A few geek updates
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March 26th, 2006
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– Wordpress. I use Wordpress for this blog and it’s a great software. Easy to learn, a fantastic forum of people willing to help, and an amazing of amounts of helpful plug-ins to manage the site. I just upgraded to WP 2.0 and so far it works very well. Most of the upgrades are on the inside and the feature I appreciate the most is the ability to see the post in the admin section exactly the way it will look in the post. Complete with photos. WP 2.0 comes with its own WYSI editor which sucks. The best plug-in I have encountered so far is Mudbomb’s unbelievable WYSI editor. Complete with image uploads, resize, thumbnail, and formating. It’s like working with Microsoft Word and it makes blogging much easier. Go to his site and download it immediately if you want to improve your Wordpress experience a few hundred percent. If it works as well as I say, please consider donating a few bucks for his hard work.
– Two “new” websites. I have two new favorite websites which are full of constantly changing great articles. It’s Digg.com and Popurls.com. Digg has many interesting articles with a tech focus and it’s user driven. Users vote for the best articles which gets rid of the crap and leaves the good stuff. Popurls.com is a collection of articles from many different sites, like Slashdot and Tailrank. Only the top articles show up so you can cover many different sites just by going to Popurls.com. Highly recommended.
– New Camera. We use a Canon SD500 ultra compact 7 Megapixel camera and also a Canon 20D with a handful of professional “L” lenses for our photography. Those are not new but there is a new Powershot SD700 IS ultra compact camera coming our with a 4X optical zoom and Image Stabilizer system. We are very happy with both our cameras and the new SD700 IS should be a step up from our 12 month old SD500. Price should start around $500 and it’s available soon.
– New stroller. Our baby girl will arrive in august and during our latest trip to NYC we got a new Mountain Buggy stroller. This time a double. We’ve already got a Mountain Buggy Single that we’re keeping for a while but the new double is amazing. It’s only 3 inches wider than the single which means it’s extremely easy to handle and fits through all normal doorways. It’s also easy to fold, take relatively little room in the car, and is light. We have already tried it out in NYC and it passed the test drive with ease. Highly recommended if you have two small kids.
– New computer. I’ve already got a Dell desktop and a ultra portable Dell laptop but I want to try Mac and see if it’s worth switching. My Windows computers work excellent and I don’t ever have the annoying problems that most clueless users seem to have. I’m talking about spyware, viruses, spam, BSOD, and regular shutdowns without warning. I always use a router, virus protection from NOD32, and a Sygate Firewall. On top of that I keep up to date with all Windows updates. Despite downloading huge amounts of stuff from the net I have yet to get a virus:-)) I need something portable so I want a 12″ Powerbook. But the new updated Intel based 12″ laptops are not out yet so I’m still waiting. It will be great to try out the Mac and I have a feeling it will be perfect for me. I have already checked if Mac software is available to download as easily as Windows, and it is. God bless Bittorrent and DC++.
I hate to “date” myself, my friend, but I’ve been using Macs for about 20 years. Holy Cow! As I told you, I’m a total Mac geek. But I wouldn’t recommend getting the latest Intel Powerbook. They’ve had a few minor security issues in the system software. Wait until around July/August at the earliest.
Thanks for the recommendation of digg.com. I’ve been hooked ever since you recommended it.