Web N+1 workshop

I spent four days last week at the “Web N+1” workshop
in Zurich, which has been written up by Henry
Story, Peter
Rieser and Dave
Levy from Sun and also Bertolt
Meyer who presented SkillMap and Andreas
Blumauer who gave a presentation the Semantic Web from 50000m
down. After these two presentations, even before we had a chance to
take in the full enormity of what was presented we went on to
discussing how we can move forward with our internal and external
systems to give better internal tools. I’m now reflecting on what was
said.

However one of the key takeaways from the workshop is that it is
not documents that need to be connected as much as people. Can we
use tagging in particular and applications like SkillMap to draw the
real organisational structure of the organisation, as opposed to the
management structure of the company. Both structures are important,
however only the management structure is currently known.

scsi.d update

A very small update to scsi.d. It allows it to work even when there is some CTF confusion due to having an incorrectly built kernel module loaded, typically via an IDR.

Version 1.8 is available here.

Good Morning Build 56

A nice gift from the keepers of my Sun Ray server on my return from Zurich. (Yes it was cool to use the Sun Ray server from the Zurich office even if the Swiss German keyboard really did my head. For those who don’t know ‘Z’ and ‘Y’ are swapped, not to mention the “special” keys moving around. We really need the keyboard layout set by the user not the physical keyboard).

: enoexec.eu FSS 1 $; uname -a

SunOS enoexec 5.11 snv_56 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire Solaris

: enoexec.eu FSS 2 $;

Need to check what has changed.

Not on top form

Hmm, eating lots in Zurich does not make you a faster rider. I
spent todays ride struggling. We went to Henfold Lakes again but
this time via Shere and Ewhurst. 39 miles before breakfast with two
good hills. Then straight home for a total of 58 miles.

Since I was struggling everything about my bike irritated me. The
genuine excuse that the freewheel is so bad that the pedals will turn
if you take your feet out of the pedals. However I was also irritated
by the lack of indexed gears which given that I know it does not have
indexed gears and decided to
ride it anyway is a bit rich.

Hopefully a week back in the saddle
will put things to right.

Tags: topic:[cycling] topic:[molesey bbt]

Cyclist not guilty of inconsiderate cycling for not using a cycle path

As a colleague of mine said:

Finally some sense….

This is the case I mentioned
the case of the cyclist who was convicted of “holding up the
traffic” back
in August 2006. The case was retried rather than appealed. As I
understand it the retial was orderd as he was found guilty of an
offence that does not really exist (like being found guilty of
walking on the cracks in the pavement).

Now I hope that the Police
will have to explain why they even stopped him and why they did
nothing about the cars that overtook the cyclist by crossing the
double white lines.

The best bit about this is
that this case caused £25,000 to be given to the Cyclists
Defence Fund in support of Daniel.

The full story is on the BBC
and on the CTC
website.

Tags: topic:[cycling]
topic:[law]

UK statute Law On line

Dave has prompted me to post where you can actually find the definitive statue law or the U.K. on line.

It is here: http://www.statutelaw.gov.uk/

Interestingly, to me, searching for “road traffic act” in google still does not find it on the first page.

Zurich

I’m currently in Zurich, attending a “Web 2.0”
workshop. When I started blogging I took on board 2 bits of advice:

1. Be interesting

   
   

2. Write what you know about.

   
   

I don’t really know about “Web 2.0” although I’m
learning fast so I’m not going to write about “Web 2.0”
so that I can at least say I have kept to one of the bits of advice.
Although there are some interesting usage possibilities that we are
exploring for tagging in particular.

I have learnt one thing while here. That is that Lenin spent a few
months here and while he did he drank in the Odeon
bar. Comrade Levy and I
checked it out. Very nice but I bit bourgeois for any aspiring
revolutionary I would have thought. Comrade
Levy kept very quiet about the fact the Mussolini also drank
there,

Tags: topic:[lenin] topic:[communism] topic:[travel]
topic:[zurich]

Mutliple time zones for cron

I’ve never worked out why things happen in pairs but last Friday
two timezone related issues came up. One a server running in some US
timezone while serving services to all the world prompted my blog
entry to suggest that you run your servers in GMT post. However
there was also a question about cron, which featured in the follow up
to my post. That is cron run in the timezone of the system. Not the
timezone of the users or a arbitrary timezone chosen by the user.
Would it not be cool to be able to specify a timezone in your crontab
file? Better yet let you specify multiple timezones in crontab files
eg: z

TZ=US/Pacific

* 11 * * * (/usr/bin/date ; /usr/bin/date -u) > /tmp/cron.out

* 19 * * * (/usr/bin/date ; /usr/bin/date -u) > /tmp/cron.out19

* 15 * * * (/usr/bin/date ; /usr/bin/date -u) > /tmp/cron.out15

* 8 * * * (/usr/bin/date ; /usr/bin/date -u) > /tmp/cron.out8

TZ=GMT

* 15 * * * (/usr/bin/date ; /usr/bin/date -u) > /tmp/cron.out15gmt

So the first four crontab lines would
run in US/Pacific and the last in GMT. Each user can use as many
timezones as they wish and the TZ environment variable is propergated
to the child.

Now as it happens I am travelling so that has meant a few hours in
Airports and I got wondering how easy it would be to get cron to be
more timezone friendly.

The answer to this is it takes just over one Tecra M2 battery life
to get it working. Clearly this needs some more testing , and the
crontab command needs to validate the TZ strings rather than just
past them though. but the diffs are here.
The output file shows one of the runs from US/Pacific:

6 # cat /tmp/cron.out8

Tue Jan 23 08:25:00 PST 2007

Tue Jan 23 16:25:00 GMT 2007

7 # 

Now I need to file an RFE and see if this can be putback.

Tags: topic:[opensolaris] topic:[cron]

Henfold Lakes open

Six riders braved the remaining winds which while still quite
strong were not dangerous to cycle Henfold Lakes via Epsom and for a
change Walton on the Hill. Going via Walton meant that we got a run
at the descent of Pebble Coombe which would have been brilliant had
I not had to slow due to the cars insisting on sticking to the speed
limit, for which they get my praise, but meant that I topped out at
44mph. I’m not sure I can get the old tourer to go much faster as the
52 x 14 top gear is just not big enough for much faster. (if my maths
is right 44mph is 147rpm).

Henfold lakes was open and so breakfast was had and we returned
via the hill past Polesden Lacy with only a slight delay when we had
to clamber under a fallen tree that was blocking the road.

50 miles.

Tags: topic:[molesey bbt] topic:[cycling]

Improving cycling safety

Robert Gifford writing
in the Independent on making cycling safer while correctly noting
that drivers should note Paragraph 139
of the Highway code:

give motorcyclists, cyclists and horse
riders at least as much room as you would a car when overtaking (see
Rules 188,
189
and 191.

falls into the usual problem area for people looking for a
solution. That of segregated cycle paths and tracks. Good quality
cycle tracks and paths are a pipe dream. They would need to reduce
the number of junctions that cyclists face, recall that the vast
majority of accidents occur at junctions, the terrible accident which
resulted in his comment is an exception. Then the paths and tracks
would have to be swept and maintained regularly. It could be done but
in reality it is never going to happen. The real estate required
makes that a certainty.

He then moves to the real issue. That of inappropriate speed.
However rather than simply suggesting a zero tolerance to speeding. I
would suggest removing fines for speeding so that the motoring lobby
can no longer suggest that safety cameras are a revenue generating
solution and simply go straight for driving bans. 3 points and a 3
month driving ban. 6 points 6 months etc. Job done.

Instead he suggests adding pinch points. Pinch points put
vulnerable road users at greater risk. Indeed the only
road I have been scared off riding on is Oatlands Drive between
Walton and Weybridge which was fine until pinch points were added.
They even have cycle “paths” that lead you into the pinch
point at the same time as vehicles are swerving towards you. Truly
horrible, prior to giving up on this road I took to just taking the
same route as the cars which used to irritate them as I would only be
doing 30mph (it is down hill).

He even then falls for the Helmet suggestion while admitting that
they won’t prevent accidents he seems to imply that they will make a
difference. Another pipe dream.

I fear for the state of cycling safety while those that advocate
it to parliament seem to have such a poor grasp of reality.

Tags: topic:[cycling] topic:[safety]