Halfapenguin.com

I am thinking of building a home server/media centre on the cheap and since my obsession with building computers has somewhat died (too much else going on in my life at the moment), i thought to look at Dell. However despite hearing many good things about Dell's commitment to the linux market, i was unable to configure the computer of my choice for Linux. I was forced to look at a limited and slim set of computers with their approved ubuntu compatibility. Personally i probably would put ubuntu on but given that in the past i've custom compiled kernels, and wasted many a day fiddling with compiling Gentoo, i consider myself capable of tweaking ubuntu (which i've done on more than one occasion) to work with odd hardware. I don't see why its not a viable option to buy any dell computer free of the Microsoft tax. I'm sure there are some who would argue that Linux isn't as compatible as windows with hardware, but this isn't 5 years ago, there is nothing that Dell sells that would be unsupported by Ubuntu. Also i have to point out that dell's linux options have their price inflated by use of intel processors, while this isn't such an issue today it seems odd when they are willing to sell AMD processors in their lower end Windows boxes. The day's of Dell's dominance of the computer market are long over and they are on the downward spiral, but mistakes like this make it more difficult for them to save themselves from the abyss.

With a little tweak of my pinging code (courtesy of foozia.com) i can now alert Technorati as to when my blog is updated.

While Iowa is only the first of many states in the decision making process, its interesting to see that while it was fairly likely that Barack and Mike would be the front runners in Iowa, i was surprised to see how far down Rudy was. Huckabee is who right wing christians have always wanted in the Whitehouse, take Bush's ignorance, remove the advisors and corporate ties and then quadruple the fanaticism and intolerance. As a result despite him not being quite as gun-toting and maniacal as Fred Thompson, he's most likely to be the Republican candidate despite both Rudy and Mitt being better candidates in my (albiet pinko intelligentsia liberal) opinion as presidential candidates. I'm happy to see Barack Obama ahead, and i hope this lasts, although i could be won over by Hilary being a very capable President. Suprisingly Hilary was behind John Edwards, although Iowa is a fairly conservative province and may be opposed to a female president (men and self hating women..grrr).

As some of you have been aware, my Skype account went walkabout (the password was changed, and the original e-mail address changed). I contacted Skype (given i'd only just bought some credit a few days ago, i imagined a response time within a week). Having heard no sign or sound or even a "we are checking into this" i decided i needed skype so i set up a second account and moved all my contacts over to the new account. However then 2 months after my message, they finally got back to me and had recovered and reset my account for me. By this time it was a bit too late to move back again, so i continued using my current account. Then i found i needed to make a call on skype out, so i tried to buy some credit with paypal (as i have done more than a few times before). However big warning flashes up and tells me that because my old account has been topped up with this account, i cannot use it to top up the new account... (upon checking there is no association listed so i cannot remove it). This would not be an insurmountable problem given surprisingly that my account still had the credit in, untouched from its period in nefarious hands (who apparently tried to buy 1.5 euro priced 5 euro worth skype gift certificates for some bizarre reason). However due to skype now locking my account, i cannot use that credit that i paid for (i've e-mailed them asking to unlock it, but i could be waiting another 2 months for a response... Skype used to be fairly functional but since e-bay have taken it over its just got worse and worse.

I love my family,

I found out i had a rather nasty dropped stitch in the secret project.