Quickie thoughts and links.
Hi! Welcome to October! Here's some quickie thoughts for the evening. All in one big long post so I don't have to battle with my FTP client for bandwidth.
I wish there was a more condensed version of Redhat. With just the cool stuff and not all the extras. A one CD distrib. I know, I know, everyone has a different idea of what cool is, but 3 CDs is a lot to download. It's going to take me two days to get it all down if I'm lucky! At least Redhat has a clue and the size of the .isos are under 650meg... Mandrake made me go out and find 700+ size CDs to burn their distrib. I'm going to be happy returning to Redhat, actually. I tried out Mandrake and I liked it, but after Scott's vicious attack and some other stuff I've read I think it'll be better to use "the standard". Actually, my first Linux install was my server running Redhat 6.1... It never gave me any trouble and was up for over two years without coming down on it's own (flaky California power is another thing...). There's really no reason to switch and this version of Redhat seems to be getting praise. We'll see...
According to Dave's blog, Roller is on the list of competitors to Skribe, another Java journaling app with an dot-com business model (MiniBlog didn't make the cut it seems...) Sounds fine to me, but don't these guys REALIZE you can't use that quote from Jobs until you actually deliver your product? Sheesh. Amateurs. Dave was thinking their business model might be what I need:
Hey Russell, this might be the ticket! Pull an all-nighter, add premium categories to MiniBlog, and fund your trip to Esther Dyson's big-blowout in Berlin. "Want to know how I feel about lawyers? Just enter your credit card number and hit the submit button."
Nice. It'd be kinda neat if someone wanted to pay me to blog... but I'm not sure I'd like the pressure. I used to be a journalist in a long-past life. deadlines and me never meshed well (as you can tell from my coding deadlines...). It requires a discipline I never had.
Actually, I was just thinking about adding another feature to MiniBlog today: I have this running todo list that I'm always mailing to myself from my email account from work. It'd be nice that after I log into my weblog, my picture would be replaced by a blog-owner-only todo list and calendar. All private, but it'd be a nice organization tool for me. But no new features for MiniBlog until I get off my ass on my other projects. Procrastination has gripped me and isn't letting go, so I've got to be firm.
Hey, Ugo and his wife have lost 3kgs in the past couple weeks on the Atkins! Yeah! And fell less hungry too! Woohoo! Did I tell you or what? It really works.
Did I ever mention Chris Kelly? He's an expat blogger in Sofia, Bulgaria! He sent me kind words about my blog and some advice on Linux stuff... He's been trying to download Mandrake 9.0 without much success due to the rain. Oof. I can't imagine what the telecom infrastructure is like there.
Another expat-blogger, Kief, is no longer an expat blogger!! Kief's working in London now! Woah! What happened? He was in Turkey and then *poof* he's now hanging out in England marveling at all the bandwidth at his new job... Kief is an American with a British wife, so I'm not sure if being the U.K. counts as being "expat" or not. I think you get 1/2 expat points for being in another country that speaks your own language. There are still cultural differences, but it's not like you need to memorize 16 verb tenses to talk to your wife about your day at work. Kief thoughts on being back in London:
...living in London is like going to college, drinking beer is a constant, with frequent nights of getting shitfaced. Brits buy pints of beer in rounds, so if you don't keep up with their pace and aren't careful your pints will queue up. It may take me a while to get back up to speed.
Yep, that reminds me of hanging out with Irish expats back in San Francisco. There'd always be 2 or 3 (literally) full pints in front of me at all times. Man what is it about the people on those islands? I guess if I had to live in that climate I'd be an alcoholic too...
Speaking of bad climates... Madrid had 3 days of good weather, but that's it from now until May. Cold, grey and wet from here on in. I've GOT to find an excuse to live somewhere else. Ana's talking about 3 bedrooms in the North part of Madrid (where we were taking a pleasant walk on Sunday) and that's starting to frighten me.
I wonder what Kief feels like being back in an English speaking country again. It must be so odd. I've been here since April 2000... it's a long time. (For the story about why I'm in Spain, check out my About Me page. I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever be go back home again and be happy.
-Russ
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