Russell Beattie’s Weblog...because I can't shut up.My first gedit plugin- June 30, 2008 I was looking at the various gedit plugins yesterday, and decided I wanted to write my own. I actually really like gedit as a text editor - it's lightweight and with the plugins provides nearly as much functionality as UltraEdit or Textmate. It's actually amusing that the default text editor in Gnome is as powerful as it is - coming from Windows, you're used to Notepad being a piece of junk and having to find other apps to do any real work. This can be a bit of an issue, as if I've turned on...http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/my-first-gedit-plugin Adult thoughts while watching WALL-E- June 28, 2008 The munchkin and I went to go see the matinee of WALL-E yesterday and it was pretty great! Definitely recommended for the whole family. If you haven't seen it, though, you probably don't want to read the rest of this post as I don't want to give any spoilers or take away from the innocent wonder of seeing the movie for the first time. ... We good Okay. The problem is that even though most of the Pixar movies have some sort of cognitive dissonance or generally creepy subtext if you think about..http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/adult-thoughts-while-watching-wall-e Ubuntu Rising- June 26, 2008 Every day I'm amazed at how good Ubuntu is, and how fast it's been improving. I've been a full time Linux user since January of last year, and in 18 months, I've just been amazed at how happy I am using it and how I get more happy as time goes on. I'm thinking about this again as I just moved computers from a desktop to a Sony Vaio laptop, and Ubuntu's latest works incredibly well on it. Advanced GUI, sound, WiFi, power management (including suspendresume) and more all work as you'd expect it..http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/ubuntu-rising Where are the electric cars- June 26, 2008 I know that GM killed their electric car in 2003, and just the thought of how insanely stupid and shortsighted they were makes me want to kill, but where are the rest of the electric cars I heard a report on the radio yesterday about the progress on the Volt and the plug-in Prius next year, and about how cool it is to ride in a Tesla, but it seems crazy that we can't go down to a dealer right now and take a look at more options than that. Just recently I read about a store here in the Valley...http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/where-are-the-electric-cars Do Mobile OS Platforms Matter- June 24, 2008 The big news today is that Nokia is spending nearly half a billion dollars for the rest of Symbian and will turn it into a non-profit organization and open OS. It's got everyone buzzing about how this is an attempt on Nokia's part to "take on" Android (because Vendor Wars always makes good copy), but I think that's a far too simplistic explanation. Backing up for a second, let's examine what the Symbian OS is, and who it targets. This really depends on who you are. Are you a manufacturer who...http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/do-mobile-os-platforms-matter mOlympics Redux- June 23, 2008 I just read this post on Read Write Web about the various options for keeping up with Olympics while mobile. It reminded me of my attempts four years ago to create a mobile Olympics news aggregator. I registered mOlympics.com and then slapped together a quick and easy news reader linking out to stories for the olympics. It's amazing how different things are now... if I had kept that domain (I got rid of it in a purge a long while ago), it'd be so easy to recreate it and actually make money this.http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/molympics-redux There should be an HP flagship store- June 23, 2008 I don't actually go computer shopping that often, but as I've been using some seriously old hardware for a while now I finally decided to bite the bullet and upgrade to a better machine. It says a lot about my current hardware that "upgrading" means buying a laptop on sale. It's true you don't actually need a lot of horsepower to do web development with a LAMP stack, but I was getting sick of seeing my Firefox peg my CPU because of YouTube Flash videos or Javascript GUI demos. So it was time...http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/there-should-be-an-hp-flagship-store Realistic Minimalism- June 22, 2008 Mark has a post today about his blog redesign, which was inspired by a few other blogs that have recently embraced minimalism. If you hadn't noticed, I've had that sort of simplistic design for quite a few years now. I actually saw someone else's very clean design at one point, and liked it so much I did it to my own site, which is why I won't claim credit for it, but I do want to point out that it wasn't for a lack of thinking about it. The design of this blog is meant to highlight the posts...http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/realistic-minimalism Laptop hunting- June 22, 2008 I went down to MicroCenter today mostly to get out of the apartment because it was so hot, and it just so happens they're having a sale on laptops! I've been trying to find a good deal on a lappy for a few weeks now. I thought I found one at Office Depot, where they were selling a nice Toshiba Satellite for $499, but it turned out that 1) It was way too big and 2) the internal WiFi chipset isn't supported well by Ubuntu, so I returned it the next day (and no restocking fee!). The sweet spot...http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/laptop-hunting Believe in Yahoo!- June 20, 2008 I stand by my assertion that Yahoo!'s problems have been caused by a departure from the fundamentals that built the company, and that by returning to their roots as a pragmatic and utilitarian service, they'll once again be a force to reckon with. Yahoo! is best when it's a Fast Follower, innovating on the back end and letting other companies try to figure out the next best thing, and either buyingintegrating or duplicating those services once the market has been created. My best comparison to.http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/believe-in-yahoo |