JavaCoda

http://www.javacoda.com/blog/?p=156

I did buy a Mac. I love it and have now bought 2 more for my daughters. It is expensive, but not having to fix things all the time is worth the price. Macs work and they work well.

What’s Going On? by Bibi Jockoso

Disused Railway Lines by Bibi Jockoso

Haven’t posted for over a year.

Culture Shock Live 05 from WessexAnarchist on Vimeo.

An update to my previous instructions for Awn on Hardy. It looks just as good on Jaunty & is in some ways easier to setup, but there are a few differences.

1. You can now install it all from Synaptic (unless you really need/want the latest).
2. You no longer need stalonetray as there is now a good notification area (systray) applet - although you wont be able to enable this until you have either removed the top gnome-panel or removed all systray items from the panel.
3. The recycle bin applet also works properly now!
4. I couldn’t seem to drag icons from my gnome-panel bar onto the awn doc. However right clicking a menu item in the awn dock now has an ‘add to bar’ item
5. The Awn Log Out applet does not give you the option to log out, only shutdown, hibernate etc. This is due to the (annoying) way that Jaunty separates the shutdown and log out menus. The solution is to create  a launcher in ‘dock preferences’ call it Log Out, choose an icon and then use the command ‘gnome-session-save –kill’ (without the quotes)
6. Next problem is how to remove the top gnome-panel. The Sessions Manager is greatly changed in Jaunty and you can’t now remove the panel from here. Here’s how to do it:
   1. In a terminal type gconf-editor
   2. Navigate to desktop/gnome/session
   3. Right-click on required_components_list
   4. remove the panel!
   5. Log out and back in again and your panel is gone

Having just bought a Dell Studio 1535, at a good price for the spec, it will still be the last Dell I’ll own & I will definitely not be recommending Dell to anybody any more. In fact I can’t think of anything I would recommend any more apart from a Mac! Unfortunately Macs are over priced for their specs, so it’s a difficult dilemma - either pay too much for something, or buy something for a reasonable price, which will have some irritating niggles, and get treated badly by the company you buy it from.

That gets me to my point about why I won’t buy or recommend Dell any more, these are my reasons:

• If you do have a problem with your Dell, you will find, by ‘Googling’, that many other people have the same issue. You will also find that, in most cases, Dell really don’t seem to care about these problems and will resist admitting that it could possibly be anything to do with them.
• Although they sell laptops with Ubuntu, they will not provide any Linux drivers for their printers! What’s that all about?
• They do not support XP on their latest models. Yet if you search you will find hundreds of posts from people who are upgrading their laptops from Vista to XP (yes I do mean upgrading). Not only are Dell not meeting their customers’ needs by refusing to supply their laptops with XP, they are also not helping customers who have chosen to upgrade to XP themselves as they are not releasing XP compatible drivers for many of their later laptops. This shows a complete disregard to the needs of customers purchasing their hardware. I’m not saying that Dell are alone in this, I’m sure many of the other laptop manufacturers are just as bad, but my experience has been with Dell, (& I’ve used Dell a lot in the past & always recommended them) & so that is what I am writing about. Not releasing drivers for XP is acceptable if new driver releases are to add extra functionality, but usually they aren’t, they are to fix bugs - it is unacceptable to not release compatible drivers which fix bugs. By not supplying laptops with XP & not supporting XP with bugfix driver releases for later models, Dell are restricting the freedom of their customers to use the hardware in their own way & forcing them to accept either compromised functionality, or forcing them to use an inferior operating system - Vista has been slated widely & most experienced computer users do not want to use it, it is probably the worst thing Microsoft have released since ME (it may even be worse).

So what are my annoying niggles on the Studio 1535 - the onboard mic doesn’t work with the XP drivers, this renders the onboard webcam practically useless. The touchpad is slow & occasionally jerky, this problem has been reported widely by many users & occurs on Vista & XP - search the web for this one, you will find Dell in complete denial about it!

These niggles are not a big issue for me. I got a good deal on the machine & have a good spec for the price. The webcam was an extra, it being useless because of the mic isn’t too much of a problem for me. The touchpad problem I can get around, by selecting ‘enhance pointer precision’ in control panel, it stops the occasional jerkiness, at the expense of making it a bit slower & I can plug in an external wireless mouse. But, what this has highlighted for me is Dell’s attitude - ‘just give us your money and put up with the problems’. It’s not good enough Dell, so that’s the end of it for me. Next time I’ll probably pay over the odds & buy a Mac!

Another from Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds at The Troxy November 2008, absolutely awesome - one of my favourite tracks.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds at The Troxy in London last night. It was an awesome gig as usual