Quote of the Moment

Seth: trillian owns your face
Nicola: im using trillian right now
Nicola: my face > trillian
Nicola: my interface is better :D -Nicola
(moar?)

Ice Machines

31
January
10 Comments

Ice machines are totally magic. How do they work? There must be little gnomes inside filling up lots of trays with water that then freezes and then they pry out the cubes and dump them into your cup when you push the button. They’re fast little buggers, and so kind to live down in my basement and make ice late at night for me :)

That is all.

Linux and Open-Source

29
January
8 Comments

Ask someone the definition of open-source software and you’d probably get many answers. “It’s free software.” “It’s software nobody owns.” “That Firefox thing, it’s open source, right?” Open-source is all of those things, but the key is that its development community is potentially far greater than even the largest commercial company’s. Don’t like the way something works, or find a bug? You can submit code and fix it, just like that. Don’t know how to code? You can still report bugs, with the knowledge that you will get a response from a real person who is actually involved with the development of the software. Yet does this lack of decentralization and financial support yield poorer-quality software?

I’m no stranger to the OSS scene, having played with Firefox ever since .5 and Linux before that. I started with Mandrake Linux way back in 1999, and sampled Red Hat and Fedora, SuSE and Ubuntu. I’ve run dual-boot systems on and off for years, but installed SuSE Linux 9.1 late in 2004 and still have it now. I felt that talking about some of the best… and worst… parts of this distribution might help lower the barrier for some of you to give it a go.

Rather than stepping through an installation or talking about features in specificity, I’ve decided to simply discuss some common questions or objections to Linux, as coming from my experiences.


Read the rest of this thought »

Note to self: IE-Mac

26
January
8 Comments

Note to self: Block IE-Mac completely from even accessing my website. Here I sit in the ZAP room, using one of their nasty Macs (not even any scroll wheel on the mouse, die!) and nasty IE5 Mac. I tried to install Camino (hat tip to Macs: software is dead simple to install) but everything is locked down. Now to bug Mark to let me put Camino on.

It’s going to be a long two hours with no scroll wheel…

And I want to dance

26
January
1 Comment

Ballroom dancing. So much fun. I was really freaked out to go the first time (in no small part because of my smooshed toe) but it turned out to be awesome. I would say it’s about 3 : 2 :: girls : guys in a class of 350. Which means I get every dance. But I met some nice people, I had a ton of fun… oh yeah, and I’m learning salsa, swing, tango, waltz, and more!

A few thoughts:

  • Guys have it really easy because:
    • The instructor speaks in terms of guy movements; girls move in reverse
    • Guys get to move forward instead of walking backward (e.g. tango)
    • Guys get to sit there while girls do fancy footwork (e.g. swing)
    • Since guys are in the minority, girls are happy to get picked to dance
  • It’s incredibly hard to talk while moving your feet in funky rhythms like 3/8. 4/4 is okay.
  • Sadly, when picking girls as dance partners, guys tend to choose the pretty ones first. After noticing, I tried to pick the ones that looked kind of alone.
  • The gorgeous girls are almost always not as nice / more aloof than those who can’t rely on looks to attract guys.
  • Dancing with a smooshed toe should mean an automatic A in the class.
  • There’s always someone more uncomfortable / less talented than you.
  • Loosen up, you can only die once.

I can’t wait to go back next week! :D

Poor toe

25
January
2 Comments

I sterilized a scalpel and cut through the quick to relieve some of the pressure on my toe. I’ll bet I’m going to lose the nail still, though… but without the pressure it sure feels better. I think I’ll need to drill through the nail tomorrow. :’(

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