Worth reading: Yes, a very interesting tale.

Summary: Albert Einstein found the unifying theory. In doing so he realised that mankind was not ready for such knowledge. Knowledge that could lift the human race to a new enlightenment, or destroy it. To protect the world, Albert hid his theory with his trusted assistants and until now it has been safe. Now, some one is killing off the old physicists in an attempt to learn the secret that has been hidden for half a century.

This is a riveting tale of betrayal and science. Mark Alpert has conducted some excellent research in the construction of this novel. Should the Unified Field Theory exist then mankind will more than likely use it to build a weapon to use against itself. While a Unified Field Theory could unlock the secrets of the universe, I don’t think humans are ready for such powerful knowledge.

Thanks to Chappo for loaning me this one.

Tags: mark alpert

Today I had an hour to fill so I thought I’d boot my PC with the new OpenSUSE 11.1 live CD and see how it goes.

What can I say?... Brilliant.

I’ve tried both the Gnome and the KDE flavours and I think I now have the motivation to move from Ubuntu 8.04. Not because there’s anything wrong with Ubuntu.. it’s really nice and does everything I need it to do. But OpenSuse 11.1 is so new and shiny, how can I resist.

I think I’ll be going for the KDE GUI this time. Gnome is nice, but I think I need a change.

And so back to the heading of this blog. Every now and then I go hunting for things like “Photoshop on Linux” and “Colour Management on Linux” to see what new developments are occurring. I search for these two topics because I feel that Linux will finally hit the big time when these two hurdles are overcome. Running Photoshop (latest version) on Linux (any distro) with full colour management. For people who don’t use Photoshop and don’t give a stuff about colour management then, Linux is ready for you NOW!

Here are two links I found today:

“25 reasons to convert to Linux”

and

“Photoshop tops “most wanted” Linux app list”

I should have enough time over the break to try out CS2 under CrossOver office. That should be fun.

Remember: Most Linux distros come as a “Live CD” so you can try it without damaging your current installed OS. So there is no reason not to give it a go.

Tags: Linux, openSUSE

It is Christmas eve.

Tomorrow is Christmas day.

There will be lots of celebrating, unwrapping of presents, laughing children, and general merry-making.

Merry Christmas to all my constant readers (or should that be singular?), Friends and Family. Take it easy, try not to drive, and I’ll see you all in the new year after our much deserved break.

An interesting new entry in one of the blogs I follow closely.

Digital Steam

A voice of commonsense in a world of increasingly little.

‘tis that season again and this is probably my favourite Christmas Carol. I think it’s hard to beat Bing Crosby singing Oh Holy Night, but these young celtic lasses have taken the title.

Tags: music

Worth reading: Oh yes.

Summary: Events after the Transition have seen a dramatic change in recorded history. Nazi Germany is about to invade Britain and the Japanese have captured Hawaii. Atrocities are occurring in Bundaberg in the hands of invading Japanese.

All sides are making use of the 21st technology at their disposal. But the smart weapons are running out.

Designated Targets is the second installment of the John Birmingham’s alternate history The Axis Trillogy.

Tags: john birmingham

Is anyone else becoming a little tired of hearing about the “Financial Crisis” and how the world governments are rallying together to try and solve it?

I know I am.

The countless billions of dollars governments are throwing at what is arguably the result of rampant greed, is quite astounding. They are trying to save a system that put them in this position in the first place. A problem that could have been avoided by just taking less.

A birds eye view of the world, while it tries to deal with this self-made problem, is rather depressing. For while the world throws mind-boggling amounts of money at propping up the financial sectors, countries are still warring, people are still dying of starvation at a time when there is an excess of EVERYTHING, there are homeless living on streets of every capital city in the world, children are being abused and neglected in every country.

The old saying “Money is the root of all evil” holds especially true in these times, and to me, the saying “Money for jam” is the embodiment of that sentiment. Money for jam is exactly the opposite to taking less. Not only that, but people who use the term Money for jam in an attempt to get other people to take more than they ordinarily would, or would need, in return for doing something that they ordinarily would not...

There is more than enough in the world for everyone. There is no need for Money for Jam or the people who subscribe to the notion.

Tags: frustration

No comment.

Tags: music

I put this too you... Can you actually save money by saving power?

Western society is profit driven - it’s the curse of capitalism. So, is it actually possible to save money by reducing your power consumption?

The cost of electricity continues to increase year by year. If the population in general reduces their power consumption in an effort to save money, the power companies are no longer making the money they once did, their profits are reduced. Their natural reaction to reduced profit would be to increase the cost of the product they supply, that being electricity. We see this all the time with just about every product available... do they ever get cheaper? Only if there is a lot of competition or there is market saturation, or both.
They could try to make us use more power, but we’re trying to cut back because we’re told it’s harming the environment and it’s costing us money. We are a captive audience, our lives revolve around electricity.

So would this not create the scenario of “the less electricity you use the more it costs”? I think it will, because the power companies are not in business for the love of it. They’re in it for the money.

I don’t believe simply reducing your electricity usage will save the environment or your back pocket. The only way the environment will be protected from further damage is if the electricity suppliers source their product from environmentally friendly sources, not by the populace using less. The only way to save your back pocket is to let your money do the talking and change suppliers to ones that offer sources of electricity from environmentally friendly options.

Something to think about.

Tags: environment

I downloaded the recently released Firefox 3.1 beta 2 today.
The interface is looking very much like the recent Thunderbird 3.0 beta 1, specially the tabs component. But aside from this there is no radically obvious changes.

Launching seems faster but that could be my new 7200rpm drive.

I’ve only been using FF31b2 for 5 minutes but one thing I did notice in my quick look around was this...



Previously, a plugin was required to do this very handy option.

Tags: firefox

There are two groups of people in this world. Those who do things, and those who take the credit.

Be in the first group. There’s a lot less competition and they tend to like one another.

Tags: quotes

What more is there to say?

Welcome back to the 80’s.

Tags: music

Meet Sammi.
Sammi is a Huntsman Spider, a Giant Grey to be precise.

Sammi isn’t so Giant yet. She’s about four inches from left leg to right leg.
This isn’t an actual picture of Sammi, but just one of her relatives and I won’t say they all look alike because she may take offense.

Sammi came to live on my bike around two weeks ago. I know this because she’s leaving her silk webs all over it. A daily wipe down in the morning cleans them up.

I have only seem Sammi twice, once about a week ago as I was tinkering in the shed. I saw her duck for cover as I walked in, skittering down under the faring. The second time was yesterday afternoon as I was riding home. She had, unfortunately, been caught napping and ended up becoming marooned on the handlebars of the bike in the less windiest spot.

How long she had been there I don’t know, probably when I started the bike to come home she had poked her head out to see what all the fuss was about.
When I finally noticed her, she had tears of fear in all eight eyes as she huddled next to the ignition keys, clinging on for dear life. Every now and then she’d try to find a more secure hiding place but because of the wind roaring up through the faring, couldn’t move beyond the steering column.

Sammi managed to hang on until I got home, where shaken, she finally managed to find some respite from the wind.

Sammi is still on the bike somewhere, I saw her webs again this morning. How long she’ll make my bike her home I’m not sure. I can’t imagine there being much to eat on a Suzuki DL650. But until she moves on... happy hunting Sammi.


Image borrowed from brisbaneinsects.com.

Tags: spiders

The discussion at work (ok, between Paul and I) is how to get Windows 98 running in Parallels 4.0. You see, it crashes just after the file copy. I’ve installed a good many Windows 98 machines in my time, I’m ashamed to say, and of all the Windows OS’s, I prefer Windows 98SE. The “almost” best of a bad bunch if you like.

I’m also ashamed to say I own (through OEM) the following Windows versions:

Windows 3.0
Windows for Workgroups 3.11
Windows 95 (A and D)
Windows 98
Windows 98SE
Windows NT Workstation
Windows 2000 Professional
Windows XP


Anyhow, from time-to-time, I find a bone that I just can’t stop chewing on... and this is such a bone.

After tinkering around for about 15 minutes I found a solution. This solution isn’t your normal “insert CD... next... next... next...”, but rather, how I’ve installed Windows 98 since time out of mind. I’m typing this up as my Windows 98SE installation is completing. Sorry, no screen grabs... I don’t care THAT much.

1. Create your virtual machine in Parallels 4.0 selecting Windows and “Other Windows” NOT “Windows 98” and leave all the machine defaults.

2. Insert your Windows 98 CD, boot from it and select the “run setup from CD”.

3. Allow the installation to start but you only want it to run to the end of the formatting of the hard drive. There will be several reboots (gotta love Windows) and once it gets to the “Checking the hard drive” force your machine to reboot again.

4. This time, boot from CD but select the “Boot with CDROM support” option.

5. You’ll end up at the DOS prompt, but importantly you’ll have an A:\, C:\ and D:\ drive. Ignore these for the moment and type the following at the prompt:

set path=d:\tools\oldmsdos;%path%

You need the tools in the D:\TOOLS\OLDMSDOS directory... namely XCOPY.EXE

6. Now type the following at the DOS prompt, ignoring the comments in inverted commas:

C: “changes to C: drive”
md win98 “creates the c:\win98 directory on c: drive”
D: “changes to D: drive”
cd win98 “changes to the win98 directory on d: drive”
xcopy *.* c:\win98 /s/e/v “copy the installation files to c:\win98 and all subdirs, even if they’re empty, and verify”

Once the copy has finished you have everything you need for the installation copied to C:\ and we no longer need the Windows 98 CDROM.

7. Now that the files are on the C: drive type the following at the DOS prompt:

C:
cd win98
setup /is /nr /id “skips the scandisk, registry scan, and disk space checks”

8. Complete the installation to your requirements.

9. To get the necessary Parallels Tools drivers to install (of which there aren’t many) you’ll need to switch the operating system version from “Other Windows” to “Windows 98”. This makes it easier to install the two drivers that are compatible with Windows 98... sorry no drag’n’drop to the desktop on this little puppy. I installed these manually.

Note: to get any type of performance out of your Windows 98 machine, I recommend you disable all the fancy effects like menu fade and the like.

Done! How easy was that eh?

The benefit of copying the installation files to the C:\ drive is that if you want to install or change something later, you don’t need the CD.

Enjoy your Win98SE virtual machine. I don’t want to know what you do with it.. that’s your business.

Tags: OS X

Ah yes, this takes me back. I currently have this song playing on my iPod Nano (2nd Gen).
Enjoy!

Tags: music

Worth reading: Most certainly YES!

Summary: The year is 2021. A military experiment has gone terribly wrong. A multinational Navy is caught in the resulting event horizon and is transported back to 1942 just before the battle of Midway atoll. 21st century technology, what’s left of it, has come into direct conflict with US Navy of 1942.

This is a really excellent read. How the people of 1942 compare to the ones of 2021 is very interesting and I think could actually be very close to the mark. I doubt the human race would react any differently if aliens landed under the same circumstances.

Tags: john birmingham