Technology

Java and saké

I’ve installed Sun Java 5 and 6 now, and the Eclipse IDE. In theory this means I can actually start doing some coding — and on a Saturday night that means code, sake and Asahi beer! I’ve got a couple of things I can try out too — the Google API’s I mentioned in the last post, for example, and also a …

Gear-less weekend

Well it’s nearly the weekend and none of my gear — the RAM replacement, a new HDD to piggyback the NAS, a copy of (ergh!) Vista — has arrived from Ebuyer. So, for this weekend at least, I’m stuck with the laptop. That’s a 1.3GHz Celeron laptop with 256MB of RAM and a dodgy keypad; it’s not the most …

Generation Turbines for …

Here’s a thought: how much electricity could you get from a turbine generator placed inside an adapter roof run-off downpipe in a place as consistently rainy as Scotland? Would it be enough to trickle-charge a battery system for running throughout the day? What about if the house was kitted out with …

Something useful for work …

So I’ve applied for a job with Canonical, that wonderful company that (in cooperation with the community of course) brings us Ubuntu. In an effort to brush up my development skills I’ve now installed Bazaar and Python on my (Windows) workstation. In theory, this means I’ll be able to learn something …

LPIC-1 – Certification is …

Finally started my training for LPIC-1. This is going to be fun! Okay, more information: after a long talk with Dee last week, I decided that I needed to get into a career that was more closely aligned with my passions – namely GNU/Linux, open source software, GNOME, Ubuntu and especially hardware …

PulseAudio

On Friday night I watched a presentation about PulseAudio, an open source and cross-platform sound server which could well finally bring decent desktop audio to GNU/Linux and other open systems. With PulseAudio you get “Compiz for sound” – mixing and redirecting of multiple channels (finally!) with …