Musings on computers, music, travel and other such things.
I’ve just stumbled upon this net label, whilst trying to determine which year the Wind Whistles album was actually released in (the answer being 2007 and 2008 in different places).
The label has so far only released three albums, but two of them happen to already be on my list of favourite freely available music for this year, which makes me think I’m likely to like anything they put out.
While I’m off for Christmas, I thought I’d spend a little time getting to know KDE4. To stop me cheating, I installed the latest KDE version of Mandriva One, which means I’m without a fair few other things I’m very reliant on.
So far I’ve changed a few cosmetic things (desktop wallpaper and window decorations), and installed all available updates. Mandriva 2009 does have Firefox, so I don’t think it is cheating to use it, although I am also exploring Konqueror as an alternative browser, as well as using KWrite, Dolphin, and a few other things I’ve not used before.
After some customisation, my desktop now looks like this:
(time passes)
A few hours later I realise that this experiement has to be at an end for now. Not due to anything to do wih KDE4, but more to do with the fact that the laptop I’m testing it on has several hardware faults which make long-term use non-viable. But in the few hours I’ve had, I’d say that I’m pleasantly surprised. Dolphin is a great file manager, Kmail has come on a lot, and the desktop environment as a whole has the feel of something that can move beyond what KDE3 was and redefine what a desktop environment does.
I’m still not abandoning Gnome though.
I’ve written about Death by Panda before (around the time I was listening to “House Made of Glass” on repeat). Since then there have been three further albums, all of which explore an area of music that can be disconcerting, but that does a damn fine job of sounding both computer-generated and very human.
The new album is called Straight Lines in Subjectivity (direct download).
I wasn’t sure I needed to upgrade this website to WordPress 2.7 (the latest version of the blogging software which acts as a front-end for everything else here), but as I missed the last couple of releases I decided it might be a good idea.
The upgrade went flawlessly (following the 3 step upgrade), and I’ve also added OpenID support so that Livejournal users who read this will be able to leave me comments using username.livejournal.com as an OpenID (replacing “username” with their own username).
I don’t think anything is broken, but let me know if this is not the case.
Ubuntu Customisation Kit is a great bit of software that allows Ubuntu disc images to be customised and then rebuilt. Uses I’ve found so far include:
I’m sure I’ll think of more.
It’s taken a while, but I’ve finally finished the upgrade. Everything seems to work, and my desktop now looks slightly different as a result:
I’ve used Evolution as my main mail client for ages, but it really doesn’t like my EeePC, so I thought I’d give Thunderbird a try. Not only does it display all my folders and messages far more clearly, but with the addition of a couple of extensions it makes navigation and moving messages a whole lot easier.
I’m still going to use Evolution at work, because I’m very much tied to Exchange, but I think for home use Thunderbird has come on a lot in the two years since I used it last, and I should at least give it a chance.
I’m sitting in the Green Room in the OLRC on Selly Oak Campus. The Green Room is what used to be the Literature Hall, where it housed books between 800 and 899 on the Dewey Decimal System and also hosted a vast array of teaching resources. Now, it is a new Learning Space, with comfy seats, plasma screens, and wifi access. Think a cross between a really posh living room, and a space-age cybercafe and you won’t be far away. Everything here is new, and is designed to give the students of the 21st century what they need to be productive. There are no books, no journals, and no remnants of the past here. It is exactly the sort of space I would have liked to have when I worked here, and I imagine that students love it. I say “imagine” because I am currently the only person here and can’t see or hear another human being. Yes, it’s Saturday, but I think that with a bit more publicity and promotion this could turn into a flagship learning space and could really put both the Univeristy and Selly Oak campus in particular at the forefront of innovative learning spaces. And that’s something I never thought I’d say when I walked through the doors of this building for the first time over 8 years ago.
Although, I must say, I do appreciate the quietness sometimes.
If I was buying a new PC, I think I’d get it from EfficientPC. 8Gb of memory and 3Tb of storage for under £700, or more realistically some decent PCs that blow anything I use now out of the water for around £300 means it would actually be possible to buy a new PC for less than the amount of money I have left in my bank account at the end of the month.
Not that I’m going to buy one, I just like to price things up every now and again.