Urbanus Magnus

In the Live-CD/USB install of the popular Ubuntu and its derivatives, the installer easily automates the encryption of home folders - a good feature for security, especially on a laptop. Should your laptop ever get stolen, the thieves won't be able to pull the hard drive out of your computer and be able to grab your personal information off of it. At least, in theory. Ubuntu and its derivatives by default do not give the root user a password, instead relying on the sudo command to perform tasks as an administrator. There are obvious benefits to this (a quick Google will give you a list), however this leaves open a massive loophole which effectively undermines any hard drive encryption. Without an explicit root password, a simple reboot of the computer into recovery mode will automatically boot into single user mode - as root. HDD encryption only works to keep people who cannot log into your system from viewing your files. As soon as someone is able to boot the system and log i...

The Ubuntu Phone OS made a noticeable splash as its initial developer preview was released for public download February 21st - and rightly so, as the Unity and screen-edge-based interface set this smart phone experience apart. Though this developer preview lacked a lot of functionality - an 'alpha' designation would be appropriate - the preview demonstrated a lot of interesting features that show a lot of promise. Initial Impressions: The design of the unlock/welcome screen is well thought out, in that the reticule in the centre warmly greets the user back to their phone. Once up and running, an animated version of the unlock screen should be a visual treat. Definite strength here. Once inside the phone, I really liked the unique layout of the separate screens: one for Music, one for Apps, and others for other content. It uses the page idea common to android and iPhone, but makes it so that one is specific to a type of content. I can see power users loving the abi...

*Edit: Somebody has posted the .zip files for the Galaxy Nexus, for those who wish to download them directly. Link . Ubuntu phone OS has *just* come out, and for those frustrated because using the flashing commands provided  don't appear to be working with their phone, there is another way to accomplish the goal . I encountered this problem myself when I attempted to flash Ubuntu phone onto my Galaxy Nexus running Cyanogenmod 10.1 -- the flasher refused to properly wipe /sdcard and overwrite the previous OS. Instead, I performed a successful install by using ClockworkMod recovery environment, doing a factory reset, and then installing the two Ubuntu zip files manually. What to do: Make sure your Android phone/tablet is rooted -- this tutorial relies upon this. In your Android phone/tablet, download and install ROM Manager. Within ROM Manager, navigate to the "Install ClockworkMod Recovery" option, and press it. Follow the instructions to install Clo...

The new Ubuntu Phone operating system is set to arrive February 21st -- a little less than 4 days away. For those who aren't familiar with Ubuntu, it is an extremely popular Linux operating system, who is now aiming to expand their territory into the mobile market. Android itself is Linux-based, and so the move from desktop to mobile isn't unprecedented. The OS will likely hold its own against custom Android ROMs -- such as Cyanogenmod and Android Open-Kang Project (AOKP).  The Ubuntu Phone OS promises a number of interesting new features. Image Credit: Canonical Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth has stated in a video published on the ubuntu website  (click the "Watch Video" button) that the operating system will be: Buttonless -- all the edges have functions which replace the standard 3-button tray in Android Run Ubuntu applications -- what features and programs will be available at launch in the mobile version are still up for debate ...

The two day stay in Siena was just enough time to tour the local sites and take a bit of a break to recharge for our next cycling ride to Montalcino.  Looking over our off-line digital map and planning the cycling route with its elevation profile in advance of the trip made us a little nervous; we would be setting new personal records with our climbs.  Again being mentally prepared for the trip helped.  The ride turned out to be not as difficult as we had anticipated -  even though we ultimately climbed to an altitude of 610 meters by the time we arrived in the town of Montalcino itself, we managed to avoid steep inclines for the most part. We had a very steady climb on the way out of Siena for about an hour and a half.  We then took a break at the crest of the climb to nourish ourselves with a nice lunch that we had purchased and packed from an alimenteria before leaving Siena - fresh pane ronde con sale , local Italian pomodoros , soft formaggio an...

We arrived safely back home at around 11:30pm Toronto time Monday the 18th, after 2 stopovers (one in Frankfurt, the other in Washington, DC), and a lot of confusion in the Naples Int'l Airport. Certainly a bad experience with staff, which lead to us both nearly missing our flight, and also damage to our bicycles. But more on that will come with the Naples posting later. Internet from Rome and south of there had been extremely spotty, and expensive at times (5 euro per hour at a few of our hotels - and still slow by N. American standards), so we haven't yet posted about our visits from Siena onwards. Besides, making time for blog-writing was difficult, what with all the sights planned. For the next few days, I will be writing-up the log of the rest of the trip. So, expect Montalcino's write-up tomorrow, then that of Montepulciano on Friday, followed by posts for Orvieto, Viterbo, Rome, Pompeii, and Napoli and our returning flight in the next week-and-a-bit. After a G...

Since we arrived late in Volterra the previous day, we had a quick walk around the town before we packed up and hit the road to Siena.   Starting with a height advantage helped, but the overall trip was still long, and it was a brutally hot day at times. We stopped for a break at the medieval fort of Monteriggioni halfway along the route to Siena. The road up and through the town gate was so steep that it had ridges created by interleaving the paving stones to give extra traction! One of the gates into Monteriggioni. The fort/town is one of Siena's defensive structures built around the 13th century to protect trade routes against attacks from their rival Florence. In fact, this is where the Dante Alleghieri hid out after he had angered some powerful Florentines with his caricatures of them in his Inferno.  It still has all of its tall walls and 13 turrets intact. Main square of Monteriggioni Siena is possibly a challenger to Florence, in terms of having impre...

We had a good ride from San Gimignano to Volterra.   We were mentally psyched because we knew the ride up to Volterra itself would be very steep.  We stopped by the Super Mercato located just outside of the walls of San Gimignano and bought some fruit, pane, formaggio and salami just before we left for our ride. This worked out well because there weren't a lot of little towns between San Gimignano and Volterra.  The first leg of the day was very ejoyable. It was fairly quiet with few cars. We did have the company a lot of little green lizards who were sunning themselves every few meters along the roadside. They would scury under the scrub brush and grass as we approached them. At one point we road along a gravel road with beautiful vistas of colourful Tuscan hills with rich olive groves, vineyards and grain fields.  Small volcano-like mountains jutting out of the hills in the distance; very picturesque. Riding along an old country road We learned...

We are finding it difficult to find time in between cycling, sleeping and seeing sights to update the blog. We made a few mental notes though, to remember what happened where and when, so we can write up the visits to all the towns we have seen once we reach Rome (or possibly Viterbo). Right now, we are in Orvieto, just preparing to see the town briefly and then check out and cycle to Viterbo.

Note: we are staggering our posts as we have been finding the internet to be slow and spotty coverage. All our posts are behind a few days. June 4 was our first true riding day, where we were tested by the Italian hills and our fully loaded bicycles. The weather cooperated with us for the most part, but we did have to stop around 2pm for about 45 minutes to avoid a down-pour. We found refuge under the overhang of the roof of San Andrea, a tiny country church, about a third of the way between Florence and San Gimignano. We were certainly expecting hills - but I think we (*Ryan*) somewhat underestimated the actual magnitude of the climbs. Here are some stats for our Florence-San Gimignano trek: Total Distance: 60.5 km Average (Moving) Speed: 9.98 km/h Max Speed: 49.3 km/h (gotta love the ride down, after the long climb up!) Min Elevation: 81 m Max Elevation: 443 m Total Elevation Gain: 2087 m We found that our unlocked Galaxy Nexus phone was invaluable for gui...

On Friday we flew in to Florence, after a 7-hour flight from Toronto to Frankfurt, and then a short 2 hour commuter jet brought us into the Gallileo Gallilei airport of Florence. Understandably we were slighty worried about how well our bicycles fared in the flight - or if they even followed us to Italy in the cargo hold of the plane. However, everything went smoothly and our bicycles survived undamaged - likely due to our "leave them no chances to break something" approach to packing them. It took us a little over and hour and a half to unpack the bikes again and move all our equipment from the duffel bags to our panniers, and then off we went. But very slowly, due to the narrower italian roads and zippy cars scooting about haphazardly. Our babies - they are ok! All packed and loaded on the way from the airport to the hotel. Although initially scary and seemingly devoid of order, we have come to find that Florentine roads have polite and highly skil...