Posted by geetarista April 17, 2006
I came across an interesting article the other day: Why Wait for Vista? Basically, it said that instead of waiting for Vista to come out, why not pay for a few little programs that will make those changes for you? These few programs will make the icons look cooler, they will style your desktop and windows, as well as tweak your system to make it do what you want.
From what I’ve read about Windows Vista, it looks like most of the upgrages are going to be GUI related. I’m wondering where all the improvements in functionality and productivity are. I’m wondering where the improvements are for memory and system use. If Vista does have a lot of these features, Micro$oft isn’t talking much about them. It seems like they keep adding all of these useless features to use up the technology that is coming out. Do we really need 64-bit chips, terabyte hard drives, 100 GBs of memory, gigabyte video cards, etc. just so we can use our operating system? Do you really need to be able to have a 3d view of your windows? If this is the case, the article mentioned above does have a valid point: why wait for Vista when you can make the changes now?
But I have another question: why waste money on 3rd party software just to make Windows look better? Why waste money on Vista if it’s not that much of an improvement? Why not just make the switch to Linux and free yourself?
The more I get frustrated about Windows, the more I look for a solution. The more I look for a solution, the more I find that Linux is the answer to all my problems. Not just for the fact that the OS and software are free (which is really great!), but there are more choices in software, it is easy to use, there is no spyware, etc. Of course it is difficult changing to an entirely new operating system when you’ve used Windows your entire life. However, the change is worth it. Right now I am migrating over to Linux and learning about it, while still able to use Windows if I need to. I just have a dual boot set up so I can use both systems at the same time. I’m learning that I can do everything with Linux that I use Windows and other M$ programs for. I’ll be dedicating many future posts to my adventures with Linux and the things that I find. Of course, I’m no pro, but I do want to share what I find so that other newbies can have it a little easier.
Posted by geetarista April 13, 2006
While I was using the Logahead forums, I was interested in the software that was used to power the forums. I found a link that led me to the site of Vanilla, which is done by Lussumo. Although I have no need for it yet, Vanilla looks to be a great tool for forums. I love software that is small, fast, easy to use, and that has nice style. This software has all of this and more. It is open source and also extensible, which means that it comes with many plugins and that other people are making plugins all the time. I do like the software that is used in the Wordpress support forums, but I think that it looks a little too “bloggy”. What I mean is the forums have a skinny width like most blogs, unlike most forums that have a length that stretches across the whole page. Another great feature is that the CSS is customizable, so you can change the look of the site to how you want.
In the future, if I need or want to set up a forum, this will definitely be the software that I will be using.
You can check out the Logahead forums, or you can check out the Lussumo Community site to see how it looks!
Posted by geetarista April 12, 2006
Hooray! I’ve been watching for signs for a Google Calendar for the past few months. Finally, my dream came true. Maybe a little late if they were shooting for April 1, but I’m not going to start complaining. I think they were just waiting until it was just right.
I have been playing around with it for a little while now, and it’s everything I wanted. It has notification and sharing, it’s really fast, you can import from major formats, share and subscribe, quick create events, and, of course, search your calendars. I’m happy that now I have a one stop shop for everything that I need online: e-mail, calendar, contacts.
Sorry Kiko and 30boxes!
Now, I may be hopeful and getting ahead of myself, but hopefully they’ll get a task manager integrated as well…
Source: CNet News (check here for a cool video as well)
Posted by geetarista April 12, 2006
This morning I read a very good post called “Argentina on Two Steaks a Day“. The whole article was very truthful and accurate about the ritual of eating delicious foods in Argentina. I didn’t know a posting like this would make it to del.icio.us/popular, but I’m glad that it did. I served as a missionary in the Buenos Aires area and grew to love the food there. Although there were a few things that I didn’t like too well, almost all of the food was the best I’ve ever had. I wish more people could experience the wonderful taste of the food.
One of the sad things about sharing Argentine with others is that most people just don’t get it. It’s also hard to share with people because you just cannot imitate the food here. The cows are raised differently, so the meat, cheese, milk, butter, etc. are totally different. Hoping to find authentic food here in the states, I even went to a restaurant in Las Vegas run by an Argentine family. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t the same. Even when cooked by people who have made this food their entire lives, it didn’t come close to the real thing. I’ve heard of a couple places that have imported food from Argentina, but I have yet to find one close to where I live. Maybe someday I’ll open a fine restaurant with imported food as well as a couple Argentine chefs so that people can get a taste of what it’s like.
Posted by geetarista April 11, 2006
Relating to an older post, I found out from an e-mail at work today that these companies are now posing as the Department of Education. As bad as it was before, this is now out of hand. These people are going to extremes to make some money that they are now posing as other entities.
Check out these links for more information:
Department of Education Misuse
FTC Scholarship Scams Site
Hopefully these companies will soon be shut down. This is ridiculous that students are being sought after since many are looking for scholarships and grants to help with their schooling.
So far for me, I have filed a complaint with the FTC and nothing has really resulted yet. Hopefully more people will file complaints and work to put these companies down.
Posted by geetarista April 11, 2006
A while ago I found a little blogging software that looked interesting, but I never really looked into it. I came across it again a few days ago and decided to play around with it. I eventually liked it so much that I created a personal blog that I can use sort of as a journal for personal things. I used to use a plugin for wordpress called Category Visibility that would hide the posts under a certain category that I used for personal posts. However, that became a pain when using some other plugins, when upgrading, etc. So I decided to export all my posts and I started using Logahead. Although it doesn’t come with an amazing amount of features, it is very small, easy to use, and is perfect for a beginning blogger. All of the editing and other “admin” stuff is done on the front page, and that makes it really neat. Check it out and see if it works for you!
From the website:
A brand new blogging engine with a ‘keep it simple’ philosophy. Designed from the ground-up to be fully buzzword compliant (AJAX, RSS, Web 2.0 - it’s all there), logahead lets you effortlessly do what blogs were invented for:
Put your words on the web. Just blog.
Posted by geetarista April 10, 2006
Sorry to all for the lack of posting. There isn’t really any excuse for it, just a lot of things have been going on in my life. I promise to keep up with the posts as I have many ideas for the near future. I also plan on making a lot of changes in the layout and features of the site, so keep a lookout!
