All kinds of wonderful things!

For anyone who doesn’t know yet, Google has announced a new free webpage hosting service. They will give you 100MB to host your site. It comes complete with some very very simple webpage building tools, but its enough to get you started. I, being the loyal Google customer I am, have already created mine. I’m not giving you the link to it though, because its rather sad looking right now. I think I’m going to change a lot of it.

In other good news, Gentoo has released their version of the 2.6.17 kernel. Or for any Gentoo-ers who read this, kernel-2.6.17-gentoo-r4. Tomorrow, hopefully, I will be downloading it through portage, compiling, and installing it. Allowing me to move my computer off of this table and onto a real desk upstairs thanks to the miracle of wireless internet.

Finally, I plan on learning ruby as well python. Ruby looks like fun and I think I will enjoy it. Maybe even more than python, we’ll see though. I don’t think ruby comes standard on a Gentoo install, so there is another thing I’ll be downloading and installing tomorrow. I have a copy of Linux Journal with a small introduction into Ruby and Ruby-on-Rails. Using that I’m going to fool around and write some small, mainly useless programs. From there, I’ll just see what blossoms.

Enjoy the Penguins!

Picassa for Linux?

Click the title of the post and you’ll see what I’m talking about! Google, being the gracious people they are, have decided to release a beta of Picassa for Linux. Should you be excited? Of course! Picassa is the best photo album software I’ve ever used. I’ve used several in my life so I can say that with pretty good confidence. Though I haven’t tried it on my computer yet, I will sooner than later. Google does not refer to their software as “beta,” instead they say, “It just hasn’t been released from the labs yet.” Clever and corny if you ask me, but that’s Google’s style. Enjoy Picassa folks, it really is a good program. Enjoy the Penguins!

Making my site W3C compliant

I didn’t spend very long on my site today, but all the time I did spend, I spent making it more W3C compliant. What and who is that you might ask? They are group that pretty much set the coding standards for internet sites. So I, in effect, spent most of my time trying to make my site meet standards. After looking around at a lot of sites you claim compatibility my site really isn’t that bad. Considering I didn’t write the code I’m proud of it. I have corrected a lot of errors in the code so far to make more compliant, and I’m proud of that as well. The whole point of compliance is that it, in theory, it will make easier for web browsers to render pages because they will all be coded in a certain fashion. This will also ease the burden on browser developers because they will only have to worry about making a single type of site come up correctly. Ok, I’m not stupid, I know that’s way over simplified, but it will do. Enjoy the Penguins!

Let the coding begin!

Even though I’ve only had one official course in computer programming and I only own books relating the Visual Basic.Net and C/C++, I’ve decided to begin my adventure into Python. My only real training is in VB.NET and my C++ training was the equivalent of throwing a non-swimmer into the deep end of a pool and screaming swim! I’m hoping that between the two of those I’ll be able to weed my way through Python enough until I can get some formal training in computer programming. I don’t know how good I am at computer programming, but I hope to become a lot better. I’m currently playing with some code from an aDesklet just to see what I can do with it. If I ever work anything out of it I’ll post it somewhere and let some more educated people play with it. Right now though that is all just a dream. Enjoy the Penguins!

Gentoo Update Problems

I’m currently in the process of updating my system. Sounds easy enough except for the fact I have a symlink that points to the wrong sources. So I’ve posted on the Gentoo Forums in hopes someone will be nice enough to show me how to change the link to the right sources. This should be a simple fix, we’ll soon find out! Enjoy the Penguins!

Free Online Storage

In a never ending quest to better my blog I realized it was awfully plain. But in order to fix it, I needed to somehow host images and such. Well I have found my solution.

http://filexoom.com/

While the homepage my look like a site that only sends out spam, its currently hosting my single badge I have prompently displayed on the bottom of the right column. Thank you very much filexoom, your service rocks. I highly recomend them. Enjoy the Penguins!

Python – One step closer

After checking out this post on the Gentoo forums, I’ve read and learned about several choices I have for a Python IDE. This may sound like a simple decision but its actually quite difficult. IDEs, or Integrated Development Environments, are very complex beasts, and you want one that fits your wants and needs as well as possible. I finally decided that I would at least try this one first. IDLE looks to be the best IDE to start with, even if it isn’t’ the best one out there. With this decision made, I can now move on to picking up books on Python. I’d really like to take a course on it at Marshall University, but I have a feeling that isn’t possible, or if it is I’m probably not qualified. Either way, I’m one step closer to fulfilling one of the many dreams I have. Enjoy the Penguins!

Helping out

Yesterday I helped someone I randomly met on AIM install Gentoo. Quite a good feeling really. If you’ve never helped a stranger install Linux, try it. Now he ( my assumption) can experience the wholesome goodness of Linux as well. This makes me ponder starting a Linux club at Marshall… meh maybe not. Next semester will be busy. Perhaps at another time. Enjoy the Penguins!

The adds on the page

I run my adds on this page through Google’s add services. While I’ve had the adds on the site for just about as long as I’ve had the site they’ve actually never given me any money for running them. See the way it works is you have to earn at least $100 to get paid. The adds on this site have yet to earn me a $100, even after a year of use, so don’t think by any means I’m getting rich off of this website. What I am doing though is looking out for my readers. Through Google’s service you can setup a “Competitive Add Filter” so Google will not run the adds of your competitors on your site. So, for example, you’ll (hopefully) never see a Microsoft add on this site.

I’ve recently noticed that some of the adds being run, while not competitive in nature, are of products that I would consider “infested” with spyware. Like toolbars and such. So I will from here on try to filter out the adds of such companies. If anyone notices an add of a product they fill is “infested” or is in any way inappropriate please e-mail me and I will gladly try to stop them from appearing here on my blog.

Thank you.

Current Screenshot

Here’s my latest screenshot. I haven’t posted one in a long time, so I thought I would get a fresh one out there. That’s a Porsche 911 Turbo GT3 if you like the background. I’m running three desklets from aDesklets: modubar, clock, and a weather one. All three of which I highly recommend. I’m also running GkRellm, which I don’t really like, but I’m using it for now. If you have any questions on where to get the pic or the other items on my desktop just ask! Enjoy the Penguins!