Month: February 2008

Software I’m using on ubuntu

Since switching to Linux, I've been feeling my way through a bunch of different free and open software. Some of the software I've picked up from when I was using Windows, others have been replacements and even in some cases I've picked completely different software for things I've never imagined.

  • QTM blog editor
  • Hamachi VPN
  • Liferea RSS reader
  • Amarok music player/manager
  • Skype
  • Gossip and Gajim instant messengers
  • Gnome Do launcher
  • Blueman Bluetooth manager
  • Blue Proximity scanner
  • Conduit
  • KeepassX password manager
  • Screenlets widget framework
  • Specto notification application
  • Tomboy Notes personal wiki
  • Inkscape
  • Gimp
  • Thunderbird and Evolution email clients
  • Firefox browser
  • Jungledisk
  • Tellico collection manager
  • Timevault backup manager
  • OpenOffice
  • Eclipse IDE
  • Jungledisk
  • Virtualbox
  • Azureus
  • icecast

I am missing a decent RSS reader like Particls but generally everything is covered.

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Home server campaign

Mommy, why is there a Server in the house

I only saw this today when Nicole sent me a link. Believe it or not, you can actually buy this book on Amazon and this User comment made ginger beer come out my nose, although its a tad unfair to slag off the kids.

This is the crap that Balmer reads to his deprived kids. This is really sick. If I gave my wife a home server she would divorce me. If this really came from Microsoft, I lost all respect for them. I would say the same thing if it came from Apple or Linux.
But it is kinda funny in a Britney Spears train wreck sort of way.

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The Trojan malware arms race

Geekdinner with Dr. Richard Clayton

So after the London Geekdinner with Doctor Richard Clayton from Cambridge University, (you can watch the videos here 1, 2, 3, q&a or listen to the audio in total here.) I had a little wonder around the net to see what I've been missing out on since I moved to GNU/Linux.

And as expected the battle over adware, spyware and trojans has grown into something extremely serious. A friend at work keeps talking about the problems she has with her windows machine. The things she describes sounds like trojan activity but I can never be sure, so I'm not quite at the point of saying to her reinstall Windows fresh again. (We actually rebuilt her machine over the Christmas period already, because things were so bad she couldn't login). However after hearing about this banking trojan on Security Now recently. I'm reconsidering my advice.

Not only does it Trojan.Silentbanker steal your passwords, but it can perform a man in the middle attack on SSL connections, rendering the secure nature of SSL totally useless. It can also modify HTTP and HTML, meaning when you log into your bank and try and pay your bills it will replace your bill details with ones of the trojans chooses. Yes click that button to transfer funds looks legitmate but it will go to a off shorebank you've never heard of. It can steal cookies, certificates, cache passwords and change your DNS settings on the fly. So type in your banks url and the browser gets sent to a site which looks like the banks site but actually its not. To finish off it automaticlly updates its self and for some reason can install it a midi driver which screws around with your sound. Maybe to play the sound “kuchhing” when you finish that hijacked transation?

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eMail problems Fixed

If you have emailed me in the last 2 days, I may not have got it because I'm experiencing email issues at the moment. It should get fixed soon, but right now its best to ping me on one of my gmail addresses. End of public broadcast.

This has been fixed, and it wasn't my host's fault. Actually it was me forgetting to set remove the proxy settings. I wish Thunderbird and Firefox would support global/operating system wide proxy settings as its painful to change it multiple times when connecting to the BBC network.

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Wii Bowling Highscore

Wii Bowling highscore of 249

Wii Sports don't you just love it? Its one of the only games I play regularlly but I managed the other day to score 249 which included 7 strikes. This took some effort and you'll be glad to hear I was sweating enough to open the patio doors. Ok yes its not quite the work out you'd get on a treadmill, but who would blog their achivements on a treadmill? I'm not that far behind other either. 257, 244, 278 279 (almost perfect), 300 (Wow! perfect). Ahhh damm you Kapowaz you are not allowed to come to the wii geekdinner ever.

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Gnome Launchy

Pidgin in Gnome Do

So I've wanted something like quicksilver for a while and I found launchy when I was on Windows but I couldn't find anything for gnu/linux. Till today when I found a few. Gnome-Do, Gnome launch box and Katapult.

I stuck with Gnome-Do because its smooth, the plugin support is pretty good and I love the blog of the developer (see quote later). I do kind of wish for the smaller box style of Launchy instead of the boxes of quicksilver but you can't have it all. Oh it would also be great if the background dimmed a little. You know add a little compiz-fusion power to the whole thing.

On a personal note, I have used Mac OS X, FreeBSD, and Linux exclusively for the last seven years. I don’t use Windows because it lowers my quality of life. I haven’t tried Vista. I recently made the switch from OS X to Ubuntu after realizing that all Steve Jobs wants is for you to shut up and buy a new iPod; don’t you dare criticize his taste or the way he treats third-party developers like dirt. Also, I’m fairly confident that propriety software has no future. Yes, I am aware that proprietary software has a multi-trillion dollar past and present, but this implies nothing about the future.

Nice!

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If I had more time, I would play lost

Lost

Yes Lost season 4 has started but I'm not talking about the great TV series with the same name. Instead lost.eu, is a game which requires the players to promote the game by recruiting more people into the game. This is very pyramid selling style but being the core part of the game makes this very cool. If I wasn't doing something in this area, I would be playing along. Maybe you should instead…

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Rez HD, I wish. But what’s Boogie?

Rez HD

I missed Rez the first time round because I never owned a PS2 or Dreamcast, and it looks like I may miss out again because Rez HD is only on Xbox 360 only. Don't get me wrong I've played Rez but only at 5min blasts at a gaming festival, I've never got a chance to really get involved like the time I've sunk into the Wipeout or Burnout. Anyway here's a great review which makes me wish I had a Xbox 360 for the first time ever.

So after looking at videos for Rez HD, I decided to look for videos of Bust A Move (bust a groove in the UK) and Bust a Move 2. Both I own but number 2 doesn't work because I own a PAL machine and the game is JP NTSC, so all the tunes are out of time in the 50-60hz switch over. Anyway, I couldn't find any updates to it except Dance dance revolution which I'm sorry isn't the same! But then I found Boogie. Honestly I've never seen this before but it looks like Bust a Move evolved. However it got a crap score. So I might rent it and see if I like it. If not Dance dance revolution Wii Party looks like my only fix for the dance games on next generation consoles.

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Whats happened to the London Geekdinners?

Geekdinners

Well the site went down a few months ago and it never came back up. Why? Well the geekdinner site was hosted by one person and the domain owned by someone else. This has always been a issue but I had never got round to moving the whole thing to my own server simply because of time and I blog using Blojsom not WordPress. Anyway, it turns out that the server the wordpress install was sitting on was not owned by one person, instead it was owned by a 3rd person. I'm trying to get the archives from that person but its taking very long (if you knew who he was you'd know why).

In the meantime I've been very busy with many things and wanted to get some help running geekdinners. So Cristiano and Mel have offered and to their credit started planning events. This is great news because the dutch couple are really passionate about it and will inject some more life into it. This also means we can spend more time setting up a mailing list and other things which I had talked about in the past.

So what events?
Well the first one is Werewolf which hasn't been played since the Backstage Christmas party in 2007. If you've never played werewolf before, this is a great time to learn it. Its not a board game and its only slightly geeky. In actual fact its more about social engineering and trickery that anything else. The game can accomodate between 6-26 people, so feel free to bring your friends along, it costs nothing and it takes place in a pub anyway. So you have no excuses!

Pause for breath on Wednesday, then we have the 2nd geekdinner for 2008 on the Thursday. This time the guest is Dr. Richard Clayton from the University of Cambridge. He's going to talk about Evil ways to make money on the Internet. I'm saying no more, but it promises to be pretty awesome. This will cost 5 pounds for food which is a bargin for good food while enjoying the talk. Hope to see you all there.

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