The Kriptonomicon
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The Kriptonomicon, Dont read everything you believe
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Mon, 25 Feb 2008
Hasta La Vista
I've been using Vista at work for about nine months and
recent developments
meant I'd had enough, a week or so shy of SP1 coming out. Given that I'd crammed 3GB of RAM into the X60 I was using, and it was still sluggish, I'm concerned for the future direction; we'd have to replace or substantially upgrade most of the computers in the company if we made the switch, especially with the OEM's being forbidden to ship anything but Vista by MS in the next couple of months. Its work around-able, of course, but is this the right direction?
Having spent a fair amount of time with Vista, I decided to do the same with Linux. First up, RHEL4 on an IBM T61. First impressions were good, but alas the screen resolution wasn't as good as you could get with windows, nor did the sound, bluetooth or wireless work. Using Codeweavers, I'm able to use Office 2003 (and most importantly Outlook), and its fairly usable. It requires quite alot of work before I could give it to anyone outside of IT, though.
What has been noticeable is the increase in performance using Linux rather than Vista. Granted, I was on a machine with more grunt, but less memory. Vista had taken away the ability to map drives like we do with Group Policy, so I was used to the manual connections. When I setup a symlink to the autofs mounted areas, it became even easier. Likewise, I couldn't manage windows servers with Vista, so I was used to remote desktop; also available under Linux (anyone know a rdesktop client with tabs?). OpenVPN works flawlessly, of course, I just need to get the wireless and Vodafone USB GPRS modem working..
Next we're trying RHEL5 and a VMWare XP session - this should support more hardware and give me more flexibility. I have to use RHEL, alas, as Fedora would probably work even better (I can't use Debian, either, alas, and a test boot with Ubuntu wouldn't get past the loading screen)..
Posted at: [/work] permanent link
UKUUG - Files and Backup
Work paid for me to attend
this conference
, at the Imperial hotel in London last week; tues and wed. A fun journey; when I got there, they'd decided to close the entrance to the underground (no explanation why), and I had to navigate by iPhone to the hotel. I also discovered that
a) the Vodafone 3G USB data modem works great all the way from cambs to Kings Cross, even on Vista
and
b) a recent Vista update had broken OpenVPN (2.1_rc7), which refused to set the default route or assign an ip address.
The conference was very interesting; I think I was the least qualified person to be there - everyone else appears to be a kernel developer of some kind (I sat next to one of the AFS developers on the first day), or distro maintainer. It made me feel rather inadequate, but reminded me of how much I like tinkering around with Linux. This has IMPLICATIONS, as you will see from the next post (or at least some of them. I'm not sure what they others are yet). I did pick up enough from the conference to keep my up to date with some cutting edge linux developments, and some recommendations to go back to the team with.
The talks were varied; the high availability talks were nothing new, and not very well delivered - not that I could have done better! The acamadicians who presenter were much better; clearly more used to doing this kind of thing. Highlights were the Bacula talk, given by the inventor and lead developer and the AFS talk.
Now I have to persuade the boss that its worth me (or someone from the team) attending the Spring Conference..
UKUUG have several conferences coming up. I'm tempted by the OpenTech one-day event on 5th July. Anyone interested?
p.s. - I don't need one, but after seeing the 'must have toy' of the Conference, I so want one..Posted at: [/work] permanent link
Sun, 24 Feb 2008
The Hippopotamus
By Steven Fry
I asked for one of his fiction books for Xmas, after my overwhelmingly positive encounter with his classical music guide. Unfortunately, I didn't get on with it - competently written, but none of the characters appealed to me, or even spoke to me. I don't think he writes straight men well (or didn't here), and while the plot redeemed itself at the end, it wasn't something I'll be looking to repeat. As always, though, glad I read it.
Posted at: [/books] permanent link
Don Giovanni
I saw
this
on the upcoming schedule at the
West Road Concert Hall
and thought it might be worth a try, so I persuaded a group of friends and along we went.
Not sure what to expect (I've seen Porgi and Bess and La Traviata, neither of which were great), when we turned up and it was in modern costume and translated into english, I did wonder what I'd signed us up for..
Best summed up by a quote from A. at half time; "I thought it was going to be a bit pants, but its brilliant!".
It was a really good modern adaption - humorous use and translation (I'm pretty sure Mozart never used the word "tosser"), and the scene with the 'serenading' by IM was inspired.
I have it on good authority that the budget was a massive (for them) 10k - the largest they've had, possibly. On the downside, the latter half lacked punch compared to the first half, especially the climatic scene, where the Ghost just didn't compare to Don Giovanni in terms of presence. A difficult part, I know, but it wasn't helped by the rather anticlimatic ending with him being dragged off to hell - I expected more lights and fanfare - some blokes in dark suites walking him backward of the stage didn't cut it.
Apart from that, it was great - I'll echo A's comments; best Opera I've seen. I'll have to get a copy of Don Giovanni now..
Posted at: [/live] permanent link
Thu, 14 Feb 2008
Mine is no where near as expensive
...but I sympathise with this musician who
needs to have his Stradivarius repaired after he fell on it..
Posted at: [] permanent link
Day Watch
The Movie, that is.
We missed this as it had an apparently short run at the Arts Cinema (and nowhere else) in Cambridge at the end of last year. Started off very well, even from the position that the last film ended of having diverged from the books. However, it didn't sustain the momentum. Looking back, it works very well self contained, so I'm probably being over harsh, especially when the characters were so true to form (not unsurprising, when Lukyanenko was the script writer, I guess). A good watch, overall, but unlike its predecessor, I won't be re-watching it on a semi-annual basis.
Posted at: [] permanent link
Poets and Murder
By Robert Van Gulik
Another Judge Dee adventure. In this, lesbians (again?), fox spirits, a new strand of buddhism. This time the venerable Judge has to manage without his trusty retinue as the Prefect summons him for a meeting with his 'little brother' Lo.
Great stuff.
Posted at: [/books] permanent link
Tue, 12 Feb 2008
Women and Art
A. pointed me at this amazing piece of stop motion animation and blending..
If you don't allow embedded flash, the URL is
here
Also, I identified the music by ear - so my clasical education is obviously coming along!
Posted at: [] permanent link
War and Peace
Br Tolstoy
Yes, that War and Peace.. I asked for this for Xmas as one of my 'self improvement' reads, as a new translation had just been released that generated much favorable comment in the press and spawned an episode of 'In Our Time' on Radio 4, if I remember correctly. I started it in the new year and yesterday, I finished it, all 1200+ pages of it.
The word masterpiece is bandied around a lot these days, but Tolstoy shows what it means. This book has everything; action, noble characters, flawed characters, love, family, intrigue, philosophy, and not unsurprisingly, war and peace. The use of language is superb - its a real delight to read. Unlike some of Neal Stephenson's magnum opus's, I only found the book dragging in the last few pages of the Epilogue, where Tolstoy expounds his philosophy on Historical Literary and motivational analysis of so-called great leaders (my summary, he's not nearly so concise.. ;-).
The blurb on the front of the gorgeous hardback has some worthy person I didn't recognise saying that he didn't beleive this translation could be bettered. Given that I've not read any other translation, I'd have to agree, simply because it was such a joy to read - the highest compliment a translator can get, in my opinion, especially for as mammoth a work as this. There are pages of footnotes and annotations at the the end to explain the historical and personal references Tolstoy makes, without which it would have been a great deal more impenetrable.
So, I'm very glad I read it, but would I read it again? Probably not, at least not for many years, but I might go back and read some sections again. I read in the essay at the end by Tolstoy written after the work was released, that the book had been released originally in five parts, and I'd have to say this would make the consumption of it even more palatable, but the presentation of the copy I had certainly added to my enjoyment of the read - it was a lovely hardback. It has given me an appreciation of Russian literature that I didn't have before, and a greater interest in consuming some of the other great works of Literature.
Posted at: [/books] permanent link