Gary Writes A Blog

Well, the change-over is complete. It didn’t go easily, probably due to the fact that I had multiple partitions and boot loaders on my hardrive, but Ubuntu auto install failed several times and in the end I had to manually set the partition table. No problem if you’ve spent the last 4 years at KTH, but if you were a beginner you would be back to Windows before you had even tried Ubuntu.

Anyway, now I’m up and running it seems to be worth it!

Ubuntu automatically set up my screen resolutions and sound cards without me needing to play around with any drivers (which would have taken ages in Windows assuming you could find the  drivers). The Internet connection worked straight away and what impressed me was that my wireless Internet also worked straight away (this previously had only worked in Windows 2000 with the help of a seperate program which cost money).

Both my HP digital camera and my Creative MP3 player also worked which they did not do in Windows 2000 (though the creative mp3 needed a free downloaded bit of software).

So far, so good an no crashes…

For the last week or so my computer has been constantly crashing right in the middle of typing sentan… (crash)

Anyway, I decided that the best course of action was to go for a re-install of the operating system. I use Windows 2000 on my home computer because I never liked Windows XP (and also because it’s the best system Microsoft made). Now Windows 2000 is running out of steam (it hasn’t been available to buy for over 4 years) and I don’t really see it being supported (i.e my MP3 player doesn’t work and my digital camera only works with the addition of some totally hideous software that takes about 1Gb).

Going to XP feels like a backward step and Vista is not an option because of my old hardware (also my Mum & Dad have it on their computer and it’s unusable, half the time it thinks USB drives are floppy drives etc.)

We use Ubuntu 6.1 Linux at work for our systems and I like it and I’m pretty comfortable with it. I have toyed with the idea of going to Linux for a few years, but their was always some excuse such as it wouldn’t detect my audio card and it took a degree in artificial intelligence to make it connect to the Internet. But recently it seems to be much better and the excuses got down to things such as how does it cope with Word documents and it didn’t support Skype etc.

This will be a little experiment to see how long I can go before coming crawling back to Microsoft products. I’ll be installing Ubuntu 8.04 and getting rid of Microsoft Office, MediaPlayer and their friends and instead be relying on Open Office along with programs I already know are great such as Firefox, Thunderbird and VLC Player.

The next posting will be written from Linux. I’ll see if I can last 2 weeks without Microsoft products.

Today I had an exam in the exciting field of “Telecom Regulation”. Hopefully that is my last ever exam from my University work (we’ll see…).

Feels a bit weird because although I have been always working and doing other things at the same time, I have been at University and taking exams etc. since I was 18 with only about 1 years break after finishing my first degree.

I’ve got a hectic couple of weeks ahead finishing off other courses etc. but quite soon I’ll be in a position to wrap up my school days for good! (Though I’m quite sure I’ll be taking other single courses in the future if it’s something that interests me).

On Saturday the people who look after the Swedish state properties had an open day where you could go and see rooms etc. that are normally closed to the public.

We chose to go to Skeppsholmen and have a look at a network of underground tunnels that run under the island.

The tunnels were used as battle command safety rooms, navel telecommunications centres and as a place to store and make navel mines. It was interesting because this island is one of my favourite parts of Stockholm and I never knew there were tunnels all over it. I suppose that’s the point of a “secret” tunnel.

Once we were back into the sunlight we went to Skeppsholmskyrkan which is an old 8 sided church that they have re-developed. Again, this was only open for that day.

You got a fantastic view across the harbour to the old town…

We thought we would make the most of the day by going around the harbour to visit one of the houses next to the place that is normally used a a guest house for visiting big-wigs.

The building is called the Tessinska Palace and it is famous for it’s inner gardens which you can see in the picture. It’s amazing to realise that such nice little garden is tucked away inside Gamla Stan which is more known for it’s narrow cobbled streets

On Friday night me and Maria and Kaiyu went down to a free music festival called re:publik that was being held at Stockholm University. When we arrived, there wasn’t too much happening. In fact one girl was so interested that she had brought her knitting…

Later on, it started to pick up and I saw one band that I liked. They were called “Mofetta & Jerre” and at first I thought they were going to be the Swedish version of Mungo Jerry, but unfortunately they were not…

Yesterday night wasn’t just the Champions League final, it was also the final for a competition billed as “Sweden’s Premier Innovation Competion(TM)“.

I was lucky enough to make it through to the final with a little idea called “Whisper” though because it’s very Web 2.0, I should probably have called it “Wispr” for it to be successful.

I had to give a 1 minute elevator speech…

Me showing how Whisper can help you to do a 1980’s robot dance

After the 10 finalists had given their pitches, we awaited the judges decisions…

Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be for me this year and I didn’t come in the top three Ah well,  I still believe that being joint 4th was a good result for the effort.

There was a lot of interesting projects and people there and a few good contacts made.  Might keep the Whisper project alive on the back burner though because you just never know…

I have to give an elevator pitch for an idea I have at a public presentation tomorrow night. I was looking on YouTube for some pitches to see the style and content etc.

This is the best one I found. I think I’ll just copy his…

Just settling down to watch the Uefa cup final between Rangers and Zenit St. Petersburg. Should be good and I’m breaking the habit of a lifetime in actually hopeing that Rangers win. (Don’t tell anyone).

I actually think they will win and that tomorrow the Uefa cup will be in Glasgow.

After the last fishing exploit returned fishless, I thought I would try and kick off my season yesterday evening by fishing with some light tackle. It turned out to be lighter than I thought!

I was a little “stressade på jobbet” today, so I decided to take a tin of sweatcorn down to the Solna edge of Brunnsviken to see if there was any bream in the area.

When I got there, I realised that I had forgotten to actually bring my fishing rod!
I can blame it on the fact I have a lot on my mind and the fact that I’m a numpty

Anyway, I was about to head home when I saw a shoal of small fish, so I throw in a little sweatcorn and they went for it straight away. I quickly made up a rough and ready hand line with float and managed to throw it just on to the edge of the shoal.

I managed to catch 3 monster fish…

I think they are roach (mört) but maybe they are dace? I normally only catch salmon, so it’s hard to tell

Anyway, there were not exactly meal size, so I put them all back and went to ICA and bought a pizza for dinner…

On Saturday it was Quarnevalen, a carnival which is held every three years and is organised by students at KTH with homemade floats etc. Basicly, it’s just like Armadale Galaday, except it was held on a sunny day.

It was especially like a Scottish galaday this year because right at the head of the parade was a pipe band!

Afterwards we headed down to Jan and Anja’s for a big BBQ. They live in the South of the city and in the evening we took a walk up a little hill that gave a view of the city that I had never seen before.