The Open Rights Group are a UK based organisation fighting for our civil liberties in the digital age. DRM, e-voting, copyright term extensions, FOI, net neutrality, privacy, RIPA, creative commons etc.etc.etc.etc.etc. They’re like an English EFF.

They have a tiny staff and many other volunteers who are extremely dedicated to the cause and are working very hard for our freedoms.  They are funded entirely by donations which pays for the staff, an office and expenses of running campaigns and pestering politicians.  They’re currently hoping to push their income up so things are more sustainable.

So, please sign up and give them some money every month. Anything from £5 upwards would be super. If you use computers for pretty much anything, it will make your life better - or at least prevent it getting any worse.

All the fastcgi_param lines up to PATH_INFO are pretty generic and I have them in a separate include file that I pull in for any Fastcgi stanza.

  if ($uri ~ ^/wiki(.*)?) {
    set $wiki_url $1;
  }
  location /wiki {
      fastcgi_param  GATEWAY_INTERFACE  CGI/1.1;
      fastcgi_param  SERVER_SOFTWARE    nginx;
      fastcgi_param  QUERY_STRING       $query_string;
      fastcgi_param  REQUEST_METHOD     $request_method;
      fastcgi_param  CONTENT_TYPE       $content_type;
      fastcgi_param  CONTENT_LENGTH     $content_length;
      fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME    $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
      fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_NAME        $fastcgi_script_name;
      fastcgi_param  REQUEST_URI        $request_uri;
      fastcgi_param  DOCUMENT_URI       $document_uri;
      fastcgi_param  DOCUMENT_ROOT      $document_root;
      fastcgi_param  SERVER_PROTOCOL    $server_protocol;
      fastcgi_param  REMOTE_ADDR        $remote_addr;
      fastcgi_param  REMOTE_PORT        $remote_port;
      fastcgi_param  SERVER_ADDR        $server_addr;
      fastcgi_param  SERVER_PORT        $server_port;
      fastcgi_param  SERVER_NAME        $server_name;

      fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $wiki_url;
      fastcgi_param SCRIPT_NAME /wiki;
      if (!-f $request_filename) {
        fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9005;
      }
  }

Now, this filesystem largely works, there is just a small part of it that causes problems when accessed. A rebuild could make things a lot worse, or it might just solve my problem (note: my problem appears NOT to be due to hardware failure. rebuilding the tree of a Reiser filesystem on hardware that has badsectors or whatever is VERY likely to make things worse. don’t do it).

So, I’m currently using the filesystem and avoiding the broken bit.  I need to know if one: how long a rebuild is going to take, so I can plan the downtime and two: will it complete sucessfully or will the world fall on my head.

LVM snapshots can help here and my filesystem in on a LVM logical volume.  The idea is to take a snapshot of the filesystem and run the rebuild on the snapshot.  Then you can decide whether you want to take the live filesystem down to rebuild that, or maybe you decide to update your backups best you can and start a new filesystem from scratch.

1. create the snapshot: lvcreate -s -L 5G -n home-080605 /dev/myvg/home
2. run the rebuild: time reiserfsck –rebuild-tree -y /dev/myvg/home-080605
3. note the time it took
4. mount the snapshot somewhere: mount /dev/myvg/home-080605 /mnt/home-rebuilt
5. poke around a bit, make sure things are worse off (in my case, I took a file listing of live and snapshot filesystems and ran it through diff - nothing guaranteed, but provides some clues :)

The 5G is how much data can change from the time of the snapshot before LVM drops it.  This depends on how many changes the rebuild is going to make and how many changes to the original filesystem are made whilst you’re working (assuming it’s still in use like in this case)

In my case, the output of the rebuild command showed that just the known corrupted files had been affected, which was nice.  So now you can arrange the downtime and do the real rebuild. Feel free to take another snapshot before running the real rebuild, then if something does happen to go terribly wrong, you can recover to at least where you started.

Remember to remove the snapshots when you’re done: lvremove /dev/myvg/home-080605

I registered a dedicated twitter account for our irc channel and had it follow everyone in the channel who has a Twitter account.  When they twit, we get an announcement within 90 seconds:

<chanbot> via twitter, johnleach is testing his rbot plugin a bit more (23 seconds ago via web)


The plugin is available here and is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2, just like rbot.

Just drop it in your .rbot/plugins dir, rescan, then configure twitter_relay.username and twitter_relay.channels and off you go.  It will check the rss feed every 5 minutes by default, but that can go as low as around 60 seconds if you set twitter_relay.sleep.

Only tested with the latest development snapshot of rbot, but it will probably work with older versions.

This is a simple little way to change all the urls in the db as you clone it:

mysqldump -h live_db_host -u user -pmypass live_db | sed -e '{s/www.example.com/staging.example.com/g}' | mysql -h staging_db_host -u user -pmypass staging_db

Though depending on your MySQL table type you might want to dump to disk first, then pipe it through sed as your live tables might be locked (I’m not actually sure if mysqldump will block waiting for the other processes to catch up)

Broken Bus Window form back in 2005.

It’ll be a bit of a mix of the two talks I’ve done before on ELER, so some stuff about the history of the comic and how I make it, plus some ranting about free software, free markets and leaders.

I was asked by the then organiser (and my friend) Matt Lee who was then extraordinarily renditioned to North America with his new wife, leaving the new organisers to pick up the pieces. Luckily most of the pieces were found and it’s all go, though I do now appear to be talking about my new Rails hosting company too and my name is spelt differently. If there is time, I’ll talk about some of the stuff we’re doing at Brightbox with Free Software.

Talk starts at 7pm at the Manchester DDA. More details on the Manchester Free Software website.

I used a test folder that had four 15000x400 tif images and four
15000x400 png images (solid colors). Without the patch, it took
Nautilus 4 minutes and 30 seconds to thumbnail the folder. With
the patch, it took 8 seconds.

I'm not clever enough to touch the actual pixop codebase. But
these numbers suggest there is enormous room for improvement!
This bug has been open for 6 years - nudge, nudge.

Because free software is forever we can just afford to get there in the end :)

UPDATE: Photos here.

“In our samples of news content, words such as ‘mass murder’, ‘savage cold-blooded killing’ and ‘lynching’ were used by journalists to describe Israeli deaths but not those of Palestinians/Arabs. The word ‘terrorist’ was used to describe Palestinians, but when an Israeli group was reported as trying to bomb a Palestinian school, they were referred to as ‘extremists’ or ‘vigilantes’.” (Philo and Berry, ‘Bad News From Israel’, Pluto Press, London, 2004, p. 259)

http://www.medialens.org/alerts/08/080311_israeli_deaths_matter.php

Expect unstructured discussion of Ruby, Ruby on Rails and other random stuff plus nice people, great beer and coffee and geeky tshirts.

The balcony back room of Mr Foley’s has been booked.  Announce that you’re coming on the upcoming page.

Oh, and we now have a website: http://leedsrubything.org/

I’m hearing the collective throat clearing of every geologist in the country in preparation for various TV and radio interviews.

I personally have been expecting the end of days for a few years now and am well prepared in the form of:

• 5 torches
• high capacity Internet link
• several comfortable cushions
• a good stock of tea
• prayer books for all the best gods

http://www.earthquakes.bgs.ac.uk/monitoring/bgs_stations_map.html is currently inaccessible.

From emsc:

My twitter feed is here btw: http://twitter.com/johnleach Mostly just nonsense though.

More links:

• http://www.klmcpherson.com/archives/27/02/2008/earthquake/
• http://www.zarrblog.com/2008/earthquake-in-england/
• http://laugana.livejournal.com/11889.html
• http://www.albino-igil.com/blog/2008/02/27/i-believe-weve-just-had-an-earthquake-in-derby/
• http://www.democracypr.com/wp/?p=24
• EARTHQUAKE - Quick, to the Internet!

A controversial website that allows whistle-blowers to anonymously post government and corporate documents has been taken offline in the US.

BBC News

WikiLeaks and its domain registrar for the wikileaks.org domain name, Dynadot, have been sued by the Swiss Bank Julius Baer, because of leaks claiming illegal activities at the bank’s Cayman Island branch.

The Judge order the DNS registrar to freeze the domain. The main servers are in Sweden though, so the cover names still work (such as the UK one: http://wikileaks.org.uk). There are also mirror sites. This is a good example of why you shouldn’t rely on US domain names (and why we need more diversity of root server control no doubt). Not sure how much better the UK system is though.

The Tor network has hidden services for this kind of thing and though not perfect, helps protect against this kind of attack (the Tor website is censored by my Vodafone ISP btw). A good time as any to volunteer to host a Tor router server.

Cryptome has a Wikileak archive and more information.

Medialens - a UK based media analysis project.

That quote is from one of their latest alerts, “‘CREATIVE DESTRUCTION’ – THE MADNESS OF THE GLOBAL ECONOMY”. Find it here: part 1 and part 2.  You can buy their book, Guardians of Power, from here.

Louisa took it, but I’m in it.

No clear plan yet either, but expect unstructured discussion of Ruby and Ruby on Rails at least.

Thursday 7th February 2008 at 7pm in the Victoria Hotel pub. All welcome!

More details here: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/423116

Things to put in it

• Vegetable oil, 6 desert spoons or so
• 1 big onion, half diced, half sliced.
• 2 teaspoons garlic
• 2 teaspoons ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon asafoetida powder
• 1/2 teaspoon tumeric
• 2 chopped tomatoes (I used 1 can of chopped)
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander
• 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
• 1 teaspoon garam masala
• 1 teaspoon fenugreek leaves (methi)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 teaspoon red chilli powder
• 1 chopped fresh chilli (green or red)
• Some mixed vegetables (I used 5 chopped small new potatoes, 5 small florets of cauliflower, a chopped pepper and a couple of chopped mushrooms.)
• 3/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon powder
• Handful of fresh coriander (chopped)

What to do with the things you put in it

1. Heat the oil super hot. Add the diced onion half.  Cook until light brown.
2. Add the garlic and ginger. Cook for a bit (minute or so)
3. Lower heat and add asafoetida powder and tumeric.  Cook for a little bit.
4. Add the tomatoes then the ground coriander, cumin seeds, garam masala, fenugreek, salt, chilli powder and the fresh chilli and a little water. Fry on medium heat to make a paste.
5. Add any root veg and a little more water if necessary. Cook for 5 mins.
6. Shallow fry the sliced onion half in another pan until brown.
7. Add the other veg, black pepper and cinnamon and fresh coriander. Little more water if necessary.
8. Sprinkle the browned onions on top.
9. Pot lid on pod, steam on a low heat for 10 minutes or so.
10. Eat with rice and a nan. Did I mention you should make rice and a nan too? Doh!

General advice: use generous teaspoons of everything but the salt. Don’t put too much chilli in - taste the paste at step 4 and add more chilli if you prefer.  Louisa buys fresh chillis, chops them and then freezes them so we always have them in.  Frozen fresh coriander isn’t so bad either.  Garlic paste and Ginger paste speed things up and keep for months in the fridge, though lazy it does mean you have it in whenever you want it.

Adding the tomatoes in before the other spices stops the spices from burning- though I sort out that whole group of spices in a little dish before cooking anyway.  Buy all the spices you need from one of your many local asian markets (ha!, there are loads of these here in Leeds/Bradford). Keep them in an air-tight container and they’ll keep forever. Ignore the best before - better to have “out of date” spices ready any time than none.

This recipe made two main meals with rice and a small nan, and one leftover big-ish lunch.  Bear in mind that Louisa and I both eat big portions.  No photos because we ate it too quick.