As promised, and in keeping with most of the blogging world, here is a look back at the year that was, and a few predictions for the coming year.

Looking Back

Its been an interesting year hardware-wise for me. I started the year have just got hold of a PIII 500 with 64MB RAM, which was a reasonable upgrade for me, and the first big upgrade since I had got married in 99. Now, only a year later, and my main desktop machine is an Athlon 1900XP with 1GB of RAM. Certainly a big difference.
I now also have a network at home, which is a new addition, aided massively by SmoothWall running on one of the old boxes. This has been matched with Broadband, which, as many will testify to, makes it impossible to go back to dialup once you have it. This has made for a great learning experience, which I have enjoyed.
The church office was an additional opportunity for me to lever a SmoothWall box and network in. Everything is running nice and smoothly, apart from a couple of issues with the adsl modem.
Lastly, I passed the first of the 2 level 1 exams for the LPI qualification.

My home machine is still running Debian happily (for both it, and me). If I was running 2 machines, a server and a workstation/desktop, I would almost definitely be looking at a Debian/Ubuntu combo (Ubuntu is currently residing on my work laptop), but with just the one machine, Debian is more than up to the task. Just how much I have become accustomed to it has been underlined by the few times in the last couple of months that I have been called upon to reinstall Windows on the machines of friends and family.
It’s been (IMHO) and big year for Debian. At the beginning of the year Knoppix was still making great waves, but we mustn’t forget the 2 main commerical Debian ventures – Xandros and Linspire – which are doing as well as any commerical Debian variants in the past (being that they are still going…..). And a big welcome during the year to 2 new big Debian distros, Mepis and the aforementioned Ubuntu. Finally we appear to be reaching the point where the power of Debian can be matched with a click-and-forget install and user experience.

Jobwise I’ve been getting into a lot more programming at work, which has been fun. I certainly feel very at home with Python now, which has been great. Add to that my new IBM contract, and things are very rosy.

Faithwise things have been tricky this year. Church is still great, but am still finding a proper equilibrium in my personal walk each day. However, there is always hope, and I am forever grateful for the people that God has placed around me.
One new project has been The Freely Project, which has taken off, and, in some ways, taken on a life of its own. It’s been great to talk with Christian Linux users the world over, and look towards using what we have learnt from Linux and Open Source to help churches and Christian organisations. This is something that I can only see growing in the next year. Of course, growth will bring its own problems, but we’ll tackle those when we get there.

I’ve spent a lot of time this year looking at Content Management Systems. WordPress is a great blogging tool that I’ve very much enjoyed using, and can be used as a simple CMS system. Perhaps the most interesting project is Typo3, which has to be the most powerful open source CMS available at this time, although I am keeping an eye on Exponent which looks like a great WYSIWYG CMS system. The guys over at OpenSourceCMS.com have been invaluable.

Perhaps the most interesting development of the year has been LUGRadio, which has matured (?) into a slick, funny, Linux-related radio show. It’s been a real pleasure to be involved in the community that has grown up around it, especially on IRC and the forums, and to meet new people, and make new friends. If anything, it has got me thinking about the nature of ‘online’ relationships, which are almost always portrayed in a negative manner in the media. I look forward to another year of LUGRadio (hopefully without the lengthy summer holiday )

JediMoose.org is going from strength to strength. I can’t say that we’re the most popular site on the web, but we’re doing reasonably well It’s been good to see some of the subdomains doing well, although things have been quiet on that front for a while. Hopefully it will pick up in the new year.
The move to WordPress has been reasonably painless – I can’t see us moving in the next year to another system, although an upgrade might be in order.

Lastly in the ‘looking back’ frame of things, is ScotLUG. I’ve now finished a full year of organising the talks, which has been interesting. We’re still getting reasonable numbers, including quite a few new folk. We’ve also managed to develop links with a couple of other projects, albeit informal and tentative. I am hoping to get a better variety of speakers through the next year.

Looking forward…..

So – predictions for the year. I’ll try and keep it short and sweet

• ‘Next’ year is always the year of the Linux desktop. However, I agree with the LUGRadio crew in that I think we will see 1 significant corporate rollout of a Linux desktop. I suspect that this may well be in a call centre environment.
• Firefox will continue to erode the IE market share – especially given the latest Microsoft announcement, I suspect that we will begin to see many more Firefox users.
• Another serious flaw will be found in XP
• JediMoose.org will move hosting company. (I suspect that this will be to Valcato hosting, who are offering stupidly large amounts of bandwidth, which will be useful for mirroring for LUGRadio)
• The SCO trial will be a huge anticlimax
• IBM will buy Apple
• Liverpool will win _something_
• Video shows via RSS will begin to appear (a la podcasting)
• There will be one major open source software release that nobody expected
• One of Xandros, Linspire or Lycoris will go under

mrBen

Out of the kindness of my cold black heart (?) I’m going to share a wee bit of the first chapter of the novel that I’m working on. This is just the first draft and I’m pretty happy with the way things are going. I’m still not sure what the overall story is about, but I’m certain that it’ll all become clear as I go.

I’m really happy with what I’m writing for the first time in years. This exerpt isn’t much but I hope you like it. If you do then it’ll encourage me to post a bit more from the later chapters.

Oh, and if any criticism could be constructive that would be just peachy.

Ch 1 – a wee bit of

There is a slight shift in the cold breeze causing the old man to shiver. He holds his coat closer to his body and smiles. He knows that he is definitely too old for these early morning strolls.

He thinks that a walk will hold back the cold, so he walks the short distance to the bandstand. Within it he sees a young man lying, asleep and snoring gently. The old man slowly walks around the bandstand clockwise, never taking his eyes off the young man.

It is plain to see that the young man is not dressed for the cold weather. He wears sneakers, baggy jeans, which the old man can only assume is the current fashion, and a t-shirt several sizes too big with some band logo scrawled across it. Perhaps the kind of band which would never have played the bandstand in its glory days, thought the old man, a wry smile playing over his cold lips.

As the old man completes his second circuit of the bandstand he thought that it was about time that the young man was awake. He stands on the first wooden step, leaning towards the young man.

“Excuse me,” calls the old man. The other man does not respond. The old man looks around the park. The mist is beginning to lift. He doesn’t have as much time as he thought.

The old man walks back to the bench and retrieves the newspaper. He carefully rolls it up, returns to the bandstand and throws the newspaper in the general direction of the young man.

The old man is rewarded with a moan as the newspaper bounces off his young friend’s head.

“Excuse me,” repeats the old man, “I think it’s for the best that you get up now.”

Still struggling with sleep the young man manages to unfurl himself from the tight ball he was in and sits upright, steadily blinking the sleep out of his eyes.

“Are you okay?” asks the old man. The young man looks around, sleepy and confused. “This is only to be expected. Hold on a moment, son.” The old man begins to fish about his pockets and, after a while, produces a silver thermos flask from too small a pocket.

The young man mumbles something which could have sounded like “how did you do that?” if he were not still half asleep.

“Don’t try to talk just now. We will have to get you awake. Now, how do you feel about a nice hot cup of black coffee?”

The young man just shakes his head.

“How about some hot chocolate?” Another shake of the head. The mist is getting thinner.

“Chicken soup?” Nod. “Chicken soup it is then.” The old man removes the small plastic cup, taps the top of the cap twice, unscrews the lid and gently pours thick, hot chicken soup into the cup. He places the cup on the top stair and waits.

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to come and get it yourself,” says the old man. “I’m not allowed on the bandstand anymore.” Reluctantly the young man crawls to the edge of the bandstand and takes the cup from the stair with shaking hands.

BigAl

Ruth left yesterday to go up to sunny Aberdeenshire to visit the parents for a couple of days, leaving me to my own devices.

I spent all of yesterday evening playing Icewind Dale, which was nice, and having a couple of relaxing beers.

The problem was that when I woke up this morning, stretching out on the bed , it didn’t feel good that she wasn’t there too. Now before you all think I’m getting too mushy here I’d best explain something.

All the time I haven’t been at work I’ve spent with Ruth. Well, nearly all the time. And to be honest it just feels really strange.

Don’t get me wrong though. It’s nice that I have time to myself to get on with things that need done (like some serious gaming…) but it’s a small flat we have and it seems kind of empty with her not there.

Although in ten years I’ll probably be encouraging her to go away for weeks at a time…

BigAl

The game I’ve been spending all my allowed pc time on at the moment is Icewind Dale. And it’s great.

But I can hear you all say: “Al, it’s an OLD game. If you must play that kind of thing why not play Neverwinter Nights?”

Yeah, I’ve played Neverwinter Nights and it IS really cool. But there’s something about the style of ID (and Baldur’s Gate I & II) which I really get in to. Gameplay-wise it’s relatively straight-forward. You create your merry band and march off to adventure.

The character creation is based on the 2nd edition AD&D rules (as is the rest of the game) which allows for the usual suspects: fighter, ranger, paladin, cleric, druid, mage, thief or bard. Always best to have a range of character classes, but then you knew that already didn’t you?

The story starts with your arrival in Easthaven, one of the Ten Towns of Icewind Dale, and there’s trouble which only you and your fellow adventurers can sort. Which is convenient.

An expansion, Heart of Winter, was available and is just as good as the original game. There’s a free downloadable second expansion for the Heart of Winter which I haven’t tried yet but looks cool.

I’d advise anyone who likes Neverwinter Nights, or that kind of game, to give Icewind Dale a chance. It’s not as good visually but the game rocks.

BigAl

… I wonder why I’m still working for Scottish Power.

Seriously though, it’s been quite a year. Got married to Ruth, I got baptised in Arbroath (in the North Sea), I started a new job and I’ve relaunched the novel.

It’s been quite a busy time. Here’s hoping I keep as busy next year.

BigAl

Just a quick note to wish you all a Merry Christmas, and thanks for reading JediMoose. I hope that you have found plenty to laugh at, and plenty to think about.

I intend to post a retrospective of the year, and a look forward to 2005 when I am back at work on 31st December.

Until then, have a great Christmas – I hope you get everything you want, and plenty besides.

God Bless.

mrBen

From Scotsman.com

Now all I need is to work out how to get new Polyphonic ringtones on to my Sagem myX2 phone and I’ll be laughing.

mrBen

Via

I can’t emphasis just how brilliant this news is.

Wlodzimierz Marcinski jumps straight into the ‘heros of all time’ list……

mrBen

January 15th will at last see a competition that has not been held properly for over 5 years. The Thorp Memorial Trophy was a 21st birthday present to me from Alan and Diane, and was originally raced at Scotkart in Cambuslang in the summer of 1997 (IIRC). Unfortunately I was robbed of first place but I fully intend to reclaim the trophy in this years competition.

Gentleman – start your engines….

mrBen

My MP3 player went a bit funny the other day – paused itself and refused to do anything. So I pulled the key out of the battery holder, and plugged it in and nothing worked So I decided it was time to finally upgrade the firmware.

Firstly some points about the Nomad world website – working out how to upgrade the firmware is really hard. And they have completely messed up the ‘Read More’ links on the downloads – they all jump to the same page, but instead of jumping to the section about the file that you want, it stays at the top, which was really confusing and I didn’t realise until I tried to download the same file twice.

However, the new firmware is great – now when I stop the player it remembers where it is in the file, rather than having to go back to the beginning and fast forward. This is especially good when I am listening to 1 long file, like the 60+ minutes of LUGRadio. It also now plays small snippets of sound as you fast forward, giving you a better indication of where you are in the file.

The one thing still missing is OGG file format – I can’t see how this would be difficult to add, unless the media decoding is hard coded onto a chip, rather than in the firmware.

mrBen

Glossary
Firmware – firmware is basically software that sits on a computer chip. It has similarities with both software and hardware (hence the name). It doesn’t ever change normally, like hardware, but you can reprogram it, like software, using special software – this is called ‘flashing’ the firmware.

Ogg – The Ogg Vorbis file format is an open compression sound format, much like MP3. The compression is actually better, for the same or better sound quality, as MP3s, and it has the big advantage of being open source, which means that there is no license fee involved. Most software media players will play OGG files, but most of the MP3 players on the market won’t, despite the fact that the manufacturers have to pay a sizable license fee to the owners of MP3.

Get it here

I even get a mention

mrBen

World66 travel guide – visited countries

create your own visited country map
or check our Amsterdam travel guide

mrBen

more pointlessness

If there is at least one person in your life whom you consider a close friend, and whom you would not have met without the internet, post this sentence in your weblog, or journal, or whatever.

Not Christmas (yet), but my copy of Return of the King (Extended Edition) DVD arrived yesterday evening thanks to the lovely guys over at SendIt.com (only £17.49 including delivery).

I haven’t watched everything yet (but the weekend is nigh…..) but it’s niiiice. The only strange thing is that they do not appear to have added any new scenes near the end – I was hoping for a little bit more of the return to the Shire, but I guess it was not to be.

mrBen