CheezyOranges

One of the perks of living in Orlando, is that you get to see this on a semi-regular basis:

The pictures of it didn’t come out well enough, but you could even see the SRB’s drop off about 2 minutes into the launch. AWESOME.

There is no such thing. At least, not one that is verbose enough to do what we need it to do. At work, we’re re-designing the Faculty Center homepage. Since I’ve got some long term projects in my lap I haven’t been delegated to it, but I’d like to help out. What we need is a system that allows us to use various types of pages without having people going directly into the html code. Too may people don’t or won’t know how to edit it and will end up messing stuff up. That’s what we’re trying to avoid.
Dreamweaver Templates is what we’re using now and its just gotten so tedious and complicated, especially with all the subsites going on inside our main site.
We’re probably going to have to write something from scratch, which is going to suck.

I’m having a hell of a time to get Rails working properly.
Rails requires a database if you plan on doing any really interactive sites, so to kill all the birds with one stone, I installed WAMP, which is a fully integrated distribution of Apache, PHP, MySQL, and some administration tools. Its convenient if you need a quick testing server up and running and don’t want to waste time setting up a bunch of infrastructure.

So, installing the server and ruby is easy - they’re both oneclick installs. Its getting them to work *together* that’s the issue.
Apache doesn’t automatically understand Ruby, and Ruby doesn’t automatically want to use Apache, so there’s a bunch of config files and settings that need to be changed. Having done that, and getting to the happy “Now you’re on Rails!” welcome page (which means server<->Ruby communications are up and running) I try to build an application.

Now, I’m met with all sorts of error messages and missing plug in warnings. And this is the 3rd time I’ve completely un-installed and re-installed the setup. Just short of re-installing windows too, just to be sure. CRAZY!

Is this stupid language worth it? It doesn’t help I can’t find any good tutorials or resources either.

http://secure.lenos.com/lenos/adobe/cs3conference/home.htm
Adobe is holding 2 conferences, one in New York and one in LA, about their new product, Creative Suite 3. It looks very informative and exciting. My employers won’t pay for me to go, but I may ask for the time off and finance it myself. Especially if Greg ends up going as well.
I know its a big hype up for you to purchase their software, but it looks like they will be talking about innovative uses and methods at the conference as well. Plus, its a chance to get to go to LA, which I’ve been wanting to do just to say “hey, I’ve been there.”

Freelanceswitch.com had this article recently. Great for freelancers/contractors/web-workers and students. Many of the online note and to-do list applications would be extremely beneficial to a student on a laptop who doesn’t want to have to wait for clunky programs to start up. A browser really is all you need to get around in the world now-adays.
101 Essential Freelancing Resources

About 6 months ago, I installed Ruby on Rails on one of our web servers at work. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the proper time or resources to get to know the development platform very well, and so the server fell by the wayside. I found out yesterday that it had been deleted from our virtual server repository. So it got me to thinking again on trying to learn how to use Ruby at work.
Only problem is that work won’t see it as an asset because they’ve been through the ‘application built in a language only one tech knows who then goes somewhere else and can’t maintain said application’ thing. We have an inventory system which is in need of updates and its written in C#. No one here knows anything about that language, so the system sits and breaks and we can do nothing to fix it but start from scratch.
I’d like to learn it if only for the joy of knowing another language (plus it may help me get a job someday) and it looks really cool. Especially when used in tandem with AJAX things. That looks like a lot of fun, and it looks like it could take some of my web designs from functional to really useful. Isn’t that what every web developer wants for their sites?

So, I installed Linux on my Dell Inspiron 9100.

Firstly, I have to say its one of the easiest installs I’ve ever sat through. I installed Ubuntu from their liveCD, which was really convenient because you can play with the OS while its installing. Before I took the plunge, I read up on problems I could expect with my computer.

First and foremost, this article has helped me greatly, as have the Ubuntu forums. Pretty much everything the guy in the article went through with his Inspiron, I am experiencing. Unfortunately for me, some of the assistance links in his article are outdated, so I’ll tell you what I’ve done so far. Because, so far, this computer has been a beast to get working.

That being said, I *want* to have linux working. This is one of the only operating systems I’ve really never dealt with in any way. My computer not working is just one way for me to further my knowledge of how this weird Linux thing works. I’ve had to delve into the terminal and do all sorts of commands that I don’t understand. Of course, in most of these instances, I just copy the code I’m given verbatim and it seems to work, but yeah; I’m learning slowly. (Note: the links below worked on my Dell Inspiron 9100 with an install of Ubuntu Edgy 6.10)

The OS installed with only one hitch - after installing, it was supposed to restart itself. The computer hung, so I restarted manually and the computer booted up fine. So, awesome, I thought. I have Linux! Yay! But no, the first problem quickly presented itself. Like the article I was guiding from, my wireless wasn’t working at all. Turns out, its a problem with the card and the drivers. After trying numerous methods to get it working, all of which I found were outdated, I stumbled upon the method here, and it worked! Apparently, the problem is so widespread that a tool has been specifically written to *make these cards work with Linux*. But every time I restarted my computer I had to re-initialize the drivers. This is apparently because of some weird bug on computers that have more than 1GB of memory. Crazy. That wouldn’t do.
I reinstalled the OS from scratch (much easier than windows!) and started fresh from the steps I knew worked, and viola, wireless and WPA.

The next hurdle is getting the sound card to work. I’ll write about that once I’ve experienced it

Step 1
Right click on your taskbar. Uncheck Lock Taskbar and check Toolbars > Desktop.


A copy of your desktop will appear, most likely smooshed over next to your system tray. Right now it gets cluttered, but soon it will be pretty!



Step 3
Hover over the edge of your taskbar until the sizing arrow appears. Then drag the taskbar up until it contains two layers of icons.



Step 4
Grab the handle on the desktop toolbar, and drag it up and over toward the Start button so that it layers on top of your task buttons.


Step 5
Right click on the word “Desktop” to open the options for this toolbar. Uncheck Show Text, Show Title and then make sure Show > Large Icons is selected.


And that’s it! It isn’t so perfect as a Mac toolbar, but its as close as Windows can come natively.