Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be, but first I need more coffee.
I finally upgraded my WordPress install to v 2.92. Was stuck on an earlier version because I was using MySQL 4.0. I exported all of my data. Imported it into a new MySQL 5.0 database. Changed the info in the wp-config.php and ran the upgrade. It went pretty smooth.
I wanted to change the theme and I installed a few new themes. Didn’t quite like the end result, so I reverted to an older one I already had installed. I will see what I can do to tweak one of those new themes to suit me.
I’ve started doing freelance work. At the beginning of the year I was helping a company get their feet wet with Plone. A lot of work and I learned a lot. I’ve set up a website for a an author who has a book coming out. I’m looking for other opportunities. Plone is a long term project and really requires me to be part of a team, but for solo projects I’m very good at helping people set up WordPress websites. It’s good for small websites with a small number of users and there are many many skins available that can be easily customized to meet the needs of a client. I’m also familiar with Django, but still have much to learn about it.
I’m a firm believer in content management systems. It allows non-technical people the ability to manage their own websites. Plone is by far the one of the best open source CMSs available. It can take time to set up one but if you have a lot of information to manage and a fair number of end users, it’s the way to go.
I’d written a blog post about setting up my laptop as a Dual Boot with Vista and Ubuntu. I thought I’d written a blog post on how to get Vista to suck less by XP-ifiy it. Turn off UAC (User Account Control) and that’ll make it far less annoying. I chose not to remove Vista and install XP because I was afraid I’d have problems finding drivers for the laptop. On to installing SP1.
I installed Vista SP1 on my laptop tonight. Given Microsoft’s track record, I decided to hold off on it until I’d done some research. Basically, as long as I was careful I was OK. I couldn’t really get a sense if I really needed it not. What I read made me lean towards it. I did back up my important files first. I downloaded it and got ready to install it when I realized that my laptop was dual boot with Ubuntu. So I did a quick search to see if that was safe. It appeared to be. Some blogs and reviews said it broke programs, but these reviews and blog posts were shortly after SP1 was released.
On the Ubuntu forums, people refer to an article that says unless you have Vista Ultimate or Vista Enterprise installing SP1 shouldn’t cause a problem.
I installed Hardy Heron and I’ve kept current with updates, so I’m currently running kernel 2.26.24-22. Although I’ve had problems with WiFi on Linux my experience with a dual boot laptop has been pretty trouble free. But as someone whose had headaches with Windows and Linux (mostly Windows), I am careful when I do upgrades. When I was a Mac user I was always on the bleeding edge and installing and upgrading to betas. I didn’t make the transition to Mac OS X. When I switched to the Windows universe I did the opposite. I waited until all the bugs and problems were worked out of Windows upgrades before following suit.
I’ve used Linux off and on over the years. My first distribution was Slackware then I switched to RedHat shortly thereafter. After a long absence I went back to using Red Hat which had become Fedora. When I went to Pycon 2007 I saw a lot of laptops running Ubuntu. I gave it a try but didn’t like it at first. I didn’t grok sudo and hated it. I do now, and I grok it.
I’m not going to give a complete list of social web tools that I’m using, but I have this blog, a Livejournal account, Facebook, Twitter, and for IM I use Trillian to aggregate ICQ, AOL IM, and Yahoo! Messenger. Not to mention LinkedIn, and a few other websites I subscribe to.
There are a number of Twitter applications so I don’t have to use the website, but I thought wouldn’t it be great if I could use Trillian to manage my Twitter posts. So far no luck, but Pidgin (formerly Gaim), does have a plugin for Twitter. I’ve used Pidgin under Ubuntu. I took a look at Pidgin and it supports far more chat protocols than Trillian does. So I’ll be switching to it in short order, though I need to do a little more research. Besides supporting Twitter it also supports IRC. Something that I ought to be using more.
Links
Twitter & Pidgin
Actually, I took this picture when I went to the Internet World Fall ’98. It was held at the Jacob K. Javits Center in NYC, though I like to refer to it as the John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt Center. I’ve been to a few tech conferences since then, but none quite as big as this one.
I fear we will see many more people on the streets in the coming months that truly are desperate. I’ve still never quite grown callous enough to ignore all beggars. I have enough guilt left over from my Catholic upbringing to give out the occasional dollar or handful of change. Sure some are scammers and make out like bandits. But who subjects themselves to such humiliation to earn a few bucks? The ratio will change and there will be fewer scammers.
I did ask they guy, “If I give you a buck, can I take your picture?” He said, “Done!”
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