THE DIARY OF A GEEK IN OXFORDSHIRE


Solving the World's problems with common sense and a flamethrower.

Thursday, November 30, 2006

Lack of Posts. . .

. . But with good reason.

Sorry, there's a lot going on at the moment. Mostly good, but not postable at this time - watch this space.

One brief moment of humour to mention, though. . .

At work, I use a trackball instead of my laptop touchpad. I use one of these:


Call me odd - I just prefer a trackball to a mouse for everything except gaming.

Anyway, yesterday one of our Technical Pre-Sales guys - normally exceptionally Clued - was looking at some info on my machine. He needed to move the cursor. So. . his right hand falls onto the trackball - and he proceeds to move the entire thing around on the desk.

Cursor, of course, doesn't move. At all.

< snigger >

"Your mouse is playing up", was his comment. "It must be", I replied, "or, alternatively, you could try using it properly".

It took him two further attempts to move the cursor. Hmmm. I thought it was us Salesdroids who were supposed to be Clueless?

Anyway, I'm looking forward to a great weekend coming up. I'm off down to Horsham to spend the weekend with my best mate Nik, and as well as drinking far too much, we're off to the BCF Fair in Worthing where we'll be manning - or geeking - the Sussex Linux User Group stand.

It's been a while since I gave some time over to serious geeking, and I am really, really, REALLY looking forward to it. Watch this space for photos and an update.

Oh, and my news once I can actually broadcast it.

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

It Just Works!

I'm still loving my Ubuntu install - it's given my laptop a whole new lease of life!

Here's a screenshot.....



I have to say I can strongly recommend this to one and all. It's been brilliant.

Saturday, November 04, 2006

I've finally switched....

...So finally my laptop has a decent OS on it...

To be exact, Ubuntu Linux.

Installation took about 45 minutes, and everything except WLAN worked. It Just Worked.

Setting up the Wireless card took about another 15 minutes - my thanks to Midtoad for his excellent article about configuring the Broadcom wireless card on an Acer laptop.

This is the first system I've had that's exclusively Linux-based. It's already faster, and apart from a couple of problems with Flash (which I can live without) it's perfect.

No more viruses, no more spyware, no more resource-hogging firewalls. An infinitely configurable GUI.

I've switched.

You should too.