Northern Grep - The blog of Shaun Holt

Oh Donny, Oh Donny, oh give us a song …

No not Donny Osmond but Doncaster the Northern, South Yorkshire town that was a Roman Army fort (Danum) and has been voted the 15th worst place to live in Britain (moving up the charts from last year). The Channel 4 program Location, Location, Location who’s hosts include Kirstie Allsopp highlighted some truths about Donny that I do see myself.

I now visit the Doncaster Hub every week as an enrolled night school student (Russian language course). I count myself very lucky to be taught by an authentic and refreshingly talented tutor in a terrific building. Some of the truths about Doncaster are a little unfair. The poor education standards may be one of them. Doncaster College has had some real controversy around it but I do believe that the result next year will be better (lets hope). Apparently 95% of the computers used on Doncaster College’s creative courses are Apples and some of the staff have the covetted ACE status.

Speaking of Apple next week sees the launch of the new OSX 10.5 Apple Operating System that is also known as Leopard. I have gone ahead and pre-ordered a copy. Not usually like me.

Linking both computers and Doncaster together I can re-assure ‘Donnyites’ that their Linux User Group had a good meet up last night at The PunchBowl in Thorne. This was the first meeting in almost one year and went very well with people travelling big distances to attend. I’d half expected to be sat sipping my diet-coke and trying to look comfortable leafing through the latest copy of Linux Journal but I had only got past the first page when the first co-member arrived (dead giveway wearing the ScunDog t-shirt :-)). Before long, as more people arrived, we had to move to a bigger table. This became tables and it was good to see some new faces amongst the crowd. One of the members is retired and is beta testing his own Linux distro based upon Mepis. Very encouraging and not an easy undertaking.

So Doncaster does has something to be proud of afterall. If you’d like a demo Kirstie (before next year’s worst place to live survey) I think there’s a big sector of the group who would fight to do an install for you