This is my final blog on this site. Blog.co.uk is a fantastic site and I highly recommend using it to anyone wanting thier own blog page, however my requirements have changed and I've migrated to my own web-page which is a front-end to a blog site and a forum site. Later in the year I hope to integrate both the blog and forum sites into the web-page as one complete website. However "you have to walk before you run", not to mention the I will require some sort of affiliate advert income in place to off-set the the host's database charges.

ANYWAY PLEASE VISIT BLACKCREEK.CO.UK !

It's not complete yet, but it is running!!!

Cheers,

blackcreek.co.uk

P.S. blog.co.uk will be informed of this page's closure at the end of January 2006.

Well the index page to my new website is almost complete, I've got temporary blog and forum sites that use open source software. These are linked on my index page. A Christmas launch looks GOOD. I need sites that use open source both from principle and so that in the near future I can set-up both an identical blog and forum site within my webspace on my homepage server. This will give me complete control over the site. This also means that I will be crossing from this blog site to another before Christmas, but this one will be linked for sometime after that. The forum site has adverts similar to this site, but the blog site is sponsored so that no adverts appear. I just need to dig through the set-up manuals and set these sites up properly so that they appear nearly as pages on the same site.

On another topic, I found an interesting sourceforge site called OSSWin. It contains a variety of links to open source software for windows machines. I'll need to leave it here for today....

Well, I haven't had much time to do anything with Linux or Open Source this week. I've changed ISPs from Wanadoo to Toucan and have been sorting that out. Toucan is cheaper, and gives you low-cost phone calls with no term contract. If thier service stays like this, they'll be the biggest ISP in the UK shortly. Wanadoo, however was less than efficient, as normal. But enough of that.
In the news, Mozilla has released Firefox1.5 rc3, but don't be fooled into downloading it as the stable (as in not Release Candidate) version will be out in a couple of weeks. I think it's best to wait, and set-up the final version with all the plugins and extensions.
Also Kubuntu, the KDE version of Ubuntu (as opposed to the Gnome version) is test-released under version 6.04. Now 5.10 was so recent that I haven't installed it yet, but remember this is a test release and its Kubuntu, 5.10 was stable and Ubuntu. However, the Ubuntu boys are working hard and staying on schedule. This means also that they will stay on top at DistroWatch.com.
Other things I have been doing is shopping for a free forum for my still upcoming website. I think I've found a couple of good ones to investigate further. Also, to always stay ahead of myself, I've been looking into a future project of a Linux cluster system. I was thinking of 4 old PCs networked together and using a specialised version of Knoppix called Parallel Knoppix to make them work as a single multi-processor machine. It's something to play with and the way Knoppix works it can easily be reverted back to a small network for just network experiments.
However that's probably next summer, and there's a lot to do before then. Until next week...

Anyone reading this may have noticed a change to the title. I'm very slowly in the process of putting together my website which includes a blog page - this one. In order to get everything looking similar, I've changed titles. Later I will include links to the other website. I figure two sites are better than one. There's a lot more I need to figure out about this site too.

I haven't done much this week (besides a bit of work on the site) but I have been reading the news. The Massachusetts(sp) thing is still going on, although I've read the comments on the state gorernment site from both companies and individuals and they are overwhelmingly positive, bar a couple of companies and individuals who appear tied to MS in some way. I've also noticed Newsforge.com has released OpenOffice.org training videos to help that State and anyone else cross-over from MSO to OOo, free of charge. Now that cuts down on the TCO.

Other things... There's a new release candidate for the Linux kernel, it's now up to 2.6.15rc1. Also several companies including IBM, Novell, Philips, Red Hat, and Sony have got together to form the Open Invention Network. They plan to buy up the patents to any technologies they already don't own and that would benefit the Linux community. Then they will give the technology (royalty-free) to anyone who agrees not to claim that Linux is infringing their own patent rights. Until next Monday....

Recently, I treated myself at a bookshop and bought a copy of Linux Magazine. At £5.99 a copy it's not cheap, even considering the free DVD. The DVD is a copy of Knoppix 4.0, a live distro which I tend to like because I/you can plug it into any machine. I've used Knoppix 3.8.? before and was impressed, but this appears better. Some of the apps are a revision behind, but that's always going to happen. All the standard apps are there and work, but I usually find the games interesting. Klaus Knopper(owner) is the Linux Live God!

I also spotted a flyer in the magazine that gave you the next 3 editions of Linux Magazine for £6. So after reading the fine print several times, I signed up to the offer online. Sure enough, yesterday December's magazine came with a Mandriva 2006 CD. Mandriva 2006, like Knoppix 4.0 offers a live or install option (forgot to mention that). This is quite handy because you can see if the distro works on you system befor installing it. I haven't had time to try it at the moment, but I have had a chance to look through the magazines (Nov & Dec). At first I thought there would be much I didn't already know news-wise as I keep pretty up-to-date with that, but I was pleasantly surprised to read about happenings I wasn't aware of. I'm supposed to contact the magazine after my second cut-price issue to cancel, but I'm considering signing up for a year, and seeing how it goes.

On another subject - my website. I've changed my format, Linux distributions are becoming too much of a commodity to sell profitably. I'm dropping that idea in favour of a Linux/Open Source Advocacy website. Income (half of which will be donated to FOSS projects) hopefully will be achieved by affiliates and advertisers. Therefore the half-completed website is almost back to square-one, but I plan for it to still be posted by Jan 1, 2006.