The Eclectic

Now that I’ve finished my tour with Wildfire, and finished my gradual motion towards living at home, I’m jumping back into the digital realm with both feet. Since the university doesn’t offer my next academic term again until January, I am trying to find work in the field for a few months while I take a distance education course on religious perspectives on evil.

On the job front, I’m having more success hearing back from web development contracted work than with full-time development work at local firms, which is fine with me so long as the pay gets me ready for next term’s tuition. On the balance of getting to learn new things and finding work in something I really know and enjoy, these opportunities are more latter-leaning, but I think that’s good; trying to take a course while I work will be a first for me, and I’m sure I’ll need to review a lot of old course work to feel prepared to re-enter the engineering realm.

The distance ed course looks interesting, but we haven’t “really” started yet, so I don’t know how things are going to go. I hope I don’t feel behind without the benefit of lectures. A couple of field trips (one mandatory) to related lectures on campus and in the community look like they’re worth the drive as well. Of course, I’m supposed to buy three books and a course pack, and have a reading from the course pack done by Thursday, but I doubt shipping will be quite that fast, considering I still need to send an on-campus buddy to pick those up for me and send them out (since at least one of them is not at the campus bookstore). Oh well, I’m sure I can catch up while I finish securing employment. I’m actually interested to see how good the online resources are for interaction with the instructor and general discussion through the distance ed system. We shall see…

I haven’t even mentioned the most plugged-in and exciting part of my return to the computer world yet. I’m typing this post from my brand new HP desktop that I finally purchased after my laptop’s service plan expired right before it ran into hard-drive complications. The funny story here was me trying to install the RAM and video card upgrades that I applied to the package. The machine is so tight inside that I practically looked like I’d taken to self-mutilation as a hobby by the time I had given up. The graphics card was so long that it crowded a surprising number of wires facing the motherboard, and none of the configurations of RAM that I patiently installed and reinstalled while slicing my hands on the inconveniently-placed drive bays ever worked. Eventually I made sure it booted once I put it back to its original configuration and took it back to the shop for a paid install. Taking off the front end to get the drive bays out of the way was the solution to my crowding, but I didn’t want to unscrew the wrong thing and then unplug have of the front-end devices by mistake.

This new machine can do anything I tell it without breaking a sweat so far, but of course, I’ve barely had it for a matter of days. The system is designed to be a TV Media Centre, though I doubt I’ll use it for that much while I’m living in London. I bought it because it’s got the specs to endure a few years. I tend to buy big less often when it comes to laptops and desktops, so I enjoy the boost I get at the beginning. For those who are interested, it’s running a quad-core Intel processor with two hard drives each circa 300GB and 4GB of RAM. Vista only registers 3.5 gigs of memory and until I upgrade to 64-bit Ultimate, it won’t even use more than three of them. Still, the setup is truly fast and vast. Of course, in this industry, that doesn’t normally last long, but I’m sure it’ll be a functional system for long enough to make it worth my while.

Technorati Tags: university, distance education, web development, employment, online resources, HP desktop

So, being on tour, I have been almost completely disconnected from the computer realm. However, of the tools that I do use to stay in touch during my life as a nomad, Facebook has been the latest to evolve for the better.

When my friends started raving about Facebook last year, like with blogging, I was resistant at first. Once I found out how fun Facebook can be (and how unquestionably superior it is to Myspace), I began to use it more and more. So, when Facebook began to release new applications, and then an open API for community developers, instead of doddling with skepticism, this time I jumped in with both feet. I’m sure my support for FOSS and community-driven initiatives had an influence on this too. While the Facebook apps I use allow the tool to outgrow its name–the apps have little to do with networking through photos–I love the new abilities I have to publish information about myself, my tastes, and my activities in a uniform layout that doesn’t suffer from any of the obvious flaws of Myspace’s equivalent services.

Then, Facebook wowed me again. I noticed a while ago that Mark Zuckerberg’s name had disappeared from the bottom of Facebook pages. The moment I saw this, I smelled a buyout. Thus, I was overjoyed to find that, not only was Facebook still in the hands of its founders, but it has turned down huge sums of money from major corporations, and has received funding from at least one VC organization that knows a good thing when it sees it.

Some people may find new applications “annoying” while developers learn to fine-tune users ability to ignore certain Facebook “requests”, and others may feel that new Facebook apps don’t fit within the vision of “a facebook”, but personally, I think its makers have seen the potential of an already well-connected community infrastructure to become even more useful.

Many kudos to Zuckerberg and his team.

Technorati Tags: Facebook, Myspace, applications, API, community-driven, Mark Zuckerberg, buyout

While sipping my Firefox morning coffee, I came across quite a few articles discussing the future of digital markets. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of capitalism, though I accept it for what it is and what it does. Meanwhile, the issues of net neutrality and free markets are a giant capitalist mess, but I think these topics are both interesting and important. My quarrels with capitalist philosophy lie, for the most part, in the harm to individuals that stems from facilitating greed and corporations. While the issues of net neutrality and VRM are problems that need to be attacked from a capitalist perspective, both ideas strive to better serve the needs of people as individuals. That’s what makes these ideas so exciting. (more…)

Technorati Tags: free markets, net neutrality, VRM

Apparently IBM sold its PC division to Lenovo, and they are planning to sell ThinkPads with Linux preinstalled. SuSE Linux, to be precise. According to Linux Journal, Lenovo is a China-based company, so it sounds like selling a division was like a sort of fire-and-forget mass outsourcing committed by IBM. Thanks IBM, for moving thousands of jobs to a Communist East Asian company. That’s exactly what the global economy needs right now.

Politics aside, this laptop looks promising. LJ reports that Novell and Lenovo will be working together on the project. Hopefully designing the hardware and software to work together will result in high performance for the power users this solution is geared toward: with GBs of RAM and a price sticker over 3-grand, this is most definately a “portable workstation” for enterprise use, which, in my opinion is too bad. When Linux-based software companies sit down with hardware distributors to make ends meet, I’m always hoping that the product will appeal to the less-computer-savvy market where Linux is not in common use. Unfortunately, Lenovo and Novell aren’t planning on replacing the Dells and the Gateways any time soon.

Technorati Tags: IBM, Lenovo, Novell, portable workstation