There are big changes afoot!

I have a new domain (loving the new URLs!), new hosting, and a bit of a change of colours on the blog.

Hosting has been moved from 2mhost to Linode. 2mhost has always worked well for me. I initially joined them because they provided cheap PHP5 hosting at a time when this was far from commonplace, but for me, their uptime and support has been excellent – far better than I would have expected from their price point.

I made the change to a VPS solely because I wanted more flexibility, and Linode have so far been excellent for me. They offer a wide choice of Linux distros (I went for Ubuntu 10.4), full shell access, and a managed backup solution for very, very reasonable rates. There’s even an android app to help you manage your account!

I would happily recommend both hosts at this time.

Please let me know if you come across any 404s or gremlins lurking here after the site move!

(Disclosure: link to Linode contains my referral number. But rest assured, if I fall out with them, I’ll be posting that here too!)

I recently wrote to my MP, Thomas McAvoy, regarding my concerns about the Digital Economy Bill, asking him to sign Tom Watson’s early day motion.

I wasn’t expecting a response, but I got a letter this morning – and only a couple of days after emailing him. Kudos.

Here’s his response:

“Thank you for your recent email.

Please be advised that as a member of the Government I am unable to sign Early Day Motions.

The concerns that you raise in relation to the Digital Economy Bill are ones that should be considered as the Bill comes through Parliament. Indeed, it is most likely that the clauses in the Bill that you refer to will be subject to much debate and may even come to a vote. This would give Ministers the opportunity to listen to any concerns and take on board any criticisms that are made of the Bill. This is normal procedure for the progress of a Bill through Parliament.

I believe that this Bill will be subject to the usual checks and scrutiny that any Bill undergoes as it passes. I will be paying attention to the Bill as it progresses and I hope that you will continue to show an interest in its progress too.”

I should point out that he’s the Deputy Chief Whip.

So not much to go on there, but if I were to guess, it looks to me like he doesn’t expect the bill to go through in its current form.

Thanks to Sam Stokes for letting us re-use the text he sent to his MP. If you want to do the same, I would recommend the excellent write to them.

Well, I didn’t see this one coming yesterday.

Google continued their assault on Microsoft by launching their new browser, Chrome, today – 24 hours after announcing it! 

I’ve just installed it, and first impressions are that it will be a serious contender in the browser market – as you would expect.

Installation was fast and easy, taking all of about one minute. It imported my settings from Firefox – bookmarks, passwords, the lot.

Another minute later, and I was up and running – actually, make that sprinting. This thing really moves – it’s lightning fast. The sleek interface adds to that feeling, and anyone coming from Firefox will be immediately at home, organising tabs and bookmarks like an old pro.

Text and graphics look great on Chrome – there’s a lovely soft, anti-aliased edge to the display. No surprise, given that the rendering engine is based on Safari’s Webkit.

The launch page borrows from Opera’s excellent quick-dial, giving you instant access to your recently bookmarked and most viewed pages.

There’s also incognito mode – where you can browse safe in the knowledge that no trace of your – ahem – browsing habits will be left on your PC.

All in all, Google Chrome is a frighteningly polished product, given that it’s a beta. The response has been very positive and I can’t wait to see some developer extensions appear to add to its feature list.

You can download Google Chrome here.

Have you tried Chrome yet? What are your thoughts?

As regular readers might know, I’ve been in the process of building my own PC for quite some time now. For my first build, it went well! Building the machine itself was a piece of cake – like putting lego together.

The challenges came though, when I started installing and configuring Ubuntu. For what’s supposed to a user-friendly ‘noob’ distro, I had my fair share of problems getting it up and running.

Here are some of the challenges I faced – and the solutions I found!

Problem #1: Installing Flash

I hit my first problem almost as soon as I started up firefox – no flash. Hey, that shouldn’t be a problem, right? OK, off to Adobe’s download centre. It helpfully recognises my operating system, and offers a choice of packages. I download the relevant one, and…

Nothing. 64 bit Ubuntu isn’t supported. OK, not a disaster – clicking on a blank Flash video offers a choice of Flash solutions to me. I choose “flashplugin-nonfree”, and hit install. I restart my browser…

Nothing. Checking synaptic shows that it’s been properly installed, but nothing happening in Firefox!

OK – next step: Ubuntu Forums. There are many, many users with issues with Flash, but the definitive post seems to be this one, which offers two solutions. I try the first…

Nothing. The second solution states not to use it, but instead to notify the developers of a bug, and wait for a response…yeah right. I try the second, unsupported, user supplied install script, and finally…

Success! Time wasted: 1 hour.

Problem #2: Graphics card drivers

Second problem – I try to enable advanced desktop effects, to be told that “Desktop effects cannot be enabled”. Not a very useful message, but it turns out that generic ‘Vesa’ drivers were being used. OK, since nearly every Google result gives results stating “same day support” for the 4800 series, this one will be easy to sort, right?

Right. :/

First thing – check Envy. This promises to identify the card, download and configure it. Sounds too good to be true? Unfortunately, for me it was – I had no success with my 4850.

The next thing I tried was the Ubuntu Hardy Installation Guide. This page provided two solutions (sound familiar?) One simple solution, one complex one. Guess which solution I tried first? Guess which one didn’t work? Yep, the simple one.

So, it was the 12 step manual solution for me. Frankly, I had no idea what was going on for most of those steps! Let’s just say that my desktop ended up looking like this (bearing in mind that it was completely blank before!):

However, it did at least work. Beautiful desktop effects!

Time wasted: Approx. 1-2 hours.

Problem #3: Guild Wars

Yep, the game of choice for millions of MMO fans no longer works on my new machine, despite working on my five year old PC (also Ubuntu). There’s an 88-page forum thread discussing various methods of getting it up and running under Wine, but to be honest, I didn’t read it all – I skipped to the last page. Just as well I did – it contained the following quote:

“Has anyone ever gotten Guild Wars working on ANY ATI video card?”

No one has responded positively yet.

I suppose I could always try Cedega, but I don’t hold out much hope for that, even. And it’s commercial.

If all of this sounds like I’m on a Linux downer – I’m not! I still love using it day to day, but I had forgotten that the initial configuration could be such a pig.

Oh, and the new machine still kicks ass, incidentally – loving it.

Just a quick update! If you submit a website with your comment, the link will now be indexed by Google; just reward for taking the time to carefully construct and submit your thoughts.

Please note that any spam will be ruthlessly destroyed.

Today sees the launch of Cuil (pronounced ‘Cool’), a brand new search engine launched by ex-Google employees.

So far, the launch has not gone smoothly. Having tested it quite a bit today I can report the following:

• It’s really, really slow just now. Probably just teething issues, but not a good sign.
• “No results because of high load…Due to excessive load, our servers didn’t return results. Please try your search again.”
• Nasty interface. A three column layout for results by default (ew!) means that I don’t immediately know where there most relevant results are. I’ve been trained to read search results top to bottom since the days of AltaVista – I am supposed to be reading left to right? One column then the other?
• Related searches at the top, and related categories on the right. Wha? Where? Who?
• Their about us page returns a 403 forbidden error!
• Thumbnails for search results that don’t relate to the content (for example, superstring theory – NSFW! Well spotted by digger Crypticlabs)

The performance issue on day one are forgivable; the usability issues less so. With excessive AJAX, and the issues mentioned above, the site is uncomfortable to use, at best.

Having said all that, I hope they do manage to provide an alternative to Google; everyone will benefit from a more competitive search market (rather than Google eating an ever-increasing slice of the pie), and their committment to privacy is laudable.

However, they’ve got a long, long way to go before they can match the power and simplicity of the big G.

Have you tried Cuil yet? What have your experiences been like?

As I mentioned before, my elderly computer is on the way out.

Although making the switch to Ubuntu certainly extended the lifespan of my home PC (I would probably have chucked it out of the nearest window otherwise), I’ve been gradually picking up components for the last few months now, ready to build myself a new monster to be proud of! Besides, I’d lose my geek card if I told anyone the stats of my current box…

What I’ve picked up already:

• 500Gb Seagate hard disc
• 4GB RAM (Geil)
• Asus P5K Motherboard
• 1 * cheap DVD writer

Still to get:

• Intel E8500 (It was going to be the E8400, but the E8500 has come down to E8400 prices recently)
• Radeon 4850
• An as-yet-undecided case / power supply
• Shiny new keyboard and mouse. No point splashing out on all that hardware if your input devices are old, crusty, germ-filled, chocolate covered health-hazards!

I’m still not sold on the advantages of quad-core computing just yet. The main advantage of building my own PC will be ease of upgrading later, so maybe in a year or two, I might be changing my mind!

As for operating system, I’m still undecided. I’ve had a great experience with Ubuntu, but I’m itching to try out other flavours of Linux – with Fedora and OpenSuse being top of the list.

Look out for some unboxing photos soon!

While it will take a long time for the full implications of the Viacom vs. Youtube battle to be known, one thing has already become clear – user privacy is an extremely low priority.

The great fear, of course, is that users are held responsible for having viewed copyrighted content, wittingly or unwittingly.

Yes, I said unwittingly!

You may or may not know this, but many modern applications prefetch links. They’re smart enough to know what link you’re likely to follow next, and they queue it up for you, in advance. This speeds up your browsing experience quite dramatically!

It affects your privacy too though, since the act of prefetching registers that you’ve loaded a particular page, even with no action on your behalf. From Mozilla:

“Privacy implications

Along with the referral and URL-following implications already mentioned above, prefetching will generally cause the cookies of the prefetched site to be accessed. (For example, if you google amazon, the google results page will prefetch www.amazon.com, causing amazon cookies to be sent back and forth.”

(http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Link_prefetching_FAQ)

I know of at least two applications that prefetch links – Firefox and Stumbleupon. You can check your settings quite easily.

• Open a new browser window
• Type about:config in the address bar
• In the ‘Filter’ box, type ‘prefetch’. You might see several settings.

Network.prefetch-next is Firefox’s setting for prefetching links; double-click this to toggle it from on to off, if you like.

If you want to adjust Stumbleupon’s settings for prefetching links, it is easiest to do this through the SU toolbar thusly:

Tools->Toolbar Options->Configuration->Prefetch Stumbles (makes stumbling faster)

So will I be changing my settings? Probably not. I don’t honestly believe that my youtube viewing habits will get me into trouble. However, knowledge is good; and you should know that the prefetching options that speed up your browsing comes with a cost to your privacy.