Film: The Wolf of Wall Street Directed by Martin Scorsese

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0993846/?ref_=nv_sr_1

Film: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Directed by Peter Jackson

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1170358/?ref_=fn_al_tt_4

Film: The Imitation Game Directed by Morten Tyldum

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2084970/?ref_=tt_rec_tti

Film: Fury Directed by David Ayer

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2713180/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Book read: Commander: The Life and Exploits of Britain's Greatest Frigate Captain by Stephen Taylor

I have always enjoyed reading about this period of naval history, around late 1700 to mid 1800s.

Of course Horatio Nelson is the main character of those times, but this book gives a biography of a similar figure Edward Pellew - whose endeavours are just as impressive.

It charts his rise from humble beginnings to command of ships and has very good descriptions of battles that he was involved in.  The capabilities of the ships and navigational abilities are limited - so what was achieved back then is truly staggering, these were true sailors - spending years at sea or on station.

The author makes the case that Pellew is an overlooked historical figure, I had never heard of him - this books provides some really interesting background on him and the times he lived in.

Book read: My Outdoor Life by Ray Mears

I've always enjoyed Ray Mears documentaries on television.  He sees very down to earth and authentic.   His programmes are part survival, part history, and part living within nature.

So I wanted to read more about him, and this book is very interesting.  It goes through his early life where he wanted to join the Royal Marines before finding his eyesight was not good enough.

From that setback he became involved with selection for Operation Raleigh, and became a proficient photo journalist.  In the background setting up of his own company for promoting bushcraft.

He got his break on TV with short shows, and then through the ITV Survival series.  He writes a lot of interesting pieces on the logistics and crew that get sent out with him to remote locations.

Film: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire directed by Francis Lawrence

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1951264/?ref_=fn_al_tt_5

Film: Interstellar directed by Christopher Nolan

This film is getting rave reviews, "film of the year" type of praise.  I loved the idea of the authentic physics and space scenes.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816692/

Those scenes really make the film - they are 2001-esque and it is good to see this type of cinema being attempted now effects have moved on so much.

That is the high point, the rest is a cluttered plot that tries to do too much and leaves nothing to the viewers imagination.  It is certainly not Prometheus bad but it is still a bit of a let down.

My main problems were:

• The first hour dwelling completely on the decline of earth and the impending death of the population.
• A convoluted finding of NASA by the pilot turned farmer.  Even NASA in their diminished state could probably have given this guy a call or found him if he was that suitable!
• The completely contrived love interest, that really did not need to be there.
• Matt Damon turning up just to play a treacherous dweeb - he really did not need to be in the film.
• Overly long effects heavy explanation of the "ghost" toward the end of the film.

Things I liked:

• The space scenes and settings, really well done.
• The on board computers, clearly a take on 2001 HAL but more interesting.
• No compromise on the hard facts of space travel, and time dilation.

Quantum Computing

Interesting article on Quantum Computing research at Microsoft.

http://www.technologyreview.com/photoessay/531606/microsofts-quantum-mechanics/

Book read: The Blunders of our Governments by Anthony King and Ivor Crewe

A really interesting book covering the last 30 years of British government and the wastage in public expenditure.  The front cover hints at the scale of things with the "revised and updated" sticker.

The book is an analysis of "the blunder" and does some reasonably in depth analysis of various policies over the years, what they intended to do, what they failed to do, and how much it all cost the taxpayer.

The early part of the book concentrates on the case studies, or the "Horror Stories".  There are just too many to mention, the poll tax, the ERM stand out.  Also the complete over confidence in any government IT project.

There are also some good examples from the last Labour government.  Individual learning accounts, the financing of the London underground metronet, and the completely over complicated tax credit system.

Gordon Brown is often cited as a deeply flawed character, vindictive of those who would oppose his ideas, developing policy in isolation in the treasury.   His policies such as tax credit probably cost the country untold millions.  Also it is claimed he would ensure someone who has opposed him career would suffer if he could.

But he is not alone in the long list of government failure.  The book goes on to analyse the human aspects of failure and then the system aspects of government.  Predictably consultancies come in for heavy criticism, with so much government expertise being removed or downsized, these firms effectively get to write their own cheque for fees and ongoing work.

A really good read, and in places simply staggering.

Film: The Reader directed by Stephen Daldry

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0976051/

A really thought provoking film with some superb acting from Kate Winslet.  The story is difficult material about a war crimes trial.  The story is very engaging, and is full of sub plot to go alongside the main theme.

Film: Never Let Me Go directed by Mark Romanek

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1334260/

FIlm: The Hunger Games directed by Gary Ross

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1392170/

Film: Winter's Bone directed by Debra Granik

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1399683/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Film: The Wrestler directed by Darren Aronofsky

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1125849/

An interesting film about a washed up wrestling star struggling to make a living on the local circuit.  The wrestler is really well played by Mickey Rourke.  It a sad story of being past your prime, facing up to giving up the one thing you've done all your live.

None of this really gets resolved in the film, so it is a bit un-Hollywood in the ending - but that makes a pleasant change.

Book read: The places in between by Rory Stewart

You might know Rory Stewart as a conservative MP - who sometimes appears on Newsnight as an expert on the Middle Eastern/North African countries.

He always provides really balanced sensible opinion - much lacking in our woeful politicians today.  But just viewing him as a politician undersells him by a huge amount - he started life a Foreign Office and overseas.

This book recounts the epic journey on foot through Afghanistan in 2002 - part of a large 6000 mile journey that took in Pakistan, India, Iran and Nepal.  At this time the collation forces were fighting the Taliban and Afghanistan was not the safest of places.  He visits remote villages, stays with villagers and really puts across the state of isolation in the country.

You always feel he is walking a tight rope of acceptance and often comes close to being harmed.  The feudal nature of the communities is put across as each stage of the journey involves carrying recommendations from the village he was travelling from.

One interesting episode is the historic background of Britain's empire.  He often gets asked about the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koh-i-Noor diamond - which was obtained by Britain under dubious circumstances.

This is the number one travel guide for Afghanistan - well deserved even though it is a limited market!

Soulless Cisco

So redundancy time at Cisco, senior managment thing it's "for the best".

Here's how it works:

1.  Senior leaders push it down to business units after coming up with a number from the financials

2.  Automated mass e-mails get sent around talking about transparency and "you might be affected"

3.  A couple of months pass and the arse end of management get to deliver the bad news, after no transparency at all

4.  They forget to send out an e-mail saying "all clear" - leaving someone with a conscience to do it locally.

Good luck everyone.

Land speed record footage

Restored footage of Donald Campbell's world record speed attempts on land and sea in Australia:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-28308872

UK Carriers

Lots of news in the last couple of weeks about the first of the new UK carriers.  Although it is a big achievement to build such vessels - so much has been compromised that their effective usefulness has been limited.  Here is a good article from back in January about some of those compromises:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/06/defence_committee_carrier_badness/

Christopher Booker has a good article in the Telegraph today about the history of some of the big design decisions for the carriers:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/10962798/Its-thanks-to-the-EU-weve-got-HMS-White-Elephant.html

The list is pretty big, a few that stand out:

1. Not nuclear powered, the carrier(s) will not have enough tanker support from the Navy.
2. Ski jump to avoid having to install catapults - now only one type of aircraft can be flown, the F35, which itself is in development trouble.  Ignoring of the electric catapult option.
3. Not enough escort ships to support a single carrier - where-ever it goes most of the Navy will have to follow.  There are only 6 Type 45's.

Vulcan Bomber

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-28276162

Film: Star Trek into Darkness Directed by J J Abrams

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1408101/?ref_=nv_sr_2

I honestly do not know where to start with this one.  The sequel to the relaunch of the franchise.  It amplifies all the bad points of the original but in such a way to make watchable film - every point leaving you waiting for the next completely absurd or improbably scene or setting.

The main problems all centre around Kirk, a bone headed captain that somehow the starfleet seniors see some potential in.   The start of the film sees him in a contrived situation violating the Prime Directive.  So I thought that would see him in prison for the rest of the film - but he seemed to escape that.  It looks like he is about to get sent back to the academy for some much needed qualifications - but then a major incident breaks out - that keeps him centre stage.

The film then goes into chasing a renegade terrorist type, who is well played by Benedict Cumberbatch - he adds some much needed acting skills and credibility to the cast.

He is later revealed as Khan from the original series - so this sees the new franchise seeking safety in the success of the past.  The Khan homage is completely overdone toward the end of the film - reversing the Spock/Kirk death scene when Kirk has to sort out the warp drive alignment.  In the original this involved Spock and some serious precision work - in this one Kirk has to kick a coil into "alignment" - like something out of a Doom game.  Of course this isn't the end of Kirk though - an opportunity missed by the script writer!

There is so much in the film that is laughable and contrived but it kept me watching to see where they would ransack next from the Star Trek history.

I can't wait for the next one!

Series: Band of Brother

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0185906/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Film: The Machinist Directed by Brad Andersen

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0361862/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Film: Prometheus directed by Ridley Scott

I remember the hype when this film came out a couple of years ago.  I did not get to see it - so I watched it on DVD.

All I can say is what a massive disappointment.  There are a lot of good ideas in there which are never fully developed - about man's quest for answers on his origins, the quest for longer life, the dominance of large corporations over wider mankind.  These are all thoughtful themes that really could have driven the film.

It is all drowned out by a implausible main plot and way too much homage paying to the original Alien film.  It is set in the same universe as Alien - but that really does not help it.

Just some things that stick in my mind:

• The Wayland corporation has spent untold billions to travel to an Alien planet - but take with them a complete bunch of amateurs who fail to work as any form of team.
• The weaponery is simply ridiculous - flame throwers on a alien world - hardly practical.
• The CEO of the corporation is supposedly dead but makes an appearance as he has secretly travelled as well.  He meets one of the aliens to request eternal life - but is just zapped.

And that is just the glaring things I could see.

Centos install from media scripts

Sometimes it is useful to install from media directly rather than take the latest version from yum for a package.

These scripts provide that, with the c6-media location mounted:

install-media.sh:

yum --disablerepo=\* --enablerepo=c6-media install $1


provides-media.sh:

yum --disablerepo=\* --enablerepo=c6-media provides $1

E-book read The Hitchikers Trilogy by Douglas Adams

I only ever read the first of the books, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy when I was younger.   By the time I had read that the BBC series had been broadcast - so I did not then read Restaurant at the End of the Universe, or Life the Universe and Everything.

So I had been meaning to read them again - they contain a lot of humour and word play that would have passed me by before.  Also a lot of philosophical ideas about life are present especially in the first book.

I think the first book is the strongest with a lot of clever ideas in there, by the time you get to Life the Universe and Everything it feels like the attempt at a story line has taken over from the comedy and ideas.

Still great to be able to read them again - I will move onto books 4 and 5 of the trilogy soon.

Heartbleed Articles

I've been following the heartbleed bug in OpenSSL, for a developer it is quite an eye opener.  It is just a common buffer overrun that returns sensitive data to the client.  It is fascinating to think that so much ofthe security on the internet depends on this - and how fragile the whole ecosystem is.

There are some interesting implications.  Firstly over reliance on code review (it is hard to think like an attacker when reviewing - you are mainly concerned with "is this doing the right thing").   Secondly the lack of funding for this project that many corporates are using is pretty shameful.  Thirdly it shows the inevitble limitations of static analysis which OpenSSL has been exposed to.

Here is an XKCD which sums up the problem.

http://xkcd.com/1354/

Here is a technical article on how this type of flaw could be detected/avoided:

http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/heartbleed.html

Here is an article about someone trying to exploit the bug:

http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/04/how-i-used-heartbleed-to-steal-a-sites-private-crypto-key/

Film: Tony Takitani directed by Jun Ichikawa

A low budget Japenese art house film about a man who find and loses the love of his live and his subsequent recovery process.

The plot is minimal and the viewer is encouraged to fill the gaps.  This was all filmed on one set and is quite an achievement for he different scenes the created.

Not a bad film - highly rated by the critics at the time.

BBC Three to close

BBC Three and Four were channels launched by BBC on freeview before the digitial switchover, as a way to encourage people to move over.

Successful shows would then get re-shown on the regular one and two channels.

But not BBC Three is to close because of budget constraints - the license fee has been frozen for a few years now.  Some of the programming will continue but in an iPlayer only format.

Here is a breakdown of the current budgets:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-26447089

Interesting times for the BBC, who have lost a lot of goodwill and trust over the last few years.  There is still a consensus that the organisation is too management heavy and pays said managers beyond industry levels.  The lower level programme making employees are more marginalised and squeezed with short term contracts.  Rather than lose a channel I'd like to have seen more rationalisation of management.

iPlayer is not something the BBC can charge a licence for from its charter, and it should be listed as a "channel" in terms of costs (the BBC must have many CDN storage deals to get the iPlayer out to the consumer).

The charter comes up for renewal in 2016 - it will be interesting if it becomes an optional thing as it should be in the this day and age.

Extending an ext3 partition with LVM

LVM is quite technical but very powerful, here is extending an ext3 filesystem that is stored on a logical volume under Linux LVM.

Starting with a spare disk, setup with 4 LVM partitions:

[root@hpmicro ~]# fdisk -l /dev/sdb

Disk /dev/sdb: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1               1        9727    78132096   8e  Linux LVM
/dev/sdb2            9728       19454    78132127+  8e  Linux LVM
/dev/sdb3           19455       29181    78132127+  8e  Linux LVM
/dev/sdb4           29182       38913    78172290   8e  Linux LVM


I make the first two into a LVM ext3 filesystem:

[root@hpmicro ~]# pvcreate /dev/sdb1
  Physical volume "/dev/sdb1" successfully created
[root@hpmicro ~]# pvcreate /dev/sdb2
  Physical volume "/dev/sdb2" successfully created

Create a volume group "TempVG" that uses these two partitions:

[root@hpmicro ~]# vgcreate TempVG /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdb2
  Volume group "TempVG" successfully created

Create a logical volume that uses storage from TempVG:

[root@hpmicro ~]# lvcreate --name TempVol00 --size 140G TempVG
  Logical volume "TempVol00" created

Create the filesystem on the logical volume:

[root@hpmicro ~]# mkfs -t ext3 /dev/TempVG/TempVol00


Mount the filesystem

[root@hpmicro ~]# mkdir /store
[root@hpmicro ~]# mount /dev/TempVG/TempVol00 /store

Now create the other two PV's:

[root@hpmicro disc]# pvcreate /dev/sdb3
  Physical volume "/dev/sdb3" successfully created
[root@hpmicro disc]# pvcreate /dev/sdb4
  Physical volume "/dev/sdb4" successfully created

Extend the existing volume group:

[root@hpmicro disc]# vgextend TempVG /dev/sdb3 /dev/sdb4
  Volume group "TempVG" successfully extended

Extend the logical volume:

 lvresize -L+150G /dev/mapper/TempVG-TempVol00
  Extending logical volume TempVol00 to 290.00 GB
  Logical volume TempVol00 successfully resized

Now resize the filesystem on that logical volume (checking with df sizes before and after):

[root@hpmicro disc]# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/TempVG-TempVol00
                      138G  4.8G  127G   4% /store

[root@hpmicro ~]# resize2fs  /dev/mapper/TempVG-TempVol00
resize2fs 1.39 (29-May-2006)
Filesystem at /dev/mapper/TempVG-TempVol00 is mounted on /store; on-line resizing required
Performing an on-line resize of /dev/mapper/TempVG-TempVol00 to 76021760 (4k) blocks.
The filesystem on /dev/mapper/TempVG-TempVol00 is now 76021760 blocks long.

[root@hpmicro ~]# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/TempVG-TempVol00
                      286G  191M  271G   1% /store

Linux: Install ISO image from DVD (CentOS6)

From: http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey

1.  Use fdisk to setup partitions (about 250M for the boot partition, "a" makes bootable):

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1   *           1          43      247657+   b  W95 FAT32
/dev/sdc2              44        5324    30418560   83  Linux

2. Make filesystems:

mkfs.vfat -n BOOT /dev/sdc1
mkfs.ext3 -m 0 -b 4096 -L DATA /dev/sdc2

3. Copy the isolinux directory from the DVD1 to the first /dev/sdc1 partition root.

4. Rename isolinux to syslinux.  Rename syslinux/isolinux.cfg syslinux/syslinux.cfg

5. Copy the images directory from DVD1 to the /dev/sdc1 partition root.

6. Create syslinux boot on the /dev/sdc1 partition.  syslinux /dev/sdc1

7. Mount the /dev/sdc2 partition and copy the .iso files to the root.

8. During install Ctrl-Alt-F2 umount /mnt/isodir ;  mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/isodir - as the installer needs to point to where the .iso files are kept.

Film: The Lives of Others Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

A foreign language film about life in East Germany under Stasi rule.  It centres around the observation of a subversive playwright who has been placed under surveillance.

The officer in charge however becomes drawn into the lifes of those he is monitoring, to the point of withholding incriminating information. 

The playwright manages to get an article published in the west about the covering up of suicide figures, which causes a storm in the party circles - eventually the agent is demoted to "steaming envelopes" for perceived incompetence.

When East Germany is re-united with the fall of the Berlin wall - the playwright finds out about this and dedicates his latest work to him.