Shiny shiny, shiny boots of leather...

Oh, hello! I'm back after a hard slog of exams, have have much to post from my recent adventures of breaktime 'twixt booktime. So, first of all, you can download free audiobooks here, on LibriVox. I've been listening to Von Masoch's Venus in Furs in the bath, lime cordial and soda in hand. It made me feel glamourous for a about a quarter of an hour, and then noodle-ish, as if I was a little udon noodle floating in miso broth, but this had more to do with my submersion in warm water than the musical and engaging voice of LibriVox's volunteer reader.

I'm a Linux user, and my open-source operating system distro of choice is Ubuntu, billed as "Linux for human beings." I use Ubuntu for two reasons: One, I used to be a Macintosh type of girl, but my love affair with Apple came to a end when my iPod and iBook collapsed within a month of each other in a veritable Liebestod of fading batteries, old-age bugs, and disk fragmentation, and I lacked the cash and brand dedication to renew them. Second, there is, of course, an ethical and political imperative I feel towards the use of open source software; see the legendary The Cathedral and the Bazaar essay and the other excellent essays and hacker reference bits on Eric Raymond's site . Basically, I really like open-source software but I'm too much of a former Apple point and click noodlehead to run something butch and heavy efficient like SuSe or Fedora. Anyhoodles, you're using Windows, and would like to try something different for your beloved compy (something speedier, more user friendly, more secure, less of those McAffee pop-up windows. Seriously, how do you guys deal with those?), take a look at this manga: Ubunchu. It's all about a group of high school kids installing Ubuntu on their new PC. As my friend Sam pointed out, manga as a genre is about as varied as "talking pictures" as a genre. So no giggles please. Okay, a few. Tee-hee.