Archive for July, 2008

Treated Without Ceremony

Published at July 14, 2008 in Art. 0 Comments

I really like how the interweb allows artists to be able to put themselves out in front of an audience and share their work; from pencil drawings to programming code and digital masterpieces. My friend Cy illustrates this point very nicely by posting a video on YouTube.

You can learn more about his art at lookingid.com

Enjoy!


Ubuntu community

Published at July 9, 2008 in Communication and Open Source. 0 Comments

Online communities are awesome!  I’ve been pretty much glued to my computer monitor for the past 2 days trying to make my new Nvidia video card (GeForce 9600GT) play with Linux. To be fair, the hardware does come with a CD which contains software for the Windows platform; but that doesn’t help me much.

Enter the Ubuntu community, http://ubuntuforums.org. These online forums have a wealth of valuable information on every subject imaginable when it comes to managing your Linux system. I was able to solve my missing driver issue with the help of this thread. I’m continually amazed at the level of help and support that you can get from online communities.  who knows… I may even try to help somebody else in return :-)


phoronix online forums

Published at July 7, 2008 in Linux. 0 Comments

Yesterday I discovered phoronix.com, an online community dedicated to all technical things, and especially Linux.

I found the online forums extremely helpful.

www.phoronix.com/forums


2008 ultimate pc

Published at July 5, 2008 in Technology. 0 Comments

quadcoreI’ve been researching new computer parts for a few months now and I’m finally at the point where its all coming together. (I’m writing this post from the new machine).

When I started the project, I wanted to build a machine that would last at least a couple of years. I’m not quite done, but I’ll just say that it’s working fine on Windows and will need some tweaks in order to run Linux.

here is the hardware list:

  • Motherboard: ASUS, M3N-HD/HDMI - allows you to browse the web without having to load the OS
  • CPU: AMD Phenom™ X4 Quad-Core -Black Edition allows you to overclock
  • Video Card: Nvidia 9600GT/HTDI/512M - allows you to plugin 2 LCD monitors
  • Power Supply: ANTEC Trio - 550 Watt PSU - SLI ready can handle multiple graphics cards and the quad core CPU
  • Memory:  4GB Kingston DDR2 1066 - with room to upgrade to 8GB
  • Hard Drive: 200GB IDE
  • Pioneer DVD/RW
  • All this hardware is kept cool in a metal case with 4 fans & blue LED lights
  • 2 x 22 inch widescreen monitors
  • 1 TB NAS (Network Attached Storage)

yet another technical speech

Published at July 1, 2008 in Communication and Open Source. 0 Comments

Last night I had the opportunity to deliver yet another technical speech to my Toastmasters club; the goal of this speech was to “persuade with power”.
Like all my speeches, I delayed my efforts until the very end because I couldn’t think of anything to persuade the crowd with.  Just hours before my deadline, I decided that I would persuade them to consider open source software.
My speech was a hit with a few members of the audience, and lasted almost 10 minutes, a new record for me!
Although I didn’t use any visuals during the speech, one of the suggestions I received was to include a nice visual representation of the topic; so I put together a quick timeline to point out a few milestone in open source. This might come in handy for another speech.

open source timeline