Robin Clarke – Perl and Life

Many of my friends have already experienced me singing the merits of OSS (Open Source Software), with Linux at its core.  With the latest Ubuntu release “Jaunty Jackalope” (which I upgraded to a few days ago), I thought it’s time to sing some more praise again for my favourite operating system!  If you have heard of Linux, and think one of the following common misconceptions:

• It’s too “geeky” – I want to use my computer, not use the command line to use it…
• It’s really difficult to get it to work…
• I won’t be able to do my stuff on it…

… think again!

I’ve never even tried to pursuade my family to convert… there’s no one else that they know who knows Linux, and I’m thousands of kilometers away – it just doesn’t make sense for them to make the effort to change.  But… when my sister got a netbook for Christmas the price tag won the fight for Linux without me even opening my mouth.  The best bang-for-buck netbook which my father found was an Acer netbook with “Linpus” installed.  Since then my sister (18 years old, great at arts, but not previously known for technical prowess) has installed Ubuntu on it, and is really happy!  If she can do it, so can you!

Why you may ask…?  If your current computer already has Windows, it’s probably not worth the effort, but when you buy your next one, consider that even if you get some version of Windows included in the deal, it’s probably adding upwards of 150EUR to the price tag, and with laptops costing as little as 300EUR nowadays, that’s pretty significant!  That’s not where it ends though – getting legal copies of all the rest of the software you want for your system (Office etc.) will cost a pretty penny too.  If you’re using a Mac now, then money obviously isn’t an object anyway… so go get yourself another Mac! ;-P

The latest Ubuntu comes with Open Office (replaces MS Office), Firefox (replaces MS Internet Explorer), Gimp (replaces Photoshop) preinstalled, and there’s all kinds of other programs which have by now become very stable, and very very competitive alternatives to their fee based counterparts.

What other stuff work on Linux these days?

• Skype
• Google Earth
• a whole host of video and sound editing suites
• Fancy 3D desktop effects – stuff that only Mac users can dream of.
• … and if you really want to use that one Windows program, you can probably install it under Linux with Wine!

The one thing I really love about my Ubuntu installation – I always have the latest version of all the software I use.  Once I decide to install any given program (there’s one easy interface to install/remove pretty much everything), I never have to go checking on a website to see if I have the latest version: the system upgrades (which you can set to happen automatically every day) upgrade EVERYTHING!

Best of all – you can try out Ubuntu without committing and installing – just download the image, burn it to a CD, and reboot your computer with the CD in the drive – it will run the whole system from the CD! And did I mention that most of the free software which runs on Linux also has a version for Windows and Mac too?

If you already are a Ubuntu user, and are wondering about the upgrade to Jaunty Jackalope: I recomend it!  The upgrade worked without a hickup, and though I’ve not seen any wild changes, the few small changes that there are are nice!

As a little aside, here’s how I was converted:

• 1998 – Richard, a Linux guru was living in my dorm and installed Debian on my computer.  It took him about 8 hours.  Sound didn’t work, and the graphics were bad… I didn’t do much with it, and felt sorry for his effort…
• 2001 – I did the final part of my Masters in Munich at the TUM.  My desktop had SuSE Linux installed… I got on ok with it, and set up a web server on it.  It was more intuitive than my previous Linux experience, and much easier than the Sun systems my colleagues were using.
• 2002 – Finished with my Masters in Computer Science, I was working in England for a few months, didn’t have many friends there, but a load of old PC’s from work… this time I managed to install Debian myself, and started doing some Perl programming and playing around with web and file servers.
• Since 2003 – I’ve always had a Linux server at home as a file server and for testing programs out on
• Since 2006 – Because of a job change, I had to buy my first own laptop (up until then they had always been work-owned, and Windows-enforced) – I installed Ubuntu and haven’t looked back since!

I’ve just finished this book, and am writing the review because I’d recommend everyone to read it!  In this book, Dan Gardner analyses the huge discrepancies between perceived dangers and real dangers, and the mechanics and feedback loops between individuals and the media that lead to our perception that the future is more dangerous than it has ever been.

The reality is that at no time before has the average (Western society) human being had a life expectancy and quality of life as they do today.

The arguments in the book are supported by hundreds of examples from research and as such is more of a long-winded executive summary than new ground breaking research, but it does combine all these points very eloquently for the person who wants to understand a bit more about the topic without reading mountains of dry research documentation.  That said, it should be taken with a grain of salt – it is obvious that this is a very subjective analysis of the situation, and I’m sure there are other interpretations with their merits.

Ask for the book at your local book shop with the ISBN: 9780771032998, or get it at Amazon.

I can also recommend reading Bruce Schneier’s Blog (which is where I got the recommendation for the book).

Back in 2002 I bought my first GPS: a Garmin eTrex.  Since then I’ve had a lot of fun with it going Geocaching, geotagging photos, and general geeky finding things and logging my movements.

This week I upgraded to what I consider the best bang-for-your-buck replacement: the eTrex Legend HCx from Garmin.  I’m not going to review everything, but rather take the eTrex as a given, and see what’s changed.

Motivation

Why change?  The old eTrex is a great device!  But there were a few points which bugged me:

• Limited track storage: This is the main motivator! The memory on the old eTrex is full after about a days hiking.  I want to log our entire Alaska trip this summer without having to upload to a PC between.
• Short battery life: a pair of 2000mAh NiMh batteries last a day.
• Limited way-point names: This is a bit of a niggly point.  In the old eTrex, way-points can only have 5 characters… this means that many of the geocaching IDs are cut off, and you have to think up naming schemes to remember e.g. a shop which you marked.
• Proprietary cable:  I already bought the cable for ~30EUR when I got the GPS (man did that piss me off – having to pay that much for a serial cable!), but it is annoying that all data transfer is serial (what PC has Serial these days?  I had to get a USB/Serial adapter, and they are not without errors), and that the power supply pin isn’t connected, so I can’t use an external power supply (like a 12V car adapter).
• And finally – do you ever need an excuse to get a new toy?

It’s really cool because…

• MicroSD card! I think you can add maps and data with this too, but I’m thrilled that I can now put in a card (2GB for $12) which can store all the track data I could generate over years! The track data is stored as one GPX file per day, including time data for every point.  I haven’t worked it out yet, but I can’t imagine I’ll ever fill 2GB of tracking data.
• USB interface – at last they have a standard interface for quick data transfer and power supply!  Plugged into a PC it is on “Garmin” (a proprietary, but documented data transfer protocol) mode which allows programs like gpsbabel to easily upload/download way-points and tracks.  In the settings, you can change to “Storage Device”, and then it is recognised by your computer as a USB mass storage device, and you have direct access to the MicroSD card within to copy the daily log files.  To top it off, it recognises when power is available over the USB cable (adapters for car are available for $6), and switches its power supply automatically – prolonging your battery life.
• High sensitivity receiver, and WAAS enabled.  This means that under heavy foliage or between buildings signal reception is much better than with the old unit, and the WAAS means that in North America, accuracy can be up to 3m!  Even now, sitting inside the building at my desk, it still has a (weak) signal!  I’m looking forward to trying this out geocaching – so many of the caches here are in the woods, where I was lucky to get anything less than 30m accuracy, and finding a cache within a 60m diameter circle is not easy!
• Support for Geocaching.  It’s a small bonus, but it sorts all way-points marked with the symbol “Geocache” into a separate section, and when you find it, you can click a little button which will change the symbol to “Geocache Found”, and it will disappear from the list.
• It has the belt/bike clip as standard.  I already bought the handlebar clip mount for my old one, and this one comes with a little screw-on addition with which I can just continue using the old one.
• Customised layout: there are loads of fields to choose from, and you can decide which ones you want to have on the screen.

Not so hot…

• The new navigation nipple: it does make navigation the many new options much easier, and held in the left hand, the array of buttons combined with the nipple is great, but try and use it with your right hand, and you have to stretch your thumb across the front, blocking part of the display (and I have long fingers!).
• Battery connectors: both sides are leaf springs.  Maybe they’re better now, but in my old one, after a lot of use, the leaf springs pushed back, got weak, and occasionally (when attached to the bike and hitting a bump), would disconnect completely… rather annoying.  I hope these hold up better!
• Display isn’t very good in low light conditions.  The old display was very readable without the back-light, even in low-light conditions.  The new one is fine in sunshine, but even just indoors you have to turn on the back-light (which presumably will dramatically lower the battery life) to be able to read the display…

Data transfer

As I mentioned earlier, gpsbabel is a great little program (available for Windows, Linux, Mac, …) to transfer data to/from your GPS, or even to convert geo data between various formats (gpx, loc, kml, …).  If you’re into GPS’s and haven’t tried it yet – you should!

I’m using mine with Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex), and apart from one minor issue, everything works fine. The problem was that my user didn’t have read/write permissions for the device when it was connected, but adding this line to /etc/udev/rules.d/51-garmin.rules fixed that:

SYSFS{idVendor}=="091e", SYSFS{idProduct}=="0003", MODE="666"

For sale!

Who wants a much loved Garmin eTrex? Like I said – it’s a good solid GPS, and even comes with a data cable.  No reasonable offer will be refused!