Category: Uncategorized

Yeah baby! I’ve just got a new computer and it’s FANTASTIC!!! Woohoo!!! I just can’t believe how much quiter it is than my old computer… you can barely hear the fan on this one, it just sounds like a quiet hum. My old computer sounded like a jet engine taking off. And this computer is more than twice the speed of my old one… nice.

I’ve just got back from a rather disastrous business trip. Sufffice it to say we went to install a piece of software, but we couldn’t because the database we were provided with wasn’t… well, it wasn’t ideal (to put it VERY mildly). So we ended up doing absolutely nothing. That’s two days down the drain… ah well. You just have to take it philosophically!

Anyway, that’s all for now…

Well, a couple of reviews coming from the opposite ends of the musical spectrum here! Firstly, the choir last night. It was a fantastic evening! I have to say that I wasn’t previously a fan of choral music, I don’t really know why… anyway, hearing it live really made it something special. It was quite something! I’m very glad I made the trip up to Colchester to hear it. After the event, I went onto campus with Philippa and we had a drink in Top Bar.

Anyway. This morning, my copy of “Push the Button” by the Chemical Brothers arrived. I haven’t finished listening to it yet, but I’ve listened to most of it and I like what I hear. I think they’ve continued the trend they started with ‘Come With Us’. It’s a similar style, but different… I think it’ll be one album that I’ll be playing a lot more of!

So there you have it…

Just in case you were wondering where I’ve gone the past week or so, I’ve been posting up on my new blog.

So for the latest updates to my life, go there — and hopefully soon, I’ll be able to transfer the new site across…

Guess what? I’m currently writing this blog entry on (wait for it…) Fedora Core! I managed to get it all working 🙂

If anyone wants me to give them a hand with loading Linux drivers for wireless cards now, then give me a shout. Basically, you need to use ndiswrapper. To the unitiated (like me) it looks a bit intimidating, but it wasn’t too bad in the end. Yay for the wireless network game…

Yesterday, I went to the wedding of a couple of good friends of mine, Chris and Louise. I really enjoyed it! The service was good, and the reception, and it was great to see them (and lots of other friends from Essex) — some who I hadn’t seen in a long time!

So that was good. This evening I’m probably going to hear the University of Essex Choir sing at charter hall, Colchester. Philippa sings in the choir, and she gave me tickets for Christmas 🙂

That’s all for now. I’ll leave you now, and go and play around with Linux… 😉

Well, I finished downloading all 2.5GB worth of Fedora Core this morning. I’ve installed it temporarily on a partition. It looks very similar to the Red Hat installation we have at work (not surprisingly because it’s sponsored by Red Hat). It looks nice, very smooth. Still can’t get the wireless network card to work though… I need an idiot’s guide to getting a wireless network card to work on Fedora Core, step-by-step! One thing I don’t like about Linux is that it’s tough to be a newbie because everyone assumes you already know everything…

Ah well. I’ll write more when I use it more, might be a while though!

Just a quick word of background: on Zeth’s blog yesterday, he made a post about GNU/Linux, in which he made the statement: “If you really care about your computers’ security then you would consider GNU software.” I responded with a comment saying, maybe true, but there are reasons I need to use Windows. Anyway, Zeth posted back quite a long post, and I thought instead of writing a long comment I’d make the post here and maybe put a comment there with a link here 🙂 Incidentally, the original post and comment is here.

Right then. Zeth said in his response to me:

That is a problem, but ‘I would use GNU/Linux but …’ is a frame of mind rather than a problem

I fully admit this. The reason is, I really can’t be bothered to go searching for ages to try and find a Linux driver for my wireless card! The thing is, I shouldn’t have to. Why use Linux when I can use Windows, when it works straight out of the box? Incidentally, on Mandrake 10 my USB mouse doesn’t work. It detects the mouse initially, but then the mouse will invariably stop working which is inconvenient. My point is, the majority of people don’t care about security as long as what they have works, without them having to spend an hour or so searching round on the net and fiddling around with configuration files etc.

All the programs (admittedly games) I have tried to run under Wine have run faster than they did on my Weirdos machine (albeit Weirdos 98) so the same programs will probably run if you fiddle a little

Wine sounds good, but I’d have to try it to make a decision. The trouble with those audio programs you listed is that I really want an audio sequencer / loops program. I’m not talking about MIDI. In a similar fashion to Macs being the de facto standard for DTP, Windows seems to be the platform that most professional audio applications like Cubase, Reason, and FL Studio (the cheapest one, which incidentally is the one I use) seem to run on Windows. There is Buzz which apparently works under Linux, but I don’t like it that much.

Anyway. The main thing I like about Windows is its usability. I think Linux has got some way to go before it will become usable to people who don’t like being buried in the command line. The trouble with Linux is just that — it’s just a bit cryptic.

For example, if you want to install a program and you’re new to Linux, you don’t want to have to gunzip / cpio / tar a file with an options string that looks like an MD5 hash: tar -2ba81a47c5512d9e23c435c1f29373cb /usr/home/tmp/sbin/dev/null wibble.ra (or whatever)

There are GUI programs that do it for you now, but the GUI feels a bit like it’s been bolted on to the command line, rather than designed from the ground-up. Some of the desktops (like KDE, Gnome) look nice (they’ve got some good skins etc) but they do feel a tad klunky at times.

Anyway. I’m currently in the process of downloading Fedora Core, and I shall come out with my opinions when it has been installed.

One thing I do agree with, though, unequivocally: Linux rules when it comes to security. I’m definitely going to use Linux for a gateway and doing various other server-related things (for example, a MySQL database connected to the web).

Sorry about the long post! That’s all for now…

(P.S. – Zeth, or anyone really, I’d invite you to post a comment to respond but I haven’t implemented comments on this blog yet! That’s something I think I’ll wait until I have a MySQL database for…)

A couple more bits of open source software for you. Or at least, one bit of open source software, and one bit of software which is free for personal use!

Firstly, remote desktop software: arguably the best is TightVNC. It’s been around for ages, I’ve used it before, use it at work.

And for FTP clients, try Smart FTP… it’s free for personal use, although you will have to occasionally click out of license reminders! And, I’ve gotta go, so I’ll leave it there…

At least, not in terms of working on my new site. I spent the whole time trying to get the database to work (for the counter) like it did in ASP… no luck. And I don’t really know why either, it works fine on my computer! I know that the servers have an older version of PHP than I have, but still… I should have thought it would work! Ah well.

Still, I might be able to turn my computer into a linux box soon and run a MySQL server on it because … I’ve ordered a new computer! I decided it was a good time to order it now (i.e., while the sales are still on, but only for another couple of days). That should be arriving next week 🙂 I’m quite looking forward to it… it will mark the first time in history I’ve had a new computer! Previously they’ve all been second-hand, and then upgraded. It’s all good (apart from when it’s not. But that doesn’t count.)

Hmmm… I’m not sure whether I like Oracle or not! I’ve spent ages trying to get Oracle CM SDK / Application Server / Database to work together in harmony, and always one bit of the chain doesn’t seem to want to work on various computers! I’m currently installing Oracle database 10g on my machine because it doesn’t seem to want to work on another… hmmm. I just hope it works this time…

Well, the menubar on the right hand side is now pretty much working… I think that’s just about everything with the blog, for now! There are some little things (for example, the ‘recent updates’ won’t update itself unless you view the main page), but I don’t think it’s really a big issue. I mean, I don’t think that I update the blog often enough tha it would affect someone, let alone inconvenience them…

Woo-hoo!