Have a Break

Thankyou, I think I will. Taking a break from this blog for a while as I'm bored with it. Back sometime I'm sure.

Rangers 2 : 2 Dundee United

I've deliberately not commented on Paul Le Guen and Rangers as it's going to take time for it all to start to gel. But a 2:2 draw, at home to the worst side in the SPL, harks back to the darkest days of Ecks reign and underlines the size of the task ahead of him.

Le Guen comes with a big reputation and a certain puzzlement from the French press as to why he'd want to come to Rangers at all but he obviously has his reasons. He has impressed me with his no nonsense approach, he's obviously not going to suffer fools gladly (ask Ricksen) and expects the players to perform. I expect Bazza "Fud" Ferguson's arse is twitching as he must perform to the highest level of his ability if he's to get into the team and retain the captaincy, time will tell.

A good run in the UEFA Cup and strong showing in the SPL will hopefully allow him to settle in for the long haul. What I really want to see is some real progress from the youth side of the operation. They have the chance to work with one of the most sought after young coaches in Europe and must raise themselves to break into the first team allowing Le Guen to show the highly paid numpties the door. Ricksen is the first but he won't be the last. The gravy train is over, time to play for the glory of the 'Gers.

Note: In the interest of community relations the word "hello" has been removed from this post. Big wave to the deviant hordes *UEFA approved description*. Canny wait to read Gerry McNee's latest dribbling, rabid rantings. "Hello" Gerry, whoops.

Category:

• Sport
• Football
• Rangers

Virtual PC 2004

Don't know how this news managed to pass me by but I was reading in my favourite PC mag (PC Plus) that Microsoft have released Virtual PC 2004 for free! (and they intend to do the same for the 2007 version once Vista is released). That's very nice of them.

I've always resisted the urge to install a dual boot configuration for a Linux distro or some such due to the hassle, geekiness, danger of wrecking a perfectly good Windows install etc. I dabbled with a few "Live" Linux flavours (Kubuntu, Knoppix etc.) where you can run directly from CD/DVD without having to install anything. These are fine for testing purposes and hardware compatibility issues but, for obvious reasons, can be incredibly slow to operate.

Ten minutes after reading the news I'd downloaded it and was in the process of installing Ubuntu as a virtual machine on my PC. The total install took about 1.5 hours and once up and running Ubuntu spent a further 2 hours downloading and installing updates.

Very easy to get up and running, all I had to do was drag an .iso image of an Ubuntu Live distro (included on PC Plus' DVD) onto the CD icon of Virtual PC 2004 and off it went, didn't even need to burn the image to disc (just as well as I'm currently out of blank CDs or DVDs). I configured it to use 256Mb of system memory (I have 2Gb of RAM) and it grabbed 11Gb of HD space. No messing with partioning or anything dangerous, it handles all the difficult stuff on the fly.

So, I can now run Ubuntu in a window on my XP Pro's desktop without any worry about the health of my machine. No boot loader menus, re-booting in and out etc I can work in both Operating Systems simultaneously, it's really quite fantastic.

What I really want to do is use a spare Windows XP licence from work and install a second copy on my PC as a virtual machine. Once up and running I could use it for testing all those little applications I download and try for a few minutes before abandoning. The odd one or two will make it though. Once approved for serious use I can then install them on the "real" PC. When the "virtual" PC eventually becomes clogged with all the crap I can just delete it and reinstall as a new Virtual PC. Smart eh? Yes, I know this extremely geeky but there you go.

To get the best out of Virtual machines you really need masses of RAM, fast processors (Dual/Quad cores woof!) and dual screens would be nice (I'm actually running a triple screen set up but more on that in a later post ;-)

Word of warning: Although it is possible to install Vista Beta as a Virtual PC on your Windows XP machine it's not advisable as it'll take hours and hours to install and then run dog slow. There's info on this on the links from Microsoft's product page. But for Dos, Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, XP, Linux etc. this really is the dogs.

Category:

• Computer
• Windows
• Linux
• Ubuntu
• Virtual+PC

Data Filing Discipline

Every once in a while I spend an inordinate amount of time cleaning up the data stored on my hard drives along with deleting junk, uninstalling applications, moving stuff to other drives... it's endless. And every time I do this I promise myself I'll implement some sort of filing system for the data I generate or download off the internet, and every time I fail, miserably.

I've just installed a new 200Gb SATA drive for some much needed extra storage space and once again I intend to apply some sort of directory structure for the data. But what's best?

I tend to do it by application. So I'd have a Blender directory with a sub-directory structure with, for example, files, demos, movies, scripts, textures, models etc. The problem comes deciding which directory to put the data in. Does a demo file go in the demo directory or the scene file directory? and what about the models and textures contained within the file?

Or should I do it by project? But then that doesn't work with stuff I've downloaded off the net rather than personal data I've created. I know with the new desktop search services the actual location of the data is not really important, Google will find it, but I'm an old fashioned type of guy and I like to see my data in a hierarchal structure (easier to read and understand) but I'm just to lazy to keep up the discipline it requires. If I'm honest I tend to save everything to the desktop, especially downloads and then have a big clean up moving it to a more appropiate place (sometimes weeks later). Terrible pratice I know, and don't talk to me about the amount of desktop icons and shortcuts I tend to have to wade through.

Anyhoo, I've just reclaimed 18Gb of space on my c: drive (by deleting unused applications, cache files etc) and started to populate the new 200Gb drive. I give it 2 weeks before it's an un-navigatable mess and my desktop is awash with files and shortcuts.

Category:

• Computer
• Data