24July2008
Posted by Christopher under: Family & Friends; Travel & Leisure.
It topped Glasto due to sheep with red dye, Sigur Ros on Saturday night after sunset, woodland glades, punting on the lake, car park 5 minutes from the camp site but above all, how incredibly clean it all was. A festival done right. The comedy tent was nowhere near big enough but its hard to fault. No wonder Glasto found it hard to sell tickets when there’s alternatives like this on. Here’s a pic for those that missed out. From r-l, Me, The Girl, The Girl’s Big Brother.
Niki, The Girl and Me at Latitude Festival, 2008
10July2008
Posted by Christopher under: Linux & Open Source.
My last posting about my linux-hater love sparked some good comments and mails. Though of course its a bit of hot potato so I’m not _that_ surprised. I was surprised by the amount of negativity that was generated - basically poor user experiences. In the vein of current feather-ruffling, perhaps the whole marketing aspect needs a re-think. Perhaps I should just subscribe to the fedora-marketing list.
Max Spevack declared about a year ago that he wanted to make sure that Fedora was never again accused of being a beta for Red Hat. Unfortunately I’m not sure that it will ever entirely shake off this moniker. I’ve read various blog posts regarding poor Fedora 9 install experience (mine has been nothing but exemplary) however these tend towards the “My $PROPRIETARY_APP/DRIVER failed” which I really couldn’t care less about. Fedora quite rightly sticks to its guns on not kow-towing to these vendors.
I think Fedora still has an identity crisis - one that started when Fedora Legacy closed its doors. It does what I want but what does it want to be?
8July2008
Posted by Christopher under: Linux & Open Source.
About a month ago I started reading Linux Hater. I have to admit I love it. It takes a few posts for the realisation to sink in that its actually written by someone who deeply cares about Linux, has a great deal of knowledge about the inner workings of a Linux distribution and actually wants it to succeed. He/She/They try to hide it beneath a barrage of bad language and breath-taking insults but its great to see someone voicing the anger which I’m sure some of us involved to any degree in Free Software all feel at times. A friend of mine who had a particularly awful experience with Linux recently (not Fedora thankfully, blame Lexmark) will no doubt enjoy it as much as I do. I think people who dismiss it immediately as insulting are missing the point. Linux Format magazine used to run a section (can’t remember the name) where an anonymous contributor voiced the fears and concerns that someone with a real name and face could not.
Anyway, I digress. I’ve read a lot of upgrade woes, relating to current distributions and their ability to complete and upgrade from a previous version. For anyone not understanding the process of upgrading an operating system I’ll say it once and only once.
It’s not simple, may well break and if you don’t feel confident doing it then don’t.
One reviewer even bemoaned the fact that a system once running FC5 didn’t handle the upgrade from F8 to F9 well. So here’s a clue to those who just want to use a computer and not struggle with post-upgrade installation issues.
Backup /home, /etc, & /var and do a fresh install. The time reconfiguring your O.S. will be greatly less than fixing broken dependencies, repositories, packages and other issues. You will then never need to post about how you don’t understand why a new distribution with new toolchain, kernel, package management system and desktop environment doesnt work out of the box.
7July2008
Posted by Christopher under: Travel & Leisure.
The first full weekend after the summer solstice arrived and with it the mighty festival that is Glastonbury. The run-up was over-shadowed by the appearance of Jay-Z in the headline slot for Saturday and although there’s been plenty said on the appearance I’m happy to weigh in with my thoughts.
I don’t like rap or hip-hop. Really. I especially don’t like the tendency of rap and hip-hop artists to talk about women as “bitches” and glorify gun use. A case in point being Jay-Z’s first Glastonbury song “99 Problems”, which contains the main refrain “99 problems but a bitch aint one.” In the video he dies at the end of the song in a hail of bullets, gets hassled by the police (yawn, yawn) and apparently also features taking part in dog-fighting. Classy stuff. What I really dislike more than anything else however is the way other music gets sampled and ripped-off. Rap and hip-hop lack originality and I stopped listening way back in the early 90’s when the recordings of Snoop Dogg breaking into the White House and shooting the president stopped being funny.
The festival itself was outstanding. The music was even more varied than in the past, highlights being Elbow, Crowded House, Eddie Grant & The Raconteurs. Practically zero waiting to leave at the end and none to get in. Weather was pretty much perfect as well. Great food, great company, great times. As the blog has been lacking a bit in photos recently, here is one to colour things up - two glasto legends.
19June2008
Posted by Christopher under: Linux & Open Source.
The Girl tells me I should be “Eating breakfast like a King, lunch like a Prince and dinner like a Pauper.”
Lets see how Wednesday measured up.
Breakfast - cold toast, much of which scattered across keyboard whilst RDP’d into a client’s server
Lunch - Frapperlattimochachino thing, sipped whilst typing into a supplier’s “Live Chat”, trying to get remote backups to sync correctly
Dinner - Latte with side order of M&M’s, drunk and eaten at 80mph in the fast lane of the M1, heading north at 11pm.
Yeah, my body is a temple.
15June2008
Posted by Christopher under: Linux & Open Source.
No Monkey Dance … yet … but this is the closest you’ll get.
Greg Kroah Hartman gives an excellent talk on the development processes, contributors etc. to the Linux kernel. There’s some really stirring stuff in there, particularly the page referring to changes that have gone into 2.6.26 - you can’t really make out the individual items but its kind of awesome all the same.
The kernel has always held a special fascination for me and I harbour a slightly childish ambition to contribute a single patch to the Linux kernel. Given that a Google employee has contributed seven spelling fixes, maybe I might just be able to fulfill it. :)
26May2008
Posted by Christopher under: Family & Friends.
So having neglected The Girl due to overworking, I subjected her to My Day Of Awesome.
12pm Lunch @ Trof (caution, flash-heavy page) - if you’re ever visiting Manchester and don’t come here, more fool you.
2pm Buy Tent for Glastonbury
3pm Bodyworlds @ MOSI - real chopped-up dead people. A bit gruesome - the plastinated foetuses were especially moving, particularly given the current debate over the abortion age limit. Fellow WYLUG’er Tommy Hall has some great pictures…
7pm Dinner @ Wagamama. Awesome asian food and great atmosphere
9pm Mad dash over Snake Pass to see The Futureheads play the Sheffield Leadmill
It was awesome.
In other news, I’m now on Planet Fedora. :)
24May2008
Posted by Christopher under: Linux & Open Source.
When videoing people for use in marketing videos, zooming in and out, moving the camera about randomly and putting people in front who talk in monotone only serves to make the viewer seasick and sleepy. Please stop it.
Exhibit number one. Bad.
Exhibit number two. A bit better.
Exhibit number three. - (OGG) Awesome.
24May2008
Posted by Christopher under: Linux & Open Source.
So of course I wanted to watch carpet tube for the 20th time after installing Fedora 9. But couldn’t. Firefox 3 beta 5 ships with Fedora 9 but the built in flash installer doesn’t work for $REASON. After futzing around with swfdec (interesting results but not _quite_ ready, qv. ath5k) I headed back to the proprietary realm. Post rpm install, video worked, just not sound. Fiddled, poked, temporarily blamed pulseaudio. Sorry Mr Poettering. Googled, hit this then installed libflashsupport. Then discovered Flash 10 is on the horizon with support for the aforementioned pulseaudio etc.
I don’t even need to browse Fedora-devel to read the latest round of:
“Why do we ship borkened Fedora, I want puppies plz k thnx”.
For a good reply of why not I direct you to Yaakov Nemoy’s take.
23May2008
Posted by Christopher under: Travel & Leisure.
My new job requires me to do a fair amount of travelling. On a recent trip to Cornwall I was talking with my mother about not having the time to see anything whilst I’m down here. Its usually spent “Computer-whispering” as The Girl puts it.
“You have to make it count.” she said.
I knew what she meant so a couple of weeks back I returned to Cornwall and this time stopped off at the Eden project. The visit was a bit rushed but I managed to fit most of it in, particularly the strange hemp garden, grown behind a fence due to licensing laws. The rainforest biome was the star attraction, particularly the asian plantation section with various curry aromas sending my mouth watering.
Purchasing entry using gift aid means that you get a years free entry. I hope to return for a more leisurely visit. Pictures to follow…
