Just Uber

Hi all, I am not Chris… I am Adam…

I thought I would try to muscle in on JustUber.com with a few of my own posts, that way I dont have to listen to Chris all the time. To start off with I will pass on a URL for you to while away the hours..

Its www.pandora.com, pop along now and load it up…

Its a brilliant concept, a bunch of people have got together and created the Genome of music, basically breaking music into small chunks and working out what other music has similar characteristics.
And in a few short words - “It works…”

Another example of the way the Web is evolving into the much heralded Web 2.0. If you need to make an account and you need an American Zip Code - have a quick look on google maps and zoom into any random US state and search for Pizza shops

I have created a few stations, you can look them up via Pandora.com, just enter my email addy - adam.jennisonNOSPAM@gmail.com (remove the NOSPAM!) under the search and they will pop up.

So thats my first post, hopefully over the coming year JustUber.com will provide some good reading as Chris and I will regal you with stories of fun, frivolity and dubious content.

ps - if you make any good radio stations - post them on here so we can hear them.

Speak to you soon..

Adam

The Nintendo Wii has been a clear tech winner this Christmas outselling the Sony PS3 at a ratio of two to one.

Being the lowest specification machine in the seventh generation console wars this comes at a little bit of a surprise to me.

It seems that people perhaps, are not quite as ’stats fickle’ as previously thought. The combination of fun playable games and an innovative motion detecting controller seems to have been more important than ‘uber’ graphics this time round.

The Wii certainly appears to have hit the spot, and it looks like it may be the machine to push Nintendo back into the console gaming limelight.

Just wanted to place a quick post to wish anyone who might possibly be reading (Google Analytics seems to indicate at least someone other than me does!) a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

God Bless,

Chris.

I had some problems with Google Analytics and a few other websites on Ubuntu Edgy. For anyone else who has similar problems give this a try.

Grab the standard install. The default one I had set up seemed to be missing some fonts required as dependencies. This sorted it.

$ sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

Grab the flash update from here and do the following with it:

$ sudo tar -xvf FP9_plugin_beta_112006.tar.gz
$ sudo mv /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/libflashplayer.7
$ sudo cp flash-player-plugin-9.0.21.78/libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/firefox/plugins
$ sudo chmod +x /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/libflashplayer.so

For me, running about:plugins in my browser still showed the old plugin. When visiting a flash enabled website however, right clicking shows that flash player 9 is in fact installed.

To see how my Karoo Max ‘8 Meg’ connection performed I did a speed test over at speedtest.net.

Click on the button below, take the test and post your results back to the comments section. Mine as you can see if rather poor. Am I alone or is everyone getting bad speed from Karoo Max?

On a side note, the karoo speed test shows my download speed as 236.29 kB/sec (or 1,890.32 kb/s if you prefer) Over 600kb/s more than the independent benchmark. I guess that means I’m still being bandwidth limited… Hmmm suspect…..

Update: After being approached by a fellow Karoo user for help, Just Uber was happy to give a home to The Unofficial Karoo User Forums. They’re run by a nice chap called Dylan who is trying to build a place where Karoo users can talk about their experiences. You can find me in there under the name lefty

In a quick update to the Karoo Max farce, the Karoo User Group reports that download speeds are getting better.

A visit to the Karoo status page indicates ongoing maintenance to the ADSL network, so we can only hope Karoo are sorting their problems out.

The Karoo User Group also writes: “There are ‘rumours’ that KC were waiting for the delivery/commission of new hardware to support the higher volumes of traffic generated by the Karoo Broadband Max services, but the KUG are unable to comment on the accuracy of these ‘rumours’.”

Personally I’d have thought it a good idea for Kingston Communications to finish building their 8Mbps network before selling it to us…..

Update: After being approached by a fellow Karoo user for help, Just Uber was happy to give a home to The Unofficial Karoo User Forums. They’re run by a nice chap called Dylan who is trying to build a place where Karoo users can talk about their experiences. You can find me in there under the name lefty

Today, Kingston Communications ‘upgraded’ my line to their new 8Mbps Karoo Max offering. I signed up for the ‘Option Three’ tariff at £24.99 per month which involved agreeing to another 12 months of service.

Oh, imagine my glee as I looked forward to downloading some nice shiny things to play with.

I went on over to the Ubuntu website to grab the LTS server ISO. Giddy with anticipation I began to download…

Ho ho ho - What’s this? this isn’t very good, 48 kB/s, I’ll try another.

After visiting several mirrors, download speed testers, gypsy fortune tellers etc, I found I couldn’t get a download speed greater than 50 kB/s.

Of course I immediately called Karoo technical support. After hearing an engaged tone on the first 10 attempts I finally got escalated to the privilege of listening to an unanswered phone ringing.

Eventually someone answered, that someone was Sanjay…

KC “Hello Karoo Technical support, Sanjay speaking, can I help you?”

ME “Ah yeah Hi, I’m having some problems with my broadband connection. You upgraded me today, and I’m not able to get a download speed higher than 50 kB/s.”

KC “You are aware of the bandwidth shaping sir?

ME “Huh?”

KC “Yes sir, between the hours of 8 am and 12 midnight we restrict customers download rates so that web-surfing and email is optimised.”

ME “WTF - You shape 8Mbps down to a 50kB/s download speed which is over half as slow again as the old package I was on?”

KC “Yes sir, it is to ensure customers are having a good internet experience.”

ME “I’m not having a good internet experience Sanjay…”

It seems I’m not alone either, the Karoo User Group is also getting reports in of adverse bandwidth throttling.

Why then Chris, I hear you ask (well, metaphorically speaking of course…) why don’t you move to another Internet Service Provider who is well, less shit… Well my friend, unfortunately because I live in Hull, the land that BT forgot.

That’s right folks, our incumbent teleco provider is Kingston Communications and they won’t unbundle their lines for anyone! You want broadband in Hull, you use Karoo from KC, and in a monopoly customer service is a novelty concept.

I can only recommend to anyone thinking about getting Karoo Max. DON’T DO IT !

———–

Update:: If you are a broadband max user seeing these terrible speeds then change your proxy to proxy.karoo.co.uk:8080 - Looks like they forgot to bandwidth limit the proxy Moowahahahaha!

Update: After being approached by a fellow Karoo user for help, Just Uber was happy to give a home to The Unofficial Karoo User Forums. They’re run by a nice chap called Dylan who is trying to build a place where Karoo users can talk about their experiences. You can find me in there under the name lefty

One of the principle benefits of IT, in my opinion, is the ability to perform tasks whilst sitting on my backside which otherwise would require some kind of movement.

After deploying Service Pack 2 recently via WSUS, we had a couple of PCs brought back into the office which had decided to end their own lives rather than continue running Windows XP. Although I was of the opinion that this was not necessarily a bad thing, my boss disagreed and suggested we attempt to re-image them.

In a flash of inspiration my colleague ‘I heart ET’ suggested that we investigate remote deployment of Windows instead of re-ghosting them via multicast and Norton ghost. Always happy to make my life easier, I readily agree….. (more…)