Brian Likes The Source

I thought I’d finish off the year by sharing some of my favourite memories of 2009 with you. It’s been quite a year for me and included many new experiences and acquaintances. I hope 2010 turns out to be as good. I’ll try not to go into detail about every month or we could be here all day, but I have been back through the blog archives to note some of the big events.

Back in January of this year I finally got my act together and set up this site. When I say “got my act together” that’s debatable because the site still isn’t anywhere near finished. It’s still got the “temporary” (ha ha) design that I launched it with. I’m working on that as I’ve said all year, but I hope 2010 will herald a new overall design linking the main Drupal site to the WordPress blog more tightly, building on that foundation. The date I actually moved everything here to danlynch.org/blog was January 17th 2009. I haven’t regretted the move to self-hosting and it’s something I should have done long ago. There’ll be more consolidation and development around DanLynch.org in 2010. I also began my regular Weekly Rewind articles in February and I’m pleased with how they’ve gone so far. People seem to enjoy them but they actually prove very useful for me too, just being able to read back what I’ve done takes a big burden off my shoddy memory. Read the rest of this entry »

Default Mint Desktop

I’m a bit late with this review I know, but the distro releases have been so thick and fast lately I just couldn’t keep up. Today I’d like to talk to you about Linux Mint 8, AKA Helena. I’ve said this many times before, but the codenames still sound a little tacky to me. The distro itself is anything but tacky though and it’s been one of my firm favourites in the past. How would this release stack up? Well, I’ll tell you…

Vital Stats:
Distro base – Ubuntu (itself based on Debian)
Packaging – .deb (Managed by the mighty Apt)
Linux Kernel – 2.6.31-14-generic
Default Desktop – Gnome 2.28

Installation:

Setting Time Zone

I began by downloading the standard Linux Mint 8 install CD, foregoing the Universal version. For those interested in the differences between the two, the Universal version is actually a much larger download and contains support for a lot more languages. I suppose the name should have made that obvious really, but I always thought there must be more technical differences. Firing up the LiveCD worked like a treat as expected and I was soon loading into a live session, from which I could install the new system. The look of Mint is always very nice and they seem to take a lot of time over the desktop themes, wallpapers and so on. This release is no exception in that department and it looks beautiful. Clicking the install shortcut located on the desktop I wasted no time in getting into business. If you’re new to Linux or just the whole LiveCD model in general, don’t be fooled by the slowness of a live session. This usually bears no real reflection on how the final install will perform on your hardware. It’s just that constantly loading data from a CD is much slower than a hard drive, so don’t panic. Read the rest of this entry »

Ho ho ho! A festive Rewind for you today. Well, it includes Christmas Day anyway. I trust everyone is having a good holiday season? I’ve caught my regular Christmas cold, it seems to happen every year and I dunno why, but it’s clearing up now and I’m getting my voice back slowly. You’ll hear that on the latest Rathole Radio, it sounds like Louis Armstrong is guest hosting from beyond the grave which is pretty funny. So, let’s get into what’s happened in the last week.

On Monday we did our final live Linux Outlaws of the year and man it was a long one. It ended up just over 2hrs but I suppose we can call it a Festively Fat Special Edition of the show. I waffled on for ages about my experience with the N900 but hopefully people will still find it interesting. Fab did a great job editing it all and it was released as episode 128 “The Mystery Box” on Wednesday. We actually did some more recording on Tuesday afternoon making some secret content for episode 129. That won’t be live obviously but you should be able too hear it some time this week. I can’t tell you what this special content is, but I will reveal that it was very funny and involved lot’s of takes to get it right. On Tuesday evening I ventured out into the snow and ice travelling to a carol concert my friend Sarah was putting on near Ormskirk. She conducts a local choir and the gig was really good, a great mixture of traditional and modern music with a guest appearance by Elvis, well an Elvis look alike anyway. It was a fun night and I was glad I’d made the effort to get there in the ice. Read the rest of this entry »

Fennec On My N900

I’ve got a quick tutorial of sorts for you today. As you may have read in my last update, I was very lucky to receive an N900 Linux-based phone from Nokia last week. I’ll do a proper in-depth write up about the device and the Maemo operating system in due course, when I’ve had some more time to test it. But for now I’d like to talk about installing Firefox. For a while now Mozilla have been developing a version of Firefox called Fennec, and it’s aimed at mobile devices. The name comes from a type of fox known for it’s small stature. I originally thought it would keep the name Fennec through it’s entire lifespan, but I’ve since been told that it’s only called Fennec as a codename whilst in development. Once it’s released it’ll just be called Firefox. Confused? Anyway, this is all beside the point.

I read earlier in the week that Fennec had been packaged for Maemo and would be available on the N900 and N810. I actually like the default browser in Maemo a lot, but I was also curious to see just what Mozilla had done with the interface. A choice of web browser is always nice on a system anyway, just ask Microsoft… oh no wait, don’t. A quick web search brought up the appropriate page on Mozilla’s website and I was able to install Fennec with ease. So for the benefit of anyone with a Maemo device, here’s what I did. Read the rest of this entry »

Greetings all, it’s a quiet Sunday afternoon here at Lynch Towers and the perfect time to update you with another Weekly Rewind. I’ll begin on Tuesday this time because last weeks article was delayed again and I’ve already covered Monday. It’s probably a good job because there’s so much to talk about from the last couple of days alone I couldn’t fit it in. I’ve got a special guest staying with me for Christmas which I’ve very excited about. More on that in the minute. In the meantime let’s start at the beginning, always a good place to start.

On Tuesday I processed the audio from Linux Outlaws Monday night recording and also started work on editing the big interview, I talked about that in the last Rewind. I took local recordings from each participant and spliced them all together. The resulting interview sounded really good I think, and I’m not just patting myself on the back here. Everyone involved did a great job of recording their own part. That was all released by Fab on Wednesday as episode 127 “Reverse Mono Trojan Horse”. I also installed Linux Mint 8 on the laptop which I’m still testing for a review, while on Thursday I attended the opening of the Space Invaders exhibition at FACT in Liverpool. It included a performance by the DS Orchestra, ably conducted by my friend Ross Dalziel. I hung around a bit at the after party with some friends and spoke to some other interesting people. I’m skipping over things so far because I want to get into the long winded description of what happened on Friday. Read the rest of this entry »

Ok, a completely bizarre post for you today, but I just had to share this with everyone. I was sent this in an email by faithful Linux Outlaws listener and friend of the show Les “Quarter” Pounder. It’s a Linux Outlaws Christmas card he’s made up and I think it’s hilarious. He says his photo editing skills aren’t up to much and I’m sure some GIMP gurus could make this more realistic, but you know what? I don’t care. I like it as it is. So here you go, enjoy…

Click to enlarge

Read the rest of this entry »