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13th April 2009: So, last night I wasn't at work, so I had a few drinks with my best friend, and we played Guitar Hero World Tour until the early hours of the morning.  We actually played 6 songs, then moved over to Rock Band and played Creep (well, I played and sang, my friend just sang). I also uninstalled Windows 7.  Pretty as it is, wired internet on a spare laptop is no good to me.  I need wireless.  I can live with wired internet on my main laptop, but Windows will never be a part of my main computing experience.  So I tried installing Wubi on Windows 7, which Windows 7 flatly refused to boot.  So I ran the Ubuntu 9.04 installer and wiped the entire hard disk.  Then installed Windows 7 in a virtual machine, which is actually behaving itself more than XP ever did.  Impressive, but no wireless (Ubuntu can make the virtual machine believe it has a physical network connection) means that it's never going to be a full replacement for me.  Sorry MS, you continue to lose me. But I do want to talk about Ubuntu 9.04.  It's so good.  The installer has got rid of one of my bugbears, which was the picking of location.  Before you had to go all the way down to London in a list of worldwide countries.  Now you can filter by geographic region.  Much easier.  Also, the installer won't think London is on New York time anymore.  Also good.  And I am loving the Knightrider style loading bar.  And the darker graphical look.  Lastly, somewhat but not entirely out of computing - I just wanted to make my feelings known about Derek Draper.  This is a guy who has intruiged me for a long time.  You see, he is married to the journalist and presenter Kate Garraway.  Now, whenever he is in the papers, his occupation is listed as psychotherapist.  Which has always bothered me.  How does someone relatively famous but not in need of psychotherapy get to meet a psychotherapist.  But this weekend has answered all that.  Derek Draper is not a psychotherapist.  Derek Draper used to be Peter Mandelson's aide.  And now runs a well respected political blog which is pro labour.  Why is this of interest?  Because the guy who has been fired from the government this weekend e-mailed ideas back and forth with Derek Draper.  And staggeringly, his name has been kept out of most of the reports I have heard.  To say it is because journalists don't want to critically damage the reputation of one of their own would be idle speculation.  Besides, he is just a psychotherapist, right? Permalink |