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If you’re considering a holiday this winter to escape to warmer climes, why not try Phaic Tan? …

Anyway. Update on Linux: I now have an MP3 Player, a DVD Player, a media player (for e.g. DivX), and a Machine that goes *Ping*.

Took some doing to get working, but it’s all there! Funny thing is, I haven’t really been noticing much that I’m on Linux at the moment. I do a lot of internet stuff (websites) and Firefox comes with Fedora Core, which looks very similar to the Windows version. Also Mozilla Thunderbird (which, incidentally, I was able to transfer all the mail to without any problems at all).

Good stuff!

Hmmm, well, one more thing I’ve found out about Linux: when you install a program with Windows, generally that’s all you need to download: one program. Not so with Linux. I’ve just been trying to install a DVD player (Ogle, an open source DVD player for unix based systems).

I’ve finally managed to get it working, but it took quite a lot of hit and miss to get there! There are a lot of additional packages it depends on.

There is a GUI to it as well, but I couldn’t get that to work… it’s getting late, I can’t be bothered, and I don’t know what’s wrong!

This could well be more work than I’d intended, but in a funny kind of way it’s actually quite satisfying – seeing it come together. I’ve managed to get an MP3 player working as well! Just need to get DivXs working now…

As I mentioned below, I took the plunge today and migrated to Linux. Fedora Core 3, to be exact; I’ll probably upgrade to 4 pretty soon.

I just thought I’d use this blog to keep a record of my experiences in the migration, it might help other people who are considering the move. Anyway, here we go…

Migrating to Linux – Day One:

Well, it seems to have gone pretty smoothly so far. I backed up all my data, and then ran the installation. It installed without any problems whatsoever! Only a couple of issues:

1. It didn’t pick up my wireless network card. However, after an hour of messing around with the windows drivers and ndiswrapper, I managed to get it to work!
2. It doesn’t seem to have built-in support for MP3s. I found this very strange, but still… downloading an MP3 player shouldn’t be much. And it could have been something I was doing wrong. I’ll let you know!
3. Also, for some reason audio CDs don’t want to play. This, again, I found quite strange – but it could be due to dodgy hardware (I have suspicions about my CD drive!).

Um, that’s all for the time being, I’ll update this as I go along!

I’ve officially moved over to the dark side! My main PC is now running (gulp)… Linux! Yes, I’ve installed Fedora Core. Unfortunately I’ve had all sorts of woes trying to get FC4 installed (corrupt media, not good) so I’ve just used an old FC3 disk that I had which seems to work fine.

I will install FC4 sometime soon, but I’m just happy to have everything running OK!

Anyway. I’m now on holiday for two weeks (yay!) so I probably won’t update this blog much. I haven’t done a huge amount so far – it took most of the morning to get Linux working!

Incidentally, I got hit again this morning by that attempted virus attack – strange! Speaking of which, must set up my e-mail… all for now!

Well, that’s a new one. I received a few emails this morning, one of them was the usual spam type. The others purported to come from “@mooseofming.co.uk” (from addresses that don’t exist though). Two of them had attachments and another two seemed to come from the web form I have on the contact page.

The two that had attachments I suspect were just generated in the usual way, i.e. find a random domain and send (something)@domain.com an e-mail. The other ones looked like they were sent from the web form, which is a totally new one to me. It seemed like some kind of bot had pasted into the “comments” bit an attachment.

Fortunately it didn’t work, but still… I might have to do something about that!

Anyway, consider this a warning – if you use a web form on your site, be careful!

It’s apparently my “birthday” today. I got a couple of cards through the post yesterday and actually had no idea what they were until I opened them… suffice it to say I’m not a big birthday celebration type person!

But it seems to be something people like to know, so now you know. Whatever!

Looking forward to my holiday next week… things have been a bit pressured at work recently, so it’s good to get away from that for a couple of weeks! I’m going to see a couple of the proms, which will be an experience for me – the first time going to the Albert Hall.

Oh, by the way, Fedora Core 4 has been available for a while now – go download it. Get yourself a better operating system (if you’re using Windows). I’m going to migrate from Windows to Linux once I can actually get FC4 burnt to CD without any errors and backup all my files…

I haven’t been up to much this weekend… on Friday I went to a music practice at Fordham. It was my first time being involved in a church music group, although I have been involved with the music for the chaplaincy a couple of times. It went well, despite everyone else being about twice as good as me! – I didn’t play much, as I didn’t know most of the songs (it’s for a new songs evening).

On Saturday I just spent a fairly relaxing day not doing much. In the evening Philippa came round for dinner, and then we headed out to the “What?” bar for a while. It was a good evening!

Then on Sunday, we went to Fordham in the morning. In the evening we met up with Luci and had dinner at the Playhouse before going to the cinema to see “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”. It was a very enjoyable film – much better than I was expecting it to be. The one they made quite a few years ago to be frank I thought was pretty rubbish… this one was pretty good – very funny in places!

So that brings you up to speed on my life, joy…

Well, I handed out a CD yesterday to one of the local bars. Hopefully it’ll be listened to and I’ll be able to DJ there 🙂 First time I’ve handed out a CD in a while, the last time was about two years ago – which I never heard back from …

Apart from that, I haven’t really done much interesting. The only reason I’m posting is that apparently if you don’t post on a blog every day you shouldn’t have a blog… I post fairly frequently (not every day), but just wanted to make sure the posts keep coming 😉

Just thought I’d change the title a bit! What did I get up to this weekend? Well… on Friday night I had an evening in. I stayed in and watched Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith. On Saturday, I didn’t do very much during the day. In the evening I went to “What?” bar, to see one of my friends from uni DJing. It was a good evening. Philippa came as well, straight from the station as she was travelling back from London that day!

Yesterday, I played Badminton with some of my friends from work in the morning (my muscles are feeling rather sore today). In the afternoon Philippa and I went to the All Nations lunch and service, we did the music. Apart from a bit of confusion with the OHP slides for one song, it was OK! In the evening, we went for dinner with Sarah & Jon and Sarah & Luke at the Stanway Harvester. It was a really good evening, it’s nice to meet up with friends that you haven’t seen in a while!

And, that’s about it for the moment…

Well, I bumped into an old friend last night… except it was planned, and I didn’t “bump” into him. Philippa and I met up with Andy C in the Playhouse in town for a few drinks. It was a really nice evening actually! It was the first time I’ve seen Andy since Sarah and Jon’s wedding last August (nearly a year!)

Other than that, having been doing much. Two weeks until I go on holiday, yay! Stay tuned…