The Release Candidate of Gutsy was released recently. As I had some free hours, I decided to upgrade to this RC release. After an official release, all Ubuntu servers are overloaded anyway, so this was the right moment. I uninstalled Compiz Fusion first, and then I initiated the upgrade with the

update-manager -d

command, which downloaded and installed the upgrade without a glitch. Compiz Fusion is now the default window manager, so that means eye candy for the masses.


Seems that Ubuntu choose to use the Xgl server as default for use with Compiz Fusion. This runs without any problems on my NVidia card, so I decided to stick with it. In the past, I had my share of troubles with Beryl/Compiz and the buggy NVidia drivers.


Overall, a great upgrade experience ! Gutsy runs in all its glory, without any upgrade problem. Nice work, Canonical !

Lagavulin (Lagga-Voolin) means "hollow where the mill is" and has been there since 1816. Since James Logan Mackie & Co of Glasgow bought the distillery in 1867, Lagavulin is one of the three Kildalton distilleries (with Ardbeg and Laphoraig) on the south-east shore of Islay. Since the 16yo was introduced as a part of a Classic Malts range as the representative of Islay it has been impressing drinkers everywhere. It is pretty incredible that 3 neighbouring distilleries can vary in character so much.


Lagavulin came to my attention as my collegue Robartes kept announcing it as his favourite whisky. Priced at 40 Euro, and being classified as a Classic Malt, this is certainly not something you want to mix in your cola or coffee.


The nose : peat, lots of smoke, orange zest. I smell cheese, Grommit. Very weird indeed, very complex.


The taste : Holy crap ! Complex, even more than the smell. The taste equivalent of a 5 minute video clip compressed into 10 seconds. More peat, more smoke, dark chocolate. The most difficult malt I ever tried.

Beste VRT, de volgende keer dat jullie een TV programma bedenken over, pakweg enkele mensen die een uitvinding wensen voor te stellen waar ze jaren aan gewerkt hebben, kunnen jullie dan ten minste meer aandacht aan de verschillende uitvindingen spenderen, dan aan de dolle fratsen en capriolen van de presentatoren ? U doet er niet alleen de bedenkers, maar vooral jullie kijkpubliek een grote dienst mee.


Disclaimer: ik ben in generlei wijze gerelateerd aan één van de betrokkenen bedenkers, enkel een TV kijker die zwaar op zijn honger moet blijven.


Dank u.

I reported previously about the Messier marathon, a race to find as many Messier objects in one night. The Messier Planner is a great tool one can use in order to prepare a marathon night. Or just use it as a handy planner for an sudden night of star watching.

DeepskyLive is a great java applet which behaves like an online star atlas, capable of showing stars up to magnitude 11.5 and deep-sky objects up to magnitude 16. You can easily locate different deepsky objects and print out detailled finder charts. Very handy if you don't have your own star atlas at hand.

Finally, a scientific study about Harry Potter : an attempt to classify Harry Potter's headaches as described in the biographical series by JK Rowling. Regrettably we are not privy to the Wizard system of classifying headache disorders and are therefore limited to the Muggle method, the International Classification of Headache Disorders.

I finished the Solera Reserve I bought lately, and because the surroundings of my regular liquor shop (that is, where I buy my Tullamore Dew) is still plagued with road works, I decided to shop elsewhere and acquire a quite different brand of whiskey. I heard lots of good of Bowmore, so I took the 12yo with me.


Found in the capital of Islay, Bowmore distillery is the oldest (legal) distillery on Islay and the second oldest in Scotland, and is one of the more renowned whiskeys of Islay. For over 200 years Bowmore has attracted the respect of those lucky enough to taste what it produces. In his Spirit Journal, F. Paul Pacult wrote "that Bowmore might just be Scotland's foremost malt distillery at this time"(2003), and in his book, Raw Spirit, Ian Banks writes , "If you can't find a Bowmore to fall in love with, you may have to consider very seriously the possibility that you're wasting your money drinking whisky at all." With a wide range of releases, and a whole new line to familiarize yourselves with, there is bound to be a Bowmore that you'll dig.


The nose, then : smell of pears, honey, a distinct fragrance of peat, and a slight hint of salt, seaweed. No surprises so far : this is an Islay after all. Tasting : the peat taste is much more present here, still sweet, and somehow syrupy, medical, sherry alike. Very different from the Speyside brands, but not that much also. Good and complex taste, I'm gonna like this. I guess I'm ready for a Talisker after all...

The latest iPods have a cryptographic "checksum" in their song databases that prevents third-party applications from synching with the portable music players. This means that iPods can no longer be used with operating systems where iTunes doesn't exist -- like Linux, where gtkpod and Amarok are common free tools used by iPod owners to load their players. If you buy such an iPod, you're only option to upload songs is to use Wine + iTunes or, more drastically, iPodLinux.

Here's a great introduction on MIDP programming with J2ME. If I only had some time, I would implement my own midlet for a project management and mindmap tool.

What character resembles your OS ? (slightly NSFW)