Round me up in ONE WORD ?
Oct 30I’m not one for silly quizes or forwards. But a comment posted by BRIE on my Facebook page, did inspire me to take up her offer. Post a text to your profile where you ask people to describe you in one word. I must say 🙂 The results came as quite a shock. If you want to join the party, check out my Facebook profile and add your own (hopefully flattering) comment ;p (Just click on the badge below).
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Ubuntu 9.10 is not an invitation to a co-ed threesome.
Oct 29
If there is one thing I hate from the core of my very existence, then
its the phenomenon called "hyping". Hyping is rounding up a few
thousand enthusiasts ,adding just a pinch of factual information, scoop
out all other ingredients like : Scepticism, common sense, rationality
and replacing all of those with pure and utter unfounded emotion.
Seeing a crowd of 14000 girls screaming in anticipation for the first
ever concert of "Vanilla Ice" is a classic example of "Hyping".
Whenever I see 20 idiots camping out on lawn chairs and sleeping bags
in front of the Apple store to get their hands on the "next Leopard", I
sigh and think of Hyping. You all know how I feel about the Iphone
(and the over-hyping culture that it floats on) so I shall spare you my
thoughts on that. The last couple of days this "hyping" phenomenon has
found new and fresh prays to thrive on.Although the whole "Windows 7
Hype" has been pretty meek in comparison to last time MS released an
OS, ‘ The OUCH starts Now ‘ it was still bad. Hyping starts with
Bloggers writing about products they have not realy tested or used in the real world. It starts when people with keyboards, a website and an internet
connection bombard themselves as "Experts" on a piece of
hardware/software/service they know NOTHING about and don’t have ANY
experience with. Their entire article (if we may call this simplistic
piece of gutteral
cries-in-a-database an article) is based on some vague screenshots,
rumor sites and "what people say on twitter". They run in line with
all the other bloggers, in very much the same manner as cows trod after
one another
when its either time for milking or feeding. I am still lost about the
whole "Google Wave" thing and fail to see the revolutionary features of
this technology. To me it looks very much like "Usenet 2.0" Ok , I am perhaps immune to the fact that Leo Laporte gets some kind of phisical phenomenon that makes him cancel his Viagra-order whenever he talks about Google Wave, or that Veronica Bellmont named her favorite Vibrater after Google Wave .. But perhaps thats just me.
Today I am equally annoyed with the whole hyping phenomenon concerning the new release of Ubuntu Karmic Koala. Never mind the fact that there are tons of "release parties’ all over the world, crowded by nerds who play "stratego outside" once every six months. Those parties have a social function and are way cooler then the Windows 7 home parties that AGAIN make me think of vibrators (Must be where Veronica got hers). My annoyance is with the fact that everybody is hootin and tootin
Koala’s horn even before its released. We are talking about a small
upgrade to jaunty. Sure, some things have changed , comparing it to
9.04, but this is not the new Ubuntu revolution here. Amids the hysteria (1000 users on the irc
channel ? ) people are more then happy to shout that the "BIG CHANGES"
are still a year away, but continue to merrily tweet that "they are
downloading the beta …RIGHT NOW !!!!".. Thats like celebrating Christmas
2011 in august 2009. You don’t even know what Santa is gonna stuff down
your stocking and you’re saying thank you already ? Please people : Try
before you buy, or at least, TRY before you blog/tweet/irc and so forth. The Irc-party-channel is filled up with a 1000+ fans who are hopping up and down ,spouting that they are torrenting
away at some hilarious speed while they shout "HOW GREAT THIS IS". As I
said this morning. Karmic Koala is not an invitation by 2 coed girls
who are lying in your bedroom NAKED waiting for you to join them .. Its
just a new release. Please .. put things in perspective and hoot and
toot AFTER Santa gives you your present.
If you want to get your panties in a twist : DOWNLOAD IT HERE.
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Random snap.
Oct 28No photoshop, no fancy effects … True beauty shines in “poin’t and click”
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Back in the Windows 7 world, Ninite saves the day.
Oct 28
The Dvd
had been lying around my office for a few days. Lurking at me with its
silver coated surface. Sending a gentle vibe towards my subconscious
whispering " Try me Try me". I had played around with its older
brother, a release candidate version freely distributed over the interwebs
and was pleasantly surprised that even this ‘release candidate’
performed better then its over-bloated parent. But let us be honest.
Even Windows 3.1 running on a 386 with "Drivespace" enabled (and the "turbo button" in OFF mode) was better then Vista.
Sure they made the whole Vista experience became considerably better after service pack 1 and 2 hit the net, but still.. You needed a pretty pumpy machine to reach around Vista’s love-handles.
Off
course, the web was abuzz with talk about Windows 7. All kinds of
shortcuts, tips, tricks and reviews where flying around. Those
commenting on "how nice it looked" where blissfully ignored by me ,
because I think a "new and shiny interface" does not always mean things
are "better". New bling wares off fast, so the gui is not a measure by which an operating system shoot be judged.
I popped in the DVD and fired up my virtualisation software. Why ? Because I would not think of installing such a system directly to the harddrive of ANY of my machines. The golden rule : "Never trust and Microsoft OS before its first servicepack"
did echo in the back of my head. And besides. This was going to be a
‘thorough test" of the operating system in its everyday use, but
nothing more then a test. The release candidate that I installed on my
Tablet pc proved that Windows 7 was indeed an interesting leap by Microsoft, so I decided that the VM i made from the "Final" version of Windows 7 would become my ‘personal system’ for a few days.
Installation
proved a breeze ( The question whether i would like to "upgrade" the
non-existing operating system on the empty virtual harddrive
did puzzle me a little) so i went for a custom and clean installation.
After that I went for the mandatory installation of Windows updates.
Next i was faced by the daunting task of installing all my cross
platform (or windows based) applications onto this system. Personal
Data, Bookmarks and many of the services I use every day are mostly
cloud based, so besides installing Firefox I did not have a bunch of "local applications" to install. But luckily I found NINITE , a great application that takes care of that for you. Those who listened to our episode "Free XP" might have heard that I like applications like "the Google Pack" and "The msn Live Pack" because the make the installation of different applications easy. NINITE
goes one step further. Head on over to the website, point and click
what applications you would like to have and you will be given a
"custom download application" that you can use. Download the NINITE app to your computer and run it. Ninite
takes care of downloading the latest versions of the apps you selected
(even based on your local country settings) and taking care of the
installation.
What I like even more is the fact that you can
"suggest" other applications to the author of the application, so i
quickly poked him to add both MIRO and Putty to the lott.
After
everything was installed I had a completely installed and working
Windows system, and was surprised how many things that I do on a
computer DON’T use applications installed locally. Beside Twitter (I
like tweetdeck)
the larger part of my daily computing life in a Windows environment..
Is done in a browser. It seems that Windows Vista (that chased me away
from using Windows at all) had pushed me higher into the cloud then I
had suspected.
But in all , i’m not displeased with Windows7, because it behaves a lot more like XP
then like Vista. I must confess that the "simplified troubleshooting
ways" of Vista are to be found in Windows 7 also. For some reason, I
could never figure these out. The simpler Microsoft TRIES to make the
troubleshooting of your pc,
the harder it becomes for me. I have NEVER figured out things like
"simple file sharing", I get lost in the new version of the network
manager ( Sorry , network and Sharing center). I can’t make heads or
tales of libraries (Collections) and am lost what the difference is
between the "locations" you can choose from. Have I become so out of
touch with Microsoft that I have a hard time with all of this ?
So i’m going to give this Windows7 VM
a little spin this week. I’m pleasantly surprised its pretty fast (even
with the meager 512 megs of ram I have given it) and will give you an
update when I : 1: am tired of it an chuck it off 2: Become so annoyed
with it I delete the VM and burn the harddrive I installed it on. 3: Become so overwhelmed with it that I’ll ask Steve Balmer to adopt me.
Links : ninite.
