Connor’s Blog

Web Developer, Student, Blogger.

Archive for August, 2008

Some Stuff

Aug 21

Posted by Connor in Life

Wow, my blog post titles have been getting less and less humorous. Just have a look back in the archives from about a year ago; I had some pretty crazy titles. Anyway, I haven’t made a post in about a week, so I felt the need to do one.

First thing is first: cross country started Monday. It has been pretty decent so far, I mean, as decent as running several miles a day is. I’m actually doing better now than I was at the end of the season last year, which is pretty nice. Oh well, my legs don’t hurt, so that’s good.

Secondly, the blog was taken down for about an hour a while ago. I was making some changes to the theme (just some slight modifications to the footer), as well as upgrading to 2.6.1 (which I have been neglecting for a few weeks now). I was also doing some database modifications to get ready for the new blog/site that will be launching in a few months.

A while back I talked about creating a personal site here, which would include a web design portfolio, as well as the blog. I am still working on it, and I hope to get it done soon so I don’t have it on my schedule once school starts. Speaking of school, it starts in less than two weeks. Actually, I don’t mind it. It is just the fact that I still have about 10 hours of AP US History homework to do. I wonder how much Wikipedia knows about early history…

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Why Linux Is the Worst Consumer OS On the Planet

Aug 14

Posted by Connor in Articles

Jeez. Honestly, the past few days I have listened to so much Linux banter, it isn’t even funny. First people complain about the lack of web video NBC Olympic coverage on their Linux machines, and then this idiot posts an article about the top 5 Linux myths and how they are busted. Oh man, let’s have some fun :).

So, let’s take a look at the typical Linux user: No family, no girlfriend, has massive amounts of time to devote to running the operating system, and likes to hit up the Linux IRC discussions with reasons why the next build of Debian or Fedora will ‘pwn’ all of the other distributions. Basically, they look like this (note: I did not add the comment on the image, it was already there, so it’s an added bonus :P). Now, the average Linux user also likes to boast about how his or her OS is superior to everything else. Whenever they make a point about how Linux is better than Windows or OS X, they always say something to the effect of “The shit M$ puts out”, and 98% of the time, they feel the need to use a dollar sign ($) in the abbreviation of Microsoft, just because they have that frame of mind.

First I want to discuss the whole no web video Olympic coverage from NBC. You see, their video system runs on Microsoft Silverlight 2, which is basically Microsoft’s version of Flash. The first time I used Silverlight, I wasn’t very impressed, but the new version I definitely like better than Flash 9, especially when it comes to speed. But I digress. You see, Microsoft Silverlight only works on certain platforms, including the most recent versions of Windows XP and Vista, as well as Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5, but only on the Intel platform. Now, that is all cool. Know why? Because software developers need to develop software for platforms that have major portions of the market share. I will use my own blog’s stats as an example:

Windows: 89.1%
Mac OS X: 5.6%
Linux: 0 .2%
Other (Not Linux, Mac, or Windows): 4.8%

The others are most likely web browsers on other platforms, such as gaming consoles. Now, why would I develop something for .2% of my visitors? That makes no sense. And this isn’t just a trend on my blog, these are the latest stats from Net Applications:

Windows: 91%
Mac: 7.76%
Linux: .82%

Do you know who the runner up to Linux is? Yea, the iPhone. But I have shown enough math already, let’s get to busting the busted myths.

Myth #1: Linux Installation is difficult. – I have to say, this one is somewhat busted. I mean, I just downloaded the disk image, burned it, and booted into the CD. Well, it was easy for me, you know, someone who is extremely tech literate. That being said, do you think my parents could do it?

Myth #2: I have to know the Linux terminal in order to use Linux. – True! Just try installing the latest beta of Firefox, or setting up XAMPP on Linux, or pretty much anything else software or hardware related without the Terminal. You know how bad it is? I couldn’t figure out how to install the beta of Firefox 3 on Linux. Honestly.

Myth #3: There is no one-click installation in Linux. I have to compile everything. – Yes and no. You see, in the most popular Linux distribution (Ubuntu), it doesn’t have any of the one click installation software systems installed by default. Once again, fail.

Myth #4: Linux Lacks applications. – Yes, it does have a ton of open source applications, but it also lacks a lot of the key software I use on a daily basis. Adobe CS3 Master Collection, anyone?

Myth #4: Can’t play my movies or use my itunes/ipod. – True and false. You see, there are applications that allow you to sync your iPod/iPhone with music, but features such as calendars and contacts don’t work. Also, you need to download codecs just to play music. How sad :(.

I am not writing this from the standpoint of a non-Linux user as well. I have used various flavors of Linux at several points in the past few years. I spent a few months on Ubuntu, then tried Fedora for a while. That being said, Linux is still crap.

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Hahaha, I Think George Is Back

Aug 14

Posted by Connor in Life

Except this time he doesn’t have a life. Check out all of this crap made by a GMC member called ‘SP oblivian’. Oh, and it’s spelled oblivion, by the way. Just another reason to think that it was George.

All Six Pages

I will write a more in depth article tomorrow. Good night :).

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Some Changes

Aug 12

Posted by Connor in News, Other Things

Just a quick note before I go into a big, most likely unimportant post: There are new changes to the blog’s UI. I changed a few things, such as the Song of the Month area, the Sites and Blogs area, the general titles for the sidebar areas, as well as some small things to get the CSS and XHTML valid. And yes, finally CSS 2.1, CSS 3, and XHTML 1.1 Valid :).

START OF USELESS MASKED MEDIA STUFF

Now I still need to run this by Alex before this becomes the official plan, but Masked Media may change again. In case you didn’t know, MM started out as a website that would essentially be the Youtube for everything, including music, videos, and, oddly, written works such as stories and poems. After a few weeks, we decided that MM wouldn’t have the resources to accommodate a plan like that, and that is how the current Masked Media came about. Now, what is our plan? The thing we originally thought of. But please, let me explain the reasons before the details.

At the current rate, the Masked Media we want will launch in about 2016. I mean, face it, we have been sitting on this domain name for over a year now (we just renewed last week), and haven’t done anything except setting up some blogs for Alex and myself. We wanted to be the new podcasting network, similar to Revision3. But there is one major difference between them and us: Money. We have about, I don’t know, one dollar in our bank account. Revision3? Millions. We couldn’t go in and try to create something like that. It was foolish for us to believe all this time.

That being said, the original idea has sparked some ideas into my head. Almost a year ago I announced that Masked Media, quote “Isn’t share your shit anymore.” I take that back. Masked Media is now going to be a social media community, but not as big as you may think. Well, for now at least.

I was talking to Tanner earlier about modularizing applications. The idea is simple: create a basic application that can do common tasks such as files functions, object selection, toolbars, you know, the whole bit. But the real power comes in the form of modules. Not only would this offer flexibility for users of the application, but it would also elevate strain on the applications developers. Users can now download only the parts of the application that they want to use. Honestly, I use about 10% of all of the Photoshop tools available to me, yet it wastes over 300MB of disk space on my hard drive, let alone the shared files by the rest of the collection. If it was modularized, then I would only have to worry about the core components of the application, and then the functions that I wanted to have. This is where I got the idea for Masked Media. Instead of worrying about a massive website launch, why not launch things in the form of modules? By creating a general web site design, I can add on the Music components when I get around to it. The same for written works and other things.

This is quite an ambitious project, but it makes more sense in the long run. If Masked Media launched today (excluding site development time), I would be wasting hours a week recording, editing, and publishing shows to both the website and iTunes. Not the best way to spend my precious time. I think this may work, but as I said, I need to run this by Alex before we proceed.

Oh yea, Alex is a real person, not one of those fake company employees :P.

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