I Like Shiny Things
I really do love new stuff, especially when it comes to software and has a “developer release” or “alpha” or “beta” tag on it.
I can’t help it. I’ve tried to stay away from buggy releases, but I always come back, if only to feel like I’m playing with the latest, greatest version.
Are you like that?
Anyway, [...]
My Jaunty Adventure
So, Canonical released the latest version of the Ubuntu distro recently, Jaunty Jackalope, version 9.04.
I played with Jaunty in a VM a bit when it was in alpha, and I didn’t notice many new features, compared to Intrepid, aside from the new login splash screen and the Growl-style notifications.
I waited a few days, then last [...]
More Fun with Virtualization
I love me some virtualization.
Whether you’re testing a web app in various O/S + browser configurations, running production hardware, testing new a O/S or just geeking out for fun, virtual machines are your friend.
I started out with VirtualBox, because it’s open source, and then went to VMWare (Fusion, specifically) to run the official Oracle Base [...]
More Ubuntu Adventures
I’ve been following a story that came out of WKOW 27 the ABC affiliate in Madison, WI.
The headline WKOW uses, “Woman blames Dell for missing online classes”, doesn’t accurately reflect the crux of the issue. Slashdot boiled it down as “Woman Claims Ubuntu Kept Her From Online Classes“, and story is called “Ubuntu Causes Girl [...]
Which Operating System Would You Have Your Child Use?
Herewith a post about parenting…
This morning’s NYTimes has an article about Mark Shuttleworth and Ubuntu. For those of you who follow Ubuntu and Shuttleworth, the article is nothing new… just talks about Shuttleworth’s desire to displace Microsoft in the OS war. However, it did get me thinking about my history with OSes. When I started [...]
What’s Your Next Project?
Initially, the title was “What’s Your Next Geeky Project?”, but I’m interested to know other projects too.
I’m a DIY guy. I like messing around with stuff, figuring out how to do things and learning new (ahem) skills. Most of my projects involve computers because that’s where most of my skills are. I tinker around the [...]
I Am Now Intrepid
I dumped Windows for good back in July and have been running Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron on my Dell since then.
I love Open Source, and for the most part, I’ve enjoyed running Ubuntu. I’ve found it to be on par with XP for stability and superior in usability. Before you quibble with the stability comment, [...]
Air Sharing Gives You iPhone File Sharing Goodness
The theme for today is file sharing apps that just work.
While browsing The Silicon Florist in my feeds today, I saw a post from Rick about Air Sharing, an iPhone app built by Avatron Software a company based in Vancouver (WA not BC).
As of yesterday, Air Sharing had 700,000 odd downloads in about a week, [...]
Dropbox is Sweet
Rich pointed me at this nugget yesterday.
Dropbox is a small utility that solves a major pain point you’re familiar with if you have more than one computer or you’ve ever needed to transfer files between computers.
At least once a week, I have to transfer files between my machines; this is an old problem we [...]
Something Cool
I wanted to share some eyecandy from my Ubuntu box. I found this phenomenal desktop image (hat tip Lifehacker), and when combined with the terminal app’s transparency setting, it creates a pretty cool effect, especially when you drag the terminal window around the desktop and the background changes.
Another cool effect is opening the terminal over [...]
Friday Lulz
I read xkcd and actually get about 75% of the jokes, I think. Anyway, this one popped up in Reader this morning, and it made me laugh, especially in light of our recent discussions about O/S, a.k.a. the “which O/S would win in a fight” thread.
Enjoy, and read xkcd if you don’t already, and don’t [...]
OS X, Ubuntu and Other Fun Stuff… My Perspective
Instead of adding a comment to Jake’s post on his Ubuntu experience to-date, I thought I’d just blog my perspective.
Here’s my backstory with Apple, MSFT, Linux, and others:
Mid to late 80s: Timex Sinclair 1000… loved writing programs on cassette tapes! How many of you Web 2.0 kiddies can say that?
Early to mid 90s: had an [...]
OS X, Ubuntu and Other Fun Stuff
Comments have been awfully quiet lately. I’m guilty of talking too much about work-related stuff and not enough about iPhones and Twitter.
My bad. Let’s remedy that.
Rich asked me recently how my move to Ubuntu was going. It’s been almost a month, and he says he has a vested interest in keeping me happy with it. [...]
Why Is Calendar So Hard?
My recent move to Ubuntu over the long weekend has reminded me of a pet rant of mine, calendars. You’d think something so basic for every cross-section of users, from personal to every size business, would have an easy solution.
But no.
I’m a long time Palm Desktop user, long meaning I had one of the second [...]
Taking the Plunge: Part 3
I decided earlier in the week that the long Fourth of July would be a great time to reimage my work laptop from XP to Ubuntu.
A couple reasons for this: 1) I’m supposed to be off today, so I can muck around with my laptop without worrying about work stuff and 2) it’s a bit [...]
Taking the Plunge: Part 2
Over the weekend, I finally made the decision to reimage my laptop, which currently runs XP, to Ubuntu 8.04, fondly known as Hardy Heron.
Well, I dragged my feet, and the weekend ended; XP must not have got the memo because it’s being more temperamental than normal. It’s complaining about disk space on C; it’s killing [...]
Taking the Plunge
It’s ironic to me that D-Day for good old Windows XP is coming up on Monday, since for several months, I’ve been trying to motivate myself to dump it in favor of Ubuntu as the O/S on my work laptop.
Tracking Dan’s recent jump into the Mac pond chronicled over Twitter and in his blog has [...]
