Chrome shoots to number 2 in my blog viewing figures.

My Blogs visitor browser stats
Now, we must get the caveats out of the way first:
1) I know my blog is Linux/open source oriented
2) This is a very small sample set and number of users
3) I'm sure absolutely positive that other sites could have their views slued depending on the subject matter.

However, I have been using Google Analytics to keep an eye on my blog since I started it, and without fail the order of browsers visiting my site has always been Firefox first and Microsoft Internet explorer second, but not anymore. Google Chrome has moved into second place by some margin as you can see above.

In the grand scheme of the computing universe this is probably not that significant, but I have definitely seen a shift in the visitors browsers who come to this blog, which in combination with other statistics flying around the web does show a shift in peoples attitude to switching their browser.

Ubuntu 10.04 alpha has added many latest versions of it's software components

I have just run up my Virtualbox virtual machine image of Ubuntu 10.04 - Lucid - to see what if anything had changed in the last week, and it most definitely has. So, we must give 10/10 to the software packagers working on Lucid who have worked extremely hard to incorporate the latest releases.

We now have the only just released Openoffice 3.2 , which will be a big win for this release of Ubuntu given the massive speed improvements and extra compatibility. There is no doubt that this software is of core importance on many desktops, as I use it on a daily basis.

Mozilla Firefox has also now been bumped up to the lastest 3.6 release, which also adds performance increases to the browser experience, and with Google Chrome in the software repository this release is going to be well supported for web browsing. I admit I would have liked to have seen Google Chrome or even Chromium installed along side, but I guess it's not that hard for people to install it now.

The kernel has been moved to 2.6.32-13, which includes several improvements, and far to many to list here.

Gnome itself has moved to the latest series 2 release - 2.29.2 - so as predicted there is no sign of Gnome 3 or Gnome-shell. This is not surprising as these will change the way people work with OS, and can't be done lightly.

It's worth noting that currently the rumoured removal of Gimp from the default install and the switch from Google search within the Firefox search box to Yahoo(Bing) has not taken place. These changes may well occur in later releases but I will be keeping an eye out for that.

The boot speed has improved in the virtual environment, but it is too early to say if this wil hit the desire of a 10sec boot on an SSD based machine.

Wow , Openoffice 3.2 is extremely fast on Ubuntu 9.10

I have been using Openoffice for years, and while it's compatibility has always been good with other office products, speed has never been one of it's strong suites, but boy has that all changed with this latest release. When you click on the menu item to start the application, even on a machine that is busy, as mine always are, it is near as damn it instantly there. Now you can't get much better than that.

I will also comment that the last release - 3.1.1 - had made moves to getting faster anyway, so it is obviously something the dev's have been looking at.

On Ubuntu it has not made it into the standard repositories to install, so you have to do it manually, which really isn't that dificult.

Basically go to the Openoffice web site HERE and grab the file that contains all the installation files.

Untar this file into your home directories tmp directory and then from a command line change into the directory it creates, which in out case is the DEB's directory and run the command shown below, simples as the Meerkat says ;-)



Now, as we already have Openoffice 3.1.1 installed, setting up an icon to access the program is slightly harder, if you don't remove that version first. I didn't as I wanted to keep both around for now.

So you need to right click on your Applications menu on the task panel, and add a link to the new application manually, like so.



Enjoy

Chromium adds a slew of new security features to Chromium

While looking through the latest improvements to the latest daily release of Chromium I noticed a whole new page of security management.



Now I have been reading some very foolish and childish FUD around the web about how chromium calls back to the mother ship and tells Google about everything you have ever done and what you are currently drinking. I have have always know this is nonsense, and you can control exactly what goes where if you have more than two brain cells available to you. Just switching in privacy mode is just one such option open to you.

This new screen allows you to control what happens with your cookies,images,Javascript,Plug-ins and Pop-ups, that's right you can tell Chromium never to allow pop-ups. I know Firefox has had most of these for a long time, and they could be more granular, but it really is a great step forward in controlling what your browser can and can't allow.

One other nice touch is the ability to control your Adobe flash plug-in settings which also allows you to protect yourself against some of the new breed of Flash plug-in exploits.

Yes this is a great step forward and one warmly welcomed here.

Is cloud computing really that new and original

I have been working in IT for more years than I care to remember, but it seems that if you wait around long enough, technologies that I have used before, suddenly become the flavour of the month and re-appear with smart presentations from slick young people in nicely tailored suits to tell us all how different it all is this time.

This happened with virtualization, where if you are brutally honest , the only key difference to what IBM were doing decades ago, was that the technologists got it to run on the Intel architecture, with all it's horribly legacy memory management et al.

So to the cloud, which in essence is the ability to leverage the power and storage of a remote machine to achieve the task's that you were used to doing locally, sound familiar, it certainly does to me. Literally decades ago people used to share resources on an IBM mainframe to run their payroll or business finance systems, which would be physically a long way away - people couldn't afford their own mainframes - and people would attach via modems and dumb terminals.

This is exactly what we are moving towards with the concept of the "Cloud is the machine". The local device can become significantly less powerful as all the real processing of the services is done remotely. This leads to much cheaper consumer devices, whether they be phones, iPads or netbooks. The services that people also want to use today are also becoming more and more central service orientated, things like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Blogging, Email, Instant Messaging etc.

I now their are many new technologies like HTML5 and improved Javascript performance that will improve the ability of the clients to do some work locally, but they are not going to be over tasked. The new breed of Intel Atom and ARM processors will be more than powerful enough to cope with the enhanced new GPU's that are appearing almost daily.

There will always be some tasks that are best suited to having a large powerful computer locally as their are many tasks that don't virtualize well, but we are talking about a small percentage for many users who today in 2010 consider the net to be the reason for owning a computer in the first place.

Ubuntu 10.04 alpha 2 installs more quickly into virtualbox VM

After installing the alpha 1 version of the next release of Ubuntu, which did take a long time, the latest release , alpha 2 is as smooth as silk, and considerably quicker. The actual installation process is much the same as 9.10, and in fact most of the screens still show 9.10 as the version ;-)

After an initial quick look around the only major difference I can find is the introduction of the new video editing software - Pitivi - by default, but gimp is still present even though it has been rumoured that is was to replace it.

See below:




One nice feature, is that with this version the Virtualbox tools are auto-detected when you click to install them, and Ubuntu auto-installs them once you have given the correct password. This is a very neat touch and brings Ubuntu fully in-line with the sort of auto-magical installs that happens with Mac OSX and Windows.

The other noticeable new feature is speed, this virtual machine boots to the login prompt incredibly quickly, and as the development cycle continues I can only see this getting faster, it will be a feature. The standard use of Ext4 and the reduction in daemons started at initial boot is bound to impact this.

Trains, Planes and auto-mobiles, a tale of an amusing journey.

This actually happened a couple of weeks ago now, put this is the first chance I have had to upload it.

As you all know I spend most of life either in a car, train or plane rushing back and forth from my personal vineyard, otherwise know as the Loire Valley. Well if you think you have had a bad Friday commute, I'm about to make you feel a whole lot better.

The journey started well enough with a brisk and on-time tube ride from Hammersmith in London to St Pancras to catch the train to Luton airport. I completely missed the sign's at St Pancras and got on the wrong platform to watch the train I wanted depart on the other side. Oh well . I had given myself plenty of time to get there, so I got on the next one. I arrived at Luton airport via a bendybus transfer to find that the Easyjet flight was late, and it got later. The delays seemed to be down to people having 38 pieces of carry on luggage and the staff having to fight and pull them from the clasped fingers of the frightened passengers who were obviously worried they would never see them again. It is worth noting , that with all their surly staff, grubby planes and £48 bottles of Chateaux le Turd , Ryanair have only ever once been late for me. Easyjet on the other hand, have friendly helpful staff, with drinks that don't strip paint as a side line, but are always late. I must factor this in for future adventures.

Anyway, I had allowed plenty of time to get from Charles des Gaules airport to Mont Parnasse to catch the TGV to Poitiers, but Easyjet had taken most of that away, so as my RER train from Charles des Gaules pulled off with all the speed of a dead tortuise I knew I would be about 1 minute late for the connection, and I was right. So not a problem, I can catch the next one. Ooops that is at 6:50 tomorrow morning, great. Car hire booths had long been abandoned and the cafe owners are staring at me as if I had leprosy and serving me with a beer might cost them their lives. There is always something intrinsically annoying about service companies that want your money, but really don't actually want anything to do with you. I digress.

What to do, grab some cardboard and make like a hobo , find a Parisian absynth den and drink myself into next week, or get an hotel? I'm an old fart so I plumbed for the later, though it was a close run thing to the drinking den. I grabbed a copy of the local hotel guide and rang three hotels, all full, this is going really well. I decided that even if it meant sleeping on the Champs-Elysees in the most expensive hotel in Paris, I wanted some rest. I walked out of the station , straight into the nearest bar to gather my strengh. I chatted to the barman who explained their was a great "little" hotel Ibis just around the corner, so after a few more Stella's I thought I would give it a go. The extremely friendly and helpful Portuguese receptionist explained they had a cupboard at the top of the building which they kept especially for tired, hungry and dishevelled Anglais travellers. I was so pleased, I would have happily slept with the ironing boards. To be fair, it was just larger than a cupboard, but only just, the bed folded down out of the wall, and then their was no room anymore. It was truely a miracle of modern hoteliers ability to squeeze every last euro out of the modern traveller. The receptionist told me that the room had a tiny balcony with a great view of the Eiffel Tower, she wasn't lying, but she did fail to mention that you needed to lean out over the balcony, 200 feet up, to see the pretty lights. It was beautiful to be fair , if death defyingly dangerous on inspection this morning. The things that Stella makes me do....

Today, here I am on the 6:50 to Bordeaux travelling at what feels like an alarming speed towards Poitiers to grab my car, and hopefully I will be home in time for lunch! I have learnt a few things this weekend about travelling through Paris. Never trust Easyjet timetables, they are just vague estimations of which year you might arrive in, put up with the chavs on the Ryanair flights, they may be cruddy but they do get you there on time. If you need a cupboard for the night in Paris, look like a lost British soul and the Portuguese receptionist will sort you out, preferably with a view of the leaning tower of Eiffel. When you find a bar that will serve you beer near the train station, amuse yourself looking at your fellow drinkers as they truely will be a motley crew. The music blasting out from the poor quality hifi, will also bring a smile to your face. You never know how lucky we are to have the great music we do in Britain, until you start listening to the French chart toppers, a sort of reggae/punk fusion with lots of accoustic guitar and ballads.


Bon voyage.