I am alone on a small island that is about the size of a roundabout in the middle of a vast ocean. With my ghostly body I look up at the night sky and contemplate what to do next. Maybe I will make the sun rise, build some more land or just read some more of the wiki. I've just installed OpenSimulator (a.k.a. OpenSim), a "3D Application Server". What this means is that it can be used to host "virtual worlds", a bit like SecondLife. In fact you can use the SecondLife Viewer as a client for it. After hearing about at various points for quite a while and finding a really good set of instructions on how to set it up, I couldn't resist having a go, even though creating virtual worlds is a bit of an excursion for me.

Often when we talk about Linux it is often in the context of a computer enthusiast, a person who enjoys finding out what open source technology can do for them, or maybe people looking to solve particular problems and get up and running with particular software or hardware. A group that sometimes we don't think about is our creative friends, artists, musicians, animators, audio engineers, video editors and suchlike, but they too can have a Linux experience specifically tailored for them, an experience set up to enable them to enjoy a diverse and rich experience right out of the box without the need for complex setup steps or in depth system knowledge. This wonderful creative playground is in the form of Ubuntu Studio, a version of the Ubuntu distribution remixed to meet the needs of creatives. It arrives as a DVD image which you can use to install it on your computer, once installed you will find a rich set of creative tools ready to go. To make things even better, thanks to the centralised way Ubuntu keeps software updated, it will keep all of these programs up to date automatically for you without the need to download lots of updates from lots of different sites.

Do you like the new design for this website? I had been meaning to do a custom Drupal theme for quite some time, the old theme I had been using 'Sky' looked pretty good but carried with it a couple of problems. Firstly, it was a fixed-width theme. Fixed-width websites are one of my pet hates, and laden with problems, they don't get the most out of the available screen area, often leaving large empty spaces or disappearing off the screen. Secondly, you could either have a left or a right sidebar; I wanted both! Plus it is always nice to have a unique design.