Pete's Eats

I’m guessing everyone can remember the Apple Switch campaign that ran not long after OSX was released. It was a pretty successful campaign I believe. Well, these things have a habit of coming back to bite you in the backside and this time is no different.

Cory just BB’d about Mark Pilgrim’s switching guide. From Mac to Ubuntu… Cory says he’s doing this soon too, and it’s been bugging me for a while as well. I’m currently installing Ubuntu on an old Powerbook and I’ll be rummaging through Mark’s software guide to get up to speed with it.

Ubuntu is beautiful to look at and has all the usual benefits that come with a Linux platform. I’ll keep posting here on the various things that come to mind over the weekend as I get used to it. If it all goes well… I may switch completely…

Technorati Tags: boinboing, linux, mactolinux, switch, ubuntu

So, I’m at dinner with some friends last week. Joi started talking about whiskey, he said ‘drinking whiskey makes me sleepy’.

John Perry Barlow goes, ‘drinking whiskey makes me famous’.

Definitely one of those memories that won’t be leaving in a hurry…

Technorati Tags: funny, joiito, johnperrybarlow

Wow, it’s amazing what goes by you when you’re 5500 miles away with a patchy internet connection! Anyway, a good friend of mine, John Davey, has been quietly beavering away at putting together a UK Flash conference and the event’s site launched over the weekend it seems! Flash on the Beach is finally announced!

It’s early stages for the event’s organisation but the speaker line-up is already astonishing and at the early-bird price of £199 it’s incredible value too. So far, Erik Natzke, Mike Downey, Joey Lott, Brendan Dawes, Craig Swann, Jobe Makar, Hoss Gifford, Aral Balkan, Chris Orwig, Rich Shupe, Robert Reinhardt, Phillip Kerman, Seb Lee-Delisle, Branden Hall, Mike Chambers, Geoff Stearns, Keith Peters & me have signed on (I’ll come back to re-edit this bit with proper linkage when I have some spare time!) and it’s just the start.

The biggest thing for me is John’s absolute and total commitment to this event. I know how much this means to him and because of that I’m certain it’ll be an event to remember for some time to come.

The second biggest thing is that it’s in my hometown of Brighton, UK! w00t! At the Brighton Dome no less, the very place where Abba first shot to fame when they won the Eurovision Song Contest a few years ago…

The third biggest thing will be the amount of people suddenly coming to town wanting to take up my freely given offers of hospitality from over the years :! (You’re all still very welcome though!)

Can’t wait…

Technorati Tags: conference, Flash, flashonthebeach

The iCommons iSummit started this morning. The program is an amazing with some really prolific people here to speak and share their knowledge and wisdom. We’re currently building a conference content site and I’ll post the link here just as soon as it launches, but the idea would be to have a complete (as much as possible) record of what’s being spoken about, demonstrated and discussed.

Gilberto Gil presented an amazing opener session this morning. The videos should be online from later on today, I’ll link them as soon as possible.

Jean-Baptiste Soufron (EFF) has blogged a guide to grabbing free wifi at the conference venue because the hotel is kicking the arse out of it by charging $100 for 3 days connection. Lessons for Marriott? You can’t out-tech the techies…

Update: The iSummit coverage site is now up…

Technorati Tags: iSummit

I’ve read a lot about sleep hacking recently, there seems to be a surging interest in this area as people strive to become more productive. I found this article on Centripedal which pulls together a lot of resources if you’re interested in this subject…

17 Articles and Some Notes on Sleep and Napping @ Centripedal

Technorati Tags: napping, sleep, sleephacking

A very handy collection of links to CC licensed content sites.

Technorati Tags: creativecommons

I’ve been meaning to blog this for ages, but a while back I was in the process of changing workspaces and had cause to have to use someone else’s machine to check email etc for a while. I mainly use .mac’s excellent web based email system for that, but I thought it might be cool to have a look at the various options out there to see if any offered better functionality etc. That’s when I stumbled upon Goowy, a Flash based desktop replacement site. When I first saw it, I thought it was *way* gimmicky but signed up to check it out anyway – I’m so glad I did. It started out as something to use when I was away from my laptop but now I’ve started to extent that further so that if I’m off somewhere where I know there is a computer then I don’t always take my mac.

So, what can it do? Well, pretty much everything you do in your average working day as far as organising and communication goes. It checks your email and presents it in an email ‘app’, it has a pretty awesome multi-protocol IM app, a file storage utility, calendar and address book etc etc. It works in a very OSX style so it’s all pretty intuitive too.

Good things: you can pop up on any machine to chat on IM; check/read/answer email in a intuitive way; import your contacts into your address book; store readily needed files (webdav); access your account on any machine that has Flash and an internet connection; you can upload your own desktop image;

Bad things: can’t import calendar events yet; IM buddies are shown by screen name so it isn’t always easy to figure out who they are.

Goowy offer a trial account if you just want to check it out before signing up for your own free account.

Note: I have nothing whatsoever to do with Goowy – apart from being a very happy user.

Technorati Tags: Flash, goowy

Joi blogs about this new mobile service called Widsets. I just signed up, downloaded the app and configured some widgets for my handset. It works like a dream. This is how Flash Lite should be working.

Technorati Tags: mobile

Last night I had to run out and grab some milk as we were running low. I asked Nete if there was anything else she wanted/needed before heading out, “chocolate!”, came the reply. Nete never craves chocolate, or eats very much so this had to be important. I racked my mind to try to remember what was a favourite of hers before it dawned…

Cadbury’s Cream Eggs! Now, I know it’s nearly summer ‘n all, and chocolate eggs are normally Easter-centric but seeing how Kinder Eggs are around all year I thought that the good old cream egg might be too. But no. It wasn’t anywhere – at least not in the two all night petrol stations and single remaining open newsagent I tried. Worse than this however, much worse that this in fact, is that in all three of these establishments, when I asked if they had any I may have missed I was met with blank looks and puzzled questions like, ’strawberry glued legs?’, and ‘very clean what?’

Why is this so bad you (non-England residents) might ask? Well, the Cadbury Cream Egg is a bloody institution that regularly divides the closest of friends because you either love them or hate them. More than this, everyone who does like them has their own way of eating one. It’s a very personal thing and not to be mocked or disparaged in any way… It’s a British great. A thing to be anticipated and savoured. Something bright to look forward to after the dull grey months that make up the British winter.

To hate them can be understood. To eat one in the most disgusting manner can be overlooked, but to not know what one is is simply unforgivable and, for me, the British Isles are a sadder place this morning. Garage assistants and shop assistants everywhere should be ashamed…

Technorati Tags: chocolate

Billy Preston is one of the main musicians on my favourite music DVD, ‘A Concert for George‘. “My Sweet Lord” is one of my favourite tracks to play when I’m in need of uplifting music.

Billy died this week, aged 59 after an amazing life of playing music with the greats such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan.

Technorati Tags: music, billypreston