Archive for December, 2006

Blog Spam is Sick

Saturday, December 30th, 2006

This blog has been hit by a lot of spam recently, prompting me to activate the Akismet plugin. This works really well, so hopefully the problem is solved.

However,  the spam I was getting wasn’t the usual irritating stuff, it was links to hard core porn sites. This is sickening, as this blog could have belonged to a child. Are these people so sad and isolated that they don’t think or care about things like that?

The Proliferation of Ubuntu SE

Sunday, December 24th, 2006

I’ve been watching the spread of Ubuntu Satanic Edition with interest. A Google search for “ubuntu satanic edition” on Thursday 14th December returned around 470 hits. A week later that has spiraled to 470,000!

That’s very interesting because the site only had around 230,000 hits in that time. The majority of those came from digg.com. Quite a few of the links were on people’s blogs, but most of them were on pointless news sites which are automatically updated with the same stories.

Interestingly for a Linux site, 60% of the hits were from Windows boxes and only 32% Linux. However, 74% of people used Firefox.

Oh, and it got 1144 diggs on digg.com

Evil Edgy Released

Thursday, December 14th, 2006

It all started as a tongue in cheek post on this blog. Then I messed around with The Gimp for a while (the graphics package, not the guy in the box). Before I know it, the whole thing got out of hand and Ubuntu Satanic Edition was born…

Actually, it took bloody ages. On top of the artwork, properly packaging the while thing and putting it in a secure APT repository was a lot of work. Not to mention the website.

Still, all in all, the feedback has been pretty good. Most people have seen the funny side and recognised it as satire. Nobody is too upset, apart from one bloke who was offended because it wasn’t “Evil” enough! Still, can’t please everyone!

Hopefully, it will take off and we’ll be able to expand the artwork with and come up with something which looks sensational. It may even turn into a proper distro one day… As some people have suggested, a 666 MB .ISO would be very cool…

House Price Fiasco

Wednesday, December 13th, 2006

House prices in the UK have tripled in the last ten years. Actually, where I live they’ve tripled in the last seven years. How on Earth has this been allowed to happen? The main people to benefit from this rise are the ones who could have put a stop to it. Estate agents, mortgage lenders and, most of all, the Government. Gordon Brown goes on about how fantastic our economy has been over recent years when, in fact, he’s completely wrecked the standard of society in Britain for the foreseeable future.

How mad is it when even a well paid job cannot earn you enough money to buy any property in some areas, let alone the three bed semi which you could have bought a few years ago. Even the ones who can afford a mortgage are borrowing three times as much as they used to, only to have most of it taken away in inheritance tax once they eventually finish paying for it!

Well done Gordon Brown. Hard luck Great Britain.