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Well, with the main computer all in pieces for the installation of all the water-cooling equipment (pics coming soon…), can’t pull up all the photos from Kat’s two weeks over here. Was mainly day trips out to Seaburn, Middleton-in-Teesdale, Weardale, etc. and a nice few days in the Lake District, but once I’ve got the main workstation up and running and played around with the photos, will stick some photos up.

Thankfully the weather held for the most part until Kat headed off, but has rained pretty much solidly since! Has eased up a bit today, but was quite funny to see the ships sail out of Newcastle on Thursday for their next leg of the Tall Ships race only to have about a dozen return by Thursday night due to extremely bad sailing conditions and to have 2 days of the Sunderland Air Show cancelled due to the weather.
Well, the last one is a shame as it’s usually a good laugh! Managed to avoid the air show when in Windermere (didn’t really want to sit looking at airplanes when I could be sitting in peace + quiet in Buttermere…) but the Sunderland show is usually quite good.

But, on the subject of airshows, still haven’t wangled tickets for the Red Bull Air Race It looks absolutely balistic and incredibly good fun, so why they force people to enter into a weekly ticket draw rather than being able to buy tickets I don’t know. Suppose it’s to try and get people interested, but it’s annoying for those really wanting to get to see it!

Hopefully the replacement radiator will be through in a couple of days to get the cooling kit installed (long story) and can get some pretty photos from the Lake District sorted out and uploaded!

Just read an interesting blog entry on ZDNet Open Source by Dana Blankenhorn posing the question: “Would you buy Microsoft Office for Linux?” if it was available.

It was more of a hypothetical question and he didn’t seem to be backing it up with any hints that Microsoft are thinking along those lines, but when you do a bit more thinking, it’s not far from the realms of possibility. I mean, they’ve already hired the guy that started Gentoo. They’ve already seemingly admited Linux is taking big chunks out of their market share and Linux on the desktop is a viable alternative that many small businesses are using. They’ve also come under quite a lot of stick from open source developers of office suites due to closed specifications and formats that Microsoft Office uses.
How much work would it take to make a Linux port of Office? They’ve done it for the Apple Mac, obviously to tempt people that have moved to a Mac to use a fully-compatible Office suite, so critical in business. With so many small business looking heavily at Linux on the desktop in their offices, but a major stumbling block being a compatible office suite, would they be tempted?

I wouldn’t, to be honest. I’ve used OpenOffice at home for going on 3 years now, and StarOffice was rolled out across the network at work 18 months ago. Many people still use Microsoft Office as they’re used to it, but of those that have used StarOffice, their only complaint is lack of clipart as you get with Microsoft Office, and problems with nested tables (which is a known problem going back to closed-formats). Other than that, there is no noticeable difference in the documents produce, plus we have the ability to easily convert to PDF’s in OpenOffice / StarOffice, which small business surely find very useful by saving further on licenses.

Nice idea, but I reckon too little take up even with businesses means it wouldn’t be viable for Microsoft to give it a go.

One thing really worries me about the bombings in London. It’s not the fact that for reasons beyond my comprehension people would plan something like this and carry it out, causing such a loss of life and injury to so many more. It’s the reasons behind it.
Some have suggested the bombings were planned to coincide with the G8 summit, which I wouldn’t exaclty go along with as the G8 summit started yesterday. Some have suggested it was in response to the Olympics being awarded to London. That makes more sense, but the more concerning thing for me is: had plans been setup to attack either London or Paris, depending on which got the deciding vote yesterday? If so, whoever planned this must have had the resources all ready and setup in Paris, and so not only had the UK intelligence service failed to pick up on things, neither had the French, and detailed plans of the transport system of both capital cities must be well mapped out and documented by the wrong kind of people. Without wanting to get too caught up in things, it’s quite concerning, and disappointing after the amazing scenes of the weekend with the Live 8 concert. Shame those that did it aren’t likely to be brought to justice either.

Now let the Government tell me ID cards would have prevented this loss of life…

Somehow it seems that London has been awarded the 2012 Olypmics. I say “somehow” as 3 months ago I had a weekend where I spent a day in both Paris + London, and Paris seemed to want it so much more, with recent polls in the UK suggesting around 70% were keen for it to happen in London but weren’t all that concerned.
Whilst I’m glad London has been awarded the Olympics in terms of the boost it will give to the pretty deprived area of East London the games will be held in and the drive through schools to encourage kids to participate more in sport which is most definately needed, I am slightly concerned at how much money it is going to suck up from everyone’s pockets. If the Government are involved, I really hope they don’t screw it up like they did with the Millenium Dome fiasco. Ã�£700m+ and very little gained.

But, suppose that stuff’s one back to Mr Chirac. Teach him to comment on the British…

It’s a got a puppy playing the piano and pokes a big stick at the British Government, making (more) fun of this whole ID card business. What’s not to like?
Make sure you have your speakers turned on, then sit back and enjoy the show!

To all the folks who, with nothing better to do, read this crap, happy 4th July. Hope it rains for you (what’s the fun of a parade if you stay dry the whole time?)!

Just make sure if you set fireworks off to read the safety instructions, stand well back, and ensure they’re aimed at your neighbour’s house before lighting them (aiming is a bitch when they’re lit and you’re almost guaranteed to loose your eyebrows…).