I welcome efforts by companies such as Microsoft and Sun to embrace openness.  Sun gets it.  They've released Java under the GPL license.  That's a significant contribution to my software freedom, and I will always appreciate Sun for doing so.  As a result, I know I can involve myself in Java as deeply as I need, and never fear my software freedoms can be taken.

I was in the market for a laptop, and if I am anything, it's a frugal gadget geek.  I'm always buying gadgets, but I'm cheap about it.  Buy.com had a deal on refurbished HP DV9627CL laptops for $700.  While that's not cheap, it's a pretty loaded laptop, with a 17 inch widescreen, dual core 64bit processor, 2 GB memory, 200 GB HDD, and so on.  This thing isn't super portable, but it's well equipped for a developer like me. 

The Asus Eee is good for many needs, but sometimes it's nice to have access to a full desktop machine from the convenience of your Eee.  Luckily, like most Linux desktops, Eee packs thousands of hidden utilities, including some that let you connect remotely to other computers.

Accessing a Windows desktop

I've been trying various browsers over the past 6 weeks or so.  I've used Firefox for four years now, since it was named Phoenix, then later Firebird, then later Firefox.  I've enjoyed the run, but I was starting to desire a bit of a change.  Firefox doesn't look as good as the rest of my Gnome desktop, and trying to make

Over the past few weeks, I've been trying browser options beyond Firefox.  I've really enjoyed using the GTK-native browsers Epiphany and Galeon.  They are fast, both in loading and rendering pages.  But, the biggest issue I had is that 64 bit builds of these browsers can't use 32 bit plugins.  And Flash 9 is only available in its 32 bit version.  It's pretty hard to use the web these days without Flash, now that sites like Youtube have pushed Flash beyond advertisements and into the mainstream.

Update: I'm getting reports that this has been fixed in Java 1.6 (aka Java 6).  So, I tested this with the latest Java 1.6 32-bit in Ubuntu Edgy, and apps seem to be working fine under Beryl.  So, you may not need to go to all the trouble below.  The latest Java 1.6 for AMD64 on Ubuntu Edgy, however, still doesn't work for me under Beryl.

Currently, I have a simple copyright at the bottom of my website.  I want to replace that with something like a Creative Commons license. 

I recently ran into this video on Gizmodo.  It was a promo video for an early version of Windows called Windows 386.  The ad is so funny, it's almost hard to believe it's supposed to be serious. Perhaps the advertising is the reason I never heard of Windows 386.  I thought I'd cross post it here so I can always go back to my blog when I want a good laugh.

I'm trying out Flock as my default browser this week. For those that are new to Flock, it is a browser built from Firefox, but focused on adding features for social networking types of activities.  Such as built-in support for editing your blog, or adding photos to services like Flickr.

Overall, I really do like it. I haven't decided whether I'll use it as my primary browser long term. I'm going to give it more time.

I've tested XGL in the past, and thought it was really cool.  But it didn't include Xinerama (proper dual monitor) support, so I couldn't use it as my primary desktop.  I've since found a way to change that.