This is from the latest Tux Magazine,

“Most of us like spending some time studying the Internet for our daily dose of information. Yet easy access to information becomes a slippery slope, consuming time and efficiency. Internet browsers enable reckless web exploring and can be addictive time killers. Ten years ago, this was hardly a concern. Everyone read newspapers conveniently organized into sections of interest. So, paper kept the allure of information surfing minimized.

Today, using the Firefox browser to inject your brain with a daily dose of news is often fatal to productivity. You read a story with two embedded links and unwittingly find you have visited five more stories before you’re aware of the time!”

The article goes on to talk about RSS as being the cure to this problem. I suffer badly from this. Distractions! I go online to do a certain task then I check my email. Big mistake. I visit a few web pages and I might find something interesting to blog about then read some more emails and visit any interesting links I find there and before I know it several hours have gone by and I still haven’t done the original thing I set out to do 🙂

The article also explains to people how to use a news aggregator.

I will have to try using Liferea news aggregator more and see if this does help fix the problem…. ha ha somehow I don’t think so.

Anyway this was a good article. If you know any Linux newbies who don’t read it I’d encourage them to start also I’ve got back copies on CD, which I was giving away at Software Freedom Day, if anyone would like one.

Tux Magazine, rss feeds

I’m running Ubuntu Dapper on my laptop. I copied the .evolution directory from my desktop machine (Ubuntu Hoary) to the laptop a few weeks ago. Everything was fine when I did it. I don’t know if this is causing these problems now though.

It started with some emails with embedded graphics, when I open them they are instantly at the bottom of the email and I have to scroll back up to read the message or see the graphics however it won’t allow me to scroll up it just keeps jumping back to the bottom of the message. I went into the preferences and removed the tick from ‘show image animations’. That seemed to stop the problem but I’m not sure why, it was a shot in the dark. Now, however, the messages still start at the bottom and some are scrolled as far as possible horizontally to the right. I can scroll back up but it’s a real pain that all these messages start at the bottom. Evolution is also crashing at random times too. Emails with attached graphics are okay.

I’ve sent this query to the LinuxChix, NewChix email mailing list to see if anyone can shed some light on this problem.

I’ll post the answers here. I like posting the tech problems I have and the results then if I need to I can refer back to them easily.

evolution email, linux, linuxchix

I took my Dad a birthday present today, though he said he wasn’t really celebrating his birthday this year. I got him a potted ranunculus but I think I came home with more than I took 🙂 I got a bag of lemons, several bags of sawdust for my chook, tips on how to improve the soil in my veggie garden and a Jackie French book to borrow. Wow!

birthdays, parents

Our society is becoming so money oriented it’s almost as if you can’t do anything without it. You can HAVE if you can pay. You can LEARN if you can pay. You can EAT if you can pay. You can WATCH TV if you can pay (see previous post). Are we doing anything to change this or are we adding to it? If we are artists, musicians, teachers, computer programmers or developers are we charging too much for our art, music, lessons or software? Are we providing free content to our communities? As I’ve said before, “What are we sharing?”

The South Australian government’s current budget may mean that school music and swimming lessons may no longer be subsidised by the government. Parents will have to pay the full amount for their children to have these lessons. Music and swimming may only be available to those who can afford them. Will we loose our future musicians and swimming stars? What if Ian Thorpe’s parents couldn’t afford swimming lessons for him? And the same for parents of musicians and singers?

If you can help at a school or community centre, do it! If you can provide free or low cost programs to schools maybe during school time or in an after school program then the schools can put money into areas which are lacking in funding. Are we helping to fix this or are we part of the problem?

materialism, government funding