Category Archives: Free Software - Page 3

Sitquietly – Linux Meditation Software

Posted by on April 29, 2007 No comments

I’ve been a little busy in the background for a while now, programming, refining, testing. The result is my first program written for Linux. It’s called Sitquietly, and it’s a simple meditation timer.

You can see its’ page along the top of my site, I’ve been using it for my own meditation sessions, I think it works well enough to be shared out. I hope to get it into Ubuntu Universe as soon as I can, and I’ll be continuing development of it as I have a few things planned, including selectable chime sounds and maybe even background music. I certainly need to develop the online help and may even throw in a few basic meditation exercises to get people started.

Please give me feedback and let me know what you think, enjoy!

Now this is amusing….

Posted by on March 24, 2007 No comments

We’ve probably all seen the Get a Mac ads at the cinema or on TV, well Novell have put together a couple of spoof ads for Linux. I think the second one is better, check them out!

Return to Free Software, with tunes!

Posted by on January 29, 2007 3 comments

Well, I finally upgraded my PC the other day and I’ve got Ubuntu 6.10 back! Know what? It feels good to back on Free Software, I much prefer using Ubuntu to Windows any day of the week!

For me, one of the unexpected bonuses was a music player called “Banshee”. It’s a very good music player, but also contains social aspects in that it talks to the Last.fm social music site about what you’re listening to. The result is on the new box on the right hand side of my blog, it’s the top 10 artists I’ve listened to recently. What the heck, at least you can all have a giggle at my musical tastes now! :-)

O/S Zealots

Posted by on September 1, 2006 No comments

It’s been a while since my last post. I’ve been reading a bit of Chaung Tzu recently and his story about the p’eng bird rang a few rather rusty bells. The peng is a huge bird, able to fly huge distances easily, but it’s seen by a small Dove..

A cicada and a young dove laughed, saying, “Now, when I fly with all my might, ’tis as much as I can do to get from tree to tree. And sometimes I do not reach, but fall to the ground midway. What then can be the use of going up ninety thousand li to start for the south?”

The crop of O/S zealots remind me of the dove in this story. This O/S is the best, or that one is the best, there is no middle ground there, they can’t see past their own view point. The thing is that any given Operating System is simply a tool in a toolbox, useful in one situation but maybe not so much in another, each has its own respective strengths and weaknesses.

I feel that the best way lies between the zealots, the middle way. Use each tool as appropriate, don’t think that one tool is the entire toolbox.