You can view the video here –  http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/video/q/video_tcm4557296.asp

Perhaps the best bit about this device is that is costs about $100. It runs Linux, has a 1.2 GHz single core processor and has 512 Mb of RAM and 512 Mb of Nand Flash. On the outside there are a few interfaces – a single USB port and an RJ45 ethernet port. It also has a min-USB connection for debugging it and an external flash slot for some kind of card – SD maybe? The whole box is pretty small  - 110 X 70 X 49mm. It is also remarkable due to the fact that it only draws 3 amps of current.

Anyhow, after this thing sitting in its box for a while I have decided to do something with it. Interestingly I think there are a number of cool things you could do with this – as a base station for motes, as an access point, for distributed p2p storage etc. etc. However, I have decided to use this one as a backup device.

Here is a photo of it sitting in a cupboard at home plugged into the network with the pink cable and connected to a tera byte Hitachi USB disk.

So far it is working pretty well, after a few hiccups (including deleting the whole init.d directory with a bit of gun ho rm commands). However there a a few things I would have liked to have known before I started:

1. It comes with Linux on it (not obvious – no screen:)

2. It responds to dhcp – no where in the documentation does it say this (that I could find). The documentation is on the whole close to non-existent.

3. It runs sshd out of the box.

4. I would have liked to know the default root password – it is “nosoup4u” – no soup for you.

5. It has samba on it but it is turned off by default.

6. I could go on but I won’t – it will just show how long it is since I did any proper sys admin – in fact if there is a downside to devices like this it is this – you have to run everything yourself – fine if you are a 15 year old Linux head but I am too old for that – I did that in my 20s.

Nevertheless, I am very impressed with this little toy – if it all goes wrong I will blog about it but for now it has backed up my daughter’s laptop and is currently backing up my wife’s.

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson.
A fictional epic featuring everything for a Computer Science: Bletchley Park, encryption, Van-Eck freaking, protecting electronic assets, Internet banking (did I mention gold, submarines and the second World War). If you like this you should also read Snow Crash by the Same Author.

by Charles Murray (Author), Catherine Bly Cox (Author) This book is amazing but very hard to find (so I include this link http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0436302241/). This book is all about how the Americans put Man on the moon. The book is really all about projects and how to run them and also how not to. I would really recommend this book to anyone but especially to anyone who thinks they can manage projects (or want to).

Ian Sommerville’s are here: http://se9book.wordpress.com/2010/10/27/reading-list-for-techies/

ian Gent’s list:

How to Get a PhD Estelle Phillips, Derek Pugh, (2005, Fourth Edition).   Open University Press.

A slight wild card, because not every CS undergraduate should read it.  But everybody in any discipline who wants to do a PhD should read it, and they should read it before they even decide to do a PhD – so while they are an undergraduate.   The chapter on How Not To Get A PhD is a classic.   A book which I have lent to people many more times than I have got it back – but I don’t mind since it’s so important that people read it.   

Andrew Hodges, (1992, New edition).  Alan Turing: The Enigma. Vintage 

Alan Turing must be one of the top three British scientists – with Darwin and Newton.   He founded theoretical computer science (the Turing machine).  He founded practical computer science (at Bletchley and with the ACE).   He founded theoretical AI (the Turing test).   He founded practical AI (the first chess playing program.)   In his spare time he won the Second World War.    And he could run a marathon in 11 minutes outside Olympics winning pace.   This is an excellent biography of him.   

Brian Kernighan and Dennis M Ritchie, (1988, second edition).  The C Programming Language.  Prentice-Hall.  

This book shows just how short a great programming language book can be.   Written by one of designers of C (Ritchie) and one of the great technical computing writers (Kernighan.)   And yes, I am saying that reading a great book about a programming language can be a great pleasure even if you don’t use the language.

Fred Brooks (1995, second edition).  The Mythical Man Month.  Addison-Wesley

If a software project with 100 people will take a year, how long will it take if you add another 100 people half way through?    Answer: who knows?  Could be it now takes 2 years, or maybe never finishes.    If you answered 9 months you’re good at puzzles but you REALLY need to read this book!

I would have had this one too had Ian not suggested it first.

Simon Dobson’s list:

Structure and interpretation of computer programs. Abelson and Sussman.
(OK, bit of a text book…)

The design of everyday things. Donald Norman.

Casting the net. Janet Abate.

The transparent society. David Brin.

Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter.

These will be posted more formally at some point on the School Web pages – possibly as an edited list.

There is another unit in Chemistry and also one in College gate – the college gate emergency number is ?01334 463985. IMHO we should have one of these in every University building – they only cost about £1500 and last for 5 years.

For more information see -

• http://www.defibshop.co.uk/defibrillators-aed-79-105-zoll-aed_plus_first_responder_defibrillator.htm (the machine we bought)
• http://www.heartstart.org/ (who provide training in basic life support)
• http://www.resus.org.uk/pages/aedalgo.pdf (for protocols for defibrillation)

Please talk/tweet/blog about this – the more people who know it is there the better.

The video can be seen here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0IiKaa8v9M&feature=player_embedded

I cannot say I am a huge fan of the ipad, there are quite a few problems with it:

• printing – you cannot really print from it – this is going to be fixed with air tunes shortly
• browsing – not being able to render flash drives you to distraction – you are happily browsing and then you find a site that you cannot view – I do not really care about corporate wars between Mr Jobs and Adobe or whoever
• uploading – using the one spanner fits everything tool that is called iTunes is not good – the ipad needs better mechanisms for synchronisation. Everyone I know (including me) ends up using Dropbox to put files on the ipad – again I am sure that is not what Mr Jobs intends us to do
• No file system – not having a file system that is exposed to users is just plain daft – we all use file systems – it is how we organise our stuff
• The browser interface drives me crazy – what is wrong with bookmarks etc – where is the eye-candy from Mac OSX
• editing – there are not enough tools for producers of media – for example, it is hard for us to mark up documents on the go – a task that is performed by many academics and professionals

Apart from that it is a pretty cool device – it is cool, fast, quiet, and ergonomic.

Now back to the windows device above. Due to the problems above and the cost which I did not mention I have assumed that Windows pads would wipe the floor with Apple come this Autumn. However viewing this video makes me want to weep. It is the epitome of un-jobsianess. It  has buttons everywhere – power, cntrl-alt-delete, home, volume, slots for this that and the other. It is slow to boot – not like the instant on  of the ipad (despite the demonstrator saying things like “that was pretty fast”). The browser looks clunky – he tries to scroll down and nothing happens then tries something to open a new tab – “hey  clicked on something there”. The on-screen keyboard – should be called the whole screen keyboard.

Of course the ultimate irony is that the movie was filmed on an iphone.

Now all that Apple have to worry about is Android…

The fish we bought were:

(all photos from http://www.tonysafricancichlids.co.uk/page45.html)

Here is a photo of me helping Graham make the fish welcome in their new home.

Photo by Aaron Quigley who no doubt has tweeted about this event if you like that sort of thing

The lack of any privacy in Facebook has been well documented. To address this issue, Ben Birt has developed PeerBook. It is based on an underlying Chord system and stores multiple replicas of encrypted Facebook style pages on peers within a network. You can only read or edit pages if you have the appropriate cryptographic keys – you cannot necessarily read data that is stored on your own machine. This architecture gives a scalable, decentralised alternative to Facebook.

Ben graduated yesterday from St Andrews. Here is a photo of us in the quad.

Ben Birt and Al Dearle

The full text of the press release about Peerbook may be found here. The Peerbook Web pages are here.

The animations of mediation and mediation change events are here and here respectively.