+1 for Islay malts, always my favourites although some people don't like the peatyness.

I'd say harsh but ultimately fair

on at least one forum I've been part of over the years, just about everyone who has posted in this thread would have been banned by now

my interesting discovery for the day is the existence of this telescope:

http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~dwe/SRF/camc.html

indeed it has, if memory serves it's because of the actual meaning of the name, which has something to do with the church. I can't be bothered to look it up right now though!

Wireless security is getting so much easier to set up, I believe it's a problem which will go away of its own accord before long.

basic WEP security is fairly easily bypassed, but the fact that someone had to break in removes any ambiguity about weather or not they were supposed to be there.

it's one of those things that has yet to be properly tested in court. I reckon it's at least bad manners to use someones internet connection without permission.

A man in Germany was recently declared liable for illegal downloading on his wireless broadband even though he could prove he was away at the time and therefore it must have been done by someone gaining unauthorised access. To extend Georges analogy, that's like saying if you leave the keys in your car, someone nicks it and uses it in a bank job then you're an accessory to said bank job.


@ George regarding Ubuntu and software, it comes with GIMP pre-installed but not UFRAW, however the Ubuntu Software Centre is simplicity itself to use and allows you to install UFRAW with a few clicks. I agree that software installation difficulties are one of Linux's barriers to wider implimentation, but most distros are getting better at it.

Ubuntu isn't necessarily "better" per-se, but it has become very widely used which means that if there's a pre-compiled package for any distro, there'll probably be one for Ubuntu.

My Dad now has the latest version of the Ubuntu Netbook Remix on his eee 700 (the very bottom of the range 2GB one, we had to put Ubuntu on an SDHC card because it doesn't fit on the SSD!). It's impressively snappy for such a low spec machine.


I guess the thing I like most about my eee on holiday is it means I'm unlikely to find myself in the situation I mentioned in an earlier post again. I was in Canada and wanted to give my Canadian relations a gift for letting me use their house. I decided a framed photo of their house (which they built themselves) at sunrise would do the trick. I had use of their computer, but it was the aforementioned PII 450 with about 128MB of RAM. Thankfully, Silkypix trial edition and GIMP aren't too picky about what they'll run on but man was it slow.

My eee running Ubuntu is still not going to win any speed contests, but I know it's capabilities and I have suitable software to work within them.

thank you George, that is accurate enough. The 7" screen on the original eees is definitely pushing it as far as ease of use goes, and it's certainly a nicer general experience editing photos on a big screen attached to a fast desktop.

However, if you want something that will fit in the top of your camera gadget bag and yet still run UFRAW + GIMP then the 900 series eees fit the bill.

I generally use mine (an eee 901, 1GB RAM, 900mhz celeron 20GB SSD and Ubuntu Linux) to look at the photos, use DCRAW to extract the embedded thumbnails and then play with crops and the like in GIMP if I have nothing better to do while I'm away. It'll do UFRAW in batch mode happily if I want it to though, it just takes a while to process (time to make a cup of tea!)

whether or not you WANT to edit on a netbook is a different question, I can see why you might not, I don't usually bother, prefering to wait for access to my 19" PVA panel on my desktop.

However a few people have made the accusation that it's not possible to edit photos on a netbook, and I can't let that stand.

I've edited photos from a K10D on a 450MHz PII with 128MB of RAM, the original eee 700 blows that machine right out of the water.

I really don't understand why people think you can't edit photos on a netbook, my Eee 901 handles GIMP with images from my K10D wonderfully.


It's easier on a desktop with a nice big screen and oodles of oomph, but you can't fit one of those in your hand luggage.