19November2006
Posted by Christopher under: Family & Friends; House.
In trying to fix a shelf it managed to convince me it never should have been in the wall anyway and it now sits leaning against the wall with books stacked up around me. I did manage to get wall plugs to replace the run-of-the-mill ones that had come out however a combination of Serenity(7/10) and laziness got the better of me. Harumph!
I leave tomorrow for Cornwall as work takes me out of the office for a week for fresh air and excercise - its a good thing. On the way down I hope to be stopping at Clifton and Sara’s to catch up before the weekend when we celebrate their upcoming wedding. I’ll try and take some of the office with me but we shall see what comes of it.
19November2006
Posted by Christopher under: Linux & Open Source.
Off to see “The Prestige” tonight. Found myself thumb-twiddling at several points so 6/10. Did some Christmas shopping and spoke to les crumblies as well as a colleague from work who rang with - quell surprise - a computer problem. Felt dirty and used afterwards.
Excellent Linux format edition which had a tutorial on Mono programming which I ran through - the usual Hello World example however it was for programming newbies so it will be interesting to see the similarities to Java (its main competitor in the OOP world) and whether I find it any easier or more enjoyable - certainly it is well supported under FC6 and I had downloaded all the libraries required using Pirut in no time at all. Here then, is Hello World in Mono.
using System;
namespace HelloWorld
{
class MainClass
{
public static void Main(string[] args)
{
Console.WriteLine(”Hello World!”);
}
}
}
Mono is the open source implementation of Microsoft’s .Net and it was not so long back that it was listed (along with NTFS, my-my, how things change) on Fedora’s Forbidden Items list.
15November2006
Posted by Christopher under: Linux & Open Source.
It seems particularly relevant that I read today about (yet another) flamewar between sections of the open source community - this time around its the turn of Ubuntu and Fedora users.
The Ubuntu philosophy of “lets load the kernel with closed source binary blobs that are impossible to debug” has never sat easy with me for stability and political reasons. Sure, I have to run madwifi drivers for the atheros chipset which controls my wifi card. But that is it and this is far from perfect, failing to resume from suspend until the module is reloaded. I prefer the route of choosing what you wish to load from third party repositories and thereby starting from a free base to adding non-free software to ease the adoption of Linux. A reviewer (I refuse to link to the blog) trashed Fedora on the basis it was hard to configure and didn’t support flash and accelerated graphics out of the box. Dave Jones, a Red Hat kernel hacker, was quick to post a rather weary response.
Ubuntu is charging forward with this approach, proposing to include nvidia and ati drivers in Feisty Fawn, the next version due in April 2007. What is more worrying is that some of the lugradio guys, usually the voice of reasoned debate, seem willing to follow the path and roll over and accept that Linux will never succeed unless people have wobbly windows and can play mp3’s straight away.
Both the nvidia and ati drivers are buggy and do not play well with accelerated X in any circumstance I have put them through. Last night I had the pleasure of attempting to get AIGLX working on a colleague’s computer running Fedora Core 6 from a fresh install and had to give up in the end, returning to regular X, despite the fact that the new 9 series drivers support GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap. Of course, the open source ati drivers work perfectly on my laptop.
I think the community is getting to a point of separation, where distributions such as Ubuntu (no, it is not the only one!) follow the path of least resistance and others stay true to the ideal that all software should be open, accessible and free to all in every sense of the word. Perhaps it is the fact that Vista is on the horizon and now is the last chance to show the world the alternative before it gets caught up - I dont believe this is the case. I believe Vista will be riddled with bugs, lack any definitive and convincing argument for upgrade and I hope that the public wont swallow it. Of course, since it comes installed on computers by default, perhaps this is too much to ask. I’m just looking forward to Fedora Core 7.
11November2006
Posted by Christopher under: Family & Friends.
I have seen the Zombie flick a number of times. My favourite part is of course where the undead are getting totalled in the shopping mall and it is the film particularly that plays through my mind when visiting any shopping centre that bears more than a passing resemblance to that in the film. I have been following the progress of Linux on the ipod for some time and decided that it might be a good idea to check out prices of iPod videos at John Lewis. After discovering that they had a new store at the Trafford Centre and having passed it several times on my trips south, I felt confident of navigating my way single-handed, despite having the fall-back option of kid brother in case we ended up in a Rotherham contra-flow by mistake. I successfully did so and it was here that things started to come unstuck. We spent the next twenty minutes playing dodgems with other drivers in an attempt to secure an elusive space in the already over-full and bursting car park. Clearly this was some place to be on a Saturday! Our minds salivated at the wonders that surely lay inside - why else would anyone put themselves through this?
Sadly, if there was a fountain of youth or bottomless pit of Quesadillas, we did not find it. All we found was consumerism at its western worst. The food hall we entered first was dominated by a huge LED screen blaring adverts over nigh on 1000+ people, all chewing mindlessly on food as a cow chews cud in a field. We ascended quickly to the retail area, all very fresh and new. Making a beeline for JL’s we perused the technological section only to leave empty handed for a number of reasons too boring to put in here.
Convinced already this would be my last visit to the place, we strolled (or fought) the length of the mall, only to find a prayer room the size of a changing room at one end. It declared itself to be multi-faith and on inspection it contained two persons of the Islamic faith prostrating as is their wont. I was surprised - what would happen if a Jew were to attend at the same time for a quick browse of the Torah. Would this even happen? The room appeared to be unattended and at best guess was included in the plans purely for the purpose of permitting those people who could not visit a shopping centre at certain times to do so, safe in the knowledge they could do the necessaries at the appropriate time, ducking out of HMV to remind $god that despite their slavish devotion to items of a material nature, they hadn’t forgotten about him. Who really benefits here?
11November2006
Posted by Christopher under: Music.
I’m still in the process of working out how best to post and was in the middle of getting the SPAM-muncher for the comments section set up when a colleague from work called with the news that Steve Gibbons Band was playing at my local. Not having heard of said band but always up for something new, I polished off the Chi’ti that said colleague had brought back a few weeks earlier from France and walked down. I was not that impressed with the music but they did some reasonable Bob Dylan covers. I was somewhat refreshed upon my return home and the morning arrived all too early. TGIF.
9November2006
Posted by Christopher under: Linux & Open Source.
That’s how many start each day according to Auntie. In other news I have added licensing to my blog as want to make sure things are done correctly from the beginning. I’m using wordpress as my blogging software as its default layout has always impressed me and the admin side of things is a piece of cake. As so often happens, some kind souls in the open source community have developed a plugin that guides you through the process of licensing content. You can even include an image of the license in the footer. I believe that Creative Commons can do for authored content on the web what the GPL has done for software development at the turn of the millenium.
Oh yeah, Vista got the go ahead today and with it my days as a Microsoft beta tester are over. According to the article “Vista boasts improved graphics, more effective tools for finding documents, pictures and other items on personal computers, and a new Internet browser, among other changes.” Oops, silly me carelessy linking into tools which I’ve enjoyed for over a year free of charge and more importantly free of legal encumbrances. Given that eye candy wont sell business desktops, what persuasion is there to purchase the upgrade?
9November2006
Posted by Christopher under: House.
So the firewood for the soon-to-be-installed wood burner has arrived. Arrived home from work to find the street blocked by a flatbed with a mechanical arm and an ex-Eton type called James scanning the house for signs of life. Thankfully brother and new temporary lodger were on hand to throw it temporarily into the front garden. I then head off to Halifax to pick up some monitors kindly donated by Martin, another Freecycler whilst I left said brother and lodger to move logs to newly constructed wood store in the cellar. On my return and descent into the cellar I was greeted with the site which I at first mistook to be a portal into a strange arboreal world, albeit a rather dead looking one. I gently remonstrated with the perpetrators and then proceeded to teach a masterclass in log-stacking, the results of which can be seen below. Huzzah!
8November2006
Posted by Christopher under: Linux & Open Source.
Its an interesting and slightly nervous time in the Open Source community as I start to write this blog. All the major players are waiting to see what Microsoft’s next move is whilst the mud-slinging continues in a general Novell-oriented direction. Which they duly pick up and throw back. I find it fascinating that they thought this would do them any good as essentially they have admitted that software patents could carry some weight and they would prefer to cover their own backs and sod everyone else.
Ballmer now has his FUD puppy to order about and he appears to be making full use of it, flexing his muscles and inviting Red Hat to join the patent party. One headline read “Fox marries chicken, moves into henhouse” and this appears to sum the general feeling of most up, myself included. Novell has done some wonderful things over the past few years - why did they have to go and ruin the party just as it was getting big?
8November2006
Posted by Christopher under: Family & Friends.
After some prodding from my father and cousin I have decided to write this blog as they both seem convinced I am the next Life Commentator. We shall see.
