Moving

I've made a blog, currently on lifepond.wordpress.com. Go take a visit, and rebookmark me!

Thinking For Outside...

I haven't been posting for probably... I don't know... more than two weeks. I've been working on this new designing blog, Gletscher Designs over at Wordpress, and almost forgot about this one. I'm planning to revamp this whole blog, abandon Blogger [sorry Google, I have to do it], and make a fresh, new blog.

Even though this blog won't be deleted [remember the times I posted everyday?], but I've decided to get a new one, because this one's way too messy, and sorta found Wordpress more attractive.

Sorry everyone, but this blog's going down.

Yahoo’s Hippest New UI

This Monday [July 17th], Yahoo had changed their look of their homepage, and is currently live for the US. It first debuted it’s beta at yahoo.com/preview publicly, and now live on yahoo.com. Millions of people might see their first AJAX interface, and interact with the new Web 2.0 style put up on Yahoo, and most of all, the better organized content on the messy homepage. Go take a visit!

Mission Failure: Edubuntu

Right now many people are using the widely popular distribution of Linux, Ubuntu, from Canonical Ltd. It comes in a CD and you can install it or test it on the live CD, and it has become the most famous name of Linux on the internet. It’s open source and it’s free, hey, it sounds great doesn’t it?

Because of it’s big popularity, the Ubuntu project, started different branches of them, like Xubuntu with the little mouse, and Kubuntu with the KDE eye candy. And they’ve managed to release Edubuntu, the educational flavor of Ubuntu Linux, with many educational add-ons.




Edubuntu, also being free, seems fantastic to school districts without so much money to maintain their computers for the higher demands of the students, but actually, Edubuntu’s more of a failure for actual usage. It’s great that it’s open source and free and all, but most of the time, teachers won’t really care. Here’s a list of reasons that Edubuntu isn’t that much at all.

1.) Linux is for people who want to fiddle with the operating system. It’s not personal, it’s public.

Edubuntu/Ubuntu/Linux is certainly fun to use sometimes, as refreshment from the everyday desktop, but not for the bigger world. Teachers and students don’t have time, don’t want to, and wouldn’t have the will to touch those coding fluff needed to do something. They don’t need to, and don’t want to, and it’s not necessary to know any programming or networking to use a computer at school unless you’re an administrator.

Would you want to see this while you’re in a hurry to use a computer? Have you seen this on any other school computer?







2.) Too many updates and CDs.

The Ubuntu flavor is known for frequent and large updates; every six months [the release of the CDs]. Besides that, there are so many updates within the six months. And most of the time, every update is pretty vital too, so you can’t really miss that either. No school wants to get these every six months, and once someone gets used to it, they might once again, have to get used to the new release again.

3.)File Popularity?

Because all Ubuntu flavors and most Linux operating systems are open source, and most of all, free, they might not always have the right stuff. For example, all the programs on it are also open source and free. Such as the famous browser, Firefox, and they use OpenOffice as a replacement for Microsoft Office/Word, GIMP rather than Photoshop, et cetera. Most people won’t know how to use most of these programs because we’d rather using Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Word and such, [while we use Firefox though], than different programs like OpenOffice, GIMP, etc.

We can’t use their programs.

And you can’t really work at home and work on Edubuntu at school. Most of the time, because they don’t have the same file formats. They don’t quite use mp3 either, but ogg. Most of all, because Ubuntu/Edubuntu/Linux isn’t that popular, yes, it’s too hard to deal with.

4.)Trust and Advertisements

Schools want trustworthy staff and teachers, and they also want trustworthy computers too. Yes, Linux based web servers are reliable and popular, but from the first time you Google Linux, you see all these websites that look really amateur. I think that teachers would be looking more at the word “Linux”, rather than “Edubuntu”. Although the Edubuntu website looks pretty professional, other Linux websites aren’t what you’d expect as a website on operating systems.

5.) They’re fed up with their current computers.

Probably, the biggest thing about this problem is, it takes too much time, and we don’t need anything more than a Mac or a PC. It’s just that it’s better to stick with popular operating systems that people are used to working with, and they’d find no reason to switch if they already have a full set of computers. After all, you’re installing Edubuntu on another computer they’ve paid a lot for, and it’s being replaced by free stuff? I don’t really know whether a school wants to do that.

Finally, that's the whole list. I'm just saying that Edubuntu isn't really what the school wants, although I still think Ubuntu is one of the most successful distributions of Linux, and I do support it. This was just a list of things that made Edubuntu not much of the next big boom.

Fresh Theme

You might have noticed, but I revamped the design of this blog as promised several months ago. It's been about 3 months after I've started this blog, and after using so many third party templates, I've decided to rearrange the Minima theme that was originally made by Stop Designs. Here's a list of things I did to make this site look better.



•The header image with the turning arrow, and the footer image at the very bottom of every page, was made by me using Adobe Photoshop CS2. I've used the "pen" tool for the curves, and used a great brush tool for the turning arrow.

•I changed the sidebar with all those 80x15 pixel links. The thing is, I've made all of those images on my image hosting account rather than sourcing it to external websites, because who knows, they might suddenly delete it or move it!

•The dotted lines now have a blue color.

•The description, under the site title. It's been out of shape, and I found out how to fix it, so now it looks good now.

Sorry, this post might have been boring, but just for all those web developers, or people who are interested, this was a site-update report.

Some Stupid Things

This is really ridiculous. In the world of so called “eco-warriors”, they use wood cased PCs, to have a “greener” computer experience. Yeah they’re advertising the world about environmental crisis and such, but isn’t the wood used for the PC….taken away from forests? They’re already ruining the woods by buying these PCs. It’s ridiculous isn’t it.

Here’s another example. Firefox 2.0 [this is a beta], just got this new feature that checks spelling while you type. And here’s this ridiculous screenshot. I know it’s not in the dictionary, but it’s weird how they didn’t add their names into it.

The Wireless Misunderstanding

I don’t know how common this is, but I find it very stupid. There’s this misunderstanding that if you’re internet is “wireless”, its “fast”. This person has AOL as his internet service provider, and he says its dial-up, but on the other hand, due to all those AOL commercials, he says its “high-speed”.

Normally if it’s dial up, there’s a depressing limit to how fast it can be, and certainly, won’t be satisfying too. The misunderstanding here, is the connection speed from the modem or whatever to the computer, the wireless connection. The wireless connection may be fast [you want it fast because that’ll decrease the delay from the modem to the computer] but that should have no relation with how fast your internet is. There’s no difference than from the fact you’re using dial-up speed internet, and that you just happen to have a wider workspace.

I don’t blame this guy for his misunderstanding, especially because I think AOL’s commercials are the main problem. “True broadband” is what they say on those commercials, an upgrade from dial-up to “True broadband”, “high-speed internet”, and other golden words. He must have first mistaken his dial-up connection with the broadband connection, got messed up, and the wireless, and had juggled three topics, and concluded that the wireless is what AOL provides to make broadband connections available. Well that’s only one man’s imagination.

The Mystery Key

This had happened a few months ago, a really odd experience. I was typing up some work, when it started to make line breaks, the equivalent to pressing the enter key or return key. My word document stretched for pages until I quit Word. Even after that, once I opened Word or any word processing program, it did the same thing. I found it almost scary, because I wasn’t pressing any of the keys, and thought it could be some hacker messing up my computer.
But the solution to this mystery was far more simple. How could a hacker get into a Mac anyways? Anyways, the thing was, the enter key on the far right of my keyboard was being pressed by one of my large binders, leaning on the keyboard. Because I never even pressed any of those keys far on the right, and because I never look over there, I didn’t find that out for about 5 minutes. The binder was the criminal after all…☺

“Google” added to the Merriam Webster Dictionary!

It’s no wonder the Merriam Webster Dictionary had added the word “Google” into their great list of words, in this era of the “Google empire”. “Google” isn’t the only new word that’s going to be in the eleventh edition, there’s 100 in total, and here’s a sampling from the list, taken from their website, m-w.com. If you don’t know some of these words, and can’t wait until getting the dictionary in print, then go to m-w.com and search it yourself. Or “Google” it if you want...


Technology and Computers

mouse potato
ringtone
spyware

Science and Medicine

avian influenza
biodiesel
gastric bypass

Pop Culture

soul patch
supersize
bling

Entertainment and Leisure

labelmate
wave pool

The Human Condition

drama queen
unibrow

International

manga
qigong

Business and Industry

agritourism
big-box

Nature

aquascape
coqui

Miscellaneous

polyamory
sandwich generation