Here’s a link to a PDF of the crossword.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson

I’ve read it at least twice before – this time I didn’t feel the momentum of the writing bowling me along quite as it did when I first read it, but that’s probably to be expected.

Bury the Chains – Adam Hochschild

An excellent account of the movement in Britain to abolish slavery. It’s still very relevant today if you’re interested in activism and campaigning, and, as the author points out, it’s the story of the first mass movement where a group campaigned for the rights of people other than themselves.

Mort – Terry Pratchett

This is the first time I’d re-read it in many years, although I usually suggest it (as do many people) as the first Terry Pratchett novel to try if you’ve never read any of his Discworld novels before.  I was glad to find still every bit as enjoyable as the first time. (At the end of the previous year I’d finished the Discworld series, after not reading any of them roughly between the ages of 18 and 32.)

Mockingjay – Suzanne Collins

I’d listened to the first two of the Hunger Games novels as audiobooks when I still had Emusic‘s “one audiobook a month” deal. It’s worth finishing the trilogy if you’ve read the first two, which I also enjoyed despite finding the character of Katniss terribly frustrating (as is probably intended).  The nature of the resistance movement is interesting, and I found the conclusion satisfying.

Knots and Crosses – Ian Rankin

Hide And Seek – Ian Rankin

Tooth and Nail – Ian Rankin

Strip Jack – Ian Rankin

The Black Book – Ian Rankin

Mortal Causes – Ian Rankin

Let It Bleed – Ian Rankin

Black and Blue – Ian Rankin

The Hanging Garden – Ian Rankin

Dead Souls – Ian Rankin

Set in Darkness – Ian Rankin

The Falls – Ian Rankin

These are the first 12 of Ian Rankin’s Rebus series of detective novels, and I’ll probably read the last few of them in 2013. I found them quick to read, and I loved the portrait of Edinburgh – it’s much more true to my experiences of the city both as a child and an adult than virtually any other books I’ve read that are set there.  I found the character of Rebus compelling as well.  The first two novels (Knots and Crosses and Hide and Seek) have some points where the writing really jarred for me, but from the third onwards they’re consistently well-written.

The Player of Games – Iain M. Banks

I seem to re-read this about once a year – it’s one of my favourite of Iain M. Banks’ novels (along with Consider Phlebas and Excession). I’ve actually stopped reading his new books, the last straw being The Steep Approach to Garbadale, where I spent most of the book thinking “oh, please don’t let the twist be the one that I think is coming, [a disturbing theme from several previous novels]“, and of course it was…

The Open-Focus Brain – Les Fehmi

This was a kind present from a student in Zürich who was concerned about my style of concentration. The idea of the book is that one can switch from a very intense “fight or flight” style of concentration to something the author describes as “open focus” by using various techniques, in particular thinking about volumes of space. It comes with a CD with some example exercises. When I’ve tried this it’s certainly been relaxing – I hadn’t tried any form of meditation before. It’s also interesting that thinking about the space around you is also something that’s used in the Alexander technique and (I’m told) various meditation techniques. Unfortunately, the book is written in a self-help style that makes me rather suspicious of it, particularly the wide-ranging claims for its health benefits sometimes based on single cases or unpublished data.

Moonwalking with Einstein – Joshua Foer

A book about memory champions and memory techniques of the “a journalist tries to become really good at something relatively obscure” genre (see also “Word Freak”, “Born To Run”, etc.) It’s a quick read, and if you’re interested in the subject of memory, or building expertise Anders Ericsson-style, worth a look.  In a strange coincidence, 6 months after I read this, my partner started work at a company run by one of the memory champions who appears in the book.

Why Have Kids? – Jessica Valenti

This probably isn’t what it sounds like from the title – it’s an excellent discussion of the absurd pressures on mothers (particularly in US culture) to meet impossible standards. It was written by Jessica Valenti after having her first child.

The Revolution will be Digitised – Heather Brooke

An interesting account of the Wikileaks saga from Heather Brooke, who is a fantastic campaigner on freedom of information issues. The most extraordinary sections deal with Julian Assange’s interactions with her, including his advances wherein he identifies himself with Jesus…

Born to Run – Christopher McDougall

An entertaining book about ultra-runners, barefoot-style running and the Tarahumara people, who run huge distances without apparently being susceptible to the injuries that plague runners elsewhere. It’s great in terms of adventure and storytelling, with lovely portraits of the runners the author meets. I wouldn’t read it if you’re looking for rigorous science and anthropology, but it’s excellent fun.

Rocket Surgery Made Easy – Steve Krug

I generally haven’t added work-related books to this list, but since I read this one straight through, it seemed as if it fitted better than then others which I tended to dip into and out-of more. This is by Steve Krug as a follow-up to “Don’t Make Me Think”, and aims to give you step-by-step guidance for running DIY usability testing sessions of websites.  I found the style somewhat irritating (as so often where technical books try for a light touch) but in practice it was very helpful for running some usability testing last year.  I’m hoping I’ll get to do that again next year.

The House of Silk – Anthony Horowitz

A new Sherlock Holmes novel by Anthony Horowitz. It’s a disturbing book, but brilliantly matches the style of the Holmes stories, I thought.

Plan of Attack – Bob Woodward

Bob Woodward’s book about the decisions that led to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 – I found this frankly terrifying.

The Sense of an Ending – Julian Barnes

The 2011 Booker prize winner – consummately well-written and an excellent read.

The Narrative of John Smith – Arthur Conan Doyle

The unpublished first novel of Arthur Conan Doyle. I found it tiresome, and not terribly interesting – I wouldn’t recommend it unless, I suppose, you’re a Conan Doyle completist.

Catherine of Aragon: Henry’s Spanish Queen – Giles Tremlett

A sympathetic biography of Catherine of Aragon – embarrassingly, I know virtually nothing of Tudor history, so this wasn’t just interesting, but almost entirely novel for me…

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson

I’d forgotten how short this story is, in fact, but it’s still hugely enjoyable. It’s tense throughout, and I’d forgotten about the interesting character of the narrator, a quiet man who’s happy sitting in silence by the fire with his old friends.

Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson

I don’t think that I’d ever read the original text of Kidnapped before, just a children’s edition and later a graphic novel version. Anyway, it’s still a great adventure and Balfour’s journey crosses lots of parts of Scotland that I know from past walking holidays.

The Ascent of Rum Doodle -  W. E. Bowman

An excellent comic novel from the 1950s about a group of mountaineers attempting to climb the fictional mountain “Rum Doodle” with the help of thousands of porters and a supply of Champagne for “medicinal purposes”. Very silly, and highly recommended.

Care of Wooden Floors – Will Wiles

This is the first novel by a friend I knew at college. I enjoyed this very much – I’ve been accused of giving away too much when discussing it before, so I’ll just say that it’s hilarious and agonising in equal parts, and definitely worth reading.

Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel

Another Booker prize winner; my ignorance of history probably meant that I missed quite a lot of pleasure in associating the wonderfully drawn characters with their actual stories, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. The (much discussed) style of the writing, in particular the use of the pronoun “he”, initially irritated me a great deal, but I got used to it after a hundred pages or so. I really did think that Wolf Hall was good, but I don’t really see why so many people are quite so passionate about it.

The Afterparty – Leo Benedictus

Another novel written by someone that I used to know, and happily another great read. I found this story of a naive journalist caught up in events around a celebrity party completely gripping, and I enjoyed the meta-narrative too – it’s a smart and very well-written novel.

How To Be A Woman – Caitlin Moran

An often hilarious book – there are several sections that had both of us laughing out loud. The subject matter’s also great – I think it’s essentially aimed at younger people who would say that they’re in favour of equal rights for women, but bizarrely would also say that they’re not feminists.

The Blank Wall – Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

Elisabeth Sanxay Holding was an author that Raymond Chandler regarded as “the top suspense writer of them all”, but who is relatively unread. (You can get it from Persephone Books.) This is the story of a housewife during WWII who is trying to protect her family from events that are going out of control, a bit like Brief Encounter crossed with hardboiled detective fiction – I enjoyed it very much.

Quiet – Susan Cain

This is probably the most personally and professionally relevant book I read this year, as someone who’s introverted but works hard to not give that impression.  It’s about the ways in which society increasingly values the qualities we associate with extroversion rather than introversion, and why that might be a mistake. I found it encouraging and thought-provoking – I’d recommend it to anyone who’s quiet, introverted or sensitive (the book deals with several associated personality traits). There’s also a little material towards the end about how these traits can affect relationships which struck quite a few chords with me.

This is a personal list of some of my “favourite” points of confusion, which I’ve seen arise time and time again, both in real life and when answering questions on Stack Overflow. To be fair to all the excellent people who have contributed to git’s development, in most cases it’s clear that they are well aware that these terms can be problematic, and are trying to improve the situation subject to compatibility constraints. The problems that seem most bizarre are those that reuse CVS and Subversion terms for completely different concepts – I speculate a bit about that at the bottom.

“update”

If you’ve used Subversion or CVS, you’re probably used to “update” being a command that goes to the remote repository, and incorporates changes from the remote version into your local copy – this is (very broadly) analogous to “git pull”.  So, when you see the following error message when using git:

foo.c: needs update

You might imagine that this means you need to run “git pull”. However, that’s wrong.  In fact, what “needs update” means is approximately: “there are local modifications to this file, which you should probably commit or stash”.

“track” and “tracking”

The word “track” is used in git in three senses that I’m aware of. This ambiguity is particularly nasty, because the latter two collide at a point in learning the system where newcomers to git are likely to be baffled anyway. Fortunately, this seems to have been recognized by git’s developers (see below).

1. “track” as in “untracked files”

To say that a file is tracked in the repository appears to mean that it is either present in the index or exists in the commit pointed to by HEAD.  You see this usage most often in the output of “git status”, where it will list “untracked files”:

# On branch master
# Untracked files:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
#
#    .classpath

This sense is relatively intuitive, I think – it was only after complaining for a while about the next two senses of “track” that I even remembered that there was also this one :)

2. “track” as in “remote-tracking branch”

As a bit of background, you can think of a remote-tracking branch as a local cache of the state of a branch in a remote repository.  The most commonly seen example is origin/master, or, to name that ref in full, refs/remotes/origin/master.  Such branches are usually updated by git fetch (and thus also potentially by git pull).  They are also updated by a successful push to the branch in the remote repository that they correspond to.   You can merge from them, examine their history, etc. but you can’t work directly on them.

The sense of “track” in the phrase “remote-tracking branch” is indicating that the remote-tracking branch is tracking the state of the branch in the remote repository the last time that remote-tracking branch was updated.  So, you might say that refs/remotes/origin/master is tracking the state of the branch master in origin.

The “tracking” here is defined by the refspec in the config variable remote.<remote-name>.fetch and the URL in the config variable remote.<remote-name>.url.

3. “track” as in “git branch –track foo origin/bar” and “Branch foo set up to track remote branch bar from origin”

Again, if you want to do some work on a branch from a remote repository, but want to keep your work separate from everything else in your repository, you’ll typically use a command like the following (or one of its many “Do What I Mean” equivalents):

git checkout --track -b foo origin/bar

… which will result in the following messages:

Branch foo set up to track remote branch bar from origin
Switched to a new branch 'bar'

The sense of “track” both in the command and the output is distinct from the previous sense – it means that config options have been set that associate your new local branch with another branch in the remote repository. The documentation sometimes refers to this relationship as making bar in origin “upstream” of foo. This “upstream” association is very useful, in fact: it enables nice features like being able to just type git pull while you’re on branch foo in order to fetch from origin and then merge from origin/bar. It’s also how you get helpful messages about the state of your branch relative to the remote-tracking branch, like “Your branch foo is 24 commits ahead of origin/bar and can be fast-forwarded”.

The tracking here is defined by config variables branch.<branch-name>.remote and branch.<branch-name>.merge.

“tracking” Summary

Fortunately, the third sense of “tracking” seems to be being carefully deprecated – for example, one of the possible options for push.default used to be tracking, but this is now deprecated in favour of the option name upstream. The commit message for 53c403116 says:

push.default: Rename ‘tracking’ to ‘upstream’

Users are sometimes confused with two different types of “tracking” behavior in Git: “remote-tracking” branches (e.g. refs/remotes/*/*) versus the merge/rebase relationship between a local branch and its @{upstream} (controlled by branch.foo.remote and branch.foo.merge config settings).

When the push.default is set to ‘tracking’, it specifies that a branch should be pushed to its @{upstream} branch. In other words, setting push.default to ‘tracking’ applies only to the latter of the above two types of “tracking” behavior.

In order to make this more understandable to the user, we rename the push.default == ‘tracking’ option to push.default == ‘upstream’.

push.default == ‘tracking’ is left as a deprecated synonym for ‘upstream’.

“commit”

In CVS and Subversion, “commit” means to send your changes to the remote repository. In git the action of committing (with “git commit”) is entirely local; the closest equivalent of “cvs commit” is “git push”. In addition, the word “commit” in git has different verb and noun senses (although frankly I’ve never found this confusing myself). To quote from the helpful git glossary:

commit

As a noun: A single point in the git history; the entire history of a project is represented as a set of interrelated commits. The word “commit” is often used by git in the same places other revision control systems use the words “revision” or “version”. Also used as a short hand for commit object.

As a verb: The action of storing a new snapshot of the project’s state in the git history, by creating a new commit representing the current state of the index and advancing HEAD to point at the new commit.

Strictly speaking that makes two different noun senses, but as a user I’ve rarely found that confusing.

“checkout”

In CVS and Subversion “checkout” creates a new local copy of the source code that is linked to that repository. The closest command in git is “git clone”. However, in git, “git checkout” is used for something completely distinct. In fact, it has two largely distinct modes of operation:

1. To switch HEAD to point to a new branch or commit, in the usage git checkout <branch>. If <branch> is genuinely a local branch, this will switch to that branch (i.e. HEAD will point to the ref name) or if it otherwise resolves to a commit will detach HEAD and point it directly to the commit’s object name.
2. To replace a file or multiple files in the working copy and the index with their content from a particular commit or the index. This is seen in the usages: git checkout -- (update from the index) and git checkout <tree-ish> -- (where <tree-ish> is typically a commit).

(git checkout is also frequently used with -b, to create a new branch, but that’s really a sub-case of usage 1.)

In my ideal world, these two modes of operation would have different verbs, and neither of them would be “checkout”.

“HEAD” and “head”

There are usually many “heads” (lower-case) in a git repository – the tip of each branch is a head. However, there is only one HEAD (upper-case) which is a symbolic ref which points to the current branch or commit.

“fetch” and “pull”

I wasn’t aware of this until Roy Badami pointed it out, but it seems that git and Mercurial have opposite meanings for “fetch” and “pull” – see the top two lines in this table of git / hg equivalences. I think it’s understandable that since git’s and Mercurial’s development were more or less concurrent, such unfortunate clashes in terminology might occur.

“push” and “pull”

“git pull” is not the opposite of “git push”; the closest there is to an opposite of “git push” is “git fetch”.

“hash”, “SHA1″, “SHA1sum”, “object name” and “object identifier”

These terms are often used synonymously to mean the 40 characters hexadecimal strings that uniquely identify objects in git. “object name” seems to be the most official, but the least used in general. Referring to an object name as a SHA1sum is potentially confusing, since the object name for a blob is not the same as the SHA1sum of the file.

“remote branch”

This term is only used occasionally in the git documentation, but it’s one that I would always try to avoid because it tends to be unclear whether you mean “a branch in a remote repository” or “a remote-tracking branch”. Whenever a git beginner uses this phrase, I think it’s worth clarifying this, since it can avoid later confusion.

“index”, “staging area” and “cache”

As nouns, these are all synonyms, which all exist for historical reasons. Personally, I like “staging area” the best since it seems to be the easiest concept to understand for git beginners, but the other two are used more commonly in the documentation.

When used as command options, --index and --cached have distinct and consistent meanings, as explained by Junio C. Hamano in this useful blog post.

Why are there so many of these points of confusion?

I would speculate that the most significant effect that contributed to these terminology confusions is that git was being actively used by an enthusiastic community from very early in its development, which means that early names for concepts have tended to persist for the sake of compatibility and consistency. That doesn’t necessarily account for the many conflicts with CVS / Subversion usage, however.

To be fair to git, thinking up verbs for particular commands in any software is tough, and there have been enough version control systems written that to completely avoid clashes would lead to some convoluted choices. However, it’s hard to see git’s use of CVS / Subversion terminology for completely different concepts as anything but perverse. Linus has made it very clear many times that he hated CVS, and joked that a design principle for git was WWCVSND (What Would CVS Never Do); I’m sympathetic to that, as I’m sure most are, especially after having switched to the DVCS mindset. However, could that attitude have extended to deliberately disregarding concerns about terminology that might make it actively harder for people to migrate to git from CVS / Subversion? I don’t know nearly enough about the early development of git to know. However, it wouldn’t have been tough to find better choices for commit, checkout and update in each of their various senses.

I’m posting this because we found it surprisingly hard to find convincing instructions for setting up a device to extend the range of a wireless router, and I suspect many other people might be in the same position.  In the end, the device we got was very cheap, easy to set up, and it’s a great improvement.

Please bear in mind that I’m just reporting what worked for us – I can’t guarantee the same will work in your situation or provide any technical support.  (I’m pretty ignorant about WiFi, it turns out.)  I imagine that this will work fine with other wireless routers and the BT Home Hub 3, but of course I can’t promise that.

The Problem

We found that one end of my parents’ house had very poor wireless LAN coverage, since for various reasons the BT Home Hub 2 has to be placed at the opposite end of the house and there are plenty of walls and other obstructions.  (For those outside the UK, the BT Home Hub is just an ADSL modem and wireless access point which BT give you when you order their broadband service – it’s quite a basic model and I assume the method described here would work with any wireless access point.)

We first tried a couple of commonly suggested solutions which didn’t involve buying new hardware:

• Checking that  802.11n was turned on: this seems to be the default on this router, however, which had b, g and n turned on when I checked.
• Changing the wireless channel to one with less traffic: the home hub actually has an option to pick a new channel automatically, presumably based on the other access points it can detect.  This did produce a slight improvement in range, in fact, but still not enough to cover the complete house.

The Solution

Some searching turned up this suggestion from Keith Beddoe from the BT community forums.  His second suggested option is to set up a particular TP Link wireless access point as a “Universal Repeater”, but suggests reflashing the access point with some files he supplies.  I’m always slightly wary of reflashing devices unless it’s absolutely necessary, and it’s not clear why it is in this case – the manual for the TL-WA701ND says that it can act both as a Repeater and a Universal Repeater.  (The distinction between those two for this device seems to be that the existing router must support WDS in order to use the Repeater option – since the BT Home Hub 2 doesn’t, we want the Universal Repeater option.)

The only steps I needed to take to set up the access point as a range extender were as follows:

• Find a spot in the house that can still get a good signal from the original access point, but is near to the end of the house that had poor coverage.
• Plug in the TP Link TL-WA701ND there.
• Find an ethernet cable, and use that to plug a laptop into the TP Link device.
• Configure the laptop to have a static IP address of 198.168.1.100
• Visit http://192.168.1.254 and log in with the default username and password given in the “Quick Installation” guide.
• Updated: the default IP address of the BT Home Hub we have is also 192.168.1.254, so it’s a good idea to change the IP address of the TP Link device to, say, 192.168.1.1 – that’s outside the address range that will be allocated via DHCP by the BT Home Hub with its default settings, and helpfully this will also enable you to log into the TP Link device in normal usage.
• Under the “Wireless” settings, select an operation mode of “Universal Repeater”.
• Click “Connect” by the existing BT Home Hub.
• Save those settings – it may want to reboot itself then, so let it do that if so.
• Now go to “Wireless Security”.
• Select WPA and enter the key for your existing BT Home Hub.  (If you have an earlier BT Home Hub, you might need to use WEP instead – it should say on the back of the hub where the key is shown.)
• Save those settings, and I think it will want to reboot again.
• Just to check that everything is working, now go to “Wireless Statistics”, and you should see that there’s at least one connection – that to the existing access point.
• The bit that everyone apparently forgets (including me): change my laptop back to using DHCP instead of static IP.

The effect of this is that there are now two access points with the same SSID as the BT Home Hub listed in the output of “iwlist scan”.  The network manager on my laptop only lists it once, though, as does my smartphone.  If I walk with my laptop from one end of the house to the other, it seems to reconnect seamlessly when moving into an area that is only covered by the range extender, and our phones behave similarly.  So, that seems to be ideal and we get a good signal all over the house now.

The price of the TP Link TL-WA701ND is only £23, and this seems like a reasonable price to pay to get wireless LAN in the garden :)

In the table, I’ve also added links to two series of reviews.  The first are Zack Handlen’s excellent reviews of every ST:TNG episode (linked from the initials “ZH” below), and I’ve also added his grade for each episode.  I’ve found myself agreeing with his reviews more often than not, and in a some cases the reviews are significantly more enjoyable than the episodes themselves.  The second set of links are to reviews by Wil Wheaton (who played Wesley Crusher) of some of the episodes from Season 1 – it’s interesting to hear his take on these very variable episodes, particularly since the writers were not good to him at all.

A few other random observations:

• It’s often been said, but there are plenty of episodes that are completely carried by Patrick Stewart – he’s just fantastic.
• Predictably, perhaps, given that I enjoyed Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Battlestar Galactica, it seems that lots of my favourite episodes were written by Ronald D. Moore.
• I hated the holodeck episodes when I was younger, and I still think they have no place in the series. There are any number of problems with the holodeck conceit from a science fiction point of view, and it very rarely adds anything to the story-telling.
• The pastiches of other genres are dreadful, in particular the insultingly awful “Dixon Hill” parodies of Raymond Chandler. As a general rule, if you think you can write something in the style of Raymond Chandler, you have no idea what makes his books good. (See also the ridiculous Robert Altman version of the Long Goodbye.)

These other links might also be of interest if you enjoyed ST:TNG:

• If you’re a Twitter user I do recommend following TNG Season 8, which has some excellent suggested episodes for an imagined Season 8.
• An analysis of viewing figures of Star Trek, showing a steady decline in popularity of the TV series.
• Ryan North links to an early Writers’ Guide for ST:TNG, which I think explains a lot about the more obnoxious aspects of the show.

Summary Table of Episodes

The source for this table is the spreadsheet here and the HTML was generated from that with this script.

The key to this colours in this table is:

• One of my favourites
• An episode I liked
• An episode I’m still undecided about
• A quite missable episode

Season 1

Season 2

Season 3

Season 4

Season 5

Season 6

Season 7

TIME magazine is perhaps the highest profile publication to  make the claim, saying that “cassette tape” is being removed from the Oxford English Dictionary and referencing The Huffington Post as its only source.  Firstly, the TIME story is obviously nonsense taken literally, since the OED is a historical dictionary and words generally aren’t removed from its 20 volumes at all.  Other stories clarify that this is supposedly a scandal with the new (12^th) edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, which was released in August 2011 to a flurry of stories about the various entertaining new words that have been added to it.  The news stories about those words seem to be largely based on two blog posts (here and here) from Oxford University Press that discuss in general terms what has defined the COED over its 100 year history.  Neither of those posts mention anything about “cassette tape” being removed.  (I haven’t found any more official press release about this new edition online.)

Anyway, suspecting that this story was nonsense, I did the obvious thing and looked in the new 12^th edition of the COED in a local bookshop.  Of course, cassette tape is still here:

So, my real question is: “Who is it that just invents this stuff?”

At the moment, looking for a new computer in the netbook space which runs Linux well is a rather frustrating exercise.  This is chiefly because:

• The market moves fast, and often there’s little information on the web about Linux support for the models that are actually available in the shops.
• Frustratingly, it seems that some companies change the hardware in their machines without changing the model number.
• What random people on Ubuntu forums consider to count as “working well” can include “won’t suspend to RAM” or “ethernet doesn’t work”.
• Most reviews of netbooks by technology journalists are written with a totally unhelpful set of assumptions, such as the  following:
• They assume that you wouldn’t use a netbook as your main machine.  This might be true if you use Windows, but I used Ubuntu on the Samsung NC-10 as my main development machine for a long time.  Sure, it’s not the same experience as working on a powerful desktop system with multiple monitors, but you can get Real Work done quite happily nonetheless.
• You see netbooks which are around the £400 price point denounced as “not knowing what they’re trying to be”, as if there aren’t customers who want the portability and battery life of a £200 netbook, but would be happy to pay a bit more for improved performance and a slightly better screen.  Their frequent suggestion that you might as well buy some powerful but bulky laptop for this money is completely missing the point.

Anyway, if you’re looking for one of these slightly-better-than-a-netbook machines to run Ubuntu on, you might consider the VPCYB2M1E – the Sony Vaio Y series that is available in the UK at the moment (summer 2011).  We believe that the “/S” at the end of the model number just means that it’s the silver rather than pink version.  This is based around the AMD E-350, so we initially chose to use the 64-bit version of Natty – however, due to some freezes that don’t seem to occur with the 32-bit flavour, we reinstalled with the 32-bit version.  (See below for more details.)

The specifications of this laptop can be found on Sony’s website.  The weight (at 1.46kg) is slightly more than I’d like, but the 1366 x 768 screen is very nice.

First we checked by booting from a live USB stick that enough of the hardware seemed to work (wireless, sound, graphics) that we were willing to risk wiping all the existing partitions and claiming all the disk space for Ubuntu.  On the second laptop I installed Natty alongside Windows 7, which worked fine.  (I note that the installation of Natty is very slick now.)

At the end of this post, we’ve include the output of “cat /proc/cpuinfo” and “lspci -v”, for those who are interested in the details.  There’s a summary of what we’ve tested so far below.  However, first a description of the only big problem we’ve seen so far:

I/O Related Freezes

When using rsync to copy large files onto this system, we found that the interface would freeze to a greater or lesser extent.  This seemed to be reproducible with any command that wrote a lot of data to disk (e.g. even dd from /dev/zero) but was only present on 64-bit installations, not 32-bit.  This problem is described here:

https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+question/159329

… and linked to a bug that might be related.  However, since this didn’t seem to be a problem with the 32-bit installation, we didn’t pursue it further.  (However, it should be still reproducible with the 64-bit Live USB stick.)

Ethernet

Works fine out-of-the-box

Wireless

Works out-of-the-box

Power Management

Suspend-to-RAM

Works out-of-the-box.  (When suspended, the power light glows bright orange, though, which is somewhat annoying.)

Hibernate (Suspend-to-Disk)

Works out-of-the-box

Special Keys

Work out-of-the-box

Sound

Speakers

Work out-of-the-box – pretty loud.  I’ve found on one occasion that the sound stopped working after a while and I had to reboot, but I need to investigate that more.

Microphone

Works out-of-the-box, a bit noisy, but we haven’t tried to change any of the mixer settings yet.

Graphics

With the default driver, some of the desktop effects flickered a great deal, and the desktop background showed some flickering. Installing the closed source ATI drivers (via the “Additional Drivers” in the System Settings) seems to have fixed this.

External monitor

- Not tested yet.  In particular we need to check how large a resolution it can drive.

Card Readers

The SD card reader and the slot for Sony’s memory sticks both work fine.

HDMI output

- Not tested yet.  (No HDMI monitor available.)

Webcam

Works out-of-the-box

Touchpad

Works fine out-of-the-box.  Changing the scrolling behaviour (from dragging on the right hand side to two-fingered scrolling) can be easily done with the mouse properties.

Hardware Details

$ lspci -v
00:00.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Pavilion DM1Z-3000 Host bridge
    Subsystem: Sony Corporation Device 9082
    Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 0

00:01.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Device 9802 (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
    Subsystem: Sony Corporation Device 9082
    Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 44
    Memory at e0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
    I/O ports at 3000 [size=256]
    Memory at f0200000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256K]
    Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
    Capabilities: <access denied>
    Kernel driver in use: fglrx_pci
    Kernel modules: fglrx, radeon

00:01.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc Device 1314
    Subsystem: Sony Corporation Device 9082
    Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 42
    Memory at f0244000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
    Capabilities: <access denied>
    Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
    Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel

00:04.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Device 1512 (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
    Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0
    Bus: primary=00, secondary=01, subordinate=01, sec-latency=0
    I/O behind bridge: 00002000-00002fff
    Memory behind bridge: f0100000-f01fffff
    Capabilities: <access denied>
    Kernel driver in use: pcieport
    Kernel modules: shpchp

00:06.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Device 1514 (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
    Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0
    Bus: primary=00, secondary=02, subordinate=02, sec-latency=0
    Memory behind bridge: f0000000-f00fffff
    Capabilities: <access denied>
    Kernel driver in use: pcieport
    Kernel modules: shpchp

00:11.0 SATA controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 40) (prog-if 01 [AHCI 1.0])
    Subsystem: Sony Corporation Device 9082
    Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 19
    I/O ports at 3118 [size=8]
    I/O ports at 3124 [size=4]
    I/O ports at 3110 [size=8]
    I/O ports at 3120 [size=4]
    I/O ports at 3100 [size=16]
    Memory at f024c000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K]
    Capabilities: <access denied>
    Kernel driver in use: ahci
    Kernel modules: ahci

00:12.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI0 Controller (prog-if 10 [OHCI])
    Subsystem: Sony Corporation Device 9082
    Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 18
    Memory at f024b000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
    Kernel driver in use: ohci_hcd

00:12.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB EHCI Controller (prog-if 20 [EHCI])
    Subsystem: Sony Corporation Device 9082
    Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 17
    Memory at f024a000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256]
    Capabilities: <access denied>
    Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd

00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI0 Controller (prog-if 10 [OHCI])
    Subsystem: Sony Corporation Device 9082
    Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 18
    Memory at f0249000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
    Kernel driver in use: ohci_hcd

00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB EHCI Controller (prog-if 20 [EHCI])
    Subsystem: Sony Corporation Device 9082
    Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 17
    Memory at f0248000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256]
    Capabilities: <access denied>
    Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd

00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 SMBus Controller (rev 42)
    Subsystem: Sony Corporation Device 9082
    Flags: 66MHz, medium devsel
    Kernel driver in use: piix4_smbus
    Kernel modules: sp5100_tco, i2c-piix4

00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) (rev 40)
    Subsystem: Sony Corporation Device 9082
    Flags: bus master, slow devsel, latency 64, IRQ 16
    Memory at f0240000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
    Capabilities: <access denied>
    Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
    Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel

00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 LPC host controller (rev 40)
    Subsystem: Sony Corporation Device 9082
    Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 0

00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge (rev 40) (prog-if 01 [Subtractive decode])
    Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 64
    Bus: primary=00, secondary=03, subordinate=03, sec-latency=64

00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 12h/14h Processor Function 0 (rev 43)
    Flags: fast devsel

00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 12h/14h Processor Function 1
    Flags: fast devsel

00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 12h/14h Processor Function 2
    Flags: fast devsel

00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 12h/14h Processor Function 3
    Flags: fast devsel
    Capabilities: <access denied>
    Kernel driver in use: k10temp
    Kernel modules: k10temp

00:18.4 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 12h/14h Processor Function 4
    Flags: fast devsel

00:18.5 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 12h/14h Processor Function 6
    Flags: fast devsel

00:18.6 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 12h/14h Processor Function 5
    Flags: fast devsel

00:18.7 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 12h/14h Processor Function 7
    Flags: fast devsel

01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications AR8131 Gigabit Ethernet (rev c0)
    Subsystem: Sony Corporation Device 9082
    Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 43
    Memory at f0100000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256K]
    I/O ports at 2000 [size=128]
    Capabilities: <access denied>
    Kernel driver in use: atl1c
    Kernel modules: atl1c

02:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)
    Subsystem: Foxconn International, Inc. Device e017
    Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 18
    Memory at f0000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
    Capabilities: <access denied>
    Kernel driver in use: ath9k
    Kernel modules: ath9k

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo

processor       : 0
vendor_id       : AuthenticAMD
cpu family      : 20
model           : 1
model name      : AMD E-350 Processor
stepping        : 0
cpu MHz         : 800.000
cache size      : 512 KB
physical id     : 0
siblings        : 2
core id         : 0
cpu cores       : 2
apicid          : 0
initial apicid  : 0
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 6
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc rep_good nopl nonstop_tsc extd_apicid aperfmperf pni monitor ssse3 cx16 popcnt lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch ibs skinit wdt arat npt lbrv svm_lock nrip_save pausefilter
bogomips        : 3192.53
TLB size        : 1024 4K pages
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management: ts ttp tm stc 100mhzsteps hwpstate

processor       : 1
vendor_id       : AuthenticAMD
cpu family      : 20
model           : 1
model name      : AMD E-350 Processor
stepping        : 0
cpu MHz         : 800.000
cache size      : 512 KB
physical id     : 0
siblings        : 2
core id         : 1
cpu cores       : 2
apicid          : 1
initial apicid  : 1
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 6
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc rep_good nopl nonstop_tsc extd_apicid aperfmperf pni monitor ssse3 cx16 popcnt lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch ibs skinit wdt arat npt lbrv svm_lock nrip_save pausefilter
bogomips        : 3192.05
TLB size        : 1024 4K pages
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management: ts ttp tm stc 100mhzsteps hwpstate

It turns out that if you want to reformat a partition on an external USB drive so that it’s encrypted, this is just a matter of doing the following:

sudo luksformat -t ext4 /dev/partitiondevice

…. where /dev/partitiondevice is the device for the drive partition you want to overwrite.  Obviously, this will destroy everything that was previously on that partition.

I like to use a proper filesystem for USB mass storage devices, but if you leave out the -t ext4 then the default is to use VFAT.

When you next plug in that drive, you’ll be prompted to enter the password that you picked when creating the partition – if you type that correctly, the drive will be mounted and usable.  (If you mistype it, you’re not given another chance to enter the password, so you’ll need to go to the command line and do: gvfs-mount -d /dev/partitiondevice to try again.)

One small thing is that the mount point in /media will be based on a UUID by default, but if you set the ext4 partition label, it’ll be mounted under that name in /media/ instead.  To do this, starting from when your disk is mounted, you can run mount without parameters to find the unencrypted device name and then unmount it and change the label:

$ umount /dev/mapper/udisks-luks-uuid-b7bbb2c8-etc
$ e2label /dev/mapper/udisks-luks-uuid-b7bbb2c8-etc topsekrit

If you unplug and plug in the disk again, it should be mounted on /media/topsekrit