Some of the news is sadly a little disappointing – due in large to financial reasons, I didn’t start at uni this year. I will however do everything within my power to start next year instead. There just wasn’t enough time between making the decision and being able to plan financially for it. I’m not a single woman, nor am I a wage earner, and above all I have a teenage daughter currently going through college and hoping to go on to uni. I’m pretty sure she’ll get there, being the bright and determined young thing that she is, and that most definitely takes priority. That and the current job market being far from lively in recent times means our finances will be strained for the next couple of years. In a nutshell, I’ll still go ahead with it but it’s taken a backseat for now.

In the meantime, I’m busying myself with other things.

I have, as usual, many ideas for online projects. Most of which will never see the light of day but there’s one I hope to launch by the end of November, hopefully in the next couple of weeks. I’ve been procrastinating about it for a while, now it’s time to get on and do it. Don’t get too excited, it’s probably of little interest to the few people who read here but I’m hoping it will appeal to a number of others. If not, well nothing ventured nothing gained. One of these days I’ll strike upon an idea that actually works out, I’m very much hoping this will be it!

I’ve also been more involved with my local LUG (Linux User Group) and was appointed caretaker of the website and forums. Unfortunately since I contracted swine flu in August I seem to have gone down with every darn bug floating around out there and therefore have missed a lot of meetings in recent months. Luckily that doesn’t stop me from carrying on with the web side of things, but I hope in future I can be a bit more in touch with the group by actually getting to the meets! It’s come on in leaps and bounds since I first joined and it’s great to watch the group getting bigger and stronger.

A couple of weeks ago I had one of the best weekends ever when my husband Carl and I attended LugRadio Live and OggCamp. Not only were both days packed full of fantastic talks (and the odd comedy sketch!) but I also got to meet some people in the flesh for the first time who’ve become very dear to me over the last couple of years. People that I originally met on Jaiku, and some who I know through Linux Outlaws (which is hosted by Fab and Dan whom I originally met online through Jaiku). There are too many to mention really, but you guys know who you are – it was an absolute pleasure and meeting you all totally made the weekend complete!

I also stood very close on several occasions to somebody whom I respect for many reasons (not least because he’s a metal god!) – Jono Bacon. Like a pitiful fangirl however, I was far too shy to actually say hello to him. I’m not good at small talk anyway, I’d probably have gushed like a complete idiot (I probably did that to a few people over the weekend, sorry if you were one of them!) so it was perhaps a good thing that I didn’t introduce myself. :)

All in all it was a fantastic weekend. I was sad to hear that it was the last LugRadio Live, as it was my first, however I’ve heard whispers of another OggCamp next year. I certainly hope so, I thoroughly enjoyed it as I know everybody else did. Considering it was the first year it was held I thought it was presented exceptionally well. A huge congratulations to the Ubuntu UK Podcast and Linux Outlaws guys on your success, it was a job very well done. Oh, and your mugs were also an astounding success with me. I have personally road tested them with both tea and coffee numerous times since the weekend they were bought and they are now favourites amongst my huge mug collection. :)

Last but not at all least – I’ve stopped smoking! I’ve done so with the aid of an electronic cigarette – I can’t sing the praises of these little (or in my case mostly not so little) devices enough. I’m almost on day 90, and I’ll be publishing an article dedicated to the subject on that day in celebration. This post is already too long for me to delve into that subject here, so I’ll just leave you with this – after being a pack a day smoker for almost 21 years I am now smoke free. Not only that, but it was a completely painless process. I’m still amazed at how easy it was. If anyone at the LugRadio / OggCamp weekend wondered what that strange thing hanging out my mouth was, now you know. Sorry to disappoint if you thought it was some strange kind of illegal drug delivery device. ;)

Stay tuned for more….

PS I realise there were far too many smilies in this post but I won’t apologise for that, I don’t care how unprofessional it looks, this was a personal post. So there. :p ;)

While I have and use a number of Logitech products, and think they’re great at what they do, they’re not exactly well known for their high end audio products. In that regard, I have mixed opinions on this takeover. I love my Squeezebox and I’d hate to see a great product sink under a cash cow. That’s not to say that will happen, but the cynical side of me tends to lean toward that opinion.

Time will tell I guess. I’ll just have to rush out and buy that Transporter system that I want tomorrow instead of in a few years time (hah, I wish!).

I must admit that before it was delivered I was having some doubts about quality loss, but I have to say the quality is fantastic (I have it hooked up to our JVC home theatre system). Even the internet radio streams sound really good. A nice little bonus for me is that it also works with last.fm so my listening habits are still tracked (quite why that’s so important to me I don’t know, but since I began using the service last year I’ve become strangely addicted to it).

The only downside to it is that you still need to use a seperate programme to compile playlists. Well, you don’t, but to do it with any ease you will – it’s ridiculously fiddly to compile a playlist with either the player or the slimserver when you have a large music collection. Luckily I’d already compiled a few in MediaMonkey so it wasn’t too much of a problem for me, I just exported then imported the .m3u file.

Other than the playlist thing though, I couldn’t be happier – I feel like a pig in muck!

However I’ve also had my eye on Feedlounge for some time, and the service finally launched today (well, yesterday now for you people who have normal sleep patterns!). The biggest downside is that it isn’t free. That made me hum and har for at least 30 seconds, but I decided to take the risk and sign up for a month. For a cost of $5 I thought it would be worth the risk, and I can always unsubscribe if I don’t like it. I’ll let you know in the next day or two how it turns out.

This weekend I bought what is turning out to be one of the best (and cheapest) gadgets I’ve ever bought – a USB cup warmer! Purchased at PC World for £5.99, it’s doing it’s job brilliantly! I am renowned amongst those who know me best for always letting my tea go cold, and now it doesn’t get cold, woohoo! Admittedly it doesn’t keep it warm for hours on end, but then if it did no doubt it would taste bloody awful anyway. But it stays warm for almost an hour, so, a thumbs up on that one from me.

Domains – I have too many sites spread out too thinly at the moment. Time to cut down and get back to basics. femalegeek.com is going, though I will copy over the posts from there to here. moon.gaz.in – staying for now, but definately on hiatus for a while. thekatswhiskers.com – will forward the root domain to here tomorrow, but keep the domain for a little while at least.

This place needs jazzing up a bit too, never did really finish it off properly. I’ll get around to that as and when though, I’m feeling too distracted for it right now. Plus I can’t make my mind up on design, so I’ll keep mulling that one over.

And that, as they say, is all about it!

I’m just wondering now how to give away those that I don’t need. If anyone who reads here would like one, (and you’re in the UK), let me know and I’ll post one off to you (email me via the contact link in the navbar). The Mac disc and 2 of the PC discs I’ll keep for myself, but the rest are free to whoever wants one.

And now I have an itch to install Ubuntu on something. Think I’ll try the live cd on my powerbook.

If you want the short version though, I think it’s shaping up well, but it’s not ready to replace my beloved Firefox just yet. But it’s a beta, so early days.

And hey, if nothing else you could download it just to get a free WordPress.com account (if you wanted one that is)!

I shall sulk until I get my hands on a copy!

Ok, so this wasn’t the best post ever made, but it’s all I have the energy to come up with right now, so it’ll have to do.

Update

I’ve just received an email from the Flock announcement list with a link to download Flock. Now that’s spooky!

Time to see if it lives up to all the hype then.

Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger) is being released today. The folks over at the Ubuntu forums are getting a tad excited about it!

I’m a teeny bit excited but not quite so much as some of the forum posters are as I’ve been running the preview release for a while now. Very nice it is too!

And with that said, I think I should get some sleep before *I* turn into a badger (though not necessarily a breezy one).

It’s powered by WordPress, it’s another design by me based on Rin, without further ado I present to you….

Female Geek

It’s a little lacking in the content department, but give me a few days and I’ll rectify that situation.

Next up….a new Textpattern powered site.

I put a lot of this down to the fact that I work with my computer a lot. That’s not to say I ignore the world beyond it (well, maybe just a little), but put it this way, it’s rare for a day to go by when I haven’t spent at least four hours at the PC. On average it’s probably more like 10+.

Now, aside from the obvious accusations of having no social life etc (I can ignore those quite well!), a lot of this is down to the fact I rarely go to bed early. Actually the two are probably co-dependant in a way. I like staying up late anyway, but I often find I’m up late because I’ve got engrossed in coding a website or playing a game etc.

There’s nothing quite like the feeling of sitting down at 2am, everyone else in the house soundly asleep, coffee at the ready, and a big chunk of coding problems to solve or a nice new site design to start on.