Quick post: as of today I basically consider this blog's transition to Wordpress complete. From today, this old home is only home to the archived dusty posts, which have been copied to the new home anyway.

So please update your bookmarks and feed readers if you haven't - blogging happens on peter.hybridweb.co.uk/blog now

I've decided that this blog is moving to a more permanent home. The idea was that in time, I have a kind of 'personal homepage' which not only includes/links to my blog, but also links to all my other places where I am on the web. Blogger doesn't really give you the flexibility to do so, and having used the Wordpress admin tool from my blogging experiences at Gizbuzz and liking it, I thought I'd move. WP also gives you a much larger feature set than Blogger and I have the freedom of hosting on a server I control too.

So, from now on, this blog's URL is http://peter.hybridweb.co.uk/blog/. Please update any bookmarks etc. you might have.

Also, the new RSS feed URL is http://peter.hybridweb.co.uk/blog/feed/, so update your feed readers as well.

There are a few teething problems at the moment; not all of the sidebar links etc. have been migrated, but in time, this URL will become deserted, as all new posts will be on the new URL.


So please visit now and wish me luck for success in the final stages of the move!

Just found a great page which clears up a lot of myths and untrue allegations made about Linux and the open source software movement in general. If you're unsure about Linux for whatever reason, then read it.

I'm not trying to say 'Linux is for everybody and does everything' here. It's not and it doesn't. However, for a basic web/email/office suite workstation, Linux will suffice. And servers... don't get me started. Linux (or in fact any Unix-based platform) is awesome for servers, in my opinion. But that is only my opinion. Draw your own conclusions.

I've been doing yet more blogging about Vista. I'm going absolutely mad about writing reviews of each and every bit of Vista, and this time I've looked at some of the bundled applications included with the OS. Have a look, you know you want to.

Exams are finally beginning to come towards the end, just three more to go and I'll be able to get on with a bigger project that should contribute significantly to my MacBook. More on that story as it happens...

And finally, to GRUB. So I installed Windows Vista Beta 2 over XP on my main system. You know that much. Well, as I said, Vista very diligently destroyed my previous dual-boot configuration when it installed.

So I needed to run Fedora again so I could reinstall the bootloader and get dual-boot wonderness back and running. So I tried booting from the Fedora disc. It detected the installation, but wouldn't let me boot into it, only upgrade or reinstall.

I tried the SUSE 9.0 disc, which I know lets you boot an existing Linux system, to no avail. I was just left with a blank screen. So I gave up on that and decided I would need to run GRUB manually to kick Fedora into action. I found this tutorial about putting GRUB on a USB stick, but unfortunately it was written for Solaris and I'm not quite geeky enough yet to be bothered to modify it to my needs.

Then I found the official page on how to put GRUB on a CD-R. So I booted a Live Linux distro, followed the instructions and made an .iso, which I saved to a FAT partition. But, being in a Live distro, I couldn't burn the disc, because obviously the OS had to be run from there. And I only have one optical drive...

So I rebooted into Vista. Vista didn't have a built-in option for burning CDs, so I tried the freeware CDBurnerXP (that's free not Free), which didn't like Vista and couldn't detect my DVD-+RW drive.

So eventually, I used another computer to burn the disc. I booted and entered the commands GRUB needed to boot Fedora, and found it wouldn't work. It had some problem and then the kernel refused to continue.

Finally, after some Googling I found that you needed to use a Fedora-specific kernel argument to kick the kernel into action, and I booted in. After which, I had an exam to go to...

And if you're interested, I needed to use:

root (hd0,6)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz ro root=LABEL=/
initrd /boot/initrd
boot

Don't be fooled - I symlinked vmlinuz and initrd so you'll probably need to press tab to see the list of possibilities and choose the appropriate and matching kernel and initrd. And don't forget to substitute (hd0,6) with your disk and partition number.

Phew.

My Vista article about the Aero user experience is on Digg. Check it out, and Digg it please!

Hey, that should be a new blog-related word. Check out my latest look at the Vista Aero User Interface and all its merits and disadvantages here.

I'll even give you a screenshot.

Today I did something rather rash. Well, actually it wasn't that rash because I backed everything up first. I decided to delete Windows XP from my main computer and install Vista.

Of course, Vista drove right over my dual-boot configuration as usual, so I'm going to have to resurrect that at some point.

The Aero UI is beautiful especially with my Geforce 6600 GT, but I did run into a bit of a problem. My monitor is a CTX VL950 19" CRT. No OS I've yet used automatically recognises the monitor settings, except Fedora Core 5 Linux if you give it some help identifying the model.

For XP, I had to get the monitor drivers from CTX to run at above 60 Hz, which is important on a CRT. Unfortunately, these drivers failed to install on Vista.

To cut a long story short, I needed a way to override the refresh rate for the monitor but I kept being greeted with a greyed-out tickbox to allow override. The solution was this:

• Create a shortcut to control.exe on the desktop.
• Right-click and choose Run as administrator.
• Now browse through Appearance and Personalisation and choose Adjust Screen Resolution.
• Choose Advanced Settings and on the Monitor tab you can untick Hide modes... and select your desired refresh rate.

Be warned: If you use this method and choose something your monitor doesn't support, it might stop working, so I accept no responsibility for anything you do here.

Hope this helps someone...

Just finished a mammoth post about Windows Vista Beta 2. It's kind of a semi-review about my first experiences now that I've got the beta.

Read it now.

This video just made me laugh. I don't know how you could let a MacBook Pro be subjected to this sort of damage. It would also make a very expensive cat toy. The cat's having fun anyway.

[via]

Yes, this is the extension I have been waiting for. Using Firefox on both Windows and Linux daily means I have two sets of bookmarks. Now that is a pain. Of course, I could try and synchronise them manually.

But Google have gone and made a really nice extension called Google Browser Sync. It does exactly what it says on the tin; that is it synchronises your settings between different installations of Firefox.

Admittedly, at the moment it does take a bit longer to load up Firefox, because it has to check for changes to your profile, but Google say it will get better.

[via] [via]

Corrected first link 15/06/2006.

OK, I haven't posted for some time now. Sorry.

But today I have finally seen a MacBook 'in the flesh'. And it is awesome. It might be quite a small screen, but personally, running at 1280x800, it is very nice.

It's also fast (2x 1.83 GHz cores). The only thing I would complain about is the hard drive size on the £749 model, which is 60 GB.

But, I'm most definitely getting one now...