If life was like Unix…

Apologies to the non-computer-geeks… What?Sudo (superuser do) is a utility for Unix- and Linux-based systems that provides an efficient way to give specific users permission to use specific system commands at the root (most powerful) level of the system. comic by xkcd

Mac Freeware

Some of my favorite mac freeware * Adium – multi-protocol instant messaging client Butler – application launcher with many other handy features Camino – mac-like gecko browser. not as many features as firefox, but faster. ClamAV – Antivirus program, because you just never know… Colloquy – GUI IRC client ColorTagGen – Use the eyedropper to …

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Life

Life is very busy. Good and bad. It has been hard to keep up with school assignments these past few weeks, but somehow I’ve gotten everything in on time. Sometimes it is easier to do things on the last day.

My last CSS test was really hard. It took me almost two days to finish it. I had no idea there could be so much math involved in CSS! I learned so many things while I was taking the test, but it hurt my brain pretty bad.

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Linuxworld 2006

Linuxworld 2006
I’m at Linuxworld at Moscone Center in San Francisco. It is the last day. I almost didn’t make it here because I’ve been so busy and kind of freaked out about getting homework done, which I still haven’t.

I accidentally took a class that started 2 weeks before my other two classes end. Oops. This week is the final project for both the CSS and JavaScript classes. Third class is about datbase design. Next week, the class I have been most excited about starts. It’s an advanced CSS class and covers the whole CSS 2.1 specification. The one I am taking now is more of a workshop that focuses on real world CSS problems and solutions.

But, I digress… Linuxworld. With some encouragement from K, along with a reminder that Linuxworld happens only once a year in these parts and that I would be really bummed if I didn’t come, I hopped on a BART train and made it here 10 minutes before the doors to the expo opened. I am really glad I made it here. Geeks everywhere. Servers. Open source open source open source everything. And t-shirts. It’s always fun coming to these things on the last day because people are always giving away their stuff so they don’t have to haul it back to wherever they came from. I also got a tiny usb hub, a few live linux distro cds, and of course, pens and magazines. There weren’t many live cds to be found that would run on a mac. They were either already all gone, or being worked on. The Gentoo folks still had one G4 mac disk, and were kind enough to burn me an intel version too. Gotta love that geek hospitality.

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Autiblogger

I am working on a new project to provide free blogs to the autism community. Autiblogger.com is now in the first public testing phase. It is powered by WordPress MU, and so far all is going very well. I have been wanting to set this up for a while and am very glad to finally …

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LBnuke 5.0

The spam. I can’t deal with it anymore. I am finally going to convert this site to WordPress. I was inspired by word camp. Can’t get online at moment. I am guessing it is a Comcast thing. It has given me some time to start transferring posts since I can’t even find out what my homework is for this week until I’m back online.

I am working on a version of this theme for wordpress, but for now will be using a different one which is very nice and has a similar color scheme. I will also be trying out a beta version of MeCommerce by Good Storm, so if you are looking to buy things, check my sidebar first! I will get 50% of the profits. Pretty cool!

WordPress widgets are fun! Drag and drop sidebar items. I’ve widgetized a few themes, and when I have some time, I will try my hand at making a widget.

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Wordcamp 2006

Have I ever mentioned that I love being surrounded by other geeks? I am at WordCamp in San Francisco now. It is a one day conference about WordPress, and so far, I am having lots of fun.

I am sitting in the back with a bunch of other folks who felt the need to plug in to a power strip. It is comforting to have so many power strips about, and I am kind of amused at the amount of people who brought their own. Talk about good planning! I was happy that I even remembered to bring my power brick.

We are having a musical interlude now by Eric Haller. He is singing ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’ and playing guitar. It is very nice : )

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Review: iWeb 1.0

I have read the mixed reviews. I have looked at the insanely redundant (yet CSS based) code. I have pointed and clicked my way to a pretty cool website! It is definitely worth the $79 price tag, especially considering that the price includes the entire iLife ’06 suite! (iLife also includes iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, and Garage Band)

This is not a professional web design/development application, and anyone who is looking for that will not be happy with it. Design options are limited in many ways. Programming options are limited to what is built in. Generated source code is mostly lots of divs with tons of repetitive inline styling and NO semantic markup. If you need a pro wysiwyg web app, Dreamweaver 8 is the way to go.

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imac core duo

It got here yesterday. 20″ imac 2.0GHz intel core duo. 1GB PC2-5300 (667MHz) DDR2 memory. It’s fast! The screen is huge! Almost all programs are running fine and in most cases way faster than on my 1.33GHz/768MB G4 12″ powerbook. Firefox is running slow. Safari is crazy fast! Only problems so far are with unsanity haxies, and some mail rules confusion.

I transferred my user accounts from my pb, but am doing the rest manually. I made a web page with pix of the big exciting transfer, complete with slideshow, in about 5 minutes with iWeb. Drag, drop, type, publish.

I made a much better slideshow with transitions (the obligatory ken burns effect) and music in iPhoto in about 10 minutes. Syncing w/.mac is working really well to keep mail, calendar, contacts, bookmarks, etc. up to date on both macs. It is automatic. I don’t even have to think about it at all. Life is good. I am very lucky : )

 imac box

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Macworld 2006 :: Day 5 | The End

Macworld is over. I am sad even though I really don’t think I have enough energy for another day there. Maybe another half day… The last day of the expo is cool because everyone is trying to get rid of their stuff so they don’t have to lug it back with them, so there are …

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Wikipedia Links of the Day, Ordered by Length

If anyone has ever wondered what I am doing when I am ‘geeking out’… Gay Bomb Evil clown List of commercial failures List of famous failures in science and engineering List of songs whose title constitutes the entire lyrics Llist of people whose first name is not commonly known List of English words containing a …

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If Architects Had To Work Like Web Designers

From: Software is too expensive to build cheaply

Dear Mr. Architect:

Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one.

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Nerd TV on PBS

is broadcast television’s first entirely downloadable series, featuring PBS technology columnist Robert X. Cringely’s interviews with personalities from the ever-changing world of technology. The inaugural guest (last wednesday) was original Macintosh programmer Andy Hertzfeld.

Firefox 1.5 beta 1

Firefox 1.5 beta 1 is available for download. Faster, better mac support, and more. But before you go rushing to download, keep in mind that it is beta software, and it does still have bugs. As they say on the site before you download it… “It might even melt your hard drive.” I don’t think …

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LinuxWorld 2005

LinuxWorld was fun. It was at Moscone Center West in SF. Much smaller and geekier than MacWorld. Talked to the Mambo guys, the RackSpace folks, and a very nice lady from HP. Got lots of distros to play with, saw some beautiful servers, and met Tux…

IE7 Beta 1 coming this summer

Finally! Microsoft is moving towards a more web standards compliant browser. The first beta release of Internet Explorer 7 is expected to be released sometime this summer. Here’s the latest news from the IE Weblog: Support the alpha channel in PNG images. We’ve actually had this on our radar for a long time, and have …

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Adobe to buy Macromedia

2 webgeek software giants, $3.4B, what happens next? PhotoWeaver CSMX 2005? Slashdot has some geek perspectives on the big news.