This weekend I have upgraded my old laptop to run Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron). The experience was suitably painless and Hardy is running smoothly. Since I’ve had my MacBook Pro, I’ve hardly opened the lid on the old laptop, it has just sat (reasonably) quietly in the corner of the room listening for SSH connections and performing downloads for me.

Under Hardy’s predecessor, Gutsy Gibbon the connection to our HTPC (which is still running Windows XP Media Center Edition) had been a little flaky, which meant that often I would transfer files between the two using an SD card rather than simply copying them using smbfs.

It turns out that smbfs has been deprecated in Hardy and the time has come for me to move over to CIFS. This was actually pretty simple, but I understand some people have struggled with the conversion, so I thought I’d document what I did here.

1. Unmount the old smbfs mounts for the last time:

sudo umount -at smbfs

1. Grant all users full access to the mount point:

chmod 777 /media/<mountpoint>

1. Update /etc/fstab to use cifs rather than smbfs, changing the mask_s to _modes and ensuring that the octal modes have leading zeros, thus.

# Before:

//server/share     /media/mountpoint        smbfs
auto,credentials=/etc/smbcredentials,workgroup=WORKGROUP,gid=smb,uid=1000,fmask=770,dmask=770,rw 
0       0

# After:

//server/share     /media/mountpoint        _cifs_
auto,credentials=/etc/smbcredentials,workgroup=WORKGROUP,gid=smb,uid=1000,_file_mode_=_0_770,_dir_mode_=_0_770,rw
0       0

1. Mount the CIFS mounts:

sudo mount -vat cifs

And that’s it: fast and easy!

As reported elsewhere, I’m in Hong Kong (or more correctly, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region) for work. It has been a long time since I last travelled for work and had to stay anywhere overnight (the last time I stayed in a Travelodge on the M1 motorway near Sheffield).

I arrived late on Friday night and was pretty bleary-eyed as I caught the hotel shuttle from the airport to Causeway Bay, having got up very early on Friday morning to go to our office in Sydney en route. However, a few things struck me (and thankfully not the bus!) as we journeyed to the hotel. Firstly, it was the first time I had ever seen rows of identical skyscrapers. In fact I don’t think I had ever seen even a pair of identical skyscrapers before. Then I noticed that vehicles have yellow registration plates to the rear and white ones to the front, evidence of the British influence still present. I was amazed at how much traffic there was, too.

The Hongkongers love their cars! The grey concrete veins and arteries around the city are constantly brimming with high-performance cars. There are also lots of buses, which seem to raise the temperature of the streets by a degree as they pass by.

Yesterday afternoon I took a walk in the drizzle and found an area where each street seemed to consist almost entirely of small commercial garages, each of which seems to feature mechanics working on German sports cars. I don’t think I have ever experienced such a smell of engine oil!

Last night, after a very nice meal, I took a wander around the shops. I was amazed at how bright it was as I left each of them. The sky remained the same grey as it had been during the day, except rather than the sun illuminating the cloud from above, it was the city lights illuminating the cloud from below. I shall not be seeing many stars here!

I think it’s too misty to bother going up to Victoria Peak today, so the City Centre beckons for a bit of exploration. I shall leave you with a link to a website I read about on the flight over: We Are What We Do.

I’m sure I have mentioned Freecycling before. It’s a fantastic way to prevent perfectly usable items from ending up in landfill before their time has come. Today we had a bit of a clear-out and put a few items on our local Freecycle group and now they have gone. Brilliant!

Thus I’d like to recommend Freecycling to you all. I offer you a top tip if you are advertising something such as a digital camera or a laptop or something else that generates a lot of requests. Once you have a single taker for your item and then send a ‘Taken’ message back to the list and then delete your original message (using the Yahoo! Groups page). This should prevent you receiving countless emails long after your item has been taken. We’ve started doing this ever since K got an email over a year after advertising some things on the Crawley group.

That was all.

Well, it’s well past midnight here, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to wish you all a very happy, healthy and prosperous 2008.

Stay cool, won’t you?

Those who follow My Flickr Feed are probably bored to tears of sunset shots by now. To them I can only apologise as there are some more uploading as I type this.

The difference between the previous shots and today’s is the equipment due to the fact that I was playing with my new toy. For those interested in such things, my new camera is a Samsung DX-10 (which is essentially a Pentax K10D with the word ‘Pentax’ crossed out and ‘Samsung’ written in in crayon). I went for the Samsung over the Pentax as I got a better lens bundled in with it than I would have with the Pentax. I also invested in a telephoto lens (the Sigma 70-300mm F4-5.6 APO DG Macro, for the geeks). So this is what I was using this evening when I took these photos.

Obviously I need to hone my photographic skills, but Melbourne presents many opportunities for practice, so I should be able to take some decent snaps at next year’s Grand Prix.

We were up at 5 o’clock this morning so that we could witness a great sporting event. Today was Victoria’s other grand prix, the Moto GP down on Phillip Island.

Having been to quite a number of motor sport events, this was actually my first trip to see two-wheelers fighting it out on the tarmac and I have to say that it was really very enjoyable indeed.

Starting from third on the grid, it was excellent to see (Australia’s) Casey Stoner in the last as he passed us into Turn 1. Stoner retained the lead from there to the chequered flag but there were some great battles going on behind him. Very exciting to watch. It was great to see the World champion win on his home soil.

The circuit itself is one of the nicest I have been at; even with general admission tickets, we could see the majority of the track from the grass opposite the pit exit. The fact that the sun shone all day form about 10am really helped matters. It was pretty parky when we arrived there, I can tell you.

Now I’m (really) looking forward to the Formula 1.

This time yesterday I was at The Forum. My ears are still buzzing after the gig. Motörhead, Rose Tattoo and Airbourne were on the bill.

I’d never heard of Airbourne before, they weren’t even on the ticket, but they were pretty good. Certainly loud and enthusiastic. And they’re local boys, too, so it’s good to see a local band on the bill with such big names.

I first heard of Rose Tattoo on a local radio station Gold 104 about a year ago, when I used to drive to work. I quite liked the tracks that they played on the radio, but never saw fit to actually buy one of their albums. In fact I’d never even looked them up on the web. Only now do I see that the lead singer is Angry Anderson, responsible for that wedding music in Neighbours all those years ago! Rock and roll.

Motörhead were who I’d paid to see, though. I’ve been a fan of theirs for years but had never seen them live until last night. It was amazing to see Lemmy thrashing out chords on his trusty Rickenbacker bass. I’d heard that Motörhead were the loudest band in the World and wow were they loud! Certainly the loudest rock band I have ever seen.

The highlight of the gig for me was Lemmy’s dedication of Rosalie to one of the greatest bass players to walk this Earth. Yes, they did play Ace of Spades and yes it was amazing, but Rosalie was just that little bit different.

Even more different, and unexpected was the song before that… Whorehouse Blues: an acoustic number, for those of you not familiar with Motörhead’s back catalogue. Even that was loud. It was funny to see Lemmy with a cigarette in one hand and a mouth organ in the other!

I suspect the tinnitus will die down just in time for me to go to Phillip Island on Sunday to see the Moto GP!

According to http://www.grandprix.com.au, there are (only) 220 days to go until the we can hear the sound of Formula 1 cars screaming around Albert Park Lake (a short stroll away from here) once more. And this year the V8 supercars are back. I, for one, am very excited about that!

This season, despite the controversies (not least this weekend’s debacle in the Maclaren pit), has been very exciting to watch and I expect that the rivalries will be even more fierce next season. I should certainly like to be there for my third(!) Melbourne Grand Prix.

I had heard that Bahrain was going to be the first race of the season, but according to the official website, The Australian Grand Prix will kick off proceedings on 16 March, so we will get to see the new cars first again!

Anyway, the point of this post is that there was a note in our PO Box from the organisers of the Grand Prix telling us that we could get the same tickets as we had last year at a reduced price if we book before the end of this month. I’m sure my father-in-law would vouch that the Four Corner Grandstand option worked out very nicely for us in 2007. I don’t really want to go by myself, so I thought I’d see if any of you guys fancied joining me. I can’t offer free tickets, but I can offer free accommodation on a first-come-first-served basis!

One of my favourite sections of I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue is the Uxbridge English Dictionary, where contestants suggest new meanings for old words.

Not having the book I can’t tell you if the definition I came up with this morning has already been done, but nevertheless I thought I’d share it with the pajLog audience (that’s you, folks!).

Understandable (adjective): a shower spraying water that is neither too hot nor too cold.

You may have heard or read about the terrible incident that happened this morning in Melbourne City Centre. The fact that I’m writing this means that I’m alive and well, Thank God.

I was running late for work this morning as I had a couple of things that I needed to do, so I caught the tram from outside our door. This tram would normally drop me at almost exactly the point where this morning’s shootings took place. Shortly after the tram had left the stop, we were told that we would have to take an alternative route, due to an incident, believed to be a shooting on William Street. I got off at Flinders Street Station and walked along Flinders Street. There was a huge police presence near the Immigration Museum. I continued as I usually do across William St without joining the spectators and took the little lane past the coffee shops to the rear entrance to The Rialto.

A uniformed police officer stopped me from entering the building. He told me I wouldn’t be allowed in this morning unless I was "bullet-proof". He was remarkably jovial. It was then I turned and saw the blue tarpaulin at the corner of Flinders Lane and William Street, where one of the victims lay. As I walked away from the policeman my friend B rang me to see if I was okay. He told me what he had heard on the news and that the gunman was still on the lose. The reality hit me and I felt pretty nauseous. I still do as I type this.

I called K to tell her that I was okay. She hadn’t heard the news and so wasn’t worried at this point! I then followed her advice and made my way home. As I left the area by the Rialto, I saw how people were no longer allowed where I had been. I really was that close to the scene of the crime.

The air was abuzz with helicopters as I walked home, glad that I hadn’t been early for work and that the sequence of traffic lights had not caused me to walk along William Street this morning, as I occasionally do if the pedestrian lights are against me at William Street. I also felt a really deep sadness for those that had been shot. I don’t think I have ever felt so saddened for ‘strangers’ before. We witness so much evil on the television that we become desensitized to it all, I suppose, but this morning was very, very real.

With all the helicopters still buzzing away over the city as I type this, I am guessing that police are yet to catch the gunman. I hope they catch him soon so that no more lives (including his own, too many people have died this morning) are lost. And so that I can go back into work.

Update: the building has been re-opened and I’m back at work.