Daniel Maclean

I've been quite busy with my studying lately so been unable to checkout any new wallpapers or themes. However I did come across a set of wallpapers I downloaded weeks ago and never used. Here are a few screenshots for your enjoyment:

Well it seems my initial skepticism about Dell and there apparent efforts to big up the Linux community have actually bared some fruits. Here's a quote from BetaNews.com "Dell confirmed on Wednesday plans to offer Linux pre-installed on select desktop and notebook systems, beyond its current Linux-based servers and Precision workstations. The decision comes after feedback on its IdeaStorm site and a survey that garnered over 100,000 responses. No specific timeframe was given for the expanded Linux plans, although the company said in a blog posting that it will provide an update in the coming weeks regarding the effort. It will detail "information on which systems we will offer, our testing and certification efforts, and the Linux distribution(s) that will be available," Dell said, adding that, "The countdown begins today."" http://www.betanews.com/article/Dell_to_Ship_Linux_on_Desktops_Laptops/1175108192 Reading some of the comments from the post o

After celebrating my mum's birthday today and getting through the huge amount of surprises my family and I had in store for her, I was greeted with laughable surprise. According to Symantec Windows in the most secure operating system compared to Mac OS X and Red Hat... in the last 6 months. Ehh, wait a minute, how can windows be the most secure operating system on the market when it's faulty by design? how can telling users they are about to do something stupid and not stopping them be secure? It just seems strange that a company who only makes software for the Windows platform publishes an article saying "the most secure operating system is the only one we develop security software for".

I really like affinity so much i´ve made a mockup of a little addition which adds a little personalization to the panel: If your reading this dude, keep up the good work!

Well it seems the author of the avant-window-navigator has lots of tricks up his sleeves. He´s now released a new piece of desktop software called Affinity . Simply it´s a fancy application launcher with integrated instant search. But it does have the potential to be much more than that. Here´s a couple of screen shots of affinity in action: It does have quite a few bugs and seems a big slow at highlighting items on the panel however it is a first release and compared to most first release´s is actually quite stable and usable. You can grab a cvs version from here and the author´s blog is here. There is also a very similar program called loro-launcher for Mac OS X, project page is here and the authors blog is here.

Well it´s that time of the year again where I have to sit away from the computer to study for my exams. Normally I study in my dining room where there´s a big table and no electronic gadgets. This normally forces me to keep reading as there is no distractions. Almost finished my BSc (Hons) Computer Science. It has taken me four years to complete and i´ve learnt so much and forgotten quite a alot of it! However, the job hunting is going well and hopefully i´ll be employed in the wonderful world of software development in no time at all. Looked at some of the big players in the market however competition for them is very high and everybody wants the one thing I ain´t got... bloody experience. At this very moment apart from writing this blog i´m sorting through two terms worth of notes which amounts to around two lever arch folders. Also apart from the exams i´ve got to finish of my dissertation which of course is about 70% complete. Got to program one last algorithm into PHP5 then do shi

Well it seems it seems Dell wants to know what linux distro you would prefer to be pre-installed and what support structure would be best. Take the survey people, I voted for Ubuntu :-) http://www.dell.com/content/topics/survey.aspx/ss?ssid=OeAjvuto67E~&s=corp

A interesting news article worth a read if your voting for FOSS: "The OpenOffice Project has sent a letter to Michael Dell, showering praise on Dell Inc.'s chairman and CEO and asking him to consider pre-loading OpenOffice onto PCs. " http://www.crn.com/software/197802057

So it's been a while since I posted one of these never mind a post. Inspired by you guessed it...