You Wanna Milk Me, Focker?

Eek.

I’ve just been called by the Anthony Nolan Trust, a UK bone marrow donor register, as I am a potential match for someone in need of a transplant. I announce this in a heady cloud of trepidation and the feeling that I could be saving someone’s life if my samples are a good enough match.

I signed up in June or so, when a colleague in need of a transplant himself organised a mass attendance at a testing session. In short, I’m really nervous as I’m pretty squeamish but how can you turn down the opportunity to save someone’s life?

There is a real shortage of blood, bone marrow (particularly male and ethnic minorities) and organ donors in the UK and I urge you to actively go out and give blood and bone marrow samples and sign up for a donor card. You could be saving somebody’s life.

Audio Previews in Nautilus, or so I Thought

Does anyone know why audio previews in Nautilus don’t work for me? They work for Jono and we’re both running Ubuntu Dapper. I remember him showing me some Ubuntu features way back around the time of the Warty stable and Hoary development versions whereby if you mouse-over an audio file in Nautilus, you get an audio preview, right there in Nautilus.

I run a pretty much stock Ubuntu configuration and don’t mess with audio and Nautilus preview settings, but still, I’ve never had this feature work for me and seeing Jono’s machine a few times recently reminded me of this fact. Bastard 😉

As per default, my preview configuration plays audio previews for local files. Does anyone know of any other issues that might be responsible?

Anyway, I can’t complain too much about Jono as he took 2 hours out of his day to teach me about GStreamer so I can help out with Jokosher and he also rescued my Everybody Loves Eric Raymond t-shirt which I left at LUG Radio Live.

Holiday Books

I’m going on a long overdue holiday in 3 weeks and I want to take a good Linux book or 2 along for the ride. I’m going for 2 quiet weeks and so I’d like something for the downtime or when I’m not feeling sociable.

Last time I went on a longish holiday I took this copy of Rebel Code by Glynn Moody, though it seems there is a newer edition now. In many ways, it was the most influential Linux book I’ve read. I was on a quiet, near 3 week holiday with plenty of time for for taking stock and making decisions for the future. I was just getting serious with Linux and this book sealed it for me as it matched my level of understanding at the time. It was at that point that I decided I wanted to make my career in the Linux field.

So this time I’m looking for something equally influential and I’m asking you for recommendations. I read the Richard Stallman biography, Free as in Freedom which painted a pretty good portrait and I’ve also read The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric S. Raymond and was bored to tears, I never did finish it.

Programming or other real tech books are no use because I don’t think I’ll be taking a laptop with airport security the way it is at the moment and there’s no way I’m putting one in the luggage hold. I don’t think I’ll find Python, PHP, Perl, Bind or Exim in a Cypriot Internet cafe.

What do you recommend?