I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that the upgrade to Mandrake 9.1 hadn’t gone as smoothly as I would have hoped. But after the rain, comes sunshine: we can now connect to the internet (albeit via a Windows box on the LAN), print, scan, listen to music and even do the accounts, in Windows while Linux is running, thanks to the magic of VNC. VNC, which is free software, displays the desktop from one machine on the display of another. Read more...

You wait ages to see a film with Anna Paquin in, and two come along at once. Actually it was a coincidence that she was in the last two films I’ve seen: 25th Hour and X2. 25th Hour is the first Spike Lee film I’ve ever seen. I was impressed, as he refuses to let his films be formulaic jelly-mould cash cows. Edward Norton, as always, gives a fantastic performance — this time as a drug dealer who has one more day of freedom before being jailed for seven years. Read more...

I’ve been telling everybody how great Linux is for, ooh, the past 4 years or so. Admittedly, it doesn’t crash as much as Windows, and individual software crashes rarely bring down the whole machine. But perhaps I am suffering from overfamiliarity: I want things to work, not just not crash. Before last Monday (when I installed Mandrake 9.1) we had a working machine, except that we had no sound or scanning. Read more...

So Apple have been busy little bunnies. Not content with ramping up the iBook to 800/900 MHz, they have launched a slimmer, sexier(?) iPod and launched the iTunes Music Store, which is browsable from anywhere, but only open for business in the US, so far. Many good things have been written about the service so far, so much so that Windows users seem to be either (a) jealous and sarky, or (b) salivating at the prospect of the launch of the service for Windows, due later in the year. Read more...

We’re off to Easter People on Wednesday. I’m doing stuff I’ve never done before, namely DJ workshops, some DJ worship and a gig. We sang in three services at church over the weekend: Maundy Thursday (communion), Good Friday (Meditation) and Easter Sunday (communion). Not much voice left now, though. Sheenagh and Dylan’s wedding on Saturday was a hoot — Simon and I DJ’d at the evening reception. Back-to-back was fun: best moment was the Fatboy Slim version of Eple Eple by Royksopp (Si) mixed into Billie Jean by Michael Jackson (me). Read more...

Downtrodden Christ, to you we pray who at the third hour of the day were led away and nailed up high in naked shame beneath the sky: Show through the pain that scars your face the love of God, and man’s disgrace. Uplifted Christ, to you we pray who at the sixth hour of the day took all our guilt upon that tree in darkness, blood, and agony: Look on our pride and unbelief, Read more...

So for a few months now my parents have been in touch with a guy called Deogratias, who works for an organisation called Christian Community Development in Burundi. He works with refugees and orphans — kids whose parents have either been killed by the AIDS pandemic or by the awful inter-ethnic violence that occurred in the mid-nineties. I’ve finally got the first phase of the web site up! Christian Community Development is a Christ-centered organisation with goals of assisting the poor and the needy of Burundi to know Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour and to overcome poverty. Read more...

…The BBC have the following story in their ‘latest news’ ticker: Muffin the Mule, one of the most popular children’s TV characters of all time, is being revived by the BBC to mark its 60th anniversary. — http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/2952533.stm While I deplored the wall-to-wall coverage in the early stages of the war, it feels as though Iraq as a subject has been tossed aside like last season’s jeans by a bored teenager. Read more...

“72,000 capacity”, I thought to myself, “that’s 36,000 tickets for each club”. Except it isn’t, as the FA keep 22,000 for distribution around the country. Only some members will be eligible for tickets and, as we’ve only been to one game, I don’t suppose we’ll get offered the chance to buy one. The club are currently in the process of working out how many games members will need to have been to in order to qualify for a ticket. Read more...

Sometimes I think that I write boring stuff, but The dullest blog in the world is in another league entirely. It’s popular though…