Archive → September, 2011
Desktop 20/09/2011
Sometimes I like to post pictures of my desktop. I like the way I’m working right now. The screen set up is a 24″ 1920×1200 on the left and a 19″ 1440×900 on the right. The background image is from a double page spread of Batman and Robin Volume 2 Issue 1. I might upload that to London Comic League later.
My memory isn’t what it used to be
I have a memory stick which hasn’t worked in a while. Although I know I’m not good enough to fix it, it may have contained important company data on it and I can’t risk anyone else being to get it. I took the initiative to make sure it wouldn’t work with a simple pair of pliers.
A moving weekend
This weekend was fantastic. On Saturday I helped Tori move into her new flat, which is a lovely, relatively new property in the Canada Water area. The entire area is filled with new builds, and the scenery is lovely, with vast lakes, wide rivers and the greenest parks you are likely to come across in London. I was surprised how quiet the area was, considering I live right next to a main road in Highgate. My mind is racing with ideas about living there, especially because the tube access to central London is so bloody good!
Most of my time this weekend was spent eating lemon sorbet and buying stuff, most notably, The Vintage Tea Party by Angel Adoree. A wonderful little book with instructions on how to make cakes, little fancies, aprons and even how to do you hair. Tori picked up this book with so much excitement, I wouldn’t let her put it down, so I bought it for her.
I hope to spend quite a bit of time in and around Canada Water, alas not too much. I have a budgie to care for, after all.
A Dramatic Turn of Events
Gosh, I’ve just been reminded that Dream Theater’s 11th album, A Dramatic Turn of Events, will be released next week. While I do have this on pre-order, I noticed that there is a leak floating around on the internet. I’m genuinely excited to listen to this album. It’s going to be a bit weird listening to the band without the original powerhouse Mike Portnoy sitting behind the drum kit, however it is said that John Petrucci wrote all of the drum parts long before it was recorded. I’ve watched videos of Mike Mangini playing, and I have complete confidence that he’ll come out with something spectacular. I wonder if Mike 2′s drumming style might lead to a little change in Dream Theater’s music in general.
Fedora vs Ubuntu
Recently I made the change to Fedora 15 from Ubuntu 11.04. I’d like to detail my reasons for doing so, but first I would like to detail why I don’t use Debian or CentOS.
Quite simply, I don’t use them because I am a desktop user. While I understand that Debian and CentOS (and Red Hat) are brilliant if you’re running servers and you need extreme levels of stability, I must confess that when I’m using the desktop environments, I get annoyed by how far behind they are in terms of looks and features. That’s it. I like my desktop up to date.
Now let’s look at the Fedora vs Ubuntu issue. Gnome is what I like. I tried KDE and for the life of me I cannot use it. I think it looks ugly and no matter what I do to tweak it, I can’t get past that. So I use Gnome, and I have used Gnome 2 quite a while. I have tweaked that bastard from here to there and back again. Gnome 2 is great for tweaking, but here’s the crux: when I switched to Unity (and then Gnome-Shell), I didn’t miss any of the tweaks. The difference was minimal and the tweaks did nothing to speed up or slow down my workflow.
Ok, now the next part: Unity vs Gnome-Shell. Unity is nice. Quite pretty, quite slick, often annoying. The menu bars were moved to the top to save vertical space, but as a user that has most things windowed, and not full screen, I hated having to move my mouse so much to use the menu of an application which was down at the bottom of my screen. Frustrating! In all honesty, I just prefer Gnome-Shell. It’s snappier, less laggy, and allows me to zoom around my applications with ease.
So now, why did I pick Fedora instead of install Gnome-Shell in Ubuntu? Simple. When I use Gnome-Shell, all I want is the default Gnome packages (and Firefox). I don’t want my Rhythmbox replaced with Banshee, I don’t want Thunderbird to be my default mail client, especially because drag and drop operations barely work, and you know what I like most about Fedora? If I update the Firefox package, I get the latest version (6 at time of speaking) not the latest security update for the version that was out at the time (4 is currently in Ubuntu).
I stood by Ubuntu for a long time, but Fedora has stolen me away. If the Ohso guys care to read this, maybe they’ll set up OMG!Fedora!
Product and stuff
Ok, so firstly I’m learning how great wordpress is. It’s so easy to install and have multiple instances running on the same box, using virtual hosts. Currently I have three wordpress sites installed and I’m enjoying tweaking the hell out of them. Having a static front page is insanely useful, for instance.
Additionally: this shit (FAT Hair 0 Calories Tickening products) is awesome! Only been using it for a couple of days and already I’ve been hold that my hair looks bigger. I’m using the “pomade” (whatever that is) to style it and for once I’ve found a product that doesn’t make my hair look darker .
Yes, I have said product several times. I’m gay as hell.
Bank holiday weekend
Well, last weekend was a fun one. It was a bank holiday weekend, which naturally meant having a free, extra day tacked on to the end of the weekend. With only 3 days holiday left to book before the end of September, I decided the best thing to do would be to use two of them to extend my three day weekend to a beautiful five! (the last one is being saved for later). Friday to Tuesday, a marvelous weekend!
I won’t bore you with the details, but here’s a couple of pictures to keep you abreast of what happened 
The one of the left is Harley Quinn, holding a diamond necklace that she stole, and to the right is one of the bats. I think it looks more like Cass Cain
There was a lot of tree climbing in a woods in Arundel. Lovely place, go visit!
Personal Blog now up and running
If you’re reading this, well done. You know my personal URL. I’m really not sure how much I’ll be updating this, it’s mostly just a holding page. Have fun.