Colin Charles Agenda

I’ve been using Ubuntu on my Thinkpad Edge 11″ (which has the machine name: magorian) for quite some time now (from 10.10). Today I did an update from 12.04 to 12.04.1 and found my wifi stopped working. Turning the card on/off using the Fn+F9 key seemed to be the fix. Minor niggle.

Some resources: Ubuntu on Thinkpad Edge 11/13/14/15 is a great place to see common problems & fixes. The ThinkWiki also has a page for the Edge 11″.

The update to 12.10 is currently going on and is expected to take 1.7GB of downloads.

I’m thinking about upgrading the RAM from 2GB -> 4GB (I’m seeing prices that are really cheap for this kind of RAM – less than RM100 ~USD33). I have to admit that the machine definitely feels a lot snappier than my aging MacBook Pro (lovegood). 

I aim to create in 2013. Many people do #365, a photo of the day, etc. I’m going to attach it to a daily blog post and not talk too much about the photo, unless I want to :-)

I tend to upload photos to Instagram on a daily basis. It naturally gets synced to my Flickr photo page too.

Can I post photos daily? Sometimes, I am stuck in a tin can (aka a plane) and its tough. Can I blog daily? I doubt I will have something to say or muse about, but I plan to write more and more. I may play catch up (like I did over the weekend).

All in, let’s see how long this journey lasts!

Photo: Taken after reaching back home to Malaysia after a two-week vacation in Europe. That’s some prawn mee & a Tiger beer. It felt good.

i’ve made numerous complaints, and i’ve finally decided to give up on phpwebhosting where i’ve been hosting the www components of bytebot.net for many years. why? very high load averages which lead to there being errors establishing connection to the databases. heck, httpd can’t push content either (static). it can occur when i post a new blog post. it can occur when someone else does so. its woefully annoying, and this is a goodbye to shared hosting with them.

machines with 1gb of ram, 2gb of swap, 4 cores Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 2.40GHz.

[byte@chop byte]$ uptime
12:32:52 up 46 days, 14:23, 1 user, load average: 41.76, 15.03, 5.88

when all is said and done, this was just $10/month. 

so where am i going? dreamhost. it is still shared hosting, but back in 2010 i signed up for a free account that gave me unlimited space. load averages seem to be a lot more sensible and there’s terabytes of storage space for users. pingdom suggests less than 4 minutes downtime in the last month which i consider acceptable.

this is also a great month to do it – i’ve been blogging with wordpress since january 2004 and its been at phpwebhosting ever since. farewell old host.

Having a few long journeys, I got to catch up with the latest Hollywood had to offer.

1. Papadopoulos & Sons – show about an entrepreneur who goes thru trials & tribulations, then learns whats important in life
2. How I Spent My Summer Vacation (aka Get the Gringo) – you won’t think much from the title, but this Mel Gibson show isn’t half bad. I don’t recommend going out of your way to watch it, but it’s a good way to pass time surely. Action, murder, revenge, love, and crime are all covered here 
3. Arbitrage– Richard Gere stars, also about an intensely wealthy entrepreneur, about to sell his company, cover up his problems, while having an affair. There are several themes & plots here, so you’ll enjoy it overall 
4. The Words – about a writer who placed his name on his best work, only to find out that he has to live with such a secret. Turns out its a lot harder than expected.

I notice that the plotlines in the last two movies seem to end with a bit of a cliffhanger. Leaves the watcher to understand or continue thinking about what might have been. Unlikely that you’ll see a part two, but maybe that’s how modern movies tend to end. 

Upon arriving home, I did turn on cable and caught Senna. If you like the Formula One (F1), you surely know whom Ayrton Senna was. You probably also know that Senna was the last F1 driver to die while racing. It is an awesome show and I highly recommend all to watch it. 

There is a lot said about Boxing Day sales in London and the great shopping experience you can enjoy. I got to be part of this on the 26th of December 2012.

First thing you should know about most of Central London. A tube strike has been happening for several years now. The unions want to ensure people get paid better to work on this day, but there’s been no solution. As a consequence, most central tube lines or areas stop functioning.

Buses work. Taxis work. Taxis are also on regular metered fares on the 26th, which is unlike on Christmas Day (the 25th). 

Getting to Harrods (Knightsbridge) or most of the High Street (Oxford Circus, Bond Street) is a challenge if you can’t use the tube. So use a taxi.

What about the sales themselves?

Some stores have genuinely good discounts. Some stores like Selfridges also have an online presence, so whatever you get in store is also available via online delivery.

The crowds are insane. Walking around Bond St will confirm that. Many queue to get into stores, seen at Next & Selfridges, but for the latter there are other entrances so use common sense.

I get the feeling that Londoners usually don’t shop on this day. Its mostly out of towners or tourists.

Many stores continue to have sales right up till January. Same prices, same deals, even on January 4 the following year! Just no more crowds :)

John Lewis apparently remains closed on the 26th, electing to open on the 27th only.

Overall, its OK if you want to get 30% off something at Dior/Chanel/Hermes/Prada/etc. It seems those brands generally don’t continue sales maybe past that day. But for anything else? I’m not so sure…

Watches are also on sale. But I’ve never paid retail prices for nice watches to begin with – shops usually provide discounts anyway.

Should you go for the experience? Only if you enjoy crowds & sale bins. You will queue to go in. You will be shopping in a rush. You will queue to pay. Bring entertainment to quell the waiting periods!

I’ve been writing this blog here since 2004 and since then its been having a default copyright stance – i.e. I own it. I’ve been supporting the use of Creative Commons licensing on many of my works since 2004 (probably earlier, but with 2004 I am firm with the bytebot.net training materials).

Today I made sure that this blog, is also licensed under the Creative Commons. I’ve always liked the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license which is what is applied here. Its worth noting that my other body of work, photographs on Flickr have always been licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs.

Why something different for photos? I’d rather you use it as a whole instead of a mashup and if you were mashing it up, ask me for it. For text, if you want to build on top of my research/writings/works, feel free to, but just share it alike.

As always, contact me if you want it in something other than a share-alike/no-derivative license.

Surprised it took me so long to make sure this body of work is licensed under the Creative Commons!