After some comments from Bigpresh I have joined Facebook. It's got some neat features, such as tagging people in pictures and lots of optional add-ons. I've linked to a few people now and there are many others I know on there. The numbers just seem vast. Even a search for a rare surname often returns loads of people, so finding people can be tricky unless they are friends of a friend. A limitation is that you cannot see much there until you join up. This may be to reduce spam.

I will still keep my Multiply page as I can't face trying to persuade friends and family to learn another system when they haven't got to grips with that one. There will some duplication of contacts, but Facebook seems to encourage more activity, especially among the geekier element.

Only seven of us this month. Due to a lack of a main speaker I suggested that people could do a short talk on whatever they had been playing with recently. I kicked off with my impressions of Jokosher. Conversation rambled around MIDI, audio compression and sundry current affairs. Someone whose name I need reminding of had some videos demonstrating the latest technology that the dreaded Microsoft have been previewing. It's called Photosynth and is simply stunning. It's about how you can view photos. It's hard to describe. Just watch the videos and gasp in wonder. I had heard of it via my friend Imel. I wonder if the free software people can match it. I really need to organise my pictures so that I can find what I want. We also talked about Second Life. I've heard so much about it, but have yet to try it. It seems that it can be run on Linux.

I built my new PC, but have only booted it from an Ubuntu CD to test it. I'm in the process of backing up some things before I transfer my drive. I've not had a proper impression of it's speed apart from some impressive figures from the Dnet benchmarks. It looks to be 5 or 6 times faster than my current unit. I hope to get moved over before next week. This PC really seems to be slow these days. I suspect that there are issues with my user profile that are causing problems. I may strip it right back and gradually copy things back in an effort to fix this.

I'm reading a book by Stewart Brand about the concepts behind The Long Now. Good stuff. See the book list for details.