I have a new computer! Bwah ha ha!!!

On Saturday I picked up that the primary drive on the old computer was starting to fail. Currently it still changes it’s mind whether it actually wants to work on any power up. But a new computer was bought…

I nipped into a local city centre parts shop and picked up many, many fine things including 2GB of Ram, a 250GB HDD, a 1GB Graphics Card and an Intel Quad Core Q6600.

And it’s very fine indeed.

The system is currently using a fresh install of Win XP Professional.

And not to fear, the old pc will be the media system on the network running the new version of Ubuntu released in 9 days time.

Of course, the network has been further blessed by the KVM switch provided by Edgy. Thank you very much for that sir…

BigAl

From Brick Commander, a fine collection of Lego spaceships.

Now, where’s that Lego box of mine…

BigAl

I’ve talked about support before. And I’ve had an idea for helping people who (in particular on forums) try to provide useful support. The guys over at the Ubuntu UK Podcast were talking about the CLI vs GUI on their latest show, so I thought I’d share the idea.

The idea is, essentially, to provide an easy web interface to a big library of animated GIFs (yes - it could be videos, but GIFs are easier to embed into a forum). These GIFs would be short clips of clicking on menus and opening the various applications and settings dialogues available in Ubuntu (or your system of choice).

My plan was to build it in Django, because it, by default, has good handling of urls. So to embed a GIF of someone clicking on, say, System -> Preferences -> Keyboard, you would just embed http://www.ubuntugif/system/preferences/keyboard/ and Hey Presto! I think some would also just be images of the dialogue boxes without animation, too.

The hope would be that, because the syntax is so simple, people wouldn’t have to think about it when putting it into a support forum, and people reading the forum would be able to see actually what is supposed to happen.

So - I guess I might get around to building this at some point. If you’re interested in the project, please let me know either in the comments or via IRC

mrBen

I spent some quality time with BBC’s iPlayer this evening catching up with The Apprentice, the only real reason to pay a license fee.

And I happened to notice that the volume control goes up to 11.

Aye, very good you Spinal Tap loving freaks..

BigAl

Even if I’d had the time, inclination and knowledge to write about this, I couldn’t say it better than davee: http://www.sungate.co.uk/?p=312

mrBen

It doesn’t really seem like it, but apparently it’s been a year since Mira was born.

Happy Birthday Munchkin

mrBen