Zappafication :)

Updated! Jan 29th 2009

Friends and colleagues know that I like Linux and I increasingly dislike Windows and the general direction of Microsoft. So I'm usually on a mission to get everything working nicely between my favourite distro(s) and my hardware. Recently I've settled upon openSUSE it has the right combination of power features, configurability and bleeding edge features. I have also experience with Fedora, Ubuntu and Slackware, but openSUSE has everything covered for my general computing needs.

Having installed and run openSuse 11.0 for a few months on a Lenovo T61, I was fairly eager to get openSuse 11.1 up and running with many of the new features it promises. This has gone smoothly with the exception of one issue as yet unresolved. Read on for the details.

Read more...

The UK is becoming an increasingly frustrating country to live in. Why? Layers of beaurocracy, incompetence, high taxes and cost of living. Faux inflation and unemployment figures. Property price-linked ego inflation. Obsession with celebrity, public apathy and general all-round stupidity abound. So naturally, when the latest government fiasco hit the news (yep, it's been a bad week for our 'government'), I was particularly interested to find out more. After all, the cock-up is in areas where I have a certain amount of knowledge, namely computing, technology and security. So you can imagine my combined disappointment and delight to find out that this mess isn't a result of complex technology or poor communication up the management chain, crossing the invisible knowledge divide between technical geekdom and "management" (members of the latter community seeming to be incredibly knowledgeable about it but little else).

So how the hell did we get to the point where 25 million people's personal ID data got lost in the post? Can any kid lucky enough to receive the golden disks, with a CD-ROM equipped PC, pour over the data and start flogging it on ebay? If not, why are we all being told to check our bank accounts carefully? I mean, surely the data is held securely on these disks, right?

Read more...

On this page the BBC asks readers to comment on the state of Broadband in the UK today. Being one of my pet irritations, I decided to rattle off a posting. The question posed is "Are you fed up with your broadband speed?"...

Read more...

(pre-kestrel!)

OK, so I got tagged over a month ago. A see a few have flown over, desperate to see my words of wisdom on Opera improvements, disappointed to see an empty black blog sporting zappafication and little else

That's all about to change, too late for Kestrel I'm guessing but "better late than never" is starting to become something of a personal motto.

Here's my (pre-Kestrel) list:

1. M2 improvements. Edit mail items within M2's database, including subject and body. Especially the facility to remove attachments to keep my (ever-growing) M2 database lean and mean. sgunhouse you pipped me with this, but you'll remember me ranting about it in more than a few forum postings. Forward, reply and redirect HTML components of received emails (although composing is of no interest to me). Simple import/export. GPG/PGP integration.
   
2. More sophisticated searches, including compound criteria and daterange searches. Combined with this, a simple archive and restore facility based on the outcome of these searches, that also archives off any filters associated with messages and their rules, which can be selectively brought back upon restore.
   
3. Printing. It really doesn't work very well in Opera. Font spacing is messed up, and many placeholders don't print properly. Printing in Linux seems worse still.
   
4. Sort out the bookmark management UI. It drives me nuts on default installs!
   
5. A big sweep up of small bug mess. Too numerous to mention. Here's one; opening a .mht then saving as HTML+images causes things to screw up nicely in 9.2x
   

No more tagging for now. Time for a cuppa tea and an album. Now, what's it gonna be?