Monday 16 January 2012
Friday 23 December 2011
@TriXonlinePhill: My Twitting learning points
@TriXonlinePhill: My Twitting learning points: I've been Twitting for just overa month and have been through quite a steep learning curve, I’ve made a few good ‘on line’ friends, and dump...
Wednesday 23 November 2011
Eleanor Lukes: Don’t Tell Me to Relax About Welfare Reform
Eleanor Lukes: Don’t Tell Me to Relax About Welfare Reform: The letter that informs me I will lose my flat comes as a surprise. I knew it was coming at some point of course, I was aware of the implica...
The Green Benches: Evidence shows that levels of sickness benefit cla...
The Green Benches: Evidence shows that levels of sickness benefit cla...: This piece exposes the various Tory lies ( see link ) on the UK's supposed growing "benefit culture" The graph above is my own research. It...
Friday 16 September 2011
Tuesday 13 September 2011
Ubuntu 11.10
Herumph, hoist with my
own petard or something like that : random scribblings about Ubuntu
1.10 have disappeared irrecoverably from http://warriet.blogspot.com/
with no effort whatsoever on my part so now following my own advice
and writing first locally to be coped and pasted later to
http://warriet.blogspot.com/.
If I remember I'll save this one in Google
Docs
on the grounds that Google's servers are probably more reliable than
any of my local confusers.. Where was I? Blogging about Ubuntu
11.10
and my experiences so far. I like Linux in all its varieties and the
co-operative mindset (as opposed to the top down approach used by
Microsoft and Apple) for the development of the OS. The numbering of
the name shows that 1 is the year and 10 the month of the intended
release. Whereas the other models effectively beta test in the
version sold to the users, aggregating the solution of problems into
urgent releases culminating in essential Service Packs resolve known
problems. I pity the sysadmins
(see also http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sysadmin)
responsible for maintenance of wide corporate networks. Subject to a
robust and fast corporate network, I would reinstall every client PC
with the defined corporate standard of software every day. What
people do with their home PCs is entirely up to them but there is
little that is more aggravating than users who reconfigure the
corporate PCs to their own whims regardless of corporate security and
other policies. Oh and disable or remove CD/DVD drives and USB ports
and Bluetooth
so that software comes solely from the corporate servers.
Back to the plot,
running Linux
means being involved, albeit in a very modest way, in the development
process. (http://linux.com/
is currently unavailable due to an as yet unresolved security breach:
rather draconian but as security is the main selling point of Linux,
it is reassuring that an event is investigated )
Each bug I find is
auto-reported to the development team who will investigate and
produce a fix usually already known but I have reported one
previously unknown bug. Worth noting that the (real)world in which we
live runs on some kind of ***x. Even Microsoft dominated businesses
don't rely on what is essentially a hobbyist OS for their
must-not-fail applications. It is of course highly ironic that I need
to use Windows or Apple to maintain devices such as my iPhone or my
satnav both of which are based some form of ***x. One very useful
piece of software for Windows (yes, I do use it sometimes) from
http://www.linuxliveusb.com/en/features
works very smoothly to create a bootable USB stick although working
out how to boot from USB rather than disk or CD/DVD can be something
of a performance as each PC requires different CMOS
settings and each PC requires a that a different key be held down
during boot to access the CMOS,
some more user-friendly than others. Also, booting from USB saves the
time and resource spent creating an endless supply of not very usefulcoasters CDs/DVDs: this place is littered with used
discs that I am loathe to bin because I remember when this was an
expensive medium, Somerset
Waste
Partnership
provides no guidance on disposal: I wonder what toxins I will be
adding to landfill? (memo to self
– always have a spare
pair of batteries on
charge for mouse and
keyboard – for a moment
I thought I had
a Windoze type hang,
probably a good cue
for saving this in
Google
Docs
which worked, keeping the
format and links I
see here.) After a day of this and that, I
am happy to declare Ubuntu to be stable and efficient!
Thursday 8 September 2011
Confusers and other mostly nerdy stuff...
Starting over September 2011
Phew!
Memory working well enough to recall the names and passwords that
access this site. Filezilla
still the best tool out there for multi-platform website maintenance.
One particularly agreeable feature is an “are you sure” process
with date and time to obviate publicly embarrassing version cock-ups.
I
hope to find something less bloated than LibreOffice
for text input... [disappears for sometime in search of something
lite and simple] Plenty of editors out there but I really can’t be
bothered with the arcane arts of HTML editing when all I want to do
is write. WordPress and
Blogger are OK but both
cumbersome to use, consuming an unnecessary amount of limited
confuser resource. [nostalgic pine for the simplicity of msdos Word:
there is a truism to the effect of work expanding to exceed available
capacity, certainly applies to home computing...]
Google's
Blogger has improved
massively since its initial launch and does provide many advantages
over a self-maintained website especially with the maintenance of
comments and despatch of distasteful trolls. Some of the comments
that I have seen on others' blogs beggar belief. Whatever the
mechanism I've learnt from experience that the best way of doing it
is to write off-line then copy/paste into the form provided. Apart from anything else Blogger provides some handy twiddly bits such as location and a sidebar repost of a day's twittering. Watching TV is not really compatible with blogging especially when the film on offer is The Unbearable Lightness Of Being complete with period Czech locations and old Škodas. Apparently Milan Kundera was not happy with the film despite the critical acclaim but then Kundera was never happy about anything very much. In translation he does provide some insight into the Czech mindset. Although not filmed in Prague, save a little black & white footage from 1968, the interspersed music by Janáček and the interior detailing provide a convincing view of Czech life in 1968.
A day later and still waiting for the Agomelatine, the supply of which seems to be difficult for Boots: it appears that it would be easier to buy some snake oil for hair loss prevention than to be supplied with a prescribed drug. Grrr. Will try again tomorrow morning. Day enlivened by Becca's calls from a very hot and sunny Ibiza. Have offered to collect them form Lulsgate on Monday, Dire weather is forecast Sunday/Monday as the UK is hit by the remnants of Hurricane Katia as predicted http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvf6iZVnG9I&feature=share
Lulsgate is generally accurate with flight times so with the experience gleaned from my taxi-driving days, I will see what the likely flight ETA is before embarking on the scenic drive via Burrington Combe to meet Becca and Alex at the airport. Airlines run to such tight schedules that a delay to the first flight of any particular aeroplane will affect all its subsequent flights around Europe in the course of the day
Computers: not dogmatic about them or OSs (although of course if money was no object, I'd be using the latest Airbook) and I use whatever works. Despite many attempts including the rather desperate measure of using the utilities provided by Roadstarter, this new-to-me IBM just won't run Windoze without blue screening but is now problem free running Ubuntu 11.10 (the 11 indicates the year, the 10 the month of scheduled release so this is a pre-release version yet more stable and less inefficient than any Windows SP99). Other computers hereabouts and connected to the Virgin hub that is at the end of what is supposed to be a 50Mb cable internet connection. To be fair, I just ran http://www.speedtest.net/ to be told that my download speed is 49.60 which is rather good for the time of day/week. There is a relentless marketing bombardment from other internet service providers (ISPs) trying to tell me how fast are there ADSL offerings but of course none can compete with cable, not even the boastful fibre offering from BT. The blogging process is not helped by the distractions of https://plus.google.com/, https://www.facebook.com/ and https://twitter.com/ but that's the nature of a life online.
A day later and still waiting for the Agomelatine, the supply of which seems to be difficult for Boots: it appears that it would be easier to buy some snake oil for hair loss prevention than to be supplied with a prescribed drug. Grrr. Will try again tomorrow morning. Day enlivened by Becca's calls from a very hot and sunny Ibiza. Have offered to collect them form Lulsgate on Monday, Dire weather is forecast Sunday/Monday as the UK is hit by the remnants of Hurricane Katia as predicted http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvf6iZVnG9I&feature=share
Lulsgate is generally accurate with flight times so with the experience gleaned from my taxi-driving days, I will see what the likely flight ETA is before embarking on the scenic drive via Burrington Combe to meet Becca and Alex at the airport. Airlines run to such tight schedules that a delay to the first flight of any particular aeroplane will affect all its subsequent flights around Europe in the course of the day
Computers: not dogmatic about them or OSs (although of course if money was no object, I'd be using the latest Airbook) and I use whatever works. Despite many attempts including the rather desperate measure of using the utilities provided by Roadstarter, this new-to-me IBM just won't run Windoze without blue screening but is now problem free running Ubuntu 11.10 (the 11 indicates the year, the 10 the month of scheduled release so this is a pre-release version yet more stable and less inefficient than any Windows SP99). Other computers hereabouts and connected to the Virgin hub that is at the end of what is supposed to be a 50Mb cable internet connection. To be fair, I just ran http://www.speedtest.net/ to be told that my download speed is 49.60 which is rather good for the time of day/week. There is a relentless marketing bombardment from other internet service providers (ISPs) trying to tell me how fast are there ADSL offerings but of course none can compete with cable, not even the boastful fibre offering from BT. The blogging process is not helped by the distractions of https://plus.google.com/, https://www.facebook.com/ and https://twitter.com/ but that's the nature of a life online.
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