April 12th, 2009
ah, that be a tale of woe, that be. such high hopes dashed on the rocks of oblivion in the sea of forgetfulness. not that one should consider it strange.
truth be told, there was always a certain tension in the air at dellideastorm.com. the hippie piece free-love give-GNU/linux-a-chance crowd was always going to have problems with the powers-that-be. so it’s not surprising that dell decided to dump the (perceived) democracy. the method they took turned out to be simple.
they started by merging threads and deleting the odd post. but the community just wrote more threads and posts. by this stage the astroturfers were out en force from microsoft et al., but most just looked ridiculous. the solution to the embarrassment of dellideastorm.com was fiendishly simple. one day the site stopped setting a cookie allowing automatic logging in and firefox stopped automatically filling in the username/password fields (don’t ask me why). then, anybody who wanted to answer a post or check for recent activity had to log themselves in.
this is of course extremely tiresome in the long run. with the result that most people didn’t bother, and the site soon fell by the wayside. dell’s ubuntu offerings are on the other hand still going relatively strong, though dell seems to be happy staying with ubuntu 8.04 (the long-term-support version) rather than offering the later 8.10 version.
that i can live with. there is so much going on with the linux kernel atm, it may be worth dell waiting for btrfs or even linuxfs before updating the operating system. but a sign of life would be appreciated.
what i do appreciate is that dell has actually used a good gnu/linux distribution (rather than some attempt to find the worst possible distribution as other OEMs are want to) for its foray into free software. this is particularly important for netbooks, and it’s great to see ubuntu smiling up at me from a dell mini 9 or 12 or whatever is available.
so long live dell for giving it a good shot. i hope they will continue to offer ubuntu for a while to come, but a lot of it will have to do with the balance of power after windows 7 has been out for a few months. make no mistake, dell’s poor market showing and the shock of vista made dell desperate to find new ways to build a community. if dell has a good year and windows 7 isn’t as terrible as vista, things could change again for the worse.
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
April 11th, 2009
It’s strange how the death of someone you’ve never met can make you think about life. Take Dave Arneson for example. I never met him, I never even really knew he existed, but he had a pretty large effect on the people in my social circle. His creativity and dedication to his creativity changed a lot of things and helped make the world a better place.
It’s the creativity I find interesting. I can be pretty creative myself: I’m a pianist, singer, composer, writer, programmer, artist etc. but i never seem to be able to stick to anything for long enough to really make my mark.
A case in point. I’ve just been to a piano course with the great Muriel Levin (much recommended, by the way) and her son, Richard Calder (a great musician) in a nice old stately home turned private school called Riddlesworth Hall. While I was there I played the piano a lot and sung and composed a lot too. I managed to get my voice going and I performed one of the songs I wrote 2 years ago. Then i started writing a piece for Violin and Piano, which was going really well, but I didn’t have time to finish it during the course. Then I came back to the house where I’m staying and I haven’t done anything since. My enthusiasm for composing and music just died as soon as I walked in the door. Now I try to somehow get through the days while deadening myself with canned culture so much, that I don’t curse myself for my lacking creativity.
I should be painting pictures of half-naked people or tall buildings. I should be hearing and writing out tones for violin and voice. I should be practising and recording Bach and Beethoven. I should be doing something. All of the talent and ability in the world is as nothing if you don’t actually do anything, and I have spent the last few days since returning from the course being annoyed and distracted by every noise.
It’s very difficult to let yourself go and be creative if you know that somebody will start talking at you any moment. To be creative I really need solitude. It’s difficult to experience the beauty of the first flowers of spring if you know that your father’s false whistling of bad marketing jingos of the 60s and 70s could pierce any stillness you had.
I wonder how the great composers of the past used to manage that. Did Bach have the ability to just shut off his ears and ignore the outside world? Was beethoven so grumpy that nobody dared disturb him while he worked? I’d be a lot happier if i could just have my little flat in paris and no distractions. Maybe I could finally do my talent justice and become a great artist. Who knows? But I have to try.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »