Archive for the ‘Linux’ Category
Saturday, March 29th, 2008
The other day I upgraded to the Hardy Heron beta, and the experience - as expected - was mostly flawless.
I inititated the upgrade last thing at night and left it downloading. The next morning it was waiting for me to answer a question, which I did and then continued working while it proceeded in the background. It needed input from me a few times concerning configuration files, but for the most part no interaction was required. A while later it was complete and asked me to reboot. I did because it was a convenient time for me, but throughout the whole process I just carried on working with no problems at all.
I’ve no experience of upgrading (or even installing) OS X, but I know the same experience would be difficult to replicate on Microsoft Windows, especially when you consider that all my applications were upgraded at the same time as the Operating System.
Once Hardy is formally released - and I’ve got the opportunity - I plan to completely re-install this machine and wipe all traces of Microsoft Windows from it forever (Vista is still lurking around on here, wasting space along with a defunct recovery partition).
So if like me you’re waiting for the release of Hardy, add the counter to your website. Find the massively complicated installation instructions here.
Tags: hardy heron, Linux, ubuntu
Posted in Linux | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, March 12th, 2008
I’m sure I’ll get some heat for this, but here goes…
Why is managing media so painful under Linux?
I have a significant amount of audio on my laptop, and a phone that is a fairly capable music player. However if I want to copy some of that audio to my phone, I have to resort to manually copying and arranging the files, as well as ensuring the tags are right (as the N95 relies on these). It’s an awkward, but manageable process that I don’t do so often.
Podcasts are a different story though. My phone is capable of downloading podcasts itself, but they are slow to download and awkward to manage. Copying podcasts from the laptop to the phone can be fraught with peril.
By contrast I had to reset my daughter’s iPod today after I tried to manage it under Linux. The reset and re-population through iTunes was painless. I know it is because Apple control the software and hardware, but it can’t be that hard to get right can it?
Don’t even get me started on photos and movies…
Tags: audio, Linux, media, n95, phone, podcast, ubuntu
Posted in Linux, Listening, Viewing | 13 Comments »
Tuesday, March 11th, 2008
Some folks from the Ubuntu UK Local Community team have got together and made a podcast:
Ubuntu UK Podcast
Tags: Linux, podcast, ubuntu, uk
Posted in Linux, Listening | No Comments »
Thursday, March 6th, 2008
I’ve shutdown AWN and reverted my GNOME desktop back to the usual top and bottom panels. Although AWN is great, and could well be the interface of the future, I guess I’m just too used to GNOME now.
I suspect GNOME Do is here to stay though. 
Tags: awn, gnome do, Linux, ubuntu
Posted in Linux | 4 Comments »
Thursday, March 6th, 2008
I’ve been lucky. I’ve never really been a victim of theft, and when I have it has been for small amounts of money or insignificant items.
![[image]](http://mowser.com/img?url=http%3A%2F%2Ffarm3.static.flickr.com%2F2228%2F2306014960_47defc1b23_m.jpg)
photo credit: nocklebeast
Now I have come across someone stealing the content from my site - and anyone else who is aggregated in Planet Ubuntu - and seeking to profit from this through the use of Google Adverts.
The culprit? http://linuxindex.com
I have sent an e-mail to the domain contact asking them to cease reproducing my content without permission immediately. I have also reported the policy violation to Google AdSense. I would urge anyone else on Planet Ubuntu to do the same.
Tags: , copyright, ip, scraping, theft
Posted in Browsing, Linux | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, March 5th, 2008
A change is as good as a rest, or so they say. Well this week I’ve been making quite a few changes.
It started off with a post from Jorge about integrating Launchpad with GNOME Do. I’d been aware of GNOME Do for a while, but never got around to trying it. Well now I have, and I love it. I do have to keep reminding myself it’s there, but I’m getting used to it.
A quick side note - PPAs rock. Major props to Celso, Julian and Kiko for making them part of Launchpad. They make obtaining packages for new projects so much easier.
I can’t remember what prompted me to try it, but I’m now using the Avant Window Manager (also known as AWN). This combined with GNOME Do lets me have a minimalist desktop.
Following a discussion about Flock I’m now trying that out again (see here and here for my previous experiences with it). I’ll post some updated opinions in a few days, but at the moment I’m ambivalent. As always when playing with a new toy, this post has been written with Flock.
Finally I’m back on Jaiku again thanks to Jaiku Invites. I’m not quite sure why when I’m getting increasingly bored with social networks, but we’ll see what happens.
Another side note - my machine hung completely while I was originally writing this post. After the reboot both Firefox and Flock restored their sessions as I have become used to. I was also pleased to the see that Flock restored this post.
Blogged with Flock
Tags: awn, Browsing, flock, gnome do, jaiku, launchpad, Linux, ppa, social netowrking, ubuntu
Posted in Browsing, Linux | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008
“…OK, now we’re ready.”
This year I’m going to attempt to join the annual LugRadio marathon - initiated by mrBen (pictured below) - in the build up to LugRadio Live (the original and best UK version, unless someone wants to sponsor me to go to the USA one).
![[image]](http://mowser.com/img?url=http%3A%2F%2Ffarm2.static.flickr.com%2F1113%2F1242003186_5c4430c799_m.jpg)
photo credit: andy.d
I’ve already started with Season 1, Episode 1 “The Phantom Message“. Even though they’ve improved in both technical and professional terms over the years, listening to that first episode again reminded me why I like(d*) listening so much. Indeed I became their first official fan!
In the spirit of competition I’m going to see mrBen’s challenge and raise it by including all of hashlugradio as well. This is, of course, in preparation for hashlugradio Live 2008 - the event that allows LugRadio Live to share the same time, dates and venue.
* I can’t remember when or exactly why I stopped listening regularly. Maybe I’ll be able to spot it as I go through.
Tags: hashlugradio, Linux, lugradio, lugradio live, podcast
Posted in Linux, Listening | 2 Comments »
Thursday, February 21st, 2008
First of all, apologies for any ‘planet spam’ caused the change to my feeds.
After what seems like an eternity (but is actually just over a year) I’ve switched the backend of this site from Mephisto to WordPress. The main reason for the switch was my overall dissatisfaction with Mephisto coupled with its lack of development (or a least stable releases) along with the fact that I was maintaining a Ruby on Rails production environment for one application. Mephisto frustrated me in many ways, from its inability to handle archives/pagination to not being able to accept pingbacks to not working with external clients. All of these were fixable, but I really didn’t have the patience or the time.
Here is my tale of migrating from Mephisto to WordPress, and how I achieved it.
(more…)
Tags: blog, Linux, mephisto, php, Python, Ruby On Rails, wordpress
Posted in Linux, Python, Ruby On Rails | 9 Comments »
Tuesday, February 5th, 2008
A while back I was discussing FOSS alternatives for cutting out distractions, and one of the pieces of software that I couldn’t find a decent alternative for was Writeroom which is commercial software for the Mac.
Now Bruno Bord (who’s basically French) has come to the rescue with the PyRoom project. I may have to get involved.
Tags: foss, Linux, pyroom, Python, software, writeroom
Posted in Linux, Python, Writing | 6 Comments »
Sunday, January 27th, 2008
A post from Ryan Singer of 37signals about how to take control of a massive iTunes library got me thinking about my own music collection. Obviously I’m not using iTunes, but according to Rhythmbox my music collection isn’t small. Right now it claims I have 2,884 songs taking up 14.3GB of space which would provide me with 7 days, 19 hours and 14 minutes of non-stop, non-repetitive (barring duplicates) music. I’m sure there are lots of people who can (and will) boast of larger music collections, but as far as I’m concerned that’s a lot of music. This, coupled with the fact that my Top Rated and Recently Played automatic playlists encompass only a fraction of my collection inspires me to do something about it.
Initially I was going to follow Ryan’s approach – archive off all the music and only add it back into my collection when I had a real desire to listen to it – but after mulling the idea over for a few days I’ve decided to take an additional step: instead of simply rebuilding my collection from, er, my collection, I’m going to actively seek out new music.
My collection is wide and varied, but I do tend to listen to the same stuff over and over again. Now I’m going to enlist the likes of , Last.fm, Jamendo, and Magnatune to discover something new. I’m also going to try and tune into a few more musical podcasts like Podrunner and Groovelectric to add some variety.
Any suggestions of artists/bands or podcasts for me?
Tags: audio, jamendo, last.fm, Listening, magnatune, music
Posted in Linux, Listening | 8 Comments »
