Wednesday, June 28

Long Day

Music: Red Hot Chili Peppers
Mood: Beat

"The most profound statements are often said in silence."
-Lynn Johnston

I had a long day. I also managed to find time to write a very long post about it. And cover lots of neat news items.


I had a long day at work. I overslept after being up so late last night from blogging and seeing superman and work was just one long stress session. Its getting really close to our launch date so everyone is stressed and it permeates the whole office. I'm just listening to loud music, so hopefully it'll help me escape.

I have so much stuff I've wanted to say lately but I've been too busy to write about it all. In fact there is so much I don't know if I can keep up with myself. I feel a little too ambitious sometimes, and then I worry that all of a sudden I'll just stop writing. I don't want that to happen, so I'm doing my best to stay calm and not get frustrated.

I think thats its funny that I write a user manual all day long and then come home and write another thousand words. I must love to write. At this point I'm not sure why I chose to become a computer-science major. Its still something I'm interested in but I don't know if I'd want to do it for a living anymore. I always figured I'd become and engineer or something because it was the only field that I could really see becoming a real career job. I never wanted to go into medicine or law, so that didn't seem to leave many options. I don't think I looked hard enough, because there are a million different fields out there, and I could do anything I wanted to.

I don't think I will though. I like the job I have, and I can see it being a great job to keep and use as a stepping stone to do anything I want to in the future. Or never leave and work there for life. It seems like thats a long time, and who knows what will happen in the future. I guess deep down inside, even though I always said I never wanted to, I do want to start my own business. I don't know what industry it would be in or how I'd even accomplish it, but its just a feeling I get now that I have a real job.

Linux - A Recap

Its been a few days since I finalized my installation and I wanted to talk about how things have gone with it. Its great. I had poor experiences in the past with linux, but this time has been very forgiving and it all works great. There are a ton of useful programs and I am able to accomplish everything I used to on windows. Of course I still use my laptop a lot. I'm actually writing this on my laptop right now. I have dreamweaver and photoshop on it, so it is my content creation tool of choice. I could work for a few hours and become frustrated and attempt to install them on linux, but I think I'll pass.

I also haven't tried OpenOffice.org 2.0 yet. I just haven't had any reason to. I tried the previous release and it was good enough for a lot of things, but it didn't have all the features that I had come to expect from Microsoft Office. I could get things done without them, but there were features I missed like grammar check and auto-summarize. I don't know if those have been added to OpenOffice.org, but I plan on finding out.

I read two very good articles from The Jem Report about linux. The first was published a while ago. It covers the differences between GNU/Linux distributions. I wish I had read it before I started installing linuzx myself, but it did help to reinforce the fact that I made the right choice.

The second article was published today and is about how linux desktop distributions are headed in the wrong direction. I don't know that I agree completely with everything it says, and I do enjoy my useless visual effects, but it makes some very good points about improving applications. I would like to see a better suite for writers, since I myself am a writer. Maybe it something I should look into further, since I am looking at a career in computer science and also an avid writer. Perhaps I will.

Ad Enabled Content

I was browsing around Google Video and at the top of the page I saw a bunch of videos that were usually paid content, but were free for today. I think thats really cool that they can give some videos away and still break even with ads. I realized that I would be willing to watch ads voluntarily if I knew that I could view paid content for free. I know its not a very good model, mostly because it is vulnerable to abuse, but I found it an interesting concept. Watch an add that isn't completely intrusive and annoying, or pay a nominal fee. I'd be more than willing to watch the ad if I knew I'd be getting the content that was actually worth something for free.

Snow Patrol

A friend of mine told me about Snow Patrol [wikipedia] just the other day. I checked out their music and really liked it. They have done a lot of stuff with indie bands that I'm familiar with, so I had a feeling they would be good, even if I wasn't a fan of their particular style. Check them out.

Farecast

Farecast is a really cool new web service. It tracks the prices of plane tickets and gives an estimate for when the tickets would be cheapest. Its still in beta form and only a few airports are available now, but I can't wait to try it once its fully functional. It puts the power back in the hands of the consumer instead of the airlines or the sites like Orbitz that cares more about the airlines than the consumer.

YouTube

I know I keep mentioning YouTube, or at least using videos from the site, but its a really great service. Plus its easy to embed videos in my posts, I don't have to do anything except copy their code.

I read an article from the NYTimes about how NBC is planning to team up with YouTube to promote its new shows. Im glad to see that big media companies are starting to get in on the free internet media sites. They already show it to millions on TV, and broadcast it out to the world, why not give it away online as well. It might actually get people interested.

Pirates!

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is looking really good. I liked the first one, but did not expect it to stay so popular. Lots of movies like that fade away and become old summer movies, but it had that special something and continues to be popular. The trailers look great and a lot of work has gone into it, so I hope its amazing. It comes out in a little over a week, so I may be seeing it with the Connecticon crew. I think that would be a blast.

Merch

xkcd has a shirt for sale. Its one of those shirts with a funny and ironic comment on it. I liked it, so check it out, and maybe buy one. I would if I could convince myself I didn't have enough shirts already. I'll probably buy the math is delicious shirt from Questionable Content at the con. I don't really like ordering shirts online. The only exception is Threadless. I bought my favorite shirt (mines in yellow) from them, and I consider it a very good purchase. I'm actually wearing it today. They do have a lot of weird and interesting shirts for sale, so check them out.

Another intersting shirt company is Busted Tees. They have a ton of funny college oriented shirts that I would buy if I lost my entire wardrobe in a fire and wanted to be funny all the time. Neither of those two requirements are met, so I don't have any, but maybe someday I will. For more offensive t-shirts I suggest T-shirt Hell. They have some really great shirts. My personal favorite from their site is a tad offensive. I don't know that its the one I'd be most likely to wear, but I support the message.

More Trailers

I guess I see a lot of trailers and think that they protray really interesting movies. Its typically not the case (the movies usually suck) but I look forward to them anyway. Hostel was one of the first thriller/horror movies that I really connected with. I was blown away and really felt an emotional response to it. I saw a trailer for The Descent and I thought that maybe it would give me the same feeling. I do want to see The Hills Have Eyes, because its supposed to be a good one, but I just don't have the time to watch it.

The other trailer is for Lady in the Water. Its another M. Night Shyamalan movie, so it'll probably have a very strange twist at the end. No matter what anyone says about it, I like The Village. I found it to be a very interesting movie. I hope this one is a good movie as well.

SketchUp

SketchUp is a really neat looking program from google. I haven't tried it, but it looks cool and I wanted to point it out. I think one of these days when I have a lot of free time I'll test it out.

Wrap Up

That covers just about everything I've wanted to cover for the last few days. I haven't checked any news for today for the fear of being overwhelmed. I'll post about todays news tomorrow or tonight if I find something really exciting.


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