Will the few users who have swelled Microsoft coffers by buying the exorbitantly unnecessary Office 2007 please stop sending us documents in “docx” format. We can’t read them—not if we use the free OpenOffice.org nor even if we use any other Microsoft product. You have an option to “Save as…” a Word 97-2003 document which we can read so please use it—everytime.
Archive for the ‘Technical’ Category
The curse of 2007
17 Mar 2008 09:21 by Rick
Virtualisation of the desktop
12 Mar 2008 15:01 by Rick
As I explained in an earlier post I have a problem with the unreliability of Windows. In there I looked at all the applications I currently use and mooted the possibility of changing over to Linux and using a virtualisation system to ease the transition, or possibly permanently to resolve the problem of legacy systems that could not be ported.
Having now looked at it more deeply I see that if it was viewed from the opposite direction—embracing virtualisation for its own merits—then further benefits could be obtained. Normally I am in favour of a single tool for a single job. I apply this to software (not liking integrated suites) and Hi-Fi (preferring separates to music-centres) but I don’t seem to have applied it to the PC very much. They are sold as general purpose, do it all systems so, as a result, they have a huge mish-mash of applications installed. It is assumed that there are great benefits to this; the data from one system can easily be passed to another, but is this actually the case or even necessary? I have already isolated a few roles for other reasons; data storage and archive has been offloaded to a NAS and music playback has it’s own dedicated systems; so we can start from this position.
To look at it we need to see what the data flows are for typical regular tasks. I have analysed 5 regular jobs that I currently perform on my PC to discover interaction between them. These were 1) Rip/Digitise a music album, 2) publish a census transcript, 3) research and update the family tree, 4) prepare a projector schedule for a Sunday service and 5) update a web site. On top of this is the routine everyday activity of email, web browsing and editing text and word processed documents. Coincidentally, or perhaps by premonition, the tasks closely match the application groups that I used for the previous article.
Apart from a lot of interaction with email, browsing and documents, part of which was by copy and paste and part by manual retyping, I discovered that there was very little interaction between the jobs. Tasks 2 and 5 share a lot of data handling techniques but it was largely low level text editing and spreadsheet work which are core activities. Tasks 3 and 5 share a web upload requirement. If I had separate machines, the work could be divided between them so that each one performed a single function and there would be little data passed between them. Where virtualisation comes in is that it would not be necessary to have the expense, space or overhead of multiple hardware and software licences. It also offers the benefit of allowing cross pasting of data on the occasions when it would be useful. New versions of major applications can be tested in their own Virtual Machines (VMs). Finally, most virtualisation systems have the facility for suspended machines which make for a much faster setup as the typically used applications in each can already be running and just require data to be loaded.
A proposed design would be…
A Windows host platform
There has to be a base upon which the dedicated task VMs run. For reasons of economy this needs to be my existing desktop system as described in the previous post. Also for reasons of direct access to the hardware, some applications will need to remain on the host system. Many of these also have “Windows-only” constraints so that forces us to go for a Windows host operating system. For reliability (the reason we started this whole exercise off) we need to minimise what runs natively. Although it looks like there is a lot of stuff in this list, with the exception of the first two items, they are light and pose little threat.
- Patchmix DSP interface to the sound card, the Matrox driver for the graphics card and ScanGear, the Twain driver for the SCSI scanner. These specialist drivers possibly pose the greatest threat to the stability of the machine as a whole.
- Wave Corrector + LAME—probably needed here so that it has native access to the sound streams.
- Pen Drive Manager and PINS. Other VMs will need access to the memory sticks and passwords.
- Notetab & WinZip—because they will be useful.
- Backup4all—to back everything up.
- AVG—for safety.
- ZoneAlarm—to protect the whole system.
The specialist task guest Virtual Machines
Legacy applications (those that have to run on Windows and for which there is no viable alternative) come in five groups each of which could be defined as a separate guest VM.
- Presentation—EasyWorship + K-Lite + PowerPoint Viewer. I am not sure how EasyWorship will cope with a VM as it is really a dual screen program. ChipmunkAV could also be installed here for development as that is where it would belong. There is an opportunity here to create a VM which closely matches the live system used at church and it is a system that would benefit from a separate development environment for new versions.
- Music processing—Exact Audio Copy + Accurate Rip + LAME, MediaMonkey and Audacity + LAME for convenience (even though a Linux version is available).
- Family History—Family Tree Maker, Resource File Viewer, GED2HTML and DjVu as it is not used for anything else. Also these functions which are not used enough to warrant a separate VM.
- GPS—Garmin Mapsource and waypoint manager. Our Advent GPS is managed from Mary’s laptop.
- Web maintenance—Zoom possibly with CuteFTP because it is available and OmniPagePro for OCR. I haven’t seen any information about whether the Twain interface can be passed to guest VMs nor have also not seen any decent Linux OCR systems.
The remaining applications can be ported to Linux guest VM(s).
- General home office—Firefox, Thunderbird + PopFile, a Jabber Client, OpenOffice, Adobe Reader, GnuPG, a Pop Peeper replacement and a picture editor.
- An FTP system (initially, command line FTP would probably do)
- A torrent client. Despite my putting µTorrent as “music download” in the earlier post I realised that the majority of my torrent traffic is not the typical music/video bootlegging that it is often used for, but mostly open software and data sharing. It would be run here because this VM is likely to be running most of the time. You could argue that it should be on the base host for this reason but I suspect that the Windows version may be contributing to the current machine instability.
This VM would be used for all the routine email/browsing activity plus the census publishing and general web maintenance which uses similar tools (hence the FTP client). Turboprint will be needed for printing.
- Software and Web development—A CVS system, Gnu C++, Home Grown Software, HTML Tidy. The VM gives the opportunity for running a local web server which would allow test and development of web applications such as WordPress locally.
That is 5 guest VMs—not all running at once of course but is this overkill?
Lingering Questions
- Where do I keep the data? Application specific data would be better on the local VM but how, then would it be backed up? VMs use the concept of virtual disks for their operating systems and data. These are seen by the host system as just big unstructured files so backup from there is limited. Some also allow for the use of real disks or partitions but this creates the problem of drive fragmentation.
Would it all be better on the NAS? It has the flexibility of floating sized share points which are visible from any machine. What are the implications for backup there—a NAS with live data would suggest the need for a backup and archive on a system separate again; at present there is only a weekly disk shadow. - Will the single Windows XP licence be sufficient for the host and multiple guest systems? MS Virtual PC presumably allows it. I am told that other VM systems work ok too.
- Do guest VMs run under Windows Limited User account or do they need an Administrator host?
- What issues are there for file sharing between Windows and Linux? Plain text files could be an issue with different line endings.
- Is there any point in running the guest Windows VM’s at all? Why not just run all the legacy applications on the host platform.
- Does this solution provide any benefits to justify its relative complexity? Will it make the overall system any more reliable and, in particular will it isolate the failures to just a single component?
The Future
Considering how little remains on the host, it suggests that the next time I need a machine replacement then, presuming that it is not actually broken, I should retain this machine for the sound card related applications and build the new one with the “General home office” configuration as the Linux host platform and run the other specialist VMs under that. The need for the digitising function should be quite low by then.
Appendix—the task analysis and data flows
- Rip/Digitise a music album.
- Ripping a CD. Exact Audio Copy reads the CD and passes the data internally to LAME and the MP3 is passed directly to the shared NAS. AccurateRip references its online dtabase. Media Monkey indexes the MP3, re-tags from internet sources and downloads the cover art. All data involved is already on shared media so there is no problem in devolving the processes.
- Digitising a vinyl or tape album. Wave Corrector records the audio stream to a temporary WAV file on local disk. As a separate process, Wave Corrector is used to edit and de-click the recording and pass the data internally to LAME and the MP3 is passed directly to the shared NAS. From there it is the same as the process above except that the cover art may be downloaded manually (using Firefox) and may need some picture editing. The temporary WAV file and the Wave Corrector log (session file) are archived to NAS.
- Publish a census transcript. The transcript arrives by email in a ZIP file. This is extracted using WinZip. The processing involves a mixture of SpreadSheet, a text editor and home written software to generate output HTML pages and a zipped archive. Email is used to distribute the results. As a secondary task, the browser is used to update a progress log (via Google Calendar) and IM is used for communication.
- Research and update the family tree. Input is by web search and email. The dedicated database is updated using Family Tree Maker. The web version is created by a piece of software that I had forgotten called GED2HTML and uploaded using FTP.
- Preparing a projector schedule. The order of service arrives by email as a word document. This is transferred, generally manually, into EasyWorship except. New songs and liturgy are cut and pasted either from the order of service or from a web based database. The output is transferred to memory stick for transport. A secondary task may involve obtaining/scanning images and editing them. These are imported into the EasyWorship system. Video clips and PowerPoint scripts are taken without modification, though may be viewed as a check.
- Updating a web site.
- The majority of this is done using a text editor (for the plain pages), or a browser (for the content managed pages). Secondary tasks include scanning and editing pictures and for some pages, data manipulation using OCR, spreadsheets etc. Server software comes in ZIP format. Upload is done using CuteFTP. The search engine index is created using Zoom which reads a local copy of the web pages and generates data files which are uploaded to the server – sometimes using an internal FTP process or sometimes using CuteFTP.
- Maintaining the online WordPress software and themes. This is done rather tediously using a text editor then FTP upload to a sandpit web site and test. It is a very slow form of software development.
Mobile phone book
10 Mar 2008 20:57 by Rick
These notes apply in particular to the ancient Nokia 6210, probably apply in general to most Nokia phones and may also apply to others with a little adaptation. It probably won’t be relevant or accurate for the newer all singing and dancing 3G phones.
The basic phone book on a mobile consists of a simple list of numbers against names. This list can be held either in the phone memory itself or on the SIM card. This is the small data card that your service provider gives you to identify your phone number and network and which is inserted in the back of your phone. It may also hold text messages and some other configuration information.
- Using the SIM card memory allows you to change handsets if, for example, the phone breaks or the battery is flat.
- Using the internal phone memory allows you to change service provider with a different SIM e.g. for travel abroad.
SIM cards are usually capable of holding between 50 and 250 name-number pairs. The phone memory may be larger or smaller and offer additional information such as multiple numbers, addresses and pictures. The 6210 can hold 500 names and additional information.
- Using both memories for the same numbers offers a limited backup; but not against losing the phone. You also need to be careful to synchronise them for any changes.
- Using both memories for different numbers gives you more space but makes what I am suggesting later very complicated.
To select which memory to use, use the menu path Names—Options—Memory in use.
To copy/move numbers from one memory to another, use the menu path Names—Copy. You are then given the option of direction, all or single numbers and whether to keep or erase the original. Only the basic name and number will be copied as that is all the SIM supports.
If you have sufficient internal memory and 250 or fewer entries in your phone book (depending on SIM card size) you can use this technique (with care) to transfer numbers from one handset or SIM card to another. It doesn’t do any harm to move SIM cards from one handset to another. Even if the SIM is incompatible with the handset because it is locked to one provider, you can still read and write it to transfer numbers. Pick a quiet time of day when you are unlikely to receive calls.
Backing up your phone book SIM to SIM
One way you can back up your numbers is to use an old or un-activated SIM card. We occasionally get these sent to us unsolicited and, though not usable until signed up, they can still store numbers. The recent ones we had from orange were 200 sized. Use the copy technique above to save a backup copy, then label it and keep it safe. Alternatively there are special devices to save the contents of a SIM or SIM reader/writers to plug into your PC which also allow you to edit them or interface with your other address books. Nether of these are any use if your phone book overspills the SIM onto the internal memory.
Infra-red or Bluetooth
My 6210 has infra-red communication so, with a suitably equipped computer (normally a laptop) this can be used to save the all the memory contents.
I would be wary of online backup schemes unless you trust the company as they could be using your phone numbers for making cold sales calls.
Time for a change?
12:14 by Rick
So Tim Yeo MP (Conservative) was winding up that hairy old topic of Double Summer Time. I notice that he didn’t mention the “E” word in Friday’s interview; he was effectively advocating that we harmonise with Western European mainland time.
But the bill ran out of time and now has little chance of further progress.
Ironic but good news.
Personally I have always believed that the whole concept of summer time was daft. If locally you are wasting the best daylight hours in the morning then get up earlier. If children are at risk going or coming from school or their sleeping time is curtailed, then the school hours should be adjusted, but there is no point in messing with the clocks. When I was a teenager I ignored summer time for one half year and kept my watch on GMT with no problems at all. Admittedly my life and living in general was more relaxed then but it was not difficult to adapt. Even now the only times I take much notice of are appointments (memory permitting).
I am not suggesting that time itself is unimportant. One of my responsibilities in the office is to ensure that that the computer systems keep synchronised and reasonably accurate time. This is important because we need to know when things happened in relation to each other. The absolute is less important but it looks unprofessional if your clock is wrong. To do that we maintain UTC (Coordinated Universal Time in French and the replacement for the old faithful GMT) and apply the offsets to local time only at the last minute. Messing about with Daylight Saving Time in different jurisdictions as they keep changing their minds just wastes time—real time.
The challenge of abandoning Windows
4 Mar 2008 22:04 by Rick
…some may say “at last!” But why am I now considering doing it? It really comes down to only one thing—reliability and hence for the sake of my health as I get so mad with it every time it Blue Screens. After all this time they should have made it self correcting. It is no excuse to say that “Windows has shut down to avoid damaging something or other…” or whatever it says, everything is still in memory so it just needs an integrity check and refresh anything damaged, not just to throw it’s hands up in despair.
A second and lesser reason is that to move on I would have to consider Vista and things would need to be rethought anyway as some software I use is very old and almost certainly not compatible.
Arguments against are that it would mean learning a new interface, software and admin but that is mitigated by the fact I am already familiar with server unix. Also that some things that are essential are Windows only which leads me to considering the options.
The options
- Linux, but which flavour? Ubuntu seems to be the current front runner.
- Mac. There are a lot of ready made applications and it is a unix based OS but requires proprietary hardware.
- Dual boot. It takes too long to switch over.
- Virtual machine, e.g. VMWare is attractive. I don’t know much about the alternatives available or the costs.
- I need to use the existing hardware as it is not very old and I can’t justify replacing it at the moment.
- The existing XP licence is available for legacy applications.
When designing a system the first and most important question is “what applications are required?” In this case, as it is an upgrade, the question is “How can the existing applications be migrated?” This is a list of what I use and do at the moment and will need to be considered for replacement.
Browsing/Web
- Firefox. With addons and plugins. Linux and Mac versions are available.
- CuteFTP (Paid-up) for upload. mac available but not Linux I think.
- Zoom search engine generator (Paid-up). The engine is CGI, PHP or JavaScript, the problem is the builder which is Windows only.
- [edit] HTML Tidy—another one I had forgotten because it is not “Windows installed”. Many other platforms exist.
- [edit] Xenu Link Sleuth broken link detector.
eMail/IM
- Thunderbird. I would want to transfer my mail archive. Mac and Linux versions are available but I don’t know how compatible the data files are.
- PopFile anti spam system. Written in perl so portable.
- Pop Peeper minimal POP server status. Windows only so an alternative will be needed.
- Exodus Jabber IM client. Windows only but there are a number of alternatives.
Document processing
- OpenOffice for word processing and spreadsheets. Other platforms are available.
- PaintShopPro (Paid-up) for picture editing. Windows only but I am not locked into this so anything decent would do. Ideas?
- NoteTab (Paid-up) for plain text editing. Windows only. I will miss this as it is an excelent program though I would probably have used vi(m) if it was available.
- Adobe Reader—because PDF’s keep coming.
- OmniPage (Paid-up). OCR (not often used). There is a Mac version but not others. I doubt that there is a viable competitor on the Linux desktop.
- CutePDF pseudo printer driver (not used much). GhostScript may be usable direct.
- DjVu image viewer (occasional use). There do seem to be other platforms available.
Family History
- Family Tree Maker for Windows (Paid-up). Not available for other platforms. As the database is large this would probably remain as a legacy Windows application.
- Resource File Viewer—Windows only, another legacy application though there may be alternatives.
- [Edit] Ged2HTML—I had forgotten about this. It is not used often and is not “installed” in the Windows way. There is a Unix version which uses the same base code but without the GUI but I am not sure about which flavours.
- Some home grown software. Written for Unix anyway.
Music—preparation only, not listening
- Rip—Exact Audio Copy with Accurate Rip. It looks like this is Windows only. The alternative, dBpoweramp, looks like Windows only as well.
- Digitise—Wave Corrector (Paid-up). Windows only, but they do say it works on Linux under Wine.
- Encoding—LAME. Multi-platform.
- Edit—Audacity. Multi-platform.
- Library & Tagging—MediaMonkey (Paid-up). Not available for other platforms. I have media in WMA and MP3 formats.
- Control—Sonos Desktop (occasional use only as it is rarely needed, most control being done by the hand-held unit). Mac version available. A shareware alternative exists driven from a web server.
- Download—µTorrent. Windows only but there is bound to be an alternative. [edit] I realise now that, although this was first installed for music download, in practice that is not what it is used for. It is more for software download and project data sharing.
GPS/Mapping
- Garmin MapSource (Paid-up). Another Windows only product. No alternative that I can think of so will remain on the legacy system.
Presentation
- EasyWorship to maintain church master database and prepare schedules. Not available for other platforms and would remain as a legacy Windows application.
- Video rendering—K-Lite codec pack (for testing only). Interface to EasyWorship so only Windows needed.
- MS PowerPoint Viewer. Interface to EasyWorship so only windows needed.
- ChipmunkAV (Paid-up). Never actually used but for Windows dev. purposes only.
Security
- AVG anti virus. Windows only but less critical on a non Windows platform anyway 🙂 There may be alternatives.
- ZoneAlarm firewall. There are native Linux firewalls but they are notoriously unfriendly.
- GnuPG encryption. Available for other platforms but may not have the GUI interface
- PINS password manager (Paid-up). This went out of effective support years ago. I rely on this being portable between office, home and other places and really needs cut and paste into applications so it is a bit of a problem.
- [edit] PuTTY secure shell. Although other systems are supported there is not a lot of point as most other systems have native ssh clients.
Programming
- MinGW Minimal GNU for Windows with C compiler, make etc. This won’t be necessary as the alternatives are Gnu compatible environments anway. I will just need to get the compiler.
- Tortoise CVS versioning system. There must be a good alternative.
Backup/Restore
- Backup4all (Paid-up). Managed backup system (uses ZIP files). A backup systems needs to be simple, foolproof and reliable. This one is Windows only and I haven’t looked at alternatives yet. If a Legacy Windows system is kept then it will still be needed anyway.
- Pen Drive Manager (Paid-up)—replicates and backs up memory sticks, no longer supported.
- WinZip (Paid-up). I get and send a lot of stuff in Zip format. As the name suggests this is Windows only but there are bound to be alternatives. Even command line would be acceptable.
Other software installed but only occasionally used
- Eraser—disk nuke system. Windows only but I think GnuPG can do a similar job or use the bootable DBAN for whole disks.
- FreeUndelete—File recovery.
- MediaInfo—codec viewer.
What hardware
Will it work with selected software?
- AMD 2600+ with 1GB memory. I would get a new Hard drive to build a replacement system on.
- Matrox P650 dual head graphics card. A Linux driver does seem to be available.
- 2 x 1280×1024 LCD monitors running an extended desktop.
- EMU 0404 Professional sound card and its interface Patchmix DSP. I can only find a Windows version of this. [Edit] The ALSA project offers hope that there may be a community supported driver.
- SCSI connected Canon Scanner & ScanGear driver.
- External NAS for music store and backup. No problem.
- Network connected Canon MP600R Printer/Scanner—
I can’t find any Linux drivers.Turboprint claims to support it.
Is there anything else to consider? It is only when you go through the stuff like this that you realise how much of a monopoly that Microsoft has.
I will be looking for help and suggestions in the coming months while I consider all the options.
[This post will be updated to add additional information as discovered]
What next after CAPTCHA
27 Feb 2008 14:50 by Rick
They were quite efective even though we all hated them—the fuzzy, misshapen, blurred letters that we had to read and type into the box to verify that we were human not some robot spam generator. But recently, two big systems, Google’s gmail and Microsoft’s live mail have been cracked. There are other types about such as simple arithmetic and counting monkeys but they wouldn’t last long if used on high volume, high profile systems like these. They all suffered from being more or less inaccessible to the disabled anyway. So now that CAPTCHA can’t keep the crackers out, where can we go next? And whatever, for the accessibility reasons they must be dropped altogether now.
There are a lot of possibilities out there; one-time pass codes texted to your mobile or RSA key-fob dongles for instance, but they are all far to expensive for the many places that you (the end user) would like to use and you (the site owner) would like to attract customers.
Spyware, who cares?
26 Feb 2008 14:20 by Rick
…when the ISP’s are selling your browsing data direct to the advertisers anyway. If you are a BT, VirginMedia or Carphone Warehouse customer who values your privacy I suggest you start looking for proxy anonymizers. Anonymizer.com and proxify.com are well known ones but I can’t vouch for any of them.
What I learned today
25 Feb 2008 22:12 by Rick
…on my Speed Choice course. That is the course you can go on to avoid getting points on your licence if you get flashed by a money maker speed camera. Actually the course was quite good; I went in expecting to learn nothing because I have moderated my driving over the years so that I now observe speed limits whenever possible, but I picked up a few helpful tips. They guys were really very pleasant and were seriously trying to help—unlike their organisation which seemed to be trying to be as obstructive as possible.
The main thing I learned was how poor the government (for want of a better description) are at communicating changes to the road laws and highway code. For instance, I hadn’t realised that large trucks were not allowed to go any faster than 40mph on single carriageway roads so there is not point in fuming if you get stuck behind one. And that Transit we hired to shift daughter’s furniture—it is supposed to be only driven at 60 on dual carriageways. They don’t tell you that when you pick it up.
I never knew that they had changed the rules about how to recognise a 30mph area when there were no signs. When I took my test it was all about built up areas and the distance between lamp posts, something that was almost impossible to determine. Now it is quite clear—except for motorways, if there are no signs but there is street lighting then the limit is automatically 30.
There were some other hints which I am not so sure about but will give a try; for example they claimed that at 30mph it makes very little difference to your fuel consumption if you stay in 3rd gear, and the car is a lot more controllable. Another is the best thing to do if you are being tailgated is … nothing … or perhaps slow down just a little bit without brakes to create a gap in front; after all, one thing worse than being followed by a bad driver is an angry bad driver.
Words on the air
14 Feb 2008 09:28 by Rick
This is a problem a colleague at work came across with a home machine. His wife said that suddenly strange words started appearing on the screen. Suspecting some virus she disconnected the network immediately and called her husband. When he tried to use a bootable Linux CD to investigate the problem he had trouble closing down because windows were being selected randomly. Resorting to the kill button (hold down the power button for a while) he rebooted but strange words started to appear during the boot sequence as well.
What is your diagnosis?
He first suspected a BIOS virus but those haven’t been seen since the late ’90s. Then he spotted that one of the words showing up was the name of a neighbour’s child. Light dawns! A chat with the neighbour revealed that they had just replaced the battery in their wireless keyboard and the extra power must have been sufficient to be picked up by the identical receiver on his wife’s PC.
The implications are left as an exercise for the reader.
Thanks to Frank and his (internal) blog for the details.
Does your website *all* belong to you?
12 Feb 2008 14:13 by Rick
When we build web sites we don’t necessarily create all the content ourselves. For various reasons we might subcontract out parts of it to third parties. Some examples are banner advertising and external widgets such as page counters and other statistics. In each case the code we insert on behalf of the third party pulls in content from their web servers and we have little control over it.
Now you might imagine that the big advertising company that you are signed up with have their reputation to consider and would only serve you good banners but it is not as simple as that. They sell on advertising space (syndicate) to other companies. The person visiting your site may be in another country; the code can tell that and will adjust the response accordingly; that is called geo-targeting. Now the agency doesn’t necessarily have material for that country so they contract out to yet another company to do it for them. This can happen many times before the advert is delivered, sometimes on a geographical basis, sometimes on a share arrangement—all without you knowing anything about it. You trusted the original supplier, and they trusted their subcontractor but it is getting a bit thin by the time the eventual supplier is reached and it is not uncommon for that one to be sending a virus or spy-ware to your customer. Yes, they are still your customer and will hold you responsible for what happens.
The other example I suggested was page counters, they are useless but small site owners still seem to like them. There used to be hundreds of different ones around but I haven’t looked recently. Some of these go out of business or get bought out without you knowing. The web address may have lapsed and been snapped up by someone else. This new owner could be using it for anything—including sending mal-ware to your visitors. When was the last time you looked at that page counter? Is it still doing what you though it was?
There are two good, but rather technical, reports linked to from this Google Blog that you should read if you think you may be affected by this.
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