None of these links compels the recipient to click on them. My busy friend will probably think, "Oh, another link from Eric... I'll look at that in a few minutes." Then he continues and probably forgets about the link.
So when we're writing slugs, we should definitely think of them as important and eye grabbing as a headline. Every little bit helps to get those clicks.
Now, Rocky Mountain News isn't immune to this, The URL I used above was fabricated. The actual URL is:
I've almost made it 4 days without a cigarette. I'm pretty much off the nicotine gum, though I'm still carrying around a few pieces of gum in case of emergency.
I am currently reading "Flatland" by E. A. Abbott, it's an interesting book.
I haven't started exercising or the weekly meditation yet because my body is still recovering from the shock of not smoking anymore. I anticipate starting that next week. I plan on jogging Tuesday and Thursday and meditating on Wednesday. We'll see how it goes, I'm not very eager to jog in the cold air.
My neighbors across the street don't have Internet access so I volunteered my WPA password to them so that they can use my Internet. Today I decided to install a custom WRT54G firmware called CoovaAP to turn my router into an open hotspot like you would see in hotels for my other neighbors to use.
It was very easy to install and configure. It uses CoovaChilli to create a captive portal to allow my neighbors create a user and log in. It also separates my hardwired network from the wireless hotspot.
I also installed ipp2p to block p2p traffic to keep the bandwidth usage down. Besides everyone uses p2p for piracy anyway (Don't try to deny it). Bittorrent is a great technology used for evil. Don't get me started on Limewire... Here's a howto on installing ipp2p on Coova
This one is two phased. First I'm quitting smoking, I've already started on the gum. That's just a means to make the second one easier. The second one is to exercise more often. I think I'm going to start by running once a week.
Meditate at home once a week. I already attend service at the local Buddhist center on Sundays which include a short meditation. There just something about meditating in the privacy of your home that's makes it more fulfilling and intimate.
Thanks to djangoprojects.com's blog application I was able to port my wordpress content to django and create some templates in just two days. How do you like the new look?
The next day I found django-diario which is a simple blog application that seems to be actively developed. I plan on following diario's tickets and sending some patches. In fact I already sent one in.
I've been meaning to post this script for a while. It's a little bash script that I wrote to switch xmms playlists using Merlin Mann's 10+2*5 procrastination hack. It's could well be the greatest bit of code I've ever written.
I've been using it for weeks now, it works for me. It may work for you or it may not. It's real simple, you can probably figure out how to fix it if it doesn't work for you. Post a comment if it's broken on your system.
My two playlists, one EBM stream (for work), one Jazz stream (for break): tenplustwo_pls.tar.gz
A quick tip, to change the playlist I usually just save over the ten.pls or the two.pls and when the phase changes it'll load the new playlist.
What's great about using playlists instead of urls directly to the stream is I can plug in my GMINI 402 and make two playlists from the mp3s and listen to my own stuff.
So I was installing Ubuntu onto my wife's puny laptop (400 mhz, 512 ram) and I thought I'd try something different and install Kubuntu because she complained that she didn't like Linux because it doesn't look like XP.
I forgot how under powered her laptop was, Ubuntu ran fine on it before she accidentally reformatted the drive by putting some forgotten Fedora Core CD in it and kept clicking "OK", trying to make it go away, but Kubuntu ran dog slow. It was bad, windows were tearing, drives were swapping, it was a computing nightmare. I started googling, "How to Replace Kubuntu with Ubuntu", and somehow I came across Xubuntu, which I never gave the light of day because regular Ubuntu ran fine, and I was unimpressed whenever I used XFCE.
On, this puny 400 mhz laptop, it runs pretty good, much better than Gnome ran. So, when I got in to work today I decided to make the switch to Xubuntu on my PC.
So I fired up VMWare (I run my linux install in VMWare because I can't touch the internals of this PC) Ran, "sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop", reboot and wala, XFCE in all it's glory!
In VMWare, Ubuntu(Gnome) didn't run super fast. It was useable, but switching windows was a little laggy. XFCE, works beautifully (not perfect, but a lot better).
I didn't really lose functionality, because a desktop environment is a desktop environment, they all do pretty much the same thing. I'm not sure I'm all that crazy with Thunar and the loss of gnome-vfs, but I can make due.
So all and all I think switching to Xubuntu (Zoo-bun-tu?) is a great Idea. Why would I not want run a resource intensive desktop environment when I can have the same experience with a lighter desktop. Duh. Seems like a no brainer...
