I’m brushing up on some technical skills and working on a few small projects. One of those is to create a TramTracker app for my Pebble Smartwatch, so I can just glance at my watch to see when the next tram is coming.

As a precursor, I got a handle on the TramTracker data source and made a Python module to quickly fetch the info my watch will need. I’m mentioning it here for the benefit of anyone with similar ideas googling around in the future. It’s on GitHub and in PyPI. I also made another module, pdfpipe, which is a python command line tool that takes text and spits out PDFs. I’ve found it quite useful.

The Pebble App is now up on the Pebble App store. So if you are one of the one (1) other Melbournians I know with a Pebble, go grab it. The source is available as well.

I recently had a reason to want to boot Linux on my Mac which already has a Windows Bootcamp partition. I wanted to just install Ubuntu onto a USB stick or hard drive and boot from that. The first bit turned out to be easy, but getting it to boot was quite arcane. I found lots of conflicting information on the web, and even after drinking from this fire hose of useful information it took a lot of trial and error to get it working.

It is possible – you just have to install like normal but requires a third-party boot loader and bit of jiggling before it will boot on its own. I’ve documented what I did below for posterity and others beating their head against the same issue.

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If you’re one of my fans (hi, Mum) you’ll have noticed I’ve been a bit quiet recently. Fortunately, I haven’t suffered organ failure of been taken hostage by jihadists. It’s just the usual story where a confluence of professional and extra-curricular obligations have curtailed my writing and blogging activities.

The upshot of my recent activity is a big change in direction, and one I’m very excited about. I’ve stepped down as EFA chair so I can enter the world of of federal politics on the staff of incoming senator Richard Di Natale. I begin when the new Senate starts on Friday, 1 July. As Senator Di Natale’s advisor I look forward to indulging my passion for policy and public debate, not only in the areas of technology and digital rights that I have been so vocal about in recent years, but in the much broader sphere, particularly Green politics.

I’ll no doubt be extremely busy in the near term coming up to speed on an exciting new job. As I lurk in Canberra, I look forward to reporting back on the successes of the Greens parliamentary team and giving some insight into how the

Courtesy Crikey, this correction from the New York Times is hilariously nerdy (I approve):

“An item in the Extra Bases baseball notebook last Sunday misidentified, in some editions, the origin of the name Orcrist the Goblin Cleaver, which Mets pitcher R. A. Dickey gave one of his bats. Orcrist was not, as Dickey had said, the name of the sword used by Bilbo Baggins in the Misty Mountains in The Hobbit; Orcrist was the sword used by the dwarf Thorin Oakenshield in the book. (Bilbo Baggins’s sword was called Sting.)”

As I mentioned before, one of the surprises in visiting North Korea was how the cult of personality based around the Kims was even more severe than I expected. President-for-eternity Kim Il Sung’s smiling chubby face was everywhere, including the sides of buildings, numerous shrines and mosaics, and upon the left breast of every North Korean citizen over the age of 15. (When we asked what happens if you lose your Kim badge, we were told it would never happen, nobody would be so careless.)

Other interesting indications of the magnitude of the cult were the bowling alley that had, under perspex, a bowling ball once admired by Kim Il Sung; the giant monument; the Mausoleum itself; and the hilarious Museum of Metro Construction, nearly as elaborate as the metro itself, detailing the many strokes of Kim genius that brought the metro into existence.

Officially, of course, the Kims are humble men; the various enormous and expensive monuments are “demanded” by the people or are simply the “will” of the people. The Arch of Triumph even has a poem to Kim Il Sung composed by “the people”. Thus is it not surprising that the media, that is to say the voice of the people, also has a Kim fixation. Sadly, I do not speak Korean and can’t fully appreciate the Korean domestic media, but luckily there is a weekly English language publication, the Pyongyang Times, and I eagerly read a few back-issues. It’s transparent propaganda that makes Murdoch look like an amateur, but with the folksy feel of a small local rag; it’s like Pravda meets the Port Fairy Gazette.

Here are some representative highlights. Sample below, or view this Flickr photoset with descriptions/comments.

As of this week I have assumed the role of Chair of the EFA board of management. Over the last few years EFA has increased its public profile markedly, and has played a leading role in debates around the internet filter, R-18+ games, privacy, and other issues. This has been in no small part to the excellent work done by outgoing chair Nicolas Suzor, whose dedication, eloquence and expertise will be sorely missed.

With the help of a very knowledgeable board I’ll do my best to keep the momentum going. I have some interesting ideas and passions still to come, so stay tuned.