The Open Sourcerer

Going Headless

Alan Bell — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 21:25:43 +0000

I have one monitor on my desk, quite a nice one, but only one. Right now I want to install Ubuntu Lucid on another desktop I have in the office, but I still want to use my monitor for other stuff (like writing this blog post). No problem, Ubuntu has an accessible installer, I just plug in the speakers and keyboard and go through it with audio, lets see how it goes.

Firstly I remember there is something on the Lucid installer about pressing the keyboard to get to the accessible install, but then what? And when do you press stuff? No cheating and plugging in the monitor, but I am allowed to Google for instructions on my other PC.

Apparently the process is

Press space every 3-4 seconds, several times, then enter, then
F5, then 3, then enter

hmm, ok. That sucks a bit. How about a beep or something at the point when I am supposed to interrupt it? Bonus points for playing a soundfile telling me what to press for an audio install. Anyhow, I seem to have missed the opportunity to press space, it seems to have done some stuff and now stopped. Lets reboot and try again.

Just realised I was looking at the CD activity light, to see what it was doing in the bootup process, that is cheating so I turned it round so I can’t see that (I could hear the heads moving too and feel the vibrations, but clues from lights are not allowed in this experiment.)

OK, booting again, lets hope I hit the magic moment . . .

. . . silence.

Really not sure what is happening here, did I miss it? Have I waited long enough? Is it going to tell me what to do next? Is it sat waiting for me to plug in a monitor. I have no idea.

Can’t feel or hear any activity from the CD any more, left it a few more minutes. Hit return and it started doing stuff. I think I must have missed the accessible install and it was sat at the normal live cd/installer option. Lets give it another go.

Rebooted, now pressing space every few seconds. The CD stopped spinning, maybe it is time now. Enter, F5, 3, Enter . . .

. . . . silence.

Enter again perhaps? Yes, it is doing something now. I wonder what.

CD stopped spinning, no sound at all.

OK, time to cheat a bit and plug in the monitor hopefully when I understand the process I will be able to do it without cheating.

Plugging the monitor in doesn’t power up the monitor and show me the display, presumably it didn’t set up X properly without monitor resolution information.

Right, cheating totally from the start I understand it a bit better, the instructions I googled were wrong, missing an extra enter on the end. Rebooting and lets do it without the monitor.

Power on

Count to 15 from the bios beep (your hardware may vary)

Press space. This goes to the boot menu from previous releases, starting with the language selection.

Press enter to select English (presume you could go up and down to get accessible installs in different languages, but not testing that right now)

Press F5 for Acccessible installation options

Press 3 to highlight the third item in the list which is “screen reader”

Press Enter to choose the highlighted option

Press Enter to start the live CD.

Wait in a silence broken only by the sound of the fan and the CD doing stuff.

. . . nothing

Not really enjoying this any more.

So does it really need a monitor plugged in to do an audio install? Why the heck would I bother with a monitor if I couldn’t see? Why couldn’t it tell me that it has failed because it needs a monitor?

OK, I borrowed the monitor from the kids computer in the playroom and plugged it in, but put it face down on the floor.

Count to 15 and we are off again . . .

Yay, jungle drums. Seems that monitor is essential.

“Welcome to Orca, starting Orca preferences”

“Tab list, general page”

WHAT???

It seems to have dumped me in the Orca preferences page, which goes on forever, with no guidance at all on how to do the install or use Orca? (and anyhow “Welcome to Orca” – didn’t I just start “Ubuntu” did I get the wrong CD?)

up and down seem to let me choose between desktop and laptop – but I think that is an Orca thing, not an install thing.

Tab seems to let me go through a bunch of preference options, but I really have not much idea what preferences I want, I assume the defaults are OK. I wonder if Enter will just select the defaults and let me get on with using the live CD?

“Return Checked” hmm OK

Because I kind of know what I am doing, lets try alt+F2 to run an application

Yup, that works, and I am going to run gedit

After a few spurious audio messages about the orca preferences window, but then gedit was running, I managed to type a little document and save it.

lets browse the applications menu, Alt+F1

yes, that makes sense, I went to the Internet menu, then over to Firefox.

Spurious audio about other windows that are open, then it loads Firefox and tells me there is no internet connection (which there isn’t)

Lets try to actually get to the installer now. I don’t know how to click the icon on the desktop, but I know it is in the menus somewhere, Alt+F1 gets me to the Applications menu, Right to System menu, down twice to the administration menu, right gets me to computer janitor, down to disk utility, down again gparted, again to hardware drivers, once more to Install Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. hmm, that was burried deep. Enter.

“Install frame, Step 1 of 7, Quit Button Forward Button”

hmm, OK. Lets try enter on the forward button. Wonder what else was on that page?

“Install frame, panel”

err, what?

Up and down seems to be a country list, selecting United Kingdom. Enter.

“Window menu”

I seem to be in some other kind of list, might be timezones. I found Europe, then I think I ended up in Belgium, or perhaps the Indian Ocean. Really not sure what is going on there. Tabbed a few times and found the forward button.

ah, now the keyboard

apparently it has suggested one for me, but doesn’t tell me what one it is.

tab gets me into the test box, and shift 3 is # rather than £ so it got the wrong keyboard, shift tab to get back to the selector radio button, I can choose my own, or have it guess. Lets see if it can guess. Tab, “Guess button”, lets press that with space.

Nope that didn’t really work, it didn’t read out the keys it wanted me to press.

Managed to get to the manual selection and find the UK keyboard. and test, shift 3 is now “pound” tabbed to the forward button and lets see what happens next.

OK, this is the partitioning tab, starting to get the hang of the radio buttons now, erasing and using the entire disk. and moving forward.

“What is your name, Text” Tab

passwords are funny, it echos “asterisk” for each keypress

filled out the form without much difficulty

“read only text”

hmm, ok, well read it to me then!

I can’t read the summary, but I can tab to the forward button.

Focus switched back to the Orca preferences window for a second then to the installation progress bar. It should have finished asking me questions now.

While it is doing the install lets think about some conclusions from this experiment.

THIS SUCKS.

And now some more constructive recommendations for improvement.

Add some help text to the install process, use a really basic command line sound playing application, not a text to speech thing, just something that can play a wav or ogg file with very few dependencies such as aplay. Initally get it to play “press A for an audio install” then just do the boot to the desktop without going through any other menus.
Get X to start without a monitor and assume something like a 1024×768 desktop, or play a clip when X fails saying “You need to turn the computer on with a monitor plugged in to start the desktop”. Giving no feedback is terrible.

Right, the install has just finished and I am rebooting.

On booting to the desktop play some text (possibly through the text to speech engine) describing how to operate Orca.
Tell the user to press Alt+F1 to get to the menu
Tell the user how to kick off the installer
Get Orca to read out more of the text on the installer pages.

OK, it has rebooted, and Orca has started, I feared it wouldn’t so this is a good thing.

I have logged in as me. yay.

oh back to the Orca preferences window. boo.

Well the plan for this was to neatly do an install, by using the audio install to save me having to use a monitor, thereby proving that this bit of accessibility technology is a handy tool for everyone to use. In the event I discovered that the accessible install is hard to get to and barely fit for purpose, but I don’t think it is beyond rescue, it just needs to give the user more advice and feedback on what it is doing. If you have a few minutes and a spare computer please have a go at reproducing my little experiment. Put that monitor on the floor or wear a blindfold and install Ubuntu. I can genuinely imagine this being a really useful process on a headless server in a rack with just a set of headphones and a USB keyboard, if only it worked a bit better.

If you want to help make Ubuntu more awesome for everyone who at some point in their life might find an audio install a handy utility then please come and join the Ubuntu Accessibility team .

Mailing List – ubuntu-accessibility AT lists.ubuntu.com (subscribe) and ubuntu-accessibility-devel AT lists.ubuntu.com (subscribe)
IRC – #ubuntu-accessibility on freenode
Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility
Forum http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=145

Tell Someone Else!

Why Windows still has good sales figures

Alan Bell — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 15:45:15 +0000

16:27:12	Alan	Initial Question/Comment: I can’t find your laptops with Ubuntu installed
16:27:23	System	You are now being connected to an agent. Thank you for using Dell Chat
16:27:23	System	Connected with Makrand_Karante
16:27:23	Makrand_Karante	Thank you for contacting Dell sales chat. This is Makrand Karante,your Sales Advisor. In order to Help you better can you provide me with your email address and Telephone number incase we get Disconnected I can either come back to you by phone or email.
16:27:39	Alan	hello
16:27:50	Alan	I am looking for laptops running Ubuntu
16:27:53	Makrand_Karante	Hi Alan
16:28:03	Makrand_Karante	we do not have that option available yet
16:28:15	Alan	oh
16:28:32	Alan	when will they be available, I don’t want Windows at all
16:28:53	Makrand_Karante	we do not have the related information here
16:29:36	Alan	that is a bit of a shame, I will have to go somewhere else to get a laptop then
16:29:53	Makrand_Karante	is there any thing else that I may assist you with today?
16:30:07	Alan	well not really. I just wanted a laptop running Ubuntu.
16:30:19	Alan	Do you have any without an operating system at all?
16:30:28	Makrand_Karante	I am afraid no
16:30:36	Alan	oh
16:31:23	Alan	so if I want a laptop from Dell I have to buy windows
16:31:58	Makrand_Karante	Yes
16:32:12	Alan	ok, thanks for your help
16:32:29	Makrand_Karante	Thank you for contacting Dell Sales Chat and allowing me the opportunity to assist you. Have a wonderful Day ahead.
16:33:25	System	The session has ended!

Couple of updates. I am in the UK, so that was through the dell.co.uk site, I don’t want one from the US because it would have the wrong keyboard and I would be stung with customs charges and it would take a long time to get here and I like instant overnight consumer gratification.

If you are tempted to go ask similar questions of the Dell online chat thing then go right ahead with the following conditions:
1) You must take a credit card out of your purse/wallet, rest it on your keyboard and be totally prepared to use it, if they find you a suitable laptop.
2) Do it once, don’t repeatedly bother them.
3) Be polite and respectful, the Code of Conduct applies.

Tell Someone Else!

Profile Roulette

Alan Bell — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 18:18:05 +0000

One of the great things about the online community is the speed at which an idea can spread. Barry Smyth, a member of the local community team in Ireland who is working on a masters degree in computing is looking at ways to improve community involvement as a part of his course. He came up with the idea of focusing on one member each day in order to help everyone get to know each other better through a profile of the day project. This seems like a fine idea, so we have picked it up in the UK LoCo and added a few extra twists. In order to document stuff you do relating to Ubuntu everyone can create their own personal page on the Ubuntu Wiki, mine is here so you can see the sort of stuff that goes on it. People can edit other people’s pages if they want, it is a wiki after all. If you like something that someone has done, you can leave them a testimonial on their wiki page. These are looked at when people apply to be an Ubuntu Member or go for a position on any of the various governance boards and committees in the community.

We have now launched Profile Roulette!

This is a game that everyone can play, you can subscribe to the Profile Roulette page to get an email each time the wheel spins, every day it will point to the personal wiki page of someone in the UK LoCo. You can see who the person of the day is, maybe you would like to leave them a testimonial or help them fix up their wiki page in some way. If you want to be on the page then what you have to do is create your personal wiki page (just go to wiki.ubuntu.com/YourName and create a new page there) and at the bottom of the page add the text:

 ----

[[CategoryUKTeamProfile]]

Then when the Profile Roulette wheel spins it might be your turn under the spotlight, don’t forget to subscribe to the Profile Roulette page so you get notified when it is your turn.

If any other LoCo teams want to join in then please feel free to give me a shout in the #ubuntu-locoteams IRC channel on Freenode if you want some help setting up the wiki pages. Once you have got it set up, do add a link to it on the Irish team Profile of the Day page, it helps us find them all and will also help Barry with his degree.

Tell Someone Else!

Ubuntu In Business

Alan Bell — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 09:52:52 +0000

The Ubuntu UK community and Canonical, the commercial sponsors of Ubuntu, would like to invite you to a very different type of IT event. The Ubuntu operating system for the desktop and server has made significant inroads into UK businesses over the last 5 years. Often it is driven there by the enthusiasm of individuals from the community who use Ubuntu for their personal computing and see the advantages it can bring to the workplace. This event gives those advocates an opportunity to introduce their colleagues to Ubuntu, Canonical, Partners, community experts and their fellow IT professionals. Attendees will learn how Ubuntu is being deployed in the UK and discover how they can introduce or extend this technology safely and effectively within their organisation.

All are welcome, but if you already count yourself as an Ubuntu user, please drag along a colleague who has yet to see the light!

1pm – Welcome

An introduction to Ubuntu and our community.

1.20 – Ubuntu in action

A selection of case studies of companies using Ubuntu to enhance their business.
Oxford Archaeology

Chris Puttick, Chief Information Officer, will explain how one of the largest independent archaeology and heritage practices in Europe, with over 400 specialist staff, took the strategic decision to adopt an open source infrastructure with Ubuntu at the heart of it.

Emphony Technologies

A start-up software company producing engineering project management and workflow tools decided to deploy Ubuntu as its infrastructure, find out how they got on and their plans for the future.

1.40 – Open Mic

Ubuntu partners and community members (perhaps including you!) tell us how they use Ubuntu in a business context. There will be 5 minute slots with strict timekeeping!

2.15 – Demonstrations, food and networking

Grab some nibbles and see a selection of demonstrations and hands on workshops featuring:

Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (Amazon EC2 compatible cloud computing wherever you want it)
Landscape Systems Management for Ubuntu
Ubuntu Server Edition
Social Media for the workplace with WordPress and Ubuntu
Quick, cheap, easy, low-risk and fun ways to get started with Ubuntu
Ingres, an enterprise class open source database
Alfresco document and content management

4.00 – Ubuntu Advantage

The new services from Canonical designed to give your business an edge in its open source strategy.

4.15 – Panel Discussion

A panel with members drawn from Canonical, partners and the community chaired by author and journalist Glyn Moody and loosely following the theme of “The Benefits and Pitfalls of an Open Source Strategy”.

5.00 – Late

Attendees are encouraged to stay on, sample an Ubuntini at the bar, have a chat and enjoy the comedy night hosted by the venue itself.

Your nearest Tube is Aldgate East

Tell Someone Else!

I Wanna Eurovision on my Lucid

Alan Bell — Tue, 25 May 2010 22:15:23 +0000

You Rock ‘N Roll kids may think Eurovision has been lost and forgotten, but actually it is unstoppable. Maybe it is a habit you are trying to quit, to which I say: what’s another year? You may be making your mind up about how you want to watch it and I would like to help in everyway that I can to get you watching on Ubuntu.
You can visit my number one Eurovision website where you can watch the show live, it requires a special plugin which takes you on a bit of a wild dance across the internet to the Octoshape site where you can download what they call a plugin. The instructions tell you to chmod +x the downloaded file and run it in a terminal, this works fine and you have to accept the EULA (just shut your eyes, say la la la and type “yes”). As far as I can make out the plugin is a peer to peer streamer, a bit like skype or bittorrent, it is downloading stuff from the central site and streaming it out again to other Divas in your vicinity. It then re-serves the stream locally to all kinds of everything, to the flash applet on the website or to mplayer or vlc. To stream to the flash applet, just run ./OctoshapeClient with no parameters and hit play on the applet. To run it in mplayer first make sure you have mplayer installed and run ./OctoshapeClient -url:octoshape:EBU.esc2010.semi2 (the URL will change for the final, that one should get you all the boom bang-a-bang of the second semi-final) and mplayer will pop up (it executed mplayer -nocache http://127.0.0.1:6498/ms2/1274825307308/0MediaPlayer+0+/octoshape+h+EBU.esc2010.semi1/EBUesc2010semi1 on my machine so you can see it pointing mplayer at the locally served stream). If you want to use VLC there is a FAQ about editing the settings.xml file to get it to execute VLC instead. I assume you could point any other media player or transcoder/recorder at that stream and control it like a puppet on a string.

Lets all get together on the 29th on Freenode IRC channel #eurovision for an evening of europop, yes that sounds good to me.

Tell Someone Else!

How to remove Mono from Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx [Updated]

Alan Lord — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:30:41 +0000

Monogenea

Monogeneans are ectoparasites, meaning they live on the surface of their host’s body (as opposed to inside of it) and feed mainly on mucus and other detritus. To ensure they do not lose grip of their host, Monogeneans have very highly developed attachment appendages such as suction devices, pincers, hooks or spines. Most species require only one host to complete their life cycle and they are mostly hermaphroditic. Monogeneans are a type of Platyhelminthe (flatworm) and as such have only one “opening” where food is ingested and any waste is expelled.

OK, that’s enough of a biology lesson. If you are reading this then you probably know why you are here already.

To remove Mono from your shiny new desktop installation of Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx enter the following command (after taking the usual precautions like backups of your data etc):

sudo apt-get purge libmono* libgdiplus cli-common libglitz-glx1 libglitz1

[UPDATE: Many thanks to Directhex who pointed out my error regarding the need to remove libsqlite0. I've removed it from the command above. He also requested (you can see in his comment below), that I mention that the mononono package is no longer particularly effective at preventing Mono from being installed. Thanks for the prompt Jo, I was going to but I just forgot.]

This is almost the same one as used for the Karmic Koala release (9.10), and for me the result of the above command was as follows:

The following packages will be REMOVED cli-common* f-spot* gbrainy* libart2.0-cil* libflickrnet2.2-cil* libgconf2.0-cil* libgdiplus* libglade2.0-cil* libglib2.0-cil* libglitz-glx1* libglitz1* libgmime2.4-cil* libgnome-keyring1.0-cil* libgnome-vfs2.0-cil* libgnome2.24-cil* libgnomepanel2.24-cil* libgtk2.0-cil* liblaunchpad-integration1.0-cil* libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil* libmono-addins0.2-cil* libmono-cairo2.0-cil* libmono-corlib2.0-cil* libmono-data-tds2.0-cil* libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil* libmono-posix2.0-cil* libmono-security2.0-cil* libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil* libmono-sqlite2.0-cil* libmono-system-data2.0-cil* libmono-system-runtime2.0-cil* libmono-system-web2.0-cil* libmono-system2.0-cil* libmono2.0-cil* libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil* libndesk-dbus1.0-cil* libnunit2.4-cil* mono-2.0-gac* mono-gac* mono-runtime* tomboy* 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 40 to remove and 0 not upgraded. After this operation, 49.8MB disk space will be freed. Do you want to continue [Y/n]?

I chose to accept this and proceeded. Of course YMMV so please check carefully before hitting that enter key. The purge switch of this command removes any configuration files as well as the packages themselves.

Compared to Ubuntu 9.10, in 10.04 there appears to be just one new Mono dependant application called gbrainy (in the Games menu) which is described thus: “a platform to train memory, arithmetical and logical capabilities with many sorts of different exercises of different difficulty levels”.

Unfortunately it appears as though the “training” objective of gbrainy might not be realised…

Over the last year or so, the BBC have carried out an experiment which examined “brain trainer” games. Subsequent analysis of the data found that these brain trainers are an empty promise as reported here in The Guardian:

Practising brain-training games will improve your performance on brain-training games, but that effect will not transfer to other aspects of brain function. They will not make you brainier, so you may as well just pootle around on the internet.

It seems that not much grey matter will be lost by removing the gbrainy package then

Gnote and Getting Things Gnome

The other applications expunged by removing Mono from the default Desktop installation are the same as last year: F-Spot and Tomboy.

For a very similar alternative to Tomboy try Gnote, and as I like task-related management too I also recommend the excellent GTG [Getting Things Gnome] application. To install these two simply type: sudo apt-get install gnote gtg.

The alternative for F-Spot I usually use is a combination of gthumb and Gimp, the latter of which has been removed from the default Lucid desktop install to make space for other things. Both of these applications can be easily installed by a simple sudo apt-get install gthumb gimp command. However there is now a new kid on the block which looks quite exciting called shotwell. Shotwell will be the default camera/image app in the forthcoming Fedora 13 distribution replacing gthumb (as it has no dependencies on Mono in the default desktop installation). It is also, I was pleased to discover, available in the main Lucid repository so can be installed using either the command line: sudo apt-get install shotwell or you can use the very easy and graphically attractive Ubuntu Software Centre (as you can for the other applications listed above also). This is how Fedora describe Shotwell in the preliminary release notes:

Shotwell is an open source photo organizer designed for the GNOME desktop environment and has replaced Gthumb by default in Fedora 13. It supports the following features:

import photos from any digital camera supported by gPhoto

automatically organize events containing photos taken at the same time

use tags to organize your photo collection

edit non-destructively when altering photos, without ruining originals or using disk space for each copy

publish photos to Facebook, Flickr or Picasa

one-click auto-enhancement

rotate, mirror, and crop photos

reduce red-eye and adjust the exposure, saturation, tint, and temperature of your photos

edit any photo, even if it’s not imported to the Shotwell library

I haven’t used Shotwell yet but it sounds like a good one to try out.

There you have it and hopefully that will be it for another 6 months on this subject.

Tell Someone Else!

The Shape of our Democracy

Alan Bell — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 21:20:58 +0000

Firstly a note about browsers, the diagrams below work great in Firefox on Ubuntu, with little popup tooltips when you hover over the dots. Google Chrome does not seem to display the tooltips which is a bit of a shame. Internet Explorer probably doesn’t display the diagrams at all, upgrade to Firefox. If you are reading this on a planet, click through to the blog to find the diagrams.
There has been much talk of a possible hung parliament in the forthcoming UK General Election, this is what happens when one party does not get enough seats in the House of Commons to survive a vote of no confidence in the government. So the other parties, if they felt like it, could bring down the government at any time. It isn’t ideal, and coalition governments formed by parties doing deals to gang up on the remaining parties tend not to last that long. There are worse things than a hung parliament that can happen with our first past the post voting system, a party could win the most votes nationally, but actually a different party could get more seats, perhaps even enough to win outright without a hung parliament. That is a very very bad situation. Luckily we have a very stable country and the chances of a civil war starting are low, here the leaders are more likely to step outside and settle the matter like men, with a game of rock-paper-scissors. Joking aside, this is a scenario where having a constitutional monarchy with the Queen as commander in chief of the armed forces seems like a rather good idea.
So what does happen in the different possible scenarios? A regular swingometer won’t tell you the full picture so we have put together something rather different. The triangle below plots the outcomes of different predicted results based on different national percentages of the vote. It is based on data from the UK Polling Report swing calculator assuming 10% of the vote is “other” and sharing out the remaining 90% in every possible combination between the three main parties (it actually goes from 1% to 88% for each party because the calculator doesn’t like zero values) so at each corner of the triangle is the maximum landslide for one of the parties. The area in the middle with the darker dots is the hung parliament zone, the dots are coloured according to which is the biggest party, which would be the one trying to form a minority government. At the centre is a white dot marking the 30:30:30 share of the vote point. If this happens the seat distribution is about Labour:300, Conservative:200, Liberal Democrat:100 which shows some of the surprising results that can happen. The green lines divide up the regions according to the party that won the national vote, you can clearly see that the divisions based on seats are not aligned with the national vote lines, it also becomes pretty clear why the Liberal Democrats are not fans of the current voting system.

The extremes of the above triangle are really never going to happen. Lets have a look at the same thing again, but focussing just on the area of plausibility where no party collapses to less than 10% and no party has a landslide greater than 50% of the national vote. Here you can see that the hung parliament zone seems a bigger target to hit, also the uphill struggle for the poor old Lib Dems is even clearer. We also plotted in green the approximate positions of the previous election results back to 1997, hover over them to see which is which.
The bit that is the area of political crisis is the bright red bit at the top to the left of the green line, plus the small and rather unlikely bright red bit on the right below the Labour/Conservative green line.

The Geek Vote can swing this election, but an outright win isn’t the only prize at stake. Smaller parties are trying to win their deposit back and get enough votes that they are motivated to come back next time. If one of the main parties wins outright then size of their majority affects whether they can force through controversial legislation or not. If a hung parliament is the outcome the the relative sizes of all the parties affects the possible negotiated coalitions that are possible. Small swings in the vote can have a very big consequence in the volatile area in the centre of the triangle, the Geek Vote counts, don’t forget to use it.

Methodology and Caveats

The data assumes “Other” (Independents and small parties such as the Greens and the Pirate Party) win 10% of the national vote, which is a bit high.
Boundary changes and other issues could well mean we plotted the results of past elections in the wrong place, the seat numbers for the past election are the predicted seat results for this election, not the actuals from the past one.
Uniform National Swing isn’t the only means of guessing seat results from changes in votes, local issues can change the results in unexpected ways, it is just an approximation
The data was generated from a series of Python scripts running on Ubuntu Linux, firstly using twill to fill out the form, then beautifulsoup to read the results, finally the output was processed by a script to directly write the SVG files.
It would be great to see some kind of animated wandering dot that moves about the chart over time with opinion poll results.

Code

This is the initial script that feeds in the values and scrapes the results. It’s output is a kind of messy .csv format which I piped through grep to get rid of lines that were not csv.
from twill.commands import * from twill import get_browser from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup b=get_browser() for ld in range (91): for con in range (91-ld): lab=((90-ld)-con) #print ld,con,lab go("http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/swing-calculator") formvalue("1", "con", con.__str__()) formvalue("1", "lab", lab.__str__()) formvalue("1", "ld", ld.__str__()) submit("0") results=b.get_html().replace("","")#hack to get round weak parser in python 3 soup=BeautifulSoup(results) conres=soup.table.contents[3].contents[9].string labres=soup.table.contents[5].contents[9].string ldres=soup.table.contents[7].contents[9].string ores=soup.table.contents[9].contents[9].string outcome=soup.findAll('p','seattitle')[1].string print '"'+con.__str__()+'","'+lab.__str__()+'","'+ld.__str__()+'","'+conres+'","'+labres+'","'+ldres+'","'+ores+'","'+outcome+'"'
The output of that is here. This was then read back in by the following script, which prints out an SVG file as output. I tweaked it a few times to do the different outputs.
import csv print """ "http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-SVG-20010904/DTD/svg10.dtd"> xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> Sultans of Swing """


r=csv.reader(open('uns.csv'))

for row in r:

    con=float(row[0])

    lab=float(row[1])
    ld=float(row[2])

    outcome=row[7]

    cx=0.8+(lab/5.0)+con*0.1

    cy=0.4+con*.1732

    #cx=0.5+(lab/5.0)#experimental right angle triangle layout - didn't like it, distorts the shape.

    #cy=0.5+(con/5.0)

    tip='Con:'+str(int(con))+' Lab:'+str(int(lab))+' LD:'+str(int(ld))+' - '+outcome

    if (con==30 and lab==30):

        print ''

    elif (con==43 and lab==36):

        print ''

    elif (con==42 and lab==27):

        print ''

    elif (con==42 and lab==31):

        print ''

    elif (con==42 and lab==34):

        print ''

    elif (con==30 and lab==43):

        print ''

    elif (con==32 and lab==40):

        print ''

    elif (con==32 and lab==35):

        print ''
    elif (con<10 or lab<10 or ld<10 or con>50 or lab>50 or ld>50):

#        print ''

        False

    elif (con==0 or lab==0 or ld==0):

        #print ''

        False

    elif outcome.find('Conservative Majority')==0:

        print ''

    elif outcome.find('Labour Majority')==0:

        print ''

    elif outcome.find('Lib Dem Majority')==0:

        print ''

    elif outcome.find('Lib Dems')>0:

        print ''

    elif outcome.find('Labour')>0:

        print ''

    elif outcome.find('Conservatives')>0:

        print ''

else: print '' print """""" print """""" print """""" print""

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Planet Saving Software for Linux now released!

Alan Lord — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 07:42:43 +0000

The Granola Gui on Ubuntu 9.10

Regular readers of this blog will know that I’ve been keen to try and help the folks at Miserware to get their Linux energy saving software (it’s also available for Windows for those who haven’t seen the light yet) tested on lots of PCs.

This morning I had an email telling me they’ve completed their testing and have now hit final release. They’ve also changed the name of the software from Micromiser to Granola:

Happy Earth Day!

The MiserWare team is proud to announce that MicroMiser Beta is out of beta and now called Granola! Why the name change? We feel like the name Granola more accurately captures our goal of making a serious impact on the planet through the reduction of wasted energy. Along with the name change, we are also rolling out a new website that allows us to increase awareness and attract new users to Granola. Check out the new site at http://grano.la/

There are over a billion personal computers in the world. Together, they consume hundreds of billions of kilowatt hours annually. If each of these computers ran Granola and reduced their power consumption by even 10%, it would be like taking 7 million cars off the road. Or planting 900 million trees. Or turning off 65 coal power plants.

The first step to protecting the Earth starts with individuals decreasing their own environmental impact and encouraging those close to them to do the same. Running Granola yourself is a great first step, but really making an impact requires the users of Granola to encourage their friends and family to also use the software. For every new computer that runs Granola, we are one step closer to the vision of Granola on every system worldwide.

For Linux PCs:

If you’re already running MicroMiser Beta and using the MiserWare Software Repository, Granola will automatically replace MicroMiser Beta the next time you check for your software updates. Otherwise, please visit the Granola download page at http://grano.la/help/ This release of Granola also includes support for Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx. Also, due to popular demand we have created a GUI for Linux, supported on FC11+ and Ubuntu 9.04+! Find instructions and information about the new GUI at http://grano.la/help/install.php#gui

For Windows PCs:

Granola for Microsoft Windows includes automatic updates to keep Granola on your PC up to date with the latest version. If you are already running MicroMiser Beta, there is no need to uninstall. Simply download the installer from http://grano.la/help/ and Granola will replace MicroMiser Beta.

Regards,

The MiserWare Team

—
Change Log

* Added Windows automatic updates.
* Added a Linux GUI.
* Improved Windows installer.
* Re-branded MicroMiser as Granola.
* Remove Debian 4.0 Etch and add Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid.
* Added CumulateReportFile option to granola.conf.
* Re-factored the Windows GUI to centralize all of the style data (colours and fonts so far).
* Added persistent reporting to MicroMiser.
* Added failure resilience to the update downloading code.
* Updated the Python for the updater. Added code in MicroMiser Application to gracefully handle update failures.
* Updated get_updates to check for an MSI and download updated versions if available.
* Fixed a bug where we do not chown or chmod the var lib MiserWare directory and can be left not being able to write to our own directory.

As they say, even if the energy savings on individual computers are relatively small, the cumulative effect across millions of machines will be significant. I’ve had this software running on many different machines around our home and on laptops & netbooks with no noticeable impact on performance. Please try it out and tell your friends and family.

I updated my Ubuntu Karmic desktop install this morning and noticed one small problem with the instructions on their website. For me I had to explicitly install the gui with sudo apt-get install granola-gui. I’ve emailed them about it.

The software is free for personal use, but I should point out that most of it is not Free (as in Open Source). There are some interesting words on their Wiki page about what is free and what isn’t and what they (Miserware) are all about:

Why are you giving Granola away for free?
We care about the environment and we are proud of the ability of our software to make computers more energy efficient. We also like when our laptops last longer and our servers cost less to operate. We want everyone to be able to use our software on their personal machines. So, early on we decided that in addition to creating enterprise power management software, we would also create a commercial-grade consumer version, Granola. Granola is free for your personal use and we have no intention of charging for it anytime soon.

We also need to create a thriving business so we can make computers even more energy efficient (trust us, we’ve got lots of other cool stuff on the drawing board). We are a small startup working out of a basement, and we provide Granola for free with the intent of helping to clean up the world. If you would like to donate to help us continue to provide Granola for free, we would welcome the funds. If you work for a company that you think would benefit from MiserWare software, we would love for you to refer them to us.

I think it is important that this kind of product is encouraged. In my opinion every little bit we can do to reduce our energy consumption is a Good Thing…

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Please sell us some laptops

Alan Bell — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:26:51 +0000

We need some laptops, just a couple of them and I really quite liked the look of a ThinkPad Edge laptop. Nice and shiny in our corporate red. We want a laptop that is bigger than a netbook, but not particularly huge. There is only one area of the specification that we are completely clear about, it must come without an operating system that we don’t want on it.

Hello

Thank you for contacting us regarding 166041 – Lenovo ThinkPad Edge Notebook PC – (via page feedback).

Unfortunately we are unable to supply the unit without OS or refund.

If you would like to purchase this item you can buy online at http://www.misco.co.uk/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=419352&catcode=&sourceid=2911 or call us for free on 0800 294 4516 option 1.

If we can be any further assistance please do not hesitate to contact us on 0800 294 4516, by email at techsupport@misco.co.uk or by fax on 0844 493 5308.

Regards
Lei Zhang
Misco Technical Support

The search goes on.

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Adventures in Radio

Alan Bell — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 09:56:42 +0000

A couple of weeks ago we had a call to the office from a BBC radio producer asking if the creators of Votegeek would like to be interviewed for the Radio 4 programme “Click On”. After thinking about this for a femptosecond or two the answer was “Yes!”. So on Friday I found myself sitting in reception of Broadcasting house in London watching lots of probably famous people that I didn’t recognise wandering in to work. After a little while I was called up to the studio (very nice anechoic chamber and separate room with mixing desks and blinking lights) and we got on with the interview. You can Listen to the show or read the transcript below.

Simon Cox:
Now the parties policies on technology probably aren’t not going to influence who gets your vote in the election. While the digital economy bill now may become law, the debate accompanying it’s rather speedy passage through parliament revealed just how little many politicians know about technology. With the economy dominating the campaign how can you find out what your local candidates think, or even know about technology. Well the answer is votegeek, the brainchild of Alan Bell, and he is with me in the studio. Alan, what are you hoping to achieve then through your site?
Alan Bell:
Well we have got a dual aim really, one half of it is to get the geeky type personality more interested in politics, and get people to understand that politics matters to them. The second aim is to get the candidates aware that we exist and that we are voters too.
SC:
What are the issues that people are wanting to focus on with candidates, presumably it is not just about broadband speed?
AB:
No, it is a wide range of issues, we are not focussing on a single issue, but we are focussing on a single topic. So there are issues such as the use of Free Software in the public sector. Public procurement policy, digital freedom, privacy, and censorship are definitely topic areas of interest.
SC:
In terms of the candidates you have been contacting what kind of reaction have you been getting from them?
AB:
A very positive reaction from some of them, and a lack of response from others! We have had responses from all the major parties, and a number of the minor parties. I was particularly pleased with a comment from the Official Monster Raving Loony Party for instance!
SC:
Are they surprised when you contact them?
AB:
The Official Monster Raving Loony Party gentleman was yes! But I would say it is not just me and my group of helpers that are contacting people, we are asking people out there to go and find their constituency on the site, look at the candidates that are available for them to vote for, and then contact their candidates. So the message to the candidates is coming from one of their constituents. There is then a comment area where people can record emails and letters they have sent to their candidates and also responses they have received back.
SC:
So it is trying to build up a profile is it on their views on particular technology issues?
AB:
Yes, it is allowing people to share information about their candidates views.
SC:
Now Rupert, what do you think about this, I mean with the Digital Economy Bill the politicians didn’t really cover themselves in glory did they?
Rupert Goodwins:
Well following the Digital Economy Bill closely was quite an eye opener for me, because not only did it transpire that the politicians didn’t know what they were talking about, but they didn’t quite realise why it was being rushed through so quickly, and this is an important part of anyone who wants to be an active democrat because you can’t be good at democracy unless you are informed. Things like votegeek mean that we can get much more involved and force politicians to be more serious about their jobs and that is an excellent thing.
SC:
What about the way that technology is being used during the campaign, we are always hearing that this is the election where we are suddenly going to see technology really beginning to take off, have you been struck at all by way it is being used?
RG:
Well yes there was the big debate, well the first of the debates between the three candidates for Prime Minister and if you were online whilst watching that there were lots and lots and lots of people talking away on twitter, blogs and instant messaging. There was an awful lot of debate going on at the same time which never happened before. The most important thing about politics is to be involved and to be informed and technology is allowing that to happen in a new way for the first time.
SC:
Alan Bell, thanks a lot for that, and Rupert thanks to you too.

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