A Life Without Compunction Blog

A nice update of Wordpress is out so I suggest you grab it. The feature that I think is the best is the tabbed editor. Additionally this feature is pretty cool:

You can set any “page” to be the front page of your site, and put the latest posts somewhere else, making it much easier to use WordPress as a content management system.

• Rina has been sick the last few days, we’ve been keeping her resting but her little mind and body still want to race at 100 mph. Please keep her in your prayers as well as Gin who’s under the weather as well. Also pray that baby stays healthy through all of this. Thanks.
• I think my first podcast really was crummy but I just had to get it out of my system. I’m conducting a couple audio based interviews and the next few podcasts should feature some special guests so stay tuned. I’ll also try my best to make them more interesting and to use “highlight” a little less.
• The Colts game was awesome and fun to watch.
• The one thing that can kill a well coded site is a badly designed database.

• Rewriting old PHP code can be tedious, it’s often more worthwhile to rewrite the code from the ground up.
• Old VB6 code should be deleted on sight, not worth rewriting. Okay it can be at times, but it’s still annoying.
• The Nuggets just scored big time … oh wait wasn’t it the 76ers that scored big time? Yeh sorry Denver you’ve just been shafted.
• Superbowl early prediction: Saints and Chargers. More like a Christmas wish.
• PHPXref can be a life saver when going over a large code base.
• Duplicate functions are the pits — even worse: different functions that do the same thing.
• Grep comes in handy!

For any Ubuntu/Kubuntu, and other derivatives, users out there who get tired of typing “sudo” before every root command, here’s an easy alternative:

sudo bash

Once you put in your password you’ll have a root level bash. Enjoy!

My wife got an upgraded computer recently and I got the task of setting it up for her. It’s a Toshiba so it comes with Windows XP Home. Though I had thoughts of trying to convert her to Linux, she gets around fine in Windows XP, I opted to have her stick with the OS and interface she knows - after all it’s already on there.

However I wanted any additional programs installed to be either GPL’d or in the very least freeware (trying to avoid all shareware). Here’s what I ended up with:

1. Word Processing - Since she doesn’t use Spreadsheets or Database I opted for Abiword over Openoffice.org as I find it a little more intuitive.

2. Music - Winamp

3. Image/Photo Viewing - IrfanView

4. Photo Editing - The GIMP

5. Email - Thunderbird with GPG/Enigmail

6. Browsing - Firefox

7. ZIP/Archiving - 7-zip
If you have any suggestions for alternative programs or other ones needed on an average user system, list them here.