Month: February 2006

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An Event Apart

So the first week in April is going to be one of the best weeks in history. As I have mentioned before, Dinosaur Jr is playing at the Orange Peel. Now I will also be attending An Event Apart in Atlanta!

I got my registration all set up yesterday, and I will be going with Chris, thanks to the education funding provided by our employer. This event will be stellar, as it is given by two of the web design world’s leading coolios: Eric Meyer and Jeffrey Zeldman. As you may know, Eric pretty much cleared the pathway through Cascading Style Sheets, and Zeldman wrote the excellent “Designing With Web Standards“. Additionally, the guest speakers will include Jason Santa Maria and Todd Dominey.

Needless to say, I am stoked as stoked can be!

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Battlestar Galactica

If you are not watching the new Battlestar Galactica, you are missing out on the best TV show since, well, the original Battlestar Galactica. Why aren’t you watching it? Do you know what you are missing?

  • There is no cheesy music. The music is very percussive and compliments the show well.
  • Each episode leaves you hanging.
  • The tech level is realistic, and the military aspect is very Naval, which Chris likes.
  • The Cylons are insane.
  • The plot twists are insane.
  • The actors are actually good.

Ron Moore, the producer of the show, used to direct some of the best Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine episodes. He knows his sci-fi.

I keep trying to tell Alicia that she would like it, as it’s not just spaceships and geekery.

Well?

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Current Music Being Grooved To

For no particular reason at all, here’s a quick list of music I am currently liking.

Will’s Current Top 10 iPod Rotation

  • Kanye West – Touch The Sky
  • Flaming Lips – Are You A Hypnotist?
  • Sigur Ros – Staralfur
  • Bliss – Song For Alabi
  • Rilo Kiley – Portions For Foxes
  • 76 – Objects In Space (whole album)
  • Grandaddy – El Caminos In The West
  • The Didjits – California Surf Queen
  • Dinosaur Jr – You’re Living All Over Me (whole album, in preparation for April 7)
  • Zero 7 – In The Waiting Line

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Windows Free – Update 1

After about 4 hours of using Ubuntu Linux, I ditched it and installed Fedora Core 4. The main reason was that Ubuntu does not have a root user. This may seem odd to experienced Linux folks, but the intentions behind it are good. Unless you know what you are doing, you can completely hose a Linux operating system as the root user. So, in order to become as user-friendly as possible for Linux newbies, they require you to use ‘sudo’ for everything in Ubuntu.

To me, this was a slowdown. I decided to go with what I am most familiar with, and that is the RedHat-based Fedora Core 4.

More on my venture to discard Windows from my life will soon follow.

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Windows Free!

I got fed up. Fed up with a bogged down operating system. I got tired of viruses, spyware, licenses, etc etc etc.

Tonight I made the switch.

No, not to Apple. To Linux. Full-time, full-on Linux. Ubuntu, to be exact.

Within two hours I was up and running a smooth desktop, playing music from my iTunes library, browsing with Firefox, checking all my email in Thunderbird, and enjoying the feeling of being free from Windows.

The remarkable thing is that almost all of my USB devices work. My webcam does not, but a quick lookup found a tutorial on setting it up. Transferring all of my files was easy too. I just mounted my WinXP hard drive and whammo – it’s all accessible.

It’s still very early to tell how well I will adjust to this in my day-to-day working environment at home, so I will report back here on the matter in a week or two.

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The Best News EVAR

I just learned that Dinosaur Jr is playing here at the Orange Peel April 7!!!

This is probably the biggest moment of my musical life. As I have written before, this band influenced me so much, and their 2nd album is still my favorite record of all time. Yet, I have never seen them. And they are touring with the original lineup!!!

I bought 2 tickets. Who wants to go?

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Free Software Utilities Update

My favorite registry-cleaning tool EZCleaner is no longer free. Well, you now have to subscribe to their web site to download the ‘free’ software. However, I found a couple of great utilities that easily take its place. So without further ado, here is my updated list of free Windows utilities software that everyone should use:

  • CCleaner – cleans the registry, cleans up sloppy software.
  • WinASO RegDefrag 2.0 – Defragments the registry, compacts it and optimizes it. Run this after running CCleaner above.
  • WinPatrol – Let Scotty the watchdog monitor your system for applications trying to add themselves to your Startup. Works great.
  • AVG Antivirus – Free virus protection. Smooth, lean, and mean. Not bloated and slow like Norton or McAfee.
  • SpyBot Search & Destroy – Eliminate spyware.
  • 7-Zip – Like Winzip, but free and without annoying registration notices.
  • Foxit PDF Reader – We all know it takes Acrobat about 3 hours to launch, if it doesn’t lock up your system. Try Foxit instead.

Know of anything I missed? Leave your comments.

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