Technology

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Peace for Christmas? … Maybe?

December 11, 2009 in General, Mind, Technology by faltarego | No comments

Okay, so I'm really into Christmas this year. Like, crazily, goofily, wackily into it. I put the tree up before November was over (yes, it's artificial) and put lighted garlands around a couple of the doorways probably a week later. The ornaments have been finding their way onto the tree (and other parts of the abode) in dribs and drabs over the last couple of weeks.

I've even got a lot of my shopping done. This is uncharacteristic of me.

And oh, yeah. I, um, also decorated the blog. Like I said, goofy, wacky…

As the song says, "We need a little Christmas…"

2009 has been, not to put too fine a point on it, The International Year of Crap. Stress, disease, death, and bad news have appeared at every turn. Yes, I exaggerate. Yes, I do it on purpose because… hello… that's what it felt like.

So, Christmas is incredibly important to me this year. I'm going to make the most of the season and basically enjoy the hell out of it. Read the rest of this entry »

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Catching the Wave (Google Wave, that is…)

November 25, 2009 in Blogging, Internet, Software, Technology, Writing by faltarego | 2 comments

(Don't skim. Read the whole post. There's a surprise later.)

Just over a month ago, my friend Asheyna sent me an invite to the preview of Google Wave. Since then, I've been going to the site nearly every day, playing with features, catching up on some of the public waves I'm following, and generally just checking things out.

First off, Google Wave is cool.

No doubt about it. It's like a discussion groups forum with document editing and formatting features and bit of instant messaging.

But it's much more than that. Read the rest of this entry »

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My Decade’s Better Than Your Decade…

September 30, 2009 in Blogging, Internet, Movies, Music, TV, Technology by faltarego | 1 comment

Being current is not always all it's cracked up to be. It's hard work being current. You always have to stay on top of things, seek out the newest, latest, and greatest, and then grab hold of it and make it your own before someone else does.

Yes, I'm talking about blogging. And this particular blog, the one you're reading right now, this little chunk of the web claimed by yours truly, is anything but current. As a matter of fact, it's completely retro.

Well, no, that's not entirely true. I'm running the latest version of WordPress on a site hosted by HostPapa, who are running the lastest and greatest versions of Apache, PHP, and MySQL. But as for the rest of it, well, retro all the way, baby.

The images on my pages are all retro technology. I'm running Windows XP Home edition on my very old HP Pavilion 522c. And I'm not exactly fresh and young myself (though I can be quite immature sometimes). And I really like talking and writing about stuff that happened, well, a loooong time ago. Read the rest of this entry »

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An Open Letter to Google

September 11, 2009 in Internet, Technology by faltarego | No comments

Dear Google:

I have to confess to you, I'm in a near-constant state of amazement at the stuff you bring out. It seems that every time I turn around, you have a new tool available to make my online experience more fun, more interesting, and more productive. That fact that most of these tools are free to either download or just use is cause for more amazement still.

Your search engine was the beginning of it all, but it was just the tip of the iceberg. You soon brought out the Google Toolbar, which allowed searching without visiting the Google homepage. Google Maps came soon after, with Google Talk, Google Reader, Google Analytics, Picasa, and Google Earth not far behind.

The big one was GMail. This was the service that made me fall in love with you all over again. A free email service with gigabytes of storage was something no one had ever heard of before, and it was quickly adopted by millions. I've been using GMail since early in the beta period, when one needed an invitation from an existing user in order to get an account. I've never looked back. GMail's features and functionality are superb, and I will likely never need another email service. Read the rest of this entry »

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WordPress: My Hero

September 4, 2009 in Blogging, Internet, Software, Technology, Writing by faltarego | 1 comment

Free software is a wonderful thing, and I've written about it not only on this blog—with my posts about WriteMonkey, Celtx, and yWriter—but on Asheyna's blog as well, with my guest post about OpenSource. I still marvel at the dedication of the individuals and groups who develop and maintain these tools; they do it because they love it, and they're often able to continue working on their projects because of donations from users.

Today, I'm going to talk about the mother of all free packages for writers: WordPress.

In the miniscule-to-nonexistent likelihood that you are a reader of this blog and somehow don't know what WordPress is, let me tell you. WordPress is a large and elaborate set of PHP scripts that allows a person to very quickly and easily set up a blog website.

If you have your domain name and web hosting service set up, all you need to do is download WordPress to your computer, unpack it, and then upload the uncompressed files to the root directory of your website. After a quick run of an installation script, you can go straight to logging in, tweaking your settings, and writing a blog post. Read the rest of this entry »

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Thoughtful Thursday? What a Hope

September 3, 2009 in Blogging, Technology, Writing by faltarego | 1 comment

Okay. This is my third attempt to start this blog post, and it's now 10:50 p.m. Once again, I had great plans to write the post earlier in the day, but, once again, those plans were thwarted by minions of the Evil Empire, who descended upon my stronghold in significant numbers and knocked over my tea.

Yeah. That's the ticket. And the dog ate my homework.

In actuality, my stronghold's not that strong, and even if there had been a large number of Apple employees here today, I would never have let them knock over my tea.

No, I have but one place to lay the blame for my late-night blogging, and that is the real villain of this piece:

Procrastination. Read the rest of this entry »

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United Breaks Guitars: It’s the Real Deal

August 25, 2009 in Blogging, Music, Technology by faltarego | 1 comment

I stated early on in this blog that I don't intend for it to be personal, meaning I'm not going to talk about myself here. I'll be casting forth opinions on things, of course, and readers might glean a thing or two about me from that, and that's fine. But it's not my purpose here to go on about myself and weep and wail about my troubles.

I've got my personal blog for that.

I'm also going to avoid writing about religion and politics, because they tend to be highly emotionally charged and subject to vociferous rants from all quarters.

That still leaves a lot of territory for me to cover. I've been roaming from music to movies to software to writing to art to personal development and back again. And it's been a lot of fun.

But what about business?

Hm. Business.

I certainly have my opinions about it. And it, too, like politics and religion, can be a contentious and emotionally charged area. So I'm a little on the fence about it.

I'm not a business expert. I'm not a money expert. Money and I don't even get along all that well. But I do have my opinions. And I'll step outside this blog's box for just a moment to state one:

There is entirely too much business on the internet.

There. I've said it. Read the rest of this entry »

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