On 19th December 2006 the media regulator, Ofcom, announced plans to auction publicly owned spectrum to the highest bidder. If the auction takes place as planned the millions of consumers who have purchased, or plan to purchase HD TVs may never be able enjoy high definition TV on the Freeview platform.

Petition the PM, make your case, protest.

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/openhdtv/

http://www.hdforall.org.uk/

Dell have setup a feedback site to ask for ideas. Interestingly the top idea requested and voted for is pre-installed Linux on Dells, followed by pre-installed Open Office. There are several other good ideas worth supporting at their site, direct feedback like this is a good step I think: http://www.dellideastorm.com/

I have had a day just reading the tonnes of emails that come in whilst I travel, doing admin, making some phonecalls, and before I know it, the day has gone. Ah well. BTW looks like there are no Holiday Inns in Sweden, can this be true?

I’m having to use my Windows XP box for work, basically I need to use Dreamweaver for html coding and there’s no Linux version yet. NVU is a open source alternative and is quite powerful but not as much as Dreamweaver, and frankly: I haven’t learnt NVU yet!

So I have realised that my hard drive is as defragged as hell. I have an old copy of Norton Systemworks that will do it and schedule itself, but when I  re-installed Windows on this box I forgot to put it back on. My external hard drive is 48% fragmented! You can hear it scream when I try and write to it.  Now Windows can defrag a drive, (right click on the drive icon and look for tools) and it’s okay. It’s not the best though, in fact Norton may be (I think they wrote the Windows version) but I want to see what open source or freeware options there are.

I am also going to setup my scheduled backup routines, so I shall also try and find freeware or open source backup software for XP.

Both need to be free, and capable of being scheduled in the XP Schedule manager. Oh, and explain how to do it..

powered by performancing firefox

I am using my Windows XP machine today, so an update on Windows security, viruses and spyware..

Do you use Grisoft‘s AVG Free Virus Checker? Ever wanted to have Winzip or WinRar check your zip files for viruses? Here’s how to do it: http://free.grisoft.com/doc/5487/lng/us/tpl/v5

I have used AVG for years and I also use the free version of ZoneAlarm as my firewall. If you install it pay attention to the options, don’t choose the Pro version in the install unless you want to pay for a more complex package. I am sure it’s good but with Free AVG, ZoneAlarm and Spybot you are quite well covered.

The key to keeping clean? Keep the updates coming and keep scanning. Or switch to Ubuntu!

powered by performancing firefox

powered by performancing firefox

I am slowly and steadily moving my work and home from Windows to Ubuntu Linux. I have found alternatives to many things, and today I found a programme to upload to my flickr account.

Providing you have the official Sun Java 1.50  then  jUploadr  is a great upload tool for Linux, Windows and OS X. If you are using Ubuntu then I think it’s wise to run Automatix to ensure you have the correct java, although I may be wrong about that. It’s frankly silly not to run Automatix on any new Ubuntu install, so do it anyway! Here’s some advice on how to install it on Ubuntu (and most Linux distros), it’s very very simple:
“Extract the .tar.gz to a folder.
Open Terminal, cd to the folder.
Type “./juploadr”
That’s it. Presuming your Java is good, then you’re set.
Now, that should be enough information for you to add it to the Alacarte menu as well.”

I am trying a new extension for Firefox called Performancing for Firefox. It’s pretty simple, a pop up option from the bottom of the Firefox bottom toolbar. I use SeMagic on Windows and it’s pretty good, but given how much of my life revolves around the browser it’s pretty good to have an option there. I am using it on my Mac, but like most extensions it’s pretty OS independent.

I have just dropped Matt and his friend Laura at Meadowhall to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean film and now I am going to order Ann a taxi to go out tonight, so I am on my own again. Which wouldn’t matter, I have stuff to do, but I have had cluster headaches for 3 days now and I think all I might manage is to sit and watch Scrubs on abc1.

Later..

If you want to add extra urpmi sources to Mandriva 2006.0 then this advice from bruno on Scots Newsletter is great..

I lost bits of KDE, here is the advice I got on Mandriva:

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Alt+F2 will(/should) bring up the run window. You could

1. try running “kicker”, see if that brings the menu back so you can do your stuff
2. “konqueror”, then go to ~/.kde/share/config and delete the appropriate configuration files, returning the desktop to its default state when you next login.

Or in the command line you could simply go to that ~/.kde/share/config and delete the files that way. No need to delete everything, just stuff that is likely to affect the main desktop.

---

kicker worked

There are several sites that cater to playing Windows games under Linux. Some developers have been proactive enough to supply native Linux ports and other folk have supplied installers.

Here are some sites to get you started.

Doom3: http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/linux/doom/
Various Games: http://www.liflg.org (Installers for many popular games)
Many Windows Games under Linux: http://www.transgaming.com ($5.00 US/month)
Many native Linux games: http://www.happypenguin.org and http://www.linuxgames.com

Happy Gaming