New Shiny Toy - Early Impressions

I've been intending to do it for a while, but yesterday I finally bought myself a new laptop.

I marched into PC World in Oxford, credit card in hand, fully intending to purchase a Samsung Q35 - and ended up walking out with an Advent 8212.

Some may ask - why buy a much lesser-known brand laptop? Well, the spec was pretty irresistible - a considerably higher spec than the Samsung - yet the price was the same. Additionally, when I did a side-by-side comparison of the two machines, the display quality was actually higher than the Samsung, and I even get the same warranty.

So - I have the laptop, it's fully charged and I've had a day to play with it so far. These are my initial opinions on the box, and I'll post more once I've lived with it for a while.

Specification
One of the first things that attracted me to the Advent was the spec, which is as follows:

- Intel Core Duo T7100 @ 1.8GHz;
- 2048MB DDRII 667 RAM;
- 120GB HDD;
- Shared graphics (it says up to 128MB, but is actually taking 448MB for VRAM!)
- Integrated 1.3MP webcam;
- 12.1" Widescreen TFT @1280 x 800 pixels
- Vista Home Premium.

Compare that to the spec of the Samsung - T5200 @1.6GHz, 1GB RAM, 100GB HDD, 128MB graphics, no webcam - and consider that this was the same price - £599. So you can see there that with the Samsung, there's an immediate cost based upon the brand.

First Impressions
Once I got the laptop home, and left it to charge up for a while (probably the hardest part of the whole thing was resisting the temptation to play with it), I settled in for my first experience of Windows Vista.

The first thing I noticed was the keyboard. I'm a touch-typist, and often find that laptop keyboards are a little small for doing that comfortably. However, despite its diminutive size, the keyboard works well, with a positive reaction from the keys and a 'desktop' feel. If I'm being really picky, I'd complain that the shift keys are a little small - but I'm already adapting to that.

Vista itself is certainly pretty - it defaulted into a dark taskbar and desktop, which was great for me as I would have set it to that anyway. The default sidebar is useful and easy to configure - more on that later.

As for the eye-candy - well, I have to say that I love it. I could spend hours playing with te window animation when I press 'Win+Alt'. I know it's similar to the Expose feature in Mac OSX, but it's done well. The additional Aero feature of showing a teensy window - with animation - on the taskbar when you hover over it is also impressive!

One of the features I was delighted to find in Vista Home Premium was the Terminal Server Client. I use RDP a lot, connecting to other machines on the home network, and was expecting it to be absent as it was in XP Home. To have the client as standard on Home Premium has saved me a lot of hassle.

Firefox and AVG Free both installed with no problems or incidents, and Windows didn't baulk at having Firefox set as the default browser.

VMWare Player also installed with no issues, giving me a virtual Ubuntu Linux desktop if I need it. I may dual-boot in the future - as yet I'm undecided.

Sidebar
The Sidebar has already turned out to be a useful tool.

Once I'd removed the useless gadgets I didn't need - like a weather report, RSS reader and (for some reason) a picture slideshow, I was left with just a clock. I prefer analogue, so this is nicer for me than the standard digital clock on the taskbar. I then downloaded and installed a couple of other gadgets from the Microsoft Gallery, including an RDP shortcut and a CPU/RAM meter. Both were quick and easy to install, and just work.

The Sidebar does take up some screen estate, but I've intentionally got mine set up to always be available. Obviously that's my choice, if you change the properties you can use the full widescreen and just see the Sidebar on the Desktop.

Performance & Battery Life
After such a short time with the laptop, I can't give definitive answers yet - but my initial impressions are good.

I went into this with some concerns, as I've read all the stories about how resource-hungry Vista is and wasn't expecting miracles. And it's true that Vista takes a LOT of memory. Running with just RDP and Firefox open (5 tabs), memory usage is at 43% - that's 880MB! I think we can safely say that 2GB is necessary.

The fan isn't hugely quiet, but it only runs for a couple of seconds at a time unless under heavy load, and even if running constantly it's not overly intrusive.

As an experiment last night, I decided to do a lot more and run the machine down from fully-charged to zero as quickly as possible.

So....I opened Firefox and IE7, opened some pages including some Flash animations and Windows Update, connected to my server via RDP, started copying files from there to the laptop, and dug out my 'guilty pleasure' - the 'Hackers' DVD, popping that into the DVD-RW drive on the right side of the laptop.

Then I took out the power cable, and sat down to watch the movie!

With all of that running, CPU usage climbed to between 60% and 80%, as did RAM usage. Battery charge dropped fast - yet I was still able to see the plucky, innocent hackers beat the big, bad villians and Dade Murphy get the girl.

There were no hangs or stutters from Media Player either.

First Impressions
Overall, my first impressions of this laptop have been overwhelmingly positive. I've tried it doing more than I would normally do with a lappy, and so far it's met every one of my challenges without breaking a sweat.

I'm delighted with my purchase, and would recommend this Advent model to anyone looking for a decent-spec subnotebook under £700.

The Experience of a Lifetime, or Wot I Done on My Holidays

PHOTO ALBUMS ARE HERE and HERE

Well, we're back, having just had the most amazing holiday I've ever experienced.

We flew to Tanzania and spent 5 days on safari, followed by three days in the old Stone Town of Zanzibar and finishing with 6 days on the paradise of Pongwe Beach Resort in Zanzibar.

Well, that's the basic description - but the reality was just incredible....

So on 18 August we grabbed our backpacks and lugged them to Heathrow, flying to Dar Es Salaam by way of a stop in Doha in Qatar, and after 26 hours finally pitched up at our hotel in Arusha. Arusha isn't the nicest of towns, and I have to say it was a little unnerving to find our hotel protected by an armed guard!

A Shaky Start

We were awoken early on the Monday morning by the building shaking. I'm not joking - a stressed-concrete building shaking like an alcoholic with the DT's. It turns out that we were 85km from the epicentre of an earthquake registering 5.2 on the Richter Scale - an interesting alarm call, and one I've no desire to repeat! The earthquake even made the news.

Oh, and it was no warmer than the UK, and it was raining. Hard. Not the most auspicious start to our trip!

After an 'interesting' breakfast - scrambled eggs, tinned mushrooms (with mixed veg), baked beans with garlic and something that was almost, but not quite, a frankfurter - we were picked up by our safari guide Hussein, introduced to our camp cook Ema and we were off, with a 2-hour drive through the rain to Tarangire National Park.

After setting up our little tent in the campsite, off we went into the park, the weather clearing above us - and within minutes we'd come face to face with our first animal - a giraffe, about 20 feet from us and totally unconcerned by the excited humans in the white Land Cruiser snapping away at him!

From that point on, the wonder started. We were lucky enough to come across a family of elephant with a calf, and we sat there for easily 20 minutes, watching the calf suckling from its mother as the herd lazily grazed on the acacia bushes.

Seeing this - sat no more than 15 feet from a herd of grazing elephant, barely daring to breathe loudly - I finally realised how incredible this was going to be. Part of me had expected the safari to be almost like a trip to a safari park, with us in a vehicle looking at animals. But the reality is totally different - I felt like I was in their space. Those elephants knew we were there, and we were watching them because they chose to allow us to do so. These weren't transplanted animals - we were the ones transplanted to their place.

After our first overnight stay, when I learned just how unnerving it is to go to the toilet at night on a campsite in an African national park, we were off again, heading up to the Serengeti National Park.

It's at this point I should mention the roads.

The Road Less Travelled

The trip to Serengeti is about 250km - 155 miles. Not that far, really, and about the same distance as I travel to visit my parents, a journey which takes about3-4 hours.

In Tanzania, it took almost 7.

There is a road between Tarangire and Serengeti - note that, one road - and it travels through the Ngorongoro Crater Conservation Area then winds on into the Serengeti National Park. The road through Ngorongoro is managed by the Conservation Area, and the part through Serengeti by the National Park. There's no central funding.

None of it is paved.

This means that the Ngorongoro stretch is a winding dirt track climbing into the clouds which permanently surround the Ngorongoro Crater Rim - where it becomes a mud track - then down onto the Serengeti plain, where the heat has created a lunar landscape and a track of rocks and dust. We slipped and slithered our way up, picking our way around broken-down and crashed lorries (and trying not to think of the 600m drop the other side of us), and then we were heading on, in dust so thick you sometimes couldn't see ahead of you, jolting and bumping and rarely exceeding 50km/h, using whichever side of the road was smoothest at the time.

Gerry and I silently blessed the bandanas we'd bought as last-minute purchases as we juddered along, hair and clothes thick with dust, mouths and noses covered like Mexican bandits, nothing in sight for mile after mile other than twisted acacia and the odd Maasai farmer.

Finally, after a late meal stop, we were in Serengeti National Park, we saw our first lion and every bone-jarring second of our drive was worthwhile.

Serengeti

I think that everyone has their own mental image of what Africa 'is' - it might be the endless sands of the Sahara, or tribal violence in the Congo, or even the soukh in Tangiers. But for me, when we pitched our camp in the Serengeti National Park, I was in the Africa I'd always imagined. Childhood images, created and shaped by wildlife documentaries, were made absolutely real.

From the door of our tent, we could gaze out over a vast panorama of dried grasses, twisted and flat-top acacia, puncuated by giraffes ambling past in the distance with their long, swinging gait and small herds of Thompson Gazelles. Mongooses and Bush Hyrax scuttled around near the camp kitchen searching for small insects and scraps of food. We ate our evening meal in the Serengeti sunset, and went to sleep early lulled by the night sounds - the incessant chirp of cicadas and the occasional lonely whooping call of a spotted hyena wandering past the campsite.


Facilities in the campsite were primitive indeed. The toilets were simple squats or, amazingly, a concrete dais with a toilet seat over the top, all above deep pits. The only water supply came from an almost-empty plastic tank. There was a bucket shower, and Gerry gratefully used it, only to find that it belonged to an enterprising local who wanted to charge $5 for the privilege! A quick word with our guide, and he was gone the next morning - sadly along with his shower, which meant that we had to wash in about an inch of water in a bucket.

Despite the presence of toilets, though, we were strongly advised by our guide not to use them after dark, as it was impossible to know what would be coming through the camp by night. This stern warning was reinforced the first morning, when we found out that two lions had come through at 5am, getting a drink from the water supply! We'd slept through it, but our cook Ema had been up and about in the camp kitchen with his colleagues, and they'd had a scary few moments.

Serengeti was our first real exposure to the awesome power of the African sun. On our arrival, I took my shirt off for just 15 minutes while pitching the tent, and ended up with sunburned shoulders!

But it was the wildlife in Serengeti National Park that really blew us away. While it could be quite a time between sightings, simply because of the sheer size of the Park, when Hussein found something it was normally something special.

A quick Stat-Spot: Serengeti National Park covers an area of almost 15,000sq km. That's 6,000sq miles. For perspective, that's an area the size of Yorkshire.

An amazing highlight of the first full day was seeing a lioness plodding along the side of the road, closely followed by her cub, who couldn't have been more than a month or two old. We were so close we could almost have touched him - though that would not have been sensible - and we watched her pad off to wherever she was going, with him jogging along behind trying to keep up.

We saw leopards, lazily sprawled in the branches of their favourite trees watching the world pass by. Ostrich couples striding along (and in one instance mating - the ridiculous dance the male ostrich does before 'performing' made me wish I'd had a video camera!). A Cheetah with her cubs, hiding in the long grass of the plain. A trio of older lion cubs, sunning themselves on a kopje while they waited for their mother to return with food. Ox-Pecker birds, with their brightly-coloured beaks, feeding on the ticks in the skin of Giraffes. Herds of Hippos wallowing contentedly in their pool while basking crocodiles looked on.

The sights seemed never-ending, and every time we thought we'd seen the most unexpected or beautiful image, something else would come along to surprise us. Hussein was fantastic, glued to his radio as we drove along, listening to what other guides were finding as he looked out for memorable sights for us.

A Memorable Finale to Serengeti

Our second (and final) full day in Serengeti produced two of the most amazing, rare and memorable sights of the whole safari.

About 30 minutes into our morning game drive, there was a sudden burst of excited Swahili over the radio, and Hussein immediately turned the vehicle around and sprinted back the way we'd come. Believe me, it was as fast as he could go - and 50km/h on a dirt track is plenty fast enough! All he'd say was it was 'something special' - and the last time he'd said that was for the lioness and her cub, so we knew we were in for a treat.

We certainly were. There, just a few feet from the road, was a pride of over 20 lions with a fresh kill - a buffalo that we'd photographed just the night before. To see a pride with a kill is rare, and if it is seen it's normally at quite a distance. Here, though, we were so close to the action that we could hear the purrs of the lions as they ate, hear as well as see their teeth tearing the flesh. We were awe-struck, and we watched in wonder, ignoring the traffic jam of safari vehicles as more and more viewers rushed to the scene. The lions were totally unfazed by our presence, feasting on their prize and, as they ate their fill, strolling off to bask in the grass.


It was a jaw-dropping piece of wildlife reality, and something that I'll remember for a very long time.

Then, just to round off our time in Serengeti, as we drove along Hussein caught a glimpse of something moving in long-grass off to our left, some distance away. We stopped, grabbing the binoculars - and we were lucky enough to see a Serval - a small African wildcat, rare and difficult to see. I grabbed a photo, but even with a 300mm lens on the camera, it was hard to see.

Finally, we broke camp and headed off, again looking like Mexican bandits, back into the dust for the 5-hour drive to our next stop - the Ngorongoro Crater Conservation Area.

The Crater and the Buffalo

After juddering and bouncing our way along the dirt road, we finally reached our campsite on the Ngorongoro Crater Rim in the early evening, and wrenched our battered and dust-caked bodies out of the Land Cruiser in a place so different from the Serengeti we might have been in another country.

We were on a hillside in crystal-clear air, about 2600m (1.6 miles) above sea level and with a view that took in almost all of the Crater below. Though the toilets were just as primitive as the Serengeti campsite, this time they had electricity - which meant hot showers, and we gratefully took the chance to get properly clean for the first time in three days.

While we waited for dinner, we walked down the hill a couple of hundred metres to the bottom of the campsite to look at the view - and came face to face with a buffalo in the camp!

I immediately started taking photos of him, moving closer - and when I got within about 3m of him he raised his huge horned head, and stared straight at me, giving me the most amazing photo opportunity of this huge member of the 'Big 5'.


It was only as we walked away that a somewhat nervous South African guy approached me and asked what I'd been doing - then explained that I'd been 10 feet from an animal considered to be one of the most dangerous in Africa!

As the evening went on, it got colder and colder - at the altitude of the Rim, it's frequently below zero - so we tucked ourselves up in our sleeping bags and settled down for the night...only to be woken not long after midnight by an odd sound....which when we checked turned out to be zebra, grazing right outside the tent. They were so close that their every sound was audible, a cacophony of munching right by our ears.

The Big 5

With the sunrise, it was time to climb back into the vehicle and descend the precarious access road into the Crater itself.

With its steep sides, the Ngorongoro Crater keeps most of its wildlife in, meaning that there's plenty to see packed into just 264 sq km (101 sq miles).

Our first glimpse of something new came quickly, with a Spotted Hyena - the first time we'd seen one reasonably close - and then, as we rounded a corner in a wooded area, we came face to face with a huge old bull elephant. The safe environment of the Ngorongoro Crater means that the elephants tend to live longer and this old boy showed every year, with the longest tusks I've ever seen except on pictures of prehistoric mammoths!


Immediately after him, though, came the crowning moment of the trip to the Crater - if not the whole safari - as another call came through on the radio and off we dashed again.

This time, it was something not just special but incredible. Black Rhino - and not just one, but two together! There are just 23 Black Rhino in the entire Ngorongoro Conservation Area, and only 11 in the whole of the Serengeti, so to see one at all is a rare privilege.

They were too far away for a decent photo, even with a 300mm lens, but they were easy to see with our binoculars, and we were grinning like kids at Christmas as we realised that we'd seen the complete Big 5 - Lion, Leopard, Cape Buffalo, Elephant and now Black Rhino.

We drove on, with the weak morning sun meaning we had a rare chance to see hippos out of the water. For 3-tonne leviathans, they have an odd grace when moving, and we watched one with her calf as they grazed before returning to the cool of their waterhole.

Throughout the Crater were herds of Wildebeest, with Zebra intermingling with them, moving in seemingly never-ending single file from one apparently featureless point to another. We would stop to allow some to cross our path, then drive round a corner and find the head of the herd crossing again - animal after animal in single file, a column stretching for thousands of metres. While we didn't see the actual Wildebeest Migration - at this time of year the Wildebeest are well north in the Maasai Mara - just seeing these herds moving around gave us a small idea of how the full Migration must look when it's millions of animals moving as one.

All too soon it was time to move, and we wound up the even more precarious Ascent Road with me gripping the armrests, grey-faced with fear, and headed away from the Crater to our last safari stop - Lake Manyara National Park.

Manyara was, in some ways, a bit of an anti-climax - though we did get to see some fantastic sights, culminating in a troop of baboons relaxing together, grooming and playing in the gathering dusk. By the time we got there, we were tired, dirty and in all honesty looking forward to spending a night in a proper bed.

Manyara done, we took the drive back to Arusha, and collapsed into a proper bed for the first time in what felt like years.

After that - well, what can I say? A short hop to Zanzibar, and there we were in a tropical paradise. We spent our first three days in Stone Town, the oldest part of Zanzibar Town, and relished a soft mattress, before being picked up and chauffeured to our final destination for the remaining week - the Pongwe Beach Resort.

Paradise Found

Pongwe was, quite simply, the absolute image of a desert island, beachside resort.

With just 16 2-person bungalows, it takes a maximum of 32 guests, who are cared for by an incredible 67 staff! From the moment we arrived we were in the lap of luxury, with our every need catered to by smiling waiters.

Our bungalow was right on the beach, looking out over white sand and the vivid blue of the Indian Ocean. We could (and did) walk straight out of the front door and, holding hands, run straight into the warmest outdoor water I've ever swum in.

We were lulled to sleep each night by the gentle sound of the waves against the shore - and, actually, brutally woken by the screeching yells of bush-babies in the early parts of the night!

All too soon, reality beckoned and we were back in a taxi...then a plane...then another plane...then another plane...then a bus...then another taxi...and home, 26 hours after leaving Paradise.

As I finish writing this now, 2 weeks after our return, it seems magically distant, like a place I read about rather than experienced. Thankfully we have the photographs (see them all here and here), and each one evokes the memories - the sights, feelings and smells of Africa brought back to life through an image on a laptop screen.

Oh well - now it's back to the 'Lonely Planet' guides, so we can plan the next holiday of a lifetime - in 2009!

Aha, so THERE'S the problem!

Simple - my elderly PCMCIA wireless card isn't supported under Linux.

I think a trip to PC world looms....

Linux at last

So I finally have Ubuntu installed on my Thinkpad X30.

It's only taken me 5 months to get around to it!

Of course, WLAN doesn't work (can't find a correct driver for the wireless card) so I have a strand of Cat5 stretching across the living room, but it's a start.

Once again, when I finally have it installed, I'm struck by its speed and simplicity. It's clean, simple and easy on the eye, and It Just Works.

Except wireless. Which Just Doesn't Work.

But the rest does.

Hooray! Promotion!

I can't believe I've done it.

So as of Monday, I'll be a Second-Line Engineer at $WEMANAGESTUFF, having only started as a 1st-line Bob 5 months ago.

The new role was advertised Thursday night and I applied Friday morning, thinking I'd have a week or two to get my snout in the books and make sure I passed the tech interview....then Monday afternoon I get an email with an interview date - Tuesday at 3. Less than 24 hours notice!

Anyway, the night and following morning was spent cramming - 20 out of 23 hours were spent either delving in textbooks, making notes from Wikipedia and whatis.com and asking questions of anyone who came within range.

By yesterday afternoon I was knackered and ready to either puke or collapse with nerves when my name was called. . .

And I PASSED!

There was only one technical question I couldn't answer, and only one procedural one I got wrong, which I'm dead chuffed about.

So - as of next Monday, I'm Second Line.

The great thing is that here at $WEMANAGESTUFF, Second Line is a huge leap away from First in terms of activity. While First Line does a lot of problem resolution, the majority of it is directly customer-facing (resetting passwords, setting up Exchange distribution lists, editing AD accounts, that sort of thing). Second Line barely do any of that, instead focusing on our security, switching and mail systems.

So it's no more lusers for me, and fun with Checkpoint, Cisco and Sendmail into the future!

A return to normality. . . .

It's been a crazy couple of months...

The lovely G had to change jobs due to redundancy, and I've now moved onto the shift pattern (a week of 7-3 followed by a week of 3-11), and I'm still getting used to it.

What makes it a bit odd for me is that G's new job means stacks of travelling, and at the moment she's kinda on the opposite cycle to me - so she's at home when I'm on lates (meaning I don't see her as she's off to work before I wake up, and I'm gone before she gets back), and she's travelling when I'm on earlies - meaning I just don't see her!

In other news, I'm now the proud owner (finally) of a subnotebook - an IBM X30. It's great, but it would be even better if I could get Ubuntu installed on the bloody thing!

Order a USB CD-ROM drive: check.
Download and burn a bootable ISO of 6.10: check.
Test booting from USB with a 'doze recovery disk: check.
Test booting into Linux on my big laptop: check.

Insert Ubuntu boot CD into USB CD-ROM and reboot. Into Windows.

Ctrl-alt-del. Try again. Check BIOS again. Reboot. Into Windows.

So at the moment, until I can work out why the damn thing won't boot from two different Linux CDs, I'm stuck with XP Pro, heavily stripped and running ObjectDock.

If anyone can offer any suggestions as to a way round this, I'd love to hear them!

Almost a week. . .

. . and the new job is still very much a revelation.

It's such a surprising feeling to wake up at a decent time in the morning, after a decent nights' sleep, and actually to look forward to going to work!

The impact it's made on my mood, even in such a short time, is marked. Everything seems brighter at the moment, and I hadn't realised just how down and unhappy I was at work.

I'm learning so much about so many things, from Exchange administration to server management to SQL - with a spot of basic desktop support thrown in.

I can't describe how glad I am I made the move. Long may it last.

First Day. . .

. . and all is well.

Can I mention how bloody lovely it is to have a commute of just 20 minutes each way?

I can't remember the last time I got home without feeling exhausted.

I feel I have a steep learning curve coming - but it's going to be FUN.

Bullet Bitten, Beginning to Bob!

OK - it's now official so I can blog about it.

Those close to me will know that I've always been into technology and computing. Yet I've always done the sales side, with a little occasional support on the side.

As far back as three years ago, even my Dad (when I built him a PC for Xmas) had said I should consider being a techie as a career.

Over the last year or so, I've become less and less satisfied with selling the solution. I've become disillusioned with sales, and with the people I found were selling as well. In many (too many) cases, IT sales people are looking to close the deal, without understanding the technology or providing a solution that fits the need, preferring instead to make commission.


In fact, I've reached the point where I honestly believe IT sales is a career choice for ex-estate agents who think estate agency has become too honest!

That, allied to a 150-mile round trip commute every day, led to my decision. . .

I've done it. As of this Thursday, I am officially an IT Support Engineer (that's the job title). Basically, I'm going to be a Bob for $WEDEVELOPANDHOSTSTUFF - and I can't wait.

My now-ex company were most understanding - once I'd got past the "if you stay with us you're bound to make loads of money" spiel from the Sales Manager. "It's not about the money" is, I've discovered, heresy - and not something a Sales Manager can comprehend or offer any form of objection-handling to!

So, while in real terms I'm taking a pay cut, what this means is:

- A 20-mile round-trip commute, taking my time in the car from 3 hours per day to just 30 minutes;
- No sales targets;
- Such a HUGE drop in fuel costs and insurance that I'm actually better
off each month despite the pay cut;
- NO more cold-calling. Ever.
- No more suits. Or ties.
- $EX-WIFE gets less of my hard-earned every month (double bonus).

I've bitten the bullet - and even today, just 24 hours after handing over the letter, I can already feel the stress bleeding off and my mood improving.

They say when your job is also your hobby, you never work a day. I'm about to put that to the test - and I can't wait.

A Great and Geeky Weekend

. . .was had by all!

Saturday night was spent quaffing beer, burning Knoppix CDs and configuring xmame.


Mostly quaffing, in my case.

Sunday dawned, and we dragged ourselves to Worthing and the Sussex Linux User Group stand. . .


It turned out to be a great day out, introducing many people to the wonders of Open Source and what it could do (we had a MythTV demo thanks to Steve, a looped presentation on OpenOffice, my Ubuntu 6.10 laptop running Hak.5 videos, and an old P3 configured as the aforementioned MAME box running 'Gauntlet' and 'Star Wars'.




As well as that, it was a good chance to meet a number of SLUG members I wouldn't normally meet, given that I can't make the moots. So hello to Gareth, Richie, Colin and Dominic - and no doubt others whose names I can't recall at the moment!

More photos are here on Flickr.

I really enjoyed the day - it's interesting to see the range of reactions to Linux, and the enthusiasm LUGgers have for promoting it. The Fairs seem to me to be a good way of increasing awareness, and I'll definitely be promoting the idea with my local LUG, OxLUG.

All in all, a great weekend and a really enjoyable day out on the stand. I'm looking forward to helping out next month!

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.

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.

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.

Life changes for the better

I used to believe that I only blogged - only actually wrote - when I was miserable.

For me, for the longest time, writing was a way to escape the things in my day-to-day life that made me so unhappy. I stayed glued to the news, puring my scorn and vitriol on anything that I could find.

Now - as the lack of posts here attests - I don't have that rage any more, nor the need to escape unhappiness.

And suddenly, over recent days, I've felt the urge to write again. The difference is that this time, my feelings are positive.

Last year, I made a hard decision and escaped the environment that was causing me pain. The fallout from that decision was painful in itself - not just for me but for others as well. And yet, 14 months on, I'm amazed and elated by the difference in my life.

I'm settled in a new relationship now - with someone who has brought me self-esteem and an inner equilibrium I've never really had before. She hasn't done this in a forceful way - just by being herself, and treating me the way she thinks I should be treated - yet in that treatment, she's created a calmer, more centred and happier me.

My parents and grandmother, who have dealt with the pain and fallout from my past life, have also been instrumental, as have friends - including one especially who, along with his lovely wife and beautiful daughter, welcomed me back as a friend when I had previously abandoned them.

For the first time in a long time - I'm happy. And I thank those who helped for it.

So. . . I'm going to try writing again. No negativity this time, no escape from pain and emotional torment - positives. Good stuff.

In other words - life.

Farewell car - an update

So I visited the crash compound to clear the car out, and took the opportunity to take some more shots.



I have to say, in the cold light of day the damage was more severe than I remembered.
Anyway, the upshot is that today I received a call from my insurers....and she's been written off.

That's the bad news.

The good news is that my insurers, who have proved so far to be absolutely fantastic, have made a much better offer than I was expecting, so I won't lose out as much as I anticipated.

My back's still stiff and sore, and I've got to get it checked out again - but having seen the damage, quite frankly I'm glad I was able to walk out of the car rather than get carried out!

So this weekend, I'm car-hunting (again). I'm resisting the urge to buy one of these so the next person who clobbers me comes off worse!

Farewell, sweet Car, I hardly knew you!

One day, the law of averages is gonna get you.

Yesterday was that day. Nine years of accident-free driving...gone.

Plus, I had the exciting experience of being strapped to a spinal board and spending two hours staring at a hospital ceiling.

Thankfully, no bones were broken and no blood gushing, but I'm gutted - I'd only had that car about 6 weeks!

Still, it's not my fault - and the nice gentleman who parked his Vauxhall Zafira in my boot didn't come off too well either. . . .


And for bonus points, the long line of 'indeterminate fluid' between the skid-marks, veering to where he stopped, indicates his radiator's fscked. Or he just lost control of his bladder. Oh, I do hope so. Either way, perhaps in future he'll look at the road in front of him.

Click on either of the images for larger versions in all their gory detail...

So I'm waiting for the hire car to arrive, and counting my blessings that I only suffered bruising and a whack of stiffness.

And as I lay in bed last night, my only regret was that I hadn't put my phone in 'voice record' mode when I got out of the car - his first words were "sorry, I didn't notice how slow you were going"! Admission of liability, anyone?

A Post at Last!

It's odd - there's been so much going on in the news recently.

The 'Jowellgate' affair. . .Bush and the Katrina Briefings. . . Lib-Dem <> Leadership Conteszzzzz (sorry, dozed off for a moment there). . .The financial crisis in the NHS. . .daily murders and bombings in Iraq. . .

The list is endless, and in earlier times I'd have been on here posting all night, venting my outrage and pouring vitriol on those responsible at all levels. Yet not now.

Why, I hear you ask?

Well - to be honest, I just can't summon up the rage any more.

A lot's happened to me in the last 6 months. Some of the events were, and continue to be, very painful emotionally. But out of the sadness has come a great deal that is good - in fact, better than my life has been for some considerable time, if ever.

When your life is unhappy, it's easy to seek outlets for the suppressed rage. Those outlets may be, and frequently ARE, totally unconnected with one's own situation.

Conversely, when things are good - in fact, very good indeed - there's no rage to need expression. So while I still watch the news avidly, and while I still comment on it personally and remain involved in relevant campaigns, I don't feel the need to scream any more.

So I'm sorry to those who used to look forward to my rambling political diatribes - this may no longer be the place for you. I plan to diarise the good things in my life from this point on.

On that note, I'm looking forward to heading off to CeBIT this year, where I'll be manning our stand from 13-15 March. I'm planning to take loads of photographs and, if I can get online enough, to post on some of the cool kit I see.

Watch this space . . .

The Beginning of the End?

Well, we can hope. . .

The Bulldog Manifesto. . .

. . has a link to the John Birch Society poll asking whether Dubya should be impeached.

Go there. Vote.

The results make for interesting reading - as, indeed, does Bulldog's entire Blog.

Blair unveils his 'respect' plans

Now THIS is amusing.

Bliar has talked before about creating a 'culture of respect' in this country.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for reducing crime and antisocial behaviour - fewer Chavs on the street would be a good start - but sadly, what Bliar fails to grasp is the concept that a culture of respect should start at the top.

He could start by respecting the Electorate he serves (ooh, I don't know - perhaps by maybe NOT STARTING AN ILLEGAL WAR FOR OIL). Alternatively, how about respecting his parliamentary peers - perhaps by reinstating two sessions of Prime Minister's Questions rather than just the one?

I know - he could try respecting the institutions of Government and Democracy by ceasing plans to limit civil liberties, and dropping ID Cards?

But we all know the truth.

For Bliar, 'respect' means the people of this nation doing what HE wants, and not noticing the high tax burden, failing education system and massaged NHS waiting times.

I can tell you one thing. He'll get no respect from me. Ever.