RickSpace

Okay, this is not where I list my favorite apps.. this is where I am looking for YOUR favorites.

I just did an install of Debian Sarge 2.6kernel with Gnome as the desktop.  I prefer KDE but I am an idiot, and for the moment, Gnome is what is there… I’ll install KDE later if I find I can’t get around with Gnome…or I’ll do Fluxbox.  I’m told Gnome is nice… we’ll see.

Anyway, I want a list of your favorite (doesn’t have to be 5) apps that don’t come with the standard distro… or maybe they are included but not installed by default, or maybe deeply buried that I may not know about.  I do development, office work, etc… I also toy with networking and such… just to give you an idea what I’m into.  Don’t say The GIMP or OpenOffice, obviously I know about those… I’m looking for the lesser-known diamonds in the rough.

This recipe is originally derived from Linda Evans’ Best Ever Vegan Lasagna. I don’t have a link for that, but I found it somewhere online.. or maybe Shaina did. Regardless, I modified it both for preference and necessity. We enjoyed this immensely, both upon first serving and as left-overs for about a week.
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I don’t know much about Habari… I use Wordpress… like most other blogging softwares, I’ll take a look at it eventually I’m sure… but I’m sick sick sick sick of people being original and different…. just like EVERYONE else.

Habari is the Swahili word for News. Ubuntu is a word from an African language and no one is REALLY certain of the meaning. Joomla is an English-ization of the Swahili word (Jumla) for ‘all together’. Why? Why? Seriously… do we REALLY need more products named in African? I get it… I do, really.

I mean, it was clever the first time, it was non-annoying the second time, but now it seems like when you create a new trendy “WE NEED THE WEB TO EMBRACE THIS!!!1″ product, you basically brainstorm a list of 500 words that COULD have something to do with it, then search African languages until you find a word/language combination that creates the coolest sounding word, then you do about five minutes of research into the meaning of it, and make a marketing campaign showing how conscious you are of the global community blah blah blah. No, you’re an apologetic self-hating software developer who thinks everyone will think of you as worldly if you name your product a word you’ve likely never used in conversation and didn’t know existed until afore-mentioned name search process.

::EDIT:: All of that aside, it sounds like they have some talented people working on Habari… the name is the only thing I expect I will be disappointed with ::EDIT::

We just got done watching Mr. and Mrs. Smith which we are the proud owners of on VHS (yay)… It’s a cute enough movie, they’re hit-people, trying to kill each other, yadda yadda yadda.  So, that’s not why I love my wife.  My wife has a cold right now, which plays in later.

After the movie is over, Shaina looks at me and this is our conversation:

Her: “I’m a hit-person.  I kill people for a living.” 
Me: “And this cold, is that just an act?”
Her: “No, I got this cold trekking through Iceland trying to kill an Eskimo.”
Me: “You do realize that Iceland is actually mostly green for most of the year, right?”
…
…
Her: “Well, he was easy to find.”

I love my wife.

I am not OVERLY shocked about this, but at the same time, I do find it interesting that SharpDevelop actually creates a smaller compiled binary than VS.NET does from the same code.

I decided to compile a Win32 app I had written a while back for my company in SharpDevelop just to see if:

1. SharpDevelop could import from a VS.NET .sln file correctly.
2. SharpDevelop would compile the (admittedly quite simple) code without problem.
3. SharpDevelop would create a similar sized binary with similar execution time.

For #1, it was seamless, painless and very easy.  Navigate to the project to import and boom, I’m done.  Once again, #2 was simply and quickly tested with incredibly pleasing results.  I clicked the run button and it popped up… no problems.  And finally, on #3 I was nicely surprised. 

• Compiled with VS.NET, .exe file size: 36k.
• Compiled with #Develop, .exe file size: 28k

That is a 23% reduction in executable file size.  Granted, this was a small application with no images or other large binary objects, but my guess is, similar results could be seen in larger applications. Can you imagine that 3mb executable file dropping to 2.333mb, etc?  It may not seem like a whopping huge difference with harddrives being as extensive as they are nowadays, but it harkens to cleaner bit code being created and I’m thrilled to see this result personally.

So, my freetime project that I’ve decided to take on is:

Setting up a start-to-finish ALL Linux ALL OpenSource .NET development station.  This will include several things.

1. A Case/UML tool for modeling mono-based .NET projects.
2. MonoDevelop - a customization of SharpDevelop for compiling bit code to run on Mono rather than the .NET framework… mind you Mono is a mimic of the .NET framework supported and primarily developed by Novell.
3. A Linux ’server’ (it will be a decent laptop) serving out webpages on Apache with mod_mono installed so it can serve up ASP.NET pages.
4. The only part I’ve not yet figured out is the database.  It may run against a SQL Server 2k instance on a windows machine of mine, or it may run against a locally-hosted MySQL installation.  I haven’t found an open source SQLSERVER.NET engine, so I’ll probably use MySQL and maybe give me a reason to check out sqlyog or whatever it is.

So, first step will actually be getting a laptop, installed with Linux, set for hosting of webpages with Apache, recompiled with mod_mono support and a mysql installation with whatever tools I choose for that.  This should be fun.

Suggestions on Linux distro?  I’ve considered Ubuntu because I’ve used and enjoyed Debian before and have messed a LITTLE with kubuntu.  Other than that, I’m not really sure what I’ll do.  USB/Wireless support are of some importance but I guess I could run wired most of the time if need be.

Thoughts?

Andrew Hill who is a never-ending source of topics for me has inquired as to why exactly I have a policy of not eating things that once had a heartbeat/were living but now are not. That’s my way of expressing vegetarianism as I understand and embrace it.
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Someone who commented on my last post stated that it would be interesting indeed to hear the story of my becoming a Christian from the background of a liberal.  Before we go ANY further, let me state 100% clearly that I in no way think being a liberal and being a Christian are mutually exclusive.  There are beliefs and practices that some liberals as well as some conservatives embrace that are against the Christian message, but Christianity is not about beliefs, practices or merely a message.

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What to post about now and going forward?

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So I’m going to be trying a couple different new tools out.  This is being posted from one of them.  I’m not overly-impressed YET, but I’m hoping to find this more full-featured than what I see so far.

I also started using del.icio.us a little more now… I’ve not been using it but when I opened up my old account I found a couple old articles that I really am glad I found again…. So, I’m going to start bookmarking into that more frequently, and hopefully from there, populating some stuff on RP.net.

Oh, and also I’ve been working on developing a different theme/different frontpage for RP.net, so we’ll see if/when that ever comes in… just decided that I really wanted to use one that I developed rather than one I borrowed from somewhere else.

Expect an explosion of posts/links probably today, and maybe in the next days but then for it to die off and me to once again completely forsake this blog sadly.