BIAM! Book In a Month

Posted by admin on June 30, 2008

Well, She Did it.

My 16-year-old daughter got tired of waiting, got tired of worrying about her college fund and decided it was time I started seriously working on my book (Or Books- Like many aspiring writers, I have a whole slew I’ve been working on, but not typing out.)

So, for Father’s Day, she got me Book in a Month Workbook from Writer’s Digest, and is now forcing me to start tomorrow. If Only I could get her to help clean the office out, too!

So Far, I’ve ran through the opening, signed the contract an got my outline ready to go. I’ll be following along in the book, which seems to be a nice cross between the No Plot? No Problem!, free association-write-only-for-yourself school and the structured-fill-in-the-blanks workbook of the Marshall Plan.

I’ll let you know how it all turns out, starting tomorrow.

More Free Goodies: Online Office Suites

Posted by admin on June 25, 2008

Got A few more Online Office Suites to talk about:

Buzzword is now part of Acrobat.com, Adobe’s fledgling online office suite. Right now, it consists of Buzzword, chat, a whiteboard, Document Storage and not much else. But, like Buzzword, the flash based, animated menus are clean looking and easy to use, and it promises to deliver more in the future.

Then There’s Entrepreneur’s Zoho Based Entrepreneur Assist. Although it uses the Popular Zoho Online office Suite, Entrpreneur adds templates for the small businessman and a limited library of business books. Unfortunately, they’ve added these as an afterthought while crippling many of the features of Zoho and adding Visa Ads. Stick With Zoho.

I Don’t get AjaxWrite- It’s a Word Clone that runs online. So I guess if you think Word is the end-all, be-all of word processors, but always wanted to have an online version, knock yourself out. Oh, Except it works only on Firefox, Not Explorer. So you can’t be THAT into Windows. Also, It’s supposed to be part of a suite, but they’re not well inegrated.

So I guess it’s Google Docs or Zoho for the time being…. I Don’t think I’ll add any more of these to the links page quite yet.

James Bond Goes to Edinburgh

Posted by admin on June 22, 2008

5 Enlightened Linux Distros

Posted by admin on June 20, 2008

Regular readers know I’ve been using Linux, trying to get another year or two of decent performance out of the Coal-fired pentium I use around the house.

This led to Live Linux CDs of the various “Major” distributions, a few stabs at dual-boot installations, and finally a full bore, Linux only reformat with Fedora, quickly followed by PCLinuxOS. I’ve been happy with PCLOS, and have been modifying and playing with it pretty much around the clock. I finally got it to do everything I wanted, and then some.

The only real disappointment I had was that OpenGEU did not run on my machine. I really liked the way this looked and performed on my wife’s laptop, and wanted to try it here. OpenGEU uses the Popular Ubuntu as its basic operating framework, and then grafts a hybrid Gnome / Enlightenment graphic desktop on it. This allows users to have some pretty impressive 3D desktop effects on a stable, well supported OS.

I really wanted Enlightment(E17) on my machine. Besides the graphic flair, its supposed to be lighter weight than either KDE or Gnome, Running on Machines as slow as 100 MHZ and I thought that I would see a performance bump. So When BugNux developed their own package to install Enlightenment on PCLinuxOS, I jumped on it.

I Haven’t looked back. Enlightenment is a neat, fast Desktop that works well. Yeah, it looks like a Mac. But it works. And that’s all I’m Looking for right now.

So Here’s a list of five Linux distros that feature Enlightenment for you to check out:

• OpenGEU: Described above, OpenGEU quite simply rocks and looks better than anything else out there . Use the Live CD at the local coffee shop to turn heads and impress all the artists working behind the counter.

• Elbuntu- Another Ubuntu-Enlightenment. Elbuntu takes a standard Ubuntu distribution and strips away Gnome. Unfortunately, Ubuntu Doesn’t run on My system so I couldn’t give it a shot. If you’re running Ubuntu or thinking of it, try it out and let me know how it works.

• OzOS- “A different Reality”. You’d think this would have an emerald green theme, but it looks pretty slick. I especially like the Vista Sidebar. Just what Linux users want: A Vista Clone.

• gOS Rocket E- Designed from the ground up for cheap, low performance PCs, gOS originally was installed in WalMart’s $199 Everett PCs. Works for Novices, and the Space edition is designed around the availability of MySpace Apps.

• PCe17OS- Gonna try this one next. I already use PCLinux, but I want to try the Multigamer Edition. It looks pretty neat. Thank You Sandor!:

Bonus:

Elive- Supposedly THE Original Enlightenment Distro

Maryan Linux- Originally Mint Linux E17, this one is under construction. Take Ubuntu, Add Mint Menus for ease of use and then wrap it up in E17.

Yellow Dog- Designed for the Power PC- Yellow dog will run on your Playstation or Mac

Rose Tremain Wins Orange Broadband

Posted by admin on June 14, 2008

Live Video as Rose Tremain Wins Orange Broadband Prize worth 30,000 pounds.