Toblog

Since the blog has been very quiet of late, here is the transcript of the twitterview I have just finished where I discussed social media, technology trends in the trading world and football with the CME...

CMEGroup: @tobybryans Good afternoon and thank you for joining us. Let’s start with you describing your role at Schneider Trading #exchtalk

tobybryans: @cmegroup It’s my pleasure! I have two roles: Technical Exchange Liaison and Strategic Technologist. #exchtalk

tobybryans: @cmegroup I make sure comms between Exchanges and ISVs & our technical departments run smooth & both sides are always up to date #exchtalk

tobybryans: @cmegroup I also keep an eye on current technology trends to see if there is anything of interest to our business #exchtalk

CMEGroup: @tobybryans speaking of staying up to date – how do technology trends affect your business? #exchtalk

tobybryans: @cmegroup Technology immensely important for our edge. We’re always looking for better and faster solutions for all our systems #exchtalk

tobybryans: @cmegroup We talk to exchanges too about how they can help improve their solutions for us (just ask Mark!) #exchtalk

CMEGroup: @tobybryans We won’t ask which one you like working with the most ;) #exchtalk

tobybryans: @cmegroup I couldn’t possibly comment on that ;-) #exchtalk

CMEGroup: @tobybryans You are a busy man for sure. So when did you join Twitter and why? #exchtalk

tobybryans: @cmegroup I was at a BBC Backstage party when I first saw it in 2006 and I had no idea what it was but it intrigued me so I joined #exchtalk

tobybryans: @cmegroup Obviously #twitter has exploded recently and has become a far more useful tool than just keeping in touch with friends! #exchtalk

CMEGroup: @tobybryans So how do you use Twitter for work/Schneider? #exchtalk

tobybryans: @cmegroup Keeping up to date with tech, following the latest news, keeping in touch with and building new relationships. #exchtalk

CMEGroup: @tobybryans What do you think traders can get out of #Twitter? #exchtalk

tobybryans: @cmegroup Up to date and immediate discussion of latest news and market events from around the world often before the main stream #exchtalk

CMEGroup: @tobybryans You mentioned technology trends – are there any you want to say that Schneider is looking at? #exchtalk

tobybryans: @cmegroup two big areas we’re looking at are virtualization and latency measurement with #correlix and #corvil #exchtalk

CMEGroup: @tobybryans Two big trends for sure #exchtalk

tobybryans: @cmegroup absolutely, we’ve always been very good on latency but it’s got to the point where the old tools aren’t good enough #exchtalk

CMEGroup: @tobybryans London is one of the world’s soccer/football capitals – care to admit who you support? #exchtalk

tobybryans: @cmegroup HA! I was born in Wembley and so I saw close up how some football fans behave. Put me off for life… #exchtalk

CMEGroup: @tobybryans Last question: do you want to make a prediction for how traders will use Social Media a year from now? #exchtalk

tobybryans: @cmegroup It will bring new diversity to how they currently communicate and for brokers expanding and messaging their client base. #exchtalk

tobybryans: @cmegroup Given how pervasive access is becoming I think it’s going to be interesting for the regulators! #exchtalk

CMEGroup: @tobybryans Great point re: regulators and community growth. We shall see #exchtalk

CMEGroup: @tobybryans Well you are a busy man & sure you have other exchanges to tend to. We appreciate your time and thank you again #exchtalk

tobybryans: @cmegroup Thank you! It’s been fun to be your second vict… er… interviewee! #exchtalk

What is it with the wireless on Apple laptops and Netgear wireless routers? I have been aware of wireless problems (time outs on connection, random disconnects) with the DG834PN in the past but i fixed that by upgrading to the DG834N.

Recently, though, this now no longer works for both my clients and myself. There have been no changes on the router side but suddenly MacBooks have been unable to connect. I can only surmise that there has been an update to the wireless drivers on the Apple side that has caused this problem to surface on this router.

I have solved it by installing the latest DGTeam firmware (version 850), setting both the region and channel to AUTO (you also really need to do a complete router reset after installing this firmware). This is not particularly satisfactory though and Apple really needs to sort out the incompatibility with the entire family of Netgear routers. Anyone else experienced this and have a better way of fixing it?

I’ve recently had to upgrade from XenCenter 4 to XenCenter 5 and after the upgrade the console tab was not working: it was just a blank grey window.

After a bit of googling around archived forum posts I found out that the solution is:

1. Uninstall the upgraded XenCenter
2. Rename (for backup purposes) your home directory\Application Data\anything to do with Citrix or Xen
3. Reinstall XenCenter

I’ve bought the blogroll back since it disappeared during the upgrade. It’s now generated from my google reader opml feed which I export and run though some ruby which means it’s going to be up-to-date more frequently.

Here is the code that takes the opml and outputs the html fragment:

#!/usr/bin/ruby

require 'rexml/document'
require 'pp.rb'

class FeedData
  attr_accessor :name, :url, :category

  def initialize( name, url, category )
    ( @name, @url, @category ) = name, url, category
  end
end

class FeedDataList
  def initialize()
    @array = Array::new
  end

  def add( name, url, category )
    tmpFeed = FeedData::new( name, url, category )
    @array.push( tmpFeed )
  end

  def eachCategory
    catArray = Array::new
    @array.each do |feed|
      if !catArray.member?( feed.category ) then
        catArray.push( feed.category )
      end
    end

    catArray.sort.each do |result|
      yield result
    end
  end

  def eachItemInCategory( category )
    @array.each do |feed|
      if feed.category == category then
        yield feed
      end
    end
  end
end

def parse_opml( opml_node, feeds, parents_names=[] )
  opml_node.elements.each('outline') do |element|
    if element.elements.size != 0 then
      feeds = parse_opml( element, feeds, parents_names + [ element.attributes[ 'text' ] ] )
    end
    if element.attributes['xmlUrl'] then
      feeds.add( element.attributes['title'], element.attributes['htmlUrl'], parents_names.last )
    end
  end

  return feeds
end

opml = REXML::Document.new( STDIN )
feeds = FeedDataList::new
feeds = parse_opml( opml.elements['opml/body'], feeds )

feeds.eachCategory do |category|
  print "<br /><strong>#{category}</strong> "
  feeds.eachItemInCategory( category ) do |item|
    print "<a href=\"#{item.url}\">#{item.name}</a> "
  end
  print "\n"
end

To make it work:

$ ./opml2html.rb < 

I got the inspiration for the recursive opml parsing code from the Dekstop blog, so thanks are due to them!

Well, that upgrade seems to have been completed OK with a couple of issues: I had a couple of glitches one of which was to do with the rails backup of my database – fixed by turning off the backup stage in the rails installer. There was also an issue with my tags: I’ve known that my tags caused problems in the past with my use of the full stop. In the new typo it causes major problems so I wrote a quick script to replace full stops with underscores. Hopefully all is well now!

Written in today’s Metro by David Hill of the World Innovation Foundation

‘Government business secretary John Hutton’s announcement that Britain could have one wind turbine every half-mile along the nation’s coastline by 2020 is a terrorist’s dream come true. For, if we are to become so reliant upon this isolated energy generation, there is no way to protect them.’

He does go on to make some slightly better points but this just caught my eyes as a really spurious use of the threat of terrorism to argue the case against something he doesn’t like.

To use it as the opening argument of his correspondence really does smack of desperation as well.

As for the WIF, a quick google shows that the only person who really talks up WIF is David Hill. The few others that discuss it either believe it is a hoax or a well meaning, but ultimately flawed organization.

So, Channel 4 has quizzed facebook about just why they make it so hard to delete an account. For those of you just catching up, facebook allow you to ‘deactivate’ an account very easily but not delete all the data that you have put into their system. In order to fully delete the account, you need to manually delete every single item that you have placed into their care. They have said in the past that this is to make it easy to reactivate your account should you suffer a change of heart.

They make the following point:

Facebook does not use any information from deactivated accounts for advertising purposes.

They have to say this. One of the major value proposition of facebook is that they give you a useful tool to do what you want with in return for making money off your personal data from advertising revenue. I feel that it would be very wrong for them to farm out your data if you are no longer getting some benefit from it.

So, why keep it, and why make it so hard to properly remove yourself from their servers? I really hope the reasons are technical and that the database design has been organically grown or designed such that there is no referential integrity, thus making it harder to traverse down the various content stores working out who owns what.

At the risk of calling down the ire of facebook (and yes, I would be temporarily lost without it) I am seriously beginning to consider whether I want to give my data to this company no matter how granular the access controls are when there are some interesting alternatives (and no, I’m not talking about the excerable myspace).

So, we shall see. This isn’t yet my ‘turn off facebook moment’ but it may well not be far around the corner…

[Edited to add – this is an interesting take as well which makes one wonder – they say they don’t use deactivated information for advertising purposes. However, that answer very effectively excludes the many, many other uses the data has. Worrying.]

I’m used to seeing ssh dictionary attacks from single IPs, hitting my servers in a short amount of time. For the first time today, however, I have had entries like the following:

Oct 22 15:05:54 [sshd] error: PAM: Authentication failure for root from <hostname>

...fairly regularly spaced throughout the day, all from different hosts. The natural assumption is that the dictionary attacks are now being run from botnets.

Anyone else seeing these? In the past when noticing dictionary attacks I’ve blocked the source IP; that now seems a little harsh for hosts that are being used without their owners’ consent. If a lot of people did that it may encourage the owners to take more notice of their security, but such a draconian measure would require a large amount of people to take part in order for it to be effective.

A DNSBL for firewalls would be a possible solution, although there would have to be a way of notifying people the reason they can’t connect to a particular host.

Oh. Great.

A few excerpts from an article in this morning’s City AM (shame about the flash site):

Patientline, the company which offers hospital-bedside premium rater phone and television services has announced plans to cut the cost of calls, after admitting that a recent 160 per cent increase was “a mistake”.

The company caused controversy when it raised call charges for patients from 10p to 26p a minute in April.

[...]

Since the April price rise, Patientline has had to hold emergency talks with its lenders about its £80m debt.

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer company…