There is a saying that goes something along the lines of

The best laid plans of mice and men…

In an attempt to revitalise my interest in the blog I started three new series on the blog:

1. Photo of the day. With over 20,000 photos on my hard disc I was intending to share many of them on this blog in an attempt to get some decent comment and traffic, both on my blog and my Flickr stream.
2. My Week in View. Was going to be released on a Wednesday and give a quick run-down of the good, bad, ugly and utter shit that happened in the previous seven days.
3. The Beginner Photography series. I was attempting to share some of my knowledge and help beginners with the basics and getting the most from their digital camera.

As you may have noticed, I have failed on all three counts. I had about 10 days worth of photos posted, I reviewed my week just once and three editions of the photography course. I ran out of time and enthusiasm, then I had one or the other but never both at the same time.

I apologise to both the people following the photography. If you really want to learn more then please leave a comment and I will point you at some sites and magazines that are running exactly the same thing and doing much much better than I have.

The “Cloud” and Linux parts of the post are intermingled, so excuse me if this makes no sense!

Freedom from the desktop is awesome. Plain an simple. I can dedicated more time to real life instead of stuck at the PC answering emails, all the new documents I create are staying on Google Docs and I can share them with contacts without having to block the tubes with attachments. I have hit a problem with it though.

We redecorated the lounge, taking about a month to achieve start to finish. In this time my Ubuntu machine was unplugged in the other room. I had a sudden thought that perhaps I could re-jig my Sony Vaio PIII 833mhz (128mb RAM) with a small Linux install. I had heard of Damned Small Linux through conversation with a geek buddy so I looked. 50mb download, 10 minutes to install and it was up and running on the laptop. Nice and quick too. I only want it to get on the ‘net in the living room and check my mail, possible work on some Google Docs and be happy. Two problems I have hit so far:

1. The version of Firefox that’s pre-installed is (quite rightly) a hugely cut-down version. There’s no flash support and although I have told FF to install the plugin, it’s not working. This kills quite a number of sites (including this one), anything with Video (YouTube etc), the Farnborough Arshw Website and limits functionality on other sites like eBay and anything else with flash embedded.
2. More importantly than the flash, Google Docs works a treat for Word type documents, but will not play with the Google Spreadsheets application at all. This makes it rather inconvenient as I’am doing large amounts of work with spreadsheets for various projects I’m working on.

So, Google Docs is great, but I might have to dump DSL and either try another Linux distro or set the Ubuntu desktop machine up again. No great shakes with that but I like the idea of being able to completely hide the laptop. Can’t easily do that with a TFT screen, keyboard and mouse…

It was always quite a scary proposition to have all my personal data live on the web and it had always stopped me from taking the plunge. After reading a few articles about living in the “cloud” (ie having everything on the web rather than stored locally) I decided that if big name techie people can do it and be safe then why can’t I?

With my life changing the way it is I have less access to my own PC and that can make it awkward if someone wants to get me an important document. By putting all my domain email addresses (4 of them) into Google I can log on from anywhere and view as I need to.

I haven’t used Google Docs or Calendar yet but have been using Google Reader for a number of months with great success. I guess I could start using them much more and I will get the same benefits as with email.

The next step is to grab one of my old pen drives (USB memory stick), put a mobile Linux distro (I haven’t decided which one yet) on it and run PCs from that. It means that I can boot any (USB bootable) PC to my pen drive, get to my favourites, reference documents and other useful info without ever going near the host OS or hard disks. Of course, I could just go for the mobile version of Firefox for the moment although that would restrict me to using either a Windows or Linux machine for compatibility.

So, do you do live in the clouds or are you scared to trust Google (like I was) and are still tethered to your PC? What problems have you found? Got any useful tips or tricks that you want to share?

I have installed a couple of extra applications, one called Liferea (LInux FEed REAder) for reading the RSS feeds. I took the opml (XML) file from Google Reader and imported into the application with no trouble whatsoever. Generally it works beautifully, but I would really like to see the name of the blog on the unread posts page so I know which blog/site I am reading. Currently it only takes the title of the post until you click on it which is a little confusing.

The second application is one courtesy of Tombuntu (who was introduced by Donncha in my previous post!). It’s called Cairo-Dock and gives functionality similar to OS X’s dock/launcher that sits at the bottom of the screen. It’s a great little app and makes my desktop even more OS X like. More information on the application is available in Tombuntu’s post How-to Install Cairo-dock. The only other thing I wanted to do was to get the application to start automatically on log-in. Another quick Google search turned up this post from Adventures In Switching [To Linux] which told me exactly what I needed to know. Thanks!

GIMP Image editing, whilst a steep learning curve (I’m used to Photoshop CS2) is as good as PS, with all the same functionality. If I’d thought of it I would have resized the two images above (taken with “take screenshot”) before uploading them.

What I am struggling to find right now is a RAW converter for Linux. I know there are a few out there and some of the reviews I have read say some of the are really good. Others however are suggesting to use Google’s Picasa application and from what I can see I would have to use WINE to run it as it’s Windows only. Any suggestions for a RAW converter? Maybe a plugin for GIMP?

Something I have just noticed while typing this is that Firefox (V.3 Beta 5) has gone grey whilst editing the post:

I think it happened when I tried to use WordPress’s new media uploader for the images. Have to look into that one I think. I don’t know if it’s WP, FF or Ubuntu that has caused this to happen.

Yes, *nix users are nerds. Just ask Root.

Update: Forgot the credit: http://www.xkcd.com/ – awesome comic. Thanks for the reminder Mike.

The conversation started with a member asking what people think of Vista. I can’t give an opinion as I am too poor to afford either the hardware to run it, or the software itself.

Daze made the initial statement about Microsoft’s data collection policies in Vista:

I’ve heard with Vista that it does these random “checks” for non-Microsoft software to make sure they are legit. Of course, while doing these checks, MS are free to download any information they want from the PC, as per their privacy policy written in the small print on the box! Also, if MS find’s a specific bit of software which they see as competition to their OS and company (Firefox, Google, Open Office, etc?), then they have the ability to disable the user from using it.

My immdediate response was of scorn as that collection policy would leave MS open to more lawsuits than Anna-Nicole Smith’s paternity casesThanks for the simile Pete!. Instead of just wittering, I got onto the privacy page at Microsoft. From that page, a couple of key points.

Activation

Information collected, processed, or transmitted
During activation of this software, product key information is sent to Microsoft along with a hardware hash, which is a non-unique number generated from the computer’s hardware configuration. The hardware hash does not represent any personal information or information about the software. The hardware hash cannot be used to determine the make or model of the computer and it cannot be backward calculated to determine any additional information about your computer. Along with standard computer information, some additional language settings are collected.

Audit

Auditing allows an administrator to configure Windows to record operating system activity in a security log, which can be accessed using the Event Viewer and other programs. This log can help an administrator detect unauthorized access to the computer or resources on the computer, and to troubleshoot problems.

When they say “administrator”, I believe they are talking about a corporate administrator in a company rather than Microsoft themselves.

Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP)

If you choose to participate, basic information about your computer and how you use Windows Vista is collected in CEIP reports. Some limited information about the software you run on Windows Vista might also be collected to help improve how our products interact with that software. These reports are sent to Microsoft, where we use them to help improve the features our customers use most often and to create solutions to common problems.

“Limited information about the software you run” is the key phrase.

Microsoft uses CEIP information to improve our software. We use the GUID to distinguish how widespread the feedback we receive is and how to prioritize it. For example, the GUID allows Microsoft to distinguish between one customer experiencing a problem one hundred times and other customers experiencing the same problem once. Microsoft does not use the information collected by CEIP reports to identify you or contact you. Although the Internet Protocol (IP) address through which you access the Internet is sent to Microsoft with each CEIP report, Microsoft does not use it to identify you or contact you.

Read that last line again.

Now, I understand that we only have Microsoft’s word for this and many people don’t trust MS at all. As far as I know though, this policy hasn’t changed since XP and most people I know (that aren’t Apple Fanboys) use XP without any quibble.

I can find nothing about disabling competitors software, but then, they wouldn’t advertise that would they!

Essentially, if you’re that paranoid about Microsoft’s policies, the answer is easy. Don’t use their products. What options are you left with though?

Linux

For: Free (I like free!), well supported by the communities.

Against:

Many hardware manufacturers don’t provide linux drivers.
Lots of configurations to be done when trying to play a DVD or listen to an MP3.
Fanboys.

I used linux for a while (Ubuntu and Suse) on a spare PC and gave up on both as neither would recognise my wireless card.

Apple Products

For: Well supported. Reliable. Powerful.
Against: Expensive. Not so much software developed. Lack of gaming compatibility. Fanboys.

Yes, I know Windows has its fanboys too and no, I’m not one! I do however rely on Microsoft products to earn my living. Without them I would be out of work.