Stitching things together - Second Life, Twitter and the web. Second Life is a wonderful experience once you have acclimatised to it. Integrating it with your web presence is a little more tricky. The next release of the client will include the ability to integrate websites more closely with your parcel of land - more on exactly how that works when it's been released.
There are however other options for getting traffic flowing between SL and your website, tying your website more closely to your SL presence. SLURLs are a key component to this as they allow a web page URL to point to a specific SL location. This means that you can link to an SL location of your choice from your webpage. Thats a good start, but we can go further than that.
www. twitter.com is an increasingly popular mini blog (posts are limited to 128 characters) that has been designed to talk about what you are doing right now or give brief news updates. These is also a feature on the Twitter site that allows you to include your top 5 posts on your website simply by pasting in a little javascript or a small flash movie.
This makes for an interesting combination, when you add to the mix the fact that you can script a SL device that allows you to complete a twitter post from inside SL simply by typing a command into the local chat box. This is something I have been working on and I will be producing a small item that has some useful functionality packed into it. The effect is that you can blog to your twitter account directly, and easily include things like SLURLS (I have added some code that will create a SLURL for your current location) in your post so that people surfing your website or your blog can easily find the location about which you are posting. When I have a fully packaged device I shall post and let you know how I'm gonna make it available - I may charge a small amount and sell it, but think the price will be www.tumblr.com provides you with a perfect solution for blogging your experiences and the media that goes with them.
Tuesday, 17 June 2008
Friday, 6 June 2008
EeePC 900
I don't have a huge amount of luck with laptops. I spend easily 6 hours a day (sometime much more) using mine and I guess I expect quite a lot from it - high performance, long battery life light weight small footprint. You know. The things you pay an absolute fortune for. Only I refuse to pay and absolute fortune for a laptop. I guess £800 is about my maximum. Let's face it, if I go and buy a £2000 laptop and around about half-way through my third day of ownership, I'll drop it.
So that's why I chose my HP Pavillion DV2000. 14.1 inch, 3 hours battery, powerful enough, looked nice. Two years happy computing later and the hard drive finally dies, which was only to be expected really as I commute for between 3 and 4 hours every day, which means may laptop gets thoroughly shaken about.
New hard drive, take the plunge with Linux (Ubunbtu then OpenSuSE) and all is good. Then last Thursday I turn my trusty laptop on to the sound of random crackles from the speakers and nothing else, no bios messages, nothing. OK. Time to do two things: replace my laptop with something temporary, repair my old laptop.
A number of people I know have bought (and are universally happy with) eeePC 701s. Given my recent switch away from MS Windows and onto Linux the idea of a small Linux based laptop is very attractive. The screen was a bit of a sticking point though. A little small. But not on the 900 series. The other fact that sold me on this was the solid state disk - 20GB, no moving parts (so less prone to breaking).
One shopping trip later, and for the quite reasonable price of £329 I'm the owner of an EeePC 900, Linux, 20GB.
The initial OS runs in tabbed 'wizard' mode. I have to say this was a little uncomfortable as it makes the eeePC as easy to use and accessible as mobile phone, but makes it hard to get beyond the default set of applications. A quick search of web gives a number of pages that provide access to relatively (assuming you know a little about Linux) easy methods for switching to a standard KDE window manager referred to as 'advanced desktop'.
One thing that I did try was installing an alternative Linux distribution. Installing OpenSuSE 10.3 went rather easily, and worked exactly as you would expect it to. Drivers were easily available for just about everything, and the experience and Gnome (my preference over KDE) worked fine.
One reason has made me reinstall the default OS and use the KDE advanced desktop: speed.
A boot under OpenSuSE was taking nearly 2 minutes. I've just timed a boot and it's taking only 28 seconds to get to the point where the OS has finished loading and is offering me a dialogue asking me how I want to open the 4GB SD card I have in at the moment. That kind of speed difference seems to be consistent across all the applications starting up. I don't know anywhere near enough about Linux to be able to say why that might be, but it is enough to make the eeePC easy to use for the 1 thing I want to look up quickly, rather than waiting an age for it to boot. If I wanted to wait, I'd go back to MS Windows!
My one issue exists because I installed OpenSuSE. The 20GB solid state disk appears to be made up of a 4GB onboard unit supported by a 16GB secondary disk. I have no issue about the fact that the two are separate. My problem is that the recovery disk provided with the eeePC doesn't reconfigure this disk for you. As it stands, I have only the 4GB internal drive configured. The solution to this problem is trickier than I expected - I have created a partition, used fstab to say what it is and can now use mount /dev/sdb1 to mount it. But these doesn't seem to be any way to get it to automount. Even setting two linux gurus that I know onto the problem hasn't yielded a solution. I'll post one when / if I find one.
The eeePC offers a good enough screen and enough performance that I can do the image, layout and web based work I always have done. The screen is a little small but at 1024x600 pixels is just large enough to be usable. Gimp and Scribus work fine (if a little cramped). Even the Second Life client runs fast enough to be usable when all the settings are turned down. Thunderbird and Skype are already installed and Flock works well and is easy to install.
Oh, and battery life is over 2 and a half hours. Long enough, and longer using less taxing applications.
My next task is to find out if my HP can be repaired and how much / how long that will take. In the mean-time, I'm happy and productive with my eeePC.
Alan
So that's why I chose my HP Pavillion DV2000. 14.1 inch, 3 hours battery, powerful enough, looked nice. Two years happy computing later and the hard drive finally dies, which was only to be expected really as I commute for between 3 and 4 hours every day, which means may laptop gets thoroughly shaken about.
New hard drive, take the plunge with Linux (Ubunbtu then OpenSuSE) and all is good. Then last Thursday I turn my trusty laptop on to the sound of random crackles from the speakers and nothing else, no bios messages, nothing. OK. Time to do two things: replace my laptop with something temporary, repair my old laptop.
A number of people I know have bought (and are universally happy with) eeePC 701s. Given my recent switch away from MS Windows and onto Linux the idea of a small Linux based laptop is very attractive. The screen was a bit of a sticking point though. A little small. But not on the 900 series. The other fact that sold me on this was the solid state disk - 20GB, no moving parts (so less prone to breaking).
One shopping trip later, and for the quite reasonable price of £329 I'm the owner of an EeePC 900, Linux, 20GB.
The initial OS runs in tabbed 'wizard' mode. I have to say this was a little uncomfortable as it makes the eeePC as easy to use and accessible as mobile phone, but makes it hard to get beyond the default set of applications. A quick search of web gives a number of pages that provide access to relatively (assuming you know a little about Linux) easy methods for switching to a standard KDE window manager referred to as 'advanced desktop'.
One thing that I did try was installing an alternative Linux distribution. Installing OpenSuSE 10.3 went rather easily, and worked exactly as you would expect it to. Drivers were easily available for just about everything, and the experience and Gnome (my preference over KDE) worked fine.
One reason has made me reinstall the default OS and use the KDE advanced desktop: speed.
A boot under OpenSuSE was taking nearly 2 minutes. I've just timed a boot and it's taking only 28 seconds to get to the point where the OS has finished loading and is offering me a dialogue asking me how I want to open the 4GB SD card I have in at the moment. That kind of speed difference seems to be consistent across all the applications starting up. I don't know anywhere near enough about Linux to be able to say why that might be, but it is enough to make the eeePC easy to use for the 1 thing I want to look up quickly, rather than waiting an age for it to boot. If I wanted to wait, I'd go back to MS Windows!
My one issue exists because I installed OpenSuSE. The 20GB solid state disk appears to be made up of a 4GB onboard unit supported by a 16GB secondary disk. I have no issue about the fact that the two are separate. My problem is that the recovery disk provided with the eeePC doesn't reconfigure this disk for you. As it stands, I have only the 4GB internal drive configured. The solution to this problem is trickier than I expected - I have created a partition, used fstab to say what it is and can now use mount /dev/sdb1 to mount it. But these doesn't seem to be any way to get it to automount. Even setting two linux gurus that I know onto the problem hasn't yielded a solution. I'll post one when / if I find one.
The eeePC offers a good enough screen and enough performance that I can do the image, layout and web based work I always have done. The screen is a little small but at 1024x600 pixels is just large enough to be usable. Gimp and Scribus work fine (if a little cramped). Even the Second Life client runs fast enough to be usable when all the settings are turned down. Thunderbird and Skype are already installed and Flock works well and is easy to install.
Oh, and battery life is over 2 and a half hours. Long enough, and longer using less taxing applications.
My next task is to find out if my HP can be repaired and how much / how long that will take. In the mean-time, I'm happy and productive with my eeePC.
Alan
Thursday, 5 June 2008
Second Life and Healthcare
I've spent some time looking at Second Life and I'm left wondering: where are the Healthcare companies that should be in here, and where is the organised public health education?
There are a couple of health sites - the NHS is a very good example, but it's role is to demonstrate and gather feedback on new ways of deploying health care to the public. It doesn't provide health or disease related information. Healh Info Island has more of an informal feel to it, and while it provides a large volume of content, the the arrangement of it and its level of ineraction seems somewhat limited.
My interest in health care in Second Life is as a precursor to the next age of Second Life and Virtual worlds as a whole. I think we have now passed through our first age and the technology is now established, the user base is built and the first wave of corporate projects have entered and the majority has left. Some key corporates remain and make successful use of the environment - IBM, Cisco, Reuters and a few other are the leaders in this.
The trouble is, that for the majority of other businesses in Second Life, what happens in Second Life stays there. The in-world economy is booming. It's fashion and entertainment industries continue to expand. What is lacks is real cross-over business that has significance both in-world and in real life, and establishing these types of business will be key to Second Life (and virtual worlds as a group) moving into their new age.
I see healthcare as a key component of this. The internet is having a revolutionary effect on the public's ability to research their own health care. From access to disease area information, to details of products and the experiences of other patients the public have access to a huge amounts of information.
Second Life offers great scope for patient education, peer support and sharing personal experiences ... these conversations are already taking place in the web, but it seems that (in the UK at least) the health care industry isn't part of them.
Of course, if you think that I'm wrong and there's something I've missed please post it here!
Alan
There are a couple of health sites - the NHS is a very good example, but it's role is to demonstrate and gather feedback on new ways of deploying health care to the public. It doesn't provide health or disease related information. Healh Info Island has more of an informal feel to it, and while it provides a large volume of content, the the arrangement of it and its level of ineraction seems somewhat limited.
My interest in health care in Second Life is as a precursor to the next age of Second Life and Virtual worlds as a whole. I think we have now passed through our first age and the technology is now established, the user base is built and the first wave of corporate projects have entered and the majority has left. Some key corporates remain and make successful use of the environment - IBM, Cisco, Reuters and a few other are the leaders in this.
The trouble is, that for the majority of other businesses in Second Life, what happens in Second Life stays there. The in-world economy is booming. It's fashion and entertainment industries continue to expand. What is lacks is real cross-over business that has significance both in-world and in real life, and establishing these types of business will be key to Second Life (and virtual worlds as a group) moving into their new age.
I see healthcare as a key component of this. The internet is having a revolutionary effect on the public's ability to research their own health care. From access to disease area information, to details of products and the experiences of other patients the public have access to a huge amounts of information.
Second Life offers great scope for patient education, peer support and sharing personal experiences ... these conversations are already taking place in the web, but it seems that (in the UK at least) the health care industry isn't part of them.
Of course, if you think that I'm wrong and there's something I've missed please post it here!
Alan
Wednesday, 4 June 2008
Found inspiration
A key element in my creative process is being aware of what is possible. Some of this comes from experimentation or re-working elements of previous projects, but just as important is seeing what everyone else is doing. It's always a great inspiration to me to see other people doing great stuff. It encourages me to raise my game and new ideas get incorporated on all sorts of levels.
This is my top list of sites that I watch for inspiration (in no particular order):
1. www.styleboost.com - One of the best sites I know of that lists the best-of-the-best websites from a design and interaction perspective.
2. www.newwebpick.com - A great design portal that both indexes great websites but also sells (at a very reasonable subscription) a great Flash based magazine - and they also give away a free version that has about 20% of the content from the full version. Well worth a look!
3. www.conceptart.org - This is an all time-favourite of mine and is the home of some amazing resident artists as well as a busy forum that covers both 2D and 3D, digital and analogue artwork. It's a great place to see a lot of amazing work, get help and feedback.
4. www.juxtapoz.com - An interesting selection of works from modern artists. Always a lot going on and covers a good range styles. Covers launches and gallery shows.
5. www.plasticandplush.com - Like toys? Like character design? I love this site, it's an amazing source of fun inspiration.
6. www.eatpoo.com - One of my long standing favourites amongst the main art forums, because of the high standard of the artwork that gets posted here and the quality of the people that make up it's uses. Much more focused to 2D artwork than 3D.
There are a few more sites that should also get a mention just for being so cool or useful:
1. peaceloveandhappiness.org - A really great site 'free software for art, music and personal creativity'. You will find things like fonts and images in this site as well. Very useful!
2. www.morguefile.com - A great source of community generated hi-rez photography, most of which is free to download and use, as long as you check the licence for each image and credit where necessary.
3. www.pdf-mags.com - If you are stuck for something fresh to read, this is a great place to look - lists all the latest released PDF magazines. Very handy.
4. www.colourlovers.com - Sometimes the thing that I get stuck on is designing colour palettes and colourlovers is a site dedicated to just that - great colour palettes. Very useful, well worth a visit. An the palettes can be downloaded as a variety of formats including photoshop palette files.
5. www.tokyoplastic.com - This site has been around for a while and is just stunning. The best example of content = interface = brand that I have found.
Alan
This is my top list of sites that I watch for inspiration (in no particular order):
1. www.styleboost.com - One of the best sites I know of that lists the best-of-the-best websites from a design and interaction perspective.
2. www.newwebpick.com - A great design portal that both indexes great websites but also sells (at a very reasonable subscription) a great Flash based magazine - and they also give away a free version that has about 20% of the content from the full version. Well worth a look!
3. www.conceptart.org - This is an all time-favourite of mine and is the home of some amazing resident artists as well as a busy forum that covers both 2D and 3D, digital and analogue artwork. It's a great place to see a lot of amazing work, get help and feedback.
4. www.juxtapoz.com - An interesting selection of works from modern artists. Always a lot going on and covers a good range styles. Covers launches and gallery shows.
5. www.plasticandplush.com - Like toys? Like character design? I love this site, it's an amazing source of fun inspiration.
6. www.eatpoo.com - One of my long standing favourites amongst the main art forums, because of the high standard of the artwork that gets posted here and the quality of the people that make up it's uses. Much more focused to 2D artwork than 3D.
There are a few more sites that should also get a mention just for being so cool or useful:
1. peaceloveandhappiness.org - A really great site 'free software for art, music and personal creativity'. You will find things like fonts and images in this site as well. Very useful!
2. www.morguefile.com - A great source of community generated hi-rez photography, most of which is free to download and use, as long as you check the licence for each image and credit where necessary.
3. www.pdf-mags.com - If you are stuck for something fresh to read, this is a great place to look - lists all the latest released PDF magazines. Very handy.
4. www.colourlovers.com - Sometimes the thing that I get stuck on is designing colour palettes and colourlovers is a site dedicated to just that - great colour palettes. Very useful, well worth a visit. An the palettes can be downloaded as a variety of formats including photoshop palette files.
5. www.tokyoplastic.com - This site has been around for a while and is just stunning. The best example of content = interface = brand that I have found.
Alan
Monday, 19 May 2008
Social Computing at Work
Roo Reynolds at IBM has the job title 'Metaverse Evangelist'. He's also very switched on about social media, networks and virtual worlds and on a recent post to his blog he has posted the IBM Social Computing guidelines.
Reading through these make a lot of sense and since I have had some rather dire, sensationalist junk (surface) mail over the past few weeks that is advocating draconian policing of (and even banning of access to) social networking in the work place, I think it is about time we tempered this approach with a little common sense. And that's what you'll find in the IBM guidelines. By the bucket load.
For any business organisation of any size, don't kid your selves, they are covnersations taking place on the internet about you. Your best approach should is to be an active, open and transparent part of these conversations and to use your educated and informed staff to do this. Ignoring the conversations is a lost opportunity to reach out to your customer base.
Social media used as an open channel to your customer base helps you to do something that I advocate as an essential element of any business communications strategy: be in your market the same way your customers are.
PH
Reading through these make a lot of sense and since I have had some rather dire, sensationalist junk (surface) mail over the past few weeks that is advocating draconian policing of (and even banning of access to) social networking in the work place, I think it is about time we tempered this approach with a little common sense. And that's what you'll find in the IBM guidelines. By the bucket load.
For any business organisation of any size, don't kid your selves, they are covnersations taking place on the internet about you. Your best approach should is to be an active, open and transparent part of these conversations and to use your educated and informed staff to do this. Ignoring the conversations is a lost opportunity to reach out to your customer base.
Social media used as an open channel to your customer base helps you to do something that I advocate as an essential element of any business communications strategy: be in your market the same way your customers are.
PH
Getting back to Second Life
I've more or less been away from Second Life for the past few months. This has been while I have focused on other things - new website, artwork, blogging and open source on the desktop.
My focus is now returning to virtual worlds and Second Life in particular.
Second Life has been getting a lot of press recently - some good, some bad. This is oddly familiar, and is a pretty common theme through-out the adoption cycles of social technologies. Think back to the first few years where the Internet and the World Wide Web became available - a lot of the same comments and condemnations where voiced then, but now we have adopted the technology and are extensive use of it through business, education and entertainment.
I fully expect to see the same from virtual worlds as a communications technology. A lot of people now understand why skype is such a good technology - multi channel (text, voice, video) personal communication, with the ability to conference call and exchange documents. Virtual worlds offer this interaction plus an interactive environment in which to hold the discussion.
Some press has been given to documenting criminal activities in Second Life. I can't deny that these elements are there, but at the same time I think it is also quite likely that there are criminals out there who are using mobile phones and sending emails, and the fact that they are will not prevent me from using either. Again, this is consistent with the adoption of the internet. The criminal elements need to be dealt with and we all need to see the technology for what it is, and not allow it to be tarnished by the actions of the few.
Second Life has uas reecently updated to include a couple of siginificant technology milestones: VOIP (Voice Over IP) and Webpage-as-texture. This may not sound that dramatic but they are of the final elements that I've been to glue your second life onto the rest of your internet communication strategy. What this also means is that in-world information can be managed and updated from outside, and this can be done using the tools that your content managers are already used to.
Second life is now able to become a serious content delivery channel, integrated with and displaying common content from your existing web presence.
PH
My focus is now returning to virtual worlds and Second Life in particular.
Second Life has been getting a lot of press recently - some good, some bad. This is oddly familiar, and is a pretty common theme through-out the adoption cycles of social technologies. Think back to the first few years where the Internet and the World Wide Web became available - a lot of the same comments and condemnations where voiced then, but now we have adopted the technology and are extensive use of it through business, education and entertainment.
I fully expect to see the same from virtual worlds as a communications technology. A lot of people now understand why skype is such a good technology - multi channel (text, voice, video) personal communication, with the ability to conference call and exchange documents. Virtual worlds offer this interaction plus an interactive environment in which to hold the discussion.
Some press has been given to documenting criminal activities in Second Life. I can't deny that these elements are there, but at the same time I think it is also quite likely that there are criminals out there who are using mobile phones and sending emails, and the fact that they are will not prevent me from using either. Again, this is consistent with the adoption of the internet. The criminal elements need to be dealt with and we all need to see the technology for what it is, and not allow it to be tarnished by the actions of the few.
Second Life has uas reecently updated to include a couple of siginificant technology milestones: VOIP (Voice Over IP) and Webpage-as-texture. This may not sound that dramatic but they are of the final elements that I've been to glue your second life onto the rest of your internet communication strategy. What this also means is that in-world information can be managed and updated from outside, and this can be done using the tools that your content managers are already used to.
Second life is now able to become a serious content delivery channel, integrated with and displaying common content from your existing web presence.
PH
Wednesday, 14 May 2008
Going Open Source - Part 4: The Pale Heretic Way
To put it simply: I have found a solution for Linux on my Laptop that works for me.
An important fact about me (and therefore my approach to this) is that I'm not a systems administrator, but I do have 15 years experience working with computers as a designer, new-media developer and animator. I don't use Linux in my day-to-day work. I've just had enough of MS Windows (and never got on with Macs) and want an alternative. So what I need is something that works more-or-less from the point where it is installed and that my limited knowledge will allow me to cope with any things that I need to configure or fix.
The laptop I use (every day) is an HP DV2130ea.
Having left Ubuntu a few weeks ago when the new version decided to forget all about my hardware, I proceeded to try out a range of distributions, quite rapidly, to see if I could find one that managed to identify my hardware (critical requirement was it had to find and configure both my Intel WIFI and Nvidia Graphics Adapter). PCLinuxOS and Dream Linux both looked interesting but failed to work for me.
As part of this I discovered a very useful site: DistroWatch. A great site that lists most of (if not all) the available distributions and provides links to reviews, community sites and download locations. They also provide a hot-list of the most viewed distributions on their site – a good rough indicator of usage / popularity.
It was from this that I found OpenSUSE. A linux distribution funded and developed by Novell.
It got my interest from more-or-less the third screen of the installer, where it correctly identified my Wifi card and Graphics adapter and also managed to cope with the fact that my laptop has a widescreen display.
The rest of the installation was exactly what I had hoped it would be: uneventful.
OpenSUSE itself is easy to work with in the same sense that any of the Linux versions you choose to install are just about similar to MS Windows that you can find the application / control panel you need. The interface is clean and the pre-installed set of applications covers most things that you'd need, with a good range of applications available from the application installer with a minimum of fuss.
The list of applications that I'm running includes Open Office, Flock, Skype, Second Life, Blender, Thunderbird , Vmware, Remote Desktop.
The installations for all of these was relatively simple, as was creating menu icons for those that didn't do this themselves (seems to be a common thing in my experience).
Even the installation and configuration of VMWare Player wasn't too tricky and made much easier by a good walkthrough that can be found on the OpenSUSE website here.
So what I now have is a laptop that works, with the software I needed and so far (on the limited sample of 2 weeks) It's been reliable to the point where I can forget about it and just work. You can see samples of the graphics that I've produced below.
An that I guess was the biggest wrench – leaving the Adobe suite of applications behind. Despite their high cost, they are a great set of applications. What is encouraging is that the open source alternatives are very good and nearly offer all the required functionality.
A brief note to the GIMP community – can we have vector objects (multiple in one layer) and layer folders please, because these are the only things that I have missed having moved from Photoshop to GIMP, and that says something right there.
Right now, I'm on a train to meet a client, and I will be demoing some bespoke MS Windows applications in a VMWare virtual machine on this laptop. That's about as good as I could have possibly hoped for.
OpenSUSE has a new version 11 out in about 30 days. I'll let you know how the upgrade goes.
PH
An important fact about me (and therefore my approach to this) is that I'm not a systems administrator, but I do have 15 years experience working with computers as a designer, new-media developer and animator. I don't use Linux in my day-to-day work. I've just had enough of MS Windows (and never got on with Macs) and want an alternative. So what I need is something that works more-or-less from the point where it is installed and that my limited knowledge will allow me to cope with any things that I need to configure or fix.
The laptop I use (every day) is an HP DV2130ea.
Having left Ubuntu a few weeks ago when the new version decided to forget all about my hardware, I proceeded to try out a range of distributions, quite rapidly, to see if I could find one that managed to identify my hardware (critical requirement was it had to find and configure both my Intel WIFI and Nvidia Graphics Adapter). PCLinuxOS and Dream Linux both looked interesting but failed to work for me.
As part of this I discovered a very useful site: DistroWatch. A great site that lists most of (if not all) the available distributions and provides links to reviews, community sites and download locations. They also provide a hot-list of the most viewed distributions on their site – a good rough indicator of usage / popularity.
It was from this that I found OpenSUSE. A linux distribution funded and developed by Novell.
It got my interest from more-or-less the third screen of the installer, where it correctly identified my Wifi card and Graphics adapter and also managed to cope with the fact that my laptop has a widescreen display.
The rest of the installation was exactly what I had hoped it would be: uneventful.
OpenSUSE itself is easy to work with in the same sense that any of the Linux versions you choose to install are just about similar to MS Windows that you can find the application / control panel you need. The interface is clean and the pre-installed set of applications covers most things that you'd need, with a good range of applications available from the application installer with a minimum of fuss.
The list of applications that I'm running includes Open Office, Flock, Skype, Second Life, Blender, Thunderbird , Vmware, Remote Desktop.
The installations for all of these was relatively simple, as was creating menu icons for those that didn't do this themselves (seems to be a common thing in my experience).
Even the installation and configuration of VMWare Player wasn't too tricky and made much easier by a good walkthrough that can be found on the OpenSUSE website here.
So what I now have is a laptop that works, with the software I needed and so far (on the limited sample of 2 weeks) It's been reliable to the point where I can forget about it and just work. You can see samples of the graphics that I've produced below.
An that I guess was the biggest wrench – leaving the Adobe suite of applications behind. Despite their high cost, they are a great set of applications. What is encouraging is that the open source alternatives are very good and nearly offer all the required functionality.
A brief note to the GIMP community – can we have vector objects (multiple in one layer) and layer folders please, because these are the only things that I have missed having moved from Photoshop to GIMP, and that says something right there.
Right now, I'm on a train to meet a client, and I will be demoing some bespoke MS Windows applications in a VMWare virtual machine on this laptop. That's about as good as I could have possibly hoped for.
OpenSUSE has a new version 11 out in about 30 days. I'll let you know how the upgrade goes.
PH
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