Bobnation.org

I implore anyone who is reading this to stop right here, right now, and go to their nearest theatre and watch Dark Knight. It is not only the best Batman movie ever, it is, right now, probably the best movie I have seen in well over a decade. I’m not going to declare it the best ever because I’m still on the “Batman High” of just having watched it, but right now it ranks up there.

I left speechless and I really don’t know what to say about it. Christopher Nolan is very quietly moving himself into the upper echelon of movie directors. Dark Knight is not so much a super hero movie than a compelling movie which happens to use the super hero Batman to portray its message.

Simply incredible.

It is day six of “Linux Only” Bob, and things are still going quite well. As I sit here working on two different Windows XP machines, I am kind of thankful that I am running Linux at the moment. However, I must say that I am not 100% satisfied with my Ubuntu setup yet, so I will be changing things in the near future.

So far things have really gone quite smoothly, at least more smoothly than I originally thought they would go. Linux has fulfilled my needs quite well so far, and it has all been for nothing more than my time. There is so much software out there to try out that I will be able to keep myself busy for a long time, and much of it is open source, so it will not cost me a dime.

My next project is going to be getting a working recording studio (for Skype calls) going. I have a couple avenues to try out, and I think I’ll find something that will work more than adequately. I kind of like having a desktop computer to work with right now as it provides me the freedom of space and comfort. The screen is large enough that I don’t need to squint my eyes and the keyboard and mouse are easy to use. I’ll take this moment to plug Logitech and their line of RF wireless mice. Absolutely fantastic mice all around.

Maybe the hardest thing for me to use right now is the media players available on Ubuntu. I tried RhythmBox and found it lacking, and I did not want to try Amarok because it requires KDE libs. So, I went out and found myself Banshee v1.0 and have been pretty pleased so far. iTunes it is not, but it is a worthy replacement at the moment. All of my music (for the most part) has been converted, and the things that I need later I will move to the Windows machine and burn a disk for myself.

I still need to work out DVD playback on the machine, and Flash seems very flaky on the internet. This is the reason I tend to carry a hatred for all things Flash on the web, along with the fact that I need to have Flash just to play a video on my computer. Oh well, a small price to pay for being able to watch Tekzilla!

Other than that, I have been very happy so far. I’ll keep on updating this blog with things I find. Right now I find myself missing a laptop and so I have taken steps to procure one for myself which will fit my needs on the road. It should be interesting, but is is also CHEAP!

Have a good night everyone.

That’s correct. The winds have indeed changed, and as to whether it is for better or worse is up in the air and will be determined at a later date. Nonetheless, the change is complete (for the most part), and now it is time to live with the consequences of that change.

That’s right, I’m talking about nothing less than the change from my Mac to the use of Linux exclusively for my work. Those who have followed this blog for a while (hard to believe that it is almost three years already) know that I toyed around with this idea a while ago, but I went ahead and got another Mac. Well, for the time being, things are going to be a little different.

You see, owning a Mac causes you to lose money pretty fast. No, it is not because the hardware might be more expensive, but something far more sneaky: the developer community. The Mac developer community entices you to go ahead and part with your hard earned cash. There are too many people creating awesome, beautiful, useful little apps that one can easily have a hard drive full of them and not even know it. That is the situation I found myself in, and no matter how small the price for each, it adds up quick.

So, what is the best way to take care of that? You guessed it, get rid of the temptation! That part is done, and now I go forward with my desktop here and hope that I can learn to use and love Linux-based operating systems. Currently, Ubuntu 8.04 is running and has been working pretty smoothly for me. One problem I have come up against with the 64bit version is that it will suddenly “crash” when visiting some websites with Flash. I’m thinking that maybe the 32bit version would not have that problem, so I might try that later on.

Right now I am without a laptop for the first time in, well, quite some time. Anyone who has any good ideas for laptops which can load Ubuntu or other Linux distros easily … please comment! Thanks!

I need to apologize. I will be bringing the next part in my Rails Deployment Tutorial soon, hopefully the beginning of this week.

Sorry for the time delay, just gotten caught up in too many things at once.

UPDATE: Just to let everyone know, this is on hold until I figure out my working conditions. Thanks!

Markdown on Rails
With the little web “app” I’m building at the moment, I needed an easy way to automatically add breaks between paragraphs without forcing my users to hand-code the HTML. Well, an easy way to do it is to use the BlueCloth Gem (simple sudo gem install BlueCloth) and you can add Markdown encoding to any text area simply by tossing something like this:

< %= markdown(@user.profile) %>

Awesome.

ASUS Eee PC?
I’d really like to get a laptop for Laura to use, but I don’t have $1,000 to spend on getting one. Quite simply, I’ve been looking at the Eee PC for a while, and one of the newest entries, the Eee PC 901, looks like almost the EXACT one I would be looking for.

Oddly enough, I’m starting to think that maybe an Eee PC would be pretty cool to use for myself as a simple, small laptop for editing and web surfing. So, who knows. Any opinions?

Don’t mix markup languages!
I enjoy building websites, but for some reason I do NOT like working on even my older sites. They are usually a complete and total mess, a concoction of different markup styles and languages. A mess, and it usually takes longer for me to figure out what I was doing than it does to make the simple edits.

Work on someone else’s site, and the frustration is just that much greater. It still gets done, but it just takes a bit longer.