Emergency services radio
I have a lot of respect for ABC Regional Radio and the service it provides.
I also appreciate the ABC has an important role as an emergency services broadcaster.
But I struggle to see the merit in broadcasting fairly mundane fire updates across the whole of country South Australia.
Driving home from work in Mount Gambier this afternoon, I was interrupted to hear an emergency broadcast regarding a fire at Cowell on the Eyre Peninsula, about 700km away.
Courtesy of the CFS website, here is the actual announcement: (more…)
Dugouts saved lives
There has been some discussion following the Victorian fires about whether dugouts might have saved lives.
They saved lives in 1939, including my Uncle Jim. My Uncle Michael died in a dugout, but there were exceptional circumstances.
My Aunt Noreen talked about the issues on Radio National with Philip Adams: (more…)
Third birthday
The twins celebrated their third birthday today. It's hard to believe they are that old already.
Here's the entry I wrote the day after they were born.
Jim and Maggie aren't old enough to understand it's their birthday, but they know it's a special day because of the presents they received and the party we had with friends.
Jim received a fire truck, fireman's hat, fireman bear and a book about machines. Maggie received a Dora the Explorer doll, Dora bag and a book about cats, reflecting their respective interests at this stage.
GoPC virtual operating system
I discovered an intriguing new technology gadget tonight thanks to the Google ads on my own site. It’s called GoPC and it’s a virtual operating system that provides a free service for accessing programs and data storage online.
It uses Suse Linux and provides a limited number of programs with the free service. These include Firefox, Gaim, Evolution, Open Office Writer and Digikam.
There are options to install the virtual computer on a PC or USB memory stick. I’m currently testing it with an installation on my laptop’s hard drive. I’m effectively running a Linux system in parallel with Windows XP and I’m able to switch easily between the two. (more…)
Meebo instant messaging
I’ve taken a look at the Meebo instant messaging web site today. This is an internet service that enables chat through a browser without having to download a program like Gaim, Trillian or Miranda.
I’m not a big IM user but I can see the potential benefits. I came to Meebo because I downloaded Portable Gaim thinking I would run it from my USB stick at work.
The company firewall had other ideas and wouldn’t let me. There are probably proxy settings I could change, but rather than go through that hassle I did a quick web search and discovered Meebo.
It works with AIM, ICQ, Jabber, GTalk, Yahoo and MSN. I have two of those, and if you register with Meebo you can access multiple services simultaneously.
There’s a widget you can install on your own web site for chat. I experimented with it, and found it works, but can’t really see the need for me personally at this stage.
There’s an article on Wikpedia which explains the history of this interesting, useful service.
Gentoo screenshot
Here’s a screenshot of Gentoo using a KDE desktop with a background picture of Jim and Maggie.
There’s nothing uniquely special about it. A couple of extra observations from my previous post:
Gentoo boots more quickly than any other distro I’ve tried; about the same as Windows XP.
Some of the stable packages are out of date. That’s rather irritating when they’re everyday programs like Firefox and Digikam and the procedure for installing “unstable” versions is complicated.
Gentoo Linux
My Kanotix installation died on me last week. It was a self-inflicted fatality; suicide in other words. I went for over a month without upgrading the distro, just updating software instead.
I finally went ahead and the system shock was all too much. I had the black screen of death, but it locked on me and I couldn’t even get a command prompt. I know I could have repaired things using a live CD, but I took the opportunity instead of a new experiment.
I have read plenty of times that Gentoo is a serious Linux diehard distro with nothing user friendly for newbies and novices. Although not very computer literate in the developer sense, I’ve been using Linux now for two years and thought it was time to take the plunge. (more…)
