I just read that it's Blogday, if you squint at the date. So here's some I find interesting:

• Bruce Schneier - talking sense about security
• Voidstar - found this via GeoURL. It's the guy behind Ecademy and he writes interesting stuff about things like Skype
• Music thing - weird and wonderful music gear
• Ndiyo - thin client stuff
• How can I recycle this? - Is there anything that can't be recycled?

Apparently you are supposed to tell the people you link to that they know, but I may not bother. I'm up for suggestions of other blogs to read, but I'm trying to keep my feeds under control. Google Reader is still serving me well.

I'm still logging my reading on my booklist. You can see the latest listed down the right side of my page. I've managed over a dozen so far this year, which is good going for me. I still have a backlog to get through. We have a 'library' at work of books people no longer want and that has provided a couple of reads for me. I'm generally into not buying so much stuff these days, so that is perfect for my needs. The problem is that I am less inclined to get rid of my own books, but I ought to clear the shelves a bit. If I'm honest then there are plenty that I will never read again, but there will be some that I can imagine re-reading. Besides, Tanya likes to re-read things like the Pratchetts and the kids may read them one day. I like the idea of minimalist living, but my hoarding instinct is stronger.

I've used Skype for a while now. I don't often use it to call phones, but it's there as a way to talk to certain people. It's been generally reliable with very little down time, but yesterday something went wrong. The connection keeps dropping and I never see all my contacts. We use it at work to keep in touch with our various offices, but that has not been viable during this issue.

They have been good enough to keep us up to date with progress. I'm intruiged by the remark: 'This problem occurred because of a deficiency in an algorithm within Skype networking software.' I wonder what suddenly went wrong. They use P2P technology, so you would expect it to be fairly robust, but there must be some central control.

Of course I would prefer to use more open technologies, but you sometimes have to go with the crowd. I'm still on Jabber, via the Google Talk network, but am not using their software, so I can't do the voice chat. I would like to see more of my contacts using Jabber, but it seems they are mostly committed to Skype and MSN.

It's been my intention for a while to make a proper back-up of my files. I have used various methods such as CD-R, DVD-R, external hard drives (various sizes) and even copying to a remote server, but some files were too big for these. So I bought myself a new Maxtor 320GB USB drive. That's bigger than my combined existing drives. I chose this one based on it being the cheapest large drive in PC World and I happened to have vouchers to spend there. It's nothing exciting to look at, just a large blob with some cables, but it at least runs nice and quiet.

I haven't quite achieved my back-up aims due to a couple of issues. Firstly, the drive is formatted as NTFS. It seems that this is supported on Linux these days thanks to the NTFS-3G project. I installed that and can indeed read and write to the drive. The next problem was that I could not copy files with certain characters in the names. It was suggested on the LUG IRC channel that I set the locale for the drive to something using UTF8. I added a line to my fstab, but the drive was being mounted from settings elsewhere and not using that. By unmounting it and re-mounting with a different location I was able to resolve that for now. So now I can copy my files, but Konqueror complains about not being able to copy certain attributes. I'm not so worried about that as long as the files are copied. I would like to set up a script to do incremental backups, but have had problems with both rsync and rdiff-backup. I think these could also be related to the destination filing system not having the same capabilities as what is used in *nix.

There are some alternatives to explore. I could create a tar file (makes it trickier to get files back out) or re-format the drive. I need to be sure that the latter will not break anything. I had another drive caddy that would only detect drives formatted in FAT32. I'll concentrate on just getting the files copied for now.

I'm open to suggestions on how to back up efficiently. Feel free to leave comments here.

The LUG meeting last week was a bit quiet. Only five of us, so we just chatted. I expect others are on their holidays at the moment.

An article on Wired today mirrors my own feeling on the social network phenomenon. We should not be tied to a certain site to host all our content. The article mentions XFN as a way to show who you know. I've used that for years and a few friends do too, so that it is possible to map our network, but you need to have the right tools. They don't mention FOAF, but that does not show much sign of hitting the mainstream. I first heard about it years ago and have maintained my own file, but it's beyond the technical abilities of many people unless they can auto-generate a file using tools. I have wanted to generate some parts of this site from my FOAF file, but have yet to get around to it.

Meanwhile, my site brings some of my external feeds together via their own web gadgets.

If you have a presence on various services then it is possible to bring them all together using something like Mugshot, but this does not address the point raised by some commenters on the article, that there is no easy way to restrict access to content outside the 'walled garden' of a network like Facebook. There would have to be some form of access control using user accounts, or better, OpenID with automatic recognition of users via the FOAF file. This is beyond my web programming skills for now, but maybe someone else has some ideas.

For those reading the feed, this site does allow for comments, so feel free to click through and leave your thoughts for general consumption.

My first time seeing Prince and my first return to the big tent since Y2K. The venue has been totally rebuilt inside. There's a load of restaurants, but they were all full when we got there. There are also some empty units and space for more to be built. We got take-away burgers upstairs, but could have had pizza, stir fry or other options. Not cheap, of course, but it filled us up.

The arena itself is pretty big. Capacity is 20,000, but the top levels, above the private boxes, are very high up. We were down on the lower tiers and had a good view of the central stage. The stage is in the shape of Prince's 'symbol'. Those down on floor level might not have been able to see everything as the stage was above head height and the screens were up near the ceiling.

We were expecting a support act, but none materialised and the main act took the stage at 8:45. The band appeared from beneath the stage. There were two keyboard players, female drummer, bass 4-man horn section, two backing singers and two apparently identical dancers. To start with the band played some instrumental New Orleans-style jazz with the horn players taking turns at solos. Then the man himself rose up though the centre of the stage to deafening noise. He wandered around the stage singing Satisfied from 3121 before getting things rocking with Cream. During his cover of Play That Funky Music some bloke appeared on stage and I expected bouncers to chuck him off, but then others came up from a roped off exclusive area next to the stage. They proceeded to dance, badly, with Prince and the dancers. I'm not sure what they did or paid to deserve this honour. Luckily they only stayed for one song.

He went on to play extended versions of an assortment from various albums, but he did disappear whilst the band played What a Wonderful World. He did Lolita and Black Sweat, with Prince playing bass, from 3121, Kiss, U Got the Look, Lets Go Crazy and Take Me With U from Purple Rain. One one encore a backing singer did Gnarls Barclay's Crazy. He kept us waiting for the final encore, but appeared with his purple symbol guitar to play Purple Rain and finished with Guitar from the new Planet Earth album that we were given as we entered and I'm listening to now.

The sound could have been better. It was loud, of course, but the vocals were indistinct and everything was a bit 'mushy'. He played a lot of guitar and did it excellently.

He does put on a good show with lots to keep your attention. He seemed to enjoy it too and kept excouraging the audience to sing and dance. When he finished at 10:45 the house lights came up, but most people did not want to leave as they knew he had come out again at the first show after some people had left, but it was not to be. Eventually we were told to leave and were home a couple of hours later via tube and train.