I hate adverts with a rage that burns hotter than the fires of hell. I hate them because most people don't understand the importance of them. They see them, ignore them (or so they think) and that's that. They will happily sit through bouts of three minutes of TV ads, attentively listening and watching everyone like puppets being played by the big corporations. Of course, ask one of these people why they watch adverts and they will tell you "They're just adverts, it's not like I listen to them". Foolish are they. Also I hate them because simply, I don't want to see them and should not have to see them if I don't want too.

Anyway, reasons aside, here is how I create a near Ad Free world:

1. Internet Adverts, these evil spawn are thankfully mostly eradicated via Firefox coupled up with the Adblock Extention and theAdblock Updater Extention. This is in my opinion one of the most advantageous reasons to use Firefox.

2. TV Adverts, this one is a little trickier/costlier. Basically you have two paths, one is to mute the TV and look away when the adverts come on which works fine but is somewhat impractical. The other is to by or build some kind of PVR (Personal Video Recorder) and get into the habbit of never watching live TV again, simply set it up to record what you want and watch it when you want. If you do your research right you'll have a box that allows you to skip adverts or if like me you are more technically minded and just happen to have a spare computer lying around, build your own using MythTV.

3. Radio adverts, this ones simple. Don't listen to the radio. Why on earth would you want to in this day and age? Grab a hard drive music player, shove loads of songs on it and have it set to random. Instant radio without the mindless chatter.

4. Junk Mail, this is obvious but learn to look for the signs so you can throw it away before even opening it. Often it will be addressed "to the occupier" or something similar. Otherwise open, to be sure and throw away quickly (after dancing on it).

5. Phone calls. I love getting these. Either just hang up with no reply (very satisfying), hang up after saying "No thanks" or have a little fun such as try to sell them something you have knocking around the house you were thinking of getting rid of, or start talking about the weather or currently politics. Ensure that you don't let them change the conversation, they will try so hard to do this. Eventually they will hang up, fun fun fun. The same tactics apply to those people in the street collecting research or trying to sign you up to something, totally ignore them. Have a bit of fun with them or just politely say "No thanks" and walk on.

6. Billboards, these are by far the most invasive unwelcome adverts that are a plain breech of human rights IMO. I don't want to be forced to look at them yet have no say so in the matter. These things you can't really avoid. They are so big that no trick I have found really works for them. The best thing to do is to recognise the shape of it via your peripheral vision and focus on something else till the scum has passed. Of course, starting a vigilante group that set's alight or defaces these things with paint or ink would be also be a good idea The same tactics of ignore and look at something else are to be used in similar adverts found in shops and around town.

There you have it, this covers most types of advertisements. I hope it serves as some use to you as you fight the advertisements, Go forth and be ignorant!

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As a Linux user, I have known about XGL/Compiz before it was publicly available and got my hand on it as soon as possible. I wrote a blog post a while ago proclaiming that I thought Linux was the winner in this market. After speaking to some Mac guys, apparently Mac can do some of the stuff XGL/Compiz can. However I have never seen any news of this on technology news sites like Digg, however the words XGL/Compiz and Linux are cropping up all the time. This confuses me but anyway, I found a rather interesting poll via digg. It features three videos of all the new fancy/useful/useless features in Linux, OSX and Vista. The Linux video is stupidly long, has little more than a guy wobbling windows and spinning cubes and fails completely to show some of the more useful effects however it pulls in the "wow" factor. Take a look at this Linux XGL/Compiz Graphics to Apple Aqua & Vista Aero poll.

Linux is in the lead... by miles! In fact it has (at the time of writing) over 82% of the votes. No this isn't on a Linux forum, it's on an OS neutral forum. I agree that two videos were unfair, the Linux and OSX video the Windows one seemed to showcase exactly how little Windows Vista can do anyway.

This is most interesting, Mac and Windows users voted on that forum and a lot voted Linux as the superior graphically capable desktop. Clearly XGL/Compiz or similar effects could play a big part in the adoption of desktop Linux.

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Well the project I have been working on for nearly three years is now dead. It was becoming a right pain in the **** to manage and a chore to code for. I'm now working on LF2 if you will, It's not Logicfury underneath though it will bear similarities in it's visual operation. Chances are the project will no longer be called Logicfury, but that's undecided yet. This time the CMS wont just have a little reordering of it's structure, it will be coded entirely from scratch. Which is no small task but it seems a more welcoming one than continuing with a poorly designed project. There are many many idea's I have for the new CMS and I can guarantee it will surpass Logicfury.

What will become of my Logicfury powered blog or indeed Logicfury it's self? That's an interesting question. It does make a good blog, blogs are much smaller web apps and the structuring isn't too bad for something like a blog or small news system based site. Perhaps Logicfury could continue with a new purpose if someone is willing to take over the code? For the time being my blog will still run on the CMS that never was

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Finally, the second instalment, better late than never. Personally I enjoyed the second day of LRL more than the first, even though it didn't last as long. The whole atmosphere seemed more relaxed this was due to having less people turn up the second day which also made more space in the main room. The talks I attended were Ted Haegar on Managing Linux desktop systems, Matthew Garret on Linux & Laptops, Kat Goodwin, Jen Phillips & Phated on Women in Open Source and Elliot Smith on Ruby on Rails. The first three were really funny talks the last was more formal but good none the less. The weekend was great, miles better than last years.

I really had been hoping to link this post to some videos of the talks but alas I can't find these anywhere. I'd rather like to catch up on the talks I wan unable to attened.

Roll on LRL 07!

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