Alan Pope's blog

At work people often come up to my desk and ask if they can get their password reset. I usually do this and tell them their new password. I’ve decided I’m missing a trick here. What I now do is this. User: "Please reset my password" Me: "Sure" *tapety* *tap* *tap* Me: "Right, your password is 'ubuntu'" User: "Huh?" Me: "Here, take this, it will help you" I hand them an Ubuntu CD pack. [Read More]

This is a long post which started life as a letter to my Dad explaining what I had done to fix his broken computer. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to paste it in here. My Dad dropped off his PC to me. It’s an ASUS motherboard based generic PC with a 1GHz CPU, 256MiB RAM, 30GB and 40GB disks, and a CD burner. It has a Matrox 450 video card, a Pinnacle DV500 ieee1394 capture card, a sound card, some USB ports and a PCI modem. [Read More]

As regular readers of my blog may recall, I recently gave my brother a PC running Ubuntu Linux. He uses it for surfing the web, getting email and chatting online. He also has an HP PSC 1610 printer/scanner/copier which works under Linux pretty well. He has a Dlink WAP/Modem/Router providing his ADSL connection via wired ethernet. I had a phone call from him a week or so ago telling me the PC was broken. [Read More]