I tried to register with the local doctor’s today. I spend so much of my British rest-time up in Dundee courtesy of the gorgeous Leah, that is made sense to register up here, and transfer all my records up from Bradford.
Proving my identity wasn’t a problem. The well-travelled passport did that for me. But they also asked for something with my address on. This was a problem. And still is. And will be for some time.
I’m staying at Leah’s place. Her name is on the mortgage, the utilities and the tax bills. I don’t get any paperwork through from banks – I do all that online. My driving license hasn’t been updated since I left Bradford as the instructions on there insist that I must give a residential address and I’m not resident in the UK in any one place long enough to make that worthwhile.
This is just me. But given that even those ridiculous new ID cards the government seem hell bent on inflicting on us don’t have to have an address on, how do you prove where you live?
If you rent and pay cash then you may not have any utility bills in your name. Council tax is based on the property so the property owner will get that bill, not the tenant. Online banking – should you opt to have a bank account or credit card – means no paperwork with your address on. Nobody says you have to have a driving license and you could shove any old address on there anyway. Passports have no address. As for phones, how often do you give out your landline rather than your mobile as a primary contact number?
Thing is, people move all the time. I’m an extreme example, but in one period my parents shifted address four times in less than a year as my father chased work. Keeping on top of all the address changes could be a nightmare if you do update everyone, but unless you need to get communications from them what’s the point?
Do we need to give people an address any more? They’re nigh-on impossible to prove anyway and with the way the internet makes us address-anonymous, it’s becoming almost an outdated concept. Even when I was working, I would get most packages delivered to that address rather than my home one as I was more likely to be in the office during delivery hours.
If you went for online billing/banking and therefore didn’t get any paper mail from such places, how many things would you now get “through the door”? And without these, assuming you also don’t have a driving license, how would you prove where you lived?
Today is – I hope – a great day. After eight years of utter madness, a lunatic will hand over the reigns of power to someone who seems to actually be intelligent. Finally, finally, George Bush will leave the office of President of the United States. This day could not have come soon enough.
My impressions of Obama are good, but I’m always wary. One thing he’s certainly doing is living up to his promises of “change”. Guantanamo Bay will begin the shutdown procedure during his first week in office. This alone is a huge step in international relations as it was a clever loophole that avoided the Gevena Convention.
I only hope such things aren’t a little gloss on his first few weeks and that he doesn’t sink into the usual nonsense we’re used to from politicians.
Bush’s final speeches have been full of hyperbole and nonsense, either ignoring or twisting virtually everything he’s done over the last eight years. According to them, he’s overcome problems and managed a surprising number of achievements. No mention of the fact that he’d not have had to overcome so many of these issues if he’s not caused them in the first place.
But let’s not dwell on the past. Let’s hope for the future. I’m very happy to see a new face in the White House, especially one that’s come pretty much from left field. Obama seems genuinely intelligent and pretty honest – and also very keen to stamp his mark in a good way.
I wish him the best. Both out of relief and out of hope and partly out of belief. And I thank America for voting him in. It’s making me genuinely happy to see someone who’s at least not an obvious idiot in the most powerful office in the world.
I run my laptop with both Windows XP and Ubuntu dual-installed. I’m using primarily the Linux, but there are still a few apps that just can’t be replaced hence still having the old MS workhorse taking up hard drive space. One of these, until today, was an up-to-date version of Skype from which I could send SMS messages.
After having a dig, I found an excellent post on the Ubuntu forums that told me about a cobble-on called “Skysentials”. This adds a few functions, basically making use of facilities present in the Windows version of Skype, the main one of which is the ability to register a phone and send SMSs.
First off, full credit for this entire method goes to “grobar” and “ceverett” on the board who, between them, published details to get this thing going. For those who need details, I’m running Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) and my Skype is the latest from the Medibuntu repository, v2.0.0.72.
5. Find where you saved the file, right click it and “Extract to here”.
6. Open up a terminal and navigate to the new folder created. Enter the following command:
sudo python skysentials.py
If you have Skype running, then the last command will open the Skysentials window.
Now, navigating and running things from the command line isn’t easy, so here’s instructions on setting up an icon or having Skysentials run whenever you load Skype. The first set of instructions is the same for both.
1. Open a terminal and navigate to where you extracted Skysentials.
5. If you like, click on the large icon on the top left and select a new one. When done, “Close” the Launcher Properties window.
Fire up Skype and then locate and click on your shortcut to make sure it works. Skype will ask you to confirm whether you want this application to communicate with it. Make sure you say “yes”.
If you’d like the utility to start up whenever you load Skype, then perform the last set of steps:
1. In Skype, go to the Options Menu.
2. Select “Notifications” from the left, then “Skype Login” from the main window.
3. Tick the “Advanced View” box in the top right.
4. Check the box labeled “Execute the following script” towards the bottom.
5. In the box below this, enter the following line:
/usr/local/bin/skysentials
6. Click “Apply”.
Test this by closing and then re-opening Skype. The Skysentials window should open up shortly after you log in.
Personally, I’ve opted not to have it fire up at the start as I don’t always need it and it won’t minimise to the tray. Instead, I just open and close it as I need from the main Applications menu. If you use multiple workspaces (I don’t) you could always pop it in there.
It’s an excellent little add-on, but a shame it’s functionality isn’t built in to the current version of Skype for Linux. I’ve mailed Skype to ask when they’re going to bring this version up to date with all their others, but have had no reply. At least this works, and works very well!
Additional step: one thing I found when I’d finished installing it, was that I struggled to get rid of the originally downloaded files. When running “sudo python setup.py install”, files are created by root which you can’t delete normally. I managed to get these into my waste basket and then couldn’t ditch them. Awkward.
If you’ve not managed to wedge it into the wastebasket, navigate to the folder you extracted it to. If you did manage to do what I did and get it stuck in the wastebasket, go to ~/.local/share/Trash/files.
Either way, once you’re there execute the following line:
sudo rm -rf <foldername>
Another additional step: I just spotted that my shortcut icon is no longer working. On trying the command from the terminal, I saw it was failing with “segmentation fault”. On a whim, I ran it using sudo and lo – it worked. I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled to no avail.
If you’re also having this issue, then edit your shortcut (instructions above) and prefix the “Command” line with gksudo. Note: not sudo. The former works in the graphic environment and will ask you for your password when you run skysentials. Using plain sudo will achieve nothing and leave you with a seemingly non-functional shortcut.
Annoying having to do this, but I can’t find another way around it. I’m wondering if it’s because I have two versions of Python installed (2.5 and 2.6) although skysentials was configured only with 2.6. The only other change I’ve made recently is upgrading from 8.10 Hardy to 9.04 Jaunty. Could be related but it’s been a while since I used the program.
I wonder how many puns there will be today? As I was in the car on the way up from Edinburgh Airport to home, I heard on the radio that Tony Hart had passed away. I must be getting old, as the TV stars of my youth have begin to pop their clogs.
I never got any of my pictures on Take Hart, but I do remember it. And the mess I ended up making with all kinds of art supplies as a result. And cornflake packets. And bits of glitter. And glue. One that springs to mind was “painting” photographs using kitchen roll and water. You spread the roll out over your soon-to-be work of art, then “painted” using just water, which made the paper transparent and the image show through.
A daft memory from when I was maybe eight years old. But the fact is, I remember it.
Now, I’ve never gone on to do anything arty but I enjoyed myself when I was little and a part of that was from messing round and kidding myself that I could draw and paint. A huge amount of this came from Take Hart, which was his program when I was a nipper.
Great guy, great program. It’s always a shame to loose a great entertainer, and even moreso when they’re someone who inspires children so well.
I love the picture at the top. I nabbed it from b3ta.com and I don’t know who PhotoShopped it, but it’s very apt. No Take Hart = No Morph… which would likely have meant no Wallace & Gromit either!
Oh, and a small trivia fact in the radio story yesterday: Tony Hart designed the original Blue Peter logo.
Here’s one that’s bizarre but does make some sense eventually.
My boss had this issue originally and we never resolved it, I’m ashamed to say. We (erm… I) effectively blamed it on France Telecom / Orange and therefore not anything we could to something about. The problem was that some websites would pretty much always fail to load while others would pop up no problem at all. It just seemed less than coincidental that orange.fr worked fine every time whereas – fo instance plus.net failed. Tesco would work, but Boots wouldn’t. Every Google page (mail, documents, calendar) was fine, but forget getting into Hotmail. Outlook would receive, but not send when connecting to our own mailserver.
All the pages connected, but resulted in the browser just saying “Waiting for…” and never loading the pages, except for very rare flashes when one would work… but the same problem re-occuring if we refreshed or clicked on an internal link.
He was/is using a NetGear DG834G wireless router and the problem occurred via wi-fi and via direct cable connection. I took my laptop over, and had the same issue.
I left France, the problem remained unresolved but he had internet access in the office anyway.
I got back to France in January and two of the child care managers had the exact same problem in their flat. Again, they were using a DG834G. Again, we blamed France Telecom who checked the line and told us “C’est bon!” Then pretty much whatever French for “**** off” is. Their customer service is actually worse than BT, which is impressive.
So I went over to prove that it was the line. Armed with another NetGear, a Thompson SpeedTouch 330 and a Sagem 800, plus a handful of microfilters and my laptop with XP and Ubuntu on it, my aim was to remove every common factor and leave the line as the only possible fault.
Laptop first. XP and Ubuntu both failed on the same websites wired up and wireless. I then updated the firmware in the router to the latest version. No joy.
Next step, I installed the drivers for the Sagem on Lydia’s machine, plugged it in, configured a “dial-up” connection and … blow me. Everything worked.
It was slower than the router connection, I assume because of the speed of the USB cable compared to CAT-5 (I think the modem uses USB1.1), but every site loaded.
Hum.
The problem was, this meant the line was fine. And the only equipment we had that would get it to work was a single-user USB router. Options started to flood in – get a router (not a router/modem) and a USB to RJ45 adaptor. Put the drivers on Lou and Lyd’s machines, give them a hub and share the connection on both PCs. That way whoever was home first would connect and the next one could share it.
What a lot of work.
But if the router’s faulty, then another one will solve the problem, surely?
So the next morning, Louise picked up a new DG834G (this one happened to be a v4 – the others were v3) and brought it up to where I was working. I configured it and, on a whim, tested the old one on someone else’s connection.
It worked. No problems.
So, more information. The issue was a result of some combination of that router and that line. Technically, the line was partially at fault. It had to be. Louise left with the new router and would call me once she got home and tested it.
Where it didn’t work. Same problem as the old one.
What. The. F…?
Armed with all the info to hand, I did a dig on Google. I can’t remember the terms I used, but after filtering through a lot of posts on various forums, a pattern developed. The issue isn’t ISP-dependant (I saw problems with AOL, PlusNet, Orange and several others) or with particular routers (a handful of Netgears, rebadged Thompsons, Linksys, etc.) but the solution was simple and it worked:
Reduce the MTU value on the router.
I can’t give you details for others, but on the NetGears just log on as the administrator to the web interface and locate the WAN settings down the left. In there, it defaults to 1500 or something. Reduce this to 1400. Click Apply. Wait a minute.
And the internet starts working again as if by magic.
Here comes the science:
An MTU is a Maximum Transmission Unit – the size of the largest packet of data that a communications protocol can forward. A higher MTU increases bandwidth efficiency, but large packets can block slower connections. It seems the 1500 default size (which, incidentally, is the largest allowed by Ethernet standards) was too much for the “fully working” France Telecom internet connection. By reducing this to smaller chunks, the blockages vanished and the connection started to work again.
I’m just glad we sorted it. Not as glad as Lou and Lyds, though. I believe I’m getting drinks out of this!
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