Wizardry? WTF?

Finally proof that the world is completely rooted, in the Australian usage of the word.

This from Florida, via FoxNews.com (don't ask):

A Florida teacher may have to pull an unemployment check out of his hat after performing magic in front of students, according to reports.

Jim Piculas said he made a toothpick disappear and reappear in front of students at the Rushe Middle School in Land 'O Lakes, Fla., Local6.com reported. He said he later got a call from the supervisor of teachers, saying he had been accused of wizardry.

"I get a call the middle of the day from head of supervisor of substitute teachers. He says, 'Jim, we have a huge issue. You can't take any more assignments. You need to come in right away,'" he told Local6.com.

Piculas said he’s concerned the incident may prevent him from being considered for future jobs.

Fortunately, there are magicians out there who are sympathetic.

Clearly bored

I'm waiting for something to download, and I see that Tom and Akusai have had a crack at an old one that Bronze Dog did. So I might as well. Have fun, and join in if you're game.

Accent: Supposedly a type of Australian accent known as "ocker". FSM knows that I do try to be well spoken.

Booze: Rather enjoying this Pale Ale renaissance that Australia is going through at the moment. KitKat gave me one called Crackenback for my birthday - I give it 4 stars - very nice with a lovely fragrant hoppy aroma.

Chore I hate: Vacuuming the house. Going to get one of those robo vacuum thingies as soon as I can.

Dog or Cat: Cat. I like dogs, but cats clean up after themselves and don't need baths.

Essential Electronics: My computer(s), my Eee PC, and that's pretty much it since my Sony Walkman got lost down the back of the sofa. OK, maybe MP3 players can be too small.

Favorite Cologne: I liked Activist by The Body Shop. Then they stopped selling it in Australia. Now I've got XY by Hugo Boss. But technically these are Eau de Toilettes, not colognes.

Gold or Silver: Gold. You better believe it, although I'm rather liking oil at the moment.

Hometown: Currently, Melbourne VIC, but I grew up in Sydney NSW.

Insomnia: Negative. But I wish that I voluntarily went to sleep earlier.

Job title: Blogger, Freeloader and Minister. Oh and I have some day job in industry superannuation as well.

Kids: Too young, too poor and too immature.

Living arrangements: A three bedroom unit with my wife and (currently) our friend from the sticks who is in town working at Honda.

Most admirable traits: Standing up for one's personal ethics.

Not going to cop to: Surely this could be phrased better? I have no idea what this one is asking.

Overnight hospital stays: Broken arm, 1985. I was boogie boarding at the time and got dumped by a freak wave.

Phobias: Snakes and crocodiles. Actually, reptiles generally gross me out.

Quote: Primary school poetry: "We had fun, fun, fun, picking boogies in the sun. When the sun got hot, our boogies turned to snot."

Religion: Pretty much quality Australian Pale Ale at the moment. And the Sydney Swans Football Club.

Siblings: Two sisters, both younger, one in Sydney NSW and one in Carson City NV. She's married to my brother-in-law who is originally from somewhere in Indiana. Shit! I know this one. It might be Bloomington. My other brother-in-law is the brother of Ms Dikkii, and he lives in a place called Funkytown.

Time I wake up: Usually after I've hit the snooze button seven or eight times.

Unusual talent or skill: I do this pen-flicking thing that drives people insane.

Vegetable I love: Peas, nuked with butter and pepper. Carrots, steamed with honey.

Worst habit: I'm not putting this one in.

X-rays: Chest, teeth, foot, arm. I think that's it.

Yummy foods I make: I'm told that my chili con carne is pretty good. Personally, I don't think I've got it right, yet.

Zodiac sign: Crux Australis.

Choppa's vegemite challenge

I don't normally post stuff this wrong, but I thought I'd make an exception in this case.

This guy is looking at certain heart failure for sure - for the benefit of my non-Australian readers, Vegemite is a concentrated yeast extract made by Kraft with more salt than the Mediterranean in each jar. It's normally spread on toast or sandwiches quite thinly.

You've been warned. I felt a little sick at the end of this.

Keysar Trad on polygamy

Keysar Trad is an interesting fellow. He's mainly been in the news as an apologist for the controversial former (Sunni) Grand Mufti of Australia, Taj El Din al-Hilaly and currently occupies the president's position in the Islamic Friendship Association of Australia.

Trad was in the news recently after writing this article for Crikey where he discusses opening a dialogue to begin the long road towards polygamous marriages.

This blogger notes that Trad is on the record as having discussed such a union with his wife. Of course, the question that doesn't appear to have been posed by the media to date is about the extent of the conversation that took place.

After thinking about this, I have to conclude that Trad does have a point. What consenting married couples do is really not society's place to say. People should, if they want and if their existing and/or prospective spouse(s) consent, be able to have multiple spouses.

I can really only think of a few reasons as to why such unions shouldn't be permitted:

1. Taxation

Our current tax laws cater, rightly or wrongly, towards singles and married couples, not married trios, quartets and other combinations. This is a potential minefield of confusion that needs to be sorted out before we can consider taxation of polygamous unions. But I don't think that it's insurmountable.

2. Social Security

Likewise welfare laws are not really friendly towards polygamous unions. I think that this may be harder than taxation to sort out, but again, I don't think that this is beyond repair.

3. Estate planning

If memory serves me correctly, estate planning has nasty little bits in it where, for example, wills get rendered null and void by marriage, in most states and territories, anyway. This would be the same for remarriage as well, I suppose, but take this example: A wife has a will in place, but then the husband marries another woman. Does this render the first wife's will ineffective?

4. Divorce

I think that this could be the messiest of the lot. Imagine that in our above example, the wife then divorces her husband. Does this mean that the second wife also has to divorce him? If not, then is the second wife divorcing the first wife? And after sorting this out, how do the property and child custody arrangements work?

5. Superannuation

This has complications as well. I thought of family law splits and contribution splitting, but these seem a dodder compared to spouse superannuation offsets and what happens in the event of a member dying who just happens to be in a polygamous relationship.

---

Anyway, these are just a few of the issues that need to be thought of before polygamy can be allowed. I don't believe that these are the kinds of thing that we can't fix, but it should be pointed out that there would be a whole stack of work involved in them.

The easiest thing to do would be to abolish marriage outright, and just lock everything under the laws covering de facto relationships that exist in each state and territory, but this is probably not an option.

The absolute last reason that we should be considering is religious considerations for or against marriage, which have been discussed to death.

So the question that the media have not asked Trad regarding his wife's position is this: What was Trad's answer when his wife asked him if he was comfortable with her having multiple husbands?

It's difficult to take Trad seriously when you know that he is most certainly not comfortable. Or even that such a question might not have been posed by Mrs Trad. Does anyone know if Trad is on the record regarding this very question?

Rock epic of the month: "We Carry On" (Portishead) 2008

Rock epics of the month is a series of posts where I'll look back on classic examples of what I think is the greatest excess of rock and roll - the rock epic.

I'm going to go for something relatively recent here this month. Portishead have just released their third proper longplayer (not counting the live one) and it is currently getting a serious workout whenever I can get the chance to listen to it.

Portishead formed as the second part of a holy trinity of what became known as the Bristol Trip Hop Scene, after Massive Attack and they released their first album, Dummy at about the same time as former Massive Attack alumnus Tricky released his first solo record.

The Bristol trip hop scene really was just a lazy media's way of describing the fact that (a) these musicians did, in fact come from Bristol, and (b) they were attempting a laid back and somewhat trippy take on Hip Hop.

Up until this point, hip hop was largely an unfamiliar genre to the Brits. During the time that hip hop went through the somewhat huge Gangster Rap and G-Funk phases in the States, the Brits were more into the rave scene which was dominated by electronic music genres such as House and later, various Techno sub-genres.

At about this time, the Brits were getting thoroughly confused by the first wave of what went on to be called Drum 'n Bass, and it occurred to some (notably in Bristol) that this hip hop stuff that the Yanks were getting into might be worth giving a second glance to.

Massive Attack released their devastatingly influential Blue Lines album, and suddenly it was game on.

Portishead were formed by Beth Gibbons (vocals), Adrian Utley (guitars) and Geoff Barrow (everything else) in 1991. Barrow had done some work for Massive Attack and Tricky, Gibbons had sung in various things around town and Utley was a known jazz axe-slinger for hire.

And where American hip hop was, at the time, dominated by the g-funk coming out of Dr Dre's stable such as Snoop "Doggy" Dogg and Warren G, Portishead's first album, Dummy, released in 1994 mined its samples from decidedly un-funky sources such as old movie soundtracks and Serge Gainsbourg.

Their eponymous second album, Portishead followed in 1997 and then they began a huge lay-off where the members worked on other stuff - Barrow moved to Sydney and did a tonne of work in the Australian hip hop scene amongst other things.

It took until 2008 for their Third album to come out, which featured sounds that were quite a bit harsher than what they had worked with in the past.

I've chosen to do "We Carry On" this month, because, at 6:27, its a true epic, and, quite frankly, it rocks.

It's one that likes a bit of a groove, and it's one that is a real grower. Utley's guitar is about as angular and primal as Portishead get - someone said to me that it's a bit reminiscent of Will Sargent's work with Echo and the Bunnymen - they could be right. I reckon that there's a bit of post-OK Computer Radiohead in there as well.

This video is a gem of Portishead performing this live on Jools Holland's show on UK TV. I love the pained way that Gibbons delivers the vocals, together with Utley and another guitarist fairly fanging away on their guitars towards the end of this. Barrow looks like he's having fun on the drums during this, too.

Hope that you like it - I did.

The art empire strikes back

One of the things that we learnt from the recent Bill Henson controversy is that there appears to be an orthodox position that artists assume on the the whole "What is an acceptable image?" thing.

That position has been characterised with a great deal of effort by artists in saying, "There has to be exploitation," for an image to be deemed unacceptable.

So what happened this week? A magazine called Art Monthly Australia has run a cover with a nude 6 year old girl on the front. Ostensibly to make a point about the Bill Henson controversy.

I'll be the first to admit, folks, that this country, and perhaps a lot of the western world is a smidge hysterical when it comes to pornography involving children. I don't actually believe that the connection between child pornography and paedophile behaviour will ever be found.

And the requirement for a nude photo to be exploitative in order for it to be porn is so goddamn subjective, I'm actually concerned about pretty much all artistic behaviour at this point.

Having said all that, doesn't it appear to the average onlooker that a 6 year old (she's now 11) has been exploited in order to make a point?

Doesn't this mean that Art Monthly Australia has crossed the line with a flying leap and is therefore guilty of child exploitation?

More to the point, given that this photo was made by the child's mother, doesn't this make her complicit in child exploitation?

After all that, the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd has waded in after spotting a way to appeal to the lowest common denominator by exploiting our anti-child pornography hysteria. Is he guilty of exploitation by milking this in the theatre of public opinion?

(My 2c: We thoroughly deserve exploitation over this)

Last but not least, in The Age today, the artist's husband (who just happens to be an art critic at The Age) has weighed in and criticised the PM for speaking out on something that he doesn't know any thing about, namely art.

This is all fucked for the following reasons:

1. The guy is a major art critic for a major Australian daily newspaper. Therefore, venturing any opinion, explicit or implied in his wife's work has a conflict of interest. He simply cannot occupy the aggrieved husband's position and therefore has to keep his mouth shut.

2. His comparison of this fiasco to the greenhouse effect is quite possibly the worst hyperbole ever by an artist:

"It's interesting that if the Prime Minister comments on, say the greenhouse effect, he gets expert advice first," Monah (sic) University Associate Professor [Robert] Nelson said. "I would like to know which art expert advised him on this."

3. "I would like to know which art expert advised him on this." An ad-hominem attack is not beneath this guy, even though he's an art critic and a university professor. Furthermore, if he's comfortable implying that the PM is a philistine, then what hope is there for the rest of us art consumers?

4. Nelson wears many hats during this which doesn't help. Hiding behind his academic one does him no favours, although Margaret Cook of The Age should take most of the blame for this. Attempting an argument from authority is a somewhat ham-fisted approach, n'est-ce pas?

5. Dissecting the above quote further, we now have evidence that the arts world, or at least the visual arts world, sees the consumer as an inconvenience. The performing arts do not. Theirs is a world where the consumer is king, whereas in the world of visual arts, the consumer is treated pretty shabbily when the artist refuses to consider their own audience.

6. Further to 5, as an arts consumer, I frankly (by and large) don't care about the artist's intention. I'm concerned with how visually appealing an image is. What's lost on Associate Professor Nelson is that most art consumers feel exactly the same way. And some of us are sick of being dictated to by those who think that they know better.

If there was ever any more evidence required that artists have lost touch with the rest of us, it is this. Ironically, it is on an issue where the rest of us have lost all sense of perspective (I speak of society generally) and become hysterical over the merest suggestion of someone getting their rocks off on kiddie nudity.

Dikkii for president, 2008?

This is interesting. I'm not even American.



(With thanks to Orac.)

Installing EeeXubuntu on your Eee PC (Dikkii has a new toy part 2)

Once again, I start this post with a note of caution: If you're not a nerd, or an Asus Eee PC user, then don't read any further.

Also, this is Part 2.

Part 1 is here.

The question is how did I get things running relatively smoothly on the Eee PC?

The answer to this is, I really have no idea. I'll be honest, I really don't know the first thing about Linux, or much about computers generally at all. But I do remember most of the sequence that it took me to get all this right.

It all starts here.

EeeXubuntu has had three releases over a short period of time. The last one was in December 2007, but it should be noted that this shouldn't prevent you from having a reasonably useful experience.

And as we go through this, you'll see that it becomes less and less important that the initial install is based on Xubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon). We'll walk through the upgrade to 8.04 (Hardy Heron) when we get to it.

For this operation, you will need the following:

1 blank CD-R
1 blank CD-RW - recommended
1 USB stick of 1 GB or bigger
1 ethernet connection to your router
1 Asus Eee PC 900 - no idea if this will work for any other model
1 Desktop with internet connection

Warning: I am not a technically-minded dude. Some of this could potentially fuck your shiny new Eee PC. Read the pages I refer to and decide for yourself before going ahead with this, as what worked for me may not necessarily work for you.

As best as I can remember, this is what I did:

1. Download your EeeXubuntu ISO and burn it to a CD-R

At the EeeUser.com wiki, there is a comprehensive guide to this. Release 3 appears to be OK, but it was back in December. Is there a Release 4 beta for the adventurous? I can't see it anywhere, but I used Release 3, and it appeared to work OK for me.

I used the torrent available through The Pirate Bay - it's fast.

Burning it to a CD-RW first will ensure that you don't create another coaster - but it's suggested that you copy it over to a CD-R to create a traditional boot CD.

2. Use your freshly burnt CD to create your USB installer

Apparently, it's simpler if you plug in an external CD drive into your Eee PC, but I did it the hard way.

Boot your desktop using the CD and run 'Start or install Xubuntu' at the main menu. Note that you're not installing Xubuntu to your desktop, merely running it. As long as you don't double click on the 'Install' icon when the Xubuntu desktop comes up, you'll be AOK.

Now connect your USB stick.

You'll need to run a terminal window in Xubuntu - Applications –> Accessories –> Terminal. Be very careful typing these commands in. The terminal is a powerful tool.

Now you'll need to key in the following command. Or cut and paste - if you use hotkeys, pasting into a terminal window requires Ctrl-Shift-V:

sudo /cdrom/mkusbinstall.sh --autodetect

Apparently, your USB stick will be autodetected, and the necessary files will be copied over. Wait until another prompt appears on the screen and then exit.

You can now power off your PC. The CD should eject automatically as you power down.

3. Install on to your Eee

Firstly, ensure that your wireless connection is enabled. It might be a good idea to power it up in Xandros or Windows first to check. Xubuntu apparently will not detect or install wireless if it is not enabled.

Plug your USB stick into the Eee, then power up holding down the Esc key while you do it. You'll then be prompted to select the USB stick from a boot selection menu.

When the Xubuntu menu appears, select 'live/eeepc'. It should be chocks away from here.

Follow the steps on this page to install. I installed with a swap partition, but this page will let you know the pros and cons of either.

Once the installation process is complete, reboot and you're away. The wireless should work out of the box, but tonnes of other stuff won't.

If the wireless doesn't work, it's not the end of the world. This page is full of heaps of stuff that will help you get your Eee up and running.

Before you follow the next steps, it's a good idea that you shut down and plug your ethernet cable into your Eee PC. Wireless will walk out the door at some point.

4. Run all updates

This is pretty important. But it does come with a caveat - be careful what you click on here.

Running the Update Manager through Applications –> System –> Update Manager will download a lot of stuff to update your system. It will also potentially disable your wireless and do a stack of other things.

You will get prompted in your Update Manager window to upgrade to Xubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron). Do not do this just yet. Shut down your system and hook up to your router via ethernet to be on the safe side. You may need to do this in order to get your wireless running again, and other stuff.

5. Upgrade to Xubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron)

Apparently this causes problems for most, so much so that upgrading to Hardy is seldom recommended. It didn't cause any for me. But then again, when I found this page, it pretty much sorted everything out for me.

The Update Manager should already have a little button in there for you to click to upgrade. Do it. Once done, you'll need to reboot.

There's an optional step in here to enable your wifi - it should have stopped working at this point. If you want to do this now, scroll down to 6A, but steps 7 and 8 will cover this off.

This page here is 24 carat gold for fixing a whole range of stuff on the Eee after upgrading to 8.04. While it relates to a vanilla Ubuntu install, I found that it fixed most of the stuff that needed to be fixed.

6. Correct the shut down glitch

I did this straight away, although one of the following scripts in 7 and 8 might fix it. I don't know. I ran it anyway.

Open a terminal window (Applications –> Accessories –> Terminal) and type in the following:

sudo mousepad /etc/default/halt

Then, add this line to the end of the script:

rmmod snd-hda-intel

This should correct the issue. Something that may be important: When you update a script in Mousepad, ensure that there are a couple of blank lines at the end of the file. This apparently makes the script work better - no idea why.

6A. Enable wireless networking

This is an optional step, obtained from this page. I did it, because I wanted to sit on the sofa while I sorted out the rest, and also because I read it first. The two scripts coming up in 7 and 8 should negate the need to do this bit.

Open a terminal window (Applications –> Accessories –> Terminal) and type in the following:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential
wget 'http://snapshots.madwifi.org/special/madwifi-ng-r3366+ar5007.tar.gz'
tar zxvf madwifi-ng-r3366+ar5007.tar.gz
cd madwifi-ng-r3366+ar5007
make clean
make
sudo make install
sudo reboot

Some of the lines in these commands didn't work cleanly for me the first time. But they did if I used the magic word "sudo" at the start of the line.

Important: As it says on the page, an update to the kernel will cause you to lose your wifi, and you'll have to run this again. Probably a good idea to keep these commands handy.

Edit 13/07/2008: Anonymous has pointed out that you don't need the "sudo reboot" line at the end. Thanks Anon:

"Hey, just a quick FYI:
In step 6A, you don't need to sudo reboot, the same can be achieved by loading the driver into the ruing kernel with sudo modprobe ath_pci"

7. Run Ubuntueeetweak

At the wiki entry for an Ubuntu 8.04 installation page that I showed you before, there are two scripts that can be run to get most stuff up and running, including the problematic stuff such as sound, wifi, etc.

I ran both of them.

Download this file to your desktop: ubuntueeetweak.sh

Then, open a terminal and run this command, replacing "username" with your user name:

sudo sh /home/username/Desktop/ubuntueeetweak.sh

You will then need to reboot:

sudo reboot

You may need to run this script again in the future if you lose functionality - this normally happens after a kernel update.

8. Run RiceeeyTweak

I did this, although it may be optional.

Same as in 6, download this file to your desktop: RiceeeyTweak.sh

Then follow the same steps as running ubuntueeetweak except for the file name. This will do much the same as above, and install an overclocking facility. I doubt that I'll ever use that.

9. Fix the sound

You will not have sound just yet.

You will need to add a line to a file in Mousepad. In your terminal, run:

sudo mousepad /etc/modprobe.d/snd-hda-intel

Add this line to the file (but only for the Eee PC 90x):

options snd-hda-intel model=auto

For an Eee PC 70x, this line should be:

options snd-hda-intel model=3stack-dig

Then save and close. Then reboot.

You should finally check all these:

• Right click on the task bar at the bottom of the screen.
• Press “Add New Item”
• Scroll down until you find the Volume Control applet and drag it to the panel next to the applications button. (Drag anything else you want down at this time too.)
• Then right-click on the new Volume Control icon and go the “Properties”.

For “Device”, choose "#0: HDA Intel" (this should be the only one you can choose)
For “Wannabe Master”, choose “Front,0” (which is responsible for main sound output).
Leave the “xfce4-mixer” in the “when clicked” box alone. – that's what we're running.

• If you click on the icon, it brings up the mixer where you can adjust front speaker and mic volume. Ensure that 'Headphone' is selected. If Headphone is not available, click on 'Show Switches' to reveal it.
  
• If you click the volume meter to the right of the panel icon it will adjust the volume up and down.

Test this with something like a YouTube page.

---

I haven't tried out the webcam or the mic yet. It might be a little while, but that should get you going - remember, most of everything else that you need to run stuff on EeeXubuntu on your Eee PC 900 is available here. And if it's not there, then try here.

One of the things that I'd like to do is to try out plugging it into a separate monitor. Given the sheer portability of this thing, I like the idea of using it on trips away and plugging it into projectors in place of a regular laptop. I'll get around to doing that eventually.

What else?

• It performs OK. It's presently underpowered, but the Atom processor in the Eee PC 901 and forthcoming Eee PC 1000 may fix this.

• It boots up in 74 seconds. Apparently this should be under a minute, but the upgrading and updating will weigh it down. I think that under a minute and a half is OK - I'll need to look into fixing it if it takes longer than this.

• It's portable. Ridiculously portable.

• Wireless works after all this, but it's painful having to run scripts every time the kernel updates. This might be fixed in a future EeeXubuntu release.

• Some are reticent of tossing the Xandros install for fear of losing Skype. This script apparently fixes this. I haven't tried it out yet.

• I can't seem to get some of the windows to adjust to the desktop space, heightwise. Hopefully a fix is not too far away.

I might do another one in the future on my Eee PC down the track - I'm still very pleased with it to date.

Dikkii has a new toy

I start this post with a note of caution: If you're not a nerd, or an Asus Eee PC user, then don't read any further.

Just so we're all in the clear, I'd like to put the following on the record:

1. I do not consider myself a nerd. Nor have I ever considered myself one, except where finance and economics are concerned.

2. I also do not consider myself an "early adopter" of any sort of bits and pieces that are technological, vaguely or otherwise.

3. Lastly, the thought of stuffing around with anything technological is weird and scary to me.

Having said all that, I am going to share my experiences with my new toy - the ASUS Eee PC 900, quite possibly one of the handiest pieces of technology around.

The Eee PC has been around since last year when it was originally developed as what appears to be a response to the one laptop per child initiative. Originally, the Eee PC 700 with it's 7" screen came out, followed by the Eee PC 701 with some enhancements, mainly in the colours available, as well as the drive - solid state, not hard disk, and up to 8 GB.

It was such a big hit with grown-ups that Asus had to raise the stakes a little.

Since then, the 9" screen (and 20 GB solid state drive) Eee PC 900 has some out, with the Eee PC 901 to follow (using Intel's new Atom processor, not the Celeron) as well as a 1000 model which has, yes you guessed it, a 10" screen.

Of course, it wasn't long before the competition came a calling. There has been others - notably the MSI Wind PC, the HP MiniNote 2133, the Everex Cloudbook just to name a few. I hear that Dell are getting into it, and given how the MacBook Air seems to have gone down like a lead balloon, it won't be long before Apple are in on the action as well.

Asus give you the option of Xandros Linux or Windows XP with the Eee PC, although with the new Atom processors and the fact that Microsoft are really trying to stop making XP, I wouldn't be surprised if the 901 and the 1000 offer Windows Vista as an option.

But back to me.

In late May, the Eee PC 900 still wasn't available in Australia. I found them interesting, and was going to investigate buying one. I had set aside June for buying a laptop. I didn't really care if it was underpowered - basic net surfing and the odd Word file was pretty much all I was after. And I really liked the whole portability angle - I can stick this into a laptop bag, and still have plenty of space for other stuff.

Unfortunately for me, this coincided with the infamous budget of May 2008, where federal Treasurer Wayne Swan closed every loophole in the book and stuck means testing on to everything where anyone could benefit. What this meant was that you could no longer salary package laptop computers and expect them to be Fringe Benefits Tax (FBT) exempt.

More fool me.

I was resigned to the fact that unless I could find a retailer willing to backdate an invoice to before 7.30 PM on Tuesday 13 May, I would be forced to buy my laptop the hard way. This could be hard to explain to an auditor from the tax office if I managed to do this for a PC that hadn't even been officially released in Australia yet at this point in time.

In the last week of May, I stuck in a lowball bid on one of these babies on Ebay, and was even more surprised when I won the sucker.

Yes folks, I picked up an Eee PC to be shipped from Hong Kong for about AUD $110 off recommended retail. Add in the AUD $50 for courier costs, and I had a bargain. Not only that but chances are that I would be getting mine before Asus even shipped their first Australian order for the 900.

(I notice now that Asus have dropped their price on the Eee PC 900 by about AUD $50 - I still got a bargain)

So I had a new Eee PC 900 running Xandros.

I wasn't at all happy with the way that Xandros makes your Eee look like a kiddies' toy. I did some browsing on teh interwebs and found that quite a lot of Eee users were putting different Linux distros on. Some were reporting great progress with different Linux distros, even running KDE, and a couple had even managed to get Windows Vista and OSX Leopard to run on their Eees.

But the one that seemed to be the best supported was a cut-down version of Xubuntu called EeeXubuntu.

Oh, OK. Not all of you will be familiar with Xubuntu. A couple of months ago, this blogger bought a new desktop and created a Linux partition running Ubuntu, which presently appears to be one of the best supported Linux distros available.

Ubuntu runs the GNOME desktop, but if you would prefer, it comes in other versions, such as Kubuntu, which runs the flashy KDE desktop, or Xubuntu which runs the fairly basic XFCE desktop. Which appears to be ideal for low-powered devices.

There are other supported Ubuntu derivatives.

I did some investigating, and while I can't actually find any concrete examples of anyone running the full version of Xubuntu on their Eee, I did find this site which caters extremely well for anyone wanting to run alternate Linux distros, and has a wealth of stuff for EeeXubuntu.

I had relatively positive experiences with Ubuntu, so I thought I'd give EeeXubuntu a go. It was relatively easy, although there are some things that need to be done in order to get your Eee PC operating effectively.

After I managed to get most things running OK, one of my old housemates suggested that I put this out there for potential users to enjoy, because I can pretty much say that things ran almost seamlessly for me. And these will be put into what I think is a decent order in Part 2.

Part 2 is here.

Conspiracy Theory #3,478

I read recently that Velvet Revolver, featuring three ex-members of Guns n' Roses - Saul "Slash" Hudson, Michael Andrew "Duff" McKagen and Matt Sorum have recently sacked their singer and ex-Stone Temple Pilot, Scott Weiland.

Meanwhile, over in the Guns n' Roses camp, singer William Bruce Axl Rose, Jr is still labouring away on Chinese Democracy, potentially the longest-anticipated anti-climax in music history.

Is anyone else prepared to put 2 and 2 together to get 300 on this?