I just now happened upon an amusing little site at Fix My Site and while I normally don't hand a large measure of meritoriousness to cookie cutter Blogger incarnations, I am still flexible enough to recognise a true artist who is willing to give up control, respect, and a usable comment system in order to have Big G handle the security updates.

I really considered submitting this website for a free critique, but I realized in the nick of time that the complete lack of redeeming qualities present here coupled with the knowledge that computers when I was in high school were the size of small airplane hangers might just leave this poor fellow speechless, and that would be wrong. Turning out high quality blog evaluations at the rate of almost two a month is an important service to the community and should not be hindered by trivial distractions.

The thing I would like to ask Jason Edelman if his comment form did work is this: Do you accept third party submissions?

A question was posed on a forum lately, "Why do you hate Windows?". I really wanted to answer for myself but at the same time I was a bit put off by the harshness of the "H" word, I mean, after all Windows has been really good to me and does what I expect after some time spent in the practice. I understand how to make anything I want to work, be it hardware or software, and I seem to have no problems due to my clean living (read boring lifestyle and complete lack of curiosity).

I am somewhat guilty of taking a free ride on the system as it were. I have never purchased a new computer and therefore have never technically paid a "Windows Tax". I do not expect to maintain this nice run of luck forever, which has a lot to do with my interest in Linux. I do like to know where my next meal (or operating system) is coming from.

This Laptop I am using now came with what I assume was a legal version of Windows 2000, but I never made use of it and in fact have been using it as my primary machine under Linux for a few weeks now. I have performed some pretty complicated tasks that would have been much simpler under Windows, because of my familiarity with specialized software. Everyday tasks seem to be completely platform-neutral.

I do have a problem with Windows. I really would like to have a basic trust on the core OS level, and then be able to use a little common sense when it comes to installing additional components. At the very least I would like to turn on security updates without any mind games. A compromised computer is a risk to everyone and maintaining such should not leave one wondering if he has sold his soul in the process.

My friend Dave tells me to hate the game, not the player. If the business model the folks behind Windows have chosen requires protection of any kind, I will choose to play along up to a point and after that I will change venues. I will not hate a thing which has worked well for me, but I will use the understanding I have developed to make use of whatever tools are available.

I do not hate Windows. I have been using Windows since about version 3 or so and I have always been happy with it. I have learned how to remove viruses or even better how not to get them in the first place. My web surfing habits keep me out of dangerous neighborhoods. The most alarming things I have picked up in recent years have been a few advertiser cookies.

I am always years behind the cutting edge in the hardware/OS department and somehow manage to get my work done. I have very recently upgraded to Windows XP Pro but anything I have done since then could have easily been carried out in W98. You run what you brung.

Anyway, I am typing this out on my dedicated Linux machine. I am not real sure why I need a dedicated Linux machine. Maybe it is to learn something new, or maybe it is for future proofing my operations in case things go really bad. I do have XP booted up on another laptop. I needed it earlier to run camera software but once again it is older technology. I have been using this laptop almost exclusively ever since I got Linux working. Not because it works any better, but simply because there is no reason not to.

In my opinion, Linux is interchangeable with Windows for the average user. If an individual is already accustomed to clicking on the Firefox icon to "do the Internet thingy", they will see no difference in Windows and Linux. Unless the person wants to print something.

I really do not know if Linux supports current printer technology well. My printer was not supported out of the box and instead of fighting it, I switch to Windows to print. The inconvenience would be a deal breaker in most circles.

In my opinion the battle for the desktop makes for an interesting study, but I do not forsee Windows usage falling much in the casual home environment. Some may migrate to Apple, but I expect most folks tp stay with the familiar. Linux will continue for the curious.

Theere is simply not enough time in the day to convert everyone.

Well, I was not having the best of luck running Linux on the little laptop. PCBSD is real nice and all, but so is Windows XP and the latter also actually supports Flash. That is not the sort of thing I would have cared about until I got broadband, but now it is kinda nice.

Anyway, I found a good buy on a T series IBM laptop of about the same vintage as the other, and after just a little trial and error found that SUSE was the distro of choice for it.

The only painful aspect of SUSE so far is setting up Apache and friends to get a test server going, and I may not be done yet. I did switch over and make the Linux laptop my primary machine just aboout a week ago, and the transition was entirely uneventful. I have needed the XP machine mainly to access passwords I had moved over from my old computer. Were I only doing surfing/email/chat I may have never known the difference, but I also accomplished some fairly geeky tasks like converting a static website to a CMS and changing servers. Things were a little odd but it all happened nonetheless.

Perhaps the next step will be to boot the XP laptop into UNIX a little more often. PCBSD has some interesting database applications that may be useful, and it may well be a better platform for as test server than SUSE is turning out to be. I will still need XP for a few odd things such as accessing my Oregon Scientific camera. And of course for Photoshop.

Those of us who develop websites need to be able to test in as many browsers as possible. This is no problem for folks who have multiple computers to run with different configurations. Not everybody has that luxury. I do count myself fortunate to have an old laptop running windows 98 and therefore I did not hesitate to update my XP system ot the new IE7 browser; please bear in mind that I have not used Internet Explorer for anything but testing for maybe four years or so.

Meanwhile, the folks who provide the Firefox browser have come out with a new browser as well. This is the browser I use as default and any silliness would hit me right where I live. The version I am running right now is 1.5.0.8 and I am very happy with it. This is the same version I have on my Linux and WinXP install. I do understand that this version will be supported for some time to come.

Maybe you find yourself in a similar situation. I mean, maybe Firefox is doing fine and all, but you wonder what all the hoopla is about with the new 2.0 version. I must admit, I don't really even know if you can run both versions concurrently. I suspect you cannot. Do yourself a favor and don't even worry about it. Download the Portable Firefox from John Haller's domain and enjoy the best of both worlds. One at a time, of course, bucause you cannot have two instances of Firefox open at once. Or so it says. Although Portable Firefox is designed to run from an external USB thingy, it will run just fine from wherever you say without touching your settings.

Have fun with it.

Highway 105 South Hosted on Zooomr

This is what it looks like when it takes two hours to drive the 12 miles between work and home. It took my son three hours. He was riding with a sixteen year old driver and only the first hour was during daylight. The first cause of the delay was due to numerous crashes from the slick roads. Later, it was necessary to drive about 20MPH so as to not outdistance the visibility. Luckily the roads were not completely snow covered and it was possible to tell where you were in relation to ditches, cliffs, etc.

This weblog is one year old today, or at least I assume so since I have personally been a member for 52 weeks and one hour. Since I usually join a website immediately at installation I feel it is fairly accurate.

Actually, the birthday of the domain was much earlier, Whois states:

Created: 10-Jun-2004

I don't think anybody will accuse me of rushing into this.

Plans for the new year include a move to a different server. I probably will not attempt a Look-and-Feel overhaul but you never know. The present design was arrived at rather scientifically: I was playing around in Photoshop, came up with this, and thought I had never seen anything similar. So I used it.

1. Photoshop runs on Windows

I just love the little flash drives. I always have one on me and whenever someone asks me about the best way to get me that file, I just whup one out and request the file to be put on it. It defeats web ambiguity and forgetfullness.

I suspect that I do not use the thumb drives to their full advantage. They are handy things to have and I use them extensively for transferring files from one computer to another to save the expense of a blank CD or the pain of setting up a proper network. For this purpose I find the media cards to be superior. If you have a card reader for each computer, there is no need to wrestle out of the USB connection with each transfer, you can simply eject the card. I tend to collect cards in the SD or CF flavor as they are also compatible with my Zaurus. This comes in handy if you ever need to park outside the public library and download a Linux distro to your handheld, provided you also have an adapter to draw power off the lighter socket.

It also turns out that you can run a customized application from the WinXP popup that you get whenever you insert a card. I need to test the concept but it seems like you can configure a card to run Apache and MySQL automatically, plus have the default browser open to localhost. This would be great for website clients, provided they run XP.

The info to do all this is listed at Daily Cup of Tech and there is a lot of info there about customizing flash drives.

It doesen't happen too often, but every once in a while I wonder why someone would go to the trouble of a self-hosted solution whem hosted solutions offer the same functionality without the pain of monitoring and upgrades. The JotSpot Google Merger offers some insight into some of the value in the control of not only my own data but of those I advise...

Generally, I tend to feel that anything not replicable on my own local Linux box is under the control of outside influnces is externally owned. I tend to own all website content I influnce, but I do run all my e-mail through Google mail, their spam filtering is above anything I could do but yet I am so dependant and I don't like it.

It seems pretty obvious that anyone should control as much as they can. I hope all; services will not follow the path of email and become impossible to maintain...