2006 February

An Event Apart

On 2/24/2006, In Web Dev, Work, By Will

So the first week in April is going to be one of the best weeks in history. As I have mentioned before, Dinosaur Jr is playing at the Orange Peel. Now I will also be attending An Event Apart in Atlanta!

I got my registration all set up yesterday, and I will be going with Chris, thanks to the education funding provided by our employer. This event will be stellar, as it is given by two of the web design world’s leading coolios: Eric Meyer and Jeffrey Zeldman. As you may know, Eric pretty much cleared the pathway through Cascading Style Sheets, and Zeldman wrote the excellent “Designing With Web Standards”. Additionally, the guest speakers will include Jason Santa Maria and Todd Dominey.

Needless to say, I am stoked as stoked can be!

Battlestar Galactica

On 2/23/2006, In TV, By Will

If you are not watching the new Battlestar Galactica, you are missing out on the best TV show since, well, the original Battlestar Galactica. Why aren’t you watching it? Do you know what you are missing?

There is no cheesy music. The music is very percussive and compliments the show well.
Each episode leaves you hanging.
The tech level is realistic, and the military aspect is very Naval, which Chris likes.
The Cylons are insane.
The plot twists are insane.
The actors are actually good.

Ron Moore, the producer of the show, used to direct some of the best Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine episodes. He knows his sci-fi.

I keep trying to tell Alicia that she would like it, as it’s not just spaceships and geekery.

Well?

Current Music Being Grooved To

On 2/17/2006, In Music, By Will

For no particular reason at all, here’s a quick list of music I am currently liking.

Will’s Current Top 10 iPod Rotation

Kanye West — Touch The Sky
Flaming Lips — Are You A Hypnotist?
Sigur Ros — Staralfur
Bliss — Song For Alabi
Rilo Kiley — Portions For Foxes
76 — Objects In Space (whole album)
Grandaddy — El Caminos In The West
The Didjits — California Surf Queen
Dinosaur Jr — You’re Living All Over Me (whole album, in preparation for April 7)
Zero 7 — In The Waiting Line

Music Updates

On 2/17/2006, In Music, By Will

A couple of minor updates to music.willchatham.com:

Added a Black Eyed Dog page
Thanks to one Brandon Skipworth, I obtained the names for the Undermine tracks.

Oh, and you can now find my on MySpace.

Windows Free — Update 1

On 2/11/2006, In OS's, Software, Tech, By Will

After about 4 hours of using Ubuntu Linux, I ditched it and installed Fedora Core 4. The main reason was that Ubuntu does not have a root user. This may seem odd to experienced Linux folks, but the intentions behind it are good. Unless you know what you are doing, you can completely hose a Linux operating system as the root user. So, in order to become as user-friendly as possible for Linux newbies, they require you to use ‘sudo’ for everything in Ubuntu.

To me, this was a slowdown. I decided to go with what I am most familiar with, and that is the RedHat-based Fedora Core 4.

More on my venture to discard Windows from my life will soon follow.

Windows Free!

On 2/11/2006, In OS's, Software, Tech, By Will

I got fed up. Fed up with a bogged down operating system. I got tired of viruses, spyware, licenses, etc etc etc.

Tonight I made the switch.

No, not to Apple. To Linux. Full-time, full-on Linux. Ubuntu, to be exact.

Within two hours I was up and running a smooth desktop, playing music from my iTunes library, browsing with Firefox, checking all my email in Thunderbird, and enjoying the feeling of being free from Windows.

The remarkable thing is that almost all of my USB devices work. My webcam does not, but a quick lookup found a tutorial on setting it up. Transferring all of my files was easy too. I just mounted my WinXP hard drive and whammo — it’s all accessible.

It’s still very early to tell how well I will adjust to this in my day-to-day working environment at home, so I will report back here on the matter in a week or two.

Will Chatham