Dirty Shoes

Posted on Tue 02 September 2008 by alex in geek

Today is the first slightly grotty cycling day since I started my new regime. My shoes now have a subtle brown spray encrusting them from the tow path by the river. Starting the journey was the hardest bit, but once I had got going it and started warming up it was fine. I wonder how cold it will have to get before my single layer hi-tech Polaris top will cease to be enough protection from the elements.

I had a nice surprise last night when our new local friends T & F came around for dinner and a movie. I had lent T an Ubuntu LiveCD to give a spin on his laptop which had been buckling under the strain of Vista. When I enquired how the test had gone he told me it had been great and he had installed it as the only OS on both his laptop and the desktop PC both he and F use. Both are very happy with the result which is heartening. Considering neither of them are classed as computer geeks it's also a shot in the eye for those who say Linux isn't ready for the consumer desktop.

T's keen on playing with a bit of programming with GUI's and databases so we shall arrange a lads night in where I can run through some of the basics. I'm thinking Python and Glade/libglade/GtkBuilder are probably the easiest way to learn these days. Having said that I'm open to suggestions on good first languages to learn when getting into programming. I started with BASIC before moving onto 6502 and 68000 assembly. I think the state of the art of learning programming may have moved on since?

EDIT: And suggestions for good editors also accepted. I'm a big Emacs fan but it's octa-pedal keystrokes and elisp based configuration would probably be a distraction while learning.