by Alfie
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I make things on the web, mobile and in the actual world.
I've done lots of bits and bobs over the years, and right now I'm mostly working on this.
I enjoy speaking about things I like, most recently this. You can email me if you'd like, and I'm on twitter.
540air says:
I'm interested in jumping across. Let me know what you make of it pleeeease :)
ViX says:
I swapped my dad from windows 95 to Ubuntu a couple of months back - he said he thought windows was great until he used Ubuntu! He loves it!
I like it, I'd swap altogether but after using Microsoft Office for so long for college/ uni I just can't get used to OpenOffice :( I may have to go dual boot so I have MS office to hand!
Alfie says:
So the open office suite is what, crap or just really different? I use the office suite a lot too, so although not exactly a sticking point for me, I want to be confident it will do what I need. What about PDF creation, are there open office plugins for that?
ViX - mate of mine who's a professional environmental scientist swears by Google docs for writing papers. Abiword is far better than OpenOffice Writer, by the way. Also, don't get him started on how much better gnumeric+gnuplot is than Excel for sciviz. Not to mention the whole fun of writing in Tex rather than Microsoft Text. His considered opinion (and that of his department) is that linux is a way better OS for science than windows.
Alfie says:
Mat, true on the Google Docs front, really simple with all of Word's functionality and more on top of that.
edit - btw, boot from disk worked beautifully, connected straight away, looking forward to moving :D
Currently burning some stored stuff from my external 60GB drive and then transferring much needed files to it, then shifting this evening!
I may call upon you again for advice on which applications to use for specific things, like media conversion (mpeg to divx/DVD), stuff like that.
ViX says:
No, not crap at all! Overall it isn't that different, its just little things such as the right click menu and certain features (spellcheck, dictionaries etc) that will need customising to get it to work to your own specification.
It just doesn't feel... right, if that makes sense. I think like I said, its just because I've been using MS office for so long. I have only used OpenOffice a handful of times, if I gave it a chance and used it on a more regular basis, in time I suppose I'd get use to it.
As for PDF plugins, I'm sure there is one but I haven't used it!
Anything you want, basically, can happen. You do have to get used to the idea that some things may involve reading a manual page, some forum posts or a howto first. Still, teach a man to fish, etc.
ViX - reading pdfs or writing them? I've done both. :)
Alfie says:
I've been doing a lot of that with running MAEMO on the Nokia 770, so I'm a little more comfortable with linux, certainly, than I was before.
