Jazz, jazz,...jazz(.)

I stumbled upon this on-line radio just before my uncle came to visit together with my parents on a Sunday dinner evening:

http://www.jazzradio.com/classicjazz

And only one phrase comes to mind when sitting back and passively listening to the lazy waves casually emanating from the loudspeakers:

"This music heals the soul."

I dare you to only listen to it for 1 minute and not feel like you should sit down and let life roll by...

Sigh. (good kind)

Ok... so tell me what's so special!

I have for many days now scanned through articles, reviews, youtube videos... you name it, to find anything that will tell me exactly why Windows 7 is better than previous versions.

The only things I can find is people's "aww factor" about the, in my opinion, semi-useless interface features which have already been around in similar formats in other OS:es.

Just give it to me straight: What's better? Apart from stability and smoother (which if Windows 7 was not, Microsoft would deserve killing once an for all), WHAT IS SO GREAT ABOUT IT?

What new improvements does the system bring to computing? How will it better people's lives?

My guess: It will improve from... not being Vista. Actually being what Vista should have been in stability and performance, but never was. But oh, no ACTUAL new improvements to justify the horrendous price tag.

Bleh and sigh. Again.

Googly!

I have read in some places and heard from free radicals that Google is actually not that good. What I mean is that some think that Google is "evil" and is bent on world domination.

Now I don't know about that, but I do know that I prefer (if I had to choose) Google dictating world policies rather than ANY president of the U.S. so far.

The reason for my reasoning, is that almost everytime I do a bit of in-depth surfing, I stumble on a useful Google app, gadget or feature.

This time it was the Google AJAX Search API Wizards, through which I have today installed a YouTube video bar on the left side of my Blog.

I might take it away after just a couple of days, but the fact I can choose a couple of options, get some code and paste it in Blogger layout...

That's cool.

The beat goes on...

I'm sitting at Chocolateria Valor in the centre of Torrevieja, waiting for Morag for our lunch date and trying to appear important, tapping away on my netbook.
The easter holidays start tomorrow, so we all have a small break to look forward to; it couldn't come at a better time. It just feels like we're all living day by day, having to fight everything and everyone, for different reasons but to one end: live our daily lives more or less in peace.

The world's in a mess and it feels like we're helplessly watching outside from behind a slightly gaping door, every so often seeing how a small catastrophe sneaks in through our legs and trying to convince it to go away, sometimes successfully, sometimes not.

Things just add and add to the stress and the load and when you seem to have gotten rid of something big and important, it doesn't feel like you've actually achieved to do anything, the feeling just doesn't go away.

"Next year will be better", I mutter to myself.

Deja vù.

Fast, fast!

Indeed. That's how I feel when learning a new program/tool and in this case it is mediawiki.org's wiki tool with which I'm intending to revamp Bonavidaspain.com's site.

Dad likes what he's seen so far, which is a relief as half of the stuff that I wanted to show wasn't ready because, well... I hadn't figured out how to do it.

A few hours after and many attempts later, it finally seems like I'm not just turning the key in the ignition and getting complaing sounds; now the motors actually started.

I worked through the problems that were getting to me, one by one and if the streak continues I should have the site done in about a month. Without breaking a sweat.

I feel like I was eight and just found a new secret-super-hidden level on Super Mario Bros. - can't wait to get back to see how cool the next section will be and how it will perform.

Yey.

Btw, read this to get the reference of my post title.

A New Hope...

No, it's not Episode IV, it's the new Ubuntu based OS I installed very easily and that works fabulously on my EEE PC 900. eeeBuntu is lightweight and therefore fast, has a nice feel to it without sacrificing functionality.

So far, very impressed. Let's hope it keeps that way.

Wiki Wiki Web, On My Computer!

I finally got a working version of mediawiki working on my home server after i had a nice time screwing up and sub-sequently fixing mysql and apache.

Anyway, finally got it and started configuring the wiki, which i have decided to change from it's original purpose, a family wiki, to a wiki to be contributed by friends and family alike. I have to decide in what language I'm finally going to convert it to, but it's likely to be Spanish, as I believe it will be my friends that will (ab)use the wiki to start with.

Next step, ftp server.

Ah by the way, all this I have done from the comfort of my EEE PC, except when fixing the MySQL problem.

Stay tuned for more news.

My new little friend...

Well, as Santa didn't bring it to me I had to hunt it down myself. I'm referring to the Asus EEE pc 900 in black that eventually arrived after DHL kept me waiting for an extra day due to a mistake made by the delivery man.

As my mum pointed out, it's been called the "bloggers laptop", so I thought I would honour the name by starting to post more regularly on my poor abandoned blog.


The main reason for buying the EEE PC was so that I can spend more time in the living-room with my family, opposed to working from the desktop computer in another room in our flat. The criteria to be met was that it had to be relatively small (which it definately is), it had to have integrated wireless and be cheap. The EEE met all this perfectly.

The fact of the matter is that I'm discovering that it's actually quite comfortable to type with the small keyboard; not perfect but very acceptable.

After having installed a full-blown version of Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex and having spent a couple of days tweaking it, I'm ready to take on a project; installing a wiki and ftp server on the main desktop through remote desktop from the EEE. I'm using FreeNX and have only found one problem: the down arrow key seems to be substituted with the PrintScreen key, so everytime I press it I get a screenshot of the desktop. Oh well.

As soon as the result is ready I'll post some screenshots, as the wiki and ftp server are intended to be for private use only and therefore not accesible to the public.

I wish myself best of luck.