A Little Update!

In the past few months, I have done a lot of things with my 'old deb' machine, me EP700 and my EP900 which I would like to 'compile' into a little story for you. I hope you like it!

After my 'old deb machine's 'Tale of Two Hard Disks', those two HDs wouldn't live together. If they were both plugged in(one as master and one as slave), the computer would tell me that nothing was plugged in! Each HD worked fine solo and there was no problem with the wire so maybe they just don't like each other(one's got windows and the other linux, no wonder they hate each other!).

Once, the windows hard disk started to crash constantly until it finally 'threw up' and I booted into a blue screen! But, 3 months later, I plugged it in and it worked fine! It seems to recover from colds in the same way we do!


But, in the linux side of things, that computer has been a bit of a slug but... I haven't changed much... Ubuntu 9.04 and running fine!


My eee900 has been having the most adventures. Since I put Karmic on it, I have reinstalled thrice and tried 3 other linux operating systems on it!

I tried Jolicloud which didn't work at all but is still a beta OS so I'll give it a break. I tried Moblin which worked like a stubborn truck(wouldn't boot and just sit there turnng my cursor on and off!). I also tried Ubuntu Mini Remix which didn't go anywhere!

I have been having a look at Ubuntu Customisation Centre lately and if you wan't to make your own linux distro, this is where you should start! It lets you access the terminal, package manager and I forgot the other one before you even put the .iso onto a usb(or CD).

Next is my eee700(shining like a angel on the right!). This gave me a hard time. I got it given to me by a friend who had bought a 'better' laptop(VISTA!!!!!) and would give it to me if I could recover his files from it. So, I got easy peasy 1.5, booted of the usb, copied the files to my sd card, stuck em on a CD and the EP was all my'n.

Then, my black EP's power button stopped working. So I was forced to use this white thingamabob for two weeks. I got a claim on the warranty from asus and they gave me extremely good fast service in taking it back and getting it fixed. That took a lot less hassle than I had expected.

The 'white thingamabob' running easy peasy worked perfectly for that two weeks and has actually become more reliable than my black one in battery and 'falling apart' standards. After I got a bit fed up of easy peasy, i stuck Xandros on it which sadly would not even connect to the wireless! So, I resolved the problem by putting Puppy linux on an SD card and making the EP auto boot from the SD card while I left Xandros alone.

Now, Xandros is gone and I suppose I still use that thingamabob whenever I have to!

Conclusion: I have three interesting pieces of hardware and I am trying to improve my writing skills by writing a blog about my little 'experiments' with them(and a little more!).

A Little Competition

I love linux. I use it on everything. But... I still know that linux is not perfect and there are some advantages of using 'Microsoft' Windows on your PC instead of linux.

So, here, I have made a little list of advantages and disadvantages of windows and linux:

• In windows, when you install a program, it goes into program files and can be copied onto a usb. A containable way of installing applications onto your computer can be a very big advantage to people who constantly switch and movve around. Yes, in that way, Windows is better!
• In Linux, security is never a problem. Sudo only comes in when a password is entered. No need for virus scanners and no need for firewalls.
• In Linux, you usually have to be a bit of a geek to use it. Because unless something is closed source and payed for, it's guaranteed that it's going to have a few bugs. But, I don't mind that and neither do quite a few people.
• Windows does have viruses. Windows is the most used and therefore the most hackable operating system around.
• But, because Windows is the most used operating system, you have barely any incompatibility problems.
• And last of all, linux is free!

I hope this has added to your knowledge of Windows!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas All! Thank you for reading my blog! I hope to have some better posts soon. Merry Christmas!

How to fix the blue screen of Death

I love linux. I don't mid Windows too much, but I like linux more! Anyway:

I have an oldish WinXP hard disk and 6 months ago, it died of a blue-screen. Today, I tried it again and it worked! So, that's how I fixed (2) blue screens of death!

Sorry about the shortness of this post!

Wikis

In the past few days, I have tried wiki after wiki after wiki. No PHP allowed sadly. And I have reached a little conclusion which I recently typed up and here it is:


This is the result of my wiki experiment . Here is my primary view of the wikis:


*  didiwiki: This is the first one I discovered. Very simple. Very wiki. Very good in all.


*  Tiddlywiki: HTML and js. No PHP and nothing else. It is very fiddly, flashy an all in all, I like it! Allthough it doesn't work with chrome, so...


*  fossil: I was gonna give up with this. But then I decided not to. And after loads of fiddlig, I managed it and it was perfect.


*  ComSwiki: Rather odd. Quite simplistic. I actually really like it compared to some wiki'progs. But, it's a bit bad!


*  Pier: Ok, like ComSwiki, it comes up like an operating system! But this time it's huge. It's got loads of odd apps in this 'OS', but when you go into the wiki, it's a cool, ok, simple wiki that's a bit fiddly.


Now, I've got a table with aa comparison of the wiki programs:


   wIkIs: |DidiWiki|TiddlyWiki|Fossil| ComSwiki: | Pier:    
Size      |   1    |    3     |  4   |    7      |   8    
Complexity|   1    |    3     |  5   |    8      |  10    
Oddity    |   7    |    8     |  3   |    4      |   5    
Fiddlyness|   5    |    7     |  8   |   9.5     |  10    


Conclusion: D,T,F,C,P
             D,T,F,P
              D,T,F
              D,T,F
               T,F
                F


Ok then, all in all, in this file's current wikis, I prefer ... Fossil!


lol! Merry Christmas 2009-10!!!

Didi-WIki

I like wikis. Whoever made up wikis had a good idea. A wiki is like a public html page. Wiki's have thei own languag... Anyway, in puppy linux, there's a little program called didiwiki that soon after seeing it, I developed an interest in it.

I searched and searched the internet and found hardly anything. But what I did find was this, a place where you can download it.

The program is miny: 250kb? smaller? It is a wiki creator and a very small one at that. Since I can't find anything on the internet about it, I thought I may as well add so info on it.

When you download he tar.gz file, you can delete all of it but the didiwiki file which is all you need. Run it with ./ in the terminal, and follow the instrucions!

The Internet: So big and yet so small

Google indexes my search. Bing indexes my search. This controls my front page. That controls the top companies. When you go onto the internet, they say you are connecting to the whole world. But, no, your not. There are millions of fantastic things on the internet, but only the big ones are on the front page.

That is why the big ones are big. That is why there are only two used search engines(maybe not 0.000999%). Because, the person who wants to connect, he connects with something big.

Bespin, Your Community Editor

I have been living in web apps lately and now, I found a good one. Bespin, it's like quanta-online with a viewer and a mini-kernel with storage. There are some killer bugs in it, but I think that it is a very good program ready for the web-app world to come!

Picasa 3.5

When I first saw face recognition on a mac, I thought 'I've got to have that!' and now, using wine, picasa 3.6 and a few of my pics, I have it!

Picasa 3 linux beta was good. It had Google integration(upload, Blog this, Sinc) but this is even better. I'm dying for the day when picasa on linux works with it's movie maker!

So, how did I do it? 3.5 for linux hasn't been released yet. So, I installed Firefox 3.5 for Windows, downloaded picasa 3.5(or was it 3.6?). I installed it and, depite all my suppositions that it would be slow and cranky under wine, it ran perfectly!

Web Apps and Security

When I first heard of Web Apps, online storage and web integration, I thought "WOW! Cool! No Installs, downloads or carrying CDs around!".

But what about security? What does Google do with my account? Does it encrypt it with my password so that nobody apart from me can use it? Does it scan through it and fill in Adsense forms? Unless I know for sure that my personal details are going to be kept private, I don't put them on the internet. So the difference is, you have control over your information when it's on your computer, which means that you have to be more weary when storing data online.

I love web apps. The idea of being able to access my files whether I'm at home or on the other side of the world is a nice idea. But, you can't fully trust something which has stored your data for free and has full access to it.

Ok, maybe I'm being a bit pessimistic here, but security does matter and unless we can have some kind of grantee that our data isn't going to be seen by the wrong people, our data is not secure and online storage may not be so good.

gOS

I was browsing around, looking at all the linux distros and I find this operating system, gOS. This is what I though Chrome OS would have been!

It is based on ubuntu and has a clear, simple look. It looks a bit like OS X but also has it's own simple twist to it.

Ok, so far through reading about this, I thought 'I'm going to get this' but then I found Out this:

• It uses avant-window-navigator(maybe you dont, but I hate the way this sucks all my CPU)
  
• The last update was ubuntu 8.04(slightly old!)

Now that's a shame! It's a brilliant OS, works simply and fine and google gave up on it. Please google, if you're reading this post, keep building!

Google Wave!

Google Wave was made to compete with facebook, twitter etc. But I'm sorry to say that it's not going to compete. It's going to bash them through the floorboards!

Ok, so far, Google Wave is like ChromeOS, new and undeveloped. But the little part that is developed, originated from a good idea, and that's good enough for google!

Now, what is a wave? An email? A chat? A wiki creator? A brainstormer? A game player? All of them together. A wave is the most simple and flexible form of collaboration and contact(you can even have video!). Now, that is cool!

Ok, there are problems with wave and here, I will name the ones that I spotted:

• The Settings Wave is not finished.
• When, you mark a wave as read, it does not instantly go out of your inbox.
• There are too many wave directories(By ME, trash spam? why not view them as extras?)

Ok, now for extras:

• Wave should Have themes(blue, red, classic, forest...) like gmail and I-google
• Wave should recieve and send emails + chat and of course waves as well(that would put it faaaar ahead of facebook!)
• There should be two types of wave, settings and add-ons wave and a normal wave
• You should be able to 'delete', not just trash them.
• You need more extensions: chess...
• You should keep it simple if you're going to take aaallll this advice!

Well, that's wave preview. I'm just waiting for wave 1.0!