Simple Minds-Spakle in the Rain Demos

http://symphonyofghosts.blogspot.com/2009/02/simple-minds-sparkle-in-rain-demos-1983.html

Not hosted on my site, but discovered this on the above web site, I like Simple Minds early work alot, from about 1980-1987 the released some groudbreaking albums. Its easy to forget how big they were in the mid 80s. This album above is basically a recording of the sparkle in the rain albumas work in progress. I think its might be recorded from the monitors, but it also sounds like this was what the album was to soundlike, of course they brought in Steve Lillywhite to produce and he gave the songs a more rockier feel. Two of the tracks are almost dance trance like, where Burchills guitar really soars above the mix. These tracks ought to be reproduced and reworked, would make a brilliant record. These kind of recordings are fascianting pieces of music as you realise what gets discarded in the recording process and what gets kept.

Fedora - New operating system, Linux...

About two weeks ago I finally had enough of working with Windows as an operating system, a few years ago I would of happily worked with XP which truth be told was quite a stable operating system however over the last few years with the advent of windows vista and windows 7, there seems to be a greater increase in ram usage and also in security issues. In the later case I had reinstalled vista about three times due to the fact that it was only letting me install the proper graphics if I installed the updates, but then obviously it would then make the system slow and unresponsive at times. I currently run a AMD computer which was also having problems with booting up, actually sending the picture to the monitor.

Anyway getting back to the point , I had tried many linux distributions over the years some good ones come to mind like Xandros and Ubuntu. I used Fedora before but I must say it is quite a good linux operating system and its very easy to install. Firstly I went to a Linux Distribution site and downloaded the ISO file. Then you use a software package like CDburner XP (which is free). Once you have the downloaded ISO file, just burn it to disc using the burn iso option. Once your disc is ejected from the drive. Restart your computer and make sure it boots from the CD drive and not the hard drive. This normally means pressing f2 of f12. The beauty about linux distros is that they run straight from the CD and mean that you can try the operating systems without losing your windows operating system. Which to me is a good way to go through all the various operating systems till you find the one best suited.

With Fedora I found it pleasing to the eye. The good things with fedora is that sound worked straight away. It also has flash player support(you go to flash player site and download rpm version). That was a little tricky to be honest but from then on its been really good. The plus points I would say would be ease of use, soundcard support, fast web pages speed, organisation of folders is cool as well. The only down sound is that to configure a sound site like Spotify is very complex, however sites like Last FM and Grooveshark and We7 work, but in a ideal world there is not a operating system that is completely faultless.Also its only compatible with certain printers.

A very good feature of note in Fedora is the add/remover programs feature which takes alot of the hard work out of installing new packages. For instance I wanted to play music so downloaded last fm application and then I wanted a word processor, two or three clicks they are there.

All though we have windows on a laptop, Linux exists on the base unit. I think Linux is almost there , I think it needs one distribution to come along with such easy ease of use and full windows and flash player capabilities to really take over the windows crown.