Electronics, Tech, Software, Hardware… and anything else that ends up here.
Archive for the ‘Commentary’ Category.
What can possibly more be said about the Newton, that hasn’t been said already? I’m not really sure, but something drove me to own one… actually, I owned a MessagePad 2100, and 5 eMate 300s.
Continue reading ‘Gadget FlashBack: The Apple Newton MessagePad’ »
I’ve never been really into ebooks. The primary trouble has always been a matter of how to read them. Computers are inconvenient because they’re only in one place. Though I do spend a lot of time at my desk, I don’t approach the Internet the same way I do recreational reading. Even a laptop would present to me an awkward situation. It just doesn’t feel right. I’ve had a few handheld devices in my day. A Palm, a Visor, even a Newton MessagePad, and that doesn’t include the phones I’ve had. In all of those, I’ve never given significant effort to trying to read a book on them. I don’t know if it was accessibility to books, ease of use, whatever, but the option has never really intrigued me.
It’s been a few weeks since I setup the blog. I’ve had a goal to post often, and by often I mean about 3 times a week. I did not realize what that meant at the time I think. I imagined this blog to be something similar to a bit of a tech-cool-stuff blog. The kind of thing you read when you want a personal opinion from someone, or a cool idea you’d like to head up.
In a few words: I don’t like it… muchI need to be fair though. I need to offer at least arguments for why I don’t like Safari 4, and it’s important to note that in spite of the definition, a beta product can be changed. To clarify that, Beta means that it’s gone from internal testing to external testing. Internal testing is Alpha, External is Beta – usually controlled. A public beta, which has become the common-place these days, would be an external test open to everyone. I think the accepted meaning of “Beta” means to most people “Available, but not finalized.” It should mean essentially that they’re in bug squashing mode. On to the thoughts (I wanted to say review, but this isn’t a review.)
iPhone apps have been around as long as I’ve had an iPhone.I got my iPhone about 6 months in, on Christmas of 07, as many people did. Apple hadn’t yet allowed iPhone apps developed with the SKD (and at that point, had no intention of releasing such a thing) and so the Jail-breaking community took the lead and reverse-engineered the iPhone platform for their own purposes. Save for a few games, I didn’t do much with it then and I frankly don’t do much with legit apps now.
Since I learned there was such a thing as a content management system, I’ve tried more than once to move my website into one. The problem I’ve universally run into was that, fundementally, I really like the idea of home-rolling my own website. I like creating the structure of the system. I think my favorite part about it all is that I know every part of the site inside and out. I wrote it, I know the code forwards and backwards. To get that with a CMS, even a simple one, requires several hours at the very least of rather intense code reading. This is especially true as CMS’ tend to be very complex packages, split among hundreds of files.
Anyway, I was looking at trying to integrate wordpress into the rest of my website, and it started to look like Word Press would do a better job managing my website than I probably would. So I’m sitting here debating in my mind the positives and negatives of just using WP to do the heavy lifting for me.
I think I’ve decided that Word Press is the right tool, and this site may very well make the transformation over the next week to reflect that. I suspect that before long I’ll get into the code to make things work the way I want, but I’m still figuring out what way that is.
What’s your experience with your personal site? Custom built? CMS? Somewhere in between?
I’ve been working up to this for several weeks now. I decided recently that I wanted my website to be more than just a landing page for people interested in hiring me. I wanted to supply the world with information, help people out, be interesting, have a following, and all that stuff that most people like me figured out a few years ago.
I’ve tried on a few occasions to make my website a blog, or at least more interactive, but I found I was posting a little too personally in my other blog, and It never seemed to mesh just right. Back in August or so I revamped my website down to a few pages. Really, just a portfolio of my work, and some related documents. I did this at the time so I would have a strong landing point for potential employers. I was moving out of state (from Utah to Oregon) and I needed something to point people to. Something real.
Now I have plenty of work, and I’ve found myself with an itch to be more engaged in the technologies that link the internet community together. A lot of this I think is born out of the want to use the technologies rather than just build them. I’ve done a lot of work for various companies and people, but I don’t use them very often. I’m ready for the next step. So I’m going to start blogging regularly with the technologies that I’m working with and investigating. The projects I’m working on, and things I’m trying to do.