Archive for March, 2007

Published by kyle on 25 Mar 2007

Time well spent

It’s been a busy wee while… not in chronological order. Was in Barcelona for a week for Tom and Mireias wedding (photos coming soon), went to France and Andorra, uploaded photos of a new model I got, been to the Border Counties Rally to do timekeeping on the Redesdale stages, been out in town with West Dental, looked around and decided on a church for the wedding, decided on a venue for the wedding reception, set a date for the wedding, finished tiling the bathroom, been to Dundee for team meeting and drinks with Bob before he sets off to Canada, remangled some aerial cable and now have the secondary MythTV backend online, helped Ellen move flat…

I lose track. I’ve got another full weekend next week, and then we’re off on holiday again. I’ve started using Google Calendar, due it sucking the least out of all the calendars I’ve tried. Maybe I’ll have some luck this time…

Life

Published by kyle on 09 Mar 2007

Clippy Revisited

We should all be grateful that Microsoft never created or contributed towards Vi. For if they did, then surely this would be the outcome…

Geek, Technology

Published by kyle on 09 Mar 2007

The Best and Worst of 1994 and Predictions for ‘95

Worst:

There’s not much that’s bad on the Net, but because cyberspace does imitate life, we shouldn’t be surprised that in 1994 some less-than-desirable material showed its insolent face. Pick any tragic event and you can probably recall seeing a newsgroup that taunted its seriousness. There was alt.tonya-harding. whack.whack.whack. Then we had alt.lorena.bobitt.chop.chop.chop. And no, I haven’t forgotten alt.oj-simpson.drive.faster.

Expect to see more of this in ‘95. But don’t despair, the flamers are out in force, scorching away at those who abuse the Net, and working to make the Information Highway more like real life, where all is good and nary an offensive word is spoken .

I take it that it didn’t all go to plan then? :-)

Internet, Technology, Web

Published by kyle on 09 Mar 2007

Bill Gates recommends Ubuntu

Bill Gates recommends Ubuntu

Ubuntu has come a long, long way from its beginnings. Now it’s gotten to a stage where even Bill Gates will recommend it. Congratulations Ubuntu! :-p Originally hosted on UMassLUG

Linux, Technology

Published by kyle on 08 Mar 2007

e-Government

Along with the national sites, like petitions.pm.gov.uk, WriteToThem, and TheyWorkForYou, it’s good to see the councils finally bringing more services online for residents. For a while, people have been able to report lighting and roads faults to them using RALF, and also pay their council bills online at billpayment.co.uk. Certainly, the entire online scheme of Glasgow seems to be contained under the umbrella at their Access Center, and their eGovernment strategy

The latest one to hit the news is NeighbourhoodFixIt. Pulling together local news and making it available to the governing body. People can report issues, update on existing issues, and see if it’s already been reported or not. All that’s needed now is a return channel for the council to feed back to the site to tell people what the plan of action is. It also doesn’t integrate with local strategies such as RALF. That said, it is still a beta product, and they’ve done well to get it this far. I’ll be using it, and I’d like to think others will.

*edit* And to make things even better, most of the code that MySociety creates is licensed under the GPL :-)

Glasgow, Technology

Published by kyle on 08 Mar 2007

Wil Wheaton Speaks Out

Wil Wheaton (who, as you all should know, was Ensign Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation) has finally come forth about the William Fucking Shatner history that he wrote about in Dancing Barefoot. The first part is this week with the second part coming up next week. The detailed recollection of how a famous actor can brush off people with arrogance and superiority, and end up being ridiculed years later.

Books, Geek

Published by kyle on 06 Mar 2007

Evolution

It’s been around for a while and I vaguely recall checking out the collection of Zip files, but it took this article to encourage me to give it a shot again. Evolution now has (well, back in July 2006) a slick Windows installer to ease the pain of dependency checks and suchlike. A few clicks and you can install a fully functional Evolution 2.6.2.

Well, that was the theory. I was planning on writing up something a bit more substantial here, but Evolution has conspired against me. The startup batch files seem to do the job, but then evolution-2.6.exe hangs silently and does nothing. I’ve left it running for over half an hour, but to no avail. I guess I’ll leave the writeup for another day then.

Computers, Cool things, Linux, Novell, Technology