Michael's musings

Tue, 30 Dec 2008

VIA Renaissance coach

I am travelling to Basking Ridge, NJ today. I am going VIA to Montreal/Dorval, Delta to JFK, and then Long-Island RailRoad (LIRR) and NJ-Transit to Basking Ridge. This route vs in/out of EWR, because there are no (inexpensive) fares that would let me stay to a reasonable lateness in NJ, while still getting home on "Thursday".

The VIA 12:45pm departure gets me to Dorval for 2:15, in time for my 4pm flight.

The train is a VIA rennaissance coach: I will upload a picture of it. The seats are 2 x 1. So much roomier than the LRC. They are elevated above the ground, and there is an angled space under one's seat that accomodates a medium sized wheelie bag easily. The overhead compartment is miniscule.

The view out the window is very nice.

Complaints: it's not clear that a bag will actually fit under the seat. Some better pictures/diagrams showing this would be good.

The trays pull out from the seat behind you. The seats, do recline, but the seat in front of you really can't get in your way too much... to recline, the seat slides forward, rather than the back going down.

I like that the trays there, it is WAY better than the fold out from the armrest. That also means that the armrest for the side-by-side seats can move up, very nice if two people are trying to sleep snuggled.

But, the tray is NOT strong enough for laptop. It folds out in two sections, and it it does not hold itself straight. So, to get your laptop in the right position, either it is sitting mostly on the second half, bouncing, or it's pushed back, and the keyboard is kinda elevated.

If I had a eeePC or an XO, I guess I could have not folded out the second half at all. The trays are not well labelled either: a grandmother next to me was very unclear how to get it open at all.

There are footrests (optional fortunately). My legs are too long for them. The floor is curved (to make room for the seat in front of mine's luggage slide), so it comes up to meet your feet, which for my leg length is okay, but it doesn't give me much space to adjust my feet. Bending my knee at 90 degrees lifts my leg off the seat.

There is AC on the train, all classes now have it. (That was the major reason I took VIA-1 to Toronto. I have much less reason to do that now that power is everywhere. Wifi is still too expensive for using to Montreal)

Suggestions: Move the AC plug to be higher. Give me a little shelf above the tray area for my drink: that way I can move it up when I need to stand up. Make the tray stronger: just put a piece underneath that can be turned to provide extra support.

It's nice to be higher. I would dispense with the above-head spaces completely, and if I were rebuilding, I'd make it even higher! The seats are nicely lined up with the windows, which they are not on the LRC.

Conclusion: nice ideas, but not built for my size. Not enough instruction on how to use things: pictures would be good.

CBC Qtv

I learnt this morning while listening to Jian Ghomeshi interview Gordon Ramsey, that most (all?) of the interviews are on webcam, and posted to Youtube.

This is brilliant! Cool content that I already paid for, and why not video tape it...

http://www.youtube.com/user/Qtv

Converting DVD into small chunks for Youtube

A friend dropped a multiple-hour DVD at my house, transfered from an 8mm tape. "Can you upload to Youtube?"

I mounted it:

mount /cdrom
cd /cdrom/video_ts

and then I found some space to put the results (an NFS server), and I proceeded to run:

ffmpeg -i vts_01_1.vob -r 16 -ss 0    -t 300 /ssw/morevideos/tim/part1.mp4
ffmpeg -i vts_01_1.vob -r 16 -ss 300  -t 300 /ssw/morevideos/tim/part2.mp4
ffmpeg -i vts_01_1.vob -r 16 -ss 600  -t 300 /ssw/morevideos/tim/part3.mp4
ffmpeg -i vts_01_1.vob -r 16 -ss 9000 -t 300 /ssw/morevideos/tim/part4.mp4

I could write a shell script to do this for me, but I typed it out. ffmpeg said to me:

Input #0, mpeg, from 'vts_01_1.vob':
  Duration: 00:14:34.8, start: 0.227022, bitrate: 9741 kb/s
  Stream #0.0[0x1e0]: Video: mpeg2video, yuv420p, 720x480, 9300 kb/s, 29.97 fps(r)
  Stream #0.1[0x80]: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, stereo, 256 kb/s
Output #0, mp4, to '/ssw/morevideos/tim/part4.mp4':
  Stream #0.0: Video: mpeg4, yuv420p, 720x480, q=2-31, 200 kb/s, 16.00 fps(c)
  Stream #0.1: Audio: aac, 48000 Hz, stereo, 64 kb/s

and the part4.mp4 was actually empty, because the _1.vob file only had about 15 minutes of video in it. I then went on to the _2.vob file.

The results are at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FT1-caLBJ9c

Tue, 11 Nov 2008

Remembrance Day

For some weeks my son Liam has been asking when I leave for the SIMtone office, "Please go too!" He had been to my office once or twice on errands, and we spent a few hours on a holiday monday afternoon with me on a call with some US workers who didn't have that day off. He remembered eating shreddies and playing with his trains.

This morning I took Liam with me on the bus to the office, and he was used to do performance testing of our virtual desktop service: his favorite tools are www.thomasandfriends.com, and www.cbc.ca/kidscbc, which are both flash game sites.

Shortly after 10 my mother (Rona) and my wife (Meaghan) arrived at the office and we left by bus to go downtown for the 11am ceremony. I don't think I've been there for some years, maybe 1992, or maybe not since I was in elementary school.

There was a lot of people, and despite some strategically placed TV monitors, we couldn't see. And then Liam had to pee. And then we couldn't find Meaghan and Rona. And then Liam talked through the 2 minutes of silence.

He's only 3, but he seemed to understand that people died. ("that's bad!") And he concluded that war wasn't a good thing. It was good to be there, even if we couldn't see anything.

When I got home tonight, I caught up on my blog feeds, and came across Monbiot:

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/11/11/lest-we-forget/

But the First World War, which ended 90 years ago today, seemed incomprehensible. The class interests of the men sent to kill each other were the same. While Germany was clearly the aggressor, the outlook of the opposing powers - seeking to expand their colonies and to dominate European trade - was not wildly different. Ugly as the German state was, no one could characterise the war at its outbreak - with Tsarist Russia on the side of the Entente Powers - as a simple struggle between democracy and dictatorship.

George Monbiot is a bit older than me (8 years), so he has perhaps some minor first hand experiences of the Vietnam war that I (born in 1971) do not.

By the time I could understand what was what, the US was leaving Vietnam with it's tail between it's legs, and it was the high-inflation late 1970s, where towns as described by Springsteen's Born in the USA were typical. America the great was a thing of the past. The USA's reputation didn't get better in the 1980s, nor the 1990s, and I do not need to speak of Dubya's legacy. (Remember, I was involved in the crypto-(policy) wars of the 1990s, so I may view the US NSA, CIA, DoJ and executive branch with more cynicism than average)

It wasn't until one winter when I received two books at the same time for Xmas: Thomas Reed's At the Abyss (http://www.amazon.ca/At-Abyss-Insiders-History-Cold/dp/0891418377/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226445513&sr=8-1) and Michael Moore's Dude, Where's my Country (http://www.amazon.ca/Dude-Wheres-Country-Michael-Moore/dp/0446532231/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226445524&sr=8-2)

that I completely understood my disconnect. Like Monbiot with World War I (which I think of being certainly being the War to End All Wars. He was the last time we had a war that was quite clearly just about me vs you. i.e. a gentleman's war. It wasn't about anything. It wasn't idological, it was just about resources and money), I just couldn't understand Vietnam: why did the Americans go there, why couldn't they just leave, and why didn't they understand where the war really was.

Thomas Reed's book tells the glass-half-full version: it is amazing that we were smart enough not set off a nuclear war. The military knew what to do in Vietnam, but wasn't allowed to do so by the politicians who were afraid of WWIII.

Yet, as far as I can tell, the military were given carte blanch in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the problem can't be solved with soldiers.

Reading Thomas Reed and Michael Moore at the same time (I keep books in different rooms) was very much a difficult, but educationally experience. Thomas, the patriot born too early and too late to fight in any war gave me a glimpse of the America he knew: America the Great. Moore, a man of my generation, and a patriot, remembers just enough of that America to ask, "where did it go?"

Conclusions... blog entries don't need conclusions, do they?

Wed, 05 Nov 2008

Google Chromium from X-over office

I tried the codeweavers (authors of the X-over office) version of chromium on my debian etch machine. It is at:

http://media.codeweavers.com/pub/crossover/chromium/cxchromium_0.9.0-1_i386.deb

and I installed it with dpkg -i. It showed up in my GNOME-panel, and it appears to run {{{ /opt/cxchromium/bin/wine c:/chromium/chrome.exe --no-sandbox --in-process-plugins }}}

I'm guessing that they did not recompile it under wine with libraries. I wish that they had. There are instructions for installing chrome with wine, but they don't work on debian etch (you need a newer wine, and some newer libraries).

The biggest problem seems to be that many of the drop-down menus do not wait for the cursor to move --- that is, if you are in google maps, and you go to the "By car/Transit/Walking" menu, that it doesn't wait for you to pick the item you want. You have to hold you mouse down to change the combo box.

The other problems are that the window can not be resized, and the bits all kinda look a bit squashed.

I wish I had time to work on the Linux port myself.

Mordor brightens

Robert Weissman writes in corp-focus that:

Yes, the skies over Mordor are now brightening.*

There is an almost palpable, physical sense of relief with the confirmation that the end of the Bush era is at hand.

And the election of an African American to the highest office in the land is an act of racial redemption that was almost unimaginable two years ago.

http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/corp-focus/2008/000303.html

I felt it too. I watched bits and pieces (some of it at Doug Yuill's house with a bunch of progress/ogwifi people), and some later on at home.

I felt myself breath easier. Robert Weissman quotes Robert Kuttner

In his book Obama's Challenge, economic journalist Robert Kuttner rightfully argues that the choice for Obama is to be bold or to fail.

I sure hope that the "infrastructure" focus is on sustainable infrastructure. I know that Robert Weissman gets that, but will the US Senate?

Joe Bidden is a regular Amtrak user. What is the official residence of the VP? Does he have one? Will he continue to travel from Delaware by Amtrak? Wouldn't that be cool... "Air Force 2" --- is a train.

Thu, 04 Sep 2008

Foxy Fixtures in Ruby

Not obvious to me at first is that Foxy Fixtures in RoR, where you can specify a foreign key relationship by name, as in:

   ### in pirates.yml

   reginald:
     name: Reginald the Pirate
     monkey: george

   ### in monkeys.yml

   george:
     name: George the Monkey
     pirate: reginald

Depends upon the fact that you didn't include id: in the fixtures. That is, RoR is not looking into the pirates.yml file to find the "reginald" fixture, and then inserting the "id" from it in.

Rather, it's applying a hash of the string "reginald" to get the id, and so the id: of reginald had better be derived in the same way.

Fri, 08 Aug 2008

Blue Skies parking

Last weekend was the 35th Blue Skies Music Festival. We went on Saturday for the day. I've been to this event since I was about 16 (yes, with my mom!). I'm 37 now. It's a great place, and I was very excited for Liam, my 3 year old, to visit.

It's his 3rd trip (we didn't go when he was 2 months old), and this time was a bit familliar for him. He'll remember it.

It was very rainy. We arrived at noon, just before the torrential rain. Oh well. That's life. It cleared up between 3pm and 10pm, enough to enjoy ourselves.

What I do not enjoy is driving to Blue Skies. As a non-car owner, we have either rented cars, or gone with people who had them. This time we took a vrtucar. We stayed in Perth at a B&B on Saturday night, which involves 30 minutes of driving before we can sleep.

You can camp there, but it can be hard to get camping tickets. Camping involves bringing more stuff, which, alas, really means more/larger vehicles.

This year, they parked more of the weekend people on the road, and the result was a 2km long row of cars parked on the side of the road. Some people parked on the right-hand side as well, which was really bad idea. Walking down the road, on the cloudy night at 10pm, to fetch the car, was a bit scary: dark (except for my "shaker" flashlight, and my freeswan keychain), except when a car came at you, at which point one was blind.

But, I kept wondering: why do I have to drive at all. Why do we have to have so many cars HERE?

It is time to organize a bus to Blue Skies.

Years ago, I wanted to cycle all the way there (strong cyclists can do it in a day from Ottawa, no problem. Go Friday, come back Monday). I wanted someone to take my stuff, however.

A bus might be able to take people, stuff, and stuff for cyclists.

Best would be to have several bus loads of people. If the buses are available, do not drive them back, but rather, park them there. The last bus could return, however, and take the drivers of the other buses back home.

Thu, 07 Aug 2008

Bill C-61 and tcpdump -- my concerns

I am concerned that Bill C-61 will make possession of tcpdump, (i.e. having it installed on your computer), illegal.

Here is the thing: despite ample evidence that the TV "scramblers" were easily defeated, satellite TV operators have never actually deployed much security other than security-by-obscurity.

Even the "modern" digital systems, where you need to use a phone line to get pay-per-view, which could TRIVIALLY use public key cryptography to provide security, they do not use such systems.

Instead, they have relied upon ligitation to prevent "theft"

look at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTA_Receiver

"Unlike traditional methods of pirate decryption that involve altered smart cards used with satellite receivers manufactured and distributed by the provider, piracy involving FTA receivers require only an update to the receiver's firmware."

"Periodically, the provider will change the processes in which encryption information is sent. "

But, if they are sending the encryption keys inline, then there is no real security. It might as well just be encoded in a complex way

The Radiocommunications act says:

(http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/ShowFullDoc/cs/R-2///en)

OFFENCES AND PUNISHMENT
Prohibitions
9. (1) No person shall
(a) knowingly send, transmit or cause to be sent or transmitted any
    false or fraudulent distress signal, message, call or radiogram of
    any kind;
(b) without lawful excuse, interfere with or obstruct any
    radiocommunication;
(c) decode an encrypted subscription programming signal or encrypted
    network feed otherwise than under and in accordance with an
    authorization from the lawful distributor of the signal or feed;
(d) operate a radio apparatus so as to receive an encrypted subscription
    programming signal or encrypted network feed that has been decoded
    in contravention of paragraph (c); or
(e) retransmit to the public an encrypted subscription programming
    signal or encrypted network feed that has been decoded in
    contravention of paragraph (c).

but the act does not define encryption. As the Supreme Court found that satellite systems were in fact "encrypted", and therefore protected (cf: http://scc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/2002/2002scc42/2002scc42.html)

that tells me, that if I decode (not just "decrypt" as cryptographers would think) a signal, then I may be enfringing copyright.

That's okay so far, as it's been the act of infringing that was illegal, so as long as I do not "decrypt" the wrong signals, then I'm okay.

But, C-61 makes possession of such tools illegal.

Note that tcpdump/wireshark not only decodes dozens of protocols (including some which have never had published specifications), but it also, provided with the keys, will decrypt IPsec ESP (VPN) packets.

I even wrote the ESP code --- because I needed it to debug VPN code. It's still very secure, because I have to provide the keys "out-of-band", but there are dozens of protocols which is not secure.

For instance, all of the emails that you send, web pages that are communicated between my server and your computer (including this one) have an implicit copyright. If I look at them transitting the internet, I may be violating your copyright! (Am I violating your privacy? Did you have an expectation of privacy? I'm not sure.)

references: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_decryption http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTA_Receiver http://www3.sympatico.ca/dylan.reid/satellitetv.html http://scc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/2002/2002scc42/2002scc42.html http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/ShowFullDoc/cs/R-2///en

Hey Big-Daddy's: Blackened Catfish should be black

On Sunday night, we went out for dinner. We were divided between Indian and Cajun. Liam decided he wanted catfish, so to Big Daddy's Crab Shack we went. We don't visit Fisher/Baseline much, as it's a pain, but we still had our Vrtucar from the Blue Skies trip.

Liam mis-behaved, and went to sleep on me instead of eating, but that's a different storey.

My fish arrived. It was white. At first, I didn't pay attention, too concerned about keeping Liam awake. I cut it up with my fork, and then was about to eat it when I looked carefully and noticed... it's not black. It doesn't even look like it's been near a pan!

I finally called our waiter over, and complained. He took it back. I couldn't see the kitchen, but Meaghan could, and she said the cook came out to look at us. My fish was returned to me, with some red-spice on it. Allspice or something.

We should have gotten up and left at that point, but Liam was fast asleep and I was hungry, so I ate it.

I question whether this fish was cooked, or just defrosted.

But, we certainly will not be returning to Big Daddy's Crab Shack.

Fri, 01 Aug 2008

Strollers on buses (letter to CBC all-in-a-day)

From: Michael Richardson <mcr@sandelman.ottawa.on.ca>
To: allinday@cbc.ca
Subject: strollers on buses
X-Mailer: MH-E 7.82; nmh 1.1; XEmacs 21.4 (patch 19)
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 16:52:04 -0400
Sender: mcr@marajade.sandelman.ca

I am the father of a 3 year-old. I depend upon transit. I expect to have more children.

I have definitely seen strollers that are too big, but I have also seen far too many patrons, including older people, who will not move to get out of the way. I think is the because most of the bus operators do not give the older people (or the people with strollers) enough time to sit down.

I have both large (running stroller, yes a Chariot Cheetah) and smaller ones, including an umbrella stroller that we bought for $10, and has over 20,000km of travel on it (much of it in a luggage hold)

With a three-year old I do not need a stroller anymore, fortunately.

I am definitely in favour of limiting the size of strollers on buses. I definitely would like that. It would make my life easier, as it would make more room for more babies!

I am also in favour of limiting who can bring their walker on the bus, and where they can sit, and how big the walkers can be.

The fold-down triple seats need to be replaced: they should have a a two-seat and one-seat fold down, so that I can fold up two seats and sit next to my smaller stroller. Otherwise, I take up FOUR seats.

There is a vertical bar on many buses which keep the motorized wheel chairs from being able to get off the bus easily, causing those patrons to RUN OVER other patrons feet.

Many of the people who have to "move" to keep their feet safe are themselves older people.

Finally, on articulated buses, there are now seats in the articulation. In rush hour, we do not need 4 useless seats, we need standing room. Outside of rush hour, we have lots of seats.

They need to be removed so that there is space for luggage and people to stand, and yes. STROLLERS.

Mon, 23 Jun 2008

mongrel_cluster vs cap:deploy

Many people (including me), get:

Couldn't find any pid file in '/data/deploy/cortland/releases/20080623202133/tmp/pids' matching 'dispatch.[0-9]*.pid'

This is because you've (correctly) started your mongrel with mongrel_cluster, and it does not create the PIDs with the same name.

To fix this, change your mongrel_cluster.yaml file to say: pid_file: tmp/pids/dispatch.pid