The Future Is In The Past

~Those Days Are Gone~

This was taken when the annual barge race was happening on the River Orwell. I decided to take the picture to its full glory and make it look old, so it looks like the picture was taken it their finest hour.

New Mazda 2. Added a darkness effect to put more light on the car.

Taken on a sunny day in Portugal

This was taken with a blue filter, on a long exposure. The light source was infact the moon!

Hello!

As you can see, I have changed the site design. There are a few errors but I will fix them soon.

I’ve had a lot of spam comments recently, around 300 a day, so for now I have stopped allowing people to make comments until I sort the problems out!

Have a nice day!

I have got a job at www.autogaming.net . I write reviews of PC games and get paid.

Here is my first review, on Euro Truck Simulator:

“Euro Truck Simulator is the first truck simulator to be set in Europe, with European trucks. Drive cargo through 17 different cities in 11 different countries. From Lisbon to Leon, Barcelona to Berlin and Paris to Prague. The auto routes bare a great deal of resemblance to their real life counter parts, whilst the cities have recognizable landmarks, the signs going into the city are in native language and the scenery along the motorways is very similar to real life, with subtle but recognizable differences in each country.”

You can read the full review here.

I also plan to do some stuff with the site, so stay around.

So, at the moment there are four main operating systems. Windows Vista, Windows XP, Mac’s OSX and Linux.

Linux

The main reason to use Linux I feel is becuase of more eyes make fewer security flaws. Linux is Open source software, which means that any programmer in the world can have a look at the code and see if there are any errors, which can then be corrected. Another reason to use Linux is because you can get free support. There are many Linux forums and IRC channels. But there are with Windows also, but the main point about the Linux forums are that the people who wrote the OS are there and you can ask them many questions, which you can’t do with Microsoft and Apple. Linux is also free and you can request a free Linux CD if you have a slow internet connection. There are also many versions of Linux which you can use, while choosing this may be confusing and you could get the wrong one, it doesn’t actually matter as you can just download another version, which you can’t do, if you buy Windows Vista Basic when you actually want Windows Vista Premium. Lastly, another great thing is that Linux automatically downloads and installs your drivers, unlike some windows.

But, Linux isn’t perfect. It is very complicated to get everything to work perfectly, especially Nvidia graphics cards. For some versions of linux, you have to pay for support and for Linspire you have to pay for it. One of the main reasons why I don’t use linux anymore, is the lack of programs which are available for Linux. You can’t run any Microsoft programs on it easily, especially Microsoft Office, which is somewhat vital to any student. They give you Open Office and WordPerfect, which aren’t very well known programs and do infact contain a few bugs.

Windows XP

Windows XP is a great operating system. You can fully customise it and run most programs made for computers on it. It is safer than Vista, uses less RAM than Vista, it is more reliable than Vista and a lot of the hardware today is compatible with XP, unlike Vista, which is why Vista didn’t sell very well. XP still has mainstream support, although you can’t buy a PC with it on now, (yes I know there are some exceptions, but mostly you can’t get it). Everything is in its place with XP. It is very easy to use and your files are located in the same place, since they have been since Windows 95. XP is now really solid and stable secure enough, if you have the right programs installed and know what you are doing. XP is great as it is family based, or XP home is atleast, which means all the members of your faimly can use the computer very easily.

However, Windows XP is old. Mainstream support will not go on forever and next year Windows 7 is coming out, so Microsoft will start to turn away from XP like they have done with Windows 2000, yes 2000 still has updates but the canceled the Service Pack 5 for 2000 and just released a few updates, this will happen with XP soon. XP Home Edition has nothing usefull really, if you know a bit about computers and have more than one, you might want to use Remote Desktop Connection, which doesn’t come with XP Home.

Mac OS X

OSX looks very nice and has a quick start up time. You can use Microsoft Office for MAC which is compatiable with the normal version for Windows. There is a lot of software which works on Macs. Apparently you don’t need Anti-Virus software.

But, OSX isn’t totally immune to spyware and viruses. As more people start to get macs a lot more viruses spread for macs. Macs are far to expensive and useless anyway. Anyone who has one shouldn’t be proud. They are for gays, or people who have more money than sense. Also all mac people want windows people to switch.

Windows Vista

The greatest thing that everyone will probably find useful about Vista is that photos, videos and music are not treated the same as Word documents any more. When you open a folder of photos, they come up as like they were in Picasa or iPhoto. Music folders come up in columns of ID3 tags, a bit like iTunes. It is also a lot quicker to install Vista onto your PC, unlike older versions of Windows. Vista Aero looks very good, compared to Xp. The Sidebar is very useful, as you can keep up to date with everything with the one of the various RSS gadgets. Another key point is that the search funtction has been greatly improved, making lost files easily found again.

However, Vista isn’t perfect and there are many reasons why you shouldn’t get it. All of the versions cost a lot of money. If you have a reasonably old computer, Vista might not be compatible with some of your hardware, so you have to fork out even more money for that. Many old applications which work on XP don’t work on Vista.

All in all, I feel that Windows XP is the best. Then comes Vista, then comes Linux and at the end comes OSX.

It’s not becuase I’m a MS fanboy, it’s becuase I have tried all four of these operating systems and I feel that I could use Vista and XP a lot easier than I could OSX and Linux. Linux has quite a few problems with Networking, which is why it didn’t put it above Vista.

Whilst reading on a photography website, I came across this site. http://www.earthshots.org It seemed a pretty neat webstie, with a different winner everyday. I thought I would give it ago, so I just have. I’ve uploaded my best picture and I will upload many more each day. I suggest you check it out, there are many great photos there!

Enjoy the rest of your day!

Today I decided to have a shot at stock photography and selling them on various sites. However, firstly I came across one great site called Dreamstime. The Terms and Conditions say that you can only sell stock photos on their site, so I took that option as it is easier, I will have less usernames and less passwords to remember. So, I hope to make at least some money from this, if I don’t in 6 months I will close my account there. But I hope to make some money at least. I will start to promote the site and put adverts up around the net to gfinch.net soon.

Stay Tuned!!