Ramblings
Just
some random blog-esque thoughts
November 11, 2008
We went to a diner the other night, and they had a HUGE chocolate cake
in their dessert carousel. On what planet is THIS considered
a single piece of cake?
It looked
better than it tasted though. There's definitely an inverse
relationship between the physical size of a cake and how good it
tastes. Giant cakes from Greek restaurants don't taste nearly as
good as small chocolate cakes from bakeries like Jackson's or
DiVincenzo's. Definitely.
August 30, 2008
So
I've decided to give Linux a try. I've been a Mac user since
1992, but have not been terribly pleased with Apple lately. I
think it probably started with OSX. The "classic" Mac OS was
such
a great operating system...it truly made Macs a "computer for the rest
of us". OSX just isn't as good. Yeah, I know it
doesn't
crash as often, but it lacks the elegant simplicity and user-friendly
features of the old OS. Apple seems to have become a bunch of
control freaks lately...look how they prevent iPhone users from doing
anything with them that isn't approved by Apple itself, or how you can'
t use an iPod with anything but iTunes. That's just not right.
I
did try to revert to Mac OS9, but the lack of a good modern web browser
killed that. The reversion process was actually quite
enlightening...it showed me just how badly Apple's i-apps (iPhoto,
iTunes, etc.) screwed around with my data. Bastards...it took
an
appreciable amount of time to get it all properly organized again.
Linux
certainly has a learning curve to it, and is NOT for everybody.
I've had to enter the scary world of its Unix underpinnings
to
deal with a few things now and again, but there hasn't been anything I
wasn't able to successfully deal with. Linux reminds me of
that
idealism that Apple used to have...people create this software for the
benefit of others, not for profit, and some of this software is of
astonishingly high quality.
I've been using the Xubuntu
version of Linux, and find its lack of eye candy to be very
refreshing...the simple, straight-forward desktop design is reminiscent
of older OSes (like the classic Mac OS), and doesn't get bogged down
with unnecessary visual effects. I'm running it on what would
be
considered a marginal machine for Windows XP, but Xubuntu flies on this
computer.
Since almost all Linux software is free, Xubuntu makes
it easy to find whatever software you want. It comes with a
program that searches to find exactly what you want and installs it for
you automatically. How cool is that? I've been able
to find
free software for everything I need..web browser, e-mail, games, web
editor, music organizer, picture organizer (with camera importing),
etc. Even found a replacement OS for my iPod so I can use it
easily with Linux. Sweet!
Would I recommend Linux to a
total computer noob? Nope. But for somebody like me
with a
little Unix experience and desire for something better than what
corporate for-profit computing is offering these days, it's certainly a
viable option.
March 18, 2008
I'm overhauling the website. The old one was done with Apple
iWeb, which at first seemed like a really cool program. However,
I discovered that it not only organizes pages in a horrifically
wasteful and confusing way, but it also took it upon itself to
trash a number of my JPEGs and turn a number of pages into images.
So, I've pulled out an ancient program, Adobe Pagemill 3.0, and
am basically recreating all of the pages from scratch. If the
site looks like it's from 1998, that's no surprise given the editor
I'm using. I'll try to pretty it up at some point.