My Writings. My Thoughts.

Then and now

// April 24th, 2010 // No Comments » // p.u.c & p.u-uk.org

Following the meme currently running on Planet Ubuntu here is one of my first linux desktops (the oldest screenshot I have). The install was set-up in 2002 I think. Mandrake 8.2 using the fluxbox window manager. It didn’t get used an awful lot as I could never get my ISDN modem working.

Today I run a [...]

First impressions of gnome-shell

// September 24th, 2009 // 46 Comments » // p.u.c & p.u-uk.org

GNOME Shell is the proposed interface for Gnome 3, it replaces the window manager, the panels at the top and bottom of the screen and everything that sits on them. It’s in the repositories for Karmic, install gnome-shell and then run gnome-shell –replace to give it a try. You should note that it’s still under [...]

Student loans cost increase

// May 20th, 2009 // 3 Comments » // General, p.u.c & p.u-uk.org

The Student Loans Company have just announced that they are to increase the real cost of post 1998 student loans.
Student loans are supposed to be linked to the lower of the retail prices index (RPI, a measure of inflation) and the Bank of England base interest rate +1%. The idea being that inflation does not [...]

Ubuntu One

// May 14th, 2009 // 5 Comments » // p.u.c & p.u-uk.org

Dave wrote
The fact of the matter is there are proprietary drives in Ubuntu and you choose whether to use them or not, why should this service be any different?
I think the difference is that this is proprietary software (or at least the back end is) that is branded as Ubuntu. Personally I don’t have [...]

Gwibber themes

// May 1st, 2009 // 8 Comments » // p.u.c & p.u-uk.org

I’m using gwibber for keeping up with identi.ca and twitter. I mainly use an eeepc while at home, so to get a couple more dents on screen I’ve recently been using the defaultsmall theme. This theme isn’t quite as nice to my eyes as the default theme though, it makes the background darker for one [...]

Internets 1 Parliament 0

// January 21st, 2009 // 3 Comments » // General, p.u.c & p.u-uk.org

MP’s plans to make their expenses exempt from FOI requests have collapsed. It’s a humiliating U turn for the Labour party, who were planning to enforce a three line whip. The Conservatives seem to have received slightly better publicity by changing their minds about it sooner and insisting they were against the idea from the [...]

MPs to conceal expenses

// January 18th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // p.u.c & p.u-uk.org

Parliament have just spent upwards of £500,000 preparing to release data on expenses claimed by MPs. The government (and the conservatives) have now decided that this data should not be available to the public, making MPs and Lords the only public officials in the country that don’t have to make this information available to [...]

QUOTD 04/12/2008

// December 4th, 2008 // No Comments » // General

“we must be the only nation on earth whose constitution is distributed, only partly canonical, of unclear ownership, not necessarily maintained, and poorly documented. It’s an open-source project!” – Alex on an interesting and humourous thread describing Westminster style parliaments in computing terms. Via Brian Burger

Closing bugs on Launchpad

// June 17th, 2008 // No Comments » // p.u.c & p.u-uk.org

Christian, Launchpad Bugs (aka Malone) has an email interface you can use to receive and interact with bugs with which should probably satisfy your offline needs. See https://help.launchpad.net/BugTrackerEmailInterface
You can also change the status of bugs via the web ui by clicking in the ’status’ column.

What do you have open?

// May 23rd, 2008 // 1 Comment » // p.u.c & p.u-uk.org

Like Tiago I don’t have much open in comparison to some people. I’m going to bed soon but I don’t usually have much more open than I have currently.
At home

Epiphany with a dozen tabs open
gnome-terminal running screen with three windows open, one at a bash prompt and two in vi
Three nautilus windows (yay for spatial [...]

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