Month: March 2006

What I use (at the moment)

Nearly a year ago, I wrote about the applications I use on a regular basis. This was obviously on the Windows laptop I am using right now. This is going to change in a major way pretty soon, when I make the big switch to Linux.

So, I thought it would be pretty interesting to make a quick list here of the desktop apps I use on a regular basis, and then in a few weeks time I can compare back. There may be fewer changes than you might think, as I have stuck to the open-source option more often than not anyway!

Stuff I use now:

  • Openoffice.org
  • Firefox
  • Thunderbird
  • FeedDemon
  • BlogJet
  • Gaim
  • Filezilla
  • 1st Page 2000
  • The GIMP
  • Limewire
  • ITunes

…and I am bound to add more when I think of them. Of course, one type of app I am certainly going to be using a lot less of are anti-virus and -malware programs.

The Changes

So, what made me want to change things round? Well, there have been, or are going to be, several changes to the way I am doing things generally, IT-wise.

One thing is that I really wanted to move away from using things that I don’t really consider ethical. The obvious one there is Microsoft, so, when I get my new PC delivered (hopefully) next week, I will be immediatley over-writing the default Windows installation with Ubuntu Linux. Expect to read a lot about my trials and tribulations in getting used to things over the next couple of months.

The other one was Google. Their actions over the latst few months have become ever more disturbing – or maybe, they are just starting to act like every other propriatory IT company out there. Anyway, stuff like the China thing, the plans to archive people’s entire hard drive on their servers and the rest of it have really put me off them. I still think that some of their products are pretty good – Gmail is a great, great interface, but attached to a very creepy system, for example – but generally I felt less and less comfortable relying on them in any way.

How do these things affect my blog? They don’t, really, except that I wanted a new URL to start up a new email address on, and that this change in my attitudes could be used as an excuse for a wider change in my blogging. The split between Tech and non-Tech is a good one, for I really can’t believe that people who like looking at some of my links and stuff to current IT stories really want to see photos of the snowman I built today.

Anyway, this is a bit of a rambly start to the new blog. But this is where I am starting from, and it will be interesting to see where I end up.

First past the post

Here’s the first post, taking over from where davebriggs.net left off. Well, some of it.

This is where I am going to be doing all of the tech stuff I used to write about – in other words, most of what made up the previous site. All the other bits, like photos, books, music, films, footy and politics will be on another blog, World of Dave.

Here’s the RSS feed for this blog. You should be able to get it via autodiscovery in your aggregator anyway. It’s through FeedBurner now.

Anyway, enjoy the site. Hopefully it will be a bit more focussed than before.

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