Another (Late) Weekly Post

Currently Listening To...
Album: Fallen
Artist: Evanescence
Song: Taking Over Me


After watching the link on filmguru's blog, there were links to there videos at the end of it. The one on the left is a fox network panel discussion about religion in politics. It's amazing that it takes until the very end and a college student to say something inteligent.

The one on the right is a report/discussion about the war in Iraq and the airing of bombings. Both are worth a watch if you haven't seen them.

So, anyway, it's been a while. I finished uni on 15th June, and don't go back until the 6th August, so I thought I'd have some quality time to finish putting my room together (yes King Kohl, I still have stuff to do too!) to keep in line with the rest of the household who have been complaining about my inablility to match their house moving expertise (It's not good enough! It's been 2 weeks and you've still got that box sitting in the middle of your room!)

Seriously, though, it seems that my uni is one of the few that finish so early, so I'm getting all thesee shifts at work. I'm basically working full time next week, which is good cash, but kind of annoying when I was expecting a break. Can't complain though - it will pay for all the new release games coming out ;).

Now, what to post this week...

You mac weenies probably won't be interested in any of this, but I'll post it for anybody's interest anyway...

I've finally discovered how to theme winxp without 3rd party software!!! I know, not an overly new discovery for most people, but a new one for me none the less. It turns out that if you replace a *.dll file in the windows directory somewhere, you can add your own themes and visual styles! I've tried things like windows blinds in the past, but always found that it slowed down my system too much, and I wasn't interested in paying $30US for the enjoyment. But now I can use the free themes from places such as deviant art to make it look like... well... linux? I've actually got this installed at the moment in the subzero colour. It looks absolutely fantastic on my laptop. I can't be bothered changing my vista desktop as I like aero enough that it doesn't annoy me.

Another great discovery that I've found is foobar2000. It's a freeware, fully customisable media player that has a very low footprint on system resources. Mine currently has this style, until I can work out the complex coding required to properly customise it. I would normally say that nothing beats winamp, but since AOL took it over it's become more bloated than a vista oem laptop.

See, this is what happens when you up your broadband plan to 7gb. You find all this awsome stuff that you never had the bandwidth to search for before. I also found xp login screens and firefox themes.

Ok, and here's one for you mac people (I'm assuming that this will work for pc and mac versions... I didn't check). Itunes themes. Most of them just change colour but worth checking out. It at least proves that itunes is somewhat customisable, despite it being more anoying that wmp (I'm waiting for film guru's indignant "GO STEVE" comment on that one). At least you can actually personalise it. NOTE: I hate wmp, but I still prefer it's media library over itunes. In itunes you actually have to add a file to the library for it to work. It may be good for people with ipods, but I personally have no use for it or the pathetic excuse for a program called quicktime.

And maybe someone can actually explain to me why on earth you'd make programs to look like XP bluesabre? It is the most awful part of xp, what with it's stupid green hill pixelated background. At least MS got it (mostly) right with vista aero. If only it didn't need a graphics card to run it.

See, this is why I like linux. You can actually set it up to do what you want, as oposed to whatever Steve or Bill say you should be doing.

Anyway, now that rant's over, what else is there...

Oh, yeah, I decided to try out opera. It's a lot quicker than firefox at loading, and as such lightyears beyond IE7, but I don't know if I'll keep it. Kind of anoying to use, 'cause I'm used to the "firefox" way of doing things. Once I get used to the shortcuts, I might use it more, but at the moment I'll stick with firefox because I'm lazy and already have it customised to my liking. Opera is a fantastic program though, and well worth checking out.

So, I think that will do for this week. I'll try and get another post in by the end of the weekend, else it won't happen until the end of next week.

Also, for a bit of interactivity, throw in a couple of your favourite apps. Maybe I'll start up a list or something, as I find "I've gotta try that", and then completely forget about it for weeks, then can't find it...

I'll even accept OSX apps - maybe I'll find MS equivalents.

So Many Choices... Linux It Is

Currently Listening To...
Album: Jazz In The Spirit: His Eye In On The Sparrow
Artist: Unlisted
Song: Awsome God

I just had to link this. Rove's been airing clips of it on Rove Live. Absolutely hilarious the things people will do to be a "real live superhero".

Random Pic Of The Week

Sorry if I stole this off someone, but it's pretty funny...

So, with a new work-in-progress template design for this week, I found myself in the rather unusal dilema of having a few options to choose from. Some topics include...
- Torchwood
- Forza 2 Motorsport
- Linux
- TV Advertisement Rants
- TV Network Rants

I figure since tv has been way overdone by everyone else already, and the people who I know read this blog don't own an xbox 360, it would be pointless covering TV and Forza (at this stage). And since I've only watched the first 4 eps of Torchwood, I might as well cover the lot when I've seen them all.

Since this blog is, after all, called "Confessions Of A Computer Nerd", I might as well cover the most nerdiest topic of all - Linux.

Lots of people seem to ask me questions about what linux actually is, I guess I should start there. Trouble is, explaining it is difficult. So here's the wiki. In short, it's an operating system based of an old operating system called unix (see wiki link). OSX, incidently, is also based on unix.

The key behind linux is that is is open source. This means that it is fully customisable down to the last detail. To make things a little more confusing though, Linux (or any operating system) isn't actually what you see on screen. It is the code behind it.

A poor analogy is a photo shop. You take in your oldskool film to be printed and hand it to the customer service person. They then hand it to the guy who actually prints it. Once printed, the photos are given to the customer service person, who gives the photos to you.

Ok, stay with me. Linux is the printer guy, the one who does all the work on the photos. The customer service person is just there to make things easier. In an operating system's case, this is the fancy graphics. You see it? Huh? Bad I know, but you (hopefully) get the picture (get it? Picture?).

So now I've clarified what linux is, I'll explain the GUI or Graphical User Interface. This is the stuff you point and click at with the mouse. The two main types for this are Gnome and KDE (pics in wiki link). Gnome is comparable to OSX, while KDE is comparable to the windows interface. These too are open source, meaning that you can make them look exactly how you want them to look without having an extra application change it for you (in window's case).

When you combine these two things together you have a distribution, a whole free operating system that I find easier to use than windows and OSX (which I admit, I haven't used much of).
You can still access windows files and folders, osx files and folders, and most hardware works straight after installation without drivers and such. It even has windows emulation, which while not perfect, is acceptible for small tasks, and even apparently runs microsoft office adequately. Not that you need it, with perfectly reliable free legal software that doesn't cost you a cent to use.

So, how's this compare to OSX and Windows? Well, linux is finally at the stage where it can probably be installed by someone whose computer literate, and without a degree in software engineering. With the one that I use, all you need to do is put in the disk, and there's a simple step by step program that does eveything for you. You can even try it out from the cd without breaking everything. The user interface is a decent quality, and you can change it as you see fit. It's prime advantage is application managers that can automatically download free software from the net. Just click it and it downloads, installs and is ready for use without EULA's, and usually without reboots (for most apps).

So, what's left to mention? Windows 90 odd % market share. It can't be that bad with that kind of record, can it? WRONG!!! again, wiki link.

As you can read in the link, it really all began gaining momentum at widnows version 3. It was the first pc operating system that could run on more than one type of hardware (3 at the time). At the time it was revolutionary, and there was finally someone to rival apple. Problem was, they got too successful. Jobs had been kicked from apple, and linux was concentrating on server orientation. This left a gaping big hole for windows '95. After this, we start to see windows downfall. Windows '98 was thought to be a minor upgrade to '95. This is when MS started getting nasty in the web browser wars. When they bundled IE into windows, no one had any reason (at the time) to use nutscrape - sorry, netscape navigator. So instead, netscape decided to add more uneeded features, resulting in it's downfall.

Now MS are far too comfortable in their success and have dropped the ball, and people are filling in the gaps. According the apple's (laughable) release of safari to windows, IE marketshare is down to 75%, because they haven't released a decent update to it in years. Hence firefox. Safari is bug filled crappy software by apple's standards, but is still better than IE. Oh, and while I'm thinking of it, there are no real security/virus threats to linux machines. Virus protection is completely unneccesary, although freely available if wanted.

Anyway, I still have windows on my desktop because I like to game. But my laptop boots just as quick and WITHOUT CRASHING AND DRIVER UPDATES with ubuntu linux installed. It's easier to use and took me 1/2 the time to install.

What's more is that when I bought the laptop, I had no choice but to have windows installed. This is how microsoft makes their money - from manufacturer support. Manufacturers are always going to prefer a nice long legal agreement with lock in contracts than a free, flexible operating environment. This is the reason why windows succeeds, and no other. But with Vista, things may change, but I doubt it. While large businesses won't spend the millions needed to change to linux, and home users don't know the difference, thing won't change.

So, I hope that clears up peoples knowledge of linux a little bit. In reality, I've probably confused you more than anything else, but what the hell.

Also, feel free to comment/critique/suggest improvements for the template colours and such. It ain't no where near finished yet, so I might need some creative input.

In news this week...

Now Listening To:
Song: Molossus
Artist: Hans Zimmer & James Newton Howard
Album: Batman Begins OST
IT'S ON NOW, MATT!!!

Random Pic Of The Week

I figure since the quality and quantity of my posts are... dubious, I might try out a regular once per week summary of thoughts/events, etc. After all, I can't get much worse from here, can I?

I found an app that gives a detailed report on hdd performance, temperatures and run time. At this stage, my computer has been running for a total of 9 months, 24 days, 13 hours. This works out at roughly being 12hrs per day. At around 400w on average power, and 550w at full load, that's a lot of juice, that I don't pay for. I'm begining to think that maybe I should use my laptop more...

In other news, Torchwood is about to hit screens in oz on Network Ten. I just found out it's actually a spin off from Dr Who, so God knows how far it's going to get before it gets axed. Anyone taking bets for 2 eps? The link's to the official ten website with an extended preview for those who want to check it out.

Anyway, it seems like a slight improvement on the latest bbc series, as you might tell from the video link. It has promise, although if they have the same script writers, than it's screwed. I'm downloading the first ep now, so we'll see how it goes. Who can't help but watch it with the whole "flash random scenes out of context from the first ep with dramatic male/female voiceover" adverts that ten are now famous for. "Captian Jack is comminnngggg....". And that's why people bit torrent.

UPDATE: Torchwood ain't half bad. It's aimed at an adult audience, so it's a lot darker than Dr Who, but I think it might actually work. I think the script writers might like the cybermen technology a bit too much though. And the overly obvious references to Dr Who are sometimes overdone. But it's pretty good for a modern BBC production.

Speaking of Ten, Jericho gets booted from screens after only 1 return ep. Seriously. I recorded the last two because of the crap timeslot, and for the second recording I get "Mean Girls". What's the deal with that? Why on earth would you air a show like Jericho, which has a more mature audience, after a bogan farm fight night? It did alright last year on Thursday nights, and is there any surprise no one tunes in when the show starts late, wedged in between what equates to school kid backyard playdates and a bogan porn fest?

The only people with less braincells than the Big Brother housemates are those people that watch it. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that drama without nudity is not going to rate well folling Big Brother.

Yet another show to add to the torrent list (Jericho, not big brother, that is...).

So, how many Indians does it take to up an internet plan and move house?
No, it's not a racist joke, despite how that sounds, but in answer it's 3 - 1 to change address, 1 to up the plan, and 1 to explain what the first 2 did.

It turns out instead of transferring our account, they simply created a new one and negleted to tell us. Which meant that account details couldn't be accessed from the net, and that our optusnet emails will be changed, confusing everyone in the process. And this is the industry I'm going to enter. *shudder*

I could comment on Paris Hilton and Tony Mockbell, but I think we're all decided on that one (and yes, I ripped the idea from Rove)...

Paris in black wig

Damn, I've got my last exam Friday this week. Stupid holiday mode zapping all my study motivation!

Well, this seems to be more substantial than most of the previous posts. This may work after all.

NEXT WEEK:
Review of Forza Motorsport 2, provided EB Games haven't screwed up or delayed the backorder. Can't wait!

People Power Unite!

US fans of the TV show Jericho have united in the most awsome, effective and awsome (did I mention awsome?) fan protest ever. In response to a cliffhanger episode after which CBS wanted to axe the show, fans sent about 5600 pounds of nuts to CBS execs in protest. They had websites, huge discounted nut prices, and what's more, it worked!!!

CBS have ordered 7 more episodes of the series. IT WORKED!!!

Maybe we could set fire to fox studios in a similar manner to get firefly back on air?

I probably should watch that show properly before I commence criminal actions in protest first though...

New Post A Comming...

Steve v Bill

So, in a rare apearance, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates had a joint gathering at a Wall Street Journal exibition.

Quite an interesting read. I don't know whether this was all planned out before hand, but it was a very dissapointingly civil meeting, almost - dare I say it - friendly!

Anyway, it's an interesting discussion, well worth checking out.