I’ve recently switched from Xubuntu to Gentoo, and I couldn’t be happier. I’d recommend it for anyone sufficiently technical with strong knowledge of Linux. I’ve found it to be fast, efficient and bloat-free. There are a few glitches to overcome, but they can almost always be handled with a few config file changes that are [...]

This morning has been interesting. I couldn’t sleep thanks to a failed wisdom tooth extraction (honestly, probably the most painful thing that’s ever happened to me) so at 5am I went to finish setting up my file server (well, I stared blankly holding my jaw until 5:30am when the painkillers kicked in). My file server [...]

I’m a big Linux user. I have Ubuntu on my PC, my wife’s PC, my kids PC and the fileserver. I also run CentOS on my two servers, and use CentOS, Ubuntu and RedHat in the office. RedHat was someone else’s choice and CentOS was somewhat forced on me by cPanel. Why did I choose [...]

I remember when I was in college. We were all using Netscape Navigator. It was around the time Microsoft realised “Whoops, we screwed up, the internet is a big deal after all” and turned around their huge behemoth to focus on Internet Explorer 3/4. There was a great divide in the friendships then: Some loved [...]

Look, I don’t hate Apple. They did base Mac OS X on Unix, and include a ton of open source applications (Apache, PHP etc) without giving adequate credit to the organisations behind them. No, really; At least it’s Unix based so I can use my Macbook to rsync to/from my main PC without hassle. What? [...]

The Nerd Generation days: Back in 1999 I needed some software to rename thousands of files, and after spending hours scouring the internet for something suitable, I gave up. I already had 7 years experience in Turbo Pascal and Delphi by this time, so I decided to write my own. A fortnight later, I was [...]

Let me define a few terms in the IT world: Hackers: Used to be known as the seedy, dodgy guys in films who break PCs. Nowadays hackers are the elite programmers who can turn Lead into Gold and such. Crackers: Always considered “bad”, and now taken on the original definition of hacker. Crackers break things [...]

I never thought I’d type this entry. My previous website portfolio has included code to apply hacks and fixes for IE6, 7 and 8. While I’m on the topic, this is good advice for all you budding (or some experienced) web developers out there. Why do I only apply fixes to 6, 7, and 8? [...]

I’ve spent a lot of time using Mac OS X Snow Leopard, Windows XP and 7, and Ubuntu over the last year. It’s remarkable and amusing how similar and dissimilar they are in surprising ways. I think the main issue people overlook is what the core of the operating system is built on, or derived [...]

Every day I take the time to read my iGoogle. It has my weather, news, email and RSS feeds. There is no better place to get my daily dose of informationm and kudos to Google for managing to provide such an excellent facility. I’m aware other sites can provide similar, but they tend to be [...]