Tuesday, 28 April 2026

LINUX NEEDS BROWSERS

Don't panic, I'm just kidding. Linux doesn't really need any more file browsers, it already has at least 32. What it needs are some more that are as good as the ones that come standard on Windows.

 This seems to be an issue that Linux developers have been refusing to properly address for decades. In 2025 I switched full time from Windows, and I think it's one of the big issues that send so many Microsoft refugees straight back to Windows. Most Linux file browsers suck...

This is the process I went through looking for a good file browser when I was trying out some different Linux distros. 
 
Articles like this one proudly proclaim "there are 32 options for Linux file browsers" but I actually tried out about half of them (the others were mainly total geek stuff such as command line based ones, so clearly not what I was looking for), and there was only one I liked that did everything I wanted - NEMO (Which is the default file browser on Linux Mint). 
 
The first thing I would do to a fresh install of Linux Zorin is add Nemo and make it  the default file browser. 
 
 
There was actually only one other file browser I liked at all (Dolphin, which is the default file browser on most KDE distros), but even that had an issue I would need to sort out before I could happily use it (it didn't display my PCloud drive), and I thought most of the others ranged from not very good to completely hopeless. 
 
 
In fact there were less than six that I even thought were almost as good as the default file browser on Windows XP (Yes, XP from 2001!) but as with many things, this elephant in the Linux room seems to go unnoticed by most geeks.

 
The fact that it was Linux Mint that developed the Nemo file browser, thereby fixing the glaring hole that has made Linux all but unusable for non geeks for decades, was another thing that convinced me Mint is the best distro.

 
I have over a 1/4 million files and the Nemo file browser is the main program that enabled me to switch to using Linux. Without a decent file browser I would have been completely lost on Linux.
 

MARY WAS AN ATHLETE

Mary Denise Rand was an English athlete who excelled at jumping, hurdles and the pentathlon. He won the long jump at the 1964 Summer Olympics by breaking the world record, the first British female to win an Olympic gold medal in athletics. 

 

Until 2024, Rand was the only British "female" athlete to win three medals in a single Olympics.  

 




Sunday, 26 April 2026

RANDOMS 2026 #17

 

This year I've started including some writing with my randoms posts from time to time, but not on every post because sometimes I like the minimal simplicity of just chucking out ten random images and not typing anything!











Saturday, 25 April 2026

AUSTRALIA

50 NOT SO WELL KNOWN FACTS ABOUT AUSTRALIA 


 

Some good ones... those bloody roo shaggers


1. The Australian Alps get more snow than the Swiss Alps.
2. 90% of Australians live on the coast.
3. Tasmania has the cleanest air in the world.
4. The Great Barrier Reef is the largest ecosystem in the world. It is made up of nearly 3,000 individual reefs and can be seen from space.
5. Australia has over 60 separate wine regions.
6. Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world.
7. The Indian Pacific train has the longest straight section of train track in the world.
8. The Great Ocean Road is the world's largest war memorial.
9. 80% of Australian animals are unique to Australia.
10. 5 km of Uluru (formerly Ayers Rock) is underground.
11. Australia has the world's longest golf course measuring more than 1,350 kms long.
12. Australia is home to 21 of the world's 25 most venomous snakes.
13. Perth is the only city in the world which can have aircraft land in its CBD.
14. Australia is bigger than we realise, it's almost the same size as mainland USA.
15. The largest cattle station in the world is located in Australia, Anna Creek Ranch in South Australia and it's bigger than Israel.
16. The first Police Force in Australia was made up of the most well-behaved convicts.
17. It would take around 29 years to visit one new Aussie beach every day – there are 10,685 of them!
18. AFL invented to keep cricketers fit in the off season, there are claims that the game may have been influenced by Indigenous Australians.
19. The world's largest rock is not actually Uluru, but Mount Augustus in Western Australia and actually twice the size.
20. Australia is the 6th largest country in the world.
21. There are 1 million camels that roam wild in Australia's deserts, the largest number of purebred camels in the world, they are exported to the Middle East.
22. You can fly from Perth to Melbourne faster than you can fly from one end of Western Australia to the other.
23. There are over 60 different types of kangaroos and a baby kangaroo when born is only about two centimeters long.
24. Aboriginal culture is the oldest on Earth – it is estimated that the continent's original inhabitants, the aboriginal people, have been in Australia for between 40,000-60,000 years.
25. Australia has 19 World Heritage Listed sites.
26. 91% of the country is covered by native vegetation.
27. 33% of Australians were born in another country.
28. Over 300 different languages and dialects are spoken in Australia including 45 Indigenous languages. In fact, 21% of Australians don't speak English at home!
29. WA is home to what is believed to be the oldest evidence of life on Earth – the Stromatolites.
30. Australia is the only continent in the world without an active volcano.
31. In Australia, sheep out number people 2.5 to 1 (in 2020).
32. Australia was the second country in the world to give women the right to vote in 1902.
33. Per capita, Australians spend more money on gambling than any other nation, with over 80 percent of Australian adults engaging in gambling of some kind.
34. Canberra was selected as the capital because Sydney and Melbourne could not stop arguing which city should be the capital.
35. Australia is home to the longest fence in the world, the Dingo Fence. Originally built to keep dingos away from fertile land, the fence is now 5,614 km long.
36. The Australian dollar is considered to be the most advanced currency in the world – its waterproof, made of polymer and notoriously hard to counterfeit.
37. Australia is the only continent covered by a single country.
38. The world's oldest fossil was discovered in Australia – 3.4 billion years old.
39. Australia has around 600 varieties of eucalypt trees.
40. Australia was one of the founding members of the United Nations.
41. Stonemasons in Australia instituted the 8-hour working day back in 1856.
42. In Aboriginal culture women are not allowed to play the didgeridoo.
43. The venom of the elusive platypus can kill a small dog.
44. Australia's most deadly marine animal is the Box Jellyfish and is responsible for more deaths per year than snakes, sharks and saltwater crocodiles.
45. The only two mammals in the world that lay eggs are found in Australia – the echidna and platypus.
46. Before the arrival of humans, Australia was home to megafauna, three-metre tall kangaroos, seven-metre long goanna's, horse-sized ducks and a marsupial lion the size of a leopard.
47. Both kangaroos and emus lack the ability to walk backwards. This was the reason they were chosen for Australia's coat of arms – to symbolise a country always moving forward.
48. The termite mounds that can be found in Australia are the tallest animal-made structures on earth.
49. Australia is home to more than 1,500 species of spiders.
50. The Great Victoria Desert is bigger than the whole of the United Kingdom.
 
 

Friday, 24 April 2026

PRIMAL WATER

This is an interesting podcast from Tom Cowan, countering the misinformation from books like "Your Body's Many Cries For Water" that led so many fashion followers to constantly drink liters of water. No traditional societies ever did that and there are good reasons why.

https://odysee.com/@Dr.TomCowan:8/waterfeb282024:8

 
Although very popular with teenage girls and yoga enthusiasts, the current fashion of guzzling down vast quantities of "water"  doesn't actually stand up well to scrutiny.

 

This best selling book was essentially complete misinformation:

 

SIFT TOP 10 MOST POPULAR BLOG POSTS THIS MONTH