It's the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love,

and you can all slake your nostalgic or simply prurient thirsts with this article. There's enough amusing stuff here to take you back for a whole evening. For best results, burn incense and smoke dope and stick on appropriate music. You know etc etc.

Birthday at the weekend, a riot of fun and all-nightery. It's a great time of year to have one. Wish my little Olympus Stylus compact camera worked better in low light though. I don't usually like to take my Nikon digital SLR out on the razz for obvious reasons.

I covet a decent portable location sound recorder, I finally have my hands on "Shakey" and I am listening to Squarepusher. That's me. Every time I buy more Squarepusher I am pushed inevitably towards the conclusion that I lucked out with my earlier purchases though. Get the "Hard Normal Daddy" album, worry less about the rest. As I cycled down the Thames today I became aware that it is eights week or something and there is a lot of competitive rowing afoot. Hard to stay out of the way of onrushing supporters on bikes. Hard to stay separate from the drink, really, and not in the usual sense.

As you can see I have abandoned structure here. No time. Garage Band. Workies. Heat. Art. Funny old world.

The Mailing Preference Service

One of your few weapons in the fight against a tide of junk mail. Get yer Telephone Preference Service registration on the same site. Free in both cases, and only takes a minute. None of this will completely free you from being hassled, because not all companies belong to the scheme. But surely it's worth a go. I've always had a low level of junk mail since I first heard of the scheme.

Just in case I failed to sufficiently ouline the dangers of WEP,

this timely article makes it plain. Two minutes and you're wide open. I suppose that with the increasing speed and decreasing cost of computing power there is always going to be an arms race with security of this kind. I won't even begin to claim that I know a great deal about encryption, but there's one thing I do know. If you have wireless access to your network, get your WPA on - and get it set up with a filthy great key-length. Really, it's enough to put you off the whole wireless thing isn't it? Then again, for home use there's nothing beats bits of wire for speed, ease of setup and security. Of course at this point they burgle you and physically pinch the hard drive. And I guess "they" were always going to be able to take your paperwork away, even before the advent of personal computing. So let's not be too paranoid, but then let's not just set up our security on the path of least resistance either.

On a less techie, and therefore almost inevitably less boring note, the Oxfordshire visual arts festival is now in full swing. If you are not already planning to do so, might I recommend picking up the excellent free guide and schlepping around a few exhibitions? It's a good excuse for walk and a poke into other people's lairs. And, of course, you will be seeing the art. The art can be defined, in my view, as the neat stuff. I have so far been to Bartlemas chapel and to St Alban's church - both East Oxford - and a few other smaller venues. And already I have been delighted with what I've seen. Artweeks really is a great - and free - opportunity to soak up some beauty and expand the horizons a little.

In other news, I am using to make both head and tail of the iMac, my first foray into Macdom. I think it's going to take a long time to fully integrate it into my network and indeed my working methods, but with the specter of XP being eventually end-of-lifed and the unspeakable Vista forced upon us in order to stay "secure" alternatives have to be considered for those of us who are quite computer-reliant. Now that, cack-handedness notwithstanding (see earlier post), both Ubuntu and Apple's OS X will get me 98% of the way there I feel a lot happier.

There I go, thechie stuff again. I'm off to look at some art before it all gets too silly.

So there I am, with quite a lot of time invested in trying to set up

wireless on Ubuntu. I'm liking the Ubuntu well enough. I have it set up using the Windows fonts, so that the appearance is pretty nice. The main thing about the standard installation is that font smoothing requires editing a text file. Actually, being as Ubuntu is only a more house-trained version of the geeks orgasm that is Linux, getting anything very tweaky done is a matter of editing text configuration files. But I don't care. I've got the thing pretty and I like what I see. It looks a hell of a lot less home-made than the crappy fonting and so forth you get "out of the box". It's all there but the wireless. So I figure I'll drop a fiver on an alternative network solution, being a long network cable to my router. And with that, shazzam. All is worky. I proceed to download and install every piece of free music software I can find, and there is much. I like what I see. There are many multitrackers, synths and drumbi - if that's the plural of drumbox, which it is not but should be.

Blundering about on my bed with the Ubuntu box whizzing away beside it now gets old. I covet having the thing on my desk where I can properly get at it. It's a squeeze since there are already two other computers in my desk region, and I am a believer in a good big display on all such things. Finally, though, I manage it. For a while I am very pleased, and take several pictures and try to leave things alone in the trouser department while admiring the sheer horsepower now arrayed in front of me. Only one thing. The Ubuntu box is running a beast of a graphics card, wasted on a box simply running simple 2D stuff and for music use. And because of something that Windows obviously has and Ubuntu obviously has not, the fan on the card is doing wind-tunnel stuff full bore all the time. Not what you want, and certainly not the kind of racket that helps on a box destined for music production. Hmm.

So I had a passively cooled graphics card in the box before a friend kindly gave me the beast card that roars. Ok then, if I revert to that I lose only noise for my purposes. Let's be do that. Struggling in confined space, I try to remove the beast card. Hmm, recalcitrant. Ah, I remember. It's one with a spring-loaded pin to release at the back end of the slot. Grope, grope and - ah, pull. Ooh - I'm holding a perfectly formed facsimile of a release pin. In fact, I'm holding a vital capacitor which I have neatly shagged by pulling it off the graphics card. Bugger. I've stuffed the card. Still, for now I need only replace the previous card as planned. I may be able to fix the beast later, and anyway there is nothing I dislike as much as noisy bits in computers.

The previous card, I remember belatedly, is in someone else's machine. I gave it to them when I had the better one. I mean, nothing's as useless as old hardware, right? So I've crippled my Ubuntu box to the point where I shall need a new graphics card to get it up and running again. Hey, I can be a dick. Nothing surprising. With great power comes the responsibility to not be a great fool. I resolve never again to botch hardware maintenance purely to avoid a spaghetti fight under my desk. Well, I think, crying into my tea, I can at least read up on some of the music software I was (briefly) so taken with.

In so reading up, I find that most of it is available for OS X and often Windows too. So frankly, other than as a curiosity, I don't need a Linux box really. Well, less than I need the desktop lebensraum at any rate. So the whole lot's back under my bed for now and the desktop has returned to being home only to my big new iMac and my nice quiet XP box. In many ways a relief, although onlookers will now believe it less likely that I was ever Blofeld.

In conclusion, I'd say Ubuntu is a very good bet as an easy-to-set-up desktop operating system UNLESS you are going to want wireless networking, which I found to be a world of pain. In fact I never got that bit going, and the advice on the web - in various places including the Ubuntu help and forums - was all pretty unclear and conflicting. And without being too much of a you-know-what I'd add that I'm pretty clued-up around these things, so don't rely on the wireless lightly. Unless, that is, you have yet to buy your wireless hardware. In that case, just buy whatever is best recommended for Ubuntu. That'll always be cool, if you have that luxury. You can get your Open Office and your Firefox and your Thunderbird and apart from gaming you can hold your head up. Fair play to Ubuntu indeed. But I don't need it right now as much as I need the space. It's pretty cool though. You'd be silly to run a dodgy or outdated copy of Windows instead, believe me. The learning curve is very shallow for day-to-day use.

And the new iMac? Goatee-sporting sods with wire-rimmed specs everywhere desperately hope I'll be raving about that. So far, I'm not. Early days yet, but so far I don't entirely see what's supposed to be so great. Sorry. Wish I'd drunk the grand instead right now, although don't worry - I'll surely drink a grand as well. And I might get to loving the Mac as I use it more. It has at least one massive advantage over the Ubuntu box; a prat has not destroyed the graphics card, so it works.

Well, that Ubuntu

It all seems well and good, apart from the fact that I can't get no net satisfaction on it. And a box with no access to the net is, well, I think we used to call that a typewriter. Or a games console. Certainly no use to me.

I was quite happy until I noticed that, out of the metaphorical box, Ubuntu wanted to use WEP on my wireless connection. WEP, for the uninitiated (and I don't blame you at all), is a form of wireless security that works on the premise that you are quite happy for any script-kiddie to get full access to your doings in no time at all. A total waste of time in the modern world, and even more dangerous in that you might think your hindquarters were not hanging out and available to all whereas the reverse (no pun intended) is likely true. I tried to get proper WPA organized, but Ubuntu just wanted to tie itself in a knot, seemingly enabling and disabling my wireless dongle at random. Ubuntu's help says there is WPA as standard on the latest release (7.04, which I am/was using), but there is not. Oh look, Ubuntu itself claims the opposite. It offers help to fix this, but of course all this help is - you guessed it - on the web.

As of right now I've given up. All the other Linuxes I've tried have sussed this perfectly well, so bad naughty wicked Ubuntu. I don't have the time. I have two XP boxes that simply work, and a decent Apple. I'd really love to give Linux a fair crack of the whip, but it lets me down every time in some respect. So it's off to play with the (BSD based) OS X a bit more. At the moment though I'm doing everything that matters on my XP boxen, and quite frankly with due diligence there is nothing wrong with that.

With the amount of going on my way a sadder and wiser man I do in relation to technology I must by now be the most depressed and clued-up individual out there.

I may resume trying to get the bugger to work, or I may not. Watch this space. But people, don't just use WEP.

Today I is mostly

cleaning the house, doing the laundry, downloading the Ubuntu (you'd better be right, Peacock) and drinking the tea.

Right now I am loving:

The Secret Oxford forums on Freeforums (lost the bastard link) on which only I and the owner are posting as yet - and in brief at that. But it's early days. Register! Post! Find the link!

I can't. Other boxen.

Liking Audacity on multiple platforms, a small amount of Second Life, posting all this without helpful links or compunction about it, vinyl (cheese vinyl), the idea of Belgium and Holland more, and my Music Man.

Don't like complex things, domestic mess and disrepair, business, shit tuners, the telly or - much - my new Mac. Thought I could do new stuff on it. Seems not. Seems XP fine for Jimbo. Hopes hang on Garage Band.

Want summer jacket. Want to sell a load of really need tech I don't have space for. Anyone shopping? I can do most stuff, and also have an arseload of CDs more than I need....

Ga'an. Treat yourself.

Pay for my hols.

Loads of gigs this week,

and in general loads going on - but there is light at the end of the tunnel. I look forward to some quality time mucking about on the internet and, er, going to Tesco and stuff like that. I'm a cheapish date.

Low frequencies are now generated by a Music Man bass around here. My word, the focus. The drive. I can't think why I waited so long. Oh yeah, didn't have the money...

Exciting other news is that I am in the process of migrating all musical activity over to a Mac. Yup, I'm a (partial) switcher. First impressions are positive. It's certainly quiet, which is the holy grail of computers in music. More when I have played around with it some more.