signal to noise ratio is borderline for a decent connection (you’re looking at the ‘Noise Margin’ figure – high is good):

Conexant AccessRunner PCI ADSL Modem Adapter Status
---------------------------------------------------

ADSL Line Connected
Line Rates:   Receive 2272 kbps     Transmit 288 kbps

ADSL Modulation: T1.413  Issue 2

ATM Virtual Channel IDs: VPI: 0   VCI: 38

Physical Layer Stats:      Receive                   Transmit
Noise Margin        6.15/ -1.05: 142           127.99/127.99:   0
Attenuation              45.23                     29.50
Power                                                -38

ATM Link Stats:      Receive           Transmit
Bytes             305086550          172532119
Cells               5756350            3255323
Management Cells          0                  0
CLP=0 Cells         5756350                  0
CLP=1 Cells               0            3255323
HEC Errors                0
Alignment Errors          0
Unroutable Cells        308

AAL Link Stats:          Receive           Transmit
Good Bytes            268827984          143793888
Good Frames              304492             263933
Discarded Bytes         7379616
Discarded Frames           6647
CRC Errors                 6586
Invalid Length Errors        61
Timeout Errors                0

ATM Channel Stats:       Receive           Transmit VPI: 0 VCI: 38
Bytes                    380116             666634
Cells                      7172              12578
Mgmt Cells                    0                  0
CLP=0 Cells                7172                  0
CLP=1 Cells                   0              12578
HEC Errors                    0
Alignment Errors              0
Unroutable Cells              0

AAL5 Channel Stats:      Receive           Transmit VPI: 0 VCI: 38
Good Bytes               300960             565344
Good Frames                 710                886
Discarded Bytes           42720
Discarded Frames            107
CRC Errors                  107
Invalid Length Errors         0
Timeout Errors                0

Driver version - 6.1.2.007-CLN (20041001)
EE PROM Mac Address 00.30.cd.00.01.00

In fact, I just saw it drop below 6 which is absolutely pathetic. I think I’ll be getting back on to F9 to rattle BT again… right now…

I’ve just switched Akismet on on brassedoff.net. Hopefully, that will further reduce the spam. I’ve switched trackbacks back on again so I can see what happens.

Mrs Woolforbrains has had a giveaway of wool for her 100th valid commenter (I was banned from entering).

I’ve also found out how to resize a jpg image in pure java, so next week whilst I’m away, I might add that into Juppy. I can release a full working version of that then with the nice look and feel, icons etc.

I had my annual appraisal today as well. No surprises. I still need to improve my dealings with other people. This time my boss quoted me from last year: “I don’t suffer fools gladly”. I prefer to think of it along the lines of “I’ll tell or show you once how to do something. If you get it wrong, I’ll tell or show you again. If you continue to get it wrong, don’t bug me again; you should have been watching”. The other thing that gets my goat is the “PC-literate people” that don’t know how to do the basic things with a PC, like create a desktop icon or access something from the start menu if it isn’t on their desktop.

Rant over. Time for tea.