From the category archives:
Tech
OpenDNS
My ISP, Karoo, is notorious around these ‘ere parts for being generally crappy. The latest in a long list of complaints being the redirection of unsuccessful DNS lookups to ask.com. Their DNS is usually pretty slow to catch up with changes too, a fact illustrated every time I change the nameservers on a domain that I own. This is just one sucky thing about them, I would list everything but won’t for fear of everyone falling asleep after an hours reading.
However, thanks to OpenDNS I have one less sucky thing to deal with. Somebody told me about this service when the whole Karoo / ask.com debacle first came to light, but I’ve only just gotten around to signing up for it. No more ask.com for me!
It’s already proved how much better it is. I’ve just moved a domain name from one host to another - generally the switch takes at least several hours but as soon as I switched to OpenDNS the domain appeared at the new host. I know this because checking it on a machine that I haven’t yet switched to OpenDNS still shows the domain at the old host, even more than an hour after the change.
There are other useful things about OpenDNS too. You get a nifty control panel which allows you to blacklist sites either by a domain or by blocking whole categories, which is a nice feature for parents. You can also turn on logs which gathers stats about everything you do on the internet, add domains to a whitelist, create shortcuts and probably other things that I haven’t looked into yet. There’s a full list of features here.
On the whole, it seems really good. I’ll keep using it on a per machine basis for a while before switching via the router, just to be sure nothing bad happens like the internet exploding on me or something. :)
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Ubuntu 8.04 released today!
Just in case you weren’t aware, or somehow missed announcements elsewhere, Ubuntu 8.04 will be released today. Codenamed Hardy Heron, you can download your very own copy from the official site.
I’ve been using the beta Hardy for around 3 weeks now and I have to say I’ve found it far more stable than Gutsy ever was.
One of the slightly riskier things they’ve done with this release is to include the beta of Firefox 3. I say riskier because Firefox still being in beta, a number of people have reported stability problems with it under Ubuntu. Personally speaking, I’ve had one or two crashes but they do seem few and far between. The main downside for me is that not all of the addons have been brought up to date for 3, and using the nightly tester tools plugin has not helped in making two of my essential addons compatible. If you don’t rely on addons however there shouldn’t be much of a problem, and I’m sure it will be a simple enough process to downgrade Firefox.
Aside from Firefox there are plenty of other goodies to keep everyone happy, here is the full feature list.
Oh, and I have heard from a reliable source that Linux Outlaws will be releasing a Hardy Heron Special podcast today, so don’t forget to check them out too!
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Women and Linux
Every now and again whilst trawling my linux feeds, I come across the question ‘Should there be a linux distro for women?’
What a ridiculous question. I can’t imagine why anyone would want or need this, and as a woman myself I find the concept more than a little patronising. Can women not use the regular distros? Of course we can! I’m living proof of that. I’m no linux guru by any means, but I manage perfectly well, just as my male counterparts do. The last thing I would want is to be told by some guy ‘Here you are, here’s a dumbed down version, just for you!’. I imagine they’d want to put in a pink GUI to go along with the stereotypes too.
While we’re at it, why not propose a distro for gays and lesbians, or blacks, or….you get the idea. I mean hey, these ‘minorities’ obviously aren’t capable of using anything the rest of the tech world is.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for helping people where it’s needed, but why must we segregate in this way? I’ve heard the argument that women find linux an intimidating field to get into. I sympathise with that to a point, but generally that’s crap. I’ve had no problems finding help and information. There may be the odd occasion where women feel intimidated, but this isn’t limited to linux and certainly doesn’t justify this idea. Women are under represented in the linux world (as they are generally in technology), but stupid proposals like this honestly don’t help. A support group for women I can understand, this I can’t. I mean you don’t walk into a store and ask for a TV for women do you?
Seriously, get a grip people!
Now I’m off to play with my new Ubuntu installation under VMware Fusion (which incidentally didn’t have to be coloured pink for me to use).
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Firefox speed dial addon
The latest version of the Opera browser brought with it a great new feature called ’speed dial’. What that does is allow you to bookmark 9 sites all within the speed dial tab, and Opera gives you a graphical representation of those sites that you assigned to each ‘dial’. There’s a screenshot here. It looks very slick and is a great tool, very handy for keeping those oft visited sites at your fingertips.
Firefox obviously lacks this feature, but not any more! Firefox users now have the speed dial addon. Though not nearly as well presented as it is in Opera, it does what it says in the tin. It’s been working well enough for me anyway. I do use Opera too (it seems to perform a lot better on my iMac for a start), I can’t get away from Firefox and all its addons, so it’s nice to be able to use this whichever browser I’m in.
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Winging it, mac style!
Some time ago I owned an Apple Powerbook G4. Not a bad machine, though a little sluggish from time to time. For one reason or another I lost interest in it, and went back to my Windows desktop and laptop, eventually selling the Powerbook.
Lately my interest in the Mac world has risen again. Having Intel based processors these days, it’s opened up a whole new world of possibilites. To cut a long story short, we went to the Apple store in Sheffield yesterday, and came away with a nice shiny 20″ iMac, with wireless (mighty) mouse and keyboard.
I have my music all set up on an external drive, along with Harman Soundsticks II speakers (which are very nice, my music is sounding great), and iTunes actually runs nicely on the iMac. The windows version is a complete mess compared to this, which is why I normally wouldn’t touch iTunes with a bargepole. But I think it may become a favourite now (apart from the store at least).
So, I’ve spent the last 24 hours busily exploring new software and various gizmos (like Quicksilver and Growl). It’s opened up a whole new world. I’m sure I’ll be happily exploring new things for days and weeks to come. Oh, and if you’re a Mac user, feel free to mention your favourite bits of software in the comments, although I’ve owned a Mac before it’s been a while!
My software favourites so far are -
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