Windows 0 : Linux 2

I've just traded up an IBM P4 workstation to a brand shiny new Dell E520 Dual core goodness. Well. Semi goodness. According to Wikipedia I have a 915 chip and it's the 9x0 ones that support x86 virtualization. Boo Hiss.

Anyway, Threw in a ubuntu AMD64 install and it's up n running in 30 mins. (once I'd nuked the 'orribly nasty "Vista Home Basic 32bit" install off it. I was looking forwards to all the aqua toys but thats apparently an upgrade...

XP install not so smooth. Blue Screen complaining of "Stop 0x0000007B" - probably the SATA Raid card? Well dells website doesn't have any handy "Use this driver disk to install XP" links and following a v good scotlug virtualisation talk I decided to throw on QEMU following this guide

Videotastic

No, not another youtube one, but a 1975 classic featuring touch screen menus, electric bikes, distributed monitoring, a gripping title sequence, and of course, facial hair. Intrigued? head over to SPS : the control system and enjoy :-)

Wireless hacking

So my shiny macbook pro that I was promised with the new job turned into a battered R50e Thinkpad. Ho Hum. Still at least it has built in wireless.... hmmm. maybe not. Enter a Cheap n Cheerful Edimax EW-7108PCg PCMCIA card. Works fine under linux including kismet using ra0 - it's the rt2500 chipset driver.

However I'd like to make use of a decent external antenna for better range, so opened it up and discovered the antenna consisted of 2* 18mm tracks with no obvious points to solder in a pigtail.