[Sussex] Rant it up , flyboy !#

Sun Mar 16 21:23:00 UTC 2003

Well its Charity time folks, so Id like you all to help me in aiding my
latest "charity" folks. Im raising money for 

Labradours with Toilet Roll Fixations.

Giving to those who take from the needy.

So what a exciting and interesting week this has been highs lows and
interesting events we have all had. and here in the usual end of week
rant I break down those events for all and sundry. This has some nice
symetery as we start with a posting that ends this week with subject of
how Newbies, lurkers and commentary.

Welcome to Newbies:
Mr Dobson, continued in the off topic thread with interesting issues of
integrating his little C script with our useful web site (
http://sussex.lug.org.uk ) . Seems Steve has aspirations of providing
one of lifes usefull little tools. Hmm seems a very unix like attitude
Mr Dobson, which I commend you off! creating a small utility that
delivers a very specialist requirement.

http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/001988.html

Mr Ellis, continues his Blue Peter 'eque travels ( hmm no relation to
Janet 'Blue Peter' Ellis are we ? ) when he reports in from the Isle of
Skye, or rather his recent return. Why we ask could he not dig into his
true geekness and deliver the report on site ;-( . 

Apparently Skye is quiet but has ADSL in portree with free internet
access which created a little debate on our little list. 

Also Mr Ellis found this little weekly rant useful in playing the catch
up game. Thanks tom. 

http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/001989.html

Still not being one to let the true facts get in the way of a topic of
whisky mr Teale broke in with discussions of bachus proportions. and the
topic quickly filtered into the usual thread diversions of 

Whisky
http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/001994.html

Free Internet access in libraries.

http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/001993.html

Oh 3ait Launched its Webcam...
http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/001996.html

And tom was the first to go fishing on that little link 
	http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/002019.html
Leaving Angelo Servini suggesting that we may indeed be the
Democratically run Police State <grin>

Meanwhile, Geoff got his laptop order fixed and working. So that Dude is
going to get a Dell!
	http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/001997.html

And of course Geoff could not resist a little Thread diversion of his
own with a introduction to. . . 

	http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/001997.html
	http://www.righteousbabe.com/

I wish more artist of all proportions could attempt this, but frankly
there is never enough clue to go around. 

Of course the funny thing about using babe in your html links is the
immediate supposition that your a porn site.
http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/002010.html

which given that all my hosts are named after puppies ...
	sickpuppy
	slushpuppy
	crudpuppy  	( this was pre User Friendly )
	badpuppy 	.. try badpuppy as a url .... heheheheh

Makes you wonder what naming conventions have ever bit you in the tush.
I know that I named the Reeves Hosts after all the German theatres of
war. 
	 Hawk, Buzzard, Kite etc.

I tried to listen to her music, two tries no score. a pity and seems a
few had similar issues.
	http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/002026.html
	http://www.webactive.com/pacifica/demnow/dn20021213.html
	http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/folk/reviews/lr_rthompson0303.shtml

Andrew brought up the topic of the simple things in life. which in this
case proved that well even the basic issues like network cables create
issues for us tech heads.

http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/001999.html

I reported about the fact that we lost the Wireless Opportunity at the
kings head we did not lose the venue and the wireless opportunity has
not been a total loss just a put off.

http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/002004.html

Geoff also wanted to clarify, make clear and explain. his comments about
GPL. which all found at least a little more useful that GPL heh, its
freee!

	http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/002011.html

Andrew cheated fate this week,
	http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/002013.html
Leading me to worry about if this will be the UK enactment of his own
Final Destination, Andrew  you checked  your own seating position in
relation to that of all the other survivors right ?  Did anyone check to
make sure Jon was not driving the other bus ?

Geoff actually asked a Linux based question on Monday, and our resident
Kernel developer dropped in and prompted into some ideas.

	http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/002015.html
	http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/002017.html

Geoff also contributed the further linux related questions with a update
on Gentoo[ use Debian ] commentary. 
	http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/002023.html

Dominic also kicked off the Linux discussions with questions relating to
the issues over /net.
	http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/002024.html

Steve also pointed to the Linux Expo, Dev Show from your friends and
ours the Linux User magazine.
	http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/002028.html

Stuart Nixon  was after a nice little half height server, whom John
Crowhurst pointed to ebay for and Gareth backed up.
	http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/002030.html
	http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/002038.html
	http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/002047.html

Tuesday also saw me attempting to tease a few vendors, which resulted in
tales from the Canteen as we all shared our experiences in one upping
the sales man! Steve, Geoff and John all seemed to have understood the joy of
ambushing the sale man!
	http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/002032.html
	http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/002056.html
	http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/002034.html
which no one was bothered to answer.

Geoff, kept us upto date on the SCO , you stole our source code, debate
	http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/002036.html

i think Mark Harrison got involved in convincing more people to look
into the whole Open Source aspect. For which most of the list responded
with the view of Apache proxy server, and lets face it open source will
give them more control over their future than any other. Meanwhile we
had a good overview of the issues of SSL.
	http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/002045.html

I mentioned a little about the case of the Civil Service worker who was
allowed to NOT wear his tie and wondered about the history of such a
meaningless peice of accoutrement. Mark Harrison kicked off with a
wonderful literate peice on the history of that pointles peice of cloth.
	http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/002050.html

Andrew also dropped in to talk about the useful ness of those estoric
number systems we life to use in TCP/IP. For Which Geoff pointed out
that services is quite useful. However sometimes Services may be
unavailable and yes its useful then.
	http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/002072.html

Geoff, ( whom I suspect changed his name to Gentoo Geoff ) dropped in
with yet more Gentoo ( use Debian ) factoids.
	http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/002074.html

The ever present and new worth Andrew reported about how the EU is
giving MS a hard time. Which for my money is worth while as just for
once Id like my TAX money not to be given to the US economy just cause
the current IT department need to down load more Taut videos.
	http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/002102.html

And is keeping us upto date for Amiga news and the prevelance of it
today.
	http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/002103.html

Although its wierd how we went from Amigas ( solid user interface ( gui
and command line )) to Improving linux. As Geoff introduced us to a
Kuro5shin article regaring OO Gui Layers and Linux. Which invoked a
great discouse on the topic of User interface and the power of command
line. Which kept the list busy for the rest of the week. Although Geoff
failed not to mention Plan 9 so he failed to get a week without making
it his whole raison detre for life.
	http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/002107.html

And in return two more lurkers came out of the Newbie closet and
introduced themselves, asking about precisely high brow you have to be
to read, contribue to this list.
	http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/002136.html

And I asked a few people, and I would like to say hello and thanks to
Robin to come down to the Microbiz fair and see the new face of
Wired4Life, 3aIT. Id have to say we had a fantastic day and it all went
well with much interest and enthusiasm from the team and the visitors
for Open Source. something of which I will write more about tommorow.
Suffice to say that when it comes to Open Source the end user really
does want it.
	http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/002143.html

And shortly I came to post Dominic outed his latest Debian install, and
was after a useful connection to bringing his stable ( read OLD! )
install to current ( read TESTING )  installations.
	http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/2003-March/002148.html

And with that his discovered a little Woody ... fnur fnur.

So thats it really , We stayed on context and content for much of the
week and we rallied round the highbrow sections mid week. I had a
succesful visit to the Employment Tribunals and recently received a
notification that Actus IT has asked a Isolvency Practioner to handle
their financial affairs under Part 1 of the Insolvency Act 1986 which is
no real suprise to those who been following their affairs closely, which
is why at least one thread on this list went uncommented about!

And on that note... 

have a good week to you all!

For those wondering about the viability of language id like you all to
wonder about how I might have delivered the above rant using only images
<grin>

-- 
nik at wired4life.org	http://www.wired4life.org/	Wired4Life, an Answer.

MATH AND ALCOHOL DON'T MIX! Please, don't drink and derive. Mathematicians Against Drunk Deriving 