Tag: nerd

My motto for life

xkcd – A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language – By Randall Munroe

The world is so complicated – the more I learn, the less clear anything gets.

I love xkcd.  Three times a week, this guy makes me laugh.  You know when someone makes a comment about something, and you hear it, and you think, “OMFG, that is EXACTLY the way I feel, but I’ve never been able to put it into words!”?

Well, I get that feeling reading xkcd at least once a week.  If you are not reading this webcomic regularly, you are not truly an internet geek.  You probably are also not prepared in the event of a velociraptor attack.  Remember, they do not know fear.

Ubuntu 6.1 released

Welcome – Ubuntu: Linux for human beings

Just saw on Lifehacker that Ubuntu has released a new version, which contains, among other things, Firefox 2.0. Sweet. Can’t wait to get home and upgrade my Ubuntu box.

Edit: Ooh, maybe I should have waited. Upgrade crapped out, now I’m not sure whether it’s going to boot back up. We’ll see how long it takes me to get a good install again.  Ubuntu forum users report some problems, which I guess is to be expected.  But I was so close to getting my Complaint Hub enhancements working, and now my development box is hosed. . .

Working from home

Our office is all but closed today, and I got permission to work from home (Mostly because I’m pretty sure I’m technically supposed to do the combination lock on the office door every time I go to the bathroom if I’m the only one there).  And what’s even better is that my assignment for the day is to get IntelliJ up and running with the Google Web Toolkit and see if I can get an environment set up to write some web services.  I’m thinking I might try writing a little something for Complaint Hub if I can get it working (And playing nicely with the WordPress php theme that I’m using).  Maybe I’ll put up a little Nano progress bar so you all can yell at me if I start falling behind next month.

IE sucks. Why are you still using it?

IE 7.0 Technical Changes Leave Web Developers, Users in the Lurch

Paul Thurrott at WindowsITPro.com says (Link via Slashdot):

My advice is simple: Boycott IE. It’s a cancer on the Web that must be stopped. IE isn’t secure and isn’t standards-compliant, which makes it unworkable both for end users and Web content creators. Because of their user bases, however, Web developers are hamstrung into developing for IE at the expense of established standards that work well in all other browsers. You can turn the tide by demanding more from Microsoft and by using a better alternative Web browser. I recommend and use Mozilla Firefox, but Apple Safari (Macintosh only) and Opera 8 are both worth considering as well.

I’ve been using Firefox for a while now, and the only reason I still have IE is that it’s too much trouble (If not impossible) to get rid of it on my Windows box. Firefox includes, and has included, many of the features that are new for IE7, Microsoft’s new version of Internet Explorer that’s still in Beta. Microsoft likes to crow about their new tabbed browsing feature, which has been available in Firefox and whatever Apple’s browser is for a while.

Another major flaw with IE is the release cycle. Firefox updates all the time. When someone finds a security flaw, they fix it. If it’s serious, they force you to upgrade. And they respond quickly. Microsoft has never been quick to fix security flaws. By the time they get around to patching something, your computer has been open to who knows what for an unacceptable amount of time.

And then there’s the point of the article I linked – Microsoft isn’t standards-compliant. They use their dominant (though shrinking) market share to do whatever they want. There are standards for building web pages that are independant of whatever it is that the browser manufacturers want, and Microsoft, more than other browsers, ignores these standards.

If you’re using IE right now, I want you to go get a real browser. Firefox, Safari, Opera, all of these are much better options. IE is bad for your computer, and bad for the internet.

Still digging Ubuntu

As I near the internet geek abyss, posting to my blog using Flock on a box running Ubuntu, setting up an account at del.icio.us, spending the afternoon learning about apt-get, I realize that I’m enjoying myself.  My fiancee thinks I’m crazy, but that’s nothing new.

I haven’t cut the cord to Windows yet, although I’d like to.  I’ll probably keep my laptop dual-booting (Currently it’s XP only) just in case.

On a related note, speaking of fiancees, I’m wondering how I can convince her that a new monitor is a reasonable investment.  I’m currently using a 17″ CRT from 1998 when I’m not on my laptop, and it’s pretty painful.  It was cruel of them at work to buy me a 24″ widescreen, because now everything else seems like an insult to my eyes.  It’ll probably have to wait until after the wedding, though.

Increasing my nerd quotient

First, there was the Slashdot post about Mac nerds switching to Ubuntu. Then I saw that someone I’ve met in real life uses Ubuntu. Since I’ve always thought that I couldn’t really claim that I was a computer geek unless I had at least one computer running Linux (And my previous attempt at running Debian was a failure), I thought, why not follow Cory’s lead and check out Ubuntu.  So far, it’s pretty cool.  I had some issues getting my resolution to display at anything but 640X480, and I still don’t have my wireless card working (Although I’m not sure it ever worked that well when I was running Windows, either), I’m liking the Linux.  Ubuntu comes with a pretty slick GUI, and a lot of the stuff you need – Firefox, OpenOffice, Gimp . . .

And it’s keeping my old Dell P3 500mhz from sitting in a corner collecting dust.  I bought the computer in 1998, and it’s treated me well.  Now I think I can get a little more use out of it.

My fiancee tells me that I’m running Linux because I want to be able to look down my nose at you silly Windows users, and she’s not entirely off-base.  There is a certain part of me that yearns to be snooty to everyone else.  But I try to keep that part in check.  Sometimes I even manage to do it.