Bog Roll ::

Another year is about to end. Looking back at what I've predicted in the past, I've not done too bad. Gordon managed to delay the recession in the UK by flooding the country with cheap credit. Now we have the ConDem coalition, the easy credit tap has to be turned off, so the while the recession has been delayed - 2011 should be the year of UK recession.

On the IT front things have gone as I feared:

• Microsoft continues to get nothing right and their loyal customers continue to get a very raw deal. As long as the monopoly holds and the money keeps rolling in, their shareholders will sit tight, but they do need a new CEO...
• Apple continue to get nothing wrong, no matter how much they cock-up.
• Google are on still on a roll even though they have had the odd cock-up. 2011 could be interesting once they have both their own Linux OS and Linux phone OS in the market.
• Linux continues to grow everywhere and even on the desktop, though still not noticed yet by the media. The Linux based Kindle being the most popular thing sold by Amazon ever.

Bye bye 2010, Happy New 2011!

posted 23:17 :: /stuff :: permalink :: ^

Today I spent most of the afternoon trying to get Ubuntu to play ball with an Edimax EW-7711In PCI WiFi card. On the Edimax website they allow you to download Ralink RT3070 drivers for the Linux kernel. We downloaded a more recent version of the driver from Ralink, as we had problems with the file from the Edimax web site.

We installed the right bits and kernel-headers, compiled it all, installed it and network-manager ignored it. We tried a few tweaks and still it was ignored. We then re-seated the card to make sure that wasn't a problem - it wasn't. However I noticed that the chip on the board was a Ralink RT3060, which is also what lspci showed.

I then downloaded the RT3062 family driver - RT3060/RT3062/RT3562/RT3592. We repeated the make dance and it popped up in network-manager the second we modprobe'd it....

posted 20:56 :: /unix/debian :: permalink :: ^

We spent this weekend painting the bathroom. We have painted the ceiling in white soft-sheen emulsion. The walls in "Jyll" a pale-blue matt emulsion - a glossier finish would have been better but we had the matt "in stock". The wooden panels have been painted in "Gynt" a bold blue satin gloss.

As ECOS paints are free of all volatile organic solvents the bathroom doesn't smell of anything horrible - the same can't be said of Dulux or Crown paint!

posted 22:26 :: /stuff/house :: permalink :: ^

This evening I helped a friend out with his Debian box. We did a few basic things, including me teaching him some basic shell scripting and making some tweaks to his blog.

Working with someone else can be very useful at helping you improve your skills. It doesn't matter if you are the teacher or the student, as both can learn from the process.

posted 21:47 :: /blog :: permalink :: ^