about 10 days ago a journalist from the Sunday Business Post rang asking me about Linux in TradeSignals. A brief interview followed, but then 2 days later a photographer called out and took a picture of me stuggling with a laptop while smiling bravely. I prefer being on the other side of the camera..
Those of you who didn’t buy the newspaper on Sunday are spared the picture of me, and the article (unfortunately), but there is an article about a CEO who tried Linspire on his laptop and was surprised to find it easy to install and use.
They also put their obligitory Microsoft FUD article online too which is a bit disappointing as it’s quite misleading and repeats the usual MS line. Oh well!
Later… This was mentioned on The ILUG mailing list on Sunday, and here too, along with some more thought about the pro-Microsoft article.
Lunar Eclipse Tonight!
I just heard on the radio, there’ll be a lunar eclipse tonight and it’s visible from Ireland! Unfortunately, the weather’s turned sour since the great weekend, but hopefully the clouds will clear!
PS. Here’s more about the March 3rd, 2007 eclipse, including some photos and facts and figures!
Mozilla Thunderbird 0.6 Out!
Yay! Mozilla Thunderbird 0.6 is out and has several new features and bugs fixed. I’m downloading it as we speak..
What a day!
Wow, hell of a day. So many cool things going on today it’s impossible to list them all. I would like to say that Fred stole the show with their performance, but I was glad things were running late otherwise I would have missed the gorgeous Micha from Slovakia! Here’s a big hello to the Slovaks in the crowd, they made the day with their cheering and enthusiastic flag waving and general mayhem! hehe.
*phew* Wacked.
Mac GIMP? Mac Crap?
You’ve probably already seen this review via the mention on slashdot but I couldn’t let it go by without commenting on it. In the usual Slashdot manner I haven’t read the article yet so I’m not going to defend the Mac version of the GIMP.
All I’ll say is that every photo I publish here is processed using the GIMP. It’s not substantially worse than Photoshop for many tasks, just different. Personally, I can’t stand using Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro. I don’t like the way they work, they’re not intuitive to me. I like the GIMP right-click to do everything approach. *shrug*
Different strokes for different folks.
Later… This made it to the GIMP User mailing list too. (but the archives are broken.. sorry!)
Here’s an interesting tip I gleaned from that thread:
Well, when you press the TAB key while in Image Window – all other GIMP windows will disappear (except for other image windows if you have multiple images open).
If you press TAB again the Toolbox will appear, after pressing it next time, all previosly hidden windows will come back.
Mizen to Malin 2004!
Hehe.. Owen’s kept busy today. 80 minis visited the garage on their round-Ireland trip which started at Kevin O’Leary’s in Silversprings! He has more on his blog, including photos of lots and lots of minis!
Macro Digital Photography
In the last few weeks I’ve taken to macro photography in a big way. It’s a whole different world out there in the microcosm of flowers, insects and strange textures, where depth of field is measured in inches rather than feet and your subject is likely to have 6 legs rather than 2!
For the budding macro photographer, here are links to tips on the subject. I’ll be looking at some of this over the weekend!
Film as a Weapon
Or it can be a shield too protecting protestors, or people under threat from greater forces.
This essay by Fritz Hippler, “an employee in the film section of the [Nazi] Propaganda Ministry,” is a very perceptive view of how powerful film would become but it’s not surprising in hind-sight given how successfully the Nazis used propaganda.
Linux: Tuning Swappiness, eh?
Via slashdot, I thought this thread on how swappy Linux should be would be informative but it appears to be very subjective.
I tested with swappiness set high and low, along with Mozilla FF, Thunderbird, xchat and mgt, I opened 3 2560×1920 images in the GIMP and performed a few operations on each. Neither setting affected performance much, except that with swappiness set high it may have been a little slower. That said, the GIMP maintains it’s own cache, and I have that set at 256MB.
I have swappyness set to 10 now. Not sure if that’s good or bad, or whatever.. *shrug*
May Day Celebrations in Cork!
There’s lots happening in Cork tomorrow!
On May 1st, the EU expands from 15 to 25 members with the addition of many East European states. Ireland holds the rotating presidency of the European Union and as such, we’re hosting delegations from the incoming states in various cities and areas around the country!
Cork is hosting the Slovak group, and it looks like tomorrow’s going to be a busy day in the city! Even better, Fred are playing on a stage in Patrick’s Street just after 5pm! (Thanks Donnchadh for that link!)