Milton Keynes FTTP Trial Comes To an End

 Fibre Optic Broadband, Geek  No Responses »
Nov 242011
 

*Wordpress lost the first version of this post so this is the hastily rewritten version*

Last November I got involved with Openreach’s FTTP (Fibre to the premises) trial in Milton Keynes. It’s been a great year testing a ridiculously fast internet connection but it’s now sadly come to an end. BT have started offering a commercial product based on the technology so I assume the trial was a success.

The trial wasn’t handled directly by BT or Openreach. Instead I had to get connected by one of the smaller ISPs involved in the trial. It was through them that I learnt the trial was ending. They supplied me with prices for if I wished to keep the connection and stay with them.

I’ll focus on the lower scale of the pricing. The products based on the product I was trialling (100Mb down and 30Mb up) are going to be too high for most people (it starts at 78 + VAT a month). The consumer focussed product is 115 down and 14 up and comes in at £60 (it’s unknown whether this will require a phone line as yet so you might need to add £10 on to it). The same product from BT costs £35 but does require a phone line so its basically £45.

This is too much to pay. We’re looking at possibly £70 a month from a smaller ISP and £45 a month if you sell your soul to BT. Most people aren’t going to be able to afford paying that much for broadband. What’s the point in spending billions of pounds hooking everyone up to a fibre network and then pricing the majority of people out? This is why we shouldn’t leave developing the country’s infrastructure to private companies. Incidentally it would be interesting to find out why the discrepancy between BTs price and the price from the small ISP is so large. Are small ISPs being screwed by wholesale prices or are BT using their clout to sell the product at a loss?

I’m actually moving out of the area next year so this speed won’t be available to be me but the same problem is there for the slower FTTC (fibre to the cabinet) technology that covers most of the country. BT offer it for £28 a month which isn’t too bad but if you want to avoid BT you pay more than double for a limited service.

And who doesn’t want to avoid BT?

A weekend with iOS 5 beta

 Apple, Geek  No Responses »
Jun 142011
 

On Friday evening I saw this post on Reddit. The poster had an Apple developer account but no use for the 30 activations of iOS betas you get with it. I replied and within the hour I was installing iOS 5 legitimately with no jailbreak. Hurrah!

I won’t go into detail about all the changes and updates as they’ve been covered in more detail elsewhere. I just wanted to go over a couple of my favourite changes quickly.

Notifications

Pre iOS 5 notifications in iOS were horrible. A big blue screen popped up and stopped you from doing whatever you were doing until you cancelled it or flipped over to that app. Now you just get a non intrusive band at the top of the screen and once it’s gone (after a few seconds) the notification ends up in Notification Center.

Activated by swiping down from the menu bar (where have I seen that before?) it lists all outstanding notifications. As you can see in the screenshot it also shows stocks and weather. I’m not sure why Apple think everyone cares about stocks… especially enough to need it there every time you want to check which apps need your attention. I couldn’t find an obvious way to turn it off in the two days I ran the OS.

 

 

Easy Access Camera
Another feature added that I think many people will appreciate is the ability to start the camera app from the lock screen. This makes is much easier to quickly take a photo or video without having to type in your passcode and open camera.app.

Because you don’t have to type your passcode you can’t see any photos that have already been taken.

You can also now use the volume up button to take pictures (Hooray!).

 

 

 

 

Whilst all of the new things to play with are fun, the software is still very much beta level. Battery life is atrocious. My iPhone 4 died half way through Saturday after fairly light usage. This isn’t really surprising as I’m sure this is the last thing to be optimised. Apps behave rather erratically as well as they haven’t been updated to run on the new OS.

I’m glad I got to have a play. I’ll probably have another go when they release beta 2 but until then I’m happy with 4.3.3.

Shairport – Apple Airplay streaming for free

 Apple, Geek, Linux, TV and Hi-Fi  No Responses »
Apr 272011
 

I used a few hours of this past long weekend to have a play with the recently released program Shairport (original post and Github repository). What the program does is emulate Apple’s Airport Express. As well as being an fairly over priced wireless router and print server, the Airport Express allows you to stream music from iTunes or an iOS device wirelessly to a stereo.

If you have an Airport Express connected to every stereo in your house you can play music to them all at once, in sync, and have a relatively cheap multiroom music system.

As I have a Linux PC connected to my TV and stereo in the living room I thought I’d give it a go. Installing is very easy – you need to download a few Perl modules (perl -MCPAN -e ‘install Module::Name::Here’)

  • HTTP::Request
  • HTTP::Message
  • Crypt::OpenSSL::RSA
  • IO::Socket::INET6

Then just fire up Terminal and type

apt-get install libssl-dev libcrypt-openssl-rsa-perl libao2 libao-dev libio-socket-inet6-perl libwww-perl avahi-utils make perl shairport.pl

Easy! I’d recommend actually looking at the installation doc when you download as the code is changing everyday and the instructions above are probably already out of date. There are also instructions for installing on OS X and Windows.

So does it work? Yes it does… and surprisingly well. I’ve even created a bash script that runs on start up so I don’t lose it after reboot. I can also connect fine after waking up from hibernation so I don;’t have to have the computer running all the time.

Overall, I’m really happy as it has saved me the £90 I was considering spending on an AppleTV (which can also act as an Airport Express for streaming) just for this feature. I already have Boxee and XBMC installed on the PC and all my music on a NAS but iTunes is really my go to application for music. It doesn’t suck nearly as much on a Mac as on Windows and all my playlists and podcasts are in it. I’ll still probably pick up an Express for the bedroom as having to plug a phone or iPod in feels a bit cumbersome.

Lets just hope Apple don’t attempt to change the key and up security so this stops working. Fingers crossed!

New 2011 Macbook Pro

 Apple, Geek  No Responses »
Mar 082011
 

Shortly after my last post where I was having trouble selling my Macbook Pro I actually managed to find a sane buyer. I had to deliver it which required driving half an hour there and back but I didn’t mind as it gave me the cash needed to put towards the 2011 Macbook. As I’m lucky enough to qualify for higher education discount it only required me put £75 towards the new laptop. Seeing as it’s going to take me around five years to finish this Open University course, I can’t see why I can’t just upgrade each year and have the latest and greatest for next to nothing.

Overall it’s pretty similar to last year’s model. The only cosmetic difference is the Thunderbolt logo taking the place of the display icon next to the mini DisplayPort. (edit. I’ve just realised that it would make sense to mention that Thunderbolt is a new interface with a transfer speed to 10 Gbps.)

 

The real changes are internal. Apple have finally dumped the ageing and positively (by computer standards) ancient Core 2 Duo in favour of Core i5s and i7s. I only picked up the low end 13″ Macbook Pro which is powered by an i5. Accordingly to early benchmarks the low end 13″ is as fast as last year’s top end 17″ in terms of processing. This is all thanks to Intel’s new Sandy Bridge processors that were only released a week or so ago.

As with last year my main complaint is with the GPU. Last year Apple used an Nvidia integrated graphics chip that wasn’t spectacular but it got the job done. Due to the increasingly annoying licensing issues between Nvidia and Intel, this year we don’t even get an Nvidia GPU. We’re stuck with the GPU integrated into the processor. I need to fire up Portal and see how things run but I’m not really expecting much and I wouldn’t even be surprised if graphics performance was worse than last year.

Really that’s all there is to say. Everything from last year’s post still stands as overall the laptop hasn’t really changed very much. The design is still great and the build quality is superb. The multitouch trackpad is still a joy to use and made even better with BetterTouchTool. £75 well spent I’d say!

Macbook Pro Upgrade Failure

 Apple, Geek  No Responses »
Mar 022011
 

After Apple released the new Macbook Pros last week I thought I’d see if I could sell my last generation Macbook Pro and pay the difference to upgrade. This turned out to be a lot harder than I originally thought.

I’m fairly happy with my laptop but the fact that the new low end 13″ Macbook Pro is now as fast as the last generation’s high end. I think that’s probably a fair bit more future proof than the 2010′s already a little outdated Core 2 Duo.

Anyway, so I placed an advert on the Milton Keynes Gumtree. After a load of attempted scams and no real offers I decided to post on the London Gumtree and just accept that I might have to jump on a train down there to meet. Even with the extra traffic I still only really got scammers and people offering ridiculously low prices. The few people that actually seemed interested still tried to screw me out of money or kept changing the plan on meeting until I just gave up. I could go with eBay but the commission taken by eBay and Paypal really start to eat into any money you make.

In the end it just ended up being a lot more hassle than I was prepared to put up with. I still might put it up again in a month or so and see if I get any interest. The i5 in the new Macbook sounds a lot more fun than a Core 2 Duo.

So instead upgrading the laptop I just decided to pick up a stupidly fast hard drive to give me my tech fix. I installed my new Seagate Momentus XT yesterday and things seem to be a good amount faster.

Now to spend a few minutes lusting over the new iPad 2…

Revo R3700, Ubuntu 10.10 and Boxee

 Geek, Linux, Media Server, TV and Hi-Fi  2 Responses »
Dec 182010
 

A few months ago I wrote a post about choosing a device for streaming media from the web and the NAS on my network. At the time I was trying to choose between an updated AppleTV and a net top running XBMC. Since then I discovered Boxee. Boxee is built on top of XBMC but incorporates extra social features and makes viewing web based content easier. For a while I considered picking up the dedicated Boxee Box build by D-Link but at £200 I thought it’d make more sense to buy a Atom based net top and install Boxee on that. That way I get the same functionality but with the option of installing other useful applications.

I quickly realised that the price of the Boxee Box is definitely worth it if you don’t have time to fiddle. I always knew that running an HTPC (Home Theatre PC) was going to take some time to set up but I still wasn’t prepared for the amount of hassle.

My first attempt at installation was with Ubuntu 10.10.  Everything went smoothly until I came to shut down after the installer finished. The screen locked up. ‘No problem’ I thought and did a hard reset. After installing the NVidia drivers I restarted and it hung again. Turns out the wireless driver for this hardware  in 10.10 has a problem unloading. I couldn’t find a solution that evening so decided to have a look at Windows XP.

Installation was fine until I was greeted with that long forgotten about issue of searching for drivers. I managed to get everything working and Boxee installed. This is where I find out that Boxee relies on DXVA (Direct X Video Acceleration)  to offload processing to the GPU. This is only available in Vista and Win 7.  Every video played like hell… even 240p Youtube videos.

In the mean time I managed to stumble upon a fix for the previously mentioned wireless driver bug in Ubuntu 10.10. Post number 9 on this thread. Hurrah! The hard disk was formatted and Ubuntu was reinstalled with the fix doing its stuff. I can now shut down/hibernate/suspend without the system locking.

Video performance is much better under Ubuntu. Boxee in Ubuntu uses VDPAU for its GPU acceleration which is obviously available to 10.10 as it’s the most up to date release. Flash content can still be a bitch but that’s down to Adobe not building GPU acceleration into Flash 10.1 on any OS except for Windows. 10.2 fixes this so once that’s out of beta hopefully Boxee will build it in and even 1080p Flash content will play smoothly.

I was hoping to be able to stream most things wirelessly but  I’m starting to think my ISP supplied N router has an issue with sustained data throughput over wireless.  I can copy a file from my NAS (gigabit ethernet) to my Macbook Pro (wireless N) and get about 3-4 MB/s. That should be enough for any video file to play smoothly but when watching a DVD rip in Boxee it’ll stop randomly for a few seconds every 10 or so minutes. I think I’ll just run a cable round at some point. At least then I can plug in my Blu Ray player and XBox 360 as well.

There are still definite issues with this set up but overall things seem to be running smoothly. I’ll maybe make another post with my actual views after a few weeks usage. I think once I put down an ethernet run things will become a lot more useful and I can actually make a proper judgement on the set up.

The Scariest Thing to Happen This Year

 Geek, Internet, Personal, Views  No Responses »
Nov 132010
 

Of all the things I’ve read in the news this year there is one thing that has frightened me the most. Forget about the usual scare stories about the imminent destruction of the human race or the threat of attack from terrorists. The most worrying thing is clearly the loss of Paul Chambers’ appeal in the so called Twitter Joke Trial.

The first time Chambers was found guilty of sending threatening messages to Robin Hood airport over Twitter I thought it was ridiculous enough. Obviously he said he would appeal and most sane people assumed this madness would be overturned once the case was heard by people that weren’t idiots. Of course this being the current British legal system that was too much to hope for and Paul Chambers’ appeal has failed. He has been ordered to pay a fine (although Stephen Fry has offered to pay these like the gentleman he is) and because of the whole mess has lost his job.

The reason this scares me so is because it sets a legal precedent that disallows us from making jokes and being facetious on the internet. If I say that I would like to punch Jedward in their collective faces will I be arrested from threatening behaviour? Does the fact that I haven’t punched someone since I was 10 or that I am clearly exaggerating for comic effect have no meaning? Internet forums and message boards are filled with people making morally dubious statements that are clearly not to be taken seriously. Until Chambers’ conviction no one thought that anyone would actually take these statements seriously but now we have to consider the fact that they might.

I’m hoping that the mainstream media will take a little more notice of this case after this failed appeal. It seems to me that this could have a detrimental effect on their freedom of speech. If you’ve ever read Charlie Brooker’s columns in the Guardian you’d know that he routinely threatens celebrities and people in the news in a light hearted fashion.

The IAmSpartacus hashtag (where people tweeted Chambers’ offending tweet verbatim) trended on Twitter for most of yesterday. The hope is that this will highlight the ridiculousness of the situation… either that or a few thousand of us Twitter users are in for a rather large fine.

People like me that have grown up with the web and specifically textual communication are overtly aware that subtle meaning can be lost in transmission. Sarcastic comments are taken seriously all over the web but this has taken that phenomenon to the next level. My only solution to this problem is to finish any jokey sentence that could be misconstrued with the universal sign of ‘only kidding’ – :-P

edit.  Corrected spelling of Spartacus… how embarrassing.

Catalyst

 Geek, Programming  3 Responses »
Nov 102010
 

I’ve been a bit lax of late with updating this blog. I haven’t been completely slacking off though you’ll be glad to hear. I’ve been relatively busy with my newest Open University module that started in October. I’ve managed to read ahead of schedule and I’ve almost finished my first assignment that is due in on the 29th of this month so I thought I’d take a bit of time out from that and get back into the land of Perl.

Since finishing Intermediate Perl I’ve been looking for a good book to continue my learning. I bought Effective Perl and read most of it but I decided fairly early on that it would work better as a reference. Just reading a whole book of tips, best practices and code snippets was, whilst useful, not giving me the opportunity to put what I was learning into practice.

After looking around I settled on The Definitive Guide to Catalyst. It’s relatively advanced compared to the stuff I have been doing but it’s set out in a way that walks you through building simple applications that you can extend with extra features as the book progresses. This is perfect for me because I find that not working in an environment where I can put my new found knowledge to use it can be difficult to know where to start. The book is also full of modern idioms and has a great introduction to Moose. It also focuses heavily on automated testing which is all very new to me.

My experience with web development has always been very basic. I’ve made a couple of websites for various projects over the years. They were all incredibly simple, flat pages that were built using Dreamweaver. Playing with Catalyst has given me a much clearer picture on what is happening behind the scenes of proper dynamic websites. It’s also interesting to see how the Perl I already know can be used in a new way to create these web apps. Although I need to brush up on my HTML and CSS skills to actually build a nice looking front end.

Thinking the unthinkable

 Apple, Geek, Linux  No Responses »
Oct 272010
 

A few things have recently got me considering the unthinkable. ‘What is the unthinkable?’ you ask. It is the idea of buying a computer that is not is not designed in Cupertino, California and doesn’t have a big, shiny Apple on it.

For the past few years I’ve been an avid Apple fan. Not at fan boy levels of devotion but I can often to found frequenting Apple rumour sites and posting in discussions about new Macs. I should probably point out that I’ll probably always have an Apple laptop. At this point in time I can’t find another company that builds such well built, high quality laptops. Yes you pay a premium but that’s all worth it when you compare a Macbook Pro with a similarly specced PC.

What I’m looking into is building a desktop tower running Linux. Usually I would look straight towards an iMac or Mac Mini for desktop use but the past week or so has brought up a few interesting points that are swaying me towards Linux.

Firstly, Ubuntu 10.10 was released. I’ve been fiddling with Ubuntu for years. Every six months when the new version is released I download the disk image and install it into a virtual machine. I even ran Ubuntu as a server for a few months and as a media streamer for a while. I’ve always found something missing. After using Windows for years I’m sick of having to fiddle with a computer to get it to perform simple tasks. Even now that I’m learning to program, I want to spend my time with the important stuff, not installing drivers. This why I bought a Mac. The first few times I tried Ubuntu on my old PC it wouldn’t recognise the wireless card. This was finally fixed around the time of 7.04 but there was always something holding me back from wanting to use Ubuntu full time. 10.10 is, I think, the first Ubuntu release that’s ready for prime time and can be used by anyone.

The second factor affecting this decision was the ‘Back to the Mac’ press conference held by Apple to introduce the Macbook Air and provide a sneak peak at Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. It left an uneasy feeling with me regarding the direction Apple are taking with their desktop operating system. I may just be being paranoid but this convergence of OS X and iOS (iPhone) has me concerned about the future of Apple computing.

For instance, I know that users will be able to install software from other sources beside the Mac App Store but for how long? And will not being in the App Store be comercial suicide for developers. I kind of like the App Store on the iPhone (although it could do with being a little more lenient) but on a computer, and in Apple’s hands, it could mean the end of the Mac platform as we know it.

Another example of iOS ‘features’ creeping into OS X is the idea of fullscreen apps. Why do I want a full screen application on a 1280 x 800 pixel screen? Or even worse a 1920 x 1080 screen found in the smaller iMac. Mac users have always sneered at Windows users that instantly hit ‘maximise’ on their internet browser and are left with two huge white spaces on either side on the 700 pixels of information. OS X is about taking full advantage or your screen’s real estate; smaller windows are arranged all over the so as much as possible is instantly accesible. This is how you work on a Mac. Not fullscreen.

Lastly I am slightly concerned about the deprecation of Java on the Mac. I’m not a Java programmer (although I will be taking a couple of modules on it next year for my Open University course) but Apple dropping official support for such a major language is troubling.

I hope I’m wrong about my concerns. I still think Apple are years ahead of their competitors on both the desktop and mobile devices, even with some of their bizarre decisions. I just hope Steve realises that we might be happy with a slightly controlled phone or even tablet for the sake of performance, battery life and security but this won’t fly on the desktop.

Fibre Optic Broadband in Milton Keynes Very Much a Reality

 Fibre Optic Broadband, Geek  5 Responses »
Oct 022010
 

Back in March I mentioned that BT were planning on running fibre optic trials in my area (Walnut Tree, Milton Keynes). Details were fairly thin on the ground but I tried to post here whenever I heard anything new. Since May there hadn’t been much news until I stumbled across this broadband availability checker. It’s not one that I’ve seen on any other website and the only links I’ve seen to it are on forums. I entered my phone number and to my surprise I was informed that my number was enabled for fibre to the premises (FTTP).

Now that I was enabled, I just had to find an ISP that was involved in the trial. Easy! Well, not really. It seems like none of the major ISPs even know about it. Two names that kept coming up on forums were Plusnet and Zen. I e-mailed both but only Plusnet replied. They told me I had to swap my ADSL to them before I could be put on the trial. However, they couldn’t promise me that if I did switch I would definitely be put on the trial. After speaking with a rather rude representative on the phone I decided they didn’t seem like a company I’d like to deal with.

A few weeks passed by with not much more information until I saw this post on the Thinkbroadband forum by the company Vivaciti saying they were on the trial and to e-mail them if you were interested and in the enabled area. So I did and I got a very helpful reply with this information…

If and when you are accepted by BT for the FTTP trial, they will do a site survey to see if the house is suitable (you are not on the 12th floor of a tower block) then they will arrange for an installation date. We will supply you with a suitable router to use but the router remain our property at this stage.
We have no control over the service that is put in as part of the trial, so can not specify the 100/15 40/10 etc (although my understanding is they want the 100MB (sic) rolled out first)

During this time there is no cost to you for installation or rental/usage of the service.
The trial is due to finish at the end of December although we think this will be extended, but either way at the end of the trial you have a couple of choices, you can either cease the service at no cost or liability or once prices are released you can agree to stay on the service although at that point there would be a 12 month contract imposed on the service.

So as you can see, it was a bit of a no brainer. No cost, no commitment and no contract! I let them know I was more than happy to join the trial and after a few more e-mails I had a installation date for when BT would come and physically connect us to the fibre network.

I’ll save the installation details for the next post.

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