Normally I wouldnt create a whole new blog entry for a reply but I suspect this time it is a better way of communicating. On my last article about Linux Format, I had this comment:

Very good blog.
However, I am tempted to argue the toss on having things for people who can’t do things already. Just because soemone can’t use WordPress to setup a blog successfully (that would be me, then) it doesn’t mean they may not want to use Linux (that would soemtimes be me, then)
Windows-based PC mags dont have to just stick to writing about things to do with Windows do they? They usually have something like “Total N00bs guide to sending an email” as well as how to integrate Excel with a beowulf cluster through using a load of port hacks (or something on that level of complexity that actually makse sense)

While I can see (partially) where you are coming from here, I dont agree. The idea behind “total newbie” guides for Linux is an ideal use for a Linux magazine and is, frankly, what is totally missing from the market. The main issue with the wordpress tutorial is that it showed nothing that isnt covered by the WordPress site itself. By the time you have worked out how to download the software you are pretty much walked through everything that this tutorial cover.

Critically, and this is important, Linux is far from a mainstream Operating System. How many adverts do you see for PCs with Linux pre-installed? When you go to PC World / Currys.digital (or whatever Dixons have become) or any of the other high street retailers, can you buy a PC running linux off the shelf? In a word, no.

Anyone running linux in the UK has probably installed it themselves. Even with the idiot friendly versions like Ubuntu and PCLinuxOS this is infinitely more complex than getting word press up and running. Word press is easier to install and configure than any of the CMS packages you may have come across (eg., DragonflyCMS, phpNuke, postNuke, Jabber, Mambo, etc). It is seriously easy to set up. Even babies can do it. The hard part of WordPress is getting it to talk to your database. This is what LXF has to say about that:

Copy the wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php and open it in a text editor. Change the “MySQL settings” line to match your database configuration – if you’ll be hosting the blog on a remote server, your hosting provider will have the database details.

Brilliant. How helpful is that? This is followed two steps later by this little chestnut:

You’ll also need to set up a blank MySQL database on the server, using the name you specified in wp-config.php. Your host may provide a configuration panel to do this, but if you can log in to the remote host provider directly, enter mysql to log in then create database name ;

Do you feel that will help you? Seriously, software like WordPress is a market leader for a reason. That reason is everyone from child to OAP can set it up and get blogging in seconds.

Well, we are blogging doggedly – if intermittently – here. However, it’s been a while since anyone gave us any evidence that we get read – like comments and links. So I am going to have a stab at getting closer to the top of some lists by going for what Technorato reckons are the most popular topics and tags. 🙂

So- it’s nice to meet you if you have come here because of this. Please forgive me for the underhand attention-seeking blog behaviour.

I copied these links from Technorati top searches:

Loretta Nall Pirate Bay Clay Aiken Supporting Our Troops Over A Cliff Macbook World Cup Haditha Reboot8 all mean basically nothing to me. Well, the World Cup does but you can probably get better information on thet from the feral cat that’s sitting by my PC at the moment. The feral cat definitely has better information on Loretta Nail, Pirate Bay and Clay Aitken. They sound suspiciuosly like country and western singers. Well Pirate Bay sounds like a new fbrand of White rum falvoured with some plant substance that doesn’t exist except as shampoo ingredient. Macbook- what can I say- Is it the Scottish volume? Haditha- the islamic daughter of Samantha in Bewitched? Reboot8- that’s what happens when everybody in a small office presses CTRL Alt & DElete at the same time.

Wow, this is like shooting fish in a barrel. Let’s move on to the top tags.

• Bush A small tree. Invasive habit. Keep well supplied with oil.
• Microsoft A company that bought up DOS and never looked back.
• soccer This is really called “football”. The s word is basically only used by the inhabitants of a the Northern part of the American continent, who unaccountably use the football word to refer to a bastardised form of rugby in which impenetrable numbers are shouted at random at people who never put their foot to the ball. This somehow stops the rest of the world from being able to use the “football” word online, without fear of being misunderstood as referring to the other “game”
• China This is what you put tea in. It is also used to make plates. There is an incomprehensible use of it in cockney rhyming slang. Note to farmers and toreadors- it is generally considered inadvisable to allow bulls near shops that sell it.
• Iraq This is next to Iran. Or is that before Iran?
• Sex This isn’t allowed on the Internet.
• Iran See, it was after Iraq.
• Would people like Iranian cats as much if their name had been updated when teh country was? Ditto, Iranian rugs.
• Terrorism This is a good reason for giving up every freedom won since Runymede.

There, that was easy. Shameless but easy.

Ok, the rants about magazines doesnt seem like it will ever go away. After a brief hiatus last month (more down to lack of time than quality of magazines) we can return to the proper ranting about how terrible they all are.

This website already has a littany of articles about specific sections of the mainstream magazines, often based on when they (mainstream mags) decide to try and cover what is still (especially in the UK) a niche product – namely Linux.

Now, given that the title of this rant is “Linux Format Magazine,” you may have already guessed which journal is about to come in for the good news… Based on our “sister site” Linux Convert, you can also guess we are fairly on-side regarding linux and feel that it really should be more mainstream. That said, it is not yet there (despite hype to the contrary), and as such needs as much support, development and promotion as possible. Continue reading →

Well, a combination of apology and news update here. The linux convert site has been providing information and advice for people looking to build their own Linux PC since the late nineties and is still going strong. It has looked after transitions from the arcane world of Linux in the past to modern, easy to use distros (no, I wont mention Ubuntu in a good light.. :))

However, over the last few months this site has been allowed to slip. Given the fast pace of change in todays world it is understandable that this site needs constant attention, and currently we havent been able to provide that. As such it is now a little bit out of date when it comes to its main content – the Q&A are up to date though!

Hopefully, this will be resolved soon and a brand new version of Linux Convert will be unleashed.

There was a review in Saturday’s Guardian of a book by a philosopher who disputes the new authoritarianism with regards to childrearing. (Sorry, I’ve thrown it out, I can’t check his name or the name of the author of the article)

However, to the best of my recollection (which the evidence above shows to be possibly faulty) he was taking issue with the supernanny style of bringing up children. I  certainly do so myself, in the strongest of terms. There is clearly a return to 1930s (Truby King et al)  ideas about bringing up babies.  Even worse, now that both parents almost always have to go to work, most toddlers barely see an adult who isn’t paid to care for them, for more than an hour or two a day. If that adult is held in thrall by the emotionally crippling theories of the day, the baby might as well be in an orphanage.

The whole supernanny style approach is based on the belief that professionals are better than inept parents at looking after kids. That’s obviously why kids in care do so well then, is it?

Biological determination holds the centre stage in well nigh every other social theory nowadays.  So why are genetics and mammalian biology miraculously absent from our beliefs about childcare.  Mothers and babies are supposed to dispense with their instincts and pay attention to wherever the childcare pendulum has swung today. And the childcare pendulum is rapidly advancing in the direction of authoritarianism, without even the belief in a shared social project that might have mitigated the 1930s approach. This approach made a generation of parents and babies infinitely miserable – the babies because they were forced to conform to unnatural rules at a pace they did not choose; the parents because they could never live up to the expression of hatred implicit in these rules, unless they genuinely hated their kids. 

The only saving grace was that real people sneakily behaved as human beings in the face of the rules.  What a mercy human fallibility can be.

Current thinking seems to be – Put your baby in a nursery and go to work to buy more and more consumer goods.  Put your school child through endless standard tests that value and enforce mediocrity.  Pressurise your kids from the moment of birth or they will fall behind in the league tables of life. When your offspring  becomes a demanding consumerist nightmare child, who prefers products to genuine attention, who would have expected that?

Deep apologise for failure to rant incoherently. Will put right asap.

Solaris – Img 3,
originally uploaded by etrusia_uk.

This is a photo I took today in the garden. It has a tungsten filter and the exposure was dialed down to -1.5 so it muffled a bit of the brightness.

Despite all this the imagery is amazing (at least I think so!)

Remember – be very, very careful when taking photos of the sun – NEVER look at it directly.

Rollright Stones – King Stone,
originally uploaded by Alun Salt.

This is an excellent photo of the King Stone at the Rollright Stones. (www.rollrightstones.co.uk for more information).

In this picture the clouds really imressed me – they look great and highten the sense of “drama” around the stone.

The rollright stones are stone circle (along the lines of Stonehenge of Avebury) in Oxfordshire. Unlike some of the more well known circles, there is little in the way of tourist trappings around this site.

Old Wardour Main View,
originally uploaded by etrusia_uk.

This is the castle from “Robin Hood – Prince of Thieves.” This image shows the main view of the castle and was taken from just to the side of the grotto.

(The grotto would be on your right as you look at this picture).

Overall a very attractive castle, still largely intact as it only saw action in the English Civil War. It is not a “proper” castle – which I arbritrarily designate as one which evolved from older strongholds – as this was built initally as a residence, not as a stamp of Norman authority.

The black and white used for this photo give the castle an old-worldy, eerie, appearance which makes it seem all the more suitable. 🙂

Old Wardour Grotto,
originally uploaded by etrusia_uk.

This is the “hermits grotto” at Old Wardour castle, built in the eigtheenth century by a local garden ornaments maker (Josiah Lane of Tisbury).

This is a completely artificial cave and it was made from the castle stones and volcanic lava from Bath. The fossils and water courses inside were designed to make the grotto look like a faerie home – when it reality it was just an overblown version of a garden pond. 🙂

Fantastic.

Old Wardour Tower of Sun,
originally uploaded by etrusia_uk.

This is a photo I took at Old Wardour castle yesterday (3 June 06) showing the main tower pointing into the sun. For some reason I just liked the way the angles and the sun came together 🙂

Like a fool, I took about 768mb of photos yesterday but set the camera date wrong (2005) – as a result all the picture EXIF data is a year wrong! If any one has any idea of how I can mass change the EXIF then I would love to hear it.