The reek of cowshit,
       Mingled with the pong of donkey piss.

He is about to pass out (never could stand blood),
       She is screaming her lungs out.
       
A brief respite (Unto us a son is given!).

The bairn is greeting, 
       The cow ... (TMI!)
       
Can you smell it?
       Let him who has nose understand!

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chrisburkard:

Can you imagine living here?

www.chrisburkard.com

What really caught my eye on this shot is the shadow the island casts on the sea, must have been amazing low sun.

I have been increasingly frustrated with the not-so-old Netgear DGND4000 ADSL modem / router / wifi. My two biggest issues with this gadget are the fact that (a) Netgear just can’t be bothered with firmware updates, and (b) the really limited firewall configuration.

So, I have replace this ‘does it all / does nothing well’ unit with a DryTek Vigor 130 modem, Ubiquiti EdgeRouter PoE and OpenMesh M2P wifi unit (I already had the latter knocking around). It’s been easy to setup, the modem requires no configuration, just pluging the phone line and ethernet cable in.

The Edge is very nice piece of kit, whith decent amount of documentation and community support. It’s not a 'PnP’ device, it needs to be set up and configured, which requires reasonable understaning of how networks work, but it has a really nice GUI console that can do the most common tasks, includes some wizards for basic setups, and a powerful CLI interface (console, ssh) for the rest. The only thing not mentioned in the setup docs was to immediately update the FW to the latest version, as the pre-installed FW was quite old.

The only mild disappointment, the M2P does not work with the Edge 24V PoE, though it should; I might have to buy a PoE injector from OpenMesh, or one of the newer units, so I can place the unit in a better place.

But here comes the shocker: my broadband speed has doubled … take that Netgear!

n., a small venture with lot of advertising, often involving brief micro discomfort; cf. adventure, n., adversity, n.

I have set up a new blog dedicated primarily to moderately challenging hill runs:

aye.tf

(It seemed sensible to separate such important stuff from posts about GPG keys, and other drivel.)

To do any of the routes on this site is not normal, sensible or rational.  They will appeal most to those whose horizons stretch beyond the urban wastelands of our celebrity culture and our mindless consumerism, past the swamps of our political malaise and way beyond the arid deserts of religious or scientific fundamentalism.  For a while, at least, these routes will allow you to experience true wealth, freedom and beauty by stepping outside the narrow confines of normal thinking and living into a semi-wilderness where everything is free to anyone with a little time, effort and awareness!

The awesome Health Warning on gofar.org.uk/about.html !

The Trossachs offer some excellent longer runs with a properly remote feel beyond the usual and well trodden routes and walkers paths. I have been meaning to write up notes on some of the running possibilities in the Trossachs back country for a while – this is a start.

Ben Ledi – Benvane Variations

Ben Ledi is a popular hill with runners, but most simply do the short walker’s loop. In fact, the section between Ben Ledi and Benvane provides superb, undulating and flowing running in both directions (as long as you don’t mind wet feet, but what hill runner does, right?)

Instead of starting from the busy Stank Road car park as the walkers do, I prefer the Bochastle car park on A821 not far after Laid Inn. Not only it is always quiet, but the pleasant 3km jog along Sustrans route 7 provides a gentle warm up before the steady climb up Ben Ledi that starts directly from the Stank Road parking.

As you cross the stream at NN 574 091, be aware this is the only good water source for the next 15km or so; there is a fair bit of stationary water along the way, but clean running water can be surprisingly hard to locate (I confess, I carry chlorine tablets for emergencies after I got caught out on this very run on a hot summers day couple of years back).

From Ben Ledi summit follow the walkers path along the obvious ridge N and NW into the bealach above Stank Glen, then continue along the fence line past Lochan nan Corp. The old fence goes all the way to Benvane, making navigation straight forward. The faint path along it provides the best running ground; stick to it, only leaving it around 30 or so vertical meters below the summit (another faint path).

Now you have two main options:

Option I – return

Retrace you steps past Lochan nan Corp, then pick up the walkers path down Stank Glen. This is by no means an inferior option, the running is again superb in reverse, and the lower Stank Glen path offers excellent fun.

26km / 1300m ascent.

Option II – cary on

Follow the NNW ridge of Benvane toward Glen Buckie. The running is, again, excellent, on a faint path. At around NN 525 159 the path turns NE following the ‘ridge’ line clearly visible on the map, passing NW of the small patch of trees, exiting on the farm track at the bridge; enjoyable, fast, descent.

Take the track to Immeroin, then follow the path sign posted for Strathyre, sparsely waymarked by wooden poles. When on the flat ridge, follow the path, which crosses a fence at a fancy metal gate (Victorian?). Continue on the path departing perpendicular from the fence, then curving gradually left (N) through younger trees until exiting on a good track in the deforested area above Strathyre. Take the track down, then return along route 7 back to start.

~35km / 1500m ascent

This is a brief summary of my experience in making GPG and SSH work using the OpenPGP SmartCard and the Gemalto Shell Token. This process is irritatingly much harder and more awkward than it should be, hence this brief write-up in hope it might help someone else.

The main documentation for using the OpenPGP card is the official HOWTO, which is, unfortunately badly out of date (last updated in 2006!), and is useful only in regards to how to use the card, but not the initial set up.

Debian

• Debian installs GPG 1.x by default; while it is possible to use this with the card, in order to work with more reasonable key sizes, GPG 2.x is required, so install the gpgv2 package (and you might want to set up a bash alias as well).
• Install gnupg-agent and its implicit dependencies needed for the card to work: pcscd, scdaemon and gpgsm packages.
• Edit your .gnupg/gpg.conf and add ’use-agent’ (on a line of its own, without the quotes).
• Edit (or create) .gnupg/gpg-agent.conf and add ’enable-ssh-support’ (again, on a line of its own, without the quotes).
• While in gpg-agent.conf, add ’scdaemon-program /usr/lib/gnupg2/scdaemon’ – this is really important! – at least on 64bit system gpg-agent looks for the daemon in a wrong directory (you might want to verify this is in fact the location of the scdaemon on your system).
• Ignore the udev bits in the HOWTO, and any instructions you might come across regarding modifying the X11 session script or your .profile etc.
• If you are running Gnome, use Startup Applications and disable the GPG and SSH agent functionality from Gnome Keyring (Gnome Keyring does not support cards, so you are using gpg-agent instead).
• Make sure your email client is using gpg2, e.g., if you are using Enigmail in Thunderbird, go to the preferences and override the default if necessary.
• Log out of the X11 session, log back in.

Now if you insert your card and run:

    gpg2 --card-status

You should see info about about the card; if you get an error message, you might try running:

    gpg-agent --server --debug=guru

This gives you an interactive interface (though you would be forgiven for not noticing that), and on the (missing) prompt type:

    scd help

This should give you an idea what the problem is.

Once you get the above to work, follow the instructions in the official HOWTO on initializing the card and generating or transferring keys onto it (if you are moving existing keys onto the card make sure you back them up first, as they get removed from your keyring, so if things don’t go right …). Verify everything works (e.g., send yourself an encrypted email).

If you are using GPG on multiple machines, the simplest way is to copy the secring.gpg file over once you are done.

The SSH part

Once the above is working, run:

ssh-add -l

You should see a key info; if not, you probably forgot to add ‘enable-ssh-support’ to the gpg-agent.conf.

Now run:

ssh-add -L

This dumps the public key to the terminal; add this to the authorized_keys on a machine you want log into (you might want to keep another key in there for now, in case things do not work). Now if you try logging into that machine, the pin entry should pop up, etc.

Mac OSX

I have not been able to get the agent working; the card itself works out of the box with the MacGPG2 package, i.e., running 'gpg2 - -card-status’ dumps the card data, but the keys cannot be edited, it looks like it’s waiting for the gpg-agent, which should be popping up the pin entry, but does not. I suspect this has something to do with sandboxing, but I am not 100% sure.

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.20 (GNU/Linux)

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-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

I have been meaning to do a longer run in the Trossachs for a while, and finally got to it last weekend. The Ben Ledi - Benvane ridge makes an obvious choice, offering great views in all directions, but also a really remote feel once beyond the bealach above Stank Glen. Setting off from the Bochastle car park (near Lade Inn) provides for a gentle warm up before the Ben Ledi ascent proper, and, returning the same way from Benvane, makes for around 28km / 1600m ascent for the run.

As I don’t particularly enjoy running on the cycle path surface, I took the lovely, rooty, footpath that runs parallel for about half the distance of the warm up section. It can be accessed by dropping down on the right of the cycle track at one of the old railway bridges.

The 3km of warm up is definitely worth it, as the climb up Ben Ledi is quite full on, ~750m of sustained steepish ascent with only a couple of short easier gradient sections near the very top (the path has been surfaced up to the 420m contour line, but becomes more fun from there onwards).

Once over the top of Ben Ledi, I followed the obvious, enjoyable, path along the gently descending ridge, picking up a line of old fence posts heading N and then turning NW where the ridge steepens. At this point the best option is to follow the fence line, which carries on all the way to Benvane.

Once the bealach of Lochan nan Corp is reached, the path becomes very faint, and while the majority of the Ben Ledi walkers on this side of the hill head down toward Stank Glen, the running comes to its best, with some proper boggy bits and views of Loch Lubnaig to the East and Glen Finglas Reservoir to the West.

There is a fair amount of up and down along the ridge, and by the time I climbed into the bealach between Creag Chaoruinneach and Benvane, I was beginning to struggle with the up hills and decided to give up on the top of Benvane and turn back just before the final 120m climb. Now, I don’t normally like there-and-back runs, but in this case the profile of the ridge makes running in each direction sufficiently different, and it is only once reaching the summit of Ben Ledi again, it starts feeling as a ‘return’ journey.

The initial descent down to the 420m contour line where the surfaced path begins is good fun, and going down the surfaced path is not too bad till the point the path crosses the landy track at around the 250m contour. From there on the surface is much more even and irritatingly boring, but it is possible to cut down through the (boggy) forest instead.

Water notes: there are a few places along the route to take water on; the first of these is about the 230m contour line, and then again the major burn crossing at 420m. Between there and Benvane, convenient opportunities are limited; there is a small stream along the landy track that the route touches on at 551 127, but this is probably subject to drying out. The 25k OS map indicates a stream leaving the small lochan on Stuc Dhubh, but it probably requires dropping below the lochan on the East side to get to running water, as this whole area is quite boggy.