Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Another Day

I know it has been a long time, but just know that I am, for the moment, back, and hope to stay that way this time. If anyone was ever really reading me anyway, that is.

In my time away, I have started school again, and am loving it. Started programing classes and finding myself loving it! Also starting to look more seriously into Linux platforms and such, especially since a job that I am looking into getting wants knowledge of said operating system.

Couple of things I wanted to throw out there:

First and foremost, to my girlfriend, my partner, my fiancee, my love...I love you with all of my heart and soul, and want to be by your side for life.

Next, for anyone else who is looking into Linux, a distro I tried in the past and set aside as having too many things they needed to work on, looks like they have done the work, and I'm going to be test driving their newest release here in a little while. The distro is called Ubuntu, and can be found at www.ubuntu.com. If you don't want to download it, they also ship FREE CDs to people who want them (takes a bit longer than the ones that you pay for, though). Everything about this distro is made to just work out of the box, and looks like they are getting pretty close to something that a novice can switch to without feeling like they are losing all sense of ease of use from their computer. Also, the CD now comes with its Live CD form as part of the installer CD, so all you have to do is boot with the CD in the tray, and check it out!

Another thing I found while out and about are two web browsers, one I have not really been able to try out as it is Linux only, but will as soon as I get my box up and running with it, but is supposed to be blazing fast and based off of Firefox. It is called Swiftfox, and if you have Linux and want to try it out, just go to www.getswiftfox.com. Otherwise, get Firefox, another top notch browser that is winning recognition just about every time you turn around, and for good reason. The other browser I was talking about, however, is not Firefox.

It is Opera, and is probably the most advanced browser I've ever seen, truly a modern web experiance. When you add widgets, they activate in real time without restarting, and so do new skins. The way it is all built together is so intuitive, it makes Firefox look complicated, and it comes with the functionality of most of the more popular Firefox extensions already built right in. It even saves your session automatically without having to dig for the option or download an extension to do it for you, and more reliably (I've had to trash saved sessions in Firefox before because they became corrupted...not so with Opera). There are only a very few sites that o not work properly in Opera, and that is not a fault of the browser but of lazy webmasters not working with modern standards (to see proof of this, run IE and Opera both through the Acid 2 Test and see how they come out...Acid 2 is a test of modern web standards, and Opera passes perfectly, and IE loses so horribly its not even funny) Anyway, it is worth a check-into...only thing I can really complain about not working right in Opera is that I can't adjust the size of my tabs and I can't seem to get the built in bit-torrant client to work.

For anyone who loves music: Check out the Corporeals on YouTube with their recording of their mix of the Halo theme, an absolutely beautiful and breathtaking bit of work. Also check out "All We Got", which is another perfect showcase of unbelievable talent as three musicians jam on one acoustic guitar at the same time.

Anyway, that's all I've got right now. I will try to be back in soon with another update.

Oh, and I don't know if this is a browser issue, or if the NEW!!! Blogger is just being stupid, but it seems I can no longer chose my own font other than the small handful of options that they provide...so, until I figure that out, I will not be able to use Tahoma and will be forced to work with Verdana.

Update: Yeah, it is a browser issue. Blogger does not hold its formatting correctly when going back and forth between HTML edit in Opera for some reason. Anyway, I am also going to really not be happy if it turns out that the way I signed in this time is how I will sign in every time to Blogger...I don't want to have to type my password THREE times to sign in.