Justin's Blog

November 25, 2004

SE P910i

I got an upgrade for my mobile to a p910i the other day which I think I may have already blogged about, and after 24hours worth of fidling around with it, I have decided I do not like it.

There is not that much software available for it, and I think I trully am a PalmOS bigot. So with that in mind, I have put up the p910i on eBay and I will either wait for the Treo 650 to come out, or I will just bite the bullet and buy a Treo 600. At least I can use Mapopolis with the Treo, and I like PalmOS!

Hair

As most people who have seen me recently will testify to, I have been due for a haircut for many weeks. Work being what it is, I hadn't got round to it until today. (This story gets better I promise!)

I have lived in London now for about 5 years and have always done the poncy thing of spending £30 on a cut. I decided today to try out my local barber so I didn't have to go into my usual place in Soho. And I am pleasantly surprised. It cost me £8 for the cut which is not that bad!

So this post is here to tell everyone, support your local barber! They are not corporate mindless idiots, they have interesting stories to tell, and it is just a nice way to keep your community going.

Where my grandparents live in Kidwelly (South Wales), they used to own the local news agents, which was the hub of the whole community. They and I have seen first hand what a dying community looks like (supermarkets, larger cities, people moving away etc.) and it is a real shame.

There you go, I have said my piece now!

November 22, 2004

New Phone!

Well it is that time of year again where I replace my mobile phone. I had a phonecall from Singlepoint last week asking if I wanted an upgrade and I managed to barter the woman into giving me a new p910i for £100 with 6 months half price line rental and also £6 worth of data transfer per month. Not that bad at all!

It should arrive on Wednesday and I can use my T610 dual SIM card too, so I can carry on using my work and personal lines. I can't wait.

So if anyone wants a SE T610, drop me a line here.

November 16, 2004

Tried NLD

Well I got all excited about the release of NLD and at first glance, the download from Novell looks very nice. The interface is clean and very usable but I still don't like it!

- I have an IBM Thinkpad (T23) and I need ltmodem to use the modem. Is it included ? Nope.
- Changing the icon theme in Gnome: Some icon themes have missing icons for the desktop and the "control panel"
- Evolution: No Exchange or Groupwise support
- It might be me but I cannot see an app icon for red-carpet. Had to start it from the terminal
- Wine, not included

This is firmly a desktop product and maybe those problems are only with the downloadable version, but I think I will have to revert to SUSE Pro 9.2 to get the functionality I need.

If this is because of it being a downloadable version, I will have to tap Novell for the final release/boxed product seeing as we are a BP.

November 12, 2004

Ximian email sigs

Does anyone have the cool Ximian html signatures they had on the developer site (old Ximian site). I really liked them and wanna use one of them. Unfortunately I can't find them!

Sorry Pete

After reading Nerm's blog entry I thought I would have a go at the Novell CLS exam. 92.5% later and I am a CLS! Sorry mate ;o)

Mortgage is sorted!

Finally! Our mortgage offer arrived this morning with the correct spelling of Aimee's name! There are other mistakes, but I have been told it is all ok to proceed and sort those out after completion.

All we are waiting for now is for the vendor's solicitor to give my solicitor the rest of the searches and we can get the papers drawn up.

The removals company I am using turned up about an hour ago thinking they were moving me today. It was as much as a shock for me as it was for them to realise I hadn't confirmed today would be our moving day.

I apologised profusely and made them a cuppa before they left to say thanks. Oops!

Speech

Well, I did my whole Linux presentation for IBM/SCC yesterday and customers. I was so nervous, which has not happened before. I am usually quite good at talking in front of people. It went well and was business and not technical based.

Some good companies were there to listen to us (banks, insurance etc). So hopefully we will get some good leads. Our Leaders for Linux is through, and the LfL roundtable event I went to in Scotland is hopefully going to help the UK/North Region partners to sell more IBM hardware and services.

Will upload the presentation and videos (the Balmer one where he is running round like a madman on the stage) at some point in the future.

LinuxIT is a stoopid as ever

Quite a few people in the UK industry are aware of a company called LinuxIT which, headed by Peter Dawes filed for bankruptcy a few years ago.

Because of a loophole in the UK business law, Peter was able to startup the LinuxIT company again but under a different name (Peter Dawes-Huish) without having to pay their creditors. This man and LinuxIT has now turned around and said that Novell is not capable of executing their Linux desktop strategy.

Dipshit says: "We cannot see that Novell has the appropriate network and the relevant expertise to support this major push of Desktop 9. We are also questioning the company's long-term commitment to Linux, after Novell's vice-chairman was recently ousted. One has to ask the question why the very person, who was responsible for acquiring SUSE and Ximian, and therefore advocating the move to Linux, is no longer there."

The article reads like a cheap shot at getting more publicity which would be in keeping with their past strategy. I cannot see any reference to LinuxIT being a SUSE/Novell Business Partner on the Novell site, but just so happened to come across a PR article from LinuxIT saying they are RedHat advanced partners. Do I sense that LinuxIT is bitter? Because I can guarantee after that statement they will find it difficult to say the least to get on the partner program. This is also the same for their IBM Leader for Linux status. IBM will not be happy.

Grrr.

November 08, 2004

Talkaboutlondon goes live

My new little side project talkaboutlondon.com is now live and is coming along nicely.

It is designed around phpbb with my own hacks and some nifty php code to analyse a mysql database for a list of restaurants in London.

This has really helped to get myself back into PHP programming and I have come across the PEAR PHP project which has proved invaluable to speed up code generation.

I will at some point in the future also look into using one of the MVC based PHP frameworks after talking to a Java programmer friend who thinks it is a good idea to adhere to it when writing web services etc.

November 03, 2004

The Election

Well, I stayed up till 2am last night watching the election unfold. As was predicted it is still very close and I am slightly concerned and optimistic about Ohio although Aimee keeps telling me the Republicans will win.

I guess I am just hopeful that Ohio with the "other" votes will swing in the Democratic favour. I am loosing faith at quite an alarming rate though, and with Bush saying he is going to go to the party HQ and state that he has won. De ja vue anyone!?