setjmp’s Life

Well I’ve been deeply burrowed into WordPress now for about 3 months, and I thought about all the articles on the web that covered exactly what I was looking for. You know, the one that moves your learning/ability forward 1000% in 500-1000 words. What I could call the WordPress Tech goldmines. You know, all those articles I couldn’t find in other words.

I must say however, there are a few resources that have proven quite useful too and in the weeks to come will detail some of those as well. Most of what I have found however, is as with any open source software, the source code. I’ve been in source code (open source and otherwise) for nearly 3 decades now, and I am glad to say it’s more readable than ever. WordPress is a good example of that.

I’m going to start writing down those sorts, find the ideas that would lead to such an article, and well…. Write it I guess. I’m also open to others wants in this area too. Definately, if you have something, you want to see and can’t find, feel free to comment and I might find that for you, or make one. No promises, however Gretsky said it best when he said “I missed 100 percent of the shots I never took!”

I will probably start with the basics, however; a lot of my own digging thus far has been into “WordPress Themes”, “WordPress Plugins”, “WordPress API” and much into the inner workings of the wordpress loop. Again, if you have anything you can’t find, feel free to post it here, and if you found something great out there, by all means, post it here too

-setjmp

Filed under: First Beginnings, WordPress by Eric Allen Griff
No Comments »

After a month of Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate Edition, I’m sold. Of course I haven’t really used anything else modern recent and later am subject to change my mind (probably with the next large Hard Drive purchase for this Dell Precision T3400, and the latest FreeBSD install at that time).

It’s handy with dual screens, as I can stay organized between my developer tools, writing tools, and general online research needs. The next few paragraphs will focus more specifically on these topics. Though in them all, I always like to be listening to something. My playlist keeps me motivated and moving  lot of the time and well, I’m not quitting my day job for singing as I’d kill the music market with fears of listeners ever hearing me again… All in the comforts of my home office.

My development environment includes Apache, PHP, MySQL, Netbeans, among a number of other less frequently used tools. With my last system right before this one, I was seldom able to move along well though the difference was system power.. I have to say this T3400 is quite a bit more powerful, and that may be the biggest difference (offsetting even the additional system resource load that Vista brings).

I run about 5 sites, and all my tools at the same time along with music playing quite well. About the biggest burp I have had is unzipping files. I’m guessing it’s a windows issue, as it happens in the explorer (compressed folders), though it also occurs with the winzip demo. It doesn’t happen enough to have time to find it’s roots; and I can get past it by just unzipping multiple times and not overwriting files already extracted.

When writing I generally do a lot of research and have upwards of 40 browser tabs open between 2-5 browsers open. Most often it’s internet explorer 7, though I also use safari and mozilla in there. The latter 2 don’t run as fast. I use them more for development where compatibility is a concern. Openoffice and Adobe reader run well in multiple instances along with all the browsers going to. It makes it real easy to get caught up in TMI out there :)  . That’s an ADD thing and no system will solve that as long as the internet exists, hehe.

When I’m not on something specific , I reasearch a lot and get all the messengers, going along with windows mail, and so on… It all runs well so far on this new system with Windows Vista Ultimate Edition, however I’d imagine it would be a mass of slow run without the Quad Core 2.4Ghz Intel Processor, 4G of ram, and SATA speed drives.

A few things I have noticed are that my old cleaning tools help, though not quite as well as they did with XP. I can’t get all fragments to go away. Oh well, it’s fast anyways :)  Another front was that it’s not as easy to get wireless / network going. They’ve fuzzied a lot of that, to a non-tech level. Unfortunaely, I think tech ;) 

All in all though, it’s been a good experience for nearly a month, and I’m able to work in ways that with weaker computers on XP I couldn’t. Maybe this article should have been more on the Dell T3400 entry level workstation. Anyways, just my brain spewing something I thought I’d share with everyone.

-setjmp

Filed under: Miscellaneous by Eric Allen Griff
No Comments »

One thing the internet has done over the last 2 decades, is prove more and more; for every boom, there is more activity leading to bringing things to the hands of many people. That includes You! I’ve been reading and found a particular eBook that’s got similiar wording… That would be “Mobile, Domains & The Future” - Javier Marti Mr Marti is also highly visible and available online, so if you have further questions there are a number of places you can contact him. Whether it be at his TrendiNews.Com or even in some of his hangouts such as Mobility.Mobi .

Lately I’ve been focusing a lot of time on ideas that will lead to a setjmp.mobi that helps bridge the gap between the desktop web and the mobile web. Imagine the ability to get out and about: and being as productive in the unknown out there as you are in the comforts of home… Of course it’s still a work in early progress (aka planning). (Any ideas appreciated hint hint)

I have been finding a many useful resources in the .mobi community. It’s refreshing and reminds me of the computer network administration and security circles of the mid 90s. Though it’s more content focused now :)  Javier Marti’s eBook is one example of information packed content that is bound to tell everyone something they didn’t know, and could make good use of, if only they read it through and focus on what seems to apply to them.

While I can’t say I’m diving into the concepts of it, I am definately reading it a few times, and finding some good ideas as a result. More will be revealed. It’s on my MUST READ list for sure.

-setjmp

Filed under: Miscellaneous by Eric Allen Griff
No Comments »

    Well, I didn’t reach the goals I had for September, and one of them was a post a day here. Guess the caffiene isn’t dealing with the ADD like it used to. Or maybe I’m just getting old :(  . In any event, since it didn’t seem that the world was flocking here for the occasion, no harm really. I’ll try that again at a later date. In the meantime, more on wordpress up and coming.

    As well as more on being mobile at setjmp.mobi. Some of my thoughts are central PIM as well as content that is designed for mobility, that can easily be connected to users desktop too for full viewing later on. Time will tell, and I’m open to ideas, and sharing outcomes as well. Thanks to anyone that steps up to the plate.

    So what happened here in September anyways? Well, I got overwhelmed with projects as my laptop went into extreme drag mode. Really nearly nothing got done. Most of it was focused on a wordpress plugin (a RAC project in arbitration now). Not going to knock it… As the buyer was definately more than patient. Though till Saturday, any work at all was tedious. Thanks to my mom (shh! It’ll go to her head) I was able to get a new Dell Precision T3400 . Well have to make the payment too. This system kicks butt so expect a review.

    Anyways Saturday, the laptop went totally to (an evil place) and I wound up rushing to install my development environment on the 3400. It consists of: There are others too which I’ll post another time.

Filed under: 30 days unexpected, First Beginnings, Life, Work, Work Seeking by Eric Allen Griff
No Comments »

    Argh, today it took 50 minutes to get my day started after oversleeping from a nap. Thank god the deadline I was cramming on got extended another 24 hours, however I actually have to have it ready in about 15 hours anyways, since that’s when they’ll be looking I suspect. :-/ and still a lot to do.

    Back to the dragging PC. Man things change too much. Back in the day I’d build a new one every 2-3 months and usually have backups for the backups and my latest system was good for what I was working on (and plenty of lan servers that also did good at Quake or Unreal tournament when there were friends around to kill & maim).

    The last few years haven’t been all that, and I more or less left the old LAN behind somewhere along the way, save 2 pieces that are outdated, and well now; a third that makes a great boat anchor (HP Vectra RS/25C). I picked up that HP years ago and it was ancient then too.

    My primary these days is an old Dell Inspiron 1300/B130. It’s a 1.5Ghz pentium G with about 35M of hardrive, and 512M ram. Actually, it’s worked it’s ass off for about a year and a half. It’s old, but modern enough to play world of warcraft (but not much disk space). With the latest software I need to run, along with a development webserver running on it, (and MySQL) well, it takes a week to get 2 days of work done, .

    Today I got shopping for a desktop, and got down memory lane on the past 20 years of hardware. Think in terms of Julio singing “All the hardware I’ve  run, before.”  “All the money I’ve spent on it all.” . Well, chances are nothing compared to what was  spent on that old Hewlett Packard when it was new.

    Back in the mid-90s I got back into fulltime computers/networks after 5 years of insurance, and 2 in the car business (well you might say I was in the car business when I was in insurance, cause I had to keep the wheels running to work). I got a Packard Bell BL210, scanner, printer, and other junk for about $2000. I probably paid too much too. But not too too much. I got as much HD and RAM as I could get, and added a couple drives too. Maybe some of that was software as well (compilers and such).

    Back to Hear and Now: I was looking at a Dell Vostro 410 (something like that) and for about 1600 I can kick the shit out of my laptop let alone that old Packard Bell. Of course most of the software I use is Free/Licensed and/or open source (NetBeans, WordPress, Apache, GIMP, CCleaner, Defraggler, PHP, MySQL, JavaEE, JavaME, all those phone SDKs, and much more). Though that machine will probably make me good and working for about 3 years over this 3 years outdated laptop (that has done wonders).

    Anyways, before that one I did get caught up in the T7400 though the cheapest I could make that (way beyond an expected budget, was about 5G. That’s the next goal, though in the meantime; Need to get a new system.

    OK, enough babble, I’ll get more caffiene in me and get focused one of these days…

Thanks,
Eric

Filed under: 30 days unexpected, First Beginnings, Miscellaneous, Tools, Work by Eric Allen Griff
No Comments »