Malta 2009

Hello all .. apologies for not communicating very prolifically over the last year unlike certain a other blogger I can think of …. http://www.gorgeoux.com/ ….

anyway we have been on holiday in the above mentioned place and had an interesting time really …

however ..

. This is a 4 star hotel in which the coffee has to be argued for each morning …. I find that a bit difficile 1st thing (before a coffee …) The manager this morning was somewhat rude as well which didn’t really help me or him after we had finished our ‘conversation’ I apologised afterwards and we are the best of mates now ….after all he is the guy who makes the coffee you see …

… Had quite an epic sail yesterday … The forcast had been for 18 mph wind which would have been quite nice , I texted the sailing school owner thinking that he wouldn’t be about on sunday (strictly catholic country ) and as his yacht had moved from the mooring, but got a reply about 12.45 saying he was about, followed by a call and met him 2.30 and went out. Its been really nice being able to sea sail in the waves and know there’s a safety system in place in case something goes wrong … about 15 years actually since I have done any sea sailing … anyway the sky clouded over and the wind got up and the forecasted wind came in and it was great .. Then the tiller (rudder holder) broke while I was about a mile out so had to struggle in and get to the outskirts of the harbour waving the broken tiller in front of the harbour so he would notice, which he did and zoomed out in his outboard motor and rubber duck and lashed a new one for me and off I went for some more fun.

The problem happened when I was being towed in (!!) .. Had the ropes a bit tight and got my foot stuck under one and over I went !! … Then found I couldn’t right it so Paul Debono http://www.fairwindsailing.com.mt   dived in and rescued me !! … All watched by Gill from the hotel window !!! …good sport and good spectator sport as well  .. Gill says she’s not letting me sail again til I lose a bit of weight ..

Anyway a felt quite exercised yesterday and needless to say slept rather well afterwards !! …. All excellent and such a good reason to stay in Malta and in a somewhat less than 4 star hotel .. The staff are quite nice really and are really one’s friends .. But the operations manager is very rude (and still unrepentant ) he offered to take us to another hotel after we complained about the room on the 1st day (next to the lift and 1st floor over the hotel entrance …. ) .. We fixed it next day through the agent though and ended up on the 5th floor.

So .. Its been good .. Weather, restaurants and sailing that is (hotel .. no further comment) .. it’ll be good to be back … And to see you all soon ..

So about the pictures , the collection is here and will write an explanation soon ..

however … until i get organised have a look at this picture    ( zoom your browser to read the text , to zoom go to the bottom right hand corner and click the + sign …  not sure about apple macs sorry   )  ….

Ok so here are some of the nicer pictures .. this was our favourite pizza place … thin crust and with the ancient busses chugging round the bay … the view from the ferry on the way to Gozo …. this and this and this was the church built by the villagers between 1950 and 1971 …. We visited the Ggantija Temples which are a world heritage site and represent the oldest freestanding manmade structure in the world ? see here and here and here . We visited the ‘citadel’ in Victoria , the centre of Gozo and admired the views from the top  and here and here  . The rest of the pictures are various shots around St Juliens. This is a shot of some fossils embedded on the Limestone on the shore at Sliema . Without doubt the best pizzas and views were from this place in Spinola Bay

We also visited in September when Gill had a private tour of some of the nicer parts of Malta.

This was St Paul’s Church in Malta which was the actual site of St Pauls incarceration in Malta after the shipwreck see here and here  ..

… we were treated to a guided tour of Ndina the ancient city of Malta with its beautiful Cathedral in which our guide was married see here    here  ( the amazing marble floor … ) and here  do browse the pictures from here  . There was a trip round Valletta by horse and trap  with a visit to the other Cathedral there replete with many Caravaggio paintings therin (no photography) all in here

Here is a nice sailing video .. “footage of extreme sailing”

 

Here is my favourite Laser sailing video …

“When we went out sailing it was 25 knots, with big waves. However, after half an hour the wind increased to over 35 knots, wtih gusts over 40. We were quite far upwind by this time, and the video shows our mad dash back to the safety of the SailBase.
www.sailcoach.com“

Richard

Norway 2008

Hello

We have just returned from a 10 day trip to Norway. We flew to Bergen airport and stayed in studio flat in Bryggen in that town. We then spent a day or two exploring Bergen. Beautifully crafted Cast Iron Manhole Covers everywhere.  Strange Sense of humour in the Fish Market, Time for a beer, Just up the Street from where we stayed, on the way to the Fjords, here, here, and through to here … IMG_2764.htm , This is the uphill railway that took us down to the Myrdal, then we traveled to Flam and a trip up the fjords IMG_2783.htm through to IMG_2860.htm , all pretty spectacular. We then travelled by expressboat to Solstrand to have a day in a Spa (Bad) , and we were off …. not quite sure why this was buried in the rocks , Our guide was studying at a Music school near the Bad, nice shots on the way /IMG_2927.htm through to /IMG_2978.htm  , and we arrive, and here , and here, and through to IMG_3005.htm ,  excellent infinity pool (yes this is it !)  , and here , and the spa area through to /IMG_3017.htm .

This is up in the woods above Bergen, and here (bless …) , and another view from the top , Bryggen is round to the far right of this picture , beautiful cobble streets everywhere in Bergen, and how can He ride this bike over the cobbles !? (I think he gave up …in the Bryggen ) ….. 

Then we were in Oslo … big disappointment as the railway from Bergen to Oslo was closed because of a landslide, with a choice of 12 hours on a bus an arriving very late or a 1 hour flight …. the bus trip was to have been really spectacular, over the mountains where there were no roads, a great pity. …. anyway …

Then we were in Oslo  … and to see an eclipse in Vigeland Sculpture Park , right next to Nicky and Matthew’s flat ! Fantastic ..

The Monolith (oh and an Eclipse) .. IMG_3086.htm through toIMG_3134.htm ,

The Fountain , and here , and here,

Oslo and the Contiki Museum to /IMG_3173.htm

and Matthews Skiing spot above Oslo …. to here

and Wow ! The Opera House …. and /IMG_3237.htm to IMG_3284.htm

and back to the airport ….

Sailing in Lankawi …

The wind came up and we had some pretty good sailing … complements to the rather good camera-person ..just hover over the utube link ..

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oI0x-uBxGg 

Langkawi Holiday (Malaysia)

Hello Just a few words about our holiday (a commentary on pictures posted elsewhere …) just  call up one picture from the links below and then you should get a low bandwidth picture preview when you hover your mouse over the links…

http://www.computersecurityuk.com/langkawi08/html/IMG_1743.htm is a picyire of the inside of a jumbo jet , for those who have never had the pleasure of a longhaul jet flight …..

http://www.computersecurityuk.com/langkawi08/html/IMG_1788.htm is a picture of a Monitor Lizard this place is teaming with them …

http://www.computersecurityuk.com/langkawi08/html/IMG_1794.htm is a bit of the ‘picture postcard’ that is this island … very pretty ..

http://www.computersecurityuk.com/langkawi08/html/IMG_1804.htm is a Tree Squirell.

http://www.computersecurityuk.com/langkawi08/html/IMG_1903.htm the sailing out here has been pretty good ….

http://www.computersecurityuk.com/langkawi08/html/IMG_1841.htm the pool-side life has rather good ….

http://www.computersecurityuk.com/langkawi08/html/IMG_1844.htm .. some rain …

http://www.computersecurityuk.com/langkawi08/html/IMG_1859.htm … this restaurant had its floor blown through the roof by the suanami …

http://www.computersecurityuk.com/langkawi08/html/IMG_1865.htm .. this is the boardwalk that disappeared in the suanami ..

All in all we are having a good stay here and a good rest .. love to all ..

Richard and Gill  

Recompile the EeePC Xandros Linux Kernel

Hello

 William Ruckman has posted this on his blog …

http://ruckman.net/tech/2008/01/24/recompile-the-eeepc-xandros-kernel/ 

 

So higher memory support, iptables (netfilter) / Firewalls can be installed and the native xandros advanced desktop still used.

 Acknowledgements to William Ruckman

 RJ  

Securing the Asus Eee PC

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASUS_Eee_PC

http://www.eeeuser.com/ 

www.GoEducation.co.uk/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFLJJw6WRqM

http://cliffhacks.blogspot.com/2007/11/asus-eeepc-first-impressions-and-gpl.html

Hello

I have recently acquired an eeepc.

This is how it looks in relation to normal laptops..

I was intriged by the price and the size. I have a need to run a linux machine of a convenient form factor ..ie small.

It does a lot of good things , straight out of the box, on the face of it has full pc functionality and applications, and with a little tweaking the repositories setup for it enable a really full desktop gui., but unfortuneately it has had the security built out of it (ie no ip-tables support)

This will involve the recompilation of the kernel so that Firestarter or Guraddog can be installed, which are convenient guis for configuring the iptables system that is normally built into a linux kernel.

This guy is a about to do it (I hope) ..

http://ruckman.net/tech/category/eeepc

and he has linked to these sites which look authoritative. While I have recompiled kernels in the past (when I have been paid to do it ..) ,  because of the way the filesystems and partitions work on the eeepc it will take a little more care than usual. 

WilliamRuckman has linked to

http://appliedlife.blogspot.com/2007/11/kernel-recompile-on-asus-eee.html ..

and

http://linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/202/1/ 

as sources of information on dealing with the issue of securing an eeepc ..

Watch this space …. I am hoping to get some time to secure the eeepc with a new kernel build soon .

I will probably use this as the methodology as it should generate a ’standard’ kernel with iptables ..

http://wiki.eeeuser.com/howto:rebuildthekernel#changing_the_configuration

Mendocino

Hello

I did post this link some time ago but didn’t provide any comment.

http://www.computersecurityuk.com/mendocino/index.htm  (right click the link and take the option to open in another window; ditto for the rest of the links too)

Anyway … having looked through the pics they are all shots of what goes on in Mendocino (ie not very much these days ….) that is apart from tourism (us) and the brave few undertaking surfing and kayaking (with a spot of fishing) and some sailing (see IMG_1253 where the little Hobie cat takes off as it goes around the headlands and hits the pacific swell ..!) …

However the history of Mendocino is rather striking. It was taken over by people from Maine (about 1900 ?) who brought their rather nice architecture (see IMG_1234 Headlands Inn where we stayed … smashing place) and their exotic skills of dealing with 15 ft wide redwoods and getting them down to the seashore , sawn up and onto boats where there were no protected harbours by a process of shutes setup over protruding rockfaces and literally firing them into boats out at sea where workman braked the flow on the shute so the guys on the boats could catch them and stack them without them getting catapaulted through the bottom of the boat ..!

IMG_1337 shows the famous breakfast “to die for” … it must be related to that required for a log man to do his duty for the day …

We managed to walk round the headlands without spotting any rattlesnakes …. fortuneately this was not bear country apparently .. excellent country for trying out the 40x telephoto with Image Stabilitiser on the Canon Powershot S5 (my recent birthday present ..thanks Gill )… I wasn’t actually getting too wet getting the surfing pictures.

Altogether a rather nice place to go to and do nothing ….

Mendocino, Highway 1, Sausilito , sailing in the Bay

Hello again. Just a quick post to leave another link to a set of pictures that describe the last part of our stay in California.

http://www.computersecurityuk.com/mendocino2/index.htm 

_DSCN0963 to _DSCN0965 and IMG_1440 to IMG_1447 show pictures of sailing done in San Franscisco Bay … Many Thanks to Mike’s friend John who gave up some of his day to allow somebody to do a tourist trip in the Bay … I am very very grateful to him (and to Mike for twisting his arm).

_DSCN0966 to _DSCN0984 show some pictures (of varying quality of our party in the evening at Scoma’s superbe seafood restaurant in Sausilito on the front with rather breathtaking views of San Fransciso bay. Many many thanks to Ruth for organising such a magnicicent venue.

The rest of the pictures are various views from Highway 1 on our way back from Mendocino with a a couple of shots of the inside of Headlands Inn … highly recommended place to stay !

Mendocino

Hi

I forgot to leave this link …. will write and desccribe the pics soon …

http://www.computersecurityuk.com/mendocino/index.htm

Bye … Richard and good bye

Yosemite

One of the main aspects of this is the need to be “bear aware” in this part of the country, a bit scarry as bears were spotted all the time in the campsites around here. here are some pictures of bears in my cousins back yard … http://www.flickr.com/wsj99/ (right click the link and take the option to open in another window….) …when checking in they show you a nice video of a bear breaking into a car to get at what smells nice from the outside (I didnt think Yogo bear was like that …) so in http://www.computersecurityuk.com/sanfranscisco/index.htm … IMG_0993 to IMG_1027 show views of Yosemite with the later pictures being from “Glacier view” a point some 3000 feet above where we stayed in the valley , a 32 mile drive out of the valley and “round the back”. IMG_1030 to IMG_1036 show more views from the AhWaynee Hotel (the famed breakfast establishment). IMG_1039 shows a shot of a 1950’s style diner which was a real blast from the past where time seemed to have stodd still for 60 years , seen on our way back to San Franscisco. The drive back via Silicon Valley was interesting, bit like driving on a 7 lane M6 at about 9.00am in the morning. Gill managed the navigation and map reading wonderfully and we managed to pitch up at the Intel museum with a couple of hours to go before closing. This establishment was well pitched at children with wonderfull techy play areas , but was pretty good for 60 year old kids too …. IMG_1040 thro IMG_1050 show some of the significant exhibits. Describing Bob Noyce (the patent holder for the transistor image IMG_1048  : I wonder how they computed the royalties …) IMG_1044 being the original business plan for intel typed by Noyce himself on a typewriter just like my old dad’s “as you can see I should fire the secretary …” and lots of stuff about the “open” corporate information culture (or its ok for him as he holds the patent on the transistor maybe ?)

Ok so the trip to Sanfrancisco IMG_1051 to IMG_1168 with IMG_1160 to IMG_1164   being nice closeup of San Quentin death row …..  and good stuff on the Cable card … got to fly …. more later .. bye ..