Thought of the day

Iv been reading a fair amount of news lately and 2 things caught my eye. First was I discovered TED , Iv watched a lot of the talks and they are all good and second (mainly because greed and corruption turns my gut like most folk) was this article at PNAS and social class.

DraftSight

This is a must if you need a CAD. If you are doing a home project or even if u have a small enginEering shop this is a must have product for you. Its available on operting systems such as Linux, Mac and Windows. I’m definately going to be posting more on this as I have a worthwhile project to do and ill let u know how it gets on.

Danger from the deep (Danger Deep)

This is a fantastic. It is, as you guessed from the title, a submarine simulator. Its brings the sense of long periods of boredom coupled with fleeting moments of intense action.

If you like settings buttons tweaking between cups of tea this game is definitely for you.

The setup/profile page is quick and easy if you want to jump into the game quickly. There were two options a scenario and a campaign. The scenario will have you yelling “Alarm” a la ‘Das Boot’ quickly. The campaign as you guessed it is the usual set series of objectives.

The background music is authentic and sets the mood complete with the scratchy records (I loved that) but with some fiddling you can put in your own background music. The 3D models are awesome and so is the weather. You can pan outside the submarine and fantastic and light years ahead of the last submarine simulator I played in DOS many years ago (decades now) GATO. I enjoyed it thoroughly and if you can contribute get hold of the authors. This game truly shows how great an open source project can work.

If you enjoy fast paced action this game may not be for you. It definitely takes time and you have many variables to set up. It will appeal to the simulator enthusiast. Currently there ar’nt many of this type of simulator around, so surprise yourself give it a try at least once. Maybe its in your repository.

Drawbacks
The only downside I had with this game was the periodic lock up. I thought initially this may have been my X set up so I’m currently playing round with this to see if different configurations work. I’m currently running a dual core.

Danger from the Deep

Danger from the deep

This is a fantastic. It is, as you guessed from the title, a submarine simulator. Its brings the sense of long periods of boredom coupled with fleeting moments of intense action.

If you like settings buttons tweaking between cups of tea this game is definitely for you.

The setup/profile page is quick and easy if you want to jump into the game quickly. There were two options a scenario and a campaign. The scenario will have you yelling “Alarm” a la ‘Das Boot’ quickly. The campaign as you guessed it is the usual set series of objectives.

The background music is authentic and sets the mood complete with the scratchy records (I loved that) but with some fiddling you can put in your own background music. The 3D models are awesome and so is the weather. You can pan outside the submarine and fantastic and light years ahead of the last submarine simulator I played in DOS many years ago (decades now) GATO. I enjoyed it thoroughly and if you can contribute get hold of the authors. This game truly shows how great an open source project can work.

If you enjoy fast paced action this game may not be for you. It definitely takes time and you have many variables to set up. It will appeal to the simulator enthusiast. Currently there ar’nt many of this type of simulator around, so surprise yourself give it a try at least once. Maybe its in your repository.

Drawbacks
The only downside I had with this game was the periodic lock up. I thought initially this may have been my X set up so I’m currently playing round with this to see if different configurations work. I’m currently running a dual core.

PC LinuxOS 2011

Well I finally managed to upgrade and compared to the recent hassles with Mint it was relatively painless…. Ok I had a kernel crash on first reboot but I hit the reset button and fantastic I was greeted with a rather plain grey login screen and desktop.

The Libre Office replacement was a little confusing though. The manager leaves you with the impression Java will be installed if it isn’t already available not so. Dive into synaptic and install the java packages. Install is painless from that point on and on my slow connection is ok. The Libre Office loads a lot faster than Open Office but the UI is pretty familiar.

I didn’t like the compiz install though its eating my dual core even with the GPU enabled. I think it needs a little more work as does Cairo Dock. Love or hate Cairo but it does leave a nasty background block although this may be alleviated by loading some of the Gnome libraries ill have to see.

VLC was more responsive but the Google widget keeps giving java script issues which is odd as java script is enabled and I ran a work around listed in the Google forums, only to reveal the necessary app is missing from the relative path (another one for tomorrow).

Overall I’m pleased with what I see. Sure it will improve over the next build or two but for someone starting Linux you sure can’t go wrong.

Migrating mail settings from Mint was not an experience I would wish on anyone I think there needs to be a serious tool for back up in Thunderbird. Pidgin on the other hand was a breeze just copied the .purple folder to Dropbox and away we went.

I fully recommend using it, download it use but more important give a copy to your friends and family. After all Software Freedom Day is round the corner

Toil and troubble…..

Well its been a really hectic month or two and this site just hasn’t received as much attention as I would have liked. I had to switch to Mint a couple of months ago but I just havnt liked it. Being a firm Fedora fan before switching to PC Linux OS I had to find out what the rave to Ubuntu was but I have to say it just didn’t grow on me and it crashed more times than I would have liked.

Ill be honest and say after having my PC dropped during a robbery earlier this year hasn’t been good healthwise to my PC but I managed to get everything up and going. I’m currently giving the Cairo dock a go and while it can be a pain at times it is really grat to work with. Its grown on me and I have been using it for a month or two now.

As for freeCAD I’m still working with that the interface is a bit weird to work with but if you are looking for a good base from which to work in Blender I suggest u give it a go and finish your rendering off in Blender.

Moving Back

Personally I hav’nt been a fan of Ubuntu sure you are saying “what about apt”. But Id based this on what Id heard or read so I decided to give Mint a go and I can honestly say I really hate it. Its crashed my PC 4 times in the last 2 months its just not stable at all. Sure there is a huge range of software to download from the repository. I’m going to move back over to PC Linux OS it was a lot more forgiving experience and I knew where I stood with it but at least next time I trash Ubuntu I can at least say I tried it.

Having said that the Compiz features did function better as did Cairo Dock. The multimedia didnt function as well as id hoped but Email clients didnt require tweaking.