I'm going to start writing reviews for open source science software. I haven't written anything like this before so you'll have to excuse the length/lack of information or lack of writing ability.

In case people were wondering I'm a physics/maths/astronomy student at Monash University and being a student I don't have a lot of money to spend on software for the PC. Luckily in my astronomy lab classes we're using a free application called Stellarium.

It's a reasonably good app giving you the ability to track stars all from the desk of your computer. This is an entirely free and open source application available to anyone with an interest in the night sky.

The interface is pretty simple with the ability to add/remove the atmosphere for a good view of the stars and the ability to turn different objects on and off. After selecting an object you can view details about that object. It will tell you all the information about the star an amateur astronomer would ever need. If you want to watch the object travel through the sky you can do so by using the simple date/time window that you can select and change the year, month, day, hours, minutes and seconds to view the object at any particular time you need.

It has the ability for you to change your location to anywhere in the world if you know the latitude and longitude. You can add the ecliptic line and the "Celestial Sphere" lines.

Stellarium is extendable to an extent. There are some plugins for it but not as many as other astronomy software.

The problem with Stellarium like most graphic intense software is that speed that the app runs at. As you can see I was only getting 2.27 fps and thats using my laptop and on Windows 7. I have run it on Fedora at uni and it is significantly slower on that. I have heard rumours that it does run faster on Macs and Ubuntu.

I'd recommend this program to all amateur astronomers and people who don't have access to a telescope. It's a very good program to view the stars without having to leave the comfort of your own home.

Whilst I was quite happily sleeping yesterday morning, the International Women’s Day competition winners were announced. The popular vote prize went to Elvira Martinez “tatica1″. The second prize went to Karen Y. Perez, and Jen Phillips got an honourable mention for her awesome analogy-style story.

You can read all the stories and see the record of votes on the Ubuntu Women wiki.

Thanks so much to everyone who entered and voted (and Jono for announcing). The competition was heaps of fun to organise and now we have lots of stories to show that we forge our own paths to Ubuntu just like the guys do!

The previously published parts of this series can be found here:

• Part 1: Logging Software for Amateur Radio contacts - xlog
• Part 2: Hacking on xlog
• Appendix: References/links

So, we've downloaded the source code for xlog from the CVS repoistory:

  cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.savannah.nongnu.org:/sources/xlog co xlog

Even before configuring, the first thing I do is put the whole thing into a Git repository. The main reason for doing this upfront is that it then becomes possible to see what files are created or altered during the software building process. When we get around to making changes we can then make use of branches and commits.

  cd xlog
  git init-db
  git add .
  git commit -m 'Initial commit'

Use 'git status' to see which files are different.

Lets now build the software, as per README.cvs.

  ln -s ...
  autoconf
  automake
  ./configure
  make
  make install

Now, 'make install' will fail unless you give yourself system (root) privileges as it will try to install the code into the system directories (eg. /usr/bin, /usr/lib etc.). For the developer, there are several methods to get around this requirement. I use a tool called 'epkg', which allows software to be installed

To update the repository from upstream:

  (commit any outstanding changes to another branch)
  git checkout master
  cvs update

These changes can then be pulled into a local working branch by using:

  git checkout (your-branch)
  git rebase master

Useful Webpages

xlog

• Software Website - http://freshmeat.net/projects/xlog
• CVS Download Page - http://savannah.nongnu.org/cvs/?group=xlog
• Browse CVS Source- http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/xlog/xlog

git

git - The Fast Version Control System

• Software website - http://git-scm.com
• Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_(software)

epkg

epkg is an encap package manager.

• Software Website - http://www.encap.org/epkg

In the first part on "Hacking on xlog" I eluded to the fact that xlog was good, but that I wanted to made some changes to it. The following article discusses these changes. What changes do I want to make to xlog?

• Be able to add additional rules for more contests - Currently xlog has some useful rules and checks (eg. duplicates) but they are either overly general (check for all the duplicates in a log file) or specific to a particular competition. It would be good able to support different contests rules by either an extension language or a plug-in or dynamic library architecture.
• Make the User Interface (UI) layout configurable - It would be good to be able to modify the UI to suit the way that I setup and use my set radio. Gnome and Gtk+ applications can be written using libglade, where the UI is defined in an XML file along with the functions that they call. It is then possible to rearrange the interface via the XML code, without touching any of the underlying code. Currently, xlog has 'hardcoded' all of the widgets and their positions into the code of the application itself.
• Add support for other forms of radio operation - Logging is necessary in on-air contests but there are other types of radio operation where a suitable logging application would also be very useful. Examples include: Running nets, Message Relaying and Emergency Operations.
• Multiple Operator Support - Support for multi-user access and multiple user logs. This would be useful for multiple user stations and for collating logs for competition managers.

In order to make these changes and make any form of useful contribution, I'm going to have to download the code and spend some time poking around in it, just to understand how it works. More about this in my next post.

Introduction

Something that I have recently been looking into is Amateur Radio logging software available on Linux, in particular Ubuntu and Gnome. One of the things that Ham (Amateur) Radio operators like to do is make contacts with other Hams, exchange details and sometimes, even exchange physical 'QSL Cards', which are postcards giving details of the contact made (Frequency, Equipment used etc.). In general, the more and varied these contacts are the greater the enjoyment found in the hobby. In addition to the adhoc 'CQ' contacts, there are regular contests, where operators try to make contacts in a particular period of time, on particular radio bands. Logs of the contacts make are submitted to the contest manager and points are awarded based on the contest rules. Rules include such things as a point for every contact made, multipliers for contacts made in particular bands and bonus points given for particular types of contacts. The software that I have found and I am most happy with is called 'xlog', which does most of what I want. I would like to be able to get it to do more (see below) and there are a couple of things which if they were done just a little bit differently would make if even more useful and easy to customise. The software is licensed under the GPL v2, so in the words of Jeremy Clarkson - 'How hard can it be?' The plan is to put together a series of posts about my experience with working on this software. Future posts will follow something like the following outline..

• What do I want to change?
• Getting the source - and using git.
• Setting up the development environment - using epkg
• Making changes.
• Getting these changes back into xlog.

Watch this space.

Remember how I said that the voting for the International Women’s Day competition was open?

Well that statement only stays valid for about the next 16hrs or so.

There’s also a substantial number of people who’ve gone through, read all the stories and submitted their votes, but have not followed the instructions that were emailed to them. They really ought to do that. The token that is emailed out is how you validate your email address — votes are held in quarantine until this happens.

I have recently downloaded the current Alpha3 ISO of UNE (formally UNR) and have installed it on a 4Gb SD card to test it out on my Eee PC 701SD. After spending a little while bringing it up to date (as of the time of writing) I chose to update it before attempting to to check out most of the functionality.

As you can see the desktop it set out the same as Karmic Koala. With the new theme schema I must say has given this release a more professional appearance! I was skeptical of the Plymouth adoption, but I must say that now seeing it, the transitions are a lot smoother with no noticeable flicker (at least on the netbook anyway!)

So far I haven’t noticed any regressions, but I really only use my netbook for web browsing (funny that’s what they are for right?) I have installed the ubuntu-restricted-extras & Skype 2.1.0.81 beta. Skype works fine! there are no noticeable sound issues as like were present in both Jaunty UNR & Karmic UNR. The flash plugin provided in the ubuntu-restricted-extras package has no noticeable issues either as has pass versions. So so far so good! 

© 2010, Scott Evans. All rights reserved.

Well the official announcement was made that ubuntu 10.04 (lucid lynx) is to have a new theme, and with this comes much discussion over the colour schema. The default for many years has been an Orange & Brown blend that for some they have got fairly accustomed too, so as with most changes you have to either accept it and move on or voice opposition to the change! (the latter not being of any use IMHO)

Here is a screen shot of my desktop… (click on image for a full size view)

As most have been talking on the ubuntu forums about the window buttons being placed on the top left (Mac style) mine has remained as the normal on the top right (Windows style) now my guess is that this is due to the setting in my profile (Gconf) was set like this when the theme was installed and as such did not alter the appearance. My current install was done from the alpha2 install media, this to may have some bearing on that as well but I’m not to sure! there is a poll on ubuntu-forums (may require to login to see the poll)

As I still insist on using Pidgin, the task bar icon doesn’t match the new theme! but then I’m not too fussed about that! 

UPDATE: After adjusting the metacity settings in Gconf-editor, I’ve now reproduced the setting displayed in the demo images (ubuntu 10.04)

© 2010, Scott Evans. All rights reserved.

I’ve just gotten around to reading my email.

There’s a faux journalist in my inbox wanting comment about my relationship with Ubuntu of late. He’s been told to publish no such thing. Forecast is for a high chance of misquotes and misappropriations.

You have been warned.

Okay, Freeview (the group that represents all of the major Free to Air Networks, including commercial and government owned) has announced that it's going to be launching a new Electronic Programme Guide service in June, complete with new hardware and something they are calling an Online Catchup Service.

Apart from the Online Catchup Service (which I will be talking about shortly) the biggest selling point that Freeview seems to be pushing for this new service is the ability to record based not only on time blocks, but by genre and programme as well.

This is what 250 million dollars buys you these days?

From the article and the reading around that I've done, it appears that the Free To Air Television industry (somewhat bizzarley aided by the ABC, an organisation that has proven time and again that it knows where the future lies) has decided that the best way to tackle the threat of extinction is to re-arrange the deck chairs on the titanic. People have had the ability to record programmes based on genre and programme titles, episode titles and so on for a few years now. If they haven't been building their own PVR's via projects like MythTV (my personal favourite), they've been using off the shelf solutions such as TiVO. It's not new people, it's old and people have been doing it for a long time now.

Hell I was there when digital came to a certain regional television network, I helped setup their first EPG generator and I can tell you that the Standard of the day, derived from the European DVB-T EPG stuff required genre information to be sent out.

Oh yes, there is something new about this particular EPG service. It's not going to be standard. In order for you to take advantage of it and the attached "Online Catchup Service", you are going to need to buy new hardware. Your set top box isn't going to be able to use any of the new features, and certainly your plasma/led/lcd tv with built in HD tuner isn't going to be able to utilise the new features being offered. Nope, you're going to have to go out and spend another couple of hundred bucks so that you can make sure you don't miss that 6 month old episode of Big Bang Theory or which ever is your Television poison.

Re the "Online Catchup Service" that appears to be a service that allows you to catchup with programmes that you've missed, online. Though I'm not quite sure if you're going to need to "catchup" given that you're going to have teh cool new "recording by genre and programme" features of the new EPG Service.

Sigh.

The International Women’’s Day Competition was launched in January. Entries closed last week and we have a whopping 15 stories to vote on. Some are funny, some are poetic, but they’re all great examples of women discovering Ubuntu.

Voting has opened, and anyone can vote, so go on.

© 2010, Scott Evans. All rights reserved.

Well I’ve previously posted about some issues I was having with Lucid whilst still in the Alpha2 stage of development, well now that Alpha3 has been pushed out there has been a number of updates come through.  For a little over a week I’ve been having an issue where the system will just freeze (hard lockup) I’ve still not quite pinpointed what is the cause or the events that lead to the system going AWAL on me!

The one thing I have noticed though that has me wondering what is so different between installs, I have two servers the first one is my Web/E-mail/DCHP/DNS this was setup originally with Ubuntu Intrepid (8.10) back in late 2008, since that time it has been updated with using the do-release-update to bing it up to current versions as they have been released. When this server is rebooted after POST has completed and Plymouth is doing its thing I’m getting a three tone bar along the bottom of the scree that is dark blue/light blue/white and these continue until the white covers the blue. At this point you still need to ALT+TAB+F2 (tty2) to get a login prompt (bug #506297) but the text on the screen is a bright with colour, not the usual grey! it’s not until about 2-3 minutes later the text will change to the grey and all services become available. This behavior is most strange and again I’ve yet to find a reason to it.

On the second server, this was installed from Ubuntu Jaunty (9.04) and this only seems to suffer from bug #506297 that I can notice. However this server is only running a few services and is no where nearly as loaded as my main server!

So I just find that the display difference between these two most bizarre! I’ve been using Ubuntu now for a few years and this is the first time I seen anything quite like it. However until I can pinpoint the issue/s it makes it very difficult to submit any bug reports!

UPDATE: I’ve since discovered that there is a theme selection for Plymouth

plymouth-set-default-theme –help
Plymouth theme chooser
usage: plymouth-set-default-theme { –list | –reset | <theme-name> [ --rebuild-initrd ] | –help }

-h, –help             Show this help message
-l, –list             Show available themes
-r. –reset            Reset to default theme
-R, –rebuild-initrd   Rebuild initrd (necessary after changing theme)
<theme-name>           Name of new theme to use (see –list for available themes)

Also it appears that Plymouth must have a minimum specification for themes because one server that has an Intel 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE VGA chip and displays the themes without an issue. However, my main server has a S3 Inc. Savage 4 VGA and doesn’t display these themes. So I think my issue be solved as to why I don’t get the themes on one server as opposed to the other… 

© 2010, Scott Evans. All rights reserved.

Today while out with the family, we decided to purchase a treat for the kids. So we headed for the nearby donut place to purchase the required sickeningly sweet treat.

Turns out they didn't have enough of the particular sweet my son wanted, so he picked what looked like an iced donut with chocolate flakes on it. Except it wasn't called a donut, rather it was called a Yeast Ring.

This naturally caught my eye as being a somewhat risky name to give a ring of dough, so after the kids had consumed their various sweets, I thought I would get a photo of the Yeasty Rings to follow up the tweet I had already made.

Not thinking much of it, I went up to the counter and used my camera to take a couple of what turned out to be uselessly blurred photos. Gave it up as a lost effort and then went off to complete the rest of the tasks we had at the time.

45 minutes later as we exited the shopping centre a security guard approached me and asked me if I had taken any photos around the donut place earlier on. Specifically he asked if I had taken photos of a young girl  who had apparently been standing close to the Yeast Rings display. Apparently the girls mother had registered a complaint, accusing me of taking photos of her girl. The guard didn't mention why this would be a problem, but the obvious implication is that I was taking photos for nefarious purposes.

It took me but a minute to explain to the guard that no, I hadn't taken photos of the girl, I hadn't even seen the girl standing there, focused as I was, on the Yeast Rings. The guard explained that they had to follow up the complaint both to calm the apparently distressed mother and for reasons of terrorism (my jaw dropped I'm sure at this one). However while I was finishing up with the guard, a police car pulled up in a nearby spot, and I was informed by the guard that I would need to talk to the officer.

Right.

Remaining calm at all times I walked over to the officer and once again went through the process of showing him that the photos I had taken were of the donut silmacra rather than the girl. The officer was pretty good about it, requesting to see through the rest of the photos, which I allowed, and then we parted ways without a request for details or anything else.

All in all the security staff and police were polite and cordial in the way that they treated me. I have since discovered however that they were actually trailing myself and my family for at least half an hour before we were approached.

Sigh.

Below are the two photos that I took:

 and 

Update (01/03/2010):

I have just received confirmation that the security personal have managed to get in contact with the woman who made the original complaint and explain that there was no substance to her complaint - something that had been playing on mind since Saturday afternoon. While this wraps up the event (and believe me I feel quite relieved), it doesn't excuse the manner in which it was dealt with. I will be writing a further letter to the centre regarding this sort of situation and ways it could have been handled better.

Hey here's an idea to combat the rash of idiotic facebook page "hacks" (leaving your facebook page open to all is not a hack by the way). Let's set up an Online Content Ombudsman, who shall have the power to... umm... complain to overseas companies.

Um.

Originally suggested by South Australian independent Senator Nick Xenaphon, it's been picked up by the Government to show how "pro-active" they are when it comes to dealing "Teh Evil Interwebs".

Considering that companies like Facebook and MySpace have absolutely zero Australian presence, I don't see how any Ombudsman can have any affect on their operations, unless, and this is a very scary, scary thought. The Ombudsman has the power to attach web sites to the Filter. Anything less than threatening to ban the site within the country is going to have all the persuasive power of a damp tissue.

I would love to be able to sit down with Kevin Rudd and Senator Nick, away from the cameras and explain to them how the internet works. If not me, then please can someone else do it?

 

I'm going to love how this gets spun. In the portion of the DBCDE site dedicated to the Minister, there is a tag cloud that's meant to show the "trending topics" within the site. Each release, post and whatever gets tagged with one or more categories and thus the tag cloud does a count and presents those categories with the more popular featuring in larger lettering.

Except if the topic is ISP Filtering. Someone on the whirlpool forums picked up that it is deliberately left out of any such count. Here's the offending code snippet:

for(var i=0; i<=15/*<-Important! increase this value by 1 everytime a keyword is excluded below*/; i++)
{
var z=0;
for(var j=0; j<split.length; j++) {
  if (unique[i]==split[j]) {
   z=z+1;
  }
  counts[i] = z;
  }
  var size = getTagClass(z);
  //Customise the tag-cloud to display what shows up
	 if (unique[i] == "ISP Filtering") 	 { 		 continue; 	 } 	 document.write('<a class="'+size+'" href=\"http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/search?q='+unique[i]+'">'+unique[i]+'</a> ');
  }

For those of you who aren't coders, the key word here is "continue;". What this does is tell the code to drop back to the beginning of the loop and with the next lot of data. In this case it means that if the Tag is "ISP Filtering" it gets ignored.

Oh and to make sure there is no confusion. This wasn't hacked out of the site. I didn't crack the server and pull down sekrit code. Instead I right clicked on my browser window and selected View Source.
 

 We've both played Enemies of the State.

Seriously, according to this article the IIPA (International Intellectual Property Alliance) has requested that the US Trade Representative place countries that mandate, or (and here's the kicker) even suggest the use of Open Source software be placed on a special list of countries that have lax intellectual property regimes (read Pirate Havens).

Note that this is not just a case of sneaking in the Open Source thing amongst a number of other reasons, the IIPA is explicitly claiming that even thinking about using Open Source software in Government is tantamount to destroying the global software industry, letting the Goths into Rome and scheduling a 7 day, 24 hour run of Home and Away on every single channel.

So according to the IIPA, I as a purveyor of Open Source solutions am leading to the delinquency of governments world wide, using my awesome "Powahs! (tm)" to drive poor innocent multi-nationals to the wall.

Sigh.