Category: community

  • I am Magellan

    I am Magellan

    After reading some interesting stories of what life inside virtual worlds could be like in the future, I was inspired to do a bit of writing of my own from a different perspective on Second Life. Beep, beep. Beep, beep. Neuro slowly opened one eye, looking towards the red light blinking plaintively on his aging…

  • Revert to Standard Ubuntu Kernel on OVH or Kimsufi Servers

    I have a cheap dedicated server running Ubuntu Linux — the 8.04 LTS “Hardy Heron” release — with Kimsufi, the budget arm of French hosting company OVH. All their Linux servers (and FreeBSD servers too, I think) are provisioned with their own custom, static kernel. This, they say, makes it “secure”. It also makes it…

  • The Four Ubuntu Yorkshiremen

    The Four Ubuntu Yorkshiremen

    (With apologies to Monty Python) Four well-dressed men sitting together at a LUG meeting, surrounding a laptop running Ubuntu 9.04. First Yorkshireman (1Y): Ahh … Very passable, this, very passable. Second Yorkshireman (2Y): Nothing like a good install of Ubuntu Jaunty, eh Gessiah? Third Yorkshireman (3Y): You’re right there, Obediah. Fourth Yorkshireman (4Y): Who’d a…

  • Lunch Club

    The first rule of Lunch Club is you do not talk about Lunch Club The second rule of Lunch Club is you do not talk about Lunch Club Third rule: If someone says “nachos!”, orders a garlic bread, or eats with their fingers, the lunch is over Fourth rule: Only one plate to a person…

  • Cabs are Awesome, Unless They’re Not

    Cabs are Awesome, Unless They’re Not

    Jono’s post about taxi cabs and close calls with death reminded me of how little hassle I’ve usually had with cab drivers. I usually chat away to cabbies, and tip pretty generously on most occasions, but one guy in San Francisco took the biscuit, and didn’t get tipped. Or chatted to, as I was giving…

  • IMAX Disappointment

    IMAX Disappointment

    So two things i’ve been looking forward to for a long time are going to see The Dark Knight and finally getting to see a movie at the IMAX cinema out at the Glasgow Science Centre. It’s a crying shame that the actual experience of going to watch the movie didn’t match up to the…

  • Defective in the Head

    Defective in the Head

    As someone said on IRC this morning: “the FSF appear to have come up with the perfect plan for how to look like a bunch of annoying, smart-arse tossers“. Has the Free Software Foundation gone nuts? Update 13:30: I don’t seem to be alone on this: popey, mgdm, ZDNet, Slashdot. I’ve been saying for a…

  • “‘Iron Man’? That’s Kinda Catchy.”

    “‘Iron Man’? That’s Kinda Catchy.”

    After seeing Iron Man last night, Robert Downey Jr. has firmly cemented himself into the canon of my “mostest awesome favourite actor types”. I’ve always liked Downey Jr. — highlights for me were his roles in Air America, Chaplin, and most recently, A Scanner Darkly, Good Night, and Good Luck and Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang.…

  • No More SmoothWall (For Me)

    Some of you who know me may know my fascination and infatuation for SmoothWall, the open source Linux firewall distro. You may be interested to know that I’ve decided to take my leave of the project after just over 7 years. To explain, I need to tell a story of how I got there in…