Hi all, well it has been a long tiring week. Everyone has those weeks occasionally, the sort of week where the traffic lights are against you. You need to send editors the same documents a couple of times, yes even the mail server is against me and the coffee machine is broken just as you reached the point of no return. Therefore, rather than rave against the world and all its contents. I prefer to look on the bright side and then go get some sleep.

Do you know what I really like about Linux and all those lovely FOSS tools that you can apt-get? It’s that feeling of being in contact with an old friend as you boot the system up. The personality of the machine is stable and charming. The machine almost says, have you had a tough day? OK then come and run fortune. Ah running fortune from the command line, I get the needed answer:

“Stupidity got us into this mess — why can’t it get us out?”

Next, I look at my X screen savers and relax to some music with XMMS. After years of experimentation, I have organized my computers in the exactly the way I want. I have added all kinds of trivial desktop tools to make me smile at the most inappropriate moments and enhance my on-line presence. So what else do I like about my desktop? Gaim of course I can chat with my sister in Australia in both Windows and now Linux. I believe I have already mentioned Abiword in a previous blog. NVU used for Web page editing. The tool is so simple, that and it’s just so well designed. No extra complexity and the generated HTML tags are not too bloated. Eclipse for my Java programming addiction and the Apache web server and Tomcat server for my hosting susceptibilities. FOSS is a big success with many, many helpers involved. Lots of stable and usable products exist. Sourceforge has over 100,000 such projects within its grasp. FOSS is consistently marching forward, forcing or motivating a more client orientated, service focused approach on big business.

Now I’m drinking my hot chocolate and forgiving myself for the rough week I had given myself. I am looking at some highly realistic open gl screen savers and I am pretty much ready to stop for the day. Yep, As fortune has taught me. I can but only agree:

It’s not easy, being green. —Kermit the Frog