Canberra

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A few photos of Canberra, a city with ample green space and grand architecture. It is difficult to get around without a car though. Despite its master plan being devised in 1912, much of the implementation came much later and exemplifies urban planning of the 1940s and 1950s with large curving roads and roundabouts which make it seem like a grander version of Milton Keynes. Either the original 1912 architect was incredibly prescient to foresee the rise of the motor car, or perhaps he envisioned self-sufficient communities linked by a rail network, it is really not clear how his plan could work otherwise.

Canberra is a very bicycle friendly city, relatively flat with light traffic and ample space for bicycle lanes. Nearby hills such as Mt Ainslie also make for excellent mountain biking apparently, and the coast is only two and a half hours away if you hanker for a weekend on the beach.

Au Revoir, Internet Café

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On previous trips, publishing a blog post or keeping in touch with home meant allocating some time to locate a reasonably priced Internet café and writing while watching a ticking timer. For this trip however I have been able to write at leisure in spare moments on my phone thanks to the availability of pre-pay GSM sim cards with data allowances.

In Australia, amaysim have been particularly good value although I only discovered their existence after considerable Internet research. A $10 purchase in-store sim card purchase gave us 1GB of data valid for 30 days plus $10 of pre-pay phone credit (90 day expiry). The network is provided by Optus, in common with most of the cheap prepaid sim offerings. There were a couple of issues though which I document here for future travellers.

  • We bought the sim card in a Seven-Eleven. The website claims you can buy them in post offices but the one we tried did not stock it so the availability might not be great. The same pack contains a sim that may be used with either the normal or micro sim formats.
  • Online activation claimed to work but actually failed because of my non-Australian address and credit card. You must call them to get your $10 purchase converted to a data plan. I have not tried to top up the credit yet but it makes me think that credit card top ups might be difficult. Buying vouchers works around this, but see the note above on availability.
  • The sim we bought has been used in multiple devices. I can report that despite rumours to the contrary, a sync with iTunes is not required to change the provider on an iPhone (at least on iOS5). However some devices could not access the Internet until the APN had been set manually to “Internet”, others just worked, for reasons I have yet to figure out.

Khao Lak, Thailand

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We chose Khao Lak in Thailand as a good place to break the long trip to Australia because of the opportunity to visit the Simulan Islands, one of the world’s top dive sites. With no accommodation permitted on the islands access to the snorkelling involved a bumpy 60 minute speed boat ride, and even the slightly slower dive boat felt like a two hour fairground ride! The snorkelling was good for fish but sadly the coral bleaching that occurred two years ago had yet to show much progress in its recovery.

Having come to snorkel we also thoroughly enjoyed the inland expedition to Cheow Lan Lake. The highlight of this was a trip on the lake in a long-tail boat which gave us a close up view of the imposing limestone islands that rose vertically up out of the water and towered over our little boat. The limestone had beautiful red colouring too, complimented by the green of the trees clinging to a precarious life on a sheer vertical wall of cliff and overhanging the water. Some of the islands have developed cave systems and we visited one which had spectacular stalactite and stalagmite formations, the iron giving them a rich red colour that invited comparison to the marble cathedrals of Italy.

Although we were only in a small part of Thailand for a few days, we really enjoyed our stay. Thai people were universally friendly and genuinely welcoming of tourists. The absence of pushy street salesmen that are commonly found in tourist areas the world over was also very pleasant—I look forward to returning.

Using the Terminal to restore from a Time Machine backup

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I recently had to restore some Application Data from a Time Machine backup and since Finder in OS X 10.7 (Lion) now hides the Library folder in your home directory I thought it easiest to just cp the files from the mounted volume to the right place. It turned out that this it was not as straightforward as that because the restored files retained the read only permissions that prevent you from modifying a backup.

The ACL does not appear in the Finder, but can be seen using ls -le:

0: group:everyone deny write,delete,append,writeattr,writeextattr,chown

and also metadata: com.apple.metadata:_kTimeMachineNewestSnapshot 50

The ACL can be removed using chmod -a #n filename where n is replaced by the number at the front of the ACL description (0 in this case). Applying it recursively is possible but potentially dangerous1 unless you know this is the only ACL applied to the files in the directory. The metadata can be removed using xattr, like this:
xattr -d com.apple.metadata filename


  1. and consequently left as an exercise to the reader [back]

Postfix and SMTP AUTH on OS X Lion

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The standard instructions for configuring postfix to use authenticated SMTP to use authentication when forwarding to a relay host did initially work for me on OS X Lion so for future searchers here is how I made it work.

  1. Create the file /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd as described in the standard docs, i.e. at least one line containing:
    server username:password
    and set the permissions using sudo chmod 600 /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd.
  2. Make the db version used by postfix: sudo postmap /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd (the new file will inherit the permissions of the original file).
  3. If you have upgraded from a previous version of OS X, particularly if you modified your postfix configs, follow the advice in the section below before continuing.
  4. To tell postfix to use authenticated SMTP, add the following lines to /etc/postfix/main.cf:

    mydomain = <<your.mail.domain>>
    mydomain_fallback = localhost
    smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes
    smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/sasl_passwd

    If your domain’s MX records do not specify your relayhost then you must also set the relayhost line.
  5. postfix on OS X runs “on demand” so there is no need to instruct it to reload its configuration. The log file is in the standard UNIX location, /var/log/mail.log.

Upgrading from Snow Leopard

I had previously had this postfix setup working under Snow Leopard, and the upgrade process appeared to have preserved my configuration settings so I was surprised to see that after upgrading to Lion, my smarthost was not accepting mail.

Examining the files in /etc/postfix I noticed that in addition to my customised main.cf there was also a file called main.cf.default which was modified the date I had upgraded to Lion. Comparing the two files showed a number of subtle differences but after being unable to determine why postfix was not authenticating to my upstream server, I decided to copy it over my customised main.cf and re-apply my changes.

Having done this, the mailq command gave me the following error:
postfix[17922]: fatal: bad string length 0 < 1: setgid_group =
Setting setgid_group = _postdrop in main.cf fixed that but then I hit another error:
fatal: file /etc/postfix/main.cf: parameter mail_owner: user postfix has same user ID as _postfix
Resolving this required me to change the value of mail_owner from postfix to _postfix but I don’t know if this is a bug in Apple’s supplied main.cf or an artefact of my user and group information evolving from a 10.6 install to 10.7.

The Lake District

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Windermere station is a beautiful 15 minute train journey from Kendal and with a tourist information and kitchenware superstore next to the station, the journey felt much more civilised than trying to navigate unfamiliar country roads in a rented car.

Since we had arrived directly after breakfast, we decided to delay walking the mile down hill to the lake itself and first take in the views from Orrest Head. Unfortunately the weather was not on our side and while the many different shades of grey-coloured clouds over the lake provided atmospheric views, the wind blew showers of rain at us frequently enough that we were not encouraged to linger at the top. The helpful lady in the tourist information had recommended an extended walk from Orrest Head so with the indomitable spirit of people who got up early and will enjoy their holiday in spite of the weather, we struck out over grazing land divided by picture postcard dry stone walls to reach the Lakeland Horticultural Society’s Holehird Gardens. The rain did not last and even I thought the garden was pretty impressive for its range of flora and colour.

Retracing our steps it did not seem long before we were back in the town of Windermere and warming ourselves up on some proper comfort food at Lazy Daisy’s café. Windermere was much less touristy than I was expecting, even for a working Thursday, although later I realised that this was probably due to it still being another mile from the lakeside! The lakeside itself was overrun by SAGA coach parties as expected, but there were some very quiet walking paths which quickly took us away from the hubbub to some pretty spots such as the Sheriff’s Walk, Cockshott point and Queen Adelaide’s hill.

Lake Windermere

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As the boat dropped us off for our 4-mile walk the weather did not look promising. Happily there is only so much rain that can fall out of the sky in one day and the harder it comes down, the sooner it stops!

Traditional Windermere launch at Wray Castle Landing

iPhone Buying Advice

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A number of people have recently asked my advice on buying an iPhone so I thought it worth writing up my current thoughts.

iPhone or Android (Samsung/HTC)

At the moment any phone marketed as an “iPhone competitor” is running Google’s Android software. I have not personally used an Android phone beyond a quick demo of friends’ devices but a survey of articles suggest that latest software has a comparable set of features to the iPhone, and every Apple-hater will quickly tell you that Android is better because it can do X, Y and/or Z, which Apple are too arrogant or controlling to allow. If you are someone who understands what feature X, Y or Z is and feel you need it, then you should get an Android phone. Everyone else should read this quote from a review of the newly released iPad-clone from people that make Blackberries:

“Browsing on the PlayBook ends up feeling very much like an Android device – perfectly usable, but not up to iOS [i.e. iPhone] standards.”

Whether this is something you find annoying enough to justify a more expensive iPhone over an Android device can to some extend be determined by spending some time with a friend’s phone or an in-store demo, so I highly recommend doing this. Another frequent complaint about Android phones is that the battery life is worse than that of an iPhone1, especially those models with the larger screens.

One of the major features of Android is the ability to install apps which have not been vetted by Apple. However it is highly unlikely that an average user would want to install an application that was banned by Apple so that advantage is moot. There is also an argument that since the iPhone+iPod+iPad2 platform is currently making developers a lot of money, and Android upgrades must be blessed by the phone manufacturer3 after being released by Google, iPhone owners are likely to get the latest and greatest apps before Android owners, and certainly no later.

It is natural that older Android phones which do not have all the latest iPhone features are practically being given away by the phone companies (so too the two-year old iPhone 3GS) but recently released Android phones are also considerably cheaper than iPhone 4s. For example today on orange.co.uk a £35 per month contract for 24 months will get you the recently released HTC Desire S for £0, while an iPhone4 costs £119 on the same monthly tariff. I don’t think I can tell you whether it is worth you paying that extra £119, only hands-on demonstration and experimentation with a phone will tell you whether you think the phone will be good enough, the right apps available for what you want, and the battery life long enough.

Should I buy an iPhone 4 now or wait for iPhone 5?

While Apple are highly secretive about their product plans, it is widely believed that Apple have unofficially set media expectations that unlike previous years they will not be announcing a new device at their annual developer conference in June. There is no reliable information as to when a new iPhone might be released but the smart money is on a September announcement alongside this year’s iPod line-up.

Historically, supplies of new models has been extremely limited for the first few months so waiting until September realistically means waiting another month or two after the release date, and expect to pay at least the current cost of an iPhone 4. At the moment (May 2011), there is the possibility you may find a carrier able to offer some sort of discount on an iPhone 4 which will easily give you 18 months of good service before an Autumn 2012 release of the next generation.

Do I need a screen protector for my iPhone?

No. The iPhone 4 screen is designed to be touched directly and manufactured to a high quality. Placing an additional layer of low quality plastic between you and the screen will impair its function. I can really recommend the InCase Snap case (~£10 on ebay.co.uk, or half that for a clear plastic knock off) which protects the back and has a raised ridge around the front preventing contact should the phone be placed face down on a surface. If you need to protect the screen while the phone is not in use (e.g. inside a hand bag or similar) then buy a case that has a cover you put over the screen when not in use, or store the phone in a sock when inside the handbag.


  1. 7 hours of talk time and 300 hours standby is claimed by Apple [back]
  2. a.k.a. “iOS” [back]
  3. This is significant since if an app requires the latest version of Android and your manufacturer has not blessed it yet then that app will not be available to you, even if it it is available on other Android phones. [back]

In defence of necessary complexity in language

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A letter to The Independent recently quoted the following sentence from an article about the Big Society as an example of obscure writing.

Public sector mutualisation and budgetary takeover by citizens of the state is a crucial initial phase in endowing ordinary citizens with the power to ensure that the services they run are operated in a way which combines public interest with economic efficiency and localised employee ownership building in all the gains that this model delivers.

I would not disagree that the final clause (“building in all the gains that this model delivers.”) is unnecessary and should have been pruned by a good editor, but a complex concept cannot be explain in simple terms.

Mutualisation refers to idea of collectives/co-operatives, for example, building societies. “Public sector mutualisation” is therefore makes people co-owners of the public sector changing the model from one where they are customers or consumers.

budgetary takeover by citizens is a (too) concise term for having spending allocations and priorities determined by citizens and not civil servants.

services they run refers to public sector services now co-owned by the ordinary citizen where said citizen has high level input into budgets and policy but implementation remains with the public sector.

combines public interest with economic efficiency—money is spent in line with public expectations with minimal administration costs. I think it interesting that “public interest” was chosen here instead of “public good”, but this is a post about language not politics so I will not examine that further.

Contemporary mediums with low character limits such as text messages and twitter encourage dense, terse and economic phrasing so I find it surprising that someone would complain about a sentence which is all of these things. However perhaps at 348 characters (requiring three tweets) it was the length that offended the letter-writer?

[Mostly typed one-handed due to a broken collar bone; enforced R&R at home has given me too much time to read and consider such things!]

Alaskan Retrospective: Whales and Glaciers

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The Alaskan coast is a fantastic place to observe whales due to the abundant food supply, it apparently has more bald eagles than the lower 48 states and has some awe-inspiring scenery, including Glacier Bay National Park. The Pacific North-West is known for its unpredictable and rapidly changing climates so to have such superb weather in September was very lucky.

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A teen flick that’s actually good and something completely different

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When the inflight entertainment guide quoted Empire magazine as saying Easy A was the best teen comedy since Clueless, I decided that it was a low risk proposition to spend some of my 10 hour flight putting that claim to the test.

At first I was sceptical but after I caught myself laughing-out-loud during an early scene, I was hooked. An updated telling of The Scarlet Letter, it is a tongue-in-cheek and self-referential demonstration of how issues of image, the human need to belong, and hypocrisy within small communities (whether they be the old English village or the modern high school) remain timeless. It is not as ground-breaking as Clueless simply because Californian high school culture has been “done”, but it is nice to see an intelligent and (a bit too) clever central protagonist bringing a higher tone of humour to the genre.

In contrast Scott Pilgrim v The World feels like a teen flick but technically is not one (we are told the eponymous lead is 22 years of age). This was similarly highly billed as “witty, dazzling and highly original”, and it is certainly different but only going to make sense if you understand video game culture. The plot line is familiar: boy meets girl and must win her heart by overcoming his rivals and/or succeed at some task or competition. The twist is that the usual real-life scenarios are instead portrayed allegorically as a series of video game levels. It is agreeable watching, although sadly it is never explained what the central characters actually have in common to make their relationship plausible. But then many video game purists claim that storyline should be secondary to gameplay—entertainment—anyway, and it certainly has that.