No Firearms When Paying Your Parking Ticket
I went down to the new Alberta Court House building in Calgary on 5 Street SW this afternoon to pay an overdue parking ticket (don’t get me started on parking tickets – it wasn’t mine). The building is very modern looking on the outside and is even more so on the inside. But the big surprise was that in order to get past the lobby, you needed to go through a security check similar to those found in airports.
Before I continue let me note that I fully support additional security where the powers that be feel it is warranted. Is it warranted at a Provincial Court House? I don’t have an answer for that and I wouldn’t presume to know the answer but it is worth noting that the old court house, in use up until only just recently, had nothing more than a Commissionaire sitting at an open information booth.
The new court building is a different matter. There is an x-ray machine, which you have to put your coat and electronics through as well as a metal detector, which failed to pick up my belt (though perhaps that’s because it’s newer and more sensitive than the detectors found at airports. You can read a few more details about the building on Wikipedia. Despite all the security it seems that if you have some sort of electronic pass, you can put the pass into a turnstile-type machine and bypass the security check. I would have assumed that this bypass would be for law enforcement personal, since removing their firearm and such would be a pain, but interestingly enough I saw a short, plain clothes women use it which makes me wonder about the security process. But like I said, I wouldn’t presume to know about the security setup – just found it odd. In any case, when paying your parking ticket, make sure you leave your firearm at home.
Calgary Soldier Killed In Afghanistan
The last 24 hours for me have been an emotional roller coaster, for a variety of reasons – some work, some personal, and some very personal. But the reasons that relate to this post are a result of my time in the Army. Yesterday afternoon I received a large package from National Defense Headquarters (NDHQ) containing a letter and certificate thanking me for my 14 years of service in the Canadian Forces. I was excited to have finally completed the clear out process from the Army, as a gradual shift in priorities (in combination with an aging body) made remaining in the Army no longer feasible. At the same time I felt torn as I had met a lot of great people, most of whom I still call friends, and as a result have nothing but good memories of my time.
And then it was great sadness that I read about the death of Cpl Nathan Hornburg, a soldier from the King’s Own Calgary Regiment (RCAC), the Army regiment I spent most of my time with. The death of any Canadian soldier is tragic, more so when it is someone from your own regiment. For me it is extra hurtful as Nathan was assigned to my troop when he first joined the Regiment and was a part of my tank crew.
My thoughts go out to Nathan’s family. And to the other members of Regiment who remain overseas, keep safe and carry on what Nathan started.
Sound With Ubuntu 7.10 On A Dell Latitude D830
I managed to get sound working using Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy beta) on my Dell Latitude D830 a few weeks ago but hadn’t documented it. I didn’t document it because I basically hacked out a solution that involved compiling a kernel of my own and including the Intel HDA driver in the kernel (rather than as a module like it is by default). This also meant that wireless and such didn’t work which was actually okay because during the day I wanted sound to listen to music but at night at home, I didn’t need sound but required wireless. So essentially i had a big hack that involved me choosing the right kernel to boot from at startup. Not an ideal solution.
But I see now from this bug report that the problem was indeed with the ALSA driver and it’s now been fixed upstream. Unfortunately there’s no update to the Ubuntu packages as of yet but at least now there is a fix that is much less of a hack.
First, grab the latest snapshot source from the ALSA site and extract the file. I grabbed the August 21, 2007 snapshot.
% wget ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/projects/alsa/snapshot/driver/alsa-driver-hg20070821.tar.bz2 % tar xvpjf alsa-driver-hg20070821.tar.bz2
Then change into the new directory, configure the build and install the driver files. It is important to note that until this is fixed, you will likely have to do this everytime the Ubuntu kernel is updated.
./configure --with-cards=hda-intel make sudo make install
After the drivers are installed, reboot and sound will now magically work.
New Roller - Now With Tags
I finally got around to installing the new version of Apache Roller (formerly called Roller Weblogger), which has now been accepted as an Apache Software Foundation project. The new version has a bunch of new features but the most noticeable of these features is the ability to tag entries. Tagging is a feature available to most other bloggers for quite a while now so it is nice to be able to join the masses. I’m not sure if I will bother going back in time and tagging all my past entries but perhaps I will tag some of the better entries I’ve written.
Update: Of course, none of the themes (either the defaults or the extra, downloadable ones) have support for tags so in order to display the tags for an entry, a tag cloud or a search box for finding entries by tag I will have to manually modify my current theme. Sigh.
Installing Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) Tribe 2 on a Dell Latitude D830
I got a new Dell Latitude D830 laptop for work last week and decided that Kubuntu was what I would run on it. However, to date there seems to be little in the way of documenting their install of Linux on the D830, so here’s a start. And I’ll try to update the entry as problems are solved. And I’ll assume that you are familiar with apt-get or the Adept Manager programs and other aspects of managing a Ubuntu-based Linux distribution.
First, the executive summary: I successfully installed Kubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (7.10) Tribe 2 on my Dell Latitude D830, with a few problems. I tried Kubuntu Feisty Fawn (both desktop and alternate) and had little success. And in doing some research it seemed that I would likely run into more problems than it was worth with Feisty given the new leading edge hardware within the D830.
Second, what’s not working? At this point, sound is not functioning whatsoever for me. And I’ve run into problems with some software packages, such as VMware Workstation 5.5 and OpenOffice. But at this point, the software issues seem more to do with the unstability of Gutsy than to do with the D830.
Here’s a look at my Dell D830. It’s a stock Latitude D830 with WUXGA (1920x1200), an Intel wireless network card (rather than the Dell wireless options) and built-in Bluetooth support.
% lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile Memory Controller Hub (rev 0c) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0c) 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0c) 00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 02) 00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI #5 (rev 02) 00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI #2 (rev 02) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02) 00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 02) 00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 6 (rev 02) 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 02) 00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 02) 00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 02) 00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI #1 (rev 02) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f2) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile LPC Interface Controller (rev 02) 00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation Mobile IDE Controller (rev 02) 00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation Mobile SATA IDE Controller (rev 02) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02) 03:01.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. Cardbus bridge (rev 21) 03:01.4 FireWire (IEEE 1394): O2 Micro, Inc. Firewire (IEEE 1394) (rev 02) 09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5755M Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02) 0c:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)
The desktop CD of Gutsy Gibbon didn’t work properly, due to the Intel video card from what I understand, but the alternate install CD worked like a charm. After the install is complete and you’ve booted off your new Kubuntu-based laptop, you should find that X starts up just fine though at this point it will be using the vesa driver rather than the Intel one. To install the Intel driver, which should bring improved graphics as ability to run OpenGL based stuff better, you need to install the ‘xserver-xorg-video-intel’ package. Then you need to edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and change your ‘Device’ section to use the Intel driver and then restart your X Server.
Section "Device"
Identifier "Intel Video Card"
Driver "intel"
BusID "PCI:0:2:0"
EndSection
If you want to control your touchpad, which works out of the box, from within KDE you need to install the ‘ksynaptics’ package and then change your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, adding a ‘SHMConfig’ option.
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "HorizScrollDelta" "0"
Option "SHMConfig" "on"
EndSection
Suspend and hibernate also worked out of the box, once I changed the ‘When Laptop Lid Closed’ option to ‘Suspend’. To change that, click on the battery icon in the system tray which will bring up the Power Manager options. Frequency scaling also works perfectly out of the box.
Unfortunately, the sound does not currently work which, according to this bug, appears to be related to the current version of the ALSA driver (version 1.0.14). The error I see in the logs is as follows:
[ 21.400000] hda_intel: azx_get_response timeout, switching to polling mode... [ 22.404000] hda_intel: azx_get_response timeout, switching to single_cmd mode... [ 26.100000] hda_codec: No auto-config is available, default to model=ref [ 33.508000] hda-intel: no codecs initialized
I’ll update this page as I encounter more details on the sound problem. Also, at this point I have not tested the Firewire or Bluetooth functionality as I do not have any devices to try out. Bluetooth, however, does appear to be working from a KDE perspective so if I can find someone at work with a Bluetooth device, I’ll see if I can make it do something.
As I mentioned, I ran into some issues with some software packages but I will document those issues in separate entries.
Shared Ownership of a Piper Cherokee Six
About two months ago I saw a quarter share in a Piper Cherokee Six hangered in Springbank (CYBW) advertised in the COPA Plane Trade section of the COPA Flight newspaper. I contacted the seller, did some research and took a test flight. The aircraft’s annual was due so I piggybacked on that and got it inspected. And then last Friday I signed on the dotted line and handed over a swack of cash, making me a 25% owner in a 1971 PA32-300 Piper Cherokee Six.
As I suspect is the case with most people who take the aircraft ownership plunge, I was motivated by aircraft suitability, convenience, control. I love the Calgary Flying Club and I think they are making huge strides in making renting there even better, but I think I’ve outgrown the club. The only aircraft that made any sense for me to rent was the CFC’s Cessna 182, which was fast and had a decent useful load. But even with it’s 1100 pound useful load, with full fuel you are left with 800 pounds for a 4 seat aircraft. That’s reasonable for 3 people but not nearly as good for 4 people with luggage. And since most of my flying is cross country and since I’d like to do more trips with another couple in the plane with us, the Cessna 182 isn’t going to work. Convenience is high linked to availability, and with only one Cessna 182 available to all members at CFC, that meant that it was next to impossible to just rent the plane on a whim. In checking the online booking system, as of today the club’s Cessna 182 is rented pretty much every weekend and most days during the week for the next few months – great for the club but not so good for me. The issue of control is also another factor. The GPS in CFC’s Cessna 182 is pretty basic, and takes up about the same size as an AI. Ya, it’s small. And old. And I’d love to see it replaced. But as a member, I don’t have direct control. Yes, I can talk to the administration and raise the issue at the AGM but with ownership comes the ability to just do it.
Costs don’t typically come into consideration when thinking about aircraft ownership because it’s fairly hard to beat a non-profit club given the amount of hours they are able to put on the aircraft (thus reducing the cost per hour for fixed costs like hanger space and insurance). But as I continue to increase the amount of flying I do per year and in combination with the rising costs associated with paying employees, I am convinced that I can fly cheaper per hour with my new PA-32 (as one of four co-owners) than I can at the flying club. The truth remains to be seen but I will report after a year of flying.
Don’t get me wrong though. I love the Calgary Flying Club and I have a lot of fond memories associated with them. And I suspect I will still participate in some of the Saturday show and fly events. But I don’t see myself renting there again, other than to perhaps check out the new Diamond DA-20 or to take multi-engine training, because I now have an aircraft of my own.
Blog Server Back
The blog server is back. Actually, the server was never really gone, it’s just that the DNS entry for ‘blogs’ got missed when I migrated the master DNS for my domains. Joy. Anyway, it’s all good again.
Ditching Gentoo On The Desktop
For the past four year I have been a huge proponent of all things Gentoo and I still am. But I’ve decided that Gentoo on the desktop (or in my case, laptop) is no longer for me. That’s not to say that it’s because Gentoo doesn’t belong on the desktop because that certainly isn’t the case. As far as I’m concerned, if you want a source-based distribution on your desktop, Gentoo is the way to go – hands down. And I still believe that Gentoo is a solid platform to run on enterprise servers; I have three servers all running Gentoo.
As my life gets busier and my priorities change, I find that I no longer wish to spend any time mucking around with the configuration of various functionality, libraries and applications on my laptop. Instead, I want everything to just work so I can concentrate on using my laptop to accomplish stuff, and I mean stuff other than making my laptop work properly. So, with that in mind, I switched to Kubuntu. It’s not fair to compare the two distributions as they have different goals and different target audiences. But I will say that when I installed Kubuntu 7.04 that everything pretty much worked out of the box, including the scroll wheel emulation on the touch pad and wireless network support. I haven’t tried suspend/resume yet but I suspect that it will work equally well. So I must say that overall I’m very pleased.
Charleston, SC
I find myself in Charleston, SC today where I am attending the ATG Insight Live 2007 conference. It’s been years since I attended a tech-related conference so I’m not entirely sure what to expect, other than what the agenda says. But if the Charleston hospitality is any indicator the next four days are bound to be a good.
I actually arrived last night, about an hour late. I flew via Chicago, where we had an incredibly hard landing (not this hard though) in a CRJ700 with a little sideways skidding thrown in for good luck. It was definitely a landing that would make any student pilot proud – nice to know even the professionals have some bad days. After last minute gate change, combined with a last minute plane change, it was in to a CRJ200 for the hop to Charleston and into the Doubletree Guest Suites.
Today I woke up late, had some breakfast and did a solo walk around the historic district of Charleston courtesy. My tour was basically guided, courtesy of National Geographic who have a Walks of a Lifetime podcast, which are available on their website or via iTunes. It’s a brilliant podcast which basically leads you along a circular route within the city, pointing out historic and interesting landmarks and giving you background information. And for my walk today the weather was perfect, making it a great afternoon. Now, time for some refreshing beer courtesy of ATG.
KDE 3.5.6
It’s been a long time since my last entry; while I’d like to say it’s because I’ve been too busy, it’s mostly because I just haven’t been motivated enough. And that means that a new version of KDE was released without my usual report on how it works with Gentoo.
KDE 3.5.6 was released back in late January and I built it shortly thereafter. And I’ve been running it ever since, again with no noticeable issues. As of this entry 3.5.6 is still marked as unstable in the Gentoo Portage tree but I say go ahead and build it. Though, if you haven’t already built it, then you may want to just wait as KDE 3.5.7 is expected at the start of May.
