xkcd - Exploits of a Mom - By Randall Munroe

If you're a computer geek, you may LOL at this database humor. If not, sorry. Just trust me that it's really funny.

Full Circle Magazine » Issue 4

Full Circle - the Ubuntu Community Magazine are proud to
announce our fourth issue.

I know, I'm going to get more user submitted complaints about rambling on about Ubuntu, but I'm more and more excited about Linux as a real alternative to Windows.  I've been thinking about trying to install it on my parents' computers because I can log in remotely and fix things for them.

I mean, my dad is running Windows 98 on his desktop.  As a computer dork, this is roughly the same as a dentist allowing his father to lose all his teeth due to cavities.

Anyway, Full Circle Magazine is accessible for the non-geek, although some of it will seem like a foreign language.  But I mention it more as a symbol of things to come - there was an article in the previous issue (That I actually haven't read, but the new issue mentions it) about someone installing Ubuntu on his grandmother's computer, and how happy she's been with it.  When people who didn't use a computer until well into adulthood start using and being happy with Linux, it's good for everyone.

Imagine you could go buy a computer, and they'd ask you, "Which operating system would you like?", and you could choose whatever you wanted.  There would be real choice, and real competition.  Right now, for the vast majority of people, you either buy a Mac or you run Windows.  But Ubuntu isn't far off.  And if Ubuntu succeeds at bringing Linux to the masses (And their deal with Dell is a huge step forward), then other distributions will follow.

Anyway, it's exciting.  At least, I'm excited.

Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories - Book Review (and build!): Forbidden Lego

Forbidden Lego written by a pair of Lego master builders, who used to work in designing advanced Lego sets (e.g., Mindstorms). While they obviously got to work on lots of cool things while they were there, there were certain projects that just turned not to be suitable to be made into kits released by the Lego company. They wrote the book to give some kind of a tantalizing hint at the kinds of things that go on behind the scenes at Lego, and the kinds of neat things that might get released in a world without product liability suits.

If you don't want to read the article (Which you should, but I know you're lazy), just watch the YouTube video linked within.  It's pretty much the best YouTube video ever.  Well, maybe not.  But it won't get stuck in your head like Chocolate Rain.

The book includes instructions on how to make automatic weapons with Legos.  What could possibly be cooler than that?  Anyone not intrigued by a self-loading Lego catapult is no friend of mine.

Or maybe it's new heights. I guess that depends on your point of view. I've been doing a little fooling around with some C++ with GCC. I'm doing a little baseball simulating, and it's going well. If it continues to go well, I'll eventually have a little executable that generates pages and pages of wonderful statistics that I can do all sorts of wonderful things with.

I realize I'm in a very small minority with my obsession with baseball statistics, but those of us here (And by 'here', I mean 'In the crazy minority') are really into it. The wife doesn't really understand, but as long as I don't sit here writing code and ignoring her while she's talking, I think she'll humor me.

I'm a little disappointed with Eclipse, however. It was slow, error messages were unhelpful, and code completion was iffy. And since code completion is one of the greatest things about an IDE, its absence is kind of a deal breaker.  It may be partly a function of my crappy computer, though.

So I'm currently coding in Gedit and doing command-line compiling. It's fine so far, but I haven't done anything really complicated.

Anyway, it's fun.

I've been doing some more playing with Ubuntu and Wubi. I got the wireless working Friday, and I haven't booted up Windows since then. This is something holding back Ubuntu for the masses. It took me four tutorials and about a week to get connected to my wireless network. This isn't so bad for me - I don't mind messing around with things on the computer, and now I'll appreciate the wireless connection even more. But I hesitate to put Ubuntu on my dad's computer, for example. He's a perfect candidate - Windows hater, older PC - but I don't want to have to get things working for him every time he wants something new.

Anyway, I'm very happy with my new Ubuntu install.  And I don't know how to write a wireless manager that just works.

I wonder if Dell has something.  They're selling machines preloaded with Ubuntu now, and they must have come up against this by now.  Of course, if the Windows wireless manager that Dell put on my laptop is any indication, they probably just threw the first piece of junk they found in there and hoped that people would figure it out.

I installed Ubuntu on my laptop last night using Wubi, and I'm not sure why I didn't do this sooner. Wubi is a Windows installer that lets you run Ubuntu sort of like running a Windows program.

My initial reactions are limited, because the install finished sometime after I went to bed last night, and I only had a few minutes to play this morning. But I was surprised that Ubuntu recognized the volume buttons on my Dell (I accidentally uninstalled the Windows driver for them and have never bothered to find it again), although I was a little disappointed that it seems to like to turn the volume on when I'm not logged in, which drives me nuts.

Also, I couldn't get onto my wireless network. But I'm not positive I have the right password. I'll have to play with it tonight. Of course, the wife comes home tonight, so I should probably do a bit of cleaning. I did some yesterday, but not everything.

In any event, I would much rather be at home playing with Ubuntu than sitting at work, checking for Section 508 compliance in our web application. Although at least this gives me an excuse to get rid of some of the awful, awful code generated by Visual Studio. If you ever hear anyone try to sing the praises of Microsoft's .NET environment, I want you to kick them in the teeth.

xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe

The world is so complicated - the more I learn, the less clear anything gets.

I love xkcd.  Three times a week, this guy makes me laugh.  You know when someone makes a comment about something, and you hear it, and you think, "OMFG, that is EXACTLY the way I feel, but I've never been able to put it into words!"?

Well, I get that feeling reading xkcd at least once a week.  If you are not reading this webcomic regularly, you are not truly an internet geek.  You probably are also not prepared in the event of a velociraptor attack.  Remember, they do not know fear.

Due to a little investigating after seeing it in my Google analytics reports, I am now able to tell you that, happily, Complaint Hub is the #1 Google result for the phrase "Internet Explorer is the devil".  That makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

This is also my 300th post.  I guess that's cool, too.

Welcome - Ubuntu: Linux for human beings

Just saw on Lifehacker that Ubuntu has released a new version, which contains, among other things, Firefox 2.0. Sweet. Can't wait to get home and upgrade my Ubuntu box.

Edit: Ooh, maybe I should have waited. Upgrade crapped out, now I'm not sure whether it's going to boot back up. We'll see how long it takes me to get a good install again.  Ubuntu forum users report some problems, which I guess is to be expected.  But I was so close to getting my Complaint Hub enhancements working, and now my development box is hosed. . .

Our office is all but closed today, and I got permission to work from home (Mostly because I'm pretty sure I'm technically supposed to do the combination lock on the office door every time I go to the bathroom if I'm the only one there).  And what's even better is that my assignment for the day is to get IntelliJ up and running with the Google Web Toolkit and see if I can get an environment set up to write some web services.  I'm thinking I might try writing a little something for Complaint Hub if I can get it working (And playing nicely with the WordPress php theme that I'm using).  Maybe I'll put up a little Nano progress bar so you all can yell at me if I start falling behind next month.