Jeff

So I had been using my two monitors a lot and was constantly feeling starved for desktop space. I would be juggling 5 or 6 windows on the two displays, throwing windows back and forth and getting generally lost where each window was. I finally decided I wanted to get the monitor I had been eyeing for a while, a 27” widescreen LCD. I was gifted enough to get free overnight shipping, but didn’t know (in my lack of experience with FedEx express) that I had to have someone sign for it. So I ended up driving to a Service Center to pick it up after work (I really wanted to play with it) and then dragged it back here and immediately hooked it up. It is glorious. I installed an application that lets me maximize windows to 1/2 the space of the big monitor and I put the two 17s in portrait on either side, so now I can have 4 windows open comfortably. It is great. I have my Firefox, IRC, Skype with Kim, and Foobar all open and visible. I had notepad, 2 browsers, and Foobar open earlier when I was doing some coding. I am really geeking out right now.

I need to build a small shelf to sit over my desk so I can put a lamp above the desk and mount my speakers above the monitors. Then I can probably de-clutter my desk some and really make it comfortable. I shall see. I think I may go after work tomorrow to scout the supplies at home depot, but the actual work may be next week, but who knows. I am getting pizza with my dad and sister tomorrow because she is in town for something. Then this weekend I am going to Purdue to see people. I will probably post more often in this now that I have moved it over to the awesome django code and have a majority of what I want in the control center section complete. Hopefully this entry goes through properly, I really don’t feel like debugging at this hour, I need to sleep >_>…

tagged with:
• personal

So I have been using OS X on my netbook for something like a week now. I have used it primarily for watching video and browsing the web (which is pretty much as I had planned). The one major conclusion I cam to is that I don’t see whats so special about it… It isn’t anything better or worse than the other two OSes I use constantly (Windows 7 and Ubuntu). It looks pretty, but so do the other two. I find some of the restrictions annoying, in terms of control and there really aren’t any killer applications that change the way I use a computer. I use VLC for video, like I do in Linux and Windows, and I use Firefox for browsing, like I do in Linux and Windows. There isn’t anything that makes it stand alone, if anything it is lacking programs for things I use primarily. I use mIRC and X-Chat for IRC on Windows and Linux, with OS X, theres Colloquy (which is crap) and X-Chat Aqua, a weaker version of its older brother. Adium is a decent chat program, but nothing better than Trillian on Windows (I don’t like Pidgin, so it wins over Linux) and Skype is the same. It lacks Outlook, so I am stuck with either Thunderbird or just using the web client (which is almost better). I don’t like iTunes but there isn’t anything else for OS X since everyone is so enamered with iTunes…

Alright, enough with me ranting… I feel that OS X is a decent OS. It lacks a lot of the extensive options available for both Linux and Windows and feels very hindered by its locked down system, compared to the other two. I do like its Unix base, so the structure feels familiar and I can still get into the terminal goodness. Because of that, I can always fall back to terminal based applications like IRSSI (yeah Tang, that is an option for IRC, but I would rather stay away from the terminal for something like this). The real allure for me is the actual machine. It is a 10” 2 pound little menace. It can do most of the things I ask it and does so in a nice, light, travel sized case. I am looking forward to dragging this with me more places, and bringing up my wireless router to Purdue so that I can use it more from Kim’s room… Well, I will probably spend this coming weekend trying to get the server stable and next week trying to get this site out to the public (rather than just my private apartment sized audience :( ).

tagged with:
• personal
• site

So I now have my own place. It’s a nice 1 bedroom apartment at the edge of Carmel. I have finally set up the web server in the apartment to utilize the strong internet I am paying for (its fancy Uverse). I am still using the poopy old computer to serve pages, but I will hopefully find time to move my old XP desktop over to an Ubuntu server so that I can have a strong CPU processing the ever growing dynamic system I am working on in Django. I will need to figure out how to migrate over the MySQL after I somehow backup the files. I will hopefully post an album for pictures of the apartment when I feel it is presentable :. I will probably make a better post in the future…

tagged with:
• personal
• site