Beer beer beer beer, beer beer beer beer

I had the good fortune to be invited along to a pub crawl last weekend. Though I was informed it wasn't a pub crawl in the normal sense, with it's negative connotations, but some refined gentlemen tried the beers in several pubs across Lincoln.

Apparently this little group of real ale enthusiasts do this on a regular basis, every couple of months one of their number is responsible for organising a trip to a town basically go around trying some quality beers.

Sounds like an excellent idea to me!

So this trip was down to my old school chum Eddie and he asked me a while back if I'd like to join them. Me like beer, so I was totally up for this. For some reason I'd envisioned a younger group and a later session, so the fact that it was an afternoon thing and they were getting trains back about half 6 in the evening caught me by surprise a little, so sadly I didn't get out to them till about 4. And there I found some guys in their own group T-shirts! They have their own logo! This I liked, not only was this a group of guys who were clearly passionate about their ale, but they were passionate enough to have an official club with a name, logo and t-shirt! My feeling is that real ale enthusiasts are basically nerds who love beer.

What was even better was what a welcoming group it was. You know what it's like when a friend asks you to join his other friends who you've never met for some drinks, you can feel like an outsider a little bit. Even more so if the other guys have a little group thing going on. Not the Pint and Puffin group, they were all friendly and welcoming as soon as I arrived. (This may have something to do with the fact they'd been at the ale for a good few hours by then. Though if this were true, I had none of the normal isolated feeling of a sober man among inebriated folk either.)

And I found them to be a lovely and interesting bunch. They were all, as I'd said, clearly very passionate about their ale, which is something I can relate to, but they all had their interesting tales too. I was treated to tales about table tennis, banks IT and the origins of the group and their name amongst other conversations, a lot of which revolved around computers as well.

By the end of the afternoon, I was heading on home, having tried some excellent beers and had a thoroughly enjoyable few hours. Plus, there'd been numerous mentions of getting me onto future trips, which just goes to show that either I'd made a good impression, or they were all really really drunk.

Being a computery nerd means I'm greatly in demand at work when items of an IT nature cause havoc. So much so that my entire job role has been changed to reflect the fact that without me this would just be an office of lady teachers yelling at apparently useless plastic objects. (I'm pushing for it to be phrased that way in the job description, but so far no luck.) So my efforts at rescuing people from difficulties with PC's is now how I earn my living! Wow, Superman had to take a seperate job! Yes, I boldly compare myself to Superman. He rescues people from crime, disasters and alien invasions. I rescue them from IT problems. Superman operates with a secret persona, taking no reward for his efforts and working a mundane job under a mundane disguise! The idiot! He should just get paid for being Superman and then live an exciting life all the time! I have combined my superheroing with the mundane job!
Anyway, I digress, not that I really have a point to this post, I'm just ruminating on some of my technical tasks today. I had to put up an interactive whiteboard. These things are immensely cool, because you can electrnically draw on them, and control the mouse by touching the board! It's like a giant touchscreen PC! That you can't really stand in front of because you block the projected picture. So it's really something that the novelty wears off from after you can't see what your touching for the 8th time you've blocked it with your own shadow. Plus they're a bitch to keep calibrated, so your cursor always ends up 3 feet to the left of your finger.
My most frustrating task has been a laptop returned to us by a closed nursery. They'd not made a lot of use of it, as they'd not peeled off the protective film you get over the screen and parts of the computer. Though they'd used it once at least. And not turned it off. And closed the laptop up. So that it got very hot. And the plastic film melted, trashing the screen and then melting through the buttons, into the motherboard and solidfying around and over that. Waste of a decent spec laptop sadly. There were attempts to save it, by carefully melting the residue off the screen and power button, but eventually had to concede the machine was a lost cause.
My favourtie one today has been the blackberry that's refusing data connections. I fixed that one by taking the battery out, putting it back and turning the machine back on! Classic IT.
Finally I'm testing one of the broadband dongles. It's marvellously simple to use, if a tad on the slow side, but it's currently only picking up a GPRS connection. I'll be interested to see it perform with a 3G signal. I wonder if I can get one to work in Linux?

Rick's Adventures in Linux - 1. The Beginning!

I spoke once before about how much I enjoyed my initial foray into the Linux world. Well, I’m still largely enojoying it! Hurrah! I’m keen for any future netbook I may own to have Linux on it too and would happily work in an all Linux world, but sadly my employers will not be convinced of the beauty of being run with Ubuntu. Even if you point out the inherent savings on software. Though given the amount of time I spend instructing computer novice ladies at my work how to use various things, I think the appearance of a different OS would cause mass panic. Or complete obliviousness. But probably panic.

Anyhow, I’ve found in my Linux journey that there’s a fantastic community of users out there who are sharing out their expertise to help newcomers like myself with any issues and difficulties they encounter. While my knowledge and experience is paltry compared to these guys, I feel it would be remiss of me if I failed to at least attempt to offer some assistance to those who brave the world of open source OS’s for the first time. So I shall tell the tale of my Linux journey, it’s successes and failures and links to the places that helped me out. I can only hope that at some point a new user with the same monitor as me, or a similar motherboard, or any generic problem I had, stumbles upon this and it helps them. Or that it is in some way an entertaining or interesting read. Hm, that last one might be a vain hope...

Chapter 1: The Linux Decision

As I’d stated in a previous blog, I was finding that life with Windows was becoming dull. I was missing the days of playing around with settings to make stuff work. I’d just built my new PC from components and was feeling technical. Then I read Stephen Fry’s blog about his new Asus EEE with Linux on it. He sounds pretty please and enthusiastic about this Linux business. So I wondered whether it might be worth giving it a try. So I did a little research. To sum up the pertinent points of Linux. That I discovered.

There’s no such actual system as ‘Linux’. Instead Linux comes in various forms, known as Distros. These Distros are all based on the core Linux basis, known as the ‘Kernel’, (sadly not the one with the fried chicken). From there they vary in many different ways, looking and feeling different and coming with different bundles of software.

The linux kernel and a lot of software for linux is open-source. Meaning, anyone can look at it and improve it and or use it for their own needs and styles. Hence how come the different distros, as people have come up with versions tailored to specific areas. For a better explanation of Open-Source and free software, go here.

One of the most popular distros currently, is Ubuntu. It’s considered to be friendly to newcomers and generally all round brilliant. Even this comes in different versions, as you can get Kubuntu, which is Ubuntu with a fancier desktop. Plus apparently Ubuntu gets a new version release every six months.

While you can’t run the same programs under Linux distros as you can with Windows, some highly regarded alternatives have been created. There’s Gimp in place of Photoshop and Open Office in place of Microsoft Office. There’s a plethora of music players, video players, media editors and programs for the ipod. I’m not much of a gamer on the PC, that’s what my playstation is for, but I was pretty happy to see Oolite, an open source version of a game that I loved in my youth along with Freeciv and some others. Web browsing, e-mail and IM’ing is all covered too. Ok, so if I was to change to a Linux system, I should still be able to do things I was able to do before.

You can dual boot. This basically means you can install a Linux distro onto a machine with Windows and then choose which system you want to use each time you turn the machine on. Ok, sounds useful, that way I can ensure a smooth transition over with Windows there for anything I can’t get working straight away.

These were the main points I needed to make my decision with. Obviously the dual boot thing was particularly important as it meant I still had Windows to fall back on. So I decided I’d begin with Ubuntu.

Next time: Ubuntu – The Installation