Source Guru

Ok, so for years, and years, I’ve used Mozilla Firefox (Firebird, etc etc!) as I’ve always liked that it was more secure, it was FLOSS etc etc.

Well anyway, after having spent a lot of time recently at Omega Sektor where I’ve had to use Opera (simply because their Firefox install is broken and I hate Internet Explorer!) I’ve come across a few features I’ve liked in it.. (Speed Dial - the fact that a popup without a URL bar has a lil thing giving the web site address across the top)… so I’ve decided to try it at home…

The install was smooth (sudo dpkg -i opera*.deb) and It’s working nicely.

I’ll probably end up either loving or hating it in the next few days, but we can only see how things go!

I just found this on the register.

While I agree that the punishment is fair, it just shows how nowadays it seems too many people are unaware of the impact of Free Software in today’s community.

To be fair, I’d rather be offline than be forced to buy/use windows on a permanent basis. Espescially seeing as having to get used to a whole new system would be hell for me.

Though, he could always wait for KDE4 to be Windows Compatible and fully released and run that

So, yes, a lot of things have forced my hand, and I now have to be in Wolverhampton tonight, at the pub, to try and find an overnight home for 2 Laptops Hopefully it wont be that hard to do!

Other than that, i’ve got to say, I love the FLOSS community just for the simple fact that so far I’ve had three people offer me a lift. Well, I’m still stuck on who I’ll be taking it off, trying to whizz round and organise everything, but one way or another, I’ll be there tomorrow @ 9.

That’s if I don’t pass out from alcohol poisoning tonight.

I must say, someone remind me tonight to take the piss out of whatever Aq decides to drink, just for comparing me to his granny last year (and that winky was for Jono!)

If you read this, come say hi to me at some point. I’ll probably be wearing a nametag tomorrow, but, to be fair,you’re probably reading this through one or another of the planets, and they all have Gotchi’s

I may look strange, but I’ll be recognisable.

You ask for more info on a bug that you reported in the first place

I’m very tired, and I really can’t remember reporting that bug, AND I can’t reproduce it.

In other news, Katapult 0.3.2.1 has been released after months  of headaches trying to work out why it wouldn’t build in a pbuild. Maybe if I hadn’t been making it use one file from debian’s libtool, and one from KDE’s … It’s been a day for headaches is all I can say, I had to make two releases, as after I made the first, I only THEN found out that google had changed their URL syntax, rendering one of the new plugins useless.

I think I need a beer now.

And I must say, I was rather surprised that Gentoo got there first for including the new version of Katapult. Kudos to them for it, Debian came a close second… now just to wait to put in a sync request to Ubuntu.

This comic from Scott Johnson made me laugh

So, this post is being written from Xubuntu.

As most of the people who know me will know, I’m a huge KDE/Kubuntu Fan. However, I’ve been sort of “donated” an old laptop to play around with for a while. And seeing as how old it is, I decided to install xubuntu on it.

I’ve only hit a few issues so far, so I’ll outline them.

• I downloaded the Dapper ISO thinking that it was the Feisty one - this was probably a case of PEBKAC
• Feisty crashes X when trying to load a terminal (and probably other things, I reinstalled when I tried for the 13th time to open a terminal
• When booting, between the grub loading and X starting, I just have a blank screen (I’ve heard this is an issue on laptops with *buntu though - so I don’t know - It worked fine on my old laptop!)
• No IRC client installed by default
• Slow responsiveness (but it’s faster thanit was in windows!)
• No Launch Feedback - when I click an icon to run something, I don’t know if it’s actually running or whatever. This is a feature I sorely miss from KDE as I just ended up loading 5 file managers as I thought that it wasn’t loading!)

In general though, other than the points above, I’m finding Xubuntu a nice clean distro. Looks wise, I haven’t had to change anything, as I do with kubuntu (what’s with those squished title bar buttons?) and it all looks nice clean crisp and fresh.

It’s a nice Distro. I think I may look at using it on some of my other machines in the future, even if it is GTK-app based, it’s still a nice alternative.

I just recieved a pingback for my latest blog post from opencontent.info.

It seems that they think I’m someone called Randy Charles Morin.

I like the name, I think I might use it.

It’s nice to be syndicated even if I don’t get credit for my work

Recently, Baz blogged about 2 people being arrested for using other people’s wifi for free access.

I actually read this in the Metro on the bus on the way home today, and I think it’s ludicrous. OK, some people don’t like it, but then most if not all Wireless Devices have the ability to use something along the lines of WEP/WPA etc. Surely, you can either blame the people setting up the wireless router for not setting it up in a secure way, or blame the manufacturers for not getting across the point of how WEP/WPA are good, and should be enabled? I can find a basic description in my routers manual, which doesn’t explain what these technologies are, just where to type in a key in the routers configuration screen.

I purposely leave my wireless open to the public (allbeit with traffic shaping so that my bandwidth doesn’t get molested!) And so far, have had 7 “visitors” with one actually taking the time out to research who I was and email me telling me I had an open access point, and how to fix it. How kind of them, but I replied and explained to them what I was doing.

I urge anyone out there to have a look at Fon - free wireless for those who share theirs Enjoy!

Every now and then, I go through my junk folder in Evolution, and check it for any emails that should have got to me.

I’ve just checked it and found that there were more emails that weren’t junk in there than were. It’s been filtering innocuous emails for no apparent reason, including a couple relating to a Job application I was going for (this was the reason I was checking it today, so luckily I spotted it!)

It’s annoying when spam filters get too smart though. It’s things like this that make me start wanting to use fetchmail/procmail, so that only the stuff I want marked as junk gets marked as junk.

Ah well, it’s easy enough to turn off Evolution’s Junk mail filtering.