Today I leave for Alabama for the weekend. NAWFest '07. should be a blast.
I've been getting extra nerdy in preparation for this event. My roommate Matt has a company, WhiteWaterPlayboating.com. It's still in its infancy, but he's trying to make his millions selling the sport of whitewater kayaking. So he spent about $3000 to have some web development company make a site for him. Well, after more than a year, there was still only the 'Coming Soon' page online.
So, last September, when Matt and I were rambling about the country on another kayaking trip, I decided enough was enough, and made this version of the page. This was done in about thirty minutes, sitting in the Jeep outside of a coffee shop in Fayetteville, West Virginia, stealing their internet access, while I tried desperately to remember what little bit I could of the Hyper Text Markup Language.
Well, that worked out for a brief fix, but obviously not of a quality I would want to associate myself with, nor would WhiteWaterPlayboating.com.
So, I dusted off my web development 'skills' and put them to good use and made the page(s) you see now when you visit the site. Obviously no one needs to worry about losing their job as a web developer. (With the exception of the woman who took Matt's 3 grand and ran.)
I also accomplished all of this while working on the 'new' laptop I received from work. It's an old Sony VAIO, probably a Pentium III, 256 MB RAM, Windows 2k.
But while trying to clean all of the crap that had accumulated on it, I realized that the previous owner had partitioned the 30 GB hard drive into to partitions. And I did something I've always wanted to do: I tried Linux.
I had just seen an article online about dual-booting, and decided it was time for me to jump right in. I downloaded the latest version of Kubuntu, burned it to a CD, and went to town. And I have no intention of going back. This is great. It was easy. Almost too easy. I would never re-boot back into Windows, if it weren't for the fact that I have to use a Windows program for work. I've done a little research, and no one seems to have gotten it to work yet. So I'll just keep booting back into Windows whenever I have to. If there was only a web version of the software we use.... Oh well, can't win 'em all.
(p.s. All of this has been typed, posted, edited and re-posted on my beautiful Linux machine.)
(p.p.s. The link for this trip's travelblog is here.)
5 comments:
That's right. Join the penguin horde. :)
If I may make a couple of suggestions since you're running my favorite Linux distro.
1) Get rid of whatever apt-get front end Kubuntu ships with and use Synaptic. It's much, much better from what I've seen.
2) Add the universe and multiverse repositories to apt-get. (or Synaptic or whatever KDE comes with). There's a ton of great programs in those repos.
3) Get and use Network Manager. It makes using wireless and wired network connections drop dead simple. I know KDE has that Kwifi or Kwireless app but Network Manager is better than both of those. It even handles WPA security and VPN connections! OMG!
4) Amarok is the best music program evAr. Now if it could only play my iTunes stuff without needing to strip off the DRM.
5) With machine specs like those you might be interested in using Xubuntu rather than Kubuntu. XFCE is the default desktop environment rather than GNOME or KDE. It's much lighter weight and runs much faster on machines with small amounts of RAM. My P3-M 1.2GHz w/ 512MB of RAM runs noticeably better under XFCE vs. GNOME or KDE.
6) Ubuntu Feisty Fawn 7.04 is going to be out soon. I've been playing with the beta and so far it's pretty damn sweet.
Good to hear someone is enjoying their Linux experience. :)
P.S.
7) If you need to use Exchange for work try out Evolution rather than KMail. I prefer it a bit more myself and it works with my Exchange email at work.
Wow, Donald got nerd all over your comments.
I was just gonna say way to go for using the ubiqutious Papyrus font. I'm seeing that font everywhere lately.
Bluh?
Yeah, so I'm still loving Linux. I've taken most of your suggestions, thank you very much, Donald.
Work is just a plain old POP3 email, so I don't have need for evolution, but I'll still check it out.
I'm going to need to upgrade my wireless. I'm still using 'B' wireless, so I have limited connectivity as it is. But I did install wireless manager, and it works so much better.
As far as 'getting nerd on my blog,' I'd like to point out that a) I got nerd on it first, and willingly. and
b)it's all been very good advice.
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