Well – all did not quite go to plan for moving JediMoose over this weekend – all the data was successfully moved by mid-Saturday morning. However, there have been some problems getting the transfer of the domain name moved, meaning that you’re still reading from the old server.

We’ll get this sorted asap, and you should hopefully notice no difference. If necessary we will do a new data transfer.

mrBen
By Order of the Moose Management

<speechless>

mrBen

I’ve always felt that survival of the fittest is a concept that doesn’t have much weight in these enlightened times. Sure, sometimes you have to beat the other chap down to get ahead, but it’s nothing personal.

And then you see this. You see this and think “hmm, maybe some people aren’t meant to reach a grand old age”. And you may be right.

The link is a BBC news page telling us of some merry half-wits who fill fluorescent light tubes with petrol and light them. Read the article. It’s priceless.

The two who were injured were 17 & 20 yrs old. Presumably they both knew about the flammable properties of petrol. Presumably they both knew that glass isn’t always the most resilient of substances.

Presumably the human race would be better off without them.

I know that’s a really harsh thing to say but don’t you ever get the feeling that this is natures way of culling the herd?

BigAl

Went to Ep3 “Revenge of the Sith” on Friday night.

Was good.

But not going to blog about it.

Oh no.

But will share unexpected plot twists.

• Vader ISN’T Luke’s father.
• but Chewbacca might be…
• Palpatine is the father of Obi Wan, Qui Gon AND Yoda.
• Mace Windu spent several years on Earth as a researcher for The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy.
• Vader DIDN’T have an accident in lava resulting in the scary black suit, it was just a bad rash which just wouldn’t shift but which he was REALLY embarrassed about.

Hope I’ve not spoiled it for you…

BigAl

Continuing in my quest for answers to usability questions, a commenter over at schwuk.com suggested that one of the reasons that he would have difficulty moving to Linux was that he was a ‘power’ user under Windows, and that because of this he a) suffered from less of the normal pitfalls (viruses, spyware, etc) and b) had many habits that would be non-transferrable.

This brought to mind the question above – are geeks ‘power users’? I have always considered myself a geek, but would have previously also thought of myself as a power user – I use keyboard shortcuts and things like that However, as I have thought about it, I have begun to think that power users are a different breed. There are a number of differences that I think highlight this:

• Power users are primarily users, whereas geeks are more tinkerers.
• Power users are, in part at least, tied to a set of applications/systems where they have learnt their techniques, whereas a geek normally develops skills that are a little more transferrable.
• Power users will often know the way to do something within their application of expertise – eg Excel formulas and macros. A geek may know a number of different ways to resolve a solution, but will probably employ completely different techniques (eg scripting/programming a solution)
• Power users learn their power to be efficient; geeks learn because they thrive on the knowledge
• Power users prefer to remain in a stable, consistent environment; geeks love their ’shiny new toys’

OK – I’ve probably made some generalisations, but I think that the point is valid. This point is even more important when it comes to Linux advocacy and migration. I think that in the past geeks have seen power users as kind of ‘newbie’ geeks, and their approach to training these people have reflected this, but has not been suitable.

Thoughts and comments welcome

mrBen

Tonight mrBen, myself and a big gang of us are going to see Star Wars Ep3: The Redemption Of Lucas. And my main expectation isn’t the film, but the certainty that I’m going to be sitting near some sorry fool who talks/munches through the entire film.

And that pisses me right off. Some people just can’t understand that when the film is on they have to SHUT UP.

During Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy some inbred halfwit was sitting in front of me, shoveling popcorn into his mouth and proceeding to munch merrily away with an open mouth. You know the type. Those open-mouth eaters who have to let everyone near them know what their partially-chewed food looks and sounds like as it rattles about their over-sized gobs.

I’ve a similar problem at our video nights. Every two weeks Ruth and I hold video nights and generally they’re quite popular. Well, popular in the way that there’s always someone there other than just the two of us…

But at these video nights there are a few people who insist on the open-mouth eating and the talking through the film. You know who you are…

So tonight I’m going to take a length of bamboo to the cinema with me. And every time someone makes a sound that they shouldn’t, they’ll get it rattled off the top of their heads.

And to deal with the offenders at the video night?

It’s quite a drop from our third-floor flat…

BigAl

While I was off last week I had a loan of Doom 3. What a load of old pants.

While it’s a joy to look at, and the graphics are DAMN good, the gameplay is disappointing.

Sorry. Did I just say disappointing? It’s piss poor. Or somewhere between disappointing and piss poor. I don’t know.

First off, the story is really linear. And I mean REALLY linear. I know the same can be said of similar games, Halflife is a good example, but at least Halflife gave you the impression that you were going somewhere or achieving something.

And scary? Not really. Well, there was this one bit…

I’d just wandered in to a room and handily dispatched a couple of big and nasties when I say aloud to the darling wife, “I don’t really see what all the fuss is”, and a corpse leaps off a console as I walk past. The under garments were an unfortunate shade of brown then, let me tell you.

But after that, when you realise that the corpses can’t be trusted, all you have to do is be wary of the shadows and realise that when the lights go off and you’re scrambling for the trusty flashlight, there’s some of those pesky undead creeping towards you…

I got bored with it pretty quickly and resorted to cheating to finish the last few levels. I know it’s not the done thing but I was so fed up with the same-ness of it that I just wanted to get it finished and get on with my life.

I’m hoping that Halflife 2 is better.

BigAl

This should have been posted for every day that I was off last week… oops.

So did I get two 5000 word short stories written last week? Nope. Started? Nope. Any ideas at all? Some, but something got in the way.

The bloody novel.

Yep, I couldn’t keep away from it. But, hey, that’s a good thing, isn’t it? At least I got SOME writing done during my “writing week”.

And as for the word count? No idea. Most of it is scrawled out on paper.

This week is “typing and tidying up week”.

BigAl

OK – here is the idea that is going to make me millions. Or rather, it would if I could get the credit for it. But remember – you heard it here first. Unless you heard it elsewhere.

We’ve all seen MMORPGs – Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games, and we’ve all seen FPSs – First Person Shooters. My plan is to combine the two into a massive MMORPFPSG!! Basically the idea is this: you have a first person shooter, much like Enemy Territory or Counter-Strike, which is basically objectives-based: capture this town, defuse this bomb, defend this thing, however, and here is the clever bit, the objectives for each place are defined at the wide-view level of the MMORPG. Thus if you like MMORPGs you can play this side of the game, but the squads that you are commanding may consist all or part of real people who are playing an FPS.

Of course – there are a lot of details to fill out, but that’s the basic concept. I think it’d be cool. The other half of the concept is to basically create a single world online, rather than multiple maps ‘n’ stuff, whereby a server may host a particular FPS set of maps, but they relate to the world as a whole. Thus all the servers work in collaboration with each other to run the game, and everyone is actually playing together.

I think it’d be cool.

mrBen

I’ve been spending a lot of my time recently thinking about usability. Don’t ask me why, but it’s something that has caught my interest of recent weeks. So here is a collection of random thoughts on that subject:

Double-Clicking

Following my recent post it was interesting to read peoples comments. I also disabled the final area of double-clicking that I used – double-clicking in the Windows file manager, which I hadn’t realised was enabled until I began thinking about it. And I’m pleased to say that I’ve found it really good – much quicker. The only real thing that you need to learn is how to select objects. Selection is done by hovering, which is not ideal really – why Windows doesn’t make better use of the middle-click like Linux, I don’t know. Selecting multiple objects can thus be quite fun, as can try to select things when that area of the window is not actually ‘active’, meaning that you can click, but not select. However, for the most part I currently prefer single-click action.

SymphonyOS

Just a quick note for this Debian-based distribution which is attempting a new way of presenting information – doing away with menus in favour of information displayed on the desktop. And this brings me to something that has been bugging me:

Desklets – are they usable/useful?

Desklets are small applications that run on the desktop and provide either information or a function. Linux has a number of programs to do it, Mac and Windows users have Konfabulator or Samurize (Windows only). There are probably others, but I couldn’t be bothered looking further.

I suppose my question is this – how helpful is this? I don’t look at my desktop at all – it’s covered in applications. Why is information placed there useful? I don’t really use desktop icons (although I have a tonne of them). Gdesklets are thus reduced, on my desktop, to startup eye-candy. However, for my friend Kester it’s great, because he has become used to running just a few applications minimised – this might perhaps be a way to work, but I can imagine that for me I would need applications to minimise when not focused to make it work, which would be a pain when you want more than 1 app open…..

Something that came to mind when thinking about this was an old desktop shell for Windows called ‘NextStart’, which still exists. Annoyingly, it’s not free NextStart assigned menus to hotspots on the desktop, but, more important, you could assign them to screen-edge or screen-corner ‘bumps’. Given that your screen edge is always “visible”, this is brilliant! One of it’s other cool tricks was that the menu system was cleverly based upon your actual folders, making it easy to create custom menus very quickly.

So – what am I looking for? Well – I would like some “desklets” that appear and disappear from the screen via an interaction that doesn’t involve clicking on the desktop anywhere, as this interferes with normal application usage. Screen bumps are good, although special key combos can work too.

Anyway – that’s probably all my thoughts for today; there are a couple more mulling around in my head, but I’ll get to them in due time.

Comments are, as always, welcomed.

mrBen

As you might have figured out by now, if you’ve been paying attention, I’m quite the fan of H.P. Lovecraft. Having written many short stories, few short novels and no full-length novels, it’s quite astounding that he has maintained such a following over all the years since his passing.

Part of that is due to the the dilligence of his friends with whom he shared a lengthy correspondence and their sharing of ideas and concepts. Even long after his death Lovecraft has continued to inspire and terrify.

And not necessarily in that order.

Noted authors who have added to the greater Lovecraft Mythos (a term which I tend to prefer to Cthulhu Mythos) include Clark Ashton Smith, Ramsay Campbell, Brian Lumley and even, in his own way, Neil Gaiman. Stephen King has named Lovecraft as an early influence, although you’d never notice.

Generally I’ve enjoyed all the Mythos-related work I’ve found… except for one.

At the Mountains Of Madness.

One of Lovecraft’s first (IIRC) short novels which I’ve tried to read several times. This was in my teenage years and maybe it might have been too much for me to manage.

Now, as I’m rapidly approaching my 4th decade on this planet, I want to give it a fair chance now. I’ve been swimming in the Mythos pool for a while now and perhaps, just perhaps, that’s what it’s going to take for me to finally finish this.

We’ll see.

BigAl

Ubuntu has been causing a bit of a stir in Linux-land recently. It arrived on the scene late last year, and rapidly moved its way up to become one of the favoured distros. I thought I would give some of my thoughts on why I believe that Ubuntu is important:

1. Ubuntu is a free, Debian, desktop distribution. There aren’t as many of these as you would think. Linspire, Lycoris and Xandros all have free elements to them, but are ultimately commercial entities. While Ubuntu is commercially backed, they have remained committed to it being free. Mepis is the other option, but is really only ’semi’ free – the author would like you to pay for it. Libranet likewise. The other options are often liveCDs that have installation options, rather than the other way round.

2. Ubuntu is committed to Debian. Everything is going to be fed back into Debian, which is very important, IMHO.

3. Ubuntu is Debian that works. Perhaps like no other distro before (I know, controversial) Ubuntu has managed to do the majority of things correctly, and produce a distribution that actually works well as a desktop OS.

4. Ubuntu is competition. Fedora was fast becoming the main option for a free Linux desktop – Ubuntu has provided some much needed competition to provide the impetus for innovation. Importantly, Ubuntu seems to be providing a bit of competition for Debian, and will hopefully inspire Debian to continue to develop and improve itself.

5. Ubuntu is corporate. This may not seem important, and some would disagree. But I think that Canonical are going to try very hard to put Ubuntu on corporate desktops – which will provide some of (4) for Novell.

OK – this has been written a little more hastily than I intended. Feel the Ubuntu love!

Let the flames begin.

mrBen

Mitch asked me to put something together for a section in the new church website, which is due out soon. So I put together this:

Reimagining Community

Ever read those articles which start by stating a question, and then, in the process of attempting to answer that question ends up revealing more and more questions? This is one of those articles.

I am very much a 21st century man; a typical Gen-Xer, if you will. And I have been trying to imagine how the church will, and should, change in order to better meet the needs of this century.

My area of concern is that of communication. In many ways it would appear that we are trying to communicate in exactly the way that Jesus communicated; we have confused the medium with the message. Jesus was a thoroughly modern man – he communicated using the methods and style of teachers in his day; parables, groups of disciples, preaching on the hilltops were all things of his time. But what of ours?

People are just beginning to catch on to the televisual media that has been so embraced by our culture. Churches are beginning to use video and music to challenge and teach. This is brilliant; this is so last century.

Welcome to the 21st century; this century is one of interactive media, of websites, instant messaging, discussion forums and podcasting. And no, podcasting is not a reference to the parable of the sower!

Do you have an email address? A website? A weblog? Any online friends? An instant messaging account? An mp3 player? An RSS feed reader? If you don’t know what these things are, then maybe you should find out. The iPod generation is upon us (no matter how much the mindshare annoys me).

What would Jesus do? Well, I reckon he would embrace these media, because they are the media of the day, and he would use them to promote His message – the Good News, that is timeless – forever cultural and yet ultimately counter-culture.

mrBen

Yesterday, for those who forgot, was exactly 2 years since the first ever post on Jedimoose.

Hope you celebrated, but if not, then BigAl and I are planning a big anniversary party in a few weeks time.

mrBen

I’ve been passed a musical baton, which is tricky, given that I don’t listen to a lot of music…. but here goes:

Total volume of music files on my computer: 80MB – probably more soon, when I get a round tuit.

The last CD I bought was:Erm – I think it was How to Build an Atomic Bomb by U2, although I think I bought it and then ended up having it given to me as a present instead.

Song playing right now: nothing. Wife is sleeping….

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:

In no particular order, other than I thought of them in this order:

1. One – U2
2. Intimacy – Matt Redman
3. Deeper – Delirious?
4. Throwing it all away – Genesis
5. Worlds Apart – Jars of Clay

Five people to whom I’m passing the baton:

1. Al
2. Guy Incognito
3. SuperGingerMan
4. Phil Crissman
5. Cheezy

mrBen

One of the oft-touted benefits of Open Source software is the fast pace of development, in particular when there are problems. While this definitely improves with the popularity of the software, and so if you are using rare or niche software it may not be quite the same, it is great to see it in action in front of our eyes.

Since the release and rise and rise of Firefox 1.0, there have been a number of security vulnerabilities found. Before anyone moans about this, it is worth pointing out that this will happen with _all_ software, whether closed or open source. What is great is that you can see the real speed with which the community responds to these problems. In the case of some previous ones, we’ve seen fixes come out almost at the same time as the proof of concept, before anything comes ‘in the wild’. While the latest vulnerabilities have not been fixed in the ‘official’ version (1.0.3), there is already a release candidate for 1.0.4, which I suspect will become official within the next 24-36 hours.

On a related note, I would like to extend a formal welcome to the Open Source community to all Firefox users for whom it is their first foray into this new and exciting arena, and to advise of one rule that, I reckon, is often overlooked. It’s alright to moan. It may not be very ‘British’, but one of the vital things in an OSS project is users feedback with problems and feature requests. If something is broken, then report it, and it will be fixed. This does not come naturally to software users, IMHO, because we have become so used to having to ‘workaround’ software issues (“Just reboot”), or the feeling that once we’ve paid for the software the company aren’t really interested in what we think.

Bring on the bugs.

mrBen

Hah – fooled you. You were thinking ‘in a galaxy far, far away’ and that I was going to talk about Episode III, didn’t you?

This year I reached the almighty age of 28, which means that it is now 20 years since a computer first entered my household. So I thought it was time for a bit of nostalgia.

My first interaction with computers probably came a bit earlier, as I had a friend who had a ZX Spectrum, and we played on that. (We’ve all had rich friends, haven’t we? He had a Spectrum, _and_ a video recorder with a copy of Star Wars, and his parents had 2 cars! Daniel Richardson, wherever you are now, you are that friend ) However, the first computer that was actually owned by my family was the Amstrad CPC 464 that my father bought at some point in 1985 (if memory serves me correctly). This was my first introduction to programming, albeit in BASIC, a passion which has continued through the years.

The next milestone in the story would be in about 1988 when I bought my first own computer, a TRS-80 MC-10 (not to be confused with the normal TRS80), which, as far as I know, is still kicking about somewhere. I bought it second hand from a friend, and it may only have had 4K of memory and been decidedly dated for 1989, but it was the first computer I truly owned, and I loved it. I also managed to acquire a number of 2nd-hand books with programs for said machine, and had great fun programming it. My parents also bought me a tape deck to plug into it to save programs on – what more could a young geek want

In around 1992 I finally bought the computer that I had always wanted – a ZX Spectrum +2. A massive 128K of memory! It was for sale in a local computer shop, along with a thermal printer and a wafadrive (a looping, random access tape device). The printer was sold before I got to it, but the Spectrum was mine. (And still is, boxed and all, at my parents house).

The Spectrum was, IMHO, one of the best computers ever made. I bought tonnes of stuff for that machine – software and hardware. I still have about a years worth of Your Sinclair back issues, including the last ever issue printed. I bought a Multiface (ultimate hacking tool), a centronics printer interface (should’ve bought the multiface with an integrated printer port – big mistake), and even got OCP Art Studio, complete with mouse and mouse interface.

Programming on the Spectrum was excellent – the +2 had a really good BASIC editor, that did syntax checking as you wrote, something that I wish I had these days. I wrote tonnes of stuff on that machine, not least ‘WIPE’, my Windows, Icons, Pointers Emulator, an attempt to write a mouse-based interface, and ‘The Beard’, a shoot-em-up game set inside my father’s beard…..

In 1991 my computer education started with my GCSE – in those days BBC computers were the computer of choice, although the Archimedes was making its way into my school too. East Devon College was my first real introduction to the PC, though, and my A-Level concentrated on Turbo Pascal, with a dabbling into dBase, and areas like that too. We also covered 6502 assembly (from the BBC Master).

The first PC I owned was bought 2nd-hand from Alan, my minister, in 1998, and spent most of it’s time being upgraded (it went from being a 486-33 with 8MB RAM, to a 486 DX4 66, overclocked to 100Mhz with 24MB RAM and a CD-ROM drive and soundcard in about 2 months) until the day I fried the motherboard trying to ascertain which of my RAM chips was faulty, and causing GCC to fail to compile anything in one of my first ventures into Linux in 1999. The replacement motherboard and CPU (a Cyrix 300 chip) still power my Smoothwall firewall at home, and I’m still using the original keyboard!

My more recent machines have already been chronicled here and here, and a look back at my internet history is here.

mrBen

Rest. Relaxation. All that good stuff.

And the main reason I took the week off from work. Writing. By the end of the week I intend to have at least two 5000 word short stories finished, in some form, and some extra work done on the novel.

So, to help spur me on to this task I’ll be posting my daily word count. Hopefully that’ll help my enthusiasm for the job…

BigAl

Well – Labour are back in for another term. I don’t think anyone is particularly surprised at this. From what I can tell, it wasn’t even a tight victory, despite a massively reduced majority. I’m kind of sad that LibDem didn’t pick up more new seats, although a distinct rise will hopefully mean that ‘real’ 3 party politics is a possibility. Turnout was also up, which I suspect means that (contrary to what some might say) people are more likely to vote if there is someone that they _don’t_ want to get in than if they do. This is quite sad, as it means that people aren’t really that interested in politics, and don’t really have a leaning to any one particularly party.

So – enough of that for another 4 years

mrBen