12.31.08 - 12:13am
If there is one thing that we must remember in these somewhat dire times it is this: we built this city on rock ‘n roll. Notice the apostrophe; the word “and” does not have enough attitude. It’s like Guns ‘N Roses. The ‘n just sets it off.
12.30.08 - 01:56pm
I’ve been way too busy lately. School has been keeping me busy, and I am starting a brand new job this week. The holidays were absolutely great as well. You should start to see things pick up around here over the next week.
11.29.08 - 12:12am
I just wanted to let you guys and girls know I’m nearing the end of a hiatus on the blog…..starting back at college and moving into a new house is busy work! Expect to see new stuff in a week or two.
10.11.08 - 10:57am
ATI, god I hate you people with a passion. ATI is notoriously bad at not only sucking wind when it comes out to helping the Linux community, but probably making our lives harder. The desktop I have Ubuntu running on has a geriatric X300 graphics card, so you’d figure they would have the drivers nailed down.
So to make a long story short, just about any ATI card has horrific drivers for Linux. As I only run Windows in a virtualized environment 99% of the time, the compatibility issues are of great importance to me now. One of the cool things you can do with the proper drivers is run Compiz Fusion. The best way to describe this is that it is like Aero on Windows Vista, or just the general look of Apple’s OS X. The bad thing about Compiz Fusion is it takes a much beefier video card to run it well. Compiz also has problems rendering over certain resolutions. I have two 1280×1024 monitors. Compiz Fusion will not run in dual head mode in this configuration. Finally, even if the stars are aligned, Compiz Fusion is still tricky to run correctly a lot of the time, and it has come a long way in that regard.
Last night after coding my butt off, I decided to take a look around at some new programs to install and noticed someone making a reference to composited Metacity. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t even the slightest but aware of it. Here is how you enable it:
That’s it! None of the goofy looking Compiz Fusion themes (you can use your normal Metacity themes) and none of the useless eye candy garbage from Compiz Fusion. As you can see, much easier to set up.
10.04.08 - 12:01pm
Just letting you guys know it’s been super busy here in my world; things are going great for me right now, just super busy. Within the next week, expect things to ramp back up here. Thanks for reading!
09.26.08 - 09:31am
Let it be said that I sacrifice to the Metal Gods. Pantera, Lamb of God, Avenged Sevenfold…..that’s my steady diet. Most music these days really suck pretty bad. So it’s always a present surprise when I actually hear something really good, especially outside the Metal Realm.
I’m sure the rest of the planet is already into them, but that’s just fine with me. Everyone and their brother is talking about TV on the Radio, and I can see why.
09.25.08 - 02:01pm
Just wanted to let you guys know that over the next week or so I will quickly be changing the direction of this blog. There are so many tech blogs out there, I’d rather not be an also-ran. If there is anything technical I must comment on, you will still find it here it just won’t be the focus.
Programming and design is where I spend most of my time, so I really want a place to blow off some steam and hopefully make you guys laugh. To anyone upset with this, I present this to you:
09.22.08 - 08:00am
There are plenty of places to look on the Web to find amazing resources on how to write amazing posts to draw people to your blog and keep them coming back. However, here are some tips and some observations about why your blog posts might stink. This the first post in this series.
Balance: It's hard, but do it.
I spend a lot of time on the web, so I come across a ton of different websites of differing content quality and a wide swath of design standards. A lot of people don’t have a balance. There are a lot of pretty sites that have useless or no content. On the flip side of that coin, some sites have terrific content but the site does not have an organized navigation system. You can’t find what you need if the menus stink.
So you only have a set amount of time to work on your blogging? Make sure you spend some time in all the different areas it takes to run a successful blog. Make sure you have a good looking design and appropriate for your topic, but don’t try and push the envelope in the graphics design department if you are running a blog about sewing. If you are a graphic designer, however, people want to see really well done design. In that situation, don’t be afraid to take some chances.
Don’t rush thru writing your posts, but don’t let them sit around too long either. Sometime there is stuff that is extremely timely……those are the posts you should just get it up there. There are also times when you really need to sit down and really think about where a post is going. It really depends on the subject.
Let’s face it, people love lists. I would presume the reason that this is so popular is that the brain gravitates to them as important, being that they really are bullets points. If you do a quick zip around on Twitter or a blog search, every single day you will see a ton of blogs with top “insert random number here” lists. Some sites almost singlehandedly rely on this technique. I myself don’t really use them as I have a hard time distilling a point down to that level.
One of the best ways to get noticed is to tick people off. The average person has no problem pointing out the pitfalls of you being you, so you might as well keep them engaged in your writing. If you are an opinionated person, let it show!
If you have a boring, badly written blog, don’t use Adsense or any advertising for that matter. It makes your ugly site even uglier. I mean it.
Blogging is one of those things that will show how much you care for the subject you are writing about. Don’t blog because everyone else is, because you think you can make money from it; blog because you can make a fantastic blog better than everyone else. If you don’t have the guts to do it, don’t bother.
Hopefully you found some value in my post, discuss in the comments all the ways that help you write a good post.
09.19.08 - 08:40am
It’s funny to think of all these things we do everyday as being younger than I am!
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