Simplicitas is Moving!

I finally got an email from WordPress.com (not to be confused with WordPress.org) offering me a free account. I've always been impressed with WordPress (from the .org) as a publishing platform, so I was fairly excited to be offered a blog. Thus, simplicitas.blogspot will be closing its doors, and simplicitas.wordpress will be picking up where it left off. (For a list of the tradeoffs between the two platforms, stay tuned to the new blog). Be sure to update your bookmarks and RSS feeds!

Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

Cory Doctorow, author and coeditor of BoingBoing, has released a new book. This in and of itself is not necessarily a momentous occassion (at least if you're not already a fan). The interesting thing is the publication media which Mr. Doctorow has chosen. Yes, he's selling the book in a traditional print format; after all, the man's gotta eat. However, he's also chosen to release the entirety of the book, a chapter or two at a time, as an RSS feed. The feed will also continue to provide all subsequently released chapters, regardless of when you first subscribe to it. Cool stuff - and probably the best (only?) method that I've seen for increasing sales using RSS.

The Intel Ruby

Is it just me, or is this just as sexy as the OQO?

pwned!

Alright...so I'm a nerd...but you should check out pure pwnage. Noobs without micro need not apply...

Keeping Track of Your RSS Feeds

Due to the recent reinstall of Linux on my home machine, the usefulness of the portable apps that I've been talking about has decreased significantly. The reason for this is that all of the ones that I've been using are entirely Windows-based. Where web browsing is concerned this isn't a big problem, as all I have to do is keep my fairly slow-changing bookmarks in sync. This is made simple by FireFox' use of a single HTML file to store bookmarks; synchronization is simply a matter of copying the most recent bookmarks.html file to the appropriate location. (Of course, in Windows, that location is fairly onerous - something like:

\Documents&Settings\username\ApplicationData\Firefox\Profiles\default\inmz3k6d.slt

...but that's another story).

Email is also relatively simple, owing to all of my accounts being forwarded (at this time) to 2 separate IMAP accounts. Since the emails are stored in folders on the server, I don't have to worry about migrating a bunch of saved messages; all I have to do is put in my account information, and I'm good to go.

RSS feeds, however, are a royal pain. To this point, Mozilla Thunderbird has been doubling as an email client and feed reader. However, due to a lack of OPML import/export functionality in the stable version, and support for OPML that can be described as "wonky, at best" in the latest beta version, I end up being stuck with no automated way of updating my list of feeds on any given machine. (Hand-entering RSS URLs isn't exactly my idea of a good time).

Long story short: I finally too Anonymous' advice and signed up for a BlogLines account. The nice thing about this is that they provide a system-tray notifier for multiple platforms - *nix, OS X, and Windows, to be precise. They also have some other nifty implementations, including FireFox and IE extensions. Hopefully I'm on the path to RSS Nirvana...

Product Disclaimer?

I was taking a look at Mobility Email, another portable implementation of Thunderbird, when part of the project's FAQ caught my eye:

If Mobility Email blows up and takes your computer, your house or your pet dog with it...well...bad luck. Let us know about the bug, and we'll try to fix it in the next release.

Well, at least they're striving for improvement...

World's Smallest Linux Computer

I found this while I was digging around on the Intarwebs the other day. Yes, folks, you saw correctly - that's a full-fledged computer, complete with RJ45 connector and serial port, that takes up a little more than twelve and a half cubic centimeters of space. Of course, a 55MHz processor and 2MB of onboard Flash (about half of which is taken up by the operating system) isn't going to knock anyone's socks off performance-wise, but they'd be ideal for, say, someone who wanted to build a cluster at home without being served with divorce papers for "re-purposing" the walk-in closet.

Of course, they're going to have to come down in price a bit before I can reasonably afford to litter my house with miniature linux computers; the manufacturer lists them at 99 euros, or about $120 US dollars. When they hit around the $20 USD price point, count me in!

The Badger

An old friend returned to my PC yesterday. To clarify, I installed the newest release of Ubuntu Linux ("Breezy Badger"). I gotta say, I'm impressed with the polish of this particular release, even after only having used it for a couple of days. Having linux back on this box is almost like I've been living in a foreign country for the past couple of months - albeit one in which the accomodations are nice - and I've come back home, which is the only place in which one can be truly comfortable.