Posted 25 Jul 2006 — by Alex
Category Sport
News just in from Bassenthwaite sailing club
A win for me in the Laser / Handicap fleet for the night jar series. Third
overall but a winner in our class, it doesn’t really count for much because
its on a personal handicap so it will go alongside the Unwin cup for
‘Sporting perserverance’ that I lifted it a rather lofty way when I was a
mere slip of a lad. I think it was just a nice way of saying ‘ You have a
go and are ok but lets face it your never going to be Daley Thompson’ which
is certainly true seeing as he has a moustache!
Maybe this will get me in the good books back home for running off every
thursday night for a secret rendevous in rubber. Steady on I mean a night
on the lake with Hazel Eyes and a wetsuit!
I don’t mind admitting it I use the internet a fair bit. I like to keep up to date and use Hubdog for my fix of news and ‘casts’ but I’m now on the watch list of my ISP because I download a fair bit. I recieved a snot-o-gram email from them telling me not to download large files during peak times (i.e when I’m awake) and to not use peer to peer technology at all. I thought this wasn’t entirely fair as it inferred that I will be downloading illegal material at worst or at least causeing them an inconvenience by using what I pay for.
I wrote to them asking for information as to what was considered to be fair use. How much exactly is the threshold? Unsurprisingly I didn’t get a straight answer, a mere redirection to a FAQ which oddly circumvented the thorny issue itself. I wrote again and receive no answer this time. I wrote on paper and as yet have still recieved no answer.
Along with the claimed connection speeds where my current 2Mb/s actually downloads around 120Kb/s at best am I the only one who feels as if my pocket has been picked in a smooth corporate way?
Answers on a post card, unless you are of course my ISP where any format would be acceptable.
Posted 24 Jul 2006 — by Alex
Category Sport
With 3800km under their back sides I’m sure they’ll spend a long time standing up but if I was me I’d be a little more excited about winning. Don’t get me wrong he’s a good rider and desrves the victory but is he really a great rider, not yet but maybe one day. I was backing Oscar but knew that it wasn’t really a possibility and thought that he genuinely was as excited as Honchar to get the maillot jaune. He just didn’t quite have the muscle to back up his claim.
Congratulations to Floyd for the tremedous effort you put in over the last 3 weeks but please jump up and down a bit more when you get crowned with the victory of the toughest cycle race in the world. Just keep it a little less arrogant than Lance.
Congratulations also to Bradley Wiggins for his first finish and I hope he goes on from a worthy domestique to a top 10 finisher and also to David millar who said he was going to make a break for it on the Champs Elysee, it was just a shame that nobody else was prepared to give you a hand, especially Credit Agricole (perhaps he was trying to set up a port blockade on behalf of the cheese makers to ban soap and water as washing might kill off the national odour or something like that…..you know it was only a guess 
). Hope to see you both next year in much higher places. roll on 7th / 8th July 2007 for the London prologue and first stage.
Just one last thing though, Robbie, you were beaten fair and square and well done for admitting it a worthy Green Jersey for you.
Vive Le Tour!
Were you surprised?
There are so many different reports on how to install this distro so I won’t go through the details but suffice to say they are all true. It’s a piece of cake, even for a new user.
So the install is done and everything is updated and the offie based stuff is in and working ok, as is automatix and a few other small radio programs I wanted. But I didn’t get a chance to do the main one ‘Myth TV’. I think this is going to take a while and I want to hve plenty of time to do this kind of thing so I don’t get interrupted with a ‘can you just do this’ from ‘er indoors.
One thing I have to say is that I do like the terminal and the fact that once you do an apt-get install it goes away and does it all for you. This is what it should be like, not more searching around the interweb for an application followed by a click here to register then download and then installing it manually. ‘apt-get install’ is now my favourite thing that does something for you, now how’s that for an accolade. Now I wonder if an apt-get cut the grass works!
All in all I can’t say anything bad about Ubuntu. Having forst dipped my toe into the Linux world with Mandrake 7,8 & 9 and a few others I found this is by far the most user friendly and simplified distribution an I think I’ll be giving it more that just a simple look, this is a probable contender for complete windows removal, not because I’m anti Bill, I don’t subscribe to the ‘Windows was made by the devil incarnate’ fantasies but a change is as good as a rest and if I can run HRD under linux then I think I’ll be a very happy bunny.
Having piddled about for a number of weeks with the 64 bit edition of Ubuntu I think I’m going to take the plug and install the 32 bit version on the main computer at home on the internal disk. I am always full of hope that this will be the distribution that suits me but I can’t help think that my favourite application (Ham radio Deluxe) will never run under wine and I’m going to be stuck with a PeeCee that doesn’t do what I want it to.
I’ve moved email and with the ever useful Hubdog and everything else onto my trusty Dell x50v so I shan’t have to rely on Windows for a while, but just to be on the safe side I’m going to keep hold of the Windows Media Centre edition drive so I can put it back if I end up pulling (the rest of) my hair out.
So whats the plan
Ubuntu
MythTV
Open Office
Wine
Ham Radio Deluxe
I think that will do for the weekend. After all it is the last few stages of the Tour de France
