Climbing in Pembroke

For the third time I've just come back from a weekend in Pembroke, South Wales.

That's South Wales in mid-October and prior to what is supposedly going to be a shit Winter (well not shit if you're a keen ice climber). Despite all this I was climbing in shorts and tshirt. In the words of Peter Griffin un-freaking-believable!

We arrived fairly late on Friday due to bad traffic and decided that perhaps we should sort out the food stuffs for the next day rather than climbing as we thought it'd get dark.
By 6pm we were back at the campsite with no sign of the people we were staying with. A quick decision later and we decided to have a punt a quick climb on the nearest crag, Stennis Head.
Rocked up around 6.30 to the climb, geared up real quick and climbed with the sunset just finishing behind us! What a great start to the weekend, atmospheric and incredibly peaceful.

Saturday started reasonably early (considering I'm not at work) and a visit to Saddle Head (just round the corner from Stennis Head). Rather than abseil we chose the scramble round to the platform so we could warm up and get started.
First route was Sea Mist (a HS classic), although I've done it before my opinion was not very high. This time it was great, the sun and a little breeze made the climb refreshing and a nice start. The traverse was interesting as I started too high and almost slipped but recovered and powered though the moves.
Once that climb was finished an ab rope had appeared, courtesy of some friends, which gave much quicker access to the platform.
The second lead was Pink 'Un (VS 4c I think), an interesting corner that was hard work in places but with an easy finish. I'd previously completed this route in walking boots (seconding not leading) and found it hard work. Rock boots made short work of it though!
Arguably the  highlight of the day was going to Huntsman's Leap, a interesting effect of coastal erosion has given an incredible area from which one abseils in and climbs out!
Long time climber Dan took us down and agreed to lead an E2 (E is NOT for Easy :-P) seconding was hard and I did rest but hugely rewarding pulling through the two roofs that make up "Beast from the Undergrowth", great holds, great gear and a bit of a shit top!

Sunday was a relatively chilled day with only two climbs being completed at Mother Carey's Kitchen.
We (that's myself, Dan and Olly) rocked up hoping to ab down to one of the best E1's in the country (apparently), Rock Idol. Well the first abseil wasn't long enough to reach the platform, the second was in the wrong place and it was impossible to swing in. So we tried again to find an alternative route down, there was nothing that looked pleasant. Feeling down heartened and wishing only to get one climb in we decided to try a VS round the corner.
Ab was setup and down I went. As I got down there the tide was at its lowest. A quick peek around the corner confirmed that we would be able to scramble around, the E1 was back on!
Quick re-rack and Dan set off, big holds and good gear meant he soon was around the first roof and at the second. A slight miscalculation meant Dan went the wrong way but that was soon corrected and done right (or left as was the case). Olly seconded first and completed the route with only one rest.
I started out with some nerves considering any tug from above would result in me being pulled off the rock...eep. Still I finished it and decided right then that one day (hopefully in a years time) I would lead what is apparently the greatest E1!

All in all it was a fantastic weekend that the weather held out for. Climbing in shorts and tshirt, in South Wales alone is enough to make it a good weekend. Given the fact that it is also October made it into something to remember.

I hope to have another outing soon and use it to break up the groups of posts about computers or technology!
I'll try and edit this post later with some photos, topos and route info.

Belkin Wireless Cards on Windows 7 and Ubuntu 11.04

It seems my OS's have a configuration swap recently. I'm used to installing drivers on Windows, it's long been an accepted part of any reinstallation, I've toyed with slipstreamed CD's back when I first got XP but found the hassle of keeping them up to date was just not worth it so I just accepted the driver install process and got on with my life. Till I met Ubuntu, drivers were suddenly not needed (at least on this machine), everything worked. "Fantastic" thought I, I can't wait to try it out on my main PC. And that's where the dream was partially shattered. I'm not sure the exact reasons why some drivers are not included in the Ubuntu installations, but it appears to relate to whether the vendor is willing to release drivers to the Open Source community.
Either way, my Belkin card does not work out of the box on any Ubuntu version I have tried. Before someone says, try obscure-linux-version it works much bettter, why? I don't need to. I'm happy with Ubuntu everything that I want can be made to work with relative ease. Until I feel the need to switch, I'll stick with it. Anyway back to making my Belkin card work, it's based on the Broadcom BCM4306 chipset, in versions gone by installing the drivers was easy and just a matter of using the "Additional Drivers" app in Ubuntu. It seems that this time, it won't pick it up. Here's what I did:

1. Identify the card, open Terminal and type lspci | grep Wireless
2. My result was Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g ....etc, so I'm looking for the BCM4306 drivers for Ubuntu.
3. A google seach terms up this page from the Ubuntu documentation: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx
4. Scrolling down to the relevant section, indicates that for 11.04 all I need to do is install firmware-b43-installer and everything will work. Right so let's do that...
5. Typing sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer in Terminal results in the usual installation stuff. The installer then sets about installing the firmware, it collects the correct package from openwrt.org and installs the driver.
6. Done! Clicking the network icon in the top right shows the various wireless networks that are available for me to connect to. Magic.

Ubuntu documentation and a nicely packaged installer are all it took to get it working.
On Windows XP, as I've mentioned, the Belkin driver package is required. However, Windows 7 supports the device straight out of the box (no configuration necessary). To me this seems like quite a switch, the days of driver installation are numbered it seems. Everything is getting just that little bit easier!

Dual Screens in Ubuntu 11.04

Dual screens are wonderful feature of modern day computing. Unfortunately setting them up isn't always so easy.

In Windows everything is very simple, point click done so long as all the drivers are installed. But that's the end of the easy part, there will only be one task bar by default and moving windows between monitors was a pain (at least until Windows 7 came along). In Linux, setting up required a little more work and certainly has a lot more configuration options but each monitor is a lot more configurable. Want two taskbars? No worries, just add a new one. Want another "start menu" (to use the Windows terminology)? No worries, just add a new one!

Currently, I use a nVidia 460GTX with 2x Acer P193W displays. nVidia are pretty good to the Linux community and have handily supplied the "NVIDIA X Server Settings" tool which can be used to configure all the aspects of your monitor.

Configuring the settings for my setup was dead simple:
1) Open the NVIDIA X Server Settings app
2) Select the X Server Display Configuration page
3) Select the disabled monitor and click Configure
4) Set the monitor as TwinView
5) Configure the position (in relation to the other screen)
6) Click Apply. You will be prompted that some settings won't take effect until XServer is restarted so go ahead and do that. If you don't know how, the easiest method is restarting the computer which is what I did.

When your computer boots up again you should be good to go! However, if you're like me and plugged your monitors in on the wrong ports (my right monitor is always available first and I need to enable the left monitor) don't despair. Initially the unity menu will appear on the right monitor, that's ok. In the NVIDIA X Server Settings app and on the page we used to configure the monitors, click the left monitor. At the bottom of the options there is a check box for Make this the primary display for the X screen, check it and click Apply. Again you'll need to restart the XServer or reboot your machine whichever you fancy. You'll notice that the login prompt is still displayed on the left screen, as soon as you login though everything will swap over.

Sharing Your Wireless Connection On Ubuntu 11.04

It's been over a year since the last post, but I'm hoping to rectify that and start posting more frequently. To bring the blog back to life I thought I would post a useful piece of information that I picked from the MakeUseOf site (article here). It all came about because my desktop pc has an obscure Belkin wireless card. This card, although reliable, is not supported out of the box by Ubuntu as the source for the drivers has not been released (at least that's how I understand it). Fortunately, with an active internet connect it is possible to install drivers using the "Additional Drivers" application. Unfortunately this meant a wired connection, which involves running a 30metre network cable downstairs to my router. Damn. Well on the offchance that I might actually be able to resolve this I had a quick google and sure enough I dound the MakeUseOf article above. It seems that Justin was in a very similar bind to me and needed to share his laptops wireless connection:

What I wanted to do was plug my client’s computers into my laptop and have them access the Internet. When I tried to search for how to share your wireless connection in this way, I mainly found a series of cryptic instructions ““ often revolving around the excellent Firestarter firewall ““ none of which worked for me on Ubuntu 9.10.

Luckily, he had also found the solution:

Step 1: Edit Network Connections On your top panel, beside your clock and your system icons, you’ll see your network indicator. When you’re connected to wireless, it features bars telling you the stength of your network connection. Right-click this, then click “Edit Connections.” Step 2: Edit The Ethernet Settings In the window you just opened, make sure you’re looking at the “Wired” tab. Then select the “Auto eth0” connection and click “Edit.” Alternatively you can create a new connection by clicking “Add” but I found it simplest to just change the default. Just be sure to remember that you changed this setting in case you ever want to use your Ethernet port to access the Internet again, because you will have to change it back to do so. Step 3: Set To Share Here’s where stuff starts to look confusing, but don’t panic: it’s not that bad. Click the “IPv4 Settings” tab. Beside the word “Method:” there is a drop-down menu that allows you to pick the manner in which your Ethernet device connects to the network. Select the “Shared to other computers” setting. Restart your computer. Assuming everything applied correctly, you should now be able to connect any computer to the Internet via your laptop’s Ethernet port.

Initially I was sceptical, as I had already tried that setting. However step 3 includes one piece of important information Restart your computer. Once restarted everything worked. I suspect the restart step is not necessary, restarting the networking processes with sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart would be sufficient but I'm not in a position to try. All credit should go to Justin Pot at MakeUseOf, for providing the steps. I'm now off to finish the installation and get all the software setup!