Linux Geeks International membership

I surely must be well on my way to full membership of Linux Geeks International. A proper Linux geek tries out different distributions just for the fun of it - and I do. :-) I had a distro called OpenSUSE installed, and now I put in the latest version of Fedora (11), which is named Leonidas, on the side. Why? For fun and for a change, for wanting to see how it looks. Picture above - not as it's out of the box of course, I set up a different style and background picture. Another fabulous distro, easy to install and great support for my laptop specs. Super fast boot too. I only had to install a graphics driver but I expected that. Alright alright, I got some help from the Fedora forum as to getting the dual-boot to work. Wonderful places, the forums of the Linux distros. I've often received a response in under half an hour!

So, now I've tried quite a few of the popular Linux distros: Ubuntu (Gnome only, 8.10 and 9.04), Eeebuntu (a tweaked version of Ubuntu for the mini Eee PC:s, tried 2.0 and 3.0, base, standard and netbook remix versions), OpenSUSE 11.1 (Gnome and KDE), Fedora 10 and 11 (Gnome, KDE only slightly), Mandriva 2009.1, Sabayon 4, PC Linux OS, Puppy Linux. Think I'll stick to the ones I have installed now for a while: OpenSuse 11.1 KDE and Fedora 11 Gnome for the laptop, and Mandriva 2009.1 Gnome for the Eee PC. These are all distros with a graphical installer. There are several major ones that require text-based console installation and setting up from source code, but I don't think I'll go into them for quite a while. :-)

Now we're talking!

I bought one of these Baden-Baden chairs (I think that's their name) today, the sort that you can adjust to anything between sitting and reclining position. They're on summer sale in many places now, about 45 euros. Perfect for reading a book on the balcony, perhaps with a cold drink or a cup of coffee beside on the table! If only the summery weather returned now. It's raining and very windy this week so far.

Oh well, a good time to write that conference paper or to listen to my recently acquired CDs, like Two Suns by Bat For Lashes. Much hyped by just about every indie-conscious individual and their parrot but for once it seems to be worth all the hype.

Port pictures

Here's a set of pictures from the old port of Sompasaari. It took me a fair bit of time to get all of the pictures I took sorted out, mainly because last week had such a brilliant summer weather that I didn't feel like spending much time at the computer. Now the temperature has fallen below +20 C and it's semi-cloudy. Also, I always shoot in RAW, raw data produced by the camera, which allows editing with smaller loss of data/quality but also takes longer to go through the pictures as all have to be checked for necessary edits and saved in .jpg.

Strange occurrence

Last night, as usual, I slept with the balcony door open. At 2 or 3 am I was awakened to someone treading on me! I opened my eyes, and there was a cat standing on me and staring! I wasn't startled, but asked him (or her): 'Hello! How did you get in here??' at which he jumped off and went back to the balcony.

It was the neighbour's white cat. I guess the neighbour had accidentally removed the obstacle from the bit of balcony fence between his balcony and mine. Finding the road open, the cat had started off and, seeing my balcony door open, had crept in to investigate.

I closed the door, and I guess the cat eventually went home, as he wasn't in the balcony in the morning.