Matthew's Journal

I have an ITIL course next week, which has made me start thinking about ITIL again. My experiences of ITIL have led me to the view that it's largely harmful; what am I missing?

Starting with the ad hominem, it arose from the civil service, which does not have a stellar record of IT delivery. Also, it has an institutional dislike of specialists, which I think informs some of the ITIL philosophy.

My first grumbles with ITIL are about jargon; it has a special word for all sorts of things which means you have to be ITIL trained to understand what people are going on about, which I don't think results in clear communication. Also, it insists on talking about "customers"; I think this is harmful because it sets a relationship up between IT and IT's customers, rather than treating colleagues as colleagues who work together in collaboration. It often seems to miss the opportunity for IT to provide some guidance into what the users of a particular service might need.

Then there's the procedural obsession - everything has to have its own Capital Letter Management Process. In my experience, this leads to a lot of process (and water-fall style setting plans in concrete) at the expense of anything that might be considered agile delivery or informal interaction between teams. While in theory ITIL lets you do continual service improvement, this often feels like an afterthought - there's too much weight of procedure to do anything like rapid iterations in collaboration with users. And there tends to be considerable procedural siloization between development and operations, which further makes any sort of rapid deployment / devopsy model difficult.

Finally, ITIL seems to result in organisations where everything has to be Managed and Approved by Management. So you have a Change Management Process which disenfranchises your IT experts, because before they can do anything they have to produce a pile of paperwork which goes to a Change Management Board (made up of management) who get to say yes or no to a proposal. The effect is that your IT experts don't feel trusted to do their jobs (because they aren't) and are disempowered to improve things - you can't scratch an itch quickly, because some remote bit of management has to weigh in before you can actually do anything.

This morning, all my LJ pages have a little banner saying "To gain access to all LiveJournal features you should validate your email", and furthermore, I am unable to comment on even my *own* posts. This is an email address that I've not changed in ages.

Also, LJ says "Non-authenticated email address: You must have an authenticated email address in order to post to another account" when I'm

I go looking, when the "resend validation email" button doesn't achieve anything - while my email provider is very picky, I have it whitelisted to allow anything from *.livejournal.com to my LJ address.

Turns out email is coming from 208.93.1.33, which a) resolves to a hostname with invalid characters in (lj_notifications.livejournal.com, and underscores aren't allowed in hostnames) b) is on at least one email blacklist http://www.spamhaus.org/query/ip/208.93.1.33

a) means that it doesn't match my whitelisting exemption (since the relevant bit of infrastructure will only resolve to valid hostnames), and b) means that my email provider isn't going to talk to it any time soon.

So, well done LJ, you've buggered up your email setup, and externalised the cost onto me.

ETA: they seem to have resolved the not-being-able-to-post issue now (hence this!), and have now decided my email address is validated again...

I encountered this problem yesterday, and it took a bit of yak-shaving to fix. Further, I didn't find much of immediate help by googling, so I thought I'd note down what I did.

A little background

Back in the day, you configured your X session by writing a small script that would run a few programs (say a clock, maybe an xterm or two, something to fettle your background), and finally execute a window manager. You'd call this ~/.xsession, and all was good. As time went by, linux distributions started shipping increasingly fancy desktop environments like GNOME and KDE, but you could always write yourself an .xsession, and keep your old-style setup.

I've never quite been convinced by fancy window managers; I can't afford really massive monitors, so am jealous of my screen real-estate, and all these taskbars and widgets and so on take up too much of my screen. Also, I'm very used to my X setup, so it's efficient for me to carry on using it. If you care, I run fvwm with a 4x3 set of virtual screens, either xplanet (the earth as viewed from the moon) or xphoon (the moon in its current phase) as backdrop, and a little buici-clock.

The problem

Anyhow, atreic has been very kindly letting me use their computer to work from. It's running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, which has unity as the default window manager, and lightdm as the default display manager. I wanted to get my usual setup going, but with minimal disruption to atreic's computer (which implies minimal system-level changes). I installed fvwm, and that meant that lightdm would then offer me an fvwm option when I logged in, but that still didn't run my .xsession.

The solution

A bit of digging found me this Debian bug report, which was forwarded upstream to Ubuntu. Debian resolved the problem by adding another .desktop file to their lightdm package that would run the user's .xsession. Ubuntu's developers, in their wisdom, decided that anything resembling a "run my .xsession" option would be far too confusing for their users. Instead, as a Ubuntu user, you have no way of getting your .xsession run without admin access to the machine.

Thankfully, I do have this, so I was able to pinch lightdm-xsession.desktop from Debian's package, and install it into /usr/share/xsessions/. And all was well with the world again!

A little grumbling

It seems to me that Ubuntu have chosen to break a traditional linux behaviour with not a great deal of justification; I ought to be able to get my .xsession run without needing rootly powers. Further, the man-pages for unity, lightdm, and dm-tool all leave a lot to be desired; the configuration files for lightdm, for example, are pretty poorly documented.

A couple of footnotes

I gather that Ubuntu's package of gdm does include a .desktop file that runs the user's .xsession. That's quite a heavyweight workaround!

If you want to know what all these .desktop files are about, there's a specification online.

You might well want to be able to get back to the Ubuntu login screen without logging out (if, for example, you wanted to let atreic log in to their own computer ;-). You can do this from the command-line thus:
dm-tool switch-to-greeter

I'm not a great gamer, and I'm not very good at computer games. I don't expect to be able to complete the "expert" mode in any of the games I own, and that's fine. The fact that I've yet to complete angband, nor expect to ever complete Burnout 3 doesn't really bother me.

What annoys me are games where some small bits are vastly harder than the rest of the game. For example, Lego Star wars is generally a very easy game to play, and if you die it doesn't really matter. Except for the vehicle levels, where you have to be pretty precise to get through them, and dying kicks you back to the start of the level. Those were frustrating because they were so much harder to get through than the rest of the game. Similarly, one of them had a level towards the end where you had to chase over platforms to avoid lava - it was very tricky to get right, and one mis-step took you right back to the start of the level.

Dungeon Hunter II is rapidly annoying me for a similar reason. I got hooked on it playing it on jacquic's iPad, so downloaded it for my iPod touch. It had been gentle fun (sometimes a bit challenging, but never especially so), right until the end-of-game boss (who you have to kill to unlock the harder difficulties, which you need to max out your character). This boss is proving impossible to kill - you have to destroy three versions of him, the last of which has two attacks that if you fail to evade them will kill you outright. The game has a "potions" mechanic whereby you have a stock of potions that restore your hit and mana points, but you can never carry more than 12. So once you've exhausted them fighting the boss and you get killed, when you respawn you have to go off and acquire another stock of 12, and then come back and start all over again. I've been through this process probably 6 times now, and it's become very annoying. I accept that the boss-fight should be harder than usual, but IMO, this one is just too hard, and leaves a sour note about the whole game.

So, facebook have a thing called "friend finder". You give it your email address and password(!), and it grobbles through your email account (!!) to which you have just given it unlimited access(!!!), supposedly to find the email addresses of your friends who aren't on facebook, so you can invite them to create a FB account.

Now, I would never trust a random website with my email account details, and I hope you would never do so either. It's worse than that, however. Facebook is carrying out a careful social compliance attack on you to persuade you to give up your account details. You've probably seen boxes that say "Sarah and Paul have found friends using Facebook's Friend Finder. Give it a try!", you may even have seen them with my name in (I know several people have, and I have the screenshots to prove it). These boxes make it seem safer for you to give facebook your email details - after all, your friends (including, possibly, those who are more computer-savvy than you) have done so, so it can't be so bad, can it? They're lies. I have never given facebook my email account details. Facebook is lying to you, is using my reputation as the grumpy bastard with no social skills who knows his way round a computer to lie to you, to con you into giving it control of your email account.

In my view, that's pretty evil.

I would like to remind everyone of rule 163 [0]. It exists to protect a vulnerable minority who are regularly subjected to abuse and intimidation by a more powerful group. That intimidation and abuse nearly always goes unpunished unless injury results, and if this minority are killed and a prosecution occurs, the penalties are relatively small. I'm talking about cyclists.

Rule 163 states, amongst other things "give motorcyclists, cyclists and horse riders at least as much room as you would when overtaking a car", which is sadly not very clear, but is helpfully illustrated:



It is my experience that many many drivers ignore this rule entirely if obeying it would mean the slightest delay to their journey. When you're in a car, please remember rule 163, and give cyclists plenty of room; if you're not driving, encourage the driver to do so, especially if they are a professional driver.

When commuting, I find I often have an unpleasant choice to make - either I cycle in the primary position, in the center of my lane, and get shouted and honked at and overtaken dangerously by some drivers who want to punish me for holding them up, or I cycle in the secondary position (about 1m from the kerb) and get people squeezing past with inches to spare because they are trying to overtake even though there is oncoming traffic and it's not safe to do so. This is quite frankly unacceptable.

On one evening cycle home, one taxi driver passed me twice (I overtook him while he was queuing in traffic). On both occasions, he sounded his horn repeatedly, revved his engine hard, and overtook dangerously close - if he'd misjudged it, or I'd wobbled, he would surely have hit me. I complained to the council's taxi licensing officer who said he'd do nothing unless there was a prosecution. The police/CPS won't prosecute unless a cyclist is injured, so taxi drivers can (and do) behave dangerously around cyclists they don't like without fear of any comeback.

There are a few further points I'd like to raise:

Cycle facilities are often worse than useless. The recommended width of a cycle lane is 2m; almost none that are not also bus lanes are this wide. That means that motorists overtaking at the white line (which many of them do) are passing at much less than the Rule 163 distance. Furthermore, the surface of these on-road cycle lanes is often poorer than the rest of the road, and they fill with debris from the road. I often cycle just outside these sort of lanes for these reasons. Shared-use paths for pedestrians and cycles are dangerous, for both cyclists and pedestrians; indeed there is research showing they are more dangerous to cycle on than the road proper. If you cycle much faster than walking pace, there is a risk of collision with pedestrians who meander across the shared-use path as if it were a pavement, and for all cyclists, there is a risk of collision wherever the path crosses a side-street - it seems that drivers don't expect to meet cyclists at these points, so fail to spot them. Indeed, I'd go as far as to say that many cycle facilities actually make cycling more dangerous, as drivers are more likely to bully cyclists using the road if they see such a facility that the cyclist isn't using.

Accordingly, I'd like to remind drivers that cyclists are not obliged to use these facilities, and you should not shout at those that choose not to. As I say above, often the cyclist is safer on the road. More generally, though don't intimidate cyclists who you feel are delaying you. Cyclists are perfectly entitled to be on the roads, and are a vulnerable group of road users. If you feel a cyclist has made an odd decision about whether to use a cycle facility or not, whether or not to wear a helmet, or whatever, consider that they are entitled to make their own minds up about these things, and have probably given the matter more thought than you have. Shouting "helpful" comments to them is bullying.

Finally, and it shouldn't need saying, driving dangerously to intimidate or punish cyclists is immoral and illegal. Don't do it! I should be able to cycle to and from work free from people threatening to kill or maim me with their vehicles. In an ideal world, there would be effective sanctions against dangerous drivers who collide with cyclists, even if the cyclist is not seriously injured. In practice, this doesn't happen, and even when drivers kill cyclists, they not infrequently escape being charged with any offense.

So yes, remember rule 163, and give cyclists a chance!

ETA This DfT article is quite sensible.

[0] No, this isn't a joke about rules about porn on the internet

For a looong time (like, since about 1997), I've had one wallet. It did exactly what I wanted, and fitted in my pocket. Occasionally I'd think about replacing it, but could never find one with the same features. Sadly, a third party has managed to break it irretrievably, so I need to replace it. Ideally reasonably soon, since the current substitute has a couple of major UI bugs.

Rant first: why does no-where let you buy wallets by desired feature? I'm not interested in the branding on my wallet, I'm interested in its functionality. AFAICT, there isn't even a web-site that lets you do this, never mind a real shop - places selling wallets seem to just heap them up higgledy-piggledy, and leave you to rummage in vain.

Secondly, does anyone know where I might get a decent replacement? I'd show you pictures of the old one, but we don't own a digital camera. Its key features were:
i) bi-fold wallet (i.e it folds in half)
ii) two rear banknote sections
iii) at least 8 credit-card sleeves (the old one had a middle section, with 4 sleeves on each side, so you could pull cards out readily, as they all pulled out in the upwards direction, rather than having a flap you had to flip up, and pull cards down out of, like say this one, which I suspect would be troublesome in use)
iv) coin purse in the same orientation as the rest of the wallet (it was zipped, which I think was better than press-studded, but maybe I could cope with the latter) - this means you can faff with notes and coins at the same time without the coins falling out
v) could be poppered close (although I managed without when that functionality failed, so maybe this isn't so important)
vi) fits in my pocket
vii) black leather (though I'd take one that matched all the above if it didn't match this!)

ETA: this one is laid out similarly to how the card-holder in my old one was. I think it has only 1 notes section, though.

What car-drivers who shout at me about cycle paths are trying to achieve. This morning's was pretty typical. As he overtook (as part of a group, who had been delayed more by a learner making a hash of pulling off at the lights), he shouted "...fucking cycle path", and made some sort of gesture. The manner of these imprecations suggests that "there's a shared-use off-road cycle path here; this cyclist obviously doesn't know about it, so I'll let him know to speed his journey" is not the primary motivation - and in any case, at commuter o'clock, the cyclists are mostly regulars who will be well aware of the path in question. Do these drivers really think that they're going to persuade me by force of their argument that I'd be better off on the cycle-path?[2] I doubt it; similarly, they don't seem interested in stopping for a chat on the relative merits of cycling on the road or the shared-use path (the variation "what's wrong with the cycle path" seems largely rhetorical).

Which leaves me with the options that they're trying to intimidate the pesky cyclists off their roads, or just want to make the cyclists' morning miserable. Why does anyone think this is a reasonable way to behave?[1] Cyclists are vulnerable road-users, and overly-aggressive driving can be quite alarming.

Some mornings I'm moved to attempt a pithy response, although I've yet to find a good one. "On yer bike" is the currently-preferred one, as "roads are for bikes too" lacks punch. brrm suggests "fucking planet", and I have sometimes resorted to suggesting by gesture that the driver concerned enjoys their own company a little too much (usually only for drivers that have overtaken dangerously whilst hurling abuse).

[1] I'm aware of road-rage, yes.
[2] For the record, cycling on the road is entirely legal, and what patchy research there is suggests that shared-use paths are more hazardous for both cyclists and pedestrians than cycling on the road

If you follow the UK news, you'll know that Dr Bilal Abdulla was recently found guilty of conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to cause explosions, and sentenced to life in jail, following two failed car-bombings in London, and the driving of a burning car into Glasgow Airport. Fair enough.

What you might have missed is that his co-accused, Dr Mohammed Asha, who was found not guilty, is still in prison, and we're trying to deport him, claiming he's "not conducive to the public good". This is outrageous! He's an innocent man, by all accounts a talented and dedicated doctor. Haven't we fucked his (and his family's) life up enough?

The python interface to databases is increasingly irking me; I have a load of working code that talked to an Oracle database (via cx_Oracle), that I now want to make talk to a Postgresql database (via pgdb). This is far too much pain. Firstly, there are 5 different parameter styles for python database modules (and the two modules concerned use different ones), secondly there seems to be no specification as to how types should be returned - so while cx_Oracle returns date objects (sensibly!) for date columns, pgdb returns strings instead (why???).

Bah.