The Register: Penguins in spa-a-a-ce! ISS . . . → Read More: Penguins in spa-a-a-ce!]]> That is just too good a title not to enthuse about! Even though this is ‘just’ a little incremental tidbit of spacefaring news, the previously unnoticed and no-fanfare note by the Linux Foundation for giving training to United Space Alliance seems to have suddenly hit the big headlines. Enjoy:

The Register: Penguins in spa-a-a-ce! ISS dumps Windows for Linux on laptops

“We migrated key functions from Windows to Linux because we needed an operating system that was stable and reliable – one that would give us in-house control. So if we needed to patch, adjust or adapt, we could,”

ExtremeTech: International Space Station switches from Windows to Linux, for improved reliability

… we shouldn’t be too surprised at the ditching of Windows. Linux is the scientific community’s operating system of choice. CERN’s Large Hadron Collider is controlled by Linux. NASA and SpaceX ground stations use Linux. DNA-sequencing lab technicians use Linux. Really, for applications that require absolute stability, which most scientific experiments are, Linux is the obvious choice. The fact that the entire OS is open source and can be easily customized for each experiment is obviously a very big draw, too. …

ZDNet: To the space station and beyond with Linux

… no other operating system is as flexible as Linux. From supercomputers to robots to desktops, NASA is finding that Linux is the answer.

… And how long has all this been creeping up upon us?… Check out an old article from Bruce Perens from way back in 1997:

New Computer Operating System Rides Space Shuttle

A radically different new computer operating system is controlling an experiment on a Space Shuttle mission in late March…

Penguins go orbital indeed!!

Down . . . → Read More: A Splendid Aurora]]> In true expeditionary style, a small grouping of us ventured out into the cold wilds around the corner to Stoney Street to find… An Aurora that is actually under The Warehouse, Plumptre Street. (The street is most likely named after a successful merchant and politician John de Plumptre who founded the Plumptre hospital nearby.)

Down we went into the warmth of light and foodie aromas for some really good food. John (our modern day John from this century) surprised us with a selection of some rather fine wine. All of which conspired to a last moment maximum speed sort-of-dash to catch our respective last buses home!

A good fine evening was had and this is one newly opened restaurant that we can heartily recommend.

Is the emblazoned chemical symbol for one of our group a sign of desire or a reminder of abstinence?…

Cheers,
Martin

A brief summary is:

The WiFi channel numbers must be treated as ‘spot frequencies’ rather than sacrosanct self-contained ‘channels’. The channels 1 to 13 are . . . → Read More: What WiFi Channel?]]> So… Confusingly there are 11, 13, or 14 ‘channels’ for the commonly used WiFi on 2.4GHz, yet not all of those channels should be used with the latest WiFi devices…

A brief summary is:

The WiFi channel numbers must be treated as ‘spot frequencies’ rather than sacrosanct self-contained ‘channels’. The channels 1 to 13 are spaced 5MHz apart. Next, channel 14 takes a 12MHz leap up from channel 13. Recent standards require using multiple neighbouring ‘channels’ as a single ‘wide channel’ to accommodate the bandwidth for high data rates. Hence:

• WiFi “b” (802.11b) uses up to a 22MHz channel width, suggesting the use of channels 1, 6, 11 (and if in Japan, 14);
• WiFi “g” or “n” (802.11g/n) uses nominally a 20MHz channel width, suggesting the use of channels 1, 5, 9 and 13 (except USA, Canada);
• WiFi “n” (802.11n) can use a 40MHz channel width, that then suggests the use of channels 3 and 11 to maximize use of the 2.4GHz band.

HOWEVER: Any misalignment of channels or bandwidth overlap by devices in the same area is seen as interfering noise that degrades performance rather than allowing cooperative non-interfering multiplexing using Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance. So, until all “b”-only devices become obsolete and the “g/n” channel assignments can be used exclusively, the best option is still to use the “b” preferred channels of 1, 6, and 11, and for nothing beyond g/n 20MHz channels.

Note that there are an awful lot of WiFi devices that default to or are fixed on channel 6 out in the wild! Also note that the same 2.4GHz band is shared with Bluetooth and other devices that may or may not suffer mutual interference.

If for your area there are no other devices in range, then you are free to choose whatever is best for your mix of devices. If you are in crowded residential apartments, then best is to stay with channels 1, 6, or 11 to cooperatively share out the airspace.

A quick-glance diagram is:

2.4GHz WiFi non-overlapping channel usage

Lost your /dev/video0 and you have . . . → Read More: Gentoo kernel 3.6.11 webcams, V4L, UVC, video: kernel config]]> For those of us adventurous enough to upgrade to the Gentoo kernel 3.6.11 using their own custom kernel config… Beware that the config spec for the video modules and webcam modules including all of the USB UVC/video have been moved in the config hierarchy and may well need reenabling:

Lost your /dev/video0 and you have a custom config for your kernel? Check that you still have enabled the appropriate kernel modules for:

CONFIG_MEDIA_CAMERA_SUPPORT:

Enable support for webcams and video grabbers.

Say Y when you have a webcam or a video capture grabber board.

Symbol: MEDIA_CAMERA_SUPPORT [=y]
Type  : boolean
Prompt: Cameras/video grabbers support
  Defined at drivers/media/Kconfig:21
  Depends on: MEDIA_SUPPORT [=m]
  Location:
    -> Device Drivers
      -> Multimedia support (MEDIA_SUPPORT [=m])

And then followed by:

CONFIG_USB_VIDEO_CLASS:

Support for the USB Video Class (UVC).  Currently only video input devices, such as webcams, are supported.

For more information see: 

Symbol: USB_VIDEO_CLASS [=m]
Type  : tristate
Prompt: USB Video Class (UVC)
  Defined at drivers/media/video/uvc/Kconfig:1
  Depends on: MEDIA_SUPPORT [=m] && VIDEO_CAPTURE_DRIVERS [=y] && VIDEO_V4L2 [=m] && V4L_USB_DRIVERS [=y] && MEDIA_CAMERA_SUPPORT [=y]
  Location:
    -> Device Drivers
      -> Multimedia support (MEDIA_SUPPORT [=m])
        -> Video capture adapters (VIDEO_CAPTURE_DRIVERS [=y])
          -> V4L USB devices (V4L_USB_DRIVERS [=y])
  Selects: VIDEOBUF2_VMALLOC [=n]

That is, in the kernel config, enable:

Device Drivers -> Multimedia support
Device Drivers -> Multimedia support -> Video capture adapters -> V4L USB devices

… And compile, install and reboot.

Rather than a whimsical seaside story, here’s a brief rundown of various bits that I noticed. Those wanting the thousands of words, please skip down to the pretty pictures Others have also posted their various other pictures/videos.

This year the barcamp had . . . → Read More: barcamp Blackpool 2012 Debrief Goodies!]]> ‘Twas a fine cool clear day and ideal for a:

barcamp Blackpool 2012

Rather than a whimsical seaside story, here’s a brief rundown of various bits that I noticed. Those wanting the thousands of words, please skip down to the pretty pictures Others have also posted their various other pictures/videos.

This year the barcamp had new organisers with Les and Lally and a new venue at the Norbreck Castle Hotel (Britannia Hotels). And it all worked very well and with great informative interesting fun all round. Les has given a brief mention in Linux Format LXF165, page 14. Lally has her organiser’s writeup also.

Simply, it all worked rather well and was a very good expanded follow-on from the great events from previous years. The new venue is much better accommodating for larger numbers of people. The hospitality was good. Someone even kindly did a quick runner around the corner to get supplies of coffee to keep the geeks geekie. About the only addition possible would be a barrel of real ale for the bar Also, geek up a bluetooth registration to go all paperless?

(Some of) The Sessions:

This a brief-ish summary of what I remember from the day…

• Global Warming/Heating – The Big One!
• Future of Broadcast + IPTV, Perceptive Media
• Concrete5 CMS – Easy to use, Made by Geeks
• Geek Fit / Hit People With Swords!
• Stitching Electronics Demo
• Instruments of Time Through The Science Museum (A Short Sample of Time!)
• Working With Arduino AVR
• @Shrimping It With £1.40 in 10 Minutes
• A Free (Libre) Software Network Infrastructure
• Code a Better Country
• Crowd Source My Dissertation
• Cake
• HTML5 on the Raspberry Pi
• Really Really Useful Tools For The Windows IT Pro
• How Computing Drove The Music Industry
• Beer, Food, Entertainment

Global Warming/Heating – The Big One!

I kicked off one of the first sessions appropriately in “The Big One” with a brief summary of Global Warming, but importantly with a straw poll of what the audience thought from what they had seen and heard for themselves. I find it utterly amazing for the unbelievable level of FUD and confusion that has been spread by lobbyists, conspiracy websites, and sensationalist media reporting. No wonder most people are completely befuddled beyond caring. Unfortunately, the audience response confirmed that befuddlement, despite any/all evidence that it really is we ourselves that are significantly and ever more quickly industrially polluting our planet into a very different and most likely a very unfavorable climate.

A few links to try:

• The day the world went mad – As record sea ice melt scarcely makes the news…, is there a form of reactive denial at work?
• Arctic expert predicts final collapse of sea ice within four years …’global disaster’ is now unfolding in northern latitudes
• Greenhouse gases hit record high (That article is a good readable summary of: WMO Press Release 965, Greenhouse Gas Concentrations Reach New Record)
• The climate change deniers: influence out of all proportion to science Reiterated in possibly a first-of-its-kind credibility study:
  • Expert credibility in climate change
• It is time for the judiciary to step in and avert climate catastrophe (My personal comment on that: Is this for real, or a cynical call for yet more procrastination that comes with highly profitable litigation expenses?…)
• 10 Indicators of a Human Fingerprint on Climate Change (All nothing new, we’ve known since the 1800′s: Joseph Fourier, John Tyndall.)
• The consequences: 20 Deadliest Effects of Global Warming
• European Environment Agency reports Climate change evident across Europe
• UN says carbon cuts too slow to curb dangerous warming … global attempts to curb emissions of CO2 are falling well short of what is needed to stem dangerous climate change. … target is still technically achievable. But the opportunity is likely to be lost without swift action by governments…

Unfortunately, all the environmental consequences look to steer us away from the thousands of years of benign climate and weather that have helpfully combined to allow the human race to flourish to where we are now… So why now spoil the party?

Future of Broadcast + IPTV, Perceptive Media

This was a live demonstration of an interesting twist being explored for broadcast radio and similar broadcast media. Rather than have (expensive, small audience) local radio and local TV, instead have the one broadcast that is then customized depending upon the receiver/audience locality… An analogy given is that of telling a campfire story. You have the one well known well spun story, but the telling is different depending upon the audience and the ambiance and the audience response. A good story teller is sensitive to that and changes the way the story is told to best fit the particular audience at that time.

In the web example demonstrated, the lift/elevator voice is a speech synthesizer running in the host web browser. The programmed responses are modified by the detected location of the web browser so as to include familiar references such as the current weather outside, nearest shopping centre, landmarks, and so on, to give a ‘local feel’ to the exchange. (The cynical may be rightly suspicious of Marketing subverting that for product placement…)

Try it out on Breaking Out and give feedback. See further details on:

• Illustrations for BBC R&D’s Perceptive Media Demo
• What is Perceptive Media?

Concrete5 CMS – Easy to use, Made by Geeks

This was a rapid-fire live demo of concrete5 CMS.

The main aspects of note are the very tidy html/css/php coding and WYSIWYG in-context editing to edit website content directly on the page that you are viewing. There is also a form of versioning so that changed content is only visible to the person doing the editing until the modified page is released.

Very neat, and a refreshingly different and intuitive way of working compared to various other CMS website frameworks.

Geek Fit / Hit People With Swords!

Dancing with long pointy bits? Whatever, good blurry moves and great chaotic fun!

Stitching Electronics Demo

There were various examples shown of flashing LEDs stitched into clothing and fabrics.

There is very flexible conductive thread available to stitch the volts together. All is supposedly washable. And all good fun, but rather clunky for the size of the control boards/units and batteries.

Still waiting for the truly flexible wearable tech!…

Instruments of Time Through The Science Museum (A Short Sample of Time!)

Here I gave a tour through time and time pieces as shown in the Science Museum through to where we are now in time. All that ofcourse is but a mere briefest moment fleetingly past in the vast time of our universe. Causality and a few effects and synchronization and consequences were rushed over until I ran out of time.

After all that, the best that can be said of time is:

• Time is that measured by clocks;
• Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.

We now have clocks that are more precise than the heavens. However, what more can we say about time?

Working With Arduino AVR

Usual good and well established Arduino fun made all the more fun with the following talk:

@Shrimping It With £1.40 in 10 Minutes

This is quite a beautiful knock-out minimal cost response to the interest in the much more elaborate Raspberry Pi. Instead go Shrimping It! Not quite an ‘Arduino‘, but it has the same programming and is very capable at minimal cost.

A Free (Libre) Software Network Infrastructure

An interesting aim long long overdue in the world of FLOSS and GNU/Linux systems: To put together a FLOSS network suit/framework that integrates the present separate networking tools and packages to create a cohesive ‘one’ network system to give a ‘single point’ comprehensive network administration and a single sign-on for users.

Why should proprietary vendors be the only ones to dumb down ease network administration and network user authentication/sign-on?…

Huge enthusiasm there but that is also a large task to put together a networking unified user interface…

Code a Better Country

Give that man a gold star for excellence beyond the call of duty! Fabulous enthusiasm flying in the face of bureaucracy to do some real teaching for IT to children.

The presentation by @teknoteacher gave a tour of various groups and events encouraging children to try real computing. Check out his blog. He also has some fame in The Guardian:

• How to run a school hack day: live blog
• Inspiration for a school hack day: what, where, why and how
• Hack to the future now! Don’t hang around for Michael Gove’s computer science curriculum changes, our blogger says plenty can be done straight away…

How did we ever allow school IT teaching to become so painfully stagnant for so painfully long?…

Crowd Source My Dissertation

A room full of ideas in true FLOSS style to brainstorm options for a dissertation.

Next problem: The poor victim has to coalesce the mind map and ideas dump into some real writing of research, critical thought, and clear writing!

Cake

And lots of cake and biscuits! Yum!

HTML5 on the Raspberry Pi

A blazingly fast implementation of a subset of HTML5 features was demoed on a Raspberry Pi, very much in real time! There is good performance to be had out of even modest hardware.

Really Really Useful Tools For The Windows IT Pro

Err… Anything more than Textpad, Wordpad, DOS prompt, Ultimate Boot, and err… Use a Linux LiveCD/USB for recovery?…

How Computing Drove The Music Industry

A very good and entertaining talk from someone very much involved in the music scene and immersed in the introduction of the emerging computer tech into the world of pop music. Amazing what was done with such ‘primitive’ hardware!

Beer, Food, Entertainment

OK… So the best bet was to go with the lager, but the food was good and the entertainment was LOUD!

We were also treated to a fun session by the retro gaming couple and saw/heard the delight of loading up an old ZX Spectrum from the audio output from a modern day iPhone from a downloaded iTunes copy of an old program tape cassette! And it worked first time!!! Phew!

The Pictures

And a few pictures from the day:

Various other Pictures and Videos for Barcamp Blackpool 2012

• Barcamp Blackpool 2012 – ramblings from an organiser by lallyd
• flickr Barcamp Blackpool 2012
• Tim Dobson: A short video I made of Barcamp Blackpool 2012
• Arran Gallagher: Fencing at Barcamp Blackpool video
• Google Images view of Barcamp Blackpool 2012

Some self-explanatory code snippets seen elsewhere as a good reminder for old-style partition tables:

# To save the MBR to a file (contains the partition table also): dd if=/dev/sdX of=sdX-mbr-full bs=512 count=1

# To . . . → Read More: dd your mbr]]> Sorry, if you don’t know what dd or mbr are, you need to do some more reading up first

Some self-explanatory code snippets seen elsewhere as a good reminder for old-style partition tables:

# To save the MBR to a file (contains the partition table also):
dd if=/dev/sdX of=sdX-mbr-full bs=512 count=1

# To restore the MBR and partition table:
dd if=sdX-mbr-full of=/dev/sdX count=1 bs=446

Note that the above does NOT work for the newer “GPT” partition table.

Well… Some of us were ‘keen’ and so we were there in the queue for when the gates opened at 9:30am. Various en-route txts from the rest of our group coordinated our . . . → Read More: Unravelling an Enigma]]> What a blazingly good fun day at Bletchley! A ‘few’ pictures of the day are shown below (hi-res versions are available on request).

Well… Some of us were ‘keen’ and so we were there in the queue for when the gates opened at 9:30am. Various en-route txts from the rest of our group coordinated our meet up over coffee and tea ready for the first tour at 11am.

There is easily more there than can be seen in one day. Did Chris ever make it out before the gates closed? Or is he still lost somewhere in the basement of Block B?…

Meanwhile, I was nearly locked in the RSGB amateur (Ham) radio station GB3RS as it was being shut down for the end of the day… Apparently, the station and displays have only recently been relocated from central London to Bletchley in July this year. They have a very good setup with some good hands-on equipment, some old historical stuff, and the latest state-of-the-art transceivers as witnessed by the various terrestrial and satellite aerials festooned around “Station X“.

… And then the more mundane mobile smartphone digital transceiver came to life to coordinate regrouping in the car park to make our timely escape…

We also enjoyed some good summertime weather that made for a very pleasant wander around the grounds and the various huts and stables. There’s various vintage vehicles and paraphernalia on show around the site to give a feel for the war period.

The wartime effort at Bletchley was certainly impressive with a cypher disassembly line spanning up towards 9000 staff with yet more staff in various outposts. Further expansion was limited by concerns to not overrun the available local services and for keeping the operation clandestine! Also impressive is the volunteer effort today that has brought Bletchley Park back to life. The ‘ultra’ secrecy surrounding the site meant that it was nearly bulldozed to disappear forever unknown under housing. The site was only rescued due to a conservation order placed on a number of trees on the site! Only some years later was the significance of the site ultimately revealed.

The rebuilding of a working Bombe and Colossus, each taking over a decade of re-engineering, are must-see pioneering marvels from the time. They are similarly epic to the Science Museum’s Babbage’s Difference Engine No 2, but also the Bletchley machines go somewhat beyond with their added complexity of electric/electronic circuitry and myriad connections… Elecro-Electronic-Mechanical marvels! And you get to see them working. With all the heat generated, and multiple machines crammed in, plus operators, plus the operators likely chain-smoking and always working under the pressure of time, and no windows, no wonder one of the huts was nick-named “Hell”.

Just a very few of the surrounding wartime stories are included on various display panels, but that still gives good context for the driving war effort.

All quite a feat all round.

Poor Eva in our group was put on the spot for translating the same repeating daily message for some lonesome Africa German outpost that the Allies very deliberately kept undisturbed… That one location must have been the safest but most boring place to be posted to for the entire war. It also helped Bletchley Park decrypt other messages that day…

Another deliberate curiosity was the Czech in-the-middle-of-nowhere posting that was of no strategic interest whatsoever that ‘happened’ to have one bomb dropped nearby. It also happened to uniquely have a few “z”s in its name…

Not to be missed are the stories of various hero pigeons that carried critical messages when all other ‘modern’ technology had failed!

And lots more. Too much to cover all in just one day.

Thanks to Jason for organizing a very good day. And thanks for the txt-ing coordinating from him to sheep-dog the rest of us all together!

And thanks are due to the volunteers we met at Bletchley who make it all enthusiastically and very knowledgeably work very well.

Cheers,
Martin

Further notes:

This seems timely: Alan Turing Monopoly

OK… A bit cheesy but a good idea. Hopefully not lost amongst all the other branded re-spins of that game… I like the use of “‘Auntie Flo is not so well’ (which was the secret phrase for…)”.

Is there also a ‘Turing Machine‘ game board? That would make for a hellish twisted sort of snakes and ladders for jogging forwards and backwards until completion…

A few links:

• Enigma Simulator
• How the Poles broke the Enigma Code
• Wikipedia: Bletchley Park
• Wikipedia: Bombe
• Wikipedia: Heath Robinson (codebreaking machine)
• Wikipedia: Colossus computer
• Wikipedia: German code breaking in World War II
• feldgrau: German Code Breaking of WWII
• Wikipedia: Ultra
• Wikipedia: Combined Cipher Machine
• Science Museum: Doron Swade operating Babbage’s Difference Engine No 2
• My years at Bletchley Park – Station X by Sgt Carol West
• BBC: Celebrating Colossus, the codebreaking computer
• Distributed computing effort that has decoded some wartime intercepted Enigma messages: Enigma@Home
• Bletchley Park National Codes Centre

Three points to note:

• The Germans were ‘ahead of the game’ at the outbreak of WWII and due to their code breaking, they knew in advance the location of all British warships and lots more
• The Polish Intelligence Service set the scene for how to break Enigma
• And the turning point in the war was perhaps at or soon after Arnhem when the British decryption effort became the more successful to turn the tide of strategic information to help Montgomery against Rommel and for throughout the entire theatre of war. Especially, decoding Enigma/Lorenz was essential to the successful D-Day landings…

Perhaps (at least in part) the war really was won by which side knew the more of the other…