Have been very lucky to get in some great mountain bike riding over the last few weeks. Couple of really good rides (albeit challenging and tiring ones!) in the Peaks including riding down Jacobs Ladder (which I was really pleased I managed to ride without coming off in a massive and very painful way!!).

Photos here, here (Ladybower classic ride), here (Bakewell and Chatsworth trips - not riding)

View of Ladybower Reservoir

Couple of nice loops nearer to home with friends over the weekend - photos to follow, unfortunately Kat came off here bike recently and has bruised herself quite badly - which she is annoyed about as is having to hide her legs in the hot weather we are having at the moment!!.

Now back to the office and the realities of work (it would be nice to just do an epic day ride every sunny day in the summer wouldn’t it?!!!)

One of my better recent shots taken on the SLR:

Taken on a recent bike ride to Donnington and Bagnor

Info on Donnington Castle here and here on Wikipedia

Photos from recent Wales Mountain Bike trip: http://photos.cronky.net/gallery/v/mtb/WalesMay09/

Ollie riding in Wales

This photo was taken on my SLR - starting to get better shots out of it…

One of my projects at the moment is to look at our options for building SMS enabled web applications (specifically for us around our Zend Framework based apps). Both for data capture (Inbound) and as an alerting / notification system (Outbound).

Thought I’d pull together some of my thoughts and reference material [not exhaustive or complete yet] in case its of use to anyone else in a similar situation. But first I’d like to thank my good friend Jem who helped identify some different angles on this…

Research Material:

As always the first place to start is Google and Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_gateways

LinkedIn Q&A is a great reference - here are a few relevant threads that I came across (you’ll probably need a Linkedin.com account to get to these) there are lots more if you search around with SMS related keywords.

Implementation Options:

There are 2 main options - and as always its the struggle between D.I.Y and DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself - or my version DRY-OFF - DRY or others [for f sake? I just wanted it to be OFF as it sounded better; anyway I'll shut up now!])

• roll your own SMS Gateway (with something like Kannel)
• make use of an outsourced SMS gateway / broker such as bulksms (disclaimer:  I am not recommending bulksms - I haven’t used them - linked as an example of the kind of provider)
  

Roll your own

The Kannel FAQ covers this point quite well - http://www.kannel.org/faq.shtml#1.2

pros - complete control over messaging and ability to iron out any kinks in connectivity etc, potentially cheaper to run / only costs you what you use (rather than having to buy credits)

cons - more complex to setup in the first place, need to buy & setup some hardware somewhere etc

Useful article on Kannel on Ubuntu with PHP5: http://www.chipmunkninja.com/Setting-up-Configuring-and-Using-13@

Outsourced

Pros - ease of getting it up and running if the integration API (eg HTTP, XML/E-mail based) is easy to pick up

Cons  - my concern around these guys is how do you how good they are - will they disappear tomorrow? What gateways are they using, how reliable are their channels etc.

Guide to Gateways (US focused) but has some nice general considerations) http://www.developershome.com/sms/howToChooseSMSGateway.asp This site also has a really nice comparison table - which you could also use as a template for doing your own matrix/scoring comparisions of these services.

We will probably go with a combination of the 2 options - using our own system for the development of services (as we have greater control) and then making use of a partner once the message volumes go above what is finanically viable/scalable in house…

Once the technical bit is out of the way you then need to consider the usability and process flow around the app - eg if users are sending in data, queuing, acknowledging their submissions, correcting mistakes etc…

Hope to post more on this topic if I get the opportunity! If anyone has any insights or good resources on this topic then by all means please comment on this post!

Thanks

This error message has been annoying the hell out of me anytime I try and do anything with my packages on my Ubuntu server:

subprocess post-removal script returned error exit status 2

Following the instructions at http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/troubleshooting-debian-ubuntu-package-upgrades-removals.html (expect that I had to comment out the line set -e with a # and hey presto package installation and removal works again!

Phew.  Sometimes Linux still requires hacking about - but I guess at least you can get in there and fix things once you know how - unlike the dll-registry hell / black box of Windows!

Recently I’ve started using Virtualisation - for those who don’t know this is running an Operating System or OS for short (such as Windows) as an application (so you could think of it as running a computer within a computer). I’ve started doing this as I’ve got frustrated with Windows slowing down after being installed for a few months. This way I can run Linux which is very stable and performs consistantly as the main Operating System (or the “Host”) and then run various “Guest” OS installations - such as Windows. You can take snapshots or save the state of the Guest machines - which is ideal if you want to go back to how your Windows install used to be (but unlike reinstalling all your applications and settings are as they were).

Generally Windows runs at the same speed as it does normally - so long as you don’t run too much stuff on the Host OS at the same time - but of course there are limitation - eg Games or software that needs access to devices that can’t be provided via VirtualBox. And of course you could run the reverse setup - if you fancy trying Linux as a Guest OS but keeping the safety net of Windows as your main Operating System.

Anyway I’m posting this as I’ve been using VirtualBox on Ubuntu Linux to run Windows XP. On a recent upgrade from Ubuntu 8.10 to the latest version 9.04 VirtualBox failed to run. This was fixed by running the command given in the error message (its nice to get a very useful error message in software!)

The command I had to run was sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

Once VirtualBox was working again I noticed that the Host key (which is the key used in different combinations to switch between the Host and the Guest OS) was not working. Instead it was flashing the Ubuntu desktop and pulsed some circles - like radar - from the cursor. At first I didn’t twig that it was simply the new mouse settings in the latest version of Ubuntu. By default it now seems the tickbox below in System->Preferences->Mouse for “Show position of pointer when the Control key is pressed” :

Mouse Settings in Ubuntu

Hey presto - the host key works again! Hopefully this is helpful for anyone else confused by this one!

Also note the position of the sliders in the above screenshot for acceleration and sensitivity - I find these settings make the touchpad on my Vaio behave in a similar way to Windows (previously my mouse felt too sluggish).

I’m now actually using Windows less and less now at home (Evolution is a decent email client and of course Firefox offer pretty much the same browsing experience - apart from some differences with fonts, and OpenOffice allows for opening the odd Office attachment). The true acid test though is how much the wife moans as previously she’s never been happy without the familarity of Windows…! (But then it is still available in a couple of clicks).

I’m sure there will be more on my adventures of using Ubuntu on the desktop in due course - if I find time I’ll share anything I think others might find useful…

Finally got round to adding some recent photos to my photo galleries: http://photos.cronky.net/gallery/v/mtb/flanstag/?g2_page=4

Here’s a nice photo from the trip:

DVD is done now too for those who’ve been waiting for it.

Discovered a great new route from Beedon up towards the Ridgeway and Wantage today that I thought I’d share on Google Maps (I just wish they included an OS layer so you can see the bridleways/byways). There’s loads of possible variation in this route including more of the ridgeway for example…

View Larger Map

I’ve also recently found http://www.worldcommute.com/ which is worth checking out if you want to calculate and track cycling instead of driving to work and for other trips.

When I publish this blog article it should update my Twitter status, my Twitter status is linked to my Facebook status via the Twitter Application.

Hmm I wonder whether these could get caught up in an infinite loop - updating themselves and annoying the hell out of everyone…!

I know - This is all very very sad - but maybe it will save me some time to do something useful for a change!

2009 has been pretty busy so far - as you can see from the lack of activity on here! Its almost 3 months in ‘09 and this is my first post!

For those of you interested in what I’ve been up to…

At work - we are in our busy end of FY period, I’ve been going to Brussels quite a bit for a project for the European Commission. Experienced a first - a meeting/workshop with (almost all) the EU Member state countries which was really interesting.

Lots of other exciting projects kicking off at the moment - looks like I will continue to be busy well into the next FY, which is good. Fingers crossed the economic downturn isn’t used as an excuse/ is a cause for cutting back on environmental and climate change projects.

On a personal level (also linked to work) Kat and I signed up to participate in trials for a new type of improved home thermostat (‘chrono-proportional’) for the EST (its a project that work are running).  It involves putting a few temperature sensors up indoors (and one outside) and we submit weekly gas/elec meter readings. These will monitor the effectiveness of our current thermostat - then later in the year we will have a new type of thermostat fitted and we’ll do the monitoring again.

The improved weather means I’m out on the bike alot more now which is good news, have also combined the riding with my new toy (which I got for Christmas) a Digital SLR camera - I’ll probably post up some photos soon.

Recent/Interesting Web Links:

Came across www.goodguide.com which is a product comparision site which lists how ethically produced,/green/healthy products are. Bit US specific at the moment but worth keeping an eye on.

An article on The Guardian’s (Free) Open Content API and DataStore. In fact the whole http://infosthetics.com website is worth a look at.

I’ve started playing around a bit with Twitter - have to say I was (and still am a bit) skeptical of this - so we’ll see how long I use it for. So far I have linked it with my Facebook status messages. Perhaps there’s a way of linking Wordpress to it so it can announce new posts?

Thats it for now - hopefully it won’t be as long until my next post!