Moving between Mac and Linux

Found interesting post about Moving From Mac to Ubuntu. Had to read all of the comments besides the writeup since there was quite bit of interesting conversation in between.

I have been using computers for most of my life and gone from MS-DOS to Windows 3.11 to Win95 to Win98 to Win2000 to Debian Linux while also using different Macs in the same time (not at home since I didn’t have enough money for Apple hardware).

Used Apple OS 8 and 9 before starting to find more of OS 10.3 or .4 installed at computers. Wouldn’t say I know too much about low-level details of different operating systems, but I have surely read quite bit of documentation and been using them for various tasks from plain old gaming to graphic design to server administration.

I like Apple’s user interfaces (mostly consistent usability requirements help to create better combination for users) but have experienced more problems than I would have wanted to. Yet, while I have seen wide array of “interesting” error code numbers in screens of Mac computers, I have mostly been liking the use of Macs. Sadly there aren’t that much of good/stable alternatives for Photoshop (+some other software) as it’s one of the main reasons I’m using OS X.

Having experienced good and bad sides of more than few operating systems I find myself going to the mix of both Mac OS X and Linux, running on different computers. Macs are good for graphic design and digital photography (RAW image processing, retouching, etc.) and UI is mostly reasonable for daily usage. Linux (recently mostly different flavors of Ubuntu) has it’s own kind of problems but package management feels more powerful than with OS X.

Anyway, both systems have their uses. I’m just not trying to do everything with one tool anymore. Use what works for you, even if it’s more than one tool. (Some developers of Microsoft Windows actually use Linux as their main development environment as it’s more suitable for large scale software development than the Windows environment itself.)

Change in the wind

I haven’t been exactly that active writing this blog but hoping to get more active at that. Anyways, though that it would be good to update visual theme of the blog to get more clear view of content. New visual theme of this blog is called White as Milk by Azeem Azeez (used to use DePo Masthead theme before that was done by Derek Powazek and Noel Jackson).

Posterous makes it easier

Yes, there really is way to do things better. I just hope that Posterous will make me to write and publish more content now that it's quite easy as writing email.

Life is worth much more than just money.

Yes, and now I feel nice after getting things done faster.  

Posted by email from Daniel’s posterous

Press This Bookmarklet « WordPress.com

Blogging is about more than sharing your ideas. It’s about sharing your discoveries: quotes, images, videos, announcements from awesome blogs like this one. And it’s about doing it quickly.

Collect and share bits of the web easier and faster than ever with Press This, the new WordPress bookmarklet.

Press This Bookmarklet « WordPress.com.

Myself

Tags: personal, photography, self, portrait, people

26 Important Comic Books You May Want to Read

Sure, it may seem silly, but, comic books mean something. Soldiers used dog-eared copies of Captain America to keep their spirits up in WWII. The Green Lantern and Green Arrow made kids actually think about issues like racism and heroin. And millions gasped when they heard the news that Superman died. Here are 26 important comic books

View Original Article

Tags: comics, art, storytelling, fiction

Best Photo Organizer?

Lifehacker writes asking what would be best tool for getting your photos in order. What it would be? I have been using different ways and software to do things depending on what kind of computer I find myself using. I have photos in portable hard drive so I can edit them at different computers.

I mostly use directory structure like this:
Photos –> 2007-01-28 –> name-of-event

As for software, I find Adobe Bridge quite nice. While it lacks some things compared to more advanced photo library managers, it’s still very good tool especially when using build-in Adobe Camera RAW Converter to tune photos to better.

Some people (including one contact who is doing advertising photography) recommend Aperture over Lightroom because of much better image quality but I haven’t had opportunity to test both with same RAW image files. Should try, if I get possibility to have some time with some Mac.

Picasa looks nice but I haven’t used it much because I find easier to have directory-based photo library instead of collection-based. Maybe that is just because I have really big amount of photos. For some people, XnView could be useful tool for organizing smaller collections of photos (it even has build-in RAW converter). Anyway, I would recommend to try different tools to find what is best for each task.

Little bit more about things to do with photos.

Information architecture

User acces permission : diagram, originally uploaded by activeside.

Nice looking example of Information architecture illustration design to explain the process of publishing, registration process, and access permissions.

XHTML 2 + HTML 5 = Better Combination?

Just read Mike Malone’s nicely written article about differences between of current XHTML2 and HTML5 standard development drafts. There are certainly some details that article about main differences don’t include but as an overview it’s good. As for the features in those specifications, I’m not sure which of them will get more support in the end. It feels for some odd reason like mix of two standards could be the best for most people (if it would be done in good way).

XHTML2 has probably simpler basic syntax and several new things in it make coding faster and cleaner. While I’m not sure about now larger parts like XForms could make things somewhat more difficult it seems that overall approach of things is to better way. One of the things I like most in XHTML2 is ability to create link from any element by adding href attribute to it. It also looks like making of navigation lists has been defined in much better way because it’s simpler and cleaner than what HTML5 offers for that issue.

HTML5 has many good ideas but for some reason it feels like they are not making it as good it could be. They have introduced many new elements to standard but good question is if those additions are enough in longer timeframe. XHTML2 has more modular way of thinking that allows to add more features in parts instead of having to define everything in one big specification. Also it seems to be bad thing that HTML5 still supports writing of markup in way based of old HTML standards, because it could allow people to do more mistakes in syntax if they get used to writing in bad way (or think they can do stuff in the same way as in HTML4).

As what goes to big additions in HTML5 to improve making of web-based applications I’m quite pleased that things are really going be better. New API’s help to make web more integrated to desktop software but developers of browsers need to make sure that security of users is taken care of because new ways of doing things present dangers for new types of malware. While API that exposes the browser history (allowing applications to add to it so they don’t break the back button) is good thing to add it has to be done in way that it don’t allow website to get all information of browser history. Also network API makes it possible that some web-based software could use it to make bad things. While it’s still quite good addition for many things, security side of things needs to be planned well (but that is more likely problem of browser developers than people planning standards).

But is one of those two standards going to rule the world or is there room for both? Mayby. Or could it be better if more fluent way of developing web-based applications (as in HTML5) would be integrated to somewhat more clean way of XHTML2? Whould that create one standard with best set of features that would still have simple basic syntax? Or do we need to make all more advanced features as extensions to language if keeping of basic set of features is what people need?

Anyways, my understanding of specifications is still quite limited so my current opinions about them could be wrong but just wanted to share what thoughts I had about them. If something I wrote didn’t make sense, it would be nice to hear what you think about subject.

Top 7 Things System Administrators Forget to Do

Tom Adelstein writes about mistakes that many system administrators do when they forget to do important things. Some would say other things, but here is his list:

1. Forgetting to Delete a Former User’s Account
2. Forgetting to Regularly Search for Rootkits
3. Forgetting to Use a Trouble Ticket Tracking System
4. Forgetting to Set Up Technical Documentation and Creating a Knowledge Base
5. Forgetting the Risks of Flash Memory Drives
6. Forgetting to Manage Partial Root Access
7. Forgetting Courtesy

Article has more details together with examples of mistakes. Read it and learn how things could be done better.