Friday, December 28, 2007

Nagging already!

After less than a week I'm already being pestered to Do This Thing on a daily basis. I think perhaps some people are missing the point. I was very gratified to find that my surprise gift of HIV had been received and not taken the wrong way. As the giftee said, it's the gift that keeps on giving! I recently force-upgraded my Nokia N95's firmware to 20 point something in the hopes that it would sort out some odd little problems it's been experiencing. As a result, everything seems to be faster and better. I spent some time this evening fiddling with it rather than talk to the people I was with in a pub I didn't want to be in. It's very exciting having things happen when you tell them to, rather than waiting for the tiny machine to think long and hard, only to perform the task in its own sweet time. As you can see, young Michael was unimpressed by my phone's new improved willingness to take photos efficiently. Note the Cheers-era Harrelson-esque look of disgruntled bafflement. And the menthol cigarette through the ear (flesh tunnels may actually have a use!). Delightful. I'm trying to get my drives sorted and install Ubuntu. This should be easy as a Linda McCartney imitation chicken pie. However, I had a trial version of Vista installed a while ago and have had to do some major data management to clear that drive and reformat it. And now I have to put everything back before I can tidy up and make a niche for the new OS. Vista, BTW, is frightfully pretty but until it's been around for a year or so longer I'm not touching it. Too messy, too many bugs, not enough security and overmuch DRM! Ubuntu, on the other hand, has improved enormously since I last tried it about 18 months ago, and I have high hopes that I may be able to shift about 75% of my PC usage away from Microsoft. What a dream! I'm terribly keen to see how Linux might take advantage of my hardware. I know XP doesn't care very much about it. I occasionally get little messages from my hardware along the lines of "I feel used", and "Why doesn't Windows appreciate my simple joy and efficiency?" So we'll see.

No comments: