New Adventures in Technology

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.

I was going to write something about an album by a new British folk singer that I downloaded yesterday, but then tonight I stumbled upon a newer mini album and thought I should probably lump them both together as two records that anyone who likes folk music, music with lyrics, or just music should download and play to death. Robin Grey likes Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen a lot. He also knows how to write songs, carry a melody, and has a decent grasp of crafting unusual but still accessable lyrics. I’ve played “Only the Missile” a few times over the last 24 hours, but think that “I Love Leonard Cohen” (particularly the title track) shows even more promise, and certainly stands head and shoulders above certain other British singer-songwriters who get played on the radio a lot and have the first name James.

I’ve also downloaded a fair amount of good music from emusic (Julain Cope, The Wedding Present, Okkervil River and I Am Kloot), but that will have to wait for another post.

This is not a post about any of the things I usually blog about, but I thought it was worth making a note of.

October and November are fast becoming my least favourite months of the year. It’s too cold, everyone is miserable, and our household is in a state of siege mentality due to the constant sonic bombardment that comes from the endless firework displays that our neighbours seem to love.

I actually like fireworks. I think they are pretty and that they cheer people up at a time when shorter days and less sunshine can drag us all down a bit. However this view is not shared by our cats, and most especially by our dog who has now been prescribed a herbal remedy for his firework phobia (valium didn’t work and we’ve run out of other viable alternatives). He’s currently sat on the floor underneath my desk and he’s visibly shaking. He’ll probably be like this for a few hours during which time he’ll not eat, not sleep, and be very fractious and downright unpleasant.

So yes, that why I’m not too keen on this time of year and also why we’re unlikely to be out and about after dark for the next couple of weeks at least.

It’s out, and it’s available from here.

Mirrors are likely to be slightly busy for a few hours though.

I’m not sure whether music can be called as product. But what I do know is that I’m a consumer of music, and as a consumer I like to have some degree of choice over where I obtain music, what I pay for it (if anything), and what I can do with it once I own it.

The main models of obtaining music are:

1/ Going to a record shop and buying CDs or vinyl. I do this one very rarely, largely because it is usually the most expensive.

2/ Buying the same records or CDs online (usually from Amazon). This was my main method of buying music until I ran out of space to store it.

3/ Paying a set amount of money per album or per song to download DRM protected files (usually from iTunes in my case). It’s convenient, usually cheaper than buying a CD, but there are issues regarding what can and can’t be done with the music afterwards. I’ve bought a fair bit this way, but will probably not buy much more as my Mac (the only computer I use iTunes on) nears the end of it’s life.

4/ As 3, but without the DRM. I’m currently trying out emusic.com as an alternative to iTunes, and they certainly have enough music I want to make my 2 week trial worthwhile and possibly to consider a subscription. The only downside is that you pay £10.99 a month whether you download songs or not. I don’t ever see myself not downloading music, but you never know.

5/ As 3, but without the DRM or the cost. This covers sites like Jamendo, and artists who release on a “pay what you like” model. I’m a big fan of this, but not everyone I like does it, and I need more than this sometimes (although did download only free music for 2 months earlier this year and did not die or explode).

6/ Peer-to-peer sharing of music files (or copying music for friends). It’s a valid option, but not something I do a great deal of in general or would like to condone too much.

I’ve done all of these in the past, and I think a happy medium is probably the way forward. As is getting a very large hard drive to store music on before I actually run out of space. 160gb sounded like a lot 3 years ago, but if I continue to acquire digital music at the rate I am then I’ll run out of space in months rather than years.

Severed Fifth is the musical alter-ego of Jono Bacon (a name that might be familiar to many Linux users). The album is available from here (various formats), and while it is proper metal, it is also oddly melodic in places. I think if I’d not weaned myself back on to this sort of music with the new Metallica album then I’d hate this. As it is, I think I actually quite like it and would recommend it to anyone who likes their metal fast and loud.

I’ve just upgraded with no issues whatsoever, and am now trying to make my laptop look as different as possible.

I don’t think I could use this for any length of time, but I do really like the look of it.

My usual desktop looks something more like this:

I think Gnome-do is going to end up on the list of my favourite pieces of software.

It reminds me a lot of Quicksilver on Mac OS X, but is much prettier.

I was sceptical that a Linux distribution with no proprietary components at all would do everything I need it to. But 30 minutes after burning the CD, I’ve got a pretty desktop, a working wireless connection, and what seems like quite a fast and user-friendly interface.

gNewSense can be downloaded from http://www.gnewsense.org/

I was looking at Wiki Widgets today, and in particular how to integrate Google Calendar and Twitter with Mediawiki.

This is something I’d like to investigate further when I’m not so busy.

I’ve been thinking recently about how we (and by we I mean anyone involved in any activity they wish to promote) can get information to the largest number of appropriate people, with the least amount of effort. This interests me because I’m involved in a fair few activities which would benefit from further participation, which will only happen if people know they exist. Software projects need developers and testers, LARP games need players and musicians need people to listen to their music, or at least to know they exist.

My current area of interest is looking at the interoperability of various social networking and microblogging sites, with a view to making the right information available to the right people instantly. Twitter and Facebook are both very good at this in different ways, but there is also a lot of scope to integrate microblogging within a more traditional blogging environment such as Livejournal or Wordpress, which can also reach people who might not normally ever consider signing up to Twitter.

I think having a good web presence is so important, and so vital in recruiting and retaining other like minded individuals. And now we have the tools at our disposal we should be using them, right?

http://torrent.mandriva.com/public/ has everything you may need. Known issues are at http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2009.0_Errata

I like this release, and think it’s the prettiest Mandriva release for ages (if not ever). I may get round to updating tonight, but it will more likely be tomorrow when things are a little quieter.

Is this the answer to late night flame wars?

I’ve just upgraded my iBook to the beta version of Ubuntu 8.10.

It doesn’t look much different, but I’m liking the tabbed browsing in Nautilus already.

For the past couple of weeks we’ve been piloting a laptop surgery at work. We’ve had several EeePCs bought in, and the general consensus of opinion was that they loved the hardware, but that Xandros looked ugly and wasn’t very functional. So what we’ve been doing is offering either Mandriva 2008.1 or the netbook respin of Ubuntu as an alternative (either on the internal SD card or on an external device). Feedback has been good, and I’ve had a few very productive chats with new Linux users over the past few days which have made me realise how vitally important user interface is. Users don’t want their computer to look like a dumbed down version of their last computer, but they do want something that is instinctive, stylish, and doesn’t get in their way.

Something for Asus and Xandros to think about perhaps.

I think I’ve made my desktop look sufficiently like a default “install”.

I really like the look of this, and could very much get used to it.

This is the sort of thing it throws up. Not exactly genius, but not too bad I suppose.

It’s less good with more obscure songs though, in that it claims to be unable to make a playlist.

I’m running RC2 of the latest Mandriva from a live-cd to test a couple of things out, and thought I’d have a look at how KDE is doing. It’s pretty, but doesn’t seem anywhere near as instinctive as Gnome.

But maybe that’s just me.

It’s still pretty though.