Well, the more I use Ubuntu, the more impressed I am. The initial installation on my Dell laptop was completely painless, and it has been pretty smooth sailing since then. Open Office is dealing with all but the most hectic Micro$oft Office 2007 files (and earlier versions of M$ Office files are no problem at all). There are still a few last wrinkles to get out, but there are good online guides to doing so.
Perhaps the most impressive part has been getting VirtualBox up and running to deal with a few applications (mainly geocaching related!) that must run under Windows XP. While a little mind-blowing to have XP running in a window under Linux as though it is running on an independent computer, it works like a dream.
Why didn't I do this ages ago?!
Thursday, 15 May 2008
Monday, 12 May 2008
More wandering and caching...
Well, again, it has been a while! In the meantime I have been to Portugal (Madeira, to be precise) for the WebIST 2008 conference, which was an excellent conference. The keynote talks were particularly outstanding with superb speakers on a wide range of web-related topics. While in Madeira, I was able to do some geocaching and found two city-centre caches. Nice to have a foreign flag showing up on my geocaching profile!
Madeira is an amazing little island, and I thoroughly enjoyed the short visit. The climate is balmy and mild, and the island is very rugged and picturesque. Some day I would love to go back for a "proper" holiday visit and explore a little more of the island than there was opportunity for during the conference.
On my return to SA I have stopped off in Pretoria (again!) and hit another geocaching milestone today: my 100'th cache. It was a particularly interesting one at a site near Cullinan that has converted several old railway coaches into luxury accommodation. The owner took great pride in showing us around and even demonstrated the old jukebox (playing real records!) and a hand-wound gramaphone. Not things you experience every day! The grounds of the site have a number of interesting old vehicles of all sorts on display, and it was a very interesting place to celebrate my geocaching "century".
My new Dell laptop chose the trip to Portugal to reject Windows Vista, which I was having some serious doubts about anyway. That has precipitated a leap into the waters of Linux, which I have been considering for some time now. Fortunately, Theo is a Linux guru of note, so being in Pta for the "transplant" is turning out to be very useful. So far, very good - I am very impressed at the ease-of-use and general "polish" of Ubuntu Linux.
Madeira is an amazing little island, and I thoroughly enjoyed the short visit. The climate is balmy and mild, and the island is very rugged and picturesque. Some day I would love to go back for a "proper" holiday visit and explore a little more of the island than there was opportunity for during the conference.
On my return to SA I have stopped off in Pretoria (again!) and hit another geocaching milestone today: my 100'th cache. It was a particularly interesting one at a site near Cullinan that has converted several old railway coaches into luxury accommodation. The owner took great pride in showing us around and even demonstrated the old jukebox (playing real records!) and a hand-wound gramaphone. Not things you experience every day! The grounds of the site have a number of interesting old vehicles of all sorts on display, and it was a very interesting place to celebrate my geocaching "century".
My new Dell laptop chose the trip to Portugal to reject Windows Vista, which I was having some serious doubts about anyway. That has precipitated a leap into the waters of Linux, which I have been considering for some time now. Fortunately, Theo is a Linux guru of note, so being in Pta for the "transplant" is turning out to be very useful. So far, very good - I am very impressed at the ease-of-use and general "polish" of Ubuntu Linux.
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