I used Parasol when i did a few months consulting. I'd use them again.

I first heard them on the John Peel show when Garlands came out & went out & bought it the following day. Loved it. I like the raw sound of the early music, especially Garlands. What they did after that, IMO, started disappearing up it's own orifice & just kept going. It all got a bit too fluffy & nice. The only Harold Budd album i won't listen to is the one he did with Liz & Will.

Reluctant, i never managed to get into Be Bop Deluxe, i know people who would agree with you though. Some of the Frippertronics sounding E-bow music he did is good. Love the Three White Roses album he did with Harold Budd.

I got one of those King of Shave things when my supply of GII+ blades finally ran out. The supermarket had it on special offer. It's the worst razor i've ever used. It's way too big & i hate the flexy head. I can't do at the base of my nose & the sides of my mouth without practising gurning. Needless to say I won't be buying any replacement blades for it.

Sorry nedrapier ;)

Sounds like i should look at getting one of those Merkur's

The Dammed's version of Ballroom Blitz :)

Bootsy's cover of If 6 were 9 (well Axiom Funk really, not just Bootsy).

I used fedora (core4) as a basis for realtime control (with RTAI) and found SE had to be disabled, though I left it enabled on my server. I had no end of trouble with it, but I'm glad to say that it seems to be much more friendly in later versions.

Heh. +1. Those early implementations of SELinux were rather too restrictive. There's no point in having a security policy that's so draconian you can't get any work done unless you switch it off.

I've been using Linux as my desktop since 1992, initially SLS & then Red Hat variants since 1995.

I work for Red Hat as a solutions architect. Linux is the only O/S i've worked with since 2000.

IMO, the only time you need to look at running AV on Linux of you're using it as mail/file etc server for Windows. That's not for protecting the server, but the client systems. Some people run AV scanners for compliance with standards such as PCI-DSS, though even then, they're often not mandatory.

Whilst i don't disagree that there's few viruses for linux, there's plenty of exploits that allow a reasonably competent cracker to gain control of your system. So just because it's linux, don't assume you're safe, you're not. You certainly should enable the firewall & run SELinux enabled in targeted mode. Keep the system up to date with security patches.

The security risks are greater if you're using Linux as a desktop. Take a look at Mark Cox's RHEL risk reports for the vulnerability comparisons between a bare bones Linux server build & a full desktop build. See what happens when you add something like firefox ;)

Elite (C64)
Rogue/Nethack
Doom
Quake I & II

Rancilio Silvia & Rocky here. Very happy with them.

IMO, there's a massive difference between the supermarket & mass market (Illy, Lavazza) beans & freshly roasted beans you get from the specialist roasters.

Since Hill & Valley stopped doing small quantity mail order, i've been buying beans from Monmouth in Borough Market whenever i pass it. Their organic espresso blend is very nice.

As others have said, any responsible mail hosting service should have all this HA'd, & mail is one of the easier services to cluster.

IME, for large mail clusters, it's normally the shared storage to the mail servers or the user authentication that's as likely to be causing the problem.

When a "friend" bought goods at B&H, they offered the worldwide warranty on the items that didn't have it. Seemed like they got a lot of brits making the most of the 2 $/£ exchange rate :)

I had a pair of E2C's & they sounded ok to me. When they finally died a death from 3+ years of day-to-day use/abuse i replaced them with a pair of SE240's. They're in another league sound-wise, with a very clean detailed sound. I've seen reviews that say they're light on bass. Can't say i notice that.

If you have a lumicycle front light, their back light is worth a look. No switches to go wrong, it just plugs into the existing loom from the battery.
Nice & bright too.

mcmoonter, that's exactly the sort of thing i used to do.

One time, minutes after having a filling done i fainted whilst stood at the bus stop & collapsed/fell into the road. Fortunately no vehicles were approaching, else i'd have been flattened. I still have the scar on my chin where it arrested my fall.

Ask your dentist about injections that don't contain adrenalin. They work for me.

I've done a triple & a quad cutter into lumi halogen cans & very pleased with the results. Been running the 3 LED one for nearly 2 years now.

Used a plumbing 28mm copper end feed stop end for a heatsink. Cut the sides of the stop end to be "fins" that splay out very slightly to get maximum contact area against the side of the lumi can, & with necessary slots for clearance around the bolt etc. Heatsink compound between the fins & the case. Fixed the back of the LED board to the face of the end stop with some artic silver adhesive.

Tape up the control board & slot into the gap behind the end stop perpendicular to the LED board. Not had any problems with overheating, running at (iirc) 75C thermal shutdown. The end stop arrangement seems to conduct the heat to the case quite nicely.

I run both at 75% current rating. I can't say i detect that much less brightness for a lot of extra battery drain & noticeable extra heat generation compared to the 100% current setting.

With the triple with a narrow beam diffuser on my helmet & the quad with a middle-ish beam diffuser on the bars, they're overkill for the type of riding i do :)

After having some work by a particularly barbaric trainee NHS dentist as a kid in the late 60's, I got very nervous going to the dentist & regularly blacked out after having injections. I put off lots of work that should have got done, putting off the inevitable.

After i suffered an abscess, i M'dTFU & found a wonderful local dentist who specialises in treating phobic patients. It turns out i'm not exactly phobic, it's the adrenalin in the injections that was causing me to faint.

get_iplayer[/url] does BBC TV & radio, & ITV TV streams. You can specify the default resolution for the BBC streams, so it'll grab the HD ones where available. Allows you to specify the output codec .. wmv, mpeg4 etc.

Also has a pvr mode so you can setup a job to run nightly to download streams that have, say, "bike" in the title.

IME, all the USB dongles are all made by the same company – Huawei – usb product id 1003 vendor id 12d1 (you can easily check this with lsusb). I've not had to get the Orange one working but I'd assume it's the same as the 3, Vodafone, o2 ones. They require minimal hacking to get working. Look for something called E220activator. To use that you'll need to add a simple udev rule that calls it when the modem is plugged in.

I did a few months contracting a while back & used Parasol. No problems with them.

So does this mean there will be some D300 bargains to be had now ?.

Looks like a verbascum. I have the white version of that in the garden. Bees love them.

I've been waiting for CK to release their conversion kit for a few months now. I didn't know about that BETD converter. Thanks :)

One of those mini-espresso makers that TJ linked when backpacking.

Bialetti stove top when camping from the car. Also serve as a useful perch for Langdale Great Tits looking for discarded crumbs from breakfast.

Edit: grrr @ the swear filter changing the name of perfectly innocent images

Breakfast most days is Infinity deluxe muesli with Provamel sweetened soy milk & whatever fruit i have in the house, possibly followed by some toast with Suma margarine, all washed down with orange juice & an espresso.

I'll occasionally use fruit juice on cereal, especially when i'm working away & stuck in a hotel with no soy milk. Pear juice is nice.

usual cooked breakfast it'd be beans, fried mushrooms & crumbled bean curd (which comes out a bit like scrambled eggs), sauté spuds done in a wok with chilli & garlic. There's a Madhur Jaffrey spicy scrambled eggs recipe that adopts well to bean curd.

My favourite breakfast, when i have time the night before & i remember to make the batter (which isn't often unfortunately), is Idly or Dosa, Sambhar & masala potatoes.

I found this Elephant Hawk Moth in the conservatory the other night

HeathenWoods, +1 to that. Of the 70's vinyl i have to hand, the ones i expected to see something on (Glastonbury Fayre, Greasy Truckers Party, Fairies, Gong etc) had nothing. Tonto's Expanding Headband came up with the goods … "The only way out of a circle is through the centre. Peace, love & joy. Signed Bob & Malcolm".

Porky must have been bored when he did the Cabs "Live at YMCA". One side is "A Lively Porky Prime Cut"

There's a torrent on isohunt right now with complete versions of Care & "Best Of". Unfortunately it's not seen a seeder for some time & 4 of the Jam Science tracks are incomplete :(

I'd love a flac quality copy of Jam Science. That has to be one of my favourite albums of the 80's.

I'm another who didn't take care of his vinyl. I'm sure there's creatures living in the depths of the grooves on Hubris on my copy of Jam Science.

Currently listening to the first A Guy Called Gerald mix. Nice one. Thanks for sharing that chvck :)

get_iplayer[/url] will record BBC TV & radio, ITV & in theory Hulu streams. Runs on Windows & OS/X as well as Linux. Has a pvr mode you can run from cron/scheduler etc.

You’d probably need 3 trains from Amberley back to Winchester & at least 3 from Eastbourne to Amberley. It would be one less train, but more riding, going to Worthing, Ford or Angmering. Worthing would probably make the most sense as it’s reasonably close to the SDW, all the fast trains to Southampton stop there.

Something to watch out for on the train on your way back, if you’re going to be doing that in the rush hour. Southern only allow folding bikes on trains leaving Brighton between 5pm & 7pm. No restrictions on trains into Brighton that time of day.

Red Hat has been around forever in Linux terms, but comes with KDE, which i could never get head round

The default desktop for a graphical Red Hat install is Gnome. Always has been.

You’re probably thinking of SuSE.

If you’re used to using unix, & as you say you’re wanting to avoid a “dummies” version, i’d avoid Ubuntu. That’s much more tailored to people unused to Unix command line etc. & I suspect you’ll find Ubuntu a bit frustrating.

For what you say you’re wanting to do, the desktop is going to be less important than the developer toolset. I’d suggest looking at CentOS (basically Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) with the Red Hat branding removed), or Fedora. (disclaimer, I work for Red Hat so would say that wouldn’t I ;)

You’d also find the same developer toolsets on some of the other more Unix-like distro’s such as SuSE & Debian.

I can’t really offer any advice on running it on your Vista laptop. (I’ve never used a windows desktop). What i would suggest is avoiding using a Live image on a USB key. For dev. work you’ll be wanting something a bit more permanent, even starting out. If you can use some form of virtualisation & run it in that, go for that. Alternatively, look at using a USB drive to store the linux filesystems & create a bootable USB key that runs linux from the USB drive. That way your vista is left untouched.

The cables on the older E2C’s (like mine) crack due to the cold apparently. Mine were cracked in about 15 places in the end, much like ski’s up there ^^. One “crack” somehow ended up about about 10mm long (i had some insulating tape around it). Eventually one cable got to be intermittent, prompting me to get the se240’s.

Ski, if yours were a year old you’d be able to get them swapped on warranty. They have 2 years & Shure apparently are good at honouring it. Wish it was 3 years.

Dibbs, i got an XTR crankset just before the price hike, so hopefully won’t be needing chainrings for a while yet ;)

I used to be vegan & went through a similar exercise.

The Torq & Cliff bars & gels are lactose free, & taste ok.

I used the Torq vegan recovery. It seemed to work. My post ride drink was soya milk with the torq recovery powders, some of the Ecomil soy powder (get it in the local wholefoods shop), a banana & some cocoa powder whizzed up in a blender.

Some people have issues with soy so that may not work for you.

I used a pair of Shure E2C’s most days for 3 years (until i broke one of the cables). They would come in at the upper limit of your budget. They have a great sound & come with a lot of different buds. You can buy packs of just one bud type from Shure. Once you get the fit right i’d suggest doing that.

I’ve now upgraded to SE420’s & their sound quality is something else.

If you’re going to go the open proxy route, i’d do as fu_manchu says, plus, i’d configure your proxy.pac so that only traffic for the sites you need to anonymise gets routed via that proxy. Other traffic will then continue to be routed via your normal proxies. (proxy.pac is assuming you’re using firefox. I don’t know what the equivalent for IE is, i assume it has something similar).

Another option would be to find someone willing to allow you to ssh tunnel from their server on a IP subnet.

Elite on C64
Rogue & Nethack on various *nix boxes
Doom, Doom II on linux
Quake, Quake II on linux

Quake II co-op kept us sane during the long boring nights on Y2K duty, waiting for the phone to ring.

If the drive isn’t spinning up it might well be suffering from stiction, especially if the USB caddy case isn’t well ventilated, the drive has been left on for long periods of time in a warm environment etc., & the spindle bearing grease has cooked. (If there’s too much friction in the bearings the motor won’t bother trying to spin up the platters).

Try sticking it in an airtight bag in the freezer for 24 hours. That’s worked for me with drives suffering from stiction before.

It’s bit bigger than what you’re looking for, but i’m liking my Gregory Z55.

I did the same on my Montane Aero about 3 years ago, L shaped tear 2″ x 1″.
Local outdoor shop recommended fixing it with “SeamGrip”. Costs about a fiver for loads more than you’ll need. The repair is done inside the garment so you barely notice the tear on the outside. Recommended.

There were other games on the C64 besides Elite ?