Thursday, April 14, 2005

Who Should I Vote For?

Your expected outcome:

Liberal Democrat



Your actual outcome:



Labour -8
Conservative -37
Liberal Democrat 55
UK Independence Party 23
Green 6


You should vote: Liberal Democrat

The LibDems take a strong stand against tax cuts and a strong one in favour of public services: they would make long-term residential care for the elderly free across the UK, and scrap university tuition fees. They are in favour of a ban on smoking in public places, but would relax laws on cannabis. They propose to change vehicle taxation to be based on usage rather than ownership.

Take the test at Should You Vote For

Sunday, April 10, 2005

Ubuntu.

Since everyone else has been off gallivanting (my own fault, I should add, that I am not there too) I've had the opportunity to do something I've been meaning to get around to for quite a while, namely give Linux a go.

Everyone seems to have their own favourite Linux distibution. Well, not everyone - I can think of many people who couldn't give two hoots about Linux in any form, but you know what I mean. My favourite, without having tried any variant whatsoever, is Ubuntu for no other reason than I'm a bit compulsive and it looks pretty.

I didn't want to go to the risk of installing it only to find that nothing functions like it should, so I made a Live CD which basically boots the operating system from the CD without actually changing anything. Setup was surprisingly straightforward, although it was somewhat slow, though I'm relatively certain that's because it was running from disc.

I vividly remember the problems I had getting this computer to recognise my Broadband modem the first time round, and was expecting the same this time... but no! Within seconds of getting into the OS I was online (Firefox, of course). Mere moments later, I was playing with my favourite and recognised tools, OOo, Thunderbird, The Gimp... in fact, I can't really see any need to have Windows at all... although no Hello so I have had to revert back to Windows to post this, but that could be easily remedied.

I'm sorely tempted... but do I dare make the jump to installing it permanently? More to the point, do I run the risk of doing some damage that I really don't know how to undo?

Pretty though, isn't it?

After.