This morning, I figured out what it was that was causing the problem. AT&T was open when I was dialling, and had the modem selected in the ‘Cellular’ tab (which I don’t normally use):

I hypothesise that it’s got a lock on the modem when this is selected (even if the ‘Cellular’ tab is not selected). Quitting the AT&T client appears to allow the connection to be created. You can then restart it and connect to the VPN in the normal way (using ‘existing internet connection’).

Hope this helps someone.

It’s a shame Vodafone themselves don’t bother making this clear. This wasted about an hour of my time when  I first got the card.

Easy-peasy connectivity. You can still track how many bytes have been uploaded/downloaded in the current session by turning on ‘Show icon in notification area when connected’ from the Connection’s Properties dialog. You’ll then see an icon in the system tray with a pop-up showing usage. Sadly, this is only for the current session, not the month as a whole – haven’t yet found a decent bit of software to do that (surprisingly).

I recently installed Ubuntu 64bit (amd64) on my Lenovo Thinkpad T61. Unfortunately, the Network Client is not available in a 32bit edition. So I had to perform a few tweaks to get it to work. Here’s the steps I took:

• Install the ia32-libs package and all it’s dependencies:

sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

• Install the AT&T client itself (IBM colleagues can obtain this from the OCDC website):

sudo dpkg -i --force-architecture agnclient_1.0~2.0.1.3000-3_i386.deb

• Add some symlinks:

sudo ln -s /usr/lib32/libssl.so.0.9.8 /usr/lib32/libssl.so.4
sudo ln -s /usr/lib32/libcrypto.so.0.9.8 /usr/lib32/libcrypto.so.4

• You should now be able to start the Network Client from the Internet section of the Gnome menu, or from /opt/agns/bin/agnclient. Click Connect and enter your details as normal.

My concerns are:

• It’ll suck time. I don’t think that can be avoided – it’s just a question of whether there’s enough benefit there to make it worthwhile.
• I haven’t yet found an interface that works for me. twitter.com is too much of a stream-of-consciousness, and not rich enough to show clear threads of discussion or filter stuff out. I’m avoiding desktop clients as a matter of habit these days. Integrating the RSS feed into my Google Reader stream will just overwhelm me. This could be a deal-breaker; I’m already wondering whether Twitter actually lends itself to a inbox, read-everything model or if I should chill and let stuff slip past unread (something that sends prickles down my spine).
• Twitter’s help pages suck. Still haven’t found the number to SMS updates to in the UK (OK, I haven’t tried that hard).

Forcing pub owners (or anyone else) to enforce your preferences is wrong and a thoroughly illiberal idea. It makes the world more homogenous and less interesting. Don’t stand for it.

You can download it for free or buy a paper copy for £13, either of them via Lulu.

#!/usr/bin/perl
#
# Usage:
#  backup-google-reader-opml file-to-write-to.opml google.user.name@domain google-password
 
use strict;
use warnings;
 
use WWW::Mechanize;
 
my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
 
$mech->get("http://reader.google.com")
    or die "Cannot reach Google Reader Homepage";
 
$mech->submit_form(
    form_number => 1,
    fields =>
    {
        Email => $ARGV[1],
        Passwd => $ARGV[2]
    }
)
    or die "Cannot submit form";
 
$mech->get("http://www.google.com/reader/subscriptions/export");
$mech->save_content($ARGV[0]);

However, I recently wrote another script (this time Python) that then takes this OPML, parses out all the URLs that are tagged with ‘podcast’, and outputs a serverlist file for podget (an automated console-based podcast downloader). This enables me to subscribe to a podcast in Google Reader, and have the podcast automatically added to the download list. The script looks like this:

#!/usr/bin/python
#
# Pass in the OPML file as the first command-line parameter. Will output the
# podget serverlist on stdout.
 
import re
import sys
import xml.dom.minidom
 
doc = xml.dom.minidom.parse(sys.argv[1])
 
body = doc.getElementsByTagName("body")[0]
 
p = re.compile('^\W+')
 
for outline in doc.getElementsByTagName("outline"):
    if outline.getAttribute("text") == "podcast":
        for subOutlines in outline.getElementsByTagName("outline"):
            title = subOutlines.getAttribute("title")
            title = p.sub("", title)
            print subOutlines.getAttribute("xmlUrl") + " NoCategory " + title

Feel free to use and adapt to your needs.

So I wrote a Yahoo Pipe that fixes up the stream – by removing the exact geographic locations and any items that describe activities and not the trip. Feel free to use it if it’s helpful – the single parameter for the pipe is the URL of your TripIt Personal Calendar Feed, and you’ll want to grab the URL of the pipe as an iCal feed to specify in your Dopplr account.

Report back to me when … I dunno … when it makes sense.

It’s definitely worth the price of admission, and is a Coen brothers pic I actually like (they vary a lot). Brad Pitt and George Clooney both do a good job of playing bozos (Brad’s attempt to blackmail John Malkovich is hilarious), and J.K. Simmons as the aforementioned CIA officer is also very funny.

This is pretty excellent customer service. I struggle to see this happening in the UK.

The game was certainly entertaining (everything the Telegraph says about attention deficit disorder is true), even though I know little about basketball. It gave me a chance to try out my (new to me) telephoto lens. I was a little disappointed with the results once I pulled them off the camera – I had trouble sucking in enough light whilst getting stable shots – but I still ended up with one or two reasonable ones, although mostly not of the game itself.

• Making a hot copy of your entire drive onto a USB hard disk with VMWare Converter beforehand is a great idea. This basically means you have your entire previous installation still bootable, so you can rescue any data or settings you forgot about, after you’ve done the reformat and reinstall. VMWare Converter is free.
• Windows XP won’t install if the BIOS has the SATA controller set to AHCI mode – it won’t find the HD to install to. Read the install instructions for the SATA driver before installing Windows. Doing this without a floppy drive involves installing Service Pack 2 first (see below).
• Windows, surprisingly, does not contain a driver that can work with the Ethernet controller. Have a copy of it ready on a USB stick.
• The redistributable version of Service Pack 3 isn’t standalone, despite claims to the contrary; it pre-reqs. at least Service Pack 1. Windows Update won’t take you the whole way there, so it’s easiest to get the SP2 and SP3 standalones.
• The USB ports will not operate at high speed until you install the Intel Chipset Device Software.

If you’ve never watched it, it’s definitely worth a peek. Jon Stewart is pretty funny, and although it has an obvious leftist bias, it has an even greater bias for ridiculing deserving politicans. Kinda the American Have I Got News For You, without the panel-game element.

Now to try and guess analyse the best place for my money.

Did you mean: lost in translation ?

But it doesn’t.

They should fix this.

Oh, and get this blog comment and response.

Update 16:58: Then, of course, you read this.

Why don’t economists get any respect?

1. Try it. If you travel a lot it’s invaluable.
2. It’s free.
3. It’s better than Dopplr.
4. Er… that’s it.