Sensibilium Blog

According to the oh-so-believable insurance companies, who we all trust and love so (you know, those kindly people who raise existing customers premiums regardless of claim history, and say things like, "insurance costs are going up for everybody," like that's any kind of valid response to a query for information), have today announced that the number of "Crash for Cash" claims are higher than ever before.

And what wise sage words of wisdom can these companies give us?

Of course, that's why our premiums constantly rise in cost, always outpacing inflation, year on year, nothing at all to do with insurance company greed (insurance companies, as we all know are some of the most trustworthy private organisations in the world - LIES!). Yes, better to list legitimate claims as scams, because this stuff eats into their profits - can't payout, that would just be wrong.

And I believe everything private insurance companies say, it's obvious to me that if someone drives into the back of my car, it's my fault and I'm just fraudulently claiming that I was in front. BULLSHIT! You greedy, trough-snuffling insurance companies. At the end of the day, if you are riding up someone's arse (too close to the car in front), and the driver in front does slam all on, then it is the driver to the rear who bears all responsibility for not stopping in time. Can't do that? Get the hell off my roads, I don't want your car in the back of mine thanks.

Even if I slam on my brakes intentionally, it is still the driver behind who is to blame. Sorry, but if you disagree you should maybe re-sit your driving test (or maybe we should get the government to take away your right to drive - at the behest of private companies).

C'mon work! Sat here waiting for work to start, really need more coffee.

Hmm, that's not long enough for here, I might get away with that on twitter, but not here. Must add further content irregardless of the relevancy or value.

As a "pirate" I suppose I should maybe provide some of my political views on all the copyright madness going on right now (and frankly has been going on for quite a long time now).

I am opposed to disconnecting in any situation. The Internet is now vital in many peoples lives. If I lost my connection for example (will never happen), it would ruin me as most of my work is based on this thing (and has been for a long time).

In my youth (I'm not old now though, I mean younger youth) I bought a lot of music, mostly vinyl; imports, white labels, small indie labels (probably around £10k or more over the years), and repeats on "new media" like cassette and eventually CD. I used to be quite the vinyl junkie. So I already have more than enough music thank you. Nowadays I tend to spend on gaming, merchandise, and gigs.

I used to spend in the cinema's and buy DVDs too, but due to the way that Hollywood views it's fans, I chose along time ago to decline to fund such an industry. The same is true for the music industry. Their "fight against piracy" is the one thing that stopped me buying.

However, I still do buy DVDs, because I have no choice but to buy Four Lions (I'm a relatively big fan of Chris Morris, but I hate the word "fan" when applied to myself, so I use it with this disclaimer). I'm not going to wait for it to turn up on iPlayer (which it likely never will). I will buy independent stuff, I love it when people try new ways of doing things - The Yes Men and Pioneer One being two prime examples.

Notice how I didn't say TV back there? That's because I haven't watched TV in a year now, I prefer to watch my programmes on the Internet. I get no adverts, no enforced breaks, and I can pause it, rewind, ffwd. That's what I like, and I really think that anyone who thinks it should be different is living in the Stone Ages.

Admittedly, at the moment I actually can't watch iPlayer on Ubuntu x64 or frankly any other x64 *nix OS (although the news and sports work, which is odd), thanks to the wonderful world of closed source Adobe Trash. We have a better one now BBC, you can stop feeding in to the Adobe machine. You already know about HTML5, right?

Instead, I have to use get_iplayer, which the BBC doesn't like, but I don't like what the BBC is forcing me to do to watch the shows I have paid in for.

There, I think that should do it, I've gone on long enough now.

The member login form will now redirect you back to the place from whence you came. Not much else to say really, it was very easy to implement (v11.0.51).

Google Wave is being killed off.

Google drops Wave because of lack of users

sensibilium.com had heavily tested the platform for numerous tasks and projects, of course, and were a dab hand at constructing waves and finding problems.

It was kinda shitty, so we won't miss it. :)

so my new asus eee pc 1001p arrived last week and i spent some time with it since then.

i was originally searching for a netbook around $300 cdn, and while the 1001p was $26 more than that, the vendor i went through had free shipping so it kinda balanced out. looking at netbooks on various etailers i found an unboxing video of this model which convinced me to buy it.

setting up was very fast. about half an hour from first boot to fully set up and browsing through firefox. it was very simple and easy to to get updated, get connected to my router through wifi(no wireless n on this model though) and set up media streaming from my desktop. i accidentally powered up the ancillary OS instead of the regular power button at first, and it booted and was functional pretty much instantly. though i didn't take the time to play around with it.

i spent the first afternoon drinking beers with it on the patio. i i was using firefox to browse my usual offtopic forum with youtube videos playing music in another tab. most videos played lag free even with a total of 4 tabs open. windows was very snappier, and overall i found it more responsive than the higher specced laptops i've used in the past.

the keyboard was comparable in ease of use to other laptop keyboards i've used, and i only had to slow down slightly from my typing speed on a full sized keyboard, and even drunk typing wasn't too bad.

the track pad is pretty small but fully adequate once i adjusted to it's size. i was looking forward to trying out the multi touch gestures, primarly two finger scrolling. unfortunately this feature was wonky as hell. two finger scrolling never seems to work properly, and i found that tapping the touchpad with one finger for left mouse button single clicks would sometimes act as middle mouse button clicks and open links in new tabs. i quickly gave up and started using it like any other laptop touchpad. which is unfortunate because this is the thing i dislike the most about laptops.

ASUS advertises up to 11hours of battery life, but using it from about 4pm to around 8pm i had only 2.5hours of estimated battery life left. which i was not surprised about but somewhat dissapointed.

i tried using it in direct sunlight, as i read somewhere that the screen was great under this condition, but it was pretty much unreadable, though not overly glared.

when using it on my lap it was not warm at all like full sized laptops i've used. teh screen goes back far enough for fairly comfortable viewing while it sits on one's lap, but typing is not that good in this potion. i found the best experience was sitting in the shade with this netbook on a table for comfortable viewing and typing.

music volume was fairly decent outside with windows volume set to full. not great quality which is to be expected, but certainly better than i was anticipating. certainly good enough for a single user on the porch listening to youtube or streaming music, but i wouldn't use it for 2 or more people in the same situation.

i have not bothered trying to play HD video on it, although people seem to point out these things aren't built for that or that they want to do that with them. i don't think it would be a pleasant viewing experience with the small screen and low resolution. i did watch some fairly high quality youtube videos that i had made myself, at default resolution, and it played them back perfectly.

PROS:
great value and performance for the price.
lightweight and cool on your lap.
snappier than expected.
fast and easy to get started from unboxing.

CONS:
ASUS software does not properly changed wallpaper as advertised
lower "real" battery life than advertised
wonky/not functional as advertised multi touch pad leads to aggravating but typical for laptop scrolling while browsing.

If you have been regular reader of this blog for a while, you'll no doubt be aware that I have had my forays into Linux before today, but only really ever used it successfully as a server or as a virtual machine during testing. I've played with (and still use to this day) CentOS, OpenSUSE (failed desktop replacement tests), Ubuntu (mainly as desktop-replacement tests in a VM) and a couple of others that I can't remember the names of right now.

At the moment I am going through an installation and test setup with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS - Lucid Lynx (x64), after a successful dry test of 10.04 x86. This will be an informational post that mostly details my tasks, and how they were completed, mainly for my own use when it comes to trashing my w7 install (I will be keeping my w7 games OS and dual booting via the BIOS). If other people find this useful, well that's just a bonus.

First up, install from the ISO/DVD, set username, etc. and login once done.

Either wait for the Update Manager to appear, or run it yourself from:
System -> Administration -> Update Manager
Install all updates. Restart if required.

Installing VirtualBox Guest Additions (this only applies to Virtual Machines)

If using VirtualBox, the Guest Additions must be installed to get a decent screen resolution. Open a shell prompt and install the dkms package first:
sudo apt-get install dkms (press enter)
Wait for install to finish.

Mount the Guest Additions to the CD drive, locate the folder using your shell prompt, which is usually:
cd /media/V* (press enter)

followed by
sudo sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-amd64.run (press enter)
Then wait for the install to finish (takes a little while). Restart computer.

Upon reboot, Guest Additions will be running as expected (hopefully - does for me).

Install additional software requirements

Use Ubuntu Software Centre to add further software, below is the list of software I need to install each time. Search and you will find:

Wine (all this for one tiny program I need)
Eclipse (software development environment)
Gimp (image manipulation)
Flash (obvious really)
ntfsprogs (access Win NTFS partitions)

Eclipse Plugins Installation

I'm not too sure about this, and whether any further development tools are necessary (especially in the case of the C++ development environment - though this knowledge will come with usage over time), but below are the plugins so far required for myself.

Eclipse C/C++ Development Tools
PHP Development Tools (PDT) SDK Feature
Eclipse Java Development Tools
JavaScript Developer Tools

Install each of the above individually, and restart Eclipse after each install.

Configure stuff

Configure the system (Firefox, Gwibber, Eclipse, Wine, etc.).

You know when it comes to file-sharing, it's all well and good for the kids who'll watch any old crap that Hollywood likes to sput out in an endless way, but what about us older folks? What about us politically-charged, long time Internet users? What if we don't want to download music because we've already got plenty? Well, we have our own buzz, and it's things like software and so-called "legal" torrents (all torrents are legal, you can't criminalise a hash).

First off, hats off to Vodo who only a few weeks back (possibly a month or so) brought us the first ever bittorrent science fiction TV-format series, Pioneer One which received more than enough donations to produce the next few episodes in it's first week of release. And now they have brought us The Yes Men - P2P Edition, which I must say was very enjoyable. If you like political tom-foolery and activism, this will be right down your street. I propose getting the HD versions.

I suppose I need to provide another bittorrent link - LinuxTracker - Bloody good if you like Linux.

Anyway, go to vodo, and share. Share to your hearts content.

It has finally happened, I have waded into the murky world of politics and become a fully paid up member of The Pirate Party UK!

It's quite a step really, although I have supported them in the past purely in spirit, now well, that's all changed. I now have access to all the member areas that I used to have access to before they went proper official after the first successful internal elections (in which I voted).

Not had a lot of chance to go through and catch up with all the current stuff, what with work being essentially constant, but I'm sure I'll get around to it sooner rather than later. I may even have to try out the irc channels again, if they still have it (I would think so).

One little foible; I still have a 'Membership Pending' link on the homepage, dunno what that is about.

We've finally axed the historic Huge Feck Off Links List which has been a regular feature since this site began way back in early '99.

Nolef's Links List did die a while back actually, and was later resurrected as Ahdkaw's Link List, which was basically Nolef's mixed in with Ahdkaw's delicious links, and simply sputted out on the Feck Off pages.

But we've finally had enough of delicious, and after discovering a while ago that it is now owned by Yahoo!, this relationship had to end at some time. We don't like Yahoo! around here, ye hear me?

We've deleted all the related files to the Feck Off section, so any attempts to visit it will result in a 404 slurping. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

So, bye bye delicious, I used my wit and ingenuity to get all my bookmarks back, tyvm.

W.I.E.P.P. = Windows Internet Explorer Platform Preview.

OK, so Microsoft are now developing Internet Explorer 9.0, which will support HTML 5, straight out of the box (unlike IE 8.0). So, to give us a sneak peek, MS have decided to create the WIEPP.

This is basically a real basic example at what HTML 5, CSS 3 and XML have to offer, and I have to say, it's really damn good! This release includes support for the HTML5 audio, video, canvas, the Web Open Font Format (WOFF), and many other new and improved capabilities.

Some of my personal favourites are not limited to, but do include:

• Network Monitoring: You can see how long stuff takes to download AND how long it takes to execute, and hence be displayed upon your screen!
• Mr. Potato Gun: Just for the Lulz really!
• HTML5 Audio XML Playlist: Basically an online streaming MP3 service!
• IMDb Video Panorama: View movie trailers online, without having to download them or even think about going to apple.com/trailers (FUCK YOU APPLE!!!). I also like the visual effects of the site, very modern!
• Amazon Shelf: This looks very good, and I can really see this kicking right off!!!!!
• FishIE Tank: Not too sure if this would replace a background of a website, if it does then I am not too over keen on it, but even still it looks good!

Please note that the design of this small program does not reflect upon the design for IE 9, MS as usual are not saying anything about the design of IE 9. This post was not to advertise the fact that IE 9 is just around the corner it is simply to advertise the fact that HTML 5 is here, and that it’s looking freaking awesome!



For more information upon this new exciting technology please click here!