Mumra dot co dot uk

I recently had to replace my front wheel setup as I upgraded by bikes front end. The new hub would needed to take a 20mm axle, and seeing as my old rims were on the verge of destruction I decided to go for a whole new wheel build.

This time I chose Sun SingleTrack rims on an Aireal DH1 Front Symetech Hub. All I can say is this is a fantastic hub, it spins beautifully even after dragging it through clay, chalk, sand and other general muck you find around my neck of the woods.



One issue I did have however was that my 20mm maxxle was an incredibly tight fit during the last 15-20% of insertion. Unfortunately, a quick release system that requires a rubber mallet and punch to remove the wheel and the same rubber mallet to re-attach it (not counting the patience of a budhist monk) is not ideal when you are out on the trails.

Unsure what to do about this I had a search around to see If anyone else was experiencing the problem...nothing.. I went to the Magura Forum and posted there asking if anyone had seen the issue with other sets of Magura Wotans again.. nothing.

I eventually contacted Aireal about the issue earlier tonight and received a very prompt reply from them stating that they would look into whether they had seen the problem. Now, this is a small company with a couple of guys that design and machine the parts and so finding an answer was incredibly quick. 20 minutes later I had another mail in my inbox saying that one person had also mentioned the problem with the maxxle and their hub.

The upshot is that they have offered to send me out some oversize end caps so that I can solve my problem! What a great result!

For anyone else out there searching for this issue, contact the guys at Aireal. You may currently experience difficulty finding their site via google as most searches throw up links to an old airealindustries url that doesnt work, but here is their correct address and they are more than happy to help.
Aireal Australia

I was amused today whilst helping my sister with printing some photos.

We were talking about the recent budget announcement and in particular, car tax. So I hit google with the following search:

car tax uk 1.4

This threw up a few relevent sites but they were all reports from 2006 and before. So I added '2007' to my search string:

car tax uk 1.4 2007

Hit google again, and upon looking at the first link I noticed something that made me chuckle. The top hit on google is this blog's entry about 'PAYG road tax'. Ha! Certainly amused me

On top once more

(p.s, since I started writing this a few minutes ago, a whole hour has passed... damn clocks)

I was asked to produce a little gui application in Java for one of my colleagues here in Solaris Sustaining.

However, making something that works in all instances on multiple versions of both the Solaris OS and the JavaVM seemed to prompt an error when serialising and deserialising objects to/from disk.

If you write an object to disk using version X of the Java VM, and then run the application with version Y, you will notice an interesting error message:

Couldnt write to /home/usernameremoved/.escs.data
javax.swing.AbstractListModel; local class incompatible: stream classdesc serial
VersionUID = 6318899794864351705, local class serialVersionUID = -7413386323730897788

This would prevent pre-serialised objects written with version X from being read when using version Y.

Well, its actually something very simple to fix. The serialVersionUID for any given class is VM dependent. Unless you do the following:
serialVersionUID is an overloadable variable (of course) so in the class for the object being written to disk, add the following line

static final long serialVersionUID = -7413386323730897788L

Where -7413386323730897788 is the serialVersionUID from the error message. Remember to declare it as static and final to ensure that only one instance of this exists and cannot be overwritten. Dont forget to use the 'L' at the end of the declaration otherwise javac will throw its toys out of the pram and complain that the number exceeds its boundaries for an int

Now, recompile your classes and serialise your object using JavaVM version X, then quit the application, start it using JavaVM Y and load the object.

If you are using a default Java Class, such as DefaultListModel etc, then you will need to extend the class and create your own version that includes the above final long declaration. Simplest way to do this (using DefaultListModel as an example)

import javax.swing.DefaultListModel;

public class FixedDefaultListModel extends DefaultListModel {

//Fixes serialVersionUID message - not e the 'L'
//which prevents the "integer too long" message
static final long serialVersionUID = -7413386323730897788L;

public FixedDefaultListModel() {
super();
}

}

Hurrah! No error message any more, and the object is now loadable in all versions of the JVM.

"Ladies and Gentlemen" the voice came over the speakers, oscillating in volume and quality. "It is now midnight in the United Kingdom. Happy New Year everyone!".

Happy new year.

It was 7 pm, 31st December 2006 in my ergonomically designed (or so they say) spacially calculated seat aboard the 767 sitting on the tarmac at Atlanta International airport. Due to an 'equipment change' (by equipment they actually mean the aeroplane) seating had been reassigned, separating parents from children and driving the plane into a state of general chaos.

Only one thing to do. I ordered a whiskey.

As I sat there, contemplating 8 hours of estranged children I started to think about the previous three weeks that culminated in the Georgian kindergarten plane.

Icy cold air greeted me as I walked out of Monterreys General Escobido Airport with Jessica in my arms on the 9th of December. Happy to be back with her, I could stand the cold but made a point of commenting that it was actually warmer back in blightly than it was in Mexico.

I had arrived for Jessica's graduation and two weeks travelling in southern/central Mexico.
Graduation day heralded blue skies and 25+ degree temperatures. Jessica, needless to say looked beautiful. Having been to only graduation ceremony (other than mine) I wasn't quite sure how long the whole thing would last. It was a nice feeling and I was very proud of her as she stepped up to take her award. The ceremony was different to how I expected it to be, but it was, best of all, short.

The next day (now the 14th of december) we grabbed our bags and headed back to the aiport to catch our flight to Mexico City. Unfortunately, it seemed that the fog (from the film of the same name) had settled on Mexico City grounding all flights in and out meaning we would not be able to catch the connecting flight to Puerto Escondido. Our flight would have to wait until the next day but that was no problem, another night in Monterrey was not disagreeable.

The next day, bright and early we managed to get a flight to Mexico city, on the way passing over Popocatepetl (try saying that when you've had a few!) a volcano whose activity is rivalled only by its difficulty of pronunciation. We caught our connecting flight to Puerto Escondido and landed in 36 degree heat, the approach leading us parallel to beautiful beaches and tropical flora.

Puerto Escondido is a small town in Oaxaca surrounded by a number of beautiful beaches. We took a taxi to Zicatela - this beach is famous for Surfing and as you approach it becomes clear as to why this is. The beach is a long straight stretch of around 2 miles in a very shallow bay. Large rolling breaks thunder onto the shore after barrelling for the final portion of its journey. We dont normally see waves like this in the UK although I would describe the break as very similar to Newquays' Fistral Beach...

Not being a surfer any more (severely less flexible and far more concious of my own mortality) I was content to watch the locals surf their break whilst I had a little swim or sat and drank a beer.

We booked into a great hostel. There is only really one road along Zicatela and it runs along the beach, adorned with small arty shops, enjoyable restaurants and cafes it also houses many hostels at very reasonable prices. Ours was a very clean room with a Tv, shower and drinkable water, situated right on the beach and sported a balcony that was just the perfect spot to help one wake up in the morning or to simply sit and watch the sun go down.

There was (whilst we were in Oaxaca) and I believe there still is a conflict between the teachers in Oaxaca state and the government. This had caused some civil unrest in the larger Oaxacan cities and I think must have stimied the tourism to the area as we arrived at the start of the peak season and found to our surpise that we very nearly had the beach to ourselves.

We met some lovely locals (Roberto, Margarito (a.k.a SnakeMan!) and a couple whose name I forget) and so were able to see a little glimpse of the local way of life. Nights were spent sitting in the warm air relaxing with them and talking about the differences between our cultures. We were shown great hospitality by all around and it made all the difference to our experience in Puerto.

Margarito (SnakeMan) is the local Steve Irwin. He lives out of town next to a lagoon that is popular with tourists who wish to see the local wildlife. However, whilst most people out there will charge a high price, take many people in one go and use a motor boat to take tourists around the lake, Margarito approached us saying how he lives at the lagoon, knows the wildlife and the area and he would use a traditional paddle canoe to take us around the lake. This, he told us, would mean we could see the maximum amount as the motors would not disturb the local fauna. Never before have I met such a healthy looking man. He is in his mid fourties and yet still looks like he is in his early twenties. So fit and full of life like I have never seen.

The trip to the lagoon was full of mangrove-like trees with fresh water mussels on their tendrils, wild Iguanas and many many different birds

One end of Zicatela beach was full of Pelicans and locals fishing. I guess the locals follow the Pelicans to find the good sites. Having never seen a Pelican before I was surprised by the size of them as they would buzz past us, flying literally milimetres above the surface of the water before settling gracefully and posing for a photo.

We both absolutely loved Puerto Escondido. It was a beautiful pace and way of life surrounded by wonderful sights and all bathed in a tropical heat. Fantastic!

We stayed for a total of 4 days (I think) in Puerto before heading onto the next stop on our journey - Huatulco.

Now even though I dont drive very often I see the governments plans to implement a "pay as you go" road taxing system as an absolute piss take. Excuse the language but I can't think of another way to describe it.

Now all you brits who read my blog, wherever you are in the world (Of both of my readers at least one of you must be a brit ) hit the Prime ministers website Number 10 Downing Street and sign up to the petition against this farcical excuse for an idea.

Some average values for you from a recent BBC study: The lowest monthly bill was £28 for a rural florist and the highest was £194 for a delivery driver. A non working mother who used the car to take the kids to school paid £86 in one month.

Now not only this, but one will also be expected to buy the tracking device for any cars owned, these are £200 a pop and include (of course) a transponder to allow anyone privy to the information to know your whereabouts and speed. This most likely means that you can expect to receive automatic notice of intended prosecution included with your monthly bill if you are one of those drivers who creeps over the speed limits.

Just what the hell are they thinking?

What about the adverse effect this bill will have on all of the products in our stores. Most freight and produce is moved by road in the UK, I wonder what retailers will do when the costs of their logistics networks sky-rockets through the roof... Well, of course they will have to increase their prices. Ah! I hear you exclaim, but they can use rail!.... With this I would agree, except that around a decade ago our freight-rail system was pretty much disbanded due to the costs of keeping it running when compared with using roads (amoung other reasons).

Britain Britain Britain, how you push me away. High Interest rates, high income tax, high house prices, high council tax, HIGH fuel tax and now this abomination the government is proposing. Its enough to make one consider emigration. How the hell am I supposed to start a life for myself in such an environment. House prices are 7-10 times my yearly salary but the average mortgage broker will only lend 4 times ones income... Hmmm.. I suppose its ok so long as I can save 120K to put down as a deposit.. Yeah Right!

Im going to have to stop this entry now because quite simply, its angering me to think about the labour party and their excuse for a policy.

Thankyou Tony. Thanks a bunch.

Now, this entry may be removed depending on how my mother feels about me sharing this information with both of the people who read this site, so read it while its hot!

A bit of background first. My mother is an "Regulation Inspector". She inspects nursing homes etc and ensures they are kept up to standard.

Today she was inspecting (smartly dressed in a trouser suit she informs me, shoes freshly cleaned, makeup, jewellery et al) and overheard a couple of the temporally-advanced residents talking.

It went (verbatim)

" She's the inspector",
" Oh is that who she is, looks like easy money that job",
" They used to look smart in my day, they used to make them wear ties in my day",
" I think its a woman but you never can tell these days",
" No its not a woman- no titties",
" Well its got a bit in front--man boobs they call them, it said its name was elizabeth",
" Well there is no wonder there are so many nancy boys about today if they give the blokes names like that, and they said it was stuff in the water"

It smacks of the 2 old guys from a comedy show a while ago (help me out someone!) ! Absolutely excellent! Made me laugh reading the email from her!!

Sorry mum!

Browsing Googlutube I came across what I consider to be some of the most extreme freeride footage I've ever seen.

You simply have to check this out! Embedded for your viewing pleasure!






Some of those scenes gave me vertigo just watching them. Loons!

Well...not quite, but this server gets hit from many countries. Below is the list, cool eh

de - Germany (Federal Republic of)
com - commercial, for-profit organizations
net - network infrastructure machines and organizations
br - Brazil (Federative Republic of)
uk - United Kingdom
jp - Japan
ru - Russian Federation
mx - Mexico
ar - Argentine Republic
it - Italy
th - Thailand
fr - France
cn - China (People's Republic of)
pl - Poland (Republic of)
nl - Netherlands (Kingdom of the)
cz - Czech Republic
ca - Canada
be - Belgium
at - Austria
edu - 4-year, degree granting colleges/universities
in - India (Republic of)
au - Australia
ro - Romania
ie - Ireland
co - Colombia (Republic of)
do - Dominican Republic
fi - Finland
tw - Taiwan, Province of China
pt - Portugal
cl - Chile
se - Sweden
us - United States of America
ee - Estonia (Republic of)
org - miscellaneous, usually non-profit, organizations
es - Spain
no - Norway
vn - Viet Nam (Socialist Republic of)
dk - Denmark
il - Israel (State of)
md - Moldova (Republic of)
tr - Turkey
ch - Switzerland (Confederation of)
hu - Hungary (Republic of)
my - Malaysia
sk - Slovak Republic
yu - Yugoslavia (Federal Republic of)
bg - Bulgaria (Republic of)
pe - Peru
sg - Singapore (Republic of)
gt - Guatemala (Republic of)
is - Iceland
cr - Costa Rica
gh - Ghana
lt - Lithuania (Republic of)
nz - New Zealand
ph - Philippines (Republic of the)
pk - Pakistan (Islamic Republic of)
ae - United Arab Emirates
bm - Bermuda
gi - Gibraltar
hk - Hong Kong (China)
id - Indonesia (Republic of)
ke - Kenya (Republic of)
kr - Korea (Republic of)
kz - Kazakstan (Republic of)
ma - Morocco (Kingdom of)
mil - US military
su - Soviet Union
tt - Trinidad and Tobago
ve - Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of)

I dont blog nearly enough about Solaris. For the past few months I have been settling in to my new position within Sun Microsystems. For the past year I was working for Sun as a Lab Engineer in Paris. This role included system and network administration, production server maintenance, system configuration and general engineer support and service.

To elaborate slightly; I worked within one of 13 worldwide labs; the purpose of which was to facilitate the use of readily available hardware configurations for use by services engineers. These requests could be as simple and small as a single machine configured with a certain release of Solaris to clustered 'big-iron' solutions such as the F15/25k with an attached SAN.

Anyway, I digress, I'm not here to write about my old position, I'm here to write about my new position and how that brings me around to the title of this entry.

A few months ago I moved departments into 'Solaris Revenue Product Engineering'. This is part of the services organisation within Sun Microsystems. This department is generally referred to as 'Solaris Sustaining' for it is we who fix issues within the operating system (Big change from my previous position!). This fits more inline with my degree in Software Engineering and my Java experience - even though the new position is coding C.

I work within a group inside this department responsible for userland commands, utilities and libraries. In this role I get introduced to a continually changing selection of said cmds utils and libs and some of them are incredibly useful.

In the future I hope to be able to expose many useful commands or features of solaris and hopefully document examples of usage.

This finally brings me to the title; open(2) refers to the Unix system call. However many of you should by now know that it is the tagline for the new Open Source release of the Solaris OS: OpenSolaris.

To quote the homepage :

What is the OpenSolaris Project?

The OpenSolaris project is an open source community and a place for collaboration and conversation around OpenSolaris technology.

The community represents a wide variety of people around the world, including developers adding functionality to the system or customizing the technology for new applications and platforms; system administrators implementing Solaris technology in data centers; educators and students researching operating systems in universities; and new users exploring the technology and discovering that OpenSolaris offers new opportunities.

The OpenSolaris source code is already cutting edge, but innovation happens everywhere so we welcome your involvement.

Whats more is it is absolutely packed with features such as ZFS and the new BrandZ allowing a Linux userland running within a Zone on your Solaris system. I urge you all to check it out. It runs on X86 and Sparc! Check it out!

Due to my recent spate of cycling injuries on the South Downs at somewhat high speed on what can only be described as "chalk highways to hell", I decided to invest in a full face helmet.

After some investigation I decided upon a Specialized Deviant Carbon. Weighing in at under 900 grams with a single piece full carbon fibre and kevlar shell it really is like wrapping oneself in a cocoon.



At least if I end up flying face first at high velocity towards a steep, rutted, chalk and rock riddled path, maybe I'll still have my face on when I stand up.

Along with this, I also invested in some 661 Veggie Wraps (Neoprene shin protectors) and 661 Elbow protectors. Genius.

I got my first suit this weekend for Jessica's graduation.

This left me with a dilemma; How to tie a neck tie properly?

Found a handy page Here that helped me out.

Im now practising a half windsor.

Upon my return to Blighty the first thing I did was to purchase a bike. Seeing as I will not be investing in a car until sometime after christmas I needed some transport to get me to work and back each day.

The Sun Microsystems - Guillemont Park campus is located between two sections of M.O.D heathland and forest and the place where I am currently staying is on the opposite side of one of these sections of land. This was a great opportunity to start cycling again as the route is about 60% cross country.

I invested in a Kona Kula which was in the top section of my price range but and have been thoroughly impressed by almost every aspect of this bike. I say almost because it does have a couple of downfalls.

First is that the paint job is rather thin and fragile. The bike has already taken a few knocks from flying debris whilst travelling at high speeds down various hills on the South Downs. However it has also had a number of chips in the paintwork from the all too familiar chain bounce.

Second is the Hayes HFX 9 disc brakes. Hydraulic. This is my first time owning a bike with hydraulics. Annoyingly every time I remove my front wheel, upon re-seating it the caliper generally needs adjusting where the wheel is not in exactly same place as it was before removal.. Does anyone else have this problem?

This month I have added some Crank Brothers Candy clipless pedals and Shimano SPD's. I had waited to buy pedals and was using a rather horrible BMX style pedal up until now. The Kula was supplied with Shimano clipless pedals but they were fairly flaky with very bad reviews (some quite lethal) from users.

The Crank Brothers choice paid off, these pedals are fantastic, the lock-in system is intuitive, easy to use and incredibly impressive overall. Clipping-in was easy to pick up and second nature within a few minutes of getting to know the system.

I also invested in a set of new tyres after having a tumble last week when my current set of Nokians (came stock with the bike) gave out from underneath me. The new Continental Survival ProTection on front and rear seem very nice, I hope to test them tomorrow in the sloppy mud that will no doubt steep the South Downs after the rain today.

(As an addition to the above comment, the new Continentals are great in mud.. useless on road (and dont roll very easily) but in mud they just stick and keep sticking...Perfect!! However I did manage to take a tumble this weekend just gone when I hit a patch of slick wet chalk halfway through a forest track.. The track bent to the right and I attemped the turn, but at ~25Mph, alas the tires did not stick and through me off tumbling down the track..

Photos are at the mumra gallery

Most recent fad : Night riding! Head torches strapped to helmets are fantastic, head out into the woods when no-one is around.. Try it!

Upon engaging in a search for getting the great VoIP software Skype running on my solaris laptop I was disappointed pretty quickly after reading a small thread on the Skype forums here

The following was said by a member of Skype staff

"we ARE lagging behind windows with linux development already (wanna help? we're hiring) and there are currently no plans of creating a solaris port."

The following post is rather blatent and in my opinion a bit upsetting that these two innovating companies cant get together and work out how it can be beneficial to them both to port Skype to Solaris.

Failing Skype doing their own porting, can they not perhaps release an API for applications wishing to connect? I dont see how this would limit skype in the slightest their money comes from the calls people make, not the client they use...

Come on Sun, you should already be on this, same goes to all those people at Skype headquarters.

Please do something about our lack of telephony VoIP on solaris!

James (previously reached stardom when mentiioned here) has now set up his website (hosted on this very server) to host his photos/VJ demos etc.

You can check out his website at http://spectrumvisuals.co.uk but for the both of you that visit this site regularly, here is a sneak preview of a photo he took in Eastbourne this weekend during the Airbourne fireworks display.

After a nice wedding on Monday of my sister and Jeff Taylor I have now arrived back in Paris and uploaded the photos on the Mumra Gallery.



Some nice photos of Jo and Jeff, along with my brother in my mothers hat, looking like Boy George and a couple of me.

Speech went ok, made a few people shed a couple of tears which is always good

Enjoy!

I seem to be racking up the entries on my blog tonight, but I wanted to rant about the stupid Microsoft Update system. Since installing the updates earlier this evening it sees fit to prompt me to reboot my system every 15 minutes for the updates to take effect!

i wouldnt mind if Windows had the boot time of Solaris 10/Nevada whereby I could be back working again within 60 seconds. However, why does windows insist that you reboot for every bloody mistake they happen to 'fix'.. I say 'fix' with some slight sarcasm.....

In relation to the guys at MS who have developed their patch engine, I came accross a very good quote by Stanislaw J. Lec that will probably make its way into my mail signature... it reads

"Every now and then you meet someone whose ignorance is encyclopedic."

When will Microsoft adopt the view that down-time is bad-time and stop the need for constant reboots.

On the same note, in the lab at work we have a Hitachi Data Storage (HDS) enterprise piece of SAN equipment, retailing at the high end of 6 figures (at least) it has, as a service processor, a small toshiba laptop bolted to the front of it running windows..

The most amusing aspect of this is that said laptop uses the schedular (by default) to reboot itself every 24 hours to ensure smooth running... Please, someone, teach MS how to build a 'stable' OS, for use in the enterprise, and at home....

(blah blah these are my own views and not the views of anyone who matters)
P.s. windows just prompted me to reboot again!!!!

Great improvement on version 3.0, better texturing, higher resolution graphics, more features and a vastly improved user interface!

Well done to the guys at Google Labs!

Off back to the UK again for the second weekend running, last time it was to take Jessica back to Heathrow and to have lunch with my new boss, this time however it's to give my sister away at her wedding. I had to right a speech for this, scary prospect it was/is! My humour (as the two of you who read this blog will know) generally leaves people waiting for a punchline so I wonder how it will go... Standing Ovation ?? I think not!

My friend James has released his first 'compilation' onto YouTube, he's spent the past few years VJ'ing in clubs local to Eastbourne and for those of you who have missed him, here's his video now, courtesy of www.youtube.com



Hope he's pleased to be plugged on such a quality site as this

Good luck in the future Jimbo!!

Its true, there is now a band called Mumra! The everliving nemesis of the Thundercats grows more popular every day, but I''m still Top Of The Pops on Google for the keyword 'mumra' whilst they show up only on Googles heuristic alternative "Try Also" section! A ha!

Lets hope they get really famous and want to buy my the mumra.co.uk domain, then I can have the satisfaction of saying "yeah that band wanted to buy my domain name, but I just said 'No'"

Seriously though, for me the music is a little strange, but I can imagine that if the late great John Peel were still with us that they would definately have had a plug on his show.

I recently read "Margrave of the Marshes", the John Peel [Auto]biography which I had been looking forward to, only to be more than slightly disappointed that he didn't manage to get any further than his residence in the USA before he passed away. I can't say that the section written by his wife 'Pig' (as she is lovingly referred to) is bad, but somehow its just not the same when its not J.P.

Famous for inspiring the name of "Atom Heart Mother", adopted by legends Pink Floyd during a Peel Session, he also has the second most famous Floydian claim to fame in that it was he who coined the masterpiece that the music of Pink Floyd was the 'Sound of dying Galaxies".

No-one has come close to Peel since his passing, and its interesting to note that not one, but 3 different DJ's have taken over his weekly slots.

John was responsible for introducing me to most of the music I listen to today, and like him, I now share a fondness for the Undertones and, as he would put it... 'The mighty, Fall". Another entry will follow on the anniversary of his passing, but for now;

Thankyou Sir John of Peel, Margrave of the Marshes.