Boo Pirate Bay

One of those days when I realise the "old" internet is dying out, companies and governments have finally tightened their grasp around the last true free place on the planet.

Soon heavy flashy web 2.0 drivel about when someone last went to the shops or when their cat was last fed will bloat the internet. People thinking that instant chat via facebook is a new thing, people accepting being forced onto a mainstream browser, forced to give over geographical locations and details about their own machines just to be allowed onto the sites.

I have realised as more and more people get onto the internet, the simpler and safer the millions of committees running it feel it should be, slowly but surely all the things it stands for will be whittled away... if it indeed ever did stand for freedom of speech, was that just an assumption due to a lack of enforcement.

I wonder if a new sub layer will emerge if it hasn't done so already effectively anonymous hosting and internet usage over anonymity networks such as Tor. Using the Internet's infrastructure but avoiding its horrendous filtering and invasion of privacy.

The Press - Michael Jackson

I have started to see the press trying to squeeze and snatch every last reader out of the Michael Jackson story, it seems the magazines in this country are usually the first to stoop to the lowest level.

I will be watching them and not reading them to see who are the worst offenders, so far it is Hello magazine. Any that are stooping to low levels to get readers should be boycotted in my opinion.

A Legend - Gone

There will be millions and millions of tributes to Michael Jackson by the morning, but I just wanted to say too that I think he is an irreplaceable musical genius and a legend in our time.

I remember spending so many nights listening to his albums again and again on little walkman on tape back in about 88 (especially Bad) when I was a little kid and never stopped listening to his songs.

I hope the press treats this with sensativity and the respect the man deserves, also that they respect the privacy of his family.

Every song he ever released was unmistakabley his how many others can you say that about, he was a true one off.

Everything's Overheating Capt!

Bahh, my blue motorbike is overheating, now my server is overheating too, one disk had to be removed as it was beeping as loudly as a fire alarm!

Hopefully I can get my blue bike taken into the Honda garage and let them see why she is a bit twitchy on tick over from what I have read so far it may be related to fuel flow, either the carbs or the fuel tap or filtering somewhere.

The weird thing is, tip it quite far to the left when idling and it'll stall its a strange strange creature. Not to mention if you turn the lights on the temperature goes up by about 25%

Ah well that's my whine for the day,

Suse Linux

This is just a general little posting about getting the newer ATI GFX cards to work on Suse 11.

A chap at work was having some trouble getting this working, just thought I would write down how I did it.

Originally we were trying to use the linux bin.run file from the ATI site, as you would on Red Hat 5 etc, that's not what you want. It says it only works on X version 6.7 or higher, using the command "X -version" red hat 5 shows as 7.7.1 for me, Suse 11. was showing up as 1.5 something.

What you actually need to do is login as root "su -" then run "yast" press enter on software management then in the search type "ATI" uncross the ignore case option and search.

Then select the driver that matches your running kernel, usually its the PAE one these days, press space on it so you get a little +.

Then select finish and press enter, then run "reboot" once restarted X should work for you.

Pidgin Linux Yahoo

Just a quick one for anyone who uses Pidgin on Linux and is having trouble connecting to yahoo, I did the following to get it working again.

change to root.
su -

copy their repository file from http://www.pidgin.im/download/centos_rhel/ for example into /etc/yum.repos.d/

yum remove pidgin
yum remove libpurple
yum install pidgin

The above will re-install libpurple which otherwise conflicts, at least it did for me.

As for windows users just have to download and install the latest version from http://www.pidgin.im/

Summer Rides

Having some great evenings at the moment taking my little blue NC30 out in the evenings. The light is gorgeous at the moment so really photographic. Unfortunately I can never stop riding in order to take the photos.

Anyway even though in shadow I thought I would take this of my NC30 resting on a country road between Crich and Matlock gorgeous little roads for a nimbler bike.

I also put the route that you'll want to follow if you want to see it for ya self. Brilliant.

View Larger Map

Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones

After a small previous rant about the events in Iran at the moment with an ever increasing clamp down on protests I noticed a story here at the moment regarding Emily Apple and a fellow demonstrator who were abused by our own police.

I think it's only fair to show that the police force in this country seems to be loosing any impartiality it had, usually it seems picking on and singling out weaker individuals, either pushing over disabled people or beating women.

I notice however they do nothing about large groups of yobbish teens cruising the streets of the countries large cities.

I am sure others will feel the same that they really need to start explaining themselves properly and if they are caught purposely not wearing their number they should be immediately suspended from duty pending investigation into their reasoning.

I am usually not a particularly left wing person but the actions of the police lately and the excuse that everything is being done with respect to anti terror laws is wearing very thin.

Well incase it is later removed I have locally hosted the video of what they have been up to, and this was even made by the police themselves, I find their apparent feeling of superiority discusting and enraging.

Political Rant

Regarding protests in Iran, I was quite shocked by some of the videos and images that had appeared at work (news agency) about the protests, seems there is alot of negativity and just a small spark of positive democracy.

I don't think anyone could argue that there isn't alot of people there looking for change and looking to engage with the west. People who also want to be recognised and accepted and respected by the rest of the world as a whole.

I just think it's sad that there are some, trying stamp it out in such a heavy handed way, trying to brush under the carpet the views of almost half the entire country (if not more..). These same individuals will use this chance to blaim outside influences driving a greater divide between Iran and the West just alienating themselves more.

Will be an interesting one to watch, it could have been such a great step forward for them to be able to engage with the rest of the world again, I guess it will be another four year wait.

VMWare tools - When you have all the time in the world

What a pain in the ass! Unless you have some time you want to burn I wouldn't bother trying to install VMWare tools on a SUSE Guest if I were you.

Mounted the cdrom, copied over the tar extrated it, no probs so far, had to install "killall" which was actually under the package psmisc incase anyone is searching for it. Then I had to install the Linux source code for my running kernel, not too much of a pain, except again SUSE wont find kernel-devel or even kernel* you have to faff around in their commandline interface yast2.

Anyway after getting all the pre-requisites installed and compiling the vmware tools to match my running kernel and installing it basically just crapped out my network card and provided no performance enhancement that I could see as I don't use X.

Basically a waste of time, had to uninstall just to get the network card working again, rubbish.

Cheeky little blue lady

Well The little blue motorbike is purring again for the time being I fitted a new regulator rectifier to see if it would stop the cutting out problem she has been having. So far so good touch wood hehe

Fitting the Regulator Rectifier is as easy as removing the rear fairing with a few bolts, with a flat head screw driver, locating the unit on the left side of the bike, removing the two nuts and the cable. Then pop on the new unit, paste a little dielectric grease around the edge of the connectors and screw it all back up.

We'll see if it continues..
Well so far so good had a nice run out with my Honda over to Matlock in the gorgeous sun. The road in was closed due to what seemed like an accident so went through lots of little woody lanes which was interesting, found a few different ways in and out of Matlock via Holloway.

Well if any other NC30 owners do stumble of this site, and you need parts, I should recommend the two best places I have found so far, namely David Silvers for retro honda parts and for retro bikes themselves and second hand parts Fast Line in Preston.