4G extended!

Great news for me here in the depths of mid Cornwall! The 4G trial - which was due to end at the end of January - has been extended until the end of June.
Like to think that those of us who attended the Trerice demonstration for the press and Ofcom helped a little bit in Ofcom taking the decision to keep us in the 21st Century for a little longer!

Blast from the past!

Downloading the latest Yoper Linux distro to see how my old mates there are getting on.

As I have probably mentioned, I used to be one of the development team on Yoper (back in the days of 2.1 and 2.2). Over time, with things changing to use a new package manager and various other changes - and with poor health, I dropped out of the team and moved on. I still watch the distro and download the current iso from time to time to see how things are going. Tobias and the guys are working hard, but with a small distro it is hard to keep up with the corporate might of the big three or four main distros.

One of the reasons I use PCLinuxOS as my main distro is because it follows the ethos of the old Yoper - and still uses Synaptic as the package manager with the rpms!

Anyway, off to play - I shall report back once I have given Yoper a run.

Updates

Not much to update as such.

4G -

Well, the speed has dropped down to 8Mbps download now as the BT guys decided that upping it affected stability for those further from the base stations. I had good reliable speeds of 15Mbps +  but others apparently suffered.
Went to the open day to demonstrate the technology to the press and Ofcom - and did lots of interviews. Spoke to various local press people, T3 magazine, The Register and all sorts of other folk. Very interesting day, with good demos of the technology in action.

Mobile phones

Well, my rather nice little Orange San Francisco (a re-badged ZTE Blade) Android phone decided to stop working correctly. The microphone has failed. I can use the hands free stuff, but if I try to use the normal mic, I get the faintest noise possible.

 So, I decided it needs to be repaired. One small snag is that I rooted the phone and installed Android 2.2 in place of the awful Orange badged and themed locked down version of Android 2.1, which is stuffed full of Orange's own "apps" - all intent on taking cash from users. So of course I rooted it and removed all the excess crap - which speeds it up as well as improving the looks of the phone.

Anyway, the general concensus was that Orange would check the phone and refuse to fix it because it had been modified - even though the phone hardware was untouched and at fault!  I was prepared to argue the toss as a technician (but not for phones I must admit). There have been similar things with other companies in the past - e.g Asus and their "adding a stick of RAM voids the warranty" claim with the early EeePC. These attempts to take money from users by having their own people do upgrades etc are always found to be unacceptable when challenged.

Anyhow, I didn't want the hassle, so I wiped the phone and re-installed the basic Orange software back on (and boy! was it fugly!).
I then rang them - expecting a load of arguing and tales of how many months it will take to repair and how I would need to deliver it to the only service station in the UK which is situated in the Mull of Kintyre and I will need to deliver it wearing just a pair of boxer shorts ..... etc etc.
Amazingly, they apologised for the faulty phone, asked when would be convenient for the courier to collect the old phone and hand me a new one tomorrow!

Normally  I complain about these companies, but this is great customer service. Well done Orange!

Speeding Up -oh, and Movember

Looks like the trial for 4G has upped the cap on our speeds. Folks mentioning 11, 12 and 15Meg speeds, so I ran a speedtest.

Got 11.78Mbps down and 6.74 up, so yes, it does seem they have upped the download speeds.
Seems very reliable too - haven't had any probs.

On the Movember thing - I decided to join this charity thing to raise awareness of male cancer problems. It involves growing a moustache for the month of November, but of course, I already had one - so I shaved it off and began from a hair free face! Feel free to donate if you like - or just watch the page to see how I get on!

http://mobro.co/kernowyon

Country fixed

Well, the 4G team have fixed the problem where attempting to access a website which redirected based on country of user (e.g Google.com or youtube.com for example) were sending us to German sites (e.g google.de instead of google.co.uk for UK residents). Not sure what they did, but at least I can now watch youtube videos which are blocked for some crazy reason in Germany (why is Kickapoo, the Tenacious D song blocked for example?).

Edit:  Not apprently fixed Blogger! I still get .de there!

Weather affected?

The 4G speeds tonight seem low - at least as far as downloading speed is concerned. From the 7.5 or more Mbps of other tests to 4.5 Mbps today....

However, the weather is pretty foul - with strong winds and plenty of rain and dampness. It may of course be simply the time I have chosen to test - around half past ten in the evening, which presumably means plenty of other trialists are using the connection. No idea if there is any contention ratio issues with this - but I doubt if there should be, certainly with the relatively small trial sample...

Uploading on the other hand seems fast - 9.34Mbps

Getting some interesting results. Still got problems with the German identification on many sites (e.g Google, Youtube....), but the 4G team are apparently "looking into this"....

More 4G reports

Well, still running at around the 7.8Meg up and down rate.
Interestingly, I did try booting my old XP install yesterday evening to compare with my usual Linux (I have XP on here as a dual boot for the very odd test) and I could not connect to the router with the USB dongle.

I discovered that dropping the encryption level from AES to TKIP allowed me to connect - so I guess my XP isn't running SP3 (which brought AES support) or my old dongle doesn't support it.

Seems at least one other triallist has problems with wireless, so I have passed on my findings - hopefully it will help.

Speed

Okies, the previous "broadband" speeds were -

Download 0.47Mb/s and upload 0.24Mb/s, which Speedtest.net claims is slower than
91% of the country (but I suspect is slower than a lot more of the country!)
That test was back in April.

Todays test, using the 4G broadband is -

Download 7.81 and upload 6.82

So it seems to be slightly better!
The speeds do seem variable - the BT engineers suggested that the speeds were being capped and changed around at the moment, so perhaps it will change later.

4G has landed!

Well, the 4G is here. Two BT Openreach vans, two BT guys to simply hand me a router and check the speed via their laptop and dongle.... hmmm...
Ah well, they were not here long and no aerial needed. First impressions - well, I did expect something faster on the download side, but upload is 8meg! Download is coming on for 8meg actual measured speeds, so not terrible, but I had read a bit before about this and speeds of 40Meg were mentioned. The BT guys said that they thought the speeds had been capped since yesterday - when it was a lot faster. So either it was unstable or the trial doesn't need us all downloading the whole interwebs!

I shall post some speed readings in a day or two.

My only main issues at the moment are -

1 Websites think you are in Germany! But this is because the router has a German SIM card in it apparently. No real problem, but a bit odd going to Google.com and getting Google.de in German!

2 And I can't blame the 4G for this odd anomoly - my ethernet card on the main PC stops my machine booting into Linux when I enable it in the BIOS! Even a live cd (and I tried with a couple of live cds from different distros) won't boot with the ethernet enabled. Disable it and the machine is happy. So for now, I have a wireless dongle stuck in there.

Strange but true....

4G

We are getting a trial of the 4G broadband next week! I shall report on the speeds we get ten - as well as any issues with it.
Will be interesting to see how it works with Linux....

All quiet

Not much has been happening of late. I finished the chemo in January, but have not been called back to see if there has been any recurrence of the tumours yet. I was told that I would be checked out in about 4 months, so I am not concerned - I expect to hear something in May.

Otherwise, health has been OK - a few chest pains on and off, for which I have been given a new medication - plus I was put on a different drug for my diabetes as the Metformin sucked and I had abdominal pains all the time. The new stuff seems better and, after they plonked me onto maximum dosage, seems to be controlling the diabetes fairly well. Hopefully that will avoid me having to inject insulin for a bit - I hate needles!

Distro wise, still using PCLOS in its KDE incarnation. Still fairly happy with it, although there are a few minor niggles (as with all distros of course!). For example, the root terminal which you can call from the user desktop fails - I know why and I can easily work around it, but it is something which really shouldn't happen. A new user would be completely stuck - which is a bad point. Also the disk editing tools - cfdisk for example - do not do as they should. These need fixing too.
Other than those niggles, pretty happy at the moment, but slightly concerned about the announcement that PCLOS intends to move from the Synaptic package managing system to a YUM based one. Not a fan of Yum myself - having used it years ago - but it is better than Smart or some of the other package managing tools. Apparently, Synaptic won't be compatible with the changes to the RPM system which PCLOS is introducing - hence the change. I will give the new version a good try out before making any decision - I like PCLOS and don't want to end up back with Ubuntu unless I am forced to.

More chemo updates

Well, coming up to the final dose which will be on Wednesday.

As previously mentioned, there should be less problems with my type of chemo as it is not IV.
I wouldn't say it is side effect free though....
The first couple of weeks I was OK - although I did start to get a bit itchy here and there on and off. But as time has gone on, I have noticed a definite pattern to the problems. For a couple of days, no real problems, but as I get to the mid-point between treatments, I can notice a tiredness creeping in as well as the itching which seems to happen anywhere. Not dramatic, but persistant and of course at night it is a real nuisance.
In the last couple of treatments I have also started getting some nausea. Nothing terrible, but a slightly queasy feeling which occasionally gets a bit worse - but nothing more than that.
Each treatment seems to increase the effects - so I am pleased that this Wednesday is the last one!

Hopefully the chemo will have the desired effect on the stupid recurring tumours!

Chemo update

Well, started the chemo yesterday. No real problems but my bladder area feels a bit tender.
As mentioned, there should be none of the main side effects which people experience at times with IV type chemo treatment and so far I feel fine other than the tenderness.

Health update

Seems I need to have chemo to deal with the ongoing tumour issues.

The recurring tumours in my bladder - which have been treated by laser - just keep coming and my consultant suggested chemo might stop this. Unlike normal chemo, the chemicals are inserted into my bladder and kept there for an hour or two. Thus there are (hopefully) no real issues with the side effects of the toxic drugs used, unlike regular chemo where the drugs can cause unpleasant side effects.

Will report back on the treatment as and when I start the course - which should be before Christmas apparently.

Update

Well, still using the KDE version - which speaks for itself.

After downloading the iso and installing it, I still ended up getting another huge load of updates - which was a bit of a pain with my lousy interwebby speeds.

So far though, I haven't found any real issues. Wireless just works (which is much better than the Ubuntu version, which lost the connection regularly!) although I prefer wired.
The other problems which plagued the Gnome version of PCLOS don't seem to be present in the KDE one - presume this is because it is much more mature.

I think I shall install this to my main PC as well. It currently runs Ubuntu 10.04, but is rarely used anyway because it is upstairs and it gets cold in the daytime up there.

Yet more changes

Well, spent ages last night trying to get the volume to increase and decrease using the function key on my laptop with the appropriate up and down keys.
Despite being fairly familiar with Linux, I ended up very cheesed off with the things! I got the keycodes from xev, then tried an old trick I used in KDE 3 back in the day - basically setting up a shell script and assigning those keycodes to an unused F key etc (if desperate, you can find it on my main website somewhere - but ask and I will link to it). No joy.
This morning, I discovered that PCLOS 2010.11 in its Gnome incarnation doesn't actually have a functional way to format/partition drives. No fdisk, no cfdisk - even GParted, which is included on the GUI menu doesn't work! Arrrggggh!

In the end, I decided to install the KDE version. Yes, I know I have moaned about KDE4 but I reasoned it is likely to be more stable/featured in PCLOS as it is the default.
So, having a 2010.7 disk lying around, I installed that. Seemed good, so I went to update the system and found that it wanted to install nearly 800megs of updates! The new 2010.10 version is not even 700 meg, so I thought I might as well simply download that, install it and then update from there.
Currently downloading.... but with my crap internet, it will be some time yet!

Whilst waiting, I have been trying out a few of the problem areas with the Gnome version to see if the KDE one has problems. Scrolling with the touchpad button - fine! Partitioning tools - yep. Function button and sound up and down - whooo, working fine! And no stupid warnings about my battery which I *know* is old and doesn't hold a charge etc so why tell me?

Part of me is quite excited to be back with KDE - I loved Konqueror as my file manager and used it as a browser most of the time. I know that Dolphin is the default these days, but I am old and prefer what I am used to.
Again, the mail client is that awful Thunderbird, but I will see what it entails to get KMail back - I like Kmail!
And of course, KDE has the best burning software of the lot - K3b. Better than any of the other Linux burning tools and, IMHO, better than Nero etc on Windows.

I still think the move to KDE4 was a mistake by the KDE team, but it does seem to have matured a bit since the first version, which was really dreadful and crashed constantly.

Will blog some more about this PCLOS KDE version once I have the latest version installed and up to date.

PCLOS update

Well, discovered after installing the 2010.7 version mentioned in the earlier post, that there was a newer version (2010.11) released last week.
I have now replaced the earlier version with this one - and the two big problems (the warning about the battery and the scroll using the button thing) are sorted.

Initial thoughts - I like the fact that the problems I had with the previous release are now sorted, not so keen on the theme/icons used in this version (although I can of course change those), still don't like Thunderbird as an email client (personal thing - I just don't like it at all, never have and Ubuntu defaulted to Evolution, which is also not great, but better than TBird IMHO)

So, apart from a load of hassle setting up my email all over again, the things I mentioned above and the overall "greyness" of TBird and Firefox in this release, I am quite enjoying the change. As I mentioned last time, similar to my days with Yoper - I might even volunteer to do a few packages at some point, depending on time/health issues.

Trials and tribulations

Well, decided - based on my tests on a live disk - to install PCLinuxOS 2010.7 on the laptop.
As mentioned before, I was pretty fed up with the way Ubuntu was heading.
I have been trying both the KDE and Gnome versions, but went for Gnome as I still can't bring myself to like KDE4.x (I have tried several times but find it just too unstable and a little annoying to be honest - but YMMV!)

Anyway, once installed, I have discovered some snags. First of all the annoying warning about the battery being b0rked. I already know that - the laptop is pretty old and beat and the battery holds a charge for about 20 minutes at best. Now, in Ubuntu, to get rid of the stupid warning, it was a simple case of using gconf-editor to untick the warning notifications. However, in PCLOS, this didn't work! The boxes are unticked, but the warning still comes up each time I restart X. Frustrating bloody thing!

The second major annoyance is the scrolling. I like to use the middle button on my touchpad to scroll up and down and in the live cd it was working perfectly. Of course, now I have installed it to the hard drive, the scroll doesn't work! I can use the touchpad itself to scroll, but I like the button! So far, I haven't found out how to fix that - like all modern distros, the PCLOS xorg.conf is fairly minimal (although a billion times more info than the Ubuntu one!) and no mention of a section for mice etc. I guess I can write that section myself - I always used to edit the old XF86 and early xorg files by hand as they always get it wrong anyway....

Other than that, I am liking PCLOS so far. It isn't perfect - but what is? But it is pleasant, seems fairly quick and uses similar tweaked kernels to the old Yoper! IN fact, it quite reminds me of the old 2.2 Yoper - tweaked optimised kernel, the Mandrake control centre, rpm packaging, but with Synaptic.....
But also like Yoper 2.x, there is a slight air of "not quite finished" - and I don't mean that in a bad way. Just a lack of developers and funding I presume holding it back a little. Ubuntu has a lot of cash and plenty of devs, but they still turn out some pretty iffy packages at times and fail to deal with genuine concerns of users.

Anyway, I shall be experimenting more with PCLOS - I hope to keep it as my distro of choice for now at least.

Genealogy and parish registers

One of my little hobbies is genealogy - tracing my ancestors.
A while back, the parish registers for many Cornish parishes became available online at the Familysearch website - which was brilliant, especially for those with ancestors down here. Then without warning, these registers were removed from the website. After waiting a while to see if this was just a technical glitch, I emailed the site to see what was happening and was surprised to be told that apparently an individual had complained about the registers being available on the site.

Now, as these were free of charge to view, I can only surmise that the complainant was someone with a vested (i.e commercial) interest in preventing us from seeing these registers.
I presume the Familysearch won't provide the details of the complainant, so if that person would like to contact me and explain their reasoning, I would be most interested. However I doubt they will - they are going to simply sit smugly and continue to presumably raise a small income from selling these registers on cd or whatever. Those of us in the genealogy community know who sells various products and one of those people is presumably the person responsible for this free service being removed.
Well, whoever it was, I did used to actually purchase cds as well as finding stuff for free (sometimes it is just easier to locate an ancestor via a searchable cd than struggling through the dreadful handwriting and faded pages of a register) - but I will no longer purchase a cd.
Not only that, but those registers I have already downloaded will be transcribed and placed online for free access - so you will not win.

Sorry for the rant - but this has really annoyed me.