Qole's Law: Thinly Sliced Cabbage

From 1080p MKV to 720p MP4

2011-12-21T22:30:00.004-08:00

I started with a 13 GB MKV with 1080p h264 video and DTS 5.1 sound. This was far too overwhelming for my current media centre. So I decided to transform and transcode the file into an mp4 with 720p video and stereo AAC audio.

I did this in Ubuntu.

I couldn't simply use avidemux to transcode the video and audio (as I often have done), perhaps because this MKV was not standard enough to be compatible, perhaps because the MKV was so huge, I don't know exactly. So I took a more circuitous route.

First step, tear apart the MKV into its component parts (elementary streams). The odd file extensions are useful to make it clear that these are containerless streams, that really can't be played by (most) video players.

The H264 video first:

mkvextract tracks original.1080p.video.mkv 1:video.h264

Then the DTS audio:

mkvextract tracks original.1080p.video.mkv 2:audio.dts

Second step, put the h264 video into an MP4 container.

mp4creator -create=video.h264 -rate=23.976 -use64bits h264.video.mp4

I found that I needed the -use64bits parameter to get mp4creator to handle the huge file size. The -rate=23.976 was the frame rate of the video, found using VLC.

Third step, use avidemux to crop, resize and transcode the video. As with many "1080p" videos, the width was 1920 but the height was only 880, and a few rows of pixels at the bottom were duplicated. I cropped the sides and the bottom first to get 1554x874, approximately 16:9 aspect ratio (yes, I lost quite a bit on the sides, but I prefer a full screen experience). I got these dimensions by opening a calculator and entering 16 / 9 x 874. The 874 was my post-crop height. I figured out how much to crop from the sides by using (1920 - 1554) / 2, which gave 183, and you can't crop odd numbers, so I cropped 182 off of the left and 184 off of the right. Then I resized using MPlayer resize (to 1280 x 720) and Lanzcos3 resize method.

I encoded with x264, single pass, using a very high quality setting, (quantizer 20). I saved to "video.720.mp4". This produced a 5.3 GB file. The same encoding, set to quantizer 26, produced a more "smeary", more noticeably compressed video, but it still looked reasonably good and it was only 1.4 GB. So you can decide what you prefer.

Waiting for this bit is the longest piece of the puzzle. Whoo. Hours.

Fourth step, I used VLC to transcode the raw DTS to stereo AAC in an mp4 container. I used "Convert/Save" in the File menu, and set the profile to "Audio - AAC (MP4)". I made sure "Video" was unchecked in the "Video codec" tab and in the "Audio codec" tab, I set the Codec to "MP4 Audio (AAC)", the bitrate to 192 kb/s, channels to 2, and sample rate to 48000. I set the output file name to "audio.aac.mp4". I hit the Save and Start buttons and waited. This was short in comparison to the video transcode.

Fifth and final step, I put the video and audio back together using ffmpeg.

ffmpeg -i audio.aac.mp4 -i video.720.mp4 -acodec copy -vcodec copy final.video.mp4

The final video was 5.5 GB in size, quite large, but so beautiful and sharp! You can still see the film grain. This video not only played on my media PC, it also played very nicely on my HP TouchPad.

Please Remove Harmattan Platform Security!

2011-07-22T20:29:00.005-07:00

This is an open letter to the decision-makers in the Nokia Harmattan project, prompted by Ville Vainio's suggestion.

There is still some time before the release of the N9. Before that release, please disable the platform security framework (MSSF) by default.

When the concept of the Maemo 6 security framework was first outlined to the community in Amsterdam, Maemo was the OS that was going to end up powering all of Nokia's future high-end devices. Maemo 6 was being designed to cater to massive global markets, and so it needed to provide full DRM capabilities.

When Nokia moved to the joint MeeGo project with Intel, they pushed to include the MSSF in the MeeGo 1.2 release.

Many important things have changed since then. Nokia has announced that it is dropping the MeeGo project; the N9 will be the only Harmattan device released by Nokia (and it will be a limited availability release with no announced plans for the UK or North America); there will be no DRM support in Harmattan; and the Intel-led MeeGo project has declined to include the framework in MeeGo 1.2 and announced a "review of meego security strategy".

Now that most (if not all) of the most compelling reasons for platform security in Harmattan have disappeared, the platform security has become, as one community member phrased it, "dead weight". It no longer has a great deal to contribute to the success of the device or the operating system. It has now become more of a hindrance than a benefit to developers and power users, more of a disabler than an enabler.

If Nokia releases the N9 with platform security enabled, it is guaranteed that an open kernel with platform security disabled will be made immediately available. Almost as surely, any power users and developers wishing to use their devices fully will immediately replace the stock kernel with the community kernel. This seems completely out of character for an open-source project, forcing a major fork at release time!

I am not arguing this as an academic exercise, however. I have a very specific example in mind when I make this plea; I have long maintained a Maemo project called Easy Debian which allows common users to install and run desktop Linux applications (like Open Office) on their handheld devices without having to know much about the internal workings of the operating system.

As far as anyone can tell, my project will simply not work with the security framework. It depends upon an image file being mounted on the loop device and then chrooted into. This image file is mounted dynamically and so the hashes cannot be stored in the system. So these files can't be signed. And even if the basic files could be signed, what about people installing any new apps from the Debian repositories?

See this post. The whole thread is very interesting.

When the N9 is released, Harmattan will be the best example on the market of a mobile, open-source operating system. It should also be the best example of an "open" OS for developers. Please don't add unneeded layers of complexity. Please make the threshold for entry as low as possible. Please keep the legacy of "most hackable device" alive in Harmattan!

Please reconsider the platform security!

I think Andrew's cogent summary below is worth including in the article:

"Symbian was a mass-market OS; Harmattan won't be.

The provision of a secure DRM system makes sense when the platform is your future, with content providers lining up to provide movies-on-demand and for purchase.

Maemo managed fine for years without platsec, and Android's recent malware problems show that having one doesn't prevent users granting permissions to apps which don't need them."

Making the WRN3500L into a Print Server

2011-03-06T23:15:00.002-08:00

The Netgear WRN3500L came to my notice very recently when a local store had it on sale for the same price as the venerable Linksys WRT54GL, my go-to router for stable-as-a-rock installs for many years. The WRN3500L is also a Linux router, but it has all sorts of cool extras; Wireless N, gigabit Ethernet, and coolest of all, a USB port! Sadly, the supplied firmware didn't have any print server capabilities, and I really wanted that feature.

So, I've managed to turn my Netgear WRN3500L router into a print server (while still keeping it as a nice router). I did so using the standard DD-WRT build and an extra package that I downloaded using ipkg, the package-manager for OpenWrt and DD-WRT.

I used the following resources:

myopenrouter.com
The DD-WRT router database and wiki

Read on for my detailed instructions on doing it yourself. And feel free to comment if you have found things I should add or change.

Getting DD-WRT Set Up

I used a netbook connected by Ethernet cable to the router to connect to the router.

Flashing to DD-WRT

First, I downloaded the "special .chk file for initial flashing" firmware and the "Standard-USB-FTP Generic" firmware to the netbook. I got them both from the wrn3500L page of the DD-WRT router database (you have to enter "wrn3500l" into the search engine; I can't link to it directly).

Then I plugged in to the router and went to the router's web interface on 192.168.1.1 (using the default name and password) and went to "Upgrade Router". I installed the .chk firmware and then let it sit a very long time (20 minutes or so) before doing the 30-30-30 reset that the wiki recommends. You probably don't need to wait that long.

When the router was back up with the DD-WRT firmware, I immediately went to the Administration / Firmware Upgrade tab and flashed the Standard-USB-FTP Generic firmware. This time, I just let it sit for 5 minutes and then reconnected. I didn't have to do anything fancy this time; it just came back up with the new version.

Enabling SSH

After I had the full DD-WRT firmware, I activated SSH (Services / Services tab: Secure Shell box: enable everything, Apply Settings; then Administration / Management tab, Remote Access, SSH Management: Enable, Apply Settings) and deactivated telnet. (That's optional; but who uses telnet these days?)

SSH really is the best way to connect to your Linux router; it gives you a secure connection from anywhere. Linux (and Mac OSX) has it built-in (well, desktop Linux distros have it built in. You have to download it for Maemo), and PuTTY for Windows is a great SSH client for Microsoft platforms. A great side benefit of setting up SSH for your router is that you can use your router as a proxy with an encrypted tunnel. But that's for another post.

Enabling JFFS

In order to install the extra print server packages, you need to first get a JFFS filesystem installed on your router. This reclaims the space not used by your firmware and gives you a writeable filesystem to put custom files on. For the WRN3500L with the standard USB firmware, this is 2.6 MB, more than enough space for getting a print server running. I'm hoping to get a windows file share using Samba as well, and it looks like there's enough space for that too.

Enabling JFFS isn't as easy as just choosing "Enable JFFS" and hitting the Apply button. I found that out the hard way. You have to follow the steps in the wiki very closely:

On the router web page click on Administration.
Scroll down until you see JFFS2 Support section.
Click Enable JFFS.
Click Save.
Wait couple seconds, then click Apply.
Wait again. Go back to the Enable JFFS section, and enable Clean JFFS.
Do not click "Save". Click Apply instead.

The router formats the available space.

Wait till you get the web-GUI back, then disable "Clean JFFS" again.
Click "Save".
It may be wise to Reboot the router, just to make sure

I didn't do it this way the first time, and the JFFS partition seemed to be there, but it wasn't really. I guess it just hadn't been formatted.

Getting The Printer Set Up

Enabling USB and Printer Support

I mostly followed the Printer Sharing article on the DD-WRT wiki to get this working. I think there may be extra steps here (it seems you may not need to install anything at the command line if you enable USB and Printer Support in the GUI), but it doesn't seem to hurt anything to do them all.

First, you need to go to the Services / USB tab and enable everything. Just go down the row of radio buttons and set everything to "Enable". Hit "Apply Settings" and wait for the GUI to return. Plug in your USB printer and reboot the router.

Go to the Setting Up The Clients section and if that works for you, then you're done. If not, come back and continue with...

Installing the Print Server

First you have to log in to your router via SSH. This is pretty straightforward. In Linux, it is just

ssh username@192.168.1.1

In PuTTY it is just a case of putting username@192.168.1.1 into the Host box.

username is the name you chose when setting up your DD-WRT for the first time. And you'll need your password too, because that's the first thing the router asks when you connect.

Once logged in, I updated ipkg, the package installation system in DD-WRT. Ok, I have to stop and say, isn't that cool? A router with a package management system! Yes, that is very cool. Ahem. Anyway. It is pretty straightforward to do.

ipkg update

You can see what printer-related stuff is available by doing the following:

ipkg list | grep print

This showed me:

kmod-lp - Kernel modules for parallel port support and line printer
kmod-usb-printer - Kernel modules for USB Printer support
p910nd - A small non-spooling printer server.
samba - NetBIOS/SMB file and print server

I installed the kernel modules (even though I think they're already installed in this version) and the p910nd printer server. I also installed the samba server, but I haven't gotten that working yet, so I'm not going to dwell on it ;-)

ipkg -force-depends install kmod-usb-printer

I created the file /jffs/etc/config/usb.startup and added a single line, using the very simple built-in text editor vi, as follows:

vi /jffs/etc/config/usb.startup

Hit the i (for insert) key, type the following two lines:

insmod /jffs/lib/modules/2.4.30/printer.o

Hit Esc a couple of times, then enter :wq to save and exit.

I rebooted the router, (reboot at the command line does this well) and then waited until I could SSH back in. Then, I installed the print server:

ipkg -force-depends install p910nd

Then I rebooted one last time.

I didn't have to do anything special beyond this to get printing working. I may not have even needed to do all that.

Getting The Clients Set Up

Ubuntu Clients: Set up the printer using System / Administration / Printing. If you add the printer, choose "Other", or if you have the printer set up, choose properties, and then put the following into the "Device URI" field:

socket://192.168.1.1:9100

And you're done with the special set up. That should just work.

Windows Clients: This is a bit weird. For some reason, you have to install a Local Printer (NOT a Network Printer! Don't go there!) and then choose New Standard TCP/IP Port. (I know, I know, I told you it was weird). Set device type to custom, keep it set to RAW and set the port number to 9100.

N900 Meego chroot part 3: polishing the process

2010-11-11T14:40:00.000-08:00

In my first post in this series, I walked you through making a Meego chroot image from the raw images provided by Meego. In the second post, I gave you some rough scripts for starting the Meego UI in a Maemo chroot with the assistance of Easy Debian. In this post I'll present my new Meego image with the newest Meego UI and all the pieces installed to run without Easy Debian. I also present new scripts that streamline and improve the process.

The Image
I have posted a new Meego image (lzma compressed) on qole.org for you, meego_1_1_b.img.ext3.lzma. This image has been updated with newer components, and so the UI looks a bit different, and I have installed Xephyr and xbindkeys. I have also copied over wmctrl and the keyboard focus binaries. These pieces now make it possible to just use the Meego image to do everything, without opening the Easy Debian image at all.

The Scripts
I have posted new scripts, meegoscripts2.tgz:

I have improved the chrootmeego script to use variables, so you can customize how you run Meego.
I have added a new syncmeego script that copies over the necessary files from Maemo to Meego. I got most of this script from this Meego wiki page, and I honestly don't know what effect the copied files actually have on the chroot (except the resolv.conf file, which we already knew about).
I have enhanced the startmeegoui script, now called startmeegoui3. This script now starts the Xephyr nested X-Server inside Meego, gives it keyboard focus, and then starts the Meego UI.
I have added a new script, gomee (clever name, eh?), that opens the Meego chroot, syncs it, and then starts the Meego UI.

Some interesting bits in the startmeegoui3 script:

export M_USE_SOFTWARE_RENDERING=1

R. Burchell was kind enough to point out after my second post that this environment variable makes all Meego apps start with software rendering. Apparently, that was all that stood in the way of getting most of the Meego apps to run.

/usr/bin/mdecorator -software -remote-theme 2>/dev/null &
echo "sleeping..."
sleep 10
echo "...ok now"
/usr/bin/duihome --desktop -software -remote-theme 2>/dev/null &

The bold lines are new. Adding the sleep command seems to fix the strange white band that was appearing across the top of the Meego home screen. I'm not sure why, but it works, so... there you go.

Still To Do

The media apps (photos and videos) do not work yet. More precisely, they work, but they can't find any media. I suspect that someone needs to show us how to start the media indexer to get them working.
The phone app doesn't work. If you try to start it, it complains about ofonod not being started. If ofonod is started, then the phone app just never starts at all.

Running Meego Handset in an N900 chroot with Easy Debian: Part 2

2010-11-06T11:57:00.002-07:00

In this post, I show you how to start the Meego Handset 1.1 "desktop" in a Maemo chroot, using Easy Debian and the image file you made using instructions in the last post.

DISCLAIMERS:

This is a very shaky process. It is in no way ready for use in any way other than "Oh that's cool!"

The animations on the desktop are very slow, and ~~none of the applications seem to work except Fennec~~ thanks to Robin Burchell, the applications all work now. Please update your scripts!

The Prerequisites:

You have a working install of Easy Debian on your N900, and you can start the LXDE desktop in a window.
You have made the image from the last post, and you have put it in your /home/user/MyDocs folder.

Quickstart:

I have written four little scripts that semi-automate the process of starting the Meego UI. You can download the zip file containing the four (updated!) scripts here at qole.org. You must put these scripts in the /home/user/meego directory, or edit the scripts to look in another directory.

Put the scripts in the MyDocs folder of your N900 (that's where they'll download if you just choose the root "N900" folder when downloading from the N900), and then, at the Maemo terminal prompt on your N900:

~ $ tar xzvf MyDocs/meegoscripts.tgz

Then:

~ $ cd meego

~/meego $ ./debmee

Hopefully, that's all you have to do to get the Meego 1.1 desktop to start up on your N900. Read on for more details of what's going on "under the hood."

The Explanation:

The main script, debmee, runs the other scripts for you.

debbie /home/user/meego/meegoxeph
/home/user/meego/chrootmeego /home/user/meego/startmeegoui

The first line runs the meegoxeph script in Easy Debian to create a nested X server (Xephyr) for Meego to run in, and the second line runs the chrootmeego script to open the Meego image in a chroot, and the startmeegoui script to start the various pieces of the Meego UI in the Easy Debian X server.

The meegoxeph script is just a stripped-down version of the script that opens LXDE in Easy Debian. I've discussed the process elsewhere, and I'm not going to look very closely at it in this post. However, feel free to ask me questions about it, if you want.

The chrootmeego script is a simple script to open a Meego chroot and run whatever is passed to it in the chroot.

if [ ! -d "/.meego" ] ; then
sudo mkdir /.meego
fi
IMG="`ls -1 /home/user/MyDocs/meego*.img* | head -1`"
sudo qchroot $IMG /.meego "$@"

The first three lines check to see if you have a /.meego directory, and if you don't, create one. The third line, starting with IMG=, looks for an image file that starts with "meego" in your MyDocs directory, and the third line chroots into that image file and runs the parameters. The parameter that it runs in this case is...

The core of the process: the startmeegoui script.

This script is the most interesting script. It starts all the pieces needed to get the Meego 1.1 desktop running.

export DISPLAY=:1
/usr/bin/mthemedaemon 1>/dev/null 2>&1 &
/usr/bin/sysuid -software -remote-theme 1>/dev/null 2>&1 &
/usr/bin/meego-im-uiserver -software -remote-theme 2>/dev/null &
/usr/bin/mdecorator -software -remote-theme 2>/dev/null &
/usr/bin/duihome --desktop -software -remote-theme 2>/dev/null &

The first line just sets the display to the Xephyr nested X server.

The rest of the lines are taken from the list of started apps found in /etc/xdg/autostart in an early version (August 2010) of Meego Handset. See this post and this one especially. This is the same script I used back in August to start the desktop, and I think it is outdated now. (There are some commented-out lines in the script that I'm not going to discuss in this post, but if you wish to experiment with them, you may).

The list of apps in /etc/xdg/autostart is much larger now, so I think the next step would be to try starting more of them (applauncherd in particular looks promising) and to see if we still need to use software rendering (the -software parameter I'm using on many of the lines).

Another note: the 1>/dev/null 2>&1 stuff that you see on the end of most of the lines of that script just silences the huge amounts of error messages the apps produce. This seems to speed up the whole desktop.

Interesting Problems and Side Effects:
One of the interesting new side effects of this is that the GPS icon starts flashing in Maemo. I guess Meego is trying to acquire a fix for some reason.
~~Another problem is that no app will start except Fennec.~~ Fixed! See above! Make sure you download the updated scripts!

Killing Meego:
You can shut down Meego (and then the Easy Debian host window) by typing the following at a Maemo terminal prompt:

~ $ sudo closechroot /.meego

~ $ sudo closechroot

Bonus:

If you've read to the bottom of the post, I'll give you a treat. Here's a link to my image file that I made using the instructions from the last post.

Running Meego Handset in an N900 chroot with Easy Debian: Part 1

2010-11-01T22:39:00.002-07:00

I would like to document my process for getting Meego Handset to run in a Maemo chroot on the N900 using Easy Debian, so you don't have to multi-boot your phone.

But I can't document everything in one post, and I'm documenting as I go, so this first post will be the just first steps: how to get an Easy Debian compatible image out of the raw Meego images that the Meego project is posting.

I do these first steps on an Ubuntu desktop machine.

1. Download the latest Meego Handset image. I got mine from the builds directory of the Meego repository, here: http://repo.meego.com/MeeGo/builds/

The file you are looking for ends in .raw.bz2 and you can get to it by choosing the biggest numbered directory twice, then going into .../handset/images/meego-handset-armv7l-n900/ and downloading the .raw.bz2 file.

This is the one I'm using.

2. Unzip the file on your Linux machine.

I recommend becoming root for the entirety of this procedure. I suggest doing it before you even unzip the file. I had problems unzipping the file as a regular user, and this may have been my problem; I don't know, but what can it hurt to gain root right away?

sudo su -

Unzipping the file is pretty straightforward on a Linux command line:

bunzip2 meego-handset-armv7l-n900.raw.bz2

In these instructions, I'm going to call the meego file "meego-handset-armv71-n900"; substitute the longer version as necessary.

3. Mount the Meego rootfs partition on loop. This is tricky, because the raw image has multiple partitions and so you have to use a little trick I found on the 'Net, here.

a. You need to first create a directory to mount on. I created /media/meego:

mkdir /media/meego

b. Now mount the first partition. First check to see where the partition starts:

fdisk -lu meego-handset-armv7l-n900.raw

See where the first partition starts. Multiply that number by 512, and use it as the offset. In my case, it starts at 1 so the calculation is easy. It is just 512. This will probably stay the same for future releases, but it might change. Better to document this, just in case.

mount -o loop,offset=512 meego-handset-armv7l-n900.raw /media/meego

4. Now make a new image file that will just have the Meego rootfs in it, so it can be mounted properly by Easy Debian. I made my image 1GB, but you can make it bigger if you want.

dd if=/dev/zero of=meego_1_1.img.ext3 bs=1024 count=0 seek=$[1024*1000] 

You have to format the new image file! I used ext3.

mkfs.ext3 -m0 -L meego1_1 meego_1_1.img.ext3

5. Mount the new empty image file. I made a mount point, /media/meego2, but you can use whatever name you want.

mkdir /media/meego2

mount -o loop meego_1_1.img.ext3 /media/meego2

6. Copy the Meego rootfs to the new image file you created. Substitute the correct directories here.

cd /media/meego

tar -cf - . | ( cd /media/meego2 ; tar -xpvf - )

7. Unmount everything.

umount /media/meego

umount /media/meego2

8. Copy your new Easy Debian compatible image file to your N900. I would suggest using the USB cable, but there are lots of ways to do this. You can also zip up your file to keep a safe backup.

Next post:

I'll try to post again soon with directions for getting the Meego Handset UI started under Easy Debian's Xephyr nested X server.

Qole Needs A Job

2010-06-13T19:09:00.000-07:00

They say it isn't what you know, but who you know that gets you a good job. Well, I know a great bunch of people in the mobile Linux world, and I'm hoping that you can help me find a great job. I've been helping out in the community since 2007, learning a lot about Linux and Maemo, and meeting some amazing people along the way. Now the economic downturn has given me an opportunity to try something new and exciting, and I want to take this chance to dive into the mobile Linux world as my career. If you want to know more about me or think you can help, please read the rest of this post, visit my LinkedIn page, e-mail me or PM me through my account at talk.maemo.org.

Things have been slowing down at my current job for a while now. As things have slowed down, I've been yearning for more of a challenge at work, but my volunteer work with various Maemo projects and the maemo.org community, as well as my family life with a precocious preschooler has kept me busy enough.

But now I find myself part of a wave of lay-offs that has jolted me into a sharp awareness of my need to get into an interesting career. And one of the most interesting parts of my life for the last few years has been my work in and around the Maemo community. My hope is that I can turn my interesting hobby into a great career.

During my years with Maemo, I've become a very capable Linux hacker, shell script writer, Debian packager, and recently, a Python programmer. Through my day job, I have also become a decent PHP programmer and an expert SQL query writer. And in the last few weeks, I've decided to start teaching myself C++ and Qt, so I can participate fully in MeeGo when it bursts onto the scene and changes the mobile world.

The "other side" of me is my love of writing and communication. I'm a good technical writer and editor, and I'm good with helping people and technical support. My technical support ability is aided by my troubleshooting and diagnostic skills. It is important to me to document my discoveries and techniques so that others can learn and grow, too.

My two terms on the maemo.org community council taught me some important things, too. I came away from that experience more tactful, more diplomatic, and with a much deeper understanding of the complex problems facing Nokia as it moves into the open source world.

I'm smart, I'm a fast learner, and I love new challenges. I have EU citizenship, and I don't mind moving if the job is interesting.

Can you help me?

N900 Easy Debian, After PR 1.2

2010-06-07T16:41:00.000-07:00

Executive Summary: There's a new version of Easy Debian in Extras-testing that has a much better method for getting the keyboard working in LXDE after the PR 1.2 firmware update changed things.

The recent PR 1.2 firmware update fixed many bugs and added many features, but it also "broke" a trick that Easy Debian folks had been using to get keyboard focus back after returning to LXDE from another app.

A little background: Maemo 5's window manager, Matchbox 2, is very strict about the keyboard focus rules, far, far stricter than any other window managers. They did this for power management reasons. Some people have called this a bug, but others argue that this is the most correct way to do it, and it is the fault of sloppy applications.

Whoever is to blame, there are quite a few apps out there that don't work properly with the N900's window manager. Unfortunately, the Xephyr nested X server that Easy Debian uses to run LXDE inside Maemo is one of those apps. Finding a way to get keyboard focus for Xephyr was one of the first hurdles facing the Easy Debian project when porting to Maemo 5.

The original breakthrough happened when qobi wrote a little "fixer app" that "fixed" non-compliant windows when given a window ID as a parameter. This method gave initial keyboard focus to LXDE when starting up.

Someone discovered a much more elegant workaround, however. All you needed to do was press the power button and then clear the menu by pressing the screen outside the menu, and the current window would receive keyboard focus. This became the standard method for returning to Easy Debian's LXDE after using another app, such as receiving a phone call or taking a picture.

When the long-anticipated PR 1.2 firmware update came, Easy Debian users were dismayed to discover that they couldn't use the power button to get their keyboard back in LXDE. Even worse, that trick made it impossible for the user to hit Ctrl-backspace to get back to the dashboard. The only ways to "break out" of this keyboardless LXDE were to either log out or to open the camera. Not a good situation.

After some hacking, we have managed to get things working again. It isn't as neat as the power button workaround, but it is nearly as good. Now, the same LXDE icon that opens LXDE in the first place also returns you to LXDE with keyboard focus. So you only need to put the Easy Debian LXDE icon (the red diamond with the "d" in it) on your desktop and press it whenever you want Easy Debian LXDE.

If you want this new version (and if you use Easy Debian LXDE, and you have PR 1.2, then yes, you want it), enable the Extras-testing repository and get the update. Please be aware that any other apps that offer updates after you enable Extras-testing may not be ready to be installed, since they may not comply with the community's QA standards.

If you have any questions about Easy Debian, they're probably answered in the the Easy Debian wiki page, but if not, go to the talk thread and ask your question there.

A Familiar Story, Retold

2009-12-12T20:20:00.007-08:00

This post, along with my other poetry, has been moved to my new poetry blog.

Easy Chroot for Maemo

2009-03-27T00:10:00.000-07:00

I'm going to start this post with a defence of my pronunciation of "chroot" as a single word, not "c-h-root" or whatever. I believe it should be pronounced this way for three reasons:

Unix/Linux commands and computer acronyms are commonly pronounced as words. "grep", which is a contraction of the g/re/p command, is pronounced as a word, as are many even less plausible acronyms. Try saying "s-c-s-i" instead of "scuzzy" in a computer lab and be prepared for the derisive laughter.
I think the chroot command was intended to reference the cheroot, a kind of inexpensive cigar also known as a stogie.
It is much easier to say. Why would you make work for yourself by saying a one-syllable word as two or three syllables?

The rest of this post is a more in-depth technical discussion of my easy-chroot package, targeted at developers, those wishing to easily mount partitions and image files, and those wishing to try out new linux distributions and environments with a minimum of hassle (no rebooting, partitioning, etc).

Easy Chroot: Introduction

I have packaged the scripts for the mount-and-chroot system underlying my Easy Debian package into a separate package I call "Easy Chroot". I have also included the drivers (compiled by Matan for me) to do the "turbo loop," which allows a mounted image file to be accessed at nearly the same speed as a partition.

I have created (with lots of help from lots of people) a set of scripts that are very generic, and can be used independently or together to build and run various kinds of "appliances" or OS replacements, without any direct impact on the host OS.

The Scripts

qchroot:

This is the all-in-one core script.

Provide it with an image/partition, a mount point, and a command, and it will do the rest... (But it runs the commands it is given as root inside the chroot, which is often not what you want. See the quserchroot command, below, to run chroot apps as non-root.)

The first parameter is the image file, the second parameter is the mountpoint, and the rest of the parameters are passed to the chroot and run there. There's a lot of magic going on under the surface here, so let's look at what's going on "under the hood."

The qchroot script can be broken into three parts; mount, bind, chroot. The mount portion is handled by qmount below, so we'll look at the binding and chroot portions.

Binding: After a partition or image file is mounted, it isn't very useful for the kind of chroot we want here. A basic chroot is sometimes referred to as a "jail", because applications run in the chroot filesystem can't "see" anything outside of this filesystem. This means none of the devices, media, temp directories, nor even the user's home directory can be accessed while "inside" the chroot. That's why a careful use of the "mount -o bind" command is required. It mounts directories from the parent OS in the chroot, too, so applications in the "chroot" can "see" them. Mounting the /dev directory makes most of the devices connected to the system visible, and mounting everything under /media allows the chroot access to SD cards and attached external media such as USB drives. This also allows chroot apps to share the X display and desktop manager, so they appear to be running on the Maemo desktop. The qchroot script also mounts the various temporary directories, so that applications can communicate with applications in the parent OS. This means GTK apps inside the chroot can invoke Maemo's stylus keyboard when a text field is tapped. It also means a chroot app can open an e-mail attachment from Modest.
Chroot: This is the primary purpose of all of these scripts, and in the end, it is one of the most simple and straightforward parts. The qchroot script makes sure that exiting the chroot, however that happens, resets things gracefully as possible, but the actual chroot is a simple one line command. It really is the mounting and the binding that make the chroot a workable virtual environment.

userchroot: The userchroot script is only a thin wrapper around qchroot. This script, however, isn't run as root; in fact it will fail unless it is run as non-root. The userchroot script inserts an extra "su user -c" before the commands to be executed inside the chroot. It takes the same parameters as qchroot.

For example, let's say you have an image file on your SD card containing, among other things, OpenOffice.org. You would run the following command (as user, not root) to open a document in oo writer:

userchroot /media/mmc1/ubuntu-ooo.img.ext2 /opt oowriter "/home/user/MyDocs/resume.doc"

Hey! Look at that splash screen! You're starting up OpenOffice Writer!

qmount: This script does some serious heavy lifting. It is called by qchroot to mount the image file or partition. It takes the first two parameters of the scripts mentioned above; the image/partition name and the mountpoint. A lot of my best scripting is in here, and this is also where I needed the most help from outside.

The qmount script checks to see what it is you are trying to mount, and if you are mounting an image file (a file that contains a filesystem, like an ISO file, except it is read/write), it will use the dmlosetup app (thanks Matan!) to mount the image file; this improves read/write speed dramatically, and makes the image file almost as fast as a dedicated partition.

You can use this script to mount an image or partition, if all you want to do is mount it (and not chroot into it). A partition mounted with qmount is not suitable for chroot however.

closechroot: This script is one of the best things about running applications in a chroot. By running this script, you can kill all of the chroot applications in one blow. No hunting around trying to find stray processes. The closechroot script is also very important to run if you want to delete or move the image file that you have mounted, because the dm-loop doesn't "let go" of the image file when you just unmount it.

The closechroot script takes one parameter, the directory where the chroot is mounted. It then kills the chroot applications, unmounts all of the bound directories, and then unmounts the image file or partition that you mounted.

qumount: This is the script that does the unmounting for closechroot. It can be used independently if all you want to do is unmount a partition or image file. Don't use qumount to unmount a fully mounted chroot, however.

synchroot: This script doesn't need to be run very often. It copies several configuration files from the primary system to the chroot, so that the two environments are "synched". This is important for things like time, user permissions, keyboard mapping, and networking. The files that are copied are the following:

/etc/hosts
/etc/resolv.conf
/etc/group
/etc/passwd
/etc/localtime
/usr/share/X11/xkb

The files in the chroot are backed up with a date-based extension, so you can restore your chroot file system if synchroot breaks something.

Some Support Hacks

There are a few extras thrown into the easy-chroot package to make it easier to run non-hildon applications. Here's a quick overview of them.

Movable Dialogs Hack: Thanks to qwerty12 and Matan, you can set your dialogue boxes to be either movable or static (the default). Movable dialogues are often needed when running desktop applications which can have huge dialogue boxes for settings, etc.

Processor Speed Hack: Thanks to lcuk and others, the /sbin/cpu-ondemand and /sbin/cpu-perform scripts (and associated menu items) set your processor to either "on demand" mode (processor speed drops when cpu is idle) or "performance" mode (processor speed is locked at full speed). Due to very aggressive definitions of "idle" in the Maemo system, the processor often scales back to half speed when it isn't appropriate. This can have a noticeably negative impact on processor intensive applications (like Gimp and OpenOffice, etc). By setting the processor to "performance", you can dramatically speed up many of these big, slow applications.

Host Window Hack: Thanks to Bundyo, this little app (/usr/bin/hostwin) can be used with the Xephyr nested X-server to run a secondary desktop (yes, a complete desktop, like Gnome, or KDE, or anything) as a window on your primary Maemo desktop. See the link above to the ITT thread discussing the program's use.

Installing The Package

easy-chroot can be found in the diablo extras repository. Install with the Application Manager or apt-get install easy-chroot or make it a dependency of your project.

Google Text Ads

2009-03-25T14:47:00.005-07:00

Hi All,

I'm going to try a trip to the Dark Side and put some Google AdSense text ads on my blog. If I get a bit of money from this, I'll show my wife that my hobby isn't entirely without benefit.

If, after a few months, I haven't made any money, I'll remove the ads. But I'll just see what happens. They're pretty non-intrusive, I think.

E17 Illume on N800

2009-03-19T17:15:00.000-07:00

The Enlightenment project is a lightweight desktop environment and a bunch of supporting libraries (which are used in projects like Canola). The Illume module is a new Enlightenment desktop "that modifies the user interface of enlightenment to work cleanly and nicely on a mobile device." E17 is the newest, still-in-development version of Enlightenment.

Nathan "Neato" Jones got E17 Illume running on the tablets under Mer, and then he gave us good instructions to try it ourselves. And he even posted an annotated video of Illume in action!

I fired up an Ubuntu Jaunty chroot on my tablet, installed the E17 builder-installer script, and after many hours of compiling the entirety of E17 on-tablet and two SVN versions, I got a working version!

I then used my Xephyr-on-Maemo trick (the trick I used in Easy Debian to run IceWM and LXDE on top of OS2008) and, from within OS2008, I tried out the interface in both portrait and landscape mode.

Here are some screenshots of portrait mode:

The browser is Epiphany, using the Mozilla engine. The text editor is Leafpad.

I have to say the on-screen keyboard is much too big for landscape use, and too small for portrait use. I found this frustrating. I also found it frustrating that there was no way to "log out" of E, I had to kill the X-Server or reboot the tablet to get out of it.

My final opinion (and Nathan seems to agree) is that the E17 Illume desktop has a lot of potential as an interface for the tablets, but it is still a work in progress and there are a lot of rough edges to be taken off.

Qole's Notes: Building an Easy Mer / Ubuntu Chroot for the NIT

2009-02-24T18:00:00.002-08:00

Mer Midori running in OS2008 Diablo via chroot

Why Mer?

I've been wanting to set up an Ubuntu chroot in the style of Easy Debian. I've decided to use the Mer 0.8 rootfs because:

Mer is based on Ubuntu Jaunty, which is my current distro of choice, mainly because it has the newest Open Java6 JDK.
The Mer developers have clearly been working to slim down the big Ubuntu footprint; consequently, the image is much smaller than a comparable Jaunty image.
The Hildon Input Method works automatically with GTK apps; this means the stylus keyboard pops up when I tap an input field in a GTK app.
Midori, a great little GTK WebKit-based browser, comes bundled. Not only that, but they've managed to get some Hildonization done by the developer!

Qole's Notes

Here are my notes for customizing the Mer 0.8 rootfs to run in my chroot.

I have the rootfs set up in a partition on my SD card, and I'm using my Easy Debian package to do the actual chroot.

I'm posting these so I can set things up quickly in the future. Hopefully someone else finds something of value here too.

Configuring the Chroot

Some basic configuration needs to be done, right off the bat. First, from the Maemo prompt:

sudo closechroot
touch /home/user/.synchroot

Then, as root inside the chroot:

mkdir -p /home/user
chown user:users /home/user

This will copy some Maemo config files into the chroot and make a home directory for "user".

Default Ubuntu Shell

The shell defaults to "dash" as opposed to "bash". As explained here, this was a decision by the Ubuntu team to improve boot speed. Boot speed is not relevant in a chroot, so I repoint /bin/sh to bash instead of dash. Inside the chroot:

rm /bin/sh
ln -s /bin/bash /bin/sh

I don't like this solution very much; it will make the system much slower booting (if you wish to boot to it). I'm going to see about leaving dash symlinked and purposely calling bash when a chroot terminal is requested.

Setting Locale:

Changing locales in Ubuntu is ugly, even "broken," as described here. This is what I do (from within the chroot) to get en_GB (my Maemo locale) set up in the chroot. From within the chroot:

cat /usr/share/i18n/SUPPORTED | grep en_GB
vim /var/lib/locales/supported.d/local
dpkg-reconfigure locales

Hardware Key Hacks / GTK Stylus Setup

Now it's time to get the pieces needed for my fullscreen and on-screen keyboard hacks. From within the chroot:

apt-get update
apt-get install matchbox-keyboard wmctrl xbindkeys libgtkstylus

I use xbindkeys, wmctrl, and Matchbox-Keyboard to do "fake hildonization;" by running xbindkeys, I can map the hardware key combination "-" and "fullscreen" to make any app fullscreen, and "-" and "menu" to toggle the Matchbox keyboard.

Boy, Ubuntu's version of Matchbox keyboard is ugly. What's with the shaded keys?

The libgtkstylus on the end there lets the user use tap-and-hold for right-click within GTK apps.

Adobe Flashplayer

Now I install Stskeep's Adobe flashplayer hack, to allow Flash to work in Midori and other browsers. In maemo root terminal (with chroot mounted):

cd /root
wget http://qole.org/files/deblet-flashplayer.tar.gz
tar xzvf deblet-flashplayer.tar.gz
cd flashplayer
leafpad flashplayer.sh
(change the CHROOT value to point to the directory where your chroot is mounted & save)
./flashplayer.sh

That should configure most Ubuntu browsers to use the maemo Adobe flash plugin.

OpenJDK (Java 6)

apt-get install icedtea6-plugin (This wants to pull in all sorts of unnecessary language fonts; I had to add all the ttf pkgs to the install line, followed by "-" for each, eg ttf-baekmuk- ttf-bengali-fonts- ttf-kannada-fonts- etc...)
sudo debian update-java-alternatives -s java-6-openjdk
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/jre/lib/arm/IcedTeaPlugin.so /ubuntu/usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins/libjavaplugin.so

Test the install here:

http://java.sun.com/applets/jdk/1.4/index.html

There currently doesn't seem to be a way to get OpenJava6 to run in Midori. I installed Mozilla Prism to to test Java. It seems to be the lightest-weight Java-capable browser available for the tablet. From within the chroot:

apt-get install prism

Prism running a simple demo Java applet

DBus

Getting maemo / chroot dbus processes to talk is proving to be a challenge...
Maemo doesn't seem to keep the machine id in /var/lib/dbus/machine-id, which is where most dbus-aware apps expect it to be. So far, I've found the following seems to work. In a maemo root terminal (after starting the chroot in /ubuntu) [1]:

dbus-uuidgen --ensure
mount -o bind /var/lib/dbus /ubuntu/var/lib/dbus

This seems to make DBus work; the Mer osso-xterm from maemo will respect the existence of maemo's osso-xterm. The only way to start Mer's osso-xterm is to close maemo's version first.

I've got to make this more permanent. I have to do the mount -o bind command every time I start the chroot (after closechroot or reboot).

Other Problems

The stylus keyboard doesn't work in Midori's web pages, only in the address bar. This is true for any GTK browser. The widgets within the web page are not GTK widgets, so no Hildon Input Method activation. Java doesn't work in Midori, and Prism is a very stripped-down browser, with a very bare interface. Sadly, even installing xulrunner Gnome support doesn't help with making it more stylus friendly. Is there nothing like MicroB out there?

Theme problems: There's got to be a way to get the chroot and maemo sharing theme information and icon info, too. This is certainly a difficult problem. Perhaps the simplest solution is to install the same theme into both maemo and mer.

Dash-vs-Bash: I've gotta figure out a way around this...

Extra apps

Leafpad is my favorite lightweight text editor. It works great in this chroot, because it is completely GTK, so the stylus keyboard and tap-and-hold right-click work fine.

Gnome ALSA mixer is a nice addition. It is not included in the tarball below, but it is easy to install, and it doesn't pull in a huge number of dependencies.

Future: I want to experiment with Fennec Alpha 2 (+24.3 MB) and Abiword 2.6.6 (+53 MB), and see how they work in this environment. I also would like to try the E17 desktop.

Downloadable rootfs tarball

Here's a tarball of the mer 0.8 chrootfs with all of the above already completed (158 MB).

Updates
25-Feb-09: Here's what I've discovered so far:

Fennec doesn't do Flash (even though it sees the plugin, it doesn't actually show the Flash) and it is somewhat unstable. I can't select text; if I drag, it just drags the page. If I double click, it zooms.
Abiword works, and it uses Hildon Input Method. It seems to have problems loading files, however, often opening an empty "Untitled" file instead of the chosen document. It also is a bit wobbly; it crashed once on me.
I can make the stylus keyboard pop up in most Mer apps (where it doesn't pop up by itself) by pressing the centre d-pad key.

01-Mar-09: Getting themes to work:

I've found a two-step way to get the theme to work in the chroot.

Edit /home/user/.gtkrc-2.0 and comment out any theme-related lines. Add the following line:

include "/usr/share/themes/liberty/gtk-2.0/gtkrc"

Start the sapwood theme server inside the chroot (as user, not root). I have no idea why it doesn't share the running sapwood server in Maemo; probably Nokia's version is proprietary somehow.

/usr/lib/sapwood/sapwood-server &

If you want to maintain a consistent theme throughout, then you need to install the same theme in OS2008 and the chroot. So far, this seems to be limited to the Titan theme, since the Liberty theme isn't available for OS2008 and Titan is the only third-party OS2008 themes in the Mer repository at the moment.

I will post updates as I discover more.

The Economic Crisis as Corruption Scandal

2009-02-05T16:44:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking a lot about the American sub-prime mortgage crisis and the following economic crisis that has people all over the world losing their jobs and their homes.

I've decided that the whole thing is actually a disguised corruption scandal.

The problem started when a bunch of con artists discovered the "sub-prime mortgage" scam. You get someone with bad credit into a bad mortgage by selling them the expectation that in a rising housing market, they'll be able to sell the house and make a profit before the mortgage's wicked, crushing interest rates kick in and squash them like a bug.

These scammers are always around, and they're always looking to lure people into giving them money through greed. Sometimes the scams are illegal, but, like those ubiquitous "Money Mart" loan sharking companies, this scam was legal.

But, really, those guys weren't the real bad guys. They couldn't have destroyed the global economy no matter how many sub-prime mortgages they sold. They were making money off of gullible idiots, sure, but not a lot of money. Not in the grand scheme of things. No, the bad guys were working on Wall Street, getting really rich by repackaging turds as gold bullion, and then slipping these turds into the investment stream so quietly that nobody noticed. And then, when people started noticing that their supposedly low-risk investments were actually piles of smelly turds, it was too late. The whole thing came crashing down. With almost a third of the global investments turning out to be turds, the economy just ground to a halt.

The "credit crunch" that followed came partly from the fact that nobody trusted anybody anymore. How could you be sure that you're getting gold when the last time you were handed "gold" it turned into turds? This kind of complete lack of trust is common in poor "developing nations" where corruption is rife, but it really wasn't a part of the Western system until suddenly we all discovered that our system had been rotting out from the inside for years and years.

Just like the corruption you hear about in poor countries, this corruption thrived mainly because the people who could have blown the whistle and stopped the corruption were getting rich by keeping quiet.

Why so much corruption in poor countries but not rich countries? Rich countries, like the USA, normally don't have to worry much about corruption, because turning corrupt doesn't pay enough in comparison to staying honest. You might get more money, but you're also much more likely to get caught, and in a mostly non-corrupt system, getting caught means severe consequences. In poorer countries, turning corrupt pays much, much better than staying honest, and since the whole system has often corrupted (due to no intervention over a long period of time), there are few, if any consequences, even if you do get caught.

Well, the situation on Wall Street during the late 90s and the beginning of the 21st century was an absolutely perfect environment for corruption. Corrupt behaviour payed much, much better than honest behaviour, and since what they were doing was technically not illegal, they didn't have to worry about any personal negative consequences of their behavior. Of course, we've all seen that there were terrible, terrible negative consequences to their behaviour, but they're doing fine.

And the problem is that nobody's been arrested, nobody's going to jail, nobody's even being fined. A couple of financial institutions collapsed, sure, but most of them are being bailed out with American tax dollars.

Well, actually, no, they're being bailed out with imaginary money, money that the American government doesn't actually have, which means they're just printing more money to give to the people who brought the whole system crashing down in the first place.

See why I call it a corruption scandal?

As long as nobody's guilty of anything, the global economy is going to continue to suffer. You don't go to the cops when you think the cops are corrupt. And you aren't going to start investing again when you think the banks are corrupt. Without trust, an economy can't function. And we don't have any trust right now.

Little Caterpillar's Hallowe'en Adventure

2008-11-09T14:24:00.000-08:00

Here's Vivian in her caterpillar costume, on Hallowe'een:

(If this video is "not available", go to Google Video and watch it there. It works fine over there.)

Vivian: "This baby caterpillar spits out leaves. Because she doesn't like leaves."
Daddy: "What does she like instead?"
Vivian: "She likes candies! That's the best thing she likes."
Daddy: "So you're a baby caterpillar that only likes candies."
Vivian: "And she likes pizza too!"

liqbase in beta testing; shiny!

2008-10-16T09:49:00.000-07:00

There's a very cool Internet Tablet application out there called liqbase. It shows off the tablet in a whole new way. Among other things, you can sketch, read books, or pan around a map quickly and smoothly. You can scan through your archive of past sketches on the Graffiti Wall, or you can bump the sketches around on a playing field with the Physics Demo. You may have seen lcuk's videos or you may have seen lcuk presenting at the maemo summit (Jamie should be getting some video of that soon), but you figured it was just a demo. And until this month, it was.

Now you can play with this flashy little app yourself; it is no longer a shaky playtest demo, it is a usable beta-quality app. Gary (lcuk) has been working hard to get things user-ready, and he's finally ready to share it with all of us.

Go over to liqbase.net to get a copy of this shiny little toy, and if you have problems, you can post on the ITt thread, the #maemo channel on IRC, or at the Garage project page. You'll get a fast response; lcuk doesn't seem to sleep much, and he seems to respond so quickly sometimes you wonder if he wasn't watching you type.

Easy Debian moves to Extras

2008-10-12T14:20:00.000-07:00

Finally, "Easy Debian" is no longer just a "circus trick"; you can use real laptop applications on your tablet at not-unreasonable speeds, thanks to a couple of "turbo charging" boosts we've gotten lately, and a lot of polish from the rapidly maturing Debian side.

I was overwhelmed by the huge positive reaction across the Internet when I released the first version of my Easy Debian project back in July on Internet Tablet Talk. But I was frustrated by the speed of the "image file" method I was using, and the Debian "armel" architecture was still missing a few key pieces to make it a stable, trustworthy distribution.

Several things have changed since July. First, the Debian armel architecture managed to pull things together in time for the Lenny "freeze" at the end of July. That means there will be a tablet-compatible version of Debian when Lenny becomes the next "stable" version later this year. It also means things like Java, OpenOffice.org and Firefox got some seriously good polishing in the last few months, and it really shows when you run them on the tablet. Also, the LXDE desktop environment came to my attention. It is a really nice, light environment that runs fast on the tablet, and is much more full-featured than the IceWM window manager I was using before.

Secondly, I was given the exciting privilege of Nokia sponsorship to the Maemo Summit in Berlin in September. This motivated me to prepare a new Debian file system with all of the enhancements that had been added in the previous months, as well as some tricks that I had learned since the first version.

Lastly, through the help of others, I found two really effective speed-up techniques that suddenly made the Easy Debian apps really usable! I got down on my virtual knees on the #maemo IRC channel and begged the elite tablet hackers there to help me figure out how to speed up access to the image file that was the basis of the Easy Debian project. Matan came through in a big way; he presented me with some kernel modules and some instructions that accelerated the whole project to almost the same speed as using a dedicated partition (around 2x-4x faster)! I then discovered the ability to set the tablets' processor to "Performance Mode," thanks to lcuk's liqbase project. What a difference that made for processor-hungry apps like OpenOffice and Iceweasel (Firefox)!

So, now that all these pieces are in place, and now that the whole project has "grown up," I felt I needed to push it into the official repositories. I was also getting some gentle pushes from several community members.

Even though the entire project is made from free components (except for one notable exception in the image file), I have released it to the non-free section of Extras-Devel. This is because it was too difficult to get all of the contributed binary bits into a form that could be compiled by the autobuilder that guards the gates of the "free" repository.

Screenshots: (click picture to see more info and larger sizes)

The Gimp editing a 4 megapixel digital photo:

OpenOffice Writer editing a document in OS2008, with Matchbox-Keyboard on top:

LXDE, (the Lightweight X Desktop Environment) running on top of OS2008:

Vivian's First Easter Egg Hunt

2008-04-01T19:55:00.000-07:00

Here's a video of Vivian, at 2.5 years, at her Oma and Opa's house, having her first Easter egg hunt. March 2008.

CIBC's Rubin Says We're Already Peak Oil

2008-03-02T17:52:00.000-08:00

Jeff Rubin, chief economist of CIBC World Markets, has said that we are already in Peak Oil, according to this Toronto Star article. Not only that, but we've been there since 2006. Not only that, but demand is growing so rapidly that a plateau in production is as good as a decline, according to this CIBC article by Rubin (from last summer). This article says that he sees "oil at $150 (U.S.) a barrel within the next four years – possibly much sooner," and "He supports the peak oil theory and believes we've already passed the peak in conventional production."

I only wish I could derive some satisfaction from saying, "I told you so."

The best thing to do is figure out ways to cut our consumption, so we can ride the tsunami. Buy a bike, install new windows, get solar heating on our roofs...

Music Recording Industry Crisis, blah blah blah.

2008-01-30T11:59:00.000-08:00

Just finished reading a long and silly speech by Paul McGuinness, manager for the band U2.

As with all news of the recording industry's panic-stricken uproar, I want to say only one thing:

Making a digital copy is not stealing.

No, seriously, it isn't. Some of the things that can be done with digital copies (like forgery, embezzlement, etc) are crimes, but the act of making a digital copy of something is not stealing. Some countries have made the act of making a digital copy of media into a crime, but please understand, this is not stealing.

Once you realize that, it changes everything. Words like "piracy" and "theft" no longer make sense, and the recording industry is freed to try and fix their problems with a much wider array of solutions. Instead of wasting money and time trying to catch people making digital copies of media, the music industry can pay people to do more productive and creative things, like, I don't know, make good music.

The problem with the entertainment industry is quite simple, actually. For decades, the industry has made profits from artificially restricting the supply of media. Now that media can be digitally copied infinitely, there is no longer a supply-side restriction. This is something like DeBeers becoming upset when cheap, high quality artificial diamonds flooded the market. The only way to tell these cheap artificial diamonds apart from mined diamonds is that the artificial ones don't have as many flaws. DeBeers responded by mounting a marketing campaign that said, in essence, "You don't want those artificial diamonds. They aren't natural!"

In general, the industry that dominates the market through artificial restrictions on supply is
doomed to fail eventually. The only way for the old industry companies to compete is for them to offer value-added options that cannot be offered by the cheaper competition. The movie industry still has an advantage in that they have a network of very large screens with high-quality audio systems. But even that advantage is fading in the new era of HD home theatre systems. In most of North America, movie theatres aren't allowed to sell beer, like sports venues.

Wake up call to the entertainment industry: It is too late, the market is flooded with cheap or free copies of your precious media. The horse is out; don't waste money trying to close the door or chase the horse all over the countryside. To continue the metaphor, your money would be better spent determining what tasty treats you can offer the horse to tempt it to come back to you on its own.

McGuinness actually acknowledges this; he admits that the live music sector is doing very well, mainly because going to a concert is an experience that adds value to the music, and people are still willing to pay money for that. In fact, they are willing to pay very well, and McGuinness grudgingly admits that too. So, Mr. McGuinness, you know what to do, you just don't want to admit it, because it means more work for you. It's easier to tell everyone else to try to stop digital copying, rather than trying to think of ways to repackage your products so that people will start paying for them again. How about a marketing campaign; "You don't want digital copies of music. They're not natural!" Oh wait, you're already doing that, when you call your customers thieves.

N800 Optimal Setup (OS2007)

2007-10-29T10:05:00.001-07:00

I received my new Nokia N800 last week, and I found that a new owner should really spend some time getting things set up before starting to use the device.

Here are my suggested steps for setting up the device.

Essential: Update the firmware. Don't waste any effort personalizing anything or installing software, just update the firmware. Immediately.

For some reason Nokia didn't include best-of-breed software installed by default on the tablet. Here are my suggested replacements:

Essential: The included media player is garbage for watching video. Install mplayer instead. Encode your 4:3 (non-widescreen) videos as 320x240 XviD, and your widescreen videos as 400x240 XviD (I recommend cropping a bit off the sides rather than letterboxing). It sounds low resolution, but it looks great on the screen.

The included Opera-based browser is inferior. The MicroB browser, based on Firefox, is a much superior drop-in replacement browser engine. Nokia seems to agree. Rumours are that it will be included as default in OS 2008 (due out in a few weeks, as of this post).

Maemo Mapper is really cool if you want to use your N800 for navigation, and essential if you want to connect it to a Bluetooth GPS device. Make sure you hit the download button to get all of the other maps. The default map provider, OpenStreets, is pretty pathetic. At least for my city, Vancouver.

The N800 comes with a built-in camera, but, out of the box, you can only use it to video chat with other N800 (or 810) users at the moment. Google Talk doesn't have a compatible video client on any of the desktop operating systems, and Skype doesn't yet have a video client for the N800. Pretty shabby, if you ask me. At least Nokia could have released their N800 video plugin as Open Source so someone could port it to another platform.

So, if you want to use the camera for something, then install the Camera app or Knips.

If you want listen to FM radio, you have to install the FM radio applet.

The included instant messaging app is only capable of Google Talk. No, I don't know why! So install Pidgin. This one's a bit more work, but totally worth it.

The included PDF reader is pretty useless. Install evince instead. Then go get some free books (like "Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town" or "Ventus") and get reading!

UKMP seems to be a really nice media center, for those who like that kind of thing. Makes your N800 look very iPod-like. This is a a bit of a complicated install. Ok, not really. First install Python 2.5 and then install UKMP.

Just a note. UKTube, included with UKMP, is broken. Probably due to YouTube tinkering with their interface. Actually, many of the YouTube downloaders seem broken these days. And you really don't want to try to watch YouTube videos with the included Flash plugin (and there's no superior community replacement for that, since that's a closed-source project).

This one is still working: http://www.witube.net/index.php

Geek Zone:

If, like me, you want to use your N800 like a little computer, then here are some things you probably want.

Note: I was able to install the following stuff without having to enable R&D mode or anything like that. Perhaps the latest firmware?

VNC (remote desktop control software): This will let you connect to your desktop computer. For total Geek Mode, this will get you a remote desktop that fits exactly to the screen dimensions of your N800. This looks really cool when you go fullscreen on the N800, hide the toolbar, then open OpenOffice on the remote desktop. So, if you have a linux desktop, install VNC server and run this on your desktop linux computer: vncserver -geometry 800x480

A shell / command line / terminal: Get Osso XTerm Enhanced.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Before I go on, I have to say that I've seen a lot of places talking about installing SSH on your N800. I haven't seen much stress the terrible security risk involved. However, since the default root password is widely available, you must must must change the root password as soon as you install the ssh package. You're propping open the back door of your device if you don't! And there's a lot of scruffy, smelly guys in that particular back alleyway.

Install SSH. Reboot. Open the XTerm. Copy or enter the following (replace [newpassword] with your new password of course):

ssh root@localhost
(enter the default root password)
passwd root [newpassword]
passwd user [newpassword]

Now you can get root access to your device securely and easily. Just type
ssh root@localhost
from your N800, or better still, WinSCP or some other SCP/SFTP capable program and log in to your N800 remotely (once you know your N800's IP address). This (SCP/SFTP) is my preferred way of accessing the N800.

I will post again soon with instructions on re-arranging the N800 Application Menu using the above remote root access.

Hint: look at /home/user/.osso/menus/applications.menu

Twinko Twinko Tar

2007-07-24T23:17:00.000-07:00

Vivian surprised me tonight by suddenly bursting into song as I changed her diaper. I ran off and got the video camera and I was able to get her to sing a few "verses" of her version of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. Mozart wouldn't recognize the melody, and nobody but a doting father would recognize the lyrics, but, as the aforementioned doting father, I must say that it's an impressive feat for a 21.5 month old child. Still, I'm not going to be entering her on American Idol anytime soon.

Warning: The following video may be overwhelmingly "precious".

Here are a couple of funny "outtakes" from the video that I have to include, because they are funny too:

Saudi Peak Oil Revisited

2007-06-12T10:15:00.000-07:00

Three more scary pieces of data have added their weight to my belief that we'll hit Peak Oil within the next decade.

OPEC Reserves Overstated

The first is a very well written document by Phil Hart and Chris Skrebowski, titled "Peak Oil: A Detailed and Transparent Analysis". A summary of this article appeared in the June 2007 issue of the Journal of Petroleum Technology. They wrote this article in response to an anti-peak oil article by Peter Jackson of Cambridge Energy Research Associates in February's J.PT.

In a very ominous portion of the article, they show how Kuwait's oil reserves were severely over-stated. They go on to say:

...it is reasonable to question the size of the remaining reserves of the other OPEC members who also increased their assessments in the so-called 'quota wars' of the 1980's. It is our view that OPEC member reserves are overstated by approximately 250 billion barrels in total.

Saudis Becoming Nervous

My second scary piece of news comes from a friend of mine working at the King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals in Dhahran (yes, there is such a thing as a Petroleum University). He says that he's been asking knowledgeable people about the questions discussed in my blog post, "Is Saudi Arabia Running Out of Oil?"

The responses he's been getting have not been encouraging. The Saudi nationals will either not discuss the issues at all, or they simply say, "everything's fine!" The ex-pats (the Western experts working in Saudi) have a different story. They point to recent frenzied activity on the part of the Saudis to re-open old wells and drill new ones as evidence that not all is well in the Kingdom. My friend found general agreement that the Saudis have been lying about their reserves, but of course, no one knows by how much. And finally, he found general agreement that the Ghawar field is starting to "run down."

As my friend put it, "When Saudi peaks, the world has peaked."

Has Saudi Already Peaked?

Saudi isn't the biggest oil producer anymore. Not since 2005.

Saudi Arabia was the largest producer of oil up until 2005, but its production recently has been declining. Russia is now the largest producer of oil. In 2006, Saudi Arabia produced 9,152,000 barrels per day while Russia produced 9,246,000 barrels per day, based on March 2007 US Energy Information Agency data.
Saudi Arabia is the still the largest oil exporter. While Russia produces more, its population is greater, so it has less to export.
OPEC announced a reduction in production as of November 1[, 2006]... [However,] even before the announced cutbacks, the three large OPEC producers (Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Venezuela) were all showing declining production.

-- Oil Quiz, Test Your Knowledge

I hope, for the sake of my child, that the world won't peak for a few more years. We're just not ready for a post-peak world.

That didn't sound like "bye-bye"

2007-06-06T22:04:00.000-07:00

Vivian was in the yard last evening when I came home on my bicycle. She ran over and inspected it, and I told her that it was a "bicycle." As she is wont to do these days, she repeated the word quietly to herself.

This morning, as I was getting ready for work, I told Vivian that I was going to work on my bicycle. I picked up my pannier, leaned over her, said "bye-bye!" and kissed her forehead. She looked up at me and said something that made both me and Vivian's mommy gasp involuntarily. It took me a second to realize what Vivian was really saying, and I thought mommy had figured it out too, because she was laughing so hard. But, as I was going out the front gate, I could see Vivian in the front window, pointing at me. Mommy opened the window and said, bewildered, "She's still saying that!"

"It's okay, she's just saying 'bicycle,'" I explained.

A look of great relief came over mommy's face as I turned and headed to work.

What did Vivian sound like she was saying that made us both gasp? I'll let you be the judge. Here's a short video where Vivian says her new word for us all:

Eating Oracle's Dessert

2007-04-26T14:46:00.000-07:00

I was reading the article titled, MySQL hits $50 million revenue, plans IPO on news.com.com.com.com and I came across this excellent bit (emphasis mine):

While MySQL was borne [sic] of the Web, it's posing an increasing threat to existing database powers. In competitive bids, MySQL most often goes up against Oracle and Microsoft, Mickos said. But the company isn't trying to directly attack Oracle's core business; instead, it's angling to head the rival off in growth markets.

"We're not trying to eat Oracle's lunch. We're trying to eat their dessert," Mickos said. "We love to compete with them and win customers from them. At the same time, we don't want to fall into this David-vs.-Goliath strategy where everyone says 'Go, MySQL, go! Go kill Oracle!' There's an old Chinese (proverb): if you focus on one competitor, ultimately you become like them, and we don't want to do that."

I think it's an interesting metaphor; if you're attempting to head off a competitor's growth by snagging new markets from them, that's called "eating their dessert."

Nuclear Power: Salvation or Disaster?

2007-04-18T14:58:00.000-07:00

I just stumbled across the very interesting Wilson Quarterly from the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, and I have really enjoyed reading the debate in last Autumn's issue about nuclear power. Max Schulz says that Nuclear is the Future, while Brice Smith and Arjun Makhijani argue that Nuclear Is Not the Way. Both sides make excellent points, but since I happen to also believe that we are nearing Peak Oil, something that neither side considers in their arguments, I think expanding nuclear power may be worth the risks.

Oh, and I saw a great quote on The Oil Drum when I was retrieving the Peak Oil link:

“Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.”

—H. G. Wells, 1904

Roasting Coffee in a Popcorn Pumper

2007-04-03T10:14:00.000-07:00

So I roasted my own coffee on the weekend, using my old Popcorn Pumper air popper, and using the instructions I found on Sweet Maria's.

The bit at the end with me swirling the beans in a metal collander is the cooling process for the beans. It comes after the "before and after pictures" because it was from the second batch I roasted...

I used green beans from JJ Bean, a Proctor Silex Popcorn Pumper, a metal collander, and a glass jar to store the roasted beans. I found that a batch took me around 8 or 9 minutes.

Vancouver: Best English-Speaking City

2007-04-02T12:36:00.000-07:00

One of the meanings for "Qole" (my Internet Name) is "Quality of Life Enjoyment/Enhancement." Well, it looks like I live in a place well suited for enjoying a high quality of life.

Looking at the Mercer 2007 World-wide quality of living survey, it is startling to realize that Vancouver is the most livable English-speaking city in the world. And if you want an English-speaking city with a comparable quality of life, you're going to have to go to Aukland, New Zealand or Sydney, Australia. Either that, or learn to speak German!

Even more startling is the fact that there are no other North American cities in the top 10, and the United States doesn't even enter the rankings until Honolulu, in lowly 27th place! San Francisco comes right behind Honolulu, and it is the first city in the continental USA on the list.

Another surprising thing is that Vancouver's close American neighbour, Seattle, was kicked to the curb, coming in at 49th place, just barely making the top 50. Portland, Oregon did a bit better, in 46th place. Note that both cities have slid down in the rankings since last year.

Is Saudi Arabia Running Out of Oil?

2007-03-27T09:58:00.000-07:00

This month, I have been following a series of articles over at The Oil Drum. Two knowledgable and articulate members have been having a debate about whether Saudi Arabia has hit Peak Oil or not. Stuart Staniford has been producing graphs, charts and tables that back up his theory that the steady 8% decline in Saudi production over 2006 was not voluntary and they have started down the post-peak slide. Euan Mearns has been arguing that the KSA is just doing what it usually does, acting as a swing producer, and that the declines over the year were not as severe as Staniford showed, nor were they involuntary.

There are a few scary things about this debate. First of all, Staniford is frighteningly well informed, and his numbers are difficult to dispute; most people seem to be disputing his conclusions but not his numbers. Secondly, Mearns doesn't pooh-pooh Staniford's claims outright; the best he can do is, "[I] feel there are several cautionary observations that need to be made before jumping to any conclusion about the end of the oil age. If Stuart is right, and he may be, then the consequences may be dire." Thirdly, the comments at the bottom of each article seem to include many expert sources quibbling over small details, but nobody seriously disputing the observation that started it all, that Saudi's production dropped steadily last year.

Lastly, the most scary thing is that Staniford bets anyone willing to take him up on it that the claim made in a Saudi Aramco press release that they will "increase maximum sustained capacity to 10.7 million barrels per day (bpd)" is total BS. He bets that "the international oil agencies will never report sustained Saudi production of crude+condensate of 10.7 million barrels or more." He starts his bet at $1000, and later raises it to $2000.

Nobody takes him up on the bet. The best that Mearns can say is, "High stakes and long odds! If Stuart was so confident that Saudi production was heading south for good then he would not have set the bar so high." ... gulp ... So even the doubter thinks that the press release's numbers are "long odds."

Anyway, here are the articles (so far). Make sure you peruse the comments as well as the articles. Unlike so many comments on other sites, the comments here seem to be mostly from industry experts.

Saudi Arabian oil declines 8% in 2006: March 2, 2007 (Stuart Staniford)
Saudi Arabia and that $1000 bet: March 7, 2007 (Euan Mearns)
A Nosedive Toward the Desert: March 8, 2007 (Stuart Staniford)
Saudi production laid bare: March 19, 2007 (Euan Mearns)
Water in the Gas Tank, Further Forensics on Saudi Oil Supply: March 26, 2007 (Stuart Staniford)

Stuart has called a peak in Saudi production in 2005 and no matter how many wells they now drill, he forecasts that production will continue to slide in a manner similar to that shown. My position is that recent falls in Saudi production reflect voluntary restraint achieved by retiring wells and that production may rise again in the future, dependent upon global demand picking up.

- Euan Mearns

And yet, Mearns refuses to take up Staniford's $2000 bet.

I think I should start getting all of my world travel in now, before it's too late...

Hydrogen Hoax debunked

2007-03-12T11:51:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, I got really excited about Hydrogen when I read the Wired article by Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall, How Hydrogen Can Save America. It became painfully clear to me over time, however, that the article was way off base. They recognize the problem of hydrogen production, but they don't mention it until page 3 of 5, after saying that we should make more fuel cell cars, and dot the landscape with hydrogen filling stations. Their suggested production methods, all controversial and difficult to implement, simply made it painfully obvious that hydrogen was a red herring to begin with.

Far preferable would be to use carbon-free resources like solar, wind, and hydropower to produce electricity for electrolysis, which splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen would make renewable energy practical, acting as a storage medium for the modest amounts of energy such resources produce. Wind power, especially, lends itself to this sort of use. This and other renewables should receive $10 billion as a seed for long-term development.

This suggests a role for a clean, efficient, and much neglected energy source: nuclear. Like the fuel cell, the nuclear generator is a technology ripe for exploitation.

Wind power? Ok, but that's a long way off. Nuclear? Oh my. No wonder they hid this bit in the middle of their article. If we could make plentiful hydrogen from wind or nuclear power, then, seriously, guys, we don't have an energy crisis. Who needs hydrocarbons when you can get reasonably-priced electricity from sources like that? We'll just save the oil for plastics, medicines, and jet fuel, OK?

What frustrated me was that I wasn't able to articulate my opinion with any degree of cogency.

Now, an excellent article by Robert Zubrin over at The New Atlantis debunks the Hydrogen Hoax quite bluntly. One of the things that caught my eye was the fact that the link between nuclear power and hydrogen proponents has been around a long time:

With the advent of nuclear energy after World War II, technologists expected that atomic power would provide electricity "too cheap to meter" -- electricity that could be used to produce pure hydrogen at low cost, which could then be used as a fuel. By the 1970s, however, it was apparent that nuclear energy, while potentially competitive with conventional power, did not usher in a new golden age of cheap electricity.

Zubrin then goes on to provide a clear analysis of the production problem.

[T]he only way to get free hydrogen on Earth is to make it. The trouble is that making hydrogen requires more energy than the hydrogen so produced can provide. Hydrogen, therefore, is not a source of energy. It simply is a carrier of energy. And it is, as we shall see, an extremely poor one.

The spokesmen for the hydrogen hoax claim that hydrogen will be manufactured from water via electrolysis. It is certainly possible to make hydrogen this way, but it is very expensive—so much so, that only four percent of all hydrogen currently produced in the United States is produced in this manner. The rest is made by breaking down hydrocarbons, through processes like pyrolysis of natural gas or steam reforming of coal.

Neither type of hydrogen is even remotely economical as fuel. The wholesale cost of commercial grade liquid hydrogen (made the cheap way, from hydrocarbons) shipped to large customers in the United States is about $6 per kilogram. High purity hydrogen made from electrolysis for scientific applications costs considerably more. Dispensed in compressed gas cylinders to retail customers, the current price of commercial grade hydrogen is about $100 per kilogram. For comparison, a kilogram of hydrogen contains about the same amount of energy as a gallon of gasoline. This means that even if hydrogen cars were available and hydrogen stations existed to fuel them, no one with the power to choose otherwise would ever buy such vehicles. This fact alone makes the hydrogen economy a non-starter in a free society.

And even if you are among those willing to sacrifice freedom and economic rationality for the sake of the environment, and therefore prefer hydrogen for its advertised benefit of reduced carbon dioxide emissions, think again. Because hydrogen is actually made by reforming hydrocarbons, its use as fuel would not reduce greenhouse gas emissions at all. In fact, it would greatly increase them.

So the hydrogen-via-electricity route is very expensive, which means it's inefficient, which means we'd be wasting a lot of energy just to store it in hydrogen. The other, cheaper, route keeps us dependent on hydrocarbons. That's certainly not a solution!

I wish the American policy makers would read and understand this, and start putting the hydrogen money into (1) battery technology and (2) alternate electric generation technologies, such as wind and, yes, nuclear. I still have hope for nuclear, believe it or not!

Oh, the quote from Verne's "The Mysterious Island" that introduces the article is magnificent!

Coal-Fired Cars, revisited.

2007-01-29T15:42:00.000-08:00

Well, I've come across some research that backs up my claims that, in order to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions, we should switch to coal-fired cars.

If you read my previous post, We Work The Black Seam, you'll know what I mean by that statement. I mean that we should move from gasoline to electric cars, because, even with electricity generated by coal-fired plants, electric cars generate less CO2 than gas-powered cars.

These links were found in the Wikipedia entry for Hybrid Car.

Some notes:

The ILEA ('Electric vs. Gasolene') article claims that hybrids are significantly better than pure electric vehicles that are run on a coal grid. Electric cars in a hydro grid, on the other hand, have almost no post-production CO2 footprint.

The "Debunking the Myth" article says:

Many EV critics point out that charging thousands of EVs from aging coal plants will increase greenhouse gases such as CO2 significantly. Although half the country uses coalfired plants, EVs recharging from these facilities are predicted to produce less CO2 than ICE vehicles. According to the World Resources Institute [a 1994 publication], EVs recharging from coal-fired plants will reduce CO2 emissions in this country from 17 to 22 percent....

...Countries such as the U.S. and the U.K. use a mix of coal and oil-fired facilities that produce an elevated level of SO2 and particulates. However, levels of HC, CO and NOx would decrease significantly.

Here are the articles:

Plug-In Hybrids Are Cleaner (Even on a Coal Grid)
Debunking the Myth of EVs and Smokestacks (PDF doc)
Automobiles: Electric vs. Gasoline (2001)

Toilet Seats vs. Telephone Handsets

2007-01-10T15:36:00.000-08:00

My wife works at a local hospital and she told me that they recently had an inservice about VRE spreading throughout their hospital.

She was told that, because these bugs can "live on toilet seats for weeks" they needed to be even more careful about sitting down. They were told that they should begin using paper to protect themselves.

Now my wife, like so many people*, has a superstition about sitting on public toilets; she believes they are unsafe. The last thing she needs is to have this myth validated by an "expert"!

Professor Charles Gerba has found that toilet seats are one of the cleanest places in the workplace. Beware, instead, of the bathroom sink, which is warm, moist, and frequently used after, um, "fecal contamination". Also, beware shared telephones.

I received an e-mail from a well-intentioned energy-saving program the other day that suggests we should all be doing our laundry in cold water to save energy. However, Gerba points out that laundry, especially underwear, should be washed at 60C to kill bacteria.

And I was right about another thing. The bus really is a "plague ship"...

Not surprisingly, the most contaminated environments were children's playgrounds and daycare centers. Following close behind were public buses, shopping carts, chair armrests, vending machine knobs, escalator handrails and public phones.

- Clorox website

* I think women are more likely than men to believe they need to create an "ass gasket" before sitting on the toilet, simply because they sit for all duties. Ironically, they've found the handles of toilets, especially urinals, to be the filth-covered problem areas!

Advent

2006-12-10T10:06:00.001-08:00

This post, along with my other poetry, has been moved to my new poetry blog.

Night Garden

2006-10-06T14:59:00.001-07:00

This post, along with my other poetry, has been moved to my new poetry blog.

SUV Nation

2006-09-28T16:27:00.000-07:00

Just read the (British) story, "Big, Not Clever", about the controversy over SUVs in the US. What caught my eye was this:

"There is not a left/right divide," says Keith Bradsher, author of High and Mighty, a telling investigation into the rise of the SUV. "Democrats have been as supportive as Republicans. Nor is there a religious divide."

Evangelist Jerry Falwell, who believes that global warming does not exist because "God would not let that happen", is for them. The Evangelical environmental network, which last year launched a campaign asking, "What would Jesus drive?" is against them.

I wish I could think of a comment to add to this, but I am unable to top "global warming does not exist because 'God would not let that happen.'"

I mean.... It's just... I really can't comment further.

I can at least point you to a very appropriate picture for this particular controversy:

"HummerGod" on Flickr, by Michael Casey

We Work The Black Seam

2006-09-28T15:18:00.000-07:00

According to this article from Reuters (link is no longer available), the burning of coal is going to become the Big Problem soon.

"The most important environmental problem in the 21st century is coal, or you could say coal is the most important enemy," Ottmar Edenhofer, chief economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, told Reuters.
"Coal is cheap, it is plentiful and it is quite evenly distributed over the entire planet," he said, noting that oil was more concentrated in a few regions such as the Middle East...
"Coal plays an important geopolitical role, and for the next 300 years it will be plentiful," he said. With oil prices above about $50-$60 a barrel "then it is competitive to go from liquids to coal".

The article later comments that

"Burning a tonne of coal typically releases more than 3 tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere."

I agree that coal is dirtier than oil when it comes to greenhouse gases. However, what I want to know is whether it is dirtier to burn gasolene in private cars or to generate electricity from coal at large power plants and then use that electricity to power cars?

Is it just possible that we're living in an era when burning coal is cleaner than burning petrol? That we're living in the era of the coal-fired car?

When I was a teenager, electric cars were geeky curiosities. Throughout the last 15 years, I've watched them gain more mainstream acceptance, especially the hybrids. This isn't such a crazy idea anymore, not in the era of the Tesla Roadster, which drives like a Lotus but is so silent that testers complain about bushings squeaking, and when the Wrightspeed X1, the world's second fastest-accelerating car, is electric.

We're living in an era when many things, like the 100mpg family car, are technologically possible but not economically feasible, mainly because there's not enough interest in these ideas from the big companies who can afford to take the initial hit, nor from investors willing to finance startups. But when gas gets so expensive that electricity from coal looks reasonable, I think we'll see things change.

Last Post about Startups

2006-08-15T11:35:00.000-07:00

Someone pointed out to me that if you bankrupt your startup, it's usually no skin off of your nose or ass or anything else; the investors are the ones who have to pay for your screwup. If you happen to be a good entrepreneur (and maybe a bit of a sociopath), you can tank several startups in a row and be none the worse for wear.

Anyway, just a little clarification.

But, nobody reads this anyway, so whatever ;-)

Playing the Startup Lottery

2006-03-03T15:25:00.000-08:00

I wrote a long-winded post about some minor point in Graham's article, only to realize that I disagree with his central point.
Graham tends to write about taking big risks and working long hours as if it is something that anyone with talent and a desire for success could do. As if they don't have families depending on them.
And because he took a big risk with a startup, and they succeeded, he tends to think that it is the way to go, even though, by his own admission, "most startups tank," and the people who poured their lives into them walk away with nothing.

He even says:

There is a large random factor in the success of any company. So the guys you end up reading about in the papers are the ones who are very smart, totally dedicated, and win the lottery.

But he's talking about those who get very rich, not the guys who only get moderately rich. He claims,

There is a conservation law at work here: if you want to make a million dollars, you have to endure a million dollars' worth of pain...If starting a startup were easy, everyone would do it.

Buddy! It's not that! We just aren't willing to work like mules for 5 years, just to lose it all when our company tanks! We aren't willing to take that kind of risk!

Graham seems to acknowledge the risk, much later:

Startups, like mosquitos, tend to be an all-or-nothing proposition. And you don't generally know which of the two you're going to get till the last minute.

While we were visiting Yahoo in California to talk about selling the company to them, we had to borrow a conference room to reassure an investor who was about to back out of a new round of funding that we needed to stay alive.

The all-or-nothing aspect of startups was not something we wanted. Viaweb's hackers were all extremely risk-averse. If there had been some way just to work super hard and get paid for it, without having a lottery mixed in, we would have been delighted. We would have much preferred a 100% chance of $1 million to a 20% chance of $10 million, even though theoretically the second is worth twice as much. Unfortunately, there is not currently any space in the business world where you can get the first deal.

Graham talks about the "lottery" being "mixed in," but he seems to think that it doesn't affect his thesis that a startup is the best place to translate hard work into wealth. However, the "20% chance of $10 million" is also an "80% chance of bankruptcy," and that's the pill that most corporate drones like me are unwilling to swallow.

By Graham's logic, if I do the math and realize that I can buy a certain number of Hospital Lottery tickets, and that will give me a 20% of winning the "Dream House," and I calculate that if I win the house, I can pay off the loans I got to buy the tickets and walk away with a handsome profit, I should jump at the chance. After all, a 20% chance is worth the risk, right?

But what happens when I don't win the Dream Home, and I have to declare bankruptcy to pay the loans?

What do you suggest, Mr. Graham? Or, do you think (and I suspect you do,) that you are smarter and harder working than the average startup owner, and so therefore your chances are actually higher? The lottery doesn't work like that, my friend. Starting a company is like Russian Roullette, except 5 of the 6 chambers have bullets in them.

Making Wealth, Giving It Away

2006-02-23T11:31:00.000-08:00

I have just finished reading Paul Graham's "How To Make Wealth," and as his essays often do, it got me thinking. In his essay, he suggests:

A great deal has been written about the causes of the Industrial Revolution. But surely a necessary, if not sufficient, condition was that people who made fortunes be able to enjoy them in peace. One piece of evidence is what happened to countries that tried to return to the old model, like the Soviet Union, and to a lesser extent Britain under the labor governments of the 1960s and early 1970s. Take away the incentive of wealth, and technical innovation grinds to a halt.

Wow, that's quite the conclusion. Take away the incentive of wealth, and innovation grinds to a halt? It just doesn't play out that way, in reality. And Graham acknowledges this to a certain degree:

Wealth can be created without being sold. Scientists, till recently at least, effectively donated the wealth they created. We are all richer for knowing about penicillin, because we're less likely to die from infections. Wealth is whatever people want, and not dying is certainly something we want. Hackers often donate their work by writing open source software that anyone can use for free. I am much the richer for the operating system FreeBSD, which I'm running on the computer I'm using now, and so is Yahoo, which runs it on all their servers.

Somehow, though, the fact that Yahoo (the company that bought his startup, incidentally), is running an operating system that was developed entirely without the incentive of wealth, doesn't connect in Graham's head as a dangerous exception to his rule. In another location, he says:

A programmer can sit down in front of a computer and create wealth. A good piece of software is, in itself, a valuable thing. There is no manufacturing to confuse the issue. Those characters you type are a complete, finished product. If someone sat down and wrote a web browser that didn't suck (a fine idea, by the way), the world would be that much richer. [5b]

Footnote [5b] simply states: "This essay was written before Firefox."

Another dangerous exception. Certainly, there was great innovation in Netscape when it was the little startup that took on Microsoft, but arguably, there has been as much innovation with that browser and its heirs (ie Firefox) since it went open source. In particular, Firefox is the ultimate example of open, community-based innovation that is astonishingly uninterested in the personal accumulation of wealth as an incentive. It was started by an Apple employee and a teenaged Netscape intern, neither of whom had any interest in becoming wealthy from their innovation.

So, what's up with that?

Graham makes several related historical statements in this paragraph (and associated note):

For most of the world's history, if you did somehow accumulate a fortune, the ruler or his henchmen would find a way to steal it. But in medieval Europe something new happened. A new class of merchants and manufacturers began to collect in towns. [10] Together they were able to withstand the local feudal lord. So for the first time in our history, the bullies stopped stealing the nerds' lunch money.

[10] It is probably no accident that the middle class first appeared in northern Italy and the low countries, where there were no strong central governments. These two regions were the richest of their time and became the twin centers from which Renaissance civilization radiated. If they no longer play that role, it is because other places, like the United States, have been truer to the principles they discovered.

My thesis is that in order for a renaissance to occur, it isn't so important that you stop stealing the wealth of the craftsmen, or the "nerds' lunch money," but that you give the nerds somewhere safe to innovate; you protect them from the bullies, but you also support them financially. You don't have to make them millionaires to do this, I think many innovators, despite what Graham suggests, would be happy to produce excellent work without the promise of great wealth. But they need time and space to create without having to worry about food, or clothes, or housing (or, for that matter, where the next round of venture capital is coming from).

I think any society that wishes to thrive needs to encourage wealth creation through patronage. That is, those with the wealth need to sponsor the creation of more wealth, and, in order to produce maximum results, that wealth should be given away.

A good example of how the desire for wealth can actually stifle innovation and even endanger society is the story of the invention of the forceps by Peter Chamberlen around 1600. The Chamberlen family kept the family secret for three generations, more than 100 years, before it was finally leaked to the public. During that time, they became quite wealthy from their reputation as the best doctors to have attending your birth, although the mother had to be blindfolded during the procedure so she wouldn't see how her baby's life was saved. To me this shows how the entrepreneurial spirit can actually work against innovation, and seriously impede the progress of civilization.

The thing that allowed the modern concept of startups to really come into existence must be the concept of patents. Before patents, anything that was not kept a closely-guarded secret was pirated immediately and there was no real way to stop other people from making money from your ideas. If the Chamberlen family could patent the forceps and then be assured that their invention would not be pirated by others, or at least be assured that they could enforce their patents, they would probably have sold forceps and become very rich, as well as benefiting society much more quickly.

But patents seem to me to be a bit of a band-aid, an artificial way to allow someone to make money from an idea, in the same way that a cage allows you to keep a pet bird. The idea and the bird both want to be free, and both thrive more fully in the wild, but the patent and the cage artificially constrain things in such a way that the user can increase their personal wealth.

I won't deny that wealth can be an incentive to innovation, and that inventions and novel ideas, via the mechanism of patents, are legitimate ways to build wealth; however, I firmly believe that a society that relies entirely on this kind of innovation is not healthy and it will start to show symptoms of sickness, like sailors without vitamin C began to get scurvy. Wealth can work as an engine to drive society, but it should never be used exclusively, because it flows uphill, and in a purely capitalistic society, all the money will end up in the hands of a very few people. And, contrary to Graham's assertion, those people are almost never the creators of wealth. They are often the very bullies that steal the nerds' lunch money.

A thriving society needs "free" innovation, innovation not tied to capital, in order to thrive. There needs to be a part of a vibrant culture that redistributes the wealth, not in a communist way, but in an "open source" way. The Renaissance wouldn't have existed without patronage, and Leonardo da Vinci, among others, would probably never have produced much if he had to figure out how to make money from his work.

In the same way, innovation and progress is fostered when wealthy patrons such as AOL (Mozilla and WinAmp) and Mark Shuttleworth (the Freedom Toaster and Ubuntu Linux) spend some of their wealth on innovations that increase the wealth of society as a whole. Without this kind of incentive to innovation, I believe innovation will grind to a halt.

Conservatives and Liberals

2006-01-20T15:29:00.000-08:00

Conservatives & Liberals
& changing the world

Liberals are people who don't have much to lose the way things are, and they have much to gain if things changed.

Conservatives are people who have a lot to lose if things changed.

That's why we tend to be more liberal when we're young, and more conservative when we're older. As we age, we tend invest in the current system, and changes become more and more likely to be negative for us. More social programs will mean more taxes, and we're in a much higher tax bracket...

That's why idealists become dictators. That's why the church has corrupted so many times in the past. Contrary to many people's thinking, it's nearly impossible to change the system from within. As you accumulate wealth and power, you become the establishment, and you lose the ability to change it. Once you depend on the establishment, the establishment can hold you hostage if you fight it.

Anybody out there know some rich liberals (Let's call them Rich Young Rulers)? And if you do, does it disprove my theory? Maybe my theory could still stand; do these RYR liberals feel secure enough in their power and wealth to be "token" liberals (Like Bill Gates, who can give millions and millions away and still be the richest man in the world, or Ray Anderson, the "Green CEO" who can garner kudos for his environmentalism and still be well-paid CEO of the world's largest carpet manufacturer), or do they have something more important than money, that is, could they lose everything for the cause, and still feel they have won?

Geek

2006-01-20T15:23:00.000-08:00

I'm re-reading an old, short book I liked as a teenager, because it felt so close to my experience.

It is called "A Very Long Way From Anywhere Else" and it is by Ursula K. Le Guin.

Here is an excerpt from the book that I think captures a bit of what it is like to be a geek in high school, at least for me:

"I think what you mostly do when you find you really are alone is to panic. You rush to the opposite extreme and pack yourself into groups -- clubs, teams, societies, types. You suddenly start dressing exactly like the others. It's a way of being invisible... You have to be with it. That's a peculiar phrase, you know? With it. With what? With them. With the others. All together. Safety in numbers. I'm not me... I'm a popular kid. I'm my friends' friend... You can't see me, all you can see is us. We're safe."

"And if We see You standing alone by yourself, if you're lucky, we'll ignore you. If you're not lucky, we might throw rocks. Because we don't like people standing there ... reminding us that we're each alone and none of us is safe."

"I tried. I really did. I tried so hard it makes me sick to think about it... But none of it worked. I don't know why. Sometimes I wonder if introverts have a peculiar smell, which only extraverts are aware of."

"Some kids really don't have much Me at all. They truly are part of the Group. But a lot of them just act -- pretend -- the way I tried to. Their heart isn't really in the groups, but still they get along, they get by. I wish I could. I honestly wish I could be a good hypocrite. It doesn't hurt anybody, and it sure makes life easier. But I never could fool anybody. They knew I wasn't interested in what interested them, and they despised me for it, and I despised them for despising me."

Signs of Intelligent Life

2006-01-20T15:10:00.000-08:00

I stumbled across an article talking about the search for intelligent life in the universe just now. Must share this quote with you:

David Grinspoon: "If civilizations like ours were all over the galaxy, it would not be obvious. We are only listening, not broadcasting. We are not doing astroengineering. True, we are leaking sitcoms and beer commercials, but these are not easily detectable over most of the galaxy and certainly would not be interpreted as signs of true intelligence."

When I read that, I imagined two aliens having a conversation.

A1: Any signs of intelligent life out there yet?
A2: Nope. I thought I had something, but it turned out to be a false lead.
A1: What do you mean? It was just static that sounded like a transmission?
A2: No it was a transmission alright, faint but consistent. It consisted of creatures getting themselves into painful social situations through misunderstandings and escalating lies.
A1: That might signify intelligent life!
A2: I thought so too, until I saw images of a green slimy creature saying "Wazzaaaap!"
A1: Oh. That's too bad. It had some promise for sure.
A2: Yah. Back to the grind.
A1: I guess so. Hey, I'm going to grab a beer. You want one?
A2: Sure. Grab one for me while you're there.