“Do you use that as your main work computer?” asked a slightly quizzical Erik Huggers, looking at my little Asus Eee PC.

When I’m over in the BBC’s Media Village, I have discovered something called the FM&T HQ Hot-Desk Area, which consists of four desks with keyboard, monitor, a network cable, and a few extra plug points (actually, no extra plug points, but let’s not spoil it). This means that I can bring a laptop over, log in to Reith, the internal BBC network, and get on with some work.

Except I rarely carry my BBC-issue “ultra-light” HP around. I’ll not bore you with the specifics, other than to mention that the BBC appears to have virtually no business wifi, that I have to carry the power adaptor around which is almost as heavy as the laptop, that the desktop is crippled to not connect to open wifi connections with anything like ease, that it appears to have little power management, and, finally, it uses… Windows. Which I’m surprising myself by beginning to actively hate as an OS.

So instead, I carry my little Asus Eee PC around with me. Which, you’ll recall, has virtually no storage space whatsoever - mine’s the 4G model, which, after an install of Ubuntu Hardy Heron, has about half that spare. Not only that, but it can’t connect to Reith at all (not being a BBC machine), so the documents on my fileshare are unavailable. No wonder Erik gave me a quizzical look. How could I do any work on the thing?

Well, part of it is that I’ve discovered quite a few “dirty” internet connections (ADSL lines connected directly out, via wifi, to the internet), and partly it’s because I run my life in the cloud, with most of what I need either on a 4G USB stick that I carry around with me, or on my own Amazon S3 storage through JungleDisk. (Indeed, so far, this entry is the abortive beginning of that post).

I’m a big fan of my little Asus Eee. I found Xandros, the Linux distro that the unit shipped with, quite confusing: I’ve only really been using Linux for a year or so now, and I’ve only just got to grips with Ubuntu, so I popped Ubuntu 8.04 onto the device, and got the thing working quite well. So well, indeed, that I’ve written a wiki page on how to do it (which many others, gratifyingly, have added to).

The one thing I did notice was that Ubuntu used a lot more battery power than Xandros. The Eee’s battery power isn’t particularly magical, so to have even less battery power was disappointing. I guessed it might be something with processor scaling, that magical bit of running a computer where your machine thinks “ah, I’m having it easy now, I’ll stop running the processor quite so fast”.

I was right; Ubuntu as it’s initially configured on the Asus doesn’t enable processor scaling at all. Yet the little Intel processor inside my Asus Eee does cope with it quite happily: it’s just that the OS doesn’t allow it.

So, after a few hours’ research, I’m happy to mention that I’m now running a better, processor-scaled, version of Ubuntu Hardy Heron on the Asus Eee. Naturally, this information is now on the wiki, and it’s a quick, less-than-ten-step process. The machine’s running less hot, and the battery should last significantly longer. And, interestingly, the top speed has changed from 650MHz to 900MHz - that’s quite a potential speed increase.

What else of the Asus Eee? Well, the screen on my 710 is a little too small; the just-released 900 fixes that, but at a massive price premium. The keyboard appears to have the numbers in the wrong place, which gets a bit of getting used to (though the size is just fine). However, the machine’s really rather well-built: solid and reassuring-feeling, rather than cheap and tacky. I was lucky enough to buy the black version instead of the “looks cute but shows the dirt” white version so it looks halfway decent; and it has many more connections than, say, the Apple MacBook Air.

And unlike one of my colleagues, who uses his MacBook Air to take notes using nothing more than TextEditor (ha!), I’ve quite a sensible note-taking system, thanks to the wonderful world of Tiddlywiki: a perfectly usable and brilliant offline note-taking system. Just power up Firefox, open the local Tiddlywiki on my system, and there are all my notes, all interlinked, with full backup files and (if I set it up) online backup. It’s really quite excellent.

Anyway, after showing him, Erik’s impressed at the Asus. So should you be. At about £220, it’s really not the worst machine you could ever buy.

Uploaded on 13 February 2008, this is a viewing platform in the war museum in Salford Quays. Photo by Mike Willshaw. Used under licence.

All this online sharing has to stop
It's ruining the motor mechanic industry. (No, really)

Flickr CC search
A quick page whipped up to help me find nice pictures for this blog - it searches all Flickr CC images together (which the Flickr UI won’t let me do).

Aussies Head to SXSW
A website using one of my photos, albeit only credited in the ALT tag (which isn’t cricket, by the way).

Oceanworld Manly
Another spotting of one of my photographs, complete with a link to my own website. How splendid.

Living on Earth: Swedish Body Heat
Sounds exciting, but actually it’s a radio feature about trains, aired on WBUR and other stations. They used one of my photographs to illustrate it on the web. Cool.

When statistics speak volumes
Good piece by Paul Smith on the press releases radio stations send out on figures day. Paul still owes me a fiver, by the way.

MMS For O2 iPhone
Just the thing I was looking for. Brilliant - now I can receive MMS on the iPhone. (Bizarre that it doesn’t support it…)

Twitter on the iPhone: Hahlo
While I’m on an iPhone theme, I use this for Twitter (it’s much prettier than it looks on this page). For this, and for the MMS thing, I’ve donated.

Keeping the conversation going
Nic Price activates a magic Wordpress plugin. So have I. Good idea.

Do We Have The Backup?
‘how it can be legitimate for a government to build roads but not to lay fibre is a mystery to me, and one that deserves to be questioned.’ Good point.

Big name #4
Hello, ladies. Contacting me has never been easier. Etc.

What HD-2s Don’t Stream And Should?
A rant about streaming. But included in this is interesting: WRXK’s HD2 channel (a new one only for HD radios) is entirely themed around their breakfast presenter. Neat idea. (Course, I was behind the ‘Virgin Radio Party Classics’ channel on Sky, voiced by Suggs.)

Interactivity: A lost opportunity for your station?
Some “isn’t the US behind the rest of us” type thoughts from Mark Ramsey; but some useful and interesting figures he quotes.

This is a tidied and edited list of my del.icio.us postings from January 26th to February 14th. You can subscribe to this list, live, via rss.

So, you’ve junked that Windows box, but you still fancy listening to a little bit of BBC Radio? Don’t blame you.

Thanks to a man called Tim who wrote a series of amusing emails to a colleague of mine at the BBC, and a nice man called Richard who, and I quote, said “You’re a linux man, James, aren’t you?”, I’ve rushed home and discovered how to do it, so I could tell him. Here’s how. Tested on Ubuntu Gutsy, the latest version. And ready for my colleagues to copy’n'paste into a proper BBC web-page.

Open Synaptic
Synaptic is the software that will install Real Player for you.
- Run System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager.
- Type your password when it asks you.

Tell Ubuntu where to find commercial software
Real Player is commercial software, so we need to tell Ubuntu how it can find that if we search for it.
- Under the ‘Settings’ menu, choose ‘Repositories’.
- Click the ‘Third party software’ tab.
- Click the ‘Add’ button at the bottom of the window.
- In the window that appears, type:
deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu dapper-commercial main
- Then click ‘OK’ to enter that information, and ‘close’.
- A window will appear saying that the repositories have changed.
- Click ‘close’.
- Click the ‘reload’ button on the top-left of the toolbar.
- After a few seconds, it’ll load a few files.

Install Real Player
Now Synaptic will know all about commercial software, like Real Player. (Don’t worry, it’s still a free download).
- Hit the ’search’ icon in the toolbar, and search for “realplay”.
- You’ll see a few programs appear in the search results window. Tick the one called ‘realplay’ and choose “Mark for Installation”.
- Then press ‘Apply’ in the toolbar; then ‘apply’ again.
- Synaptic will automatically download a file (6 megabytes).
- Close Firefox while it’s doing this, so it can install correctly.
- Synaptic will automatically install Real Player onto your system.

Go to the iPlayer for Radio
- Open Firefox.
- Go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/
- Click on “Listen live” for the station of your choice
- Enjoy the best the BBC has to offer.

Photo: Alosh Bennett. Used under licence

Photo taken this week by mike138. Used under licence. Photos for my Delicious postings like this will be taken from Flickr’s ‘interesting feed’ for the day concerned. Seemed like a good idea.

Postalicious
One of the reasons I stopped posting my Del.icio.us links to this blog was the unpleasant way that it rendered, and the lack of any control I had with regard to timing. This hopefully fixes this.

Meet Mr. TechCrunch UK - ScobleShow
In the latest of my “let’s mention Robert Scoble because he normally adds your mention to his linkblog”, a serious one - Robert interviews the excellent Mike Butcher, who’s looking very well in this video. I last saw Mike a good eight months ago.

Ubuntu
Recently added it to my normal workhorse laptop (an HP Compaq tc4200). I wouldn’t say it worked totally instantly out of the box, but after a little tinkering, it’s doing everything I want except print, which is a good start, and I’ve still Windows on the machine if I need it.

The UCC Journalism Society Conference 2008 (my speaking events)
Delighted to be speaking on “the place of traditional media in the Web 2.0 world” at this conference for University College Cork: under the auspices of my Media UK work.

An ego blog-search
I wanted to see who was blogging about me, but I had problems with Google Blog Search returning my own blog entries. I’ve worked out how to stop that with -blogurl, like so: “James Cridland” -blogurl:james.cridland.net -blogurl:www.flickr.com

v-moda “Vibe Duo” headphones for the iPhone
My Christmas present to myself was an iPhone: and these are just excellent headphones - way better sound than the original crappy ones, and with a headset mike, so I can still use it as a phone. Mind, damn expensive.

ShinyRed - 10 blogs to read in 2008
Nine blogs you might actually want to read; and one ridiculous suggestion. But it’s very nice of them, so thank you, ShinyRed.