Back to work, Fire, Linux...

Been back from home about three weeks ago and what three weeks these have been... Had to get back to work on the new project we are starting on Disaster Management (sounds quite relevant given the recent events around) and finish up stuff from my phd. Then, disaster struck... fire in our building.. I witnessed it first hand on Sunday the 2nd Nov. as I was driving to London... (see some pictures). Thank God our side of the building was not touched but still, we were not allowed in up till today... Up to now, we had been relocated in another building, all hotdesking.

The fact that i no pc to work on did not help... until i got my new Toshiba Portégé M300 last week. Things started getting better as i could work from home. I particularly wanted to see if i could install linux on it as we would have to work on that platform later on anyway. So i grabbed the Ubuntu distro, after reading some reviews, and installed it. Contrary to my previous experiences with Linux, the Ubuntu install went ahead without any hitches! All devices were recognised - from the wireless card to the bluetooth. Note, you need a utility called dambt to power the bluetooth device up. Tried to install toshiba utilities for linux but that did not work well.. so i left it for later. Also installed a web calendar software called Plans (free). It's very easy to install - was done in 10 mins.

On windows, i managed to sync my palm tungsten t2 and use the web browser on my palm through bluetooth with my pc (connected to a router) - used a nice piece of software called MochaPPP

Now all is well...