Father of three, seasoned web developer (Django, Vue, Astro, etc), Ubuntu Member, photographer and woodworker. This is my blog, covering a raft of topics, mostly technical.
FreeRice.com is a site that tries to educate and feed the world at the same time, but just taking a quick look at their figures shows there is a massive potential of earning money from this "philanthropic" gesture. Just how much is the owner keeping?
If something adverse can happen, chances are it will, just to spite you. I’ve just had my first hard drive crash in years and it waited until just after I dismantled my RAID5 array. Just perfect. Strong and colourful language in this post.
I once heard that good things come to those that wait and today Linux users who’ve been waiting for Skype to push out a video-chatting client finally got their wish, albeit in beta form. Download link included,
Some time ago I wrote that Linux needed "golden applications" to succeed on the desktop. I was wrong because I’ve seen the light that is Amarok. Cross-platform FOSS will cause platform freedom.
As Linux and OSX toddle on, catering for every hardware device under the sun, Windows 7 looks like it’s going to have a complete refresh of drivers, effectively taking it back to square 1 in the game of hardware support.
The Gutsy-fever is approaching tangibility and unlike most other bouts of mass-enthusiasm, I’m actually enjoying this.
While there’s definitely progress in the latest release of Ubuntu, there are still problems: some limited to Ubuntu, some ingrained in gnome and some endemic to Linux as a whole.
It’s that time of year again: "Oli attempts to migrate to Linux"! This time (using Gutsy) I’ve got to say that it was considerable more successful that previous times and damn, it’s just too pretty for words…
In short: Caitlyn Martin said last month that she was unable to review Puppy Linux. She claims today that a commenter in a Distrowatch thread issued her a death threat… Nasty stuff but I just can’t see the threat angle of it. "Threat" included in the post.
Distrowatch’s HPD stats are often bandied about to make out one distribution is “the best”. But do the numbers actually equate popularity and why do some care so much anyway?
They warned you but Apple decided to follow through and give those iPhone enthusiasts exactly what they wanted: shiny, bricked iPhones. Well done Apple. Way to meet the needs of your customers.
O2 are souring the pot by removing video calls from inclusive minutes. From next year they cost as much as a cheapish sex line. Hoorah for progress. Hoorah for competition. Perhaps Google can fix things.
Stats are a tricky thing. When you’re trying to push an argument and you have raw statistics by your side, it’s usually very easy to feed them to your audience in a fashion that misrepresents them. Using that as a base you can form conclusions varying from just misguided to outright lies…
Another day, another "unlimited" claim. This time from the mouth of O2’s CEO regarding their new "unlimited" data plans. What he didn’t tell people at the iPhone unveiling is that unlimited actually means just 35megs. Spot the difference.
While I definitely think some elements of Vista are definite improvements, 10 months of experience has shown me there are some things that just annoy me to my very core. Here are the three things that most make me wish I had the strength to move over to Linux — full time.
Completely customise your browsing experience with complete and utter ease. Remove any page-clutter and any adverts with just 4 clicks.
With the way publishers go on about them, you’d be forgiven for thinking ad-blockers were going to destroy the universe. In a desperate effort to stem the whinging, I’ve written some code to help them be as obnoxious as they like on their own sites.
What I’ve written is technically DRM 2.0. Please don’t hate me.
Well it’s been a good year on o2. They did Harri and myself rather well last year by offering us a £35 contract but giving us £10 off each month. The tariff gives us 500 anytime minutes and 500 texts.
This year is a completely different story. Tariffs are getting worse, not better, with
Just under a year since the original What Slows Windows Down article and I’m gearing up for the third in the series. This time it’s an antivirus-only arena and it’s shaping up to be quite a deathmatch…
Video: watch a simple download crash explorer over and over again. This really reminds me how feeble the underlying systems are in Windows.