I've been aware of this for a while now hence my sudden interest in learning Linux, specifically Ubuntu Linux. It gains special significance when you know that Microsoft will withdraw support (security patches etc.) for XP 12 months after Service Pack 3 which is expected in about 6 months. So that means 18 months and then you have to migrate to Vista.
I don't think so!
As you're aware I've been playing with an Open Source Linux operating system called Ubuntu. What with Windows going all "Windows Genuine Advantage" and Vista going ... who knows, well, I thought I should take a look at some Linux flavours again.
So here's a brief synopsis for those of you willing to dip your toe in the water.
I've assumed the reader knows nothing so don't take offence if you know this already.
The main reasons to go with an Open Source OS are
1/ it's free
2/ it's more secure than Windows and generally you won't need an anti-virus or firewall
3/ it comes complete with mail client, web browsers etc.etc.
Users can have both Linux and Windows operating on the same p.c.. This is referred to as "dual boot" as you will be given a choice at start-up in the black BIOS boot screen as to which OS you want to boot into every time you turn the p.c. on.
You can order a CD of the complete Ubuntu OS for the price of postage/free or download it from here. It's a big file, 700MB.
New users can run what's called a "live session" meaning try out Ubuntu without it being permanently installed. This gives you an idea of how it looks and feels, try before you buy.
All the instructions for installing etc. are on help pages like this. It's pretty idiot proof. You should defragment your hard drive before installing to tidy your hard drive up. This page probably has the best install instructions I've seen along with pics of what you'd expect to see at each step.
Ubuntu has been set up to detect just about all your drivers and attached devices on start-up. Linux has come a long, long way and it's fairly much plug'n'play now with the exception of wireless. A hard wired LAN connection is no problem though so it'll probably be completely painless for you to put on your main p.c. for a trial run. Lots of help is available.
Ubuntu comes complete with loads of software on the install disc/download that will duplicate the functionality of the Windows programs you're familiar with. You can also download a Linux program called Automatix that will download and install a lot of useful plug-ins and media codecs automatically.
For Windows programs that you don't want to give up there are emulator programs that act as go betweens and should allow the Windows software to run under Linux fairly well.
Of course there are other flavours of Linux. Here's another, Linspire, that's supposed to be a dawdle do set up.
I did take on a biggy. Install a Linux OS and get it running on my p.c. wirelessly. Now accomplished. Sort of. For those of you who are not close to the penguin Linux is a multi-flavoured Open Source (the important bit is FREE here) operating system, a more secure, and apparently stable alternative to Windows. It's constantly in development so bugs and issues get fixed quickly and the way Linux works means you don't normally need a firewall or anti-virus program. The only problem is that hardware manufacturers don't do a lot to support Linux users in terms of drivers so there are all sorts of workarounds. I know this because I must have spent the equivalent of 20 hours pouring over forum threads about wireless networking to get my own (albeit obscure) wireless USB adapter working.
It set up a wired LAN network automatically but wireless.....that's a bit different. And I still haven't been able to get it configured with security enabled. But I will, eventually.
So, if you're one of my neighbours and have attached yourself to my network (I know who you are)..... that wasn't me earlier looking at pictures of naked Australian women, but yes, they were tasteful. And that wasn't my bank account I was checking either. If I were you though I'd batten down the hatches because thanks to Linux I've just discovered two open source cracking utilities that'll mean I'll be able to unzip your WEP key post haste. You better hope you don't have any "artistic" pics of your wife on your hard drive.
Viva la penguin!
Having a wee one who is only compatible with short flights to go on holiday means I have to learn a language over the next 12 months. I don't have to, I just feel more than a bit pathetic not being able to speak more than a few words when I'm in someone else's country.
So the question is which country, which language? Let's see. Countries close to hand are Belgium, Holland, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Greece, Albania, Turkey, Poland, Switzerland and Austria.
I'll drop the cold ones. And Germany and Austria. German sounds awful. The words are too big too. Polish, well, they're all coming over here so that can't be good. Portugal, they drink sherry and make bad wine. No, No, NO! Italy, full of Italians and thieving Albanians. Albania, see Italy x 10. Who am I left with?
France, Spain, Greece. Greece is history, no Roman alphabet. And.... you have to throw your dirty bog roll in a basket rather than flush because their toilets were built with exit pipes the size of beer bottle necks. Very clever!
So France or Spain.
France, full of French. Sorry, got to go. No work ethic, think everyone owes them a living and the lowest spenders on deodorant products in the EU. Best export is surrendering on hearing a loud noise and hoisting up anything white.
Spain it is then. And at least Spanish is phonetic.
More on this soon.
At the time of posting I've got a short example of a movie in my embedded Windows Media Player on the right hand sidebar (though this may not be the case by the time you read this). It's actually quite easy to do (otherwise I wouldn't have been able to do it). So what do you need? Either a digital stills camera with a movie mode or a digital video camera, a web hosting service and some software-in my case Windows Movie maker 2.1 (which is free) and probably already on your XP pc. For my example I used the movie mode in my stills camera which, even though it's low resolution 360x240 pixels will come out fine. You don't want or need a higher resolution anyway as the resulting file has to be as small as possible so that visitors to your page don't wait long for your blog page or movie to download.
First step. After downloading the movie from your camera to your p.c. open Windows Movie Maker (Start/All Programs/Accessories)and "import video". This will work if your movie has the suffix .avi or .mpeg or .wmv. If your movie is in .mov file format (which is Quicktime and not supported) all is not lost as you can use software to convert it to a file format supported by Windows Movie Maker like .avi using one of these trials Mov Converter, Convert Movie, or the free MPeg4CamToAvi. Having converted the imported video ( if necessary) drag the video to the time line to begin editing. Effects, titles and cutting can all be done here. Excellent instructions on the editing here from Microsoft Movie Maker's website. When you're happy with the result save the output to your p.c. as a .wmv or .avi selecting 512 DSL (or lower) output quality to compress the file size. And that's all there is to it. Your movie is now ready to upload to your hosting service and play in the embedded Media Player.
Well, after looking through a load of old photos I was going to scan one in and have all 3 readers guess where it was taken. Of course my scanner decided that it wasn't in the room ....
"Error, scanner cannot be found. Bummer error"
Now I knew most computer errors were bummers but I'd never actually seen one admit it before. Progress, I suppose.
So as I can't post it you're going to have to guess what the picture was of. Should be easy enough, just tune in to my thoughtwaves in a Uri Geller like way.
Easy Peasy.
What? You need a clue? O.K. then. It was taken with my own fair hand in the mid 90s.
What the f's he on about now? Ever had a day when the page you want to load just won't or pictures and links in pages take forever? Me too!! Especially now I've got my broadband enabled at the new house. No idea what it is but I can't load pages for shit. Until now.
The solution I came across accidentally (like everything else) and ... by fluck!, does it make a difference. It's called TreeWalk DNS. I'll try to explain what it does but as I'm stupid this will most likely be wrong. When you type in a URL the internet service provider's address book converts it into a number and "connects" with it. Sometimes however this information in the address book gets corrupted or their DNS server acts up. This is when you get error pages and slow or non-loading pages. Your computer keeps these addresses temporarily and disposes of them when you switch off. Treewalk doesn't use your ISP's DNS server and also keeps a copy of regularly viewed pages' addresses even after the p.c. is switched off hence faster loading.
If you're happy it's safe why not try it. It auto-installs even on a broadband network and seems to speed up things dramatically particularly if you use a multi-tabbed browser like Firefox. Your firewall may warn you about an application called "named.exe" trying to act as a server. This is what's meant to happen. There's a support forum at the site.
Oh, and it's free.
Get it here.
Fiddling with Firefox today I contacted the Arkansas Oracle , juncquedujour , whereupon I was made aware of a Firefox add-on ( they call them extensions ) named Forecastfox .
Now , there are no prizes for guessing what this does but suffice to say it sits discretely in your browser and lets you know whether to iron your shorts soon or bring the washing in .
I've added it to the Firefox list down the page .
I've been experiencing some problems with Firefox lately , but predominantly on MSN pages . Updates from 1.04 to 1.05 to 1.06 didn't solve it . The versions immediately before 1.06 disabled some of the functionality of some of the extensions due to a security patch (I was using 20 and most were not verified as being compatible) so I backed up my profile , went through a diagnostic and finished up re-installing 1.06 from scratch which was painless . All my settings and bookmarks are still there . Seems to be a lot faster now , but obviously I couldn't leave it there , what with it working O.K. and all that so , at the risk of breaking it again tweaked some settings which should render pages faster - link also in the list .
It's going to be a roaster for me tomorow folks - 17 degrees - already stocked up with the factor 60 .
Still going through the holiday pics . Today I assembled a panorama from several shots I took out at Cape Greko between Protaras and Ayia Napa using Autostitch software ( which is free ! ) .
It does a fantastic job as long as you take the pics in a certain way .
Click on the thumbnail image to see the full pic .
You can download the full size image from there and save it to your hard drive to zoom in and have a better look at it through Windows Picture viewer or your photo software .
If you've arrived at this entry via an internet search involving Spaces and Firefox you'll find a series of entries about Firefox and MSN Spaces in a list accessed from the home page of my blog.
If you use Internet Explorer or Avant Browser ( a multi-tabbed "skin" for I.E. ) the term "bookmark" will mean nothing . It's Firefox's version of a "favourite" . Except in Firefox you can do something really useful with bookmarks in MSN Spaces .
If you use Firefox ( or after you've downloaded it from here ) when you browse a Spaces page you'll notice a symbol on the right of the status bar . This is the RSS symbol . Rather than explain what RSS is just hover on the symbol and the tool tip should say " add a live bookmark " - in other words " add a continually updated favourite " in I.E. speak . Left click on this symbol and it will add the Space as a bookmark ( it will save it as a folder ) but save each blog entry , list , photo album as individual pages .
The handy part here is that you will save a whole site in one go and it will be automatically updated in real time behind the scenes so all you have to do is right click on the bookmark and you can " open in tabs " all the blog entries etc .allowing you to see every blog post and it's comments in one go in Firefox's multiple tabbed pages . If you do this for each Space you regularly read then the most up to date pages will always be instantly available through your bookmarks sidebar .
You can test it on this page so that you can refer back to the instructions if you need to .
Am i becoming a Firefox evangelist ?
We're all so tech savvy nowadays , aren't we ? Well , a bit anyway . Enough to get us complacent and into danger . Sometimes we just don't know how to get the best from our new technology .
Here are a few sites that I've found useful for this'n'that .
computer hardware or software help
everything you need to know about digital photography / your camera
sending files up to 100MB
test your firewall
