June 29th, 2006
I have been thinking of switching from Mandriva for a long time, but could not face the time backing up my files and cleaning out my junk ready for a new installation. Then XGL appeared on the scene and I wanted it, but have had recent hassles with building from code when no RPMs have been available. Reading about the latest Ubuntu and Suse having this already installed made me serious about changing. Now I have found this video of Mandriva, I think I may stick with it for a bit longer. Mandriva XGL Demo
This video is from a Zenwalk installation and shows some nice examples of video footage being bent around corners. The Zenwalk footage. I would love to know what the zooming / scrolling task manager is that is shown at the bottom. Any ideas – someone – please?
Tags: Linux, Mandriva, XGL
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June 26th, 2006
Is it just me or does anyone else see jobs advertised with the line
salary: neg
and think that neg means negligible and not negotiable?
Tags: Advertising, Fun, Jobs
Posted in Fun, General | No Comments »
June 22nd, 2006
If you are interested in Games development should really enjoy listening to the FLOSS podcast from twit.tv. A really great show. Anyone who has ever written a game and not finished will surely be digging it out of the archives to give it another go.Nice to see some good advice on keeping the first project simple. There are probably countless unfinished projects out there someone has aimed a bit too high on the first effort. This goes for commercial games too – I know from my own experience. Has anyone heard of Etchinghill Studios?
Interesting to see that programming langauges were not really discussed. Games can be easily developed in languages other than C/C++. If I didn’t already know C I am quite sure I would give up from frustration over learning the language. With the great control you get from C, there is also a lot to learn. Python is an alternative and there are links on libSDL for Python developers. At a job interview I was told that it didn’t matter that I had no experience in Python. The interviewer said I could learn enough to be productive in a weeked. Saying that – I still haven’t tried it.
The Challenge
Anyway, Ryan reckons you can write a Tetris clone in a night and have it debugged by morning. I am going to give it a go. If I finish it I will post it – perhaps FLOSS can have a page of links to all those Tetris clones that are spawned by this podcast.
If you want to listen to the podcast head over to twit.tv.
Tags: Etchinghill, FLOSS, Linux, Podcast
Posted in Fun, General | No Comments »
June 13th, 2006
For several years the local papers have been publicising the fact that there is not enough water supplies to support the new houses Mr. Prescott has been forcing upon the South. No matter what the council has been said or the local studies have reported, no one was really interested.
Then, the media made it open season on John Prescott and any news involving him has become big news. This last week the national newspapers commented on how “irresponsible” it was to promote the building of new homes in the south when there is not the infrastructure to support it.
So, thanks to the hot water Prescott has got himself into through his extra-marital affairs, someone has finally noticed what was going on.
Tags: Ashford, Kent, Politics, Prescott
Posted in Ashford, General | No Comments »
May 25th, 2006
The Times has reported on the crime figures for England and Wales and found that Ashford in Kent has the dubious honour of being the eigth in the table for murders per capita!
Tags: Ashford, Crime, Kent
Posted in Ashford, General | No Comments »
May 9th, 2006
The news of an MOD report into the existance of extra terrestrials has been all over the “Oddly Enough” pages of the news sites today. Reuters and the BBC had both been reporting on an investigation into the causes of the UFO phenomena by the MOD.
The full report is not out until the 15th of May but the conclusions have been reported on, perhaps a little disappointingly, as
Evidence suggests that meteors and their well-known effects and, possibly some other less-known effects are responsible for some unidentified aerial phenomena…
and
Considerable evidence exists to support the thesis that the events are almost certainly attributable to physical, electrical and magnetic phenomena in the atmosphere, mesosphere and ionosphere.
After a little searching around I found a list of reported UFO sightings since 2002 on the MOD site. I have included those that happened in Kent during 2005 below.
27-May-05 15:15 Kent
Was a small white object, that was moving parallel with an airliner.
22-Nov-05 Sheerness Kent
A ‘V’ shape of dim lights, that went into a straight line and then back into a V again.
22-Nov-05 Gillingham Kent
Five lights in the sky, that looked very strange. The lights were flashing.
24-Dec-05 21:20 Whitstable Kent
Three bright, orange lights in the sky, and then a forth orange light appeared and followed the other three.
27-Dec-05 Whitstable Ken
Strange lights were seen in the sky.
The descriptions from the report are somewhat lacking in detail which is disappointing. Kent only receives 3% of the sightings in the report. Either the aliens don’t think that we are interesting enough, or we just don’t get the unusual atmospheric weather conditions.
Shame.
Tags: alien, Fun, Kent
Posted in Fun, General | No Comments »
May 4th, 2006
Disaster strikes.
I was going to tell you all about the great interview that the BBC’s Zane Lowe had with Anthony Kiedis and John Frusciante. The interview was available for download as part of the BBC podcasting trial. Unfortunately the BBC does not hold an archive and only interviews for the current week are hosted. By the time I got to write this post it had been removed.
There has also been a hilarious interview with Russell Brand by Tim Westwood. It sounded like the pair grew up on completely different planets and not within commuting distance of London. I was in fits of laughter as the two of them played off of the others styles. Russells “Best Bits” are available for download from the BBC. Lets hope he is as funny as he is when presenting “Big Brothers Big Mouth”. You had better download them now before the BBC takes them off line 
If I find the RHCP interview hosted anywhere I will post the link.
Tags: BBC, Music, RHCP
Posted in Fun, General | No Comments »
April 28th, 2006
A friend of mine has been working on some freeware games and has posted them on his website.
The games play well, are nicely presented and are well worth a look. I really like the attention to detail in the homage to Pac-man called Cac-man. The sound effects are spot on and brought nostalgic memories of the original flooding back.The author, Blitterbug, has even been seen playing Cac-Man himself during lunchtimes. I have suggested that he could add networked highest score table so that we can see how well we perform against other players, but I think this project is considered complete and something new is probably in the pipeline.
The games can be downloaded from here.
Tags: Fun, Games
Posted in Family, Fun, General | No Comments »
April 28th, 2006
Nintendo have announced the name under which they will release their latest console.
It is Wii.
Yep, a rubbish name. I can only imagine it is designed to provoke comment from the English speaking world.
Lets hope the console performs better than it sounds.
Tags: Games, Wii
Posted in Family, Fun, General | 1 Comment »
April 27th, 2006
Very exciting news is that it looks like my crowd are going to descend on the May Beer Festival at the Halfway House in Brenchley. Mendip is proposing attendance on the Saturday or Sunday, as by Monday the best beer will be gone (and Sunday has the added bonus of a traditional pub roast).
So, I will blending in with the Real Ale stereotype by wearing my Linux guru beard and sandles.
Tags: Fun, Kent
Posted in Family, Fun, General | No Comments »