Category Archives: Blogroll

Linux for the desktop

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I was working on my home machine the other day, cleaning up files and trying to remove un-needed folders and so forth. Thats cool yes nothing wrong with that. except I was doing it on a linux live system and when I rebooted into windows, it did not work anymore :(

Well thats cool, I then install Ubuntu 7 thinking that could do everything I need… wrong, in order for ubuntu to be useful at all you need a internet connection and that is something I don’t have at home. A standard install of Ubuntu you cannot watch dvd’s which is the main usage of my home pc, plus a number of other things, avi files don’t play without downloading the codec. I got a copy of vlc source hoping that this would solve the issue only to find out that the version of gcc cannot create executables. Great, what now? I am hoping to get a copy of fedora soon which could solve the problem but for now I have LindowsOS running which plays all the avi/dvds I need it to how every does not connect to SCSI drives where the avi’s are located.

This has made me wonder how far the linux desktop has come. When I think of a home machine the first thing I think of is no internet connection with the need to watch dvds and connect to local machines to share files. Also the need to mount hard drives and configure sounds cards is not on the menu of tasks to be done. The later versions handle some of the harder tasks but simple things are left out.

In the end the question I have on my mind on this topic is the open source going in the right direction? OS’s like Unbuntu are been targeted to third world countries where there is little chance of having a internet connection yet there system requires a connection….

What? where from….

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Click here to for not reason…..

Think I am loosing my mind a bit but thats cool,m just finished the coupon section for springleap.com they will be give a nice discount on the website this weekend and then more will come. hope all works well, its been a pain for me working on someone elses cod that is just a mess, but all is good, cleaned it up the deleted it and started again. that seemed to have worked for me.

going to coninue watching kevin rose thing on future of news

have a good weekend if your out of here….

to convert or not to convert

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Thinking about making a cakephp version of this site, should be a good idea as then I would get more involved with it. Currently running wordpress and always find it limiting with what you can and cant do.

Going to start and see how far I get and also how easy it is to do the database migration and everything. If that is not too difficult then will do the swop over.

GEOTagging / GEOCoding

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Hmm, a topic that has been in my mind for a while now. Its not that I have much to say about the topic its more the fact that I want more people to know about it. With technology moving the way it is, it is a good idea to keep on top of things. If restraints and shops started to geotag there locations on anything then they could find more business. GPS system would be able to find there locations on a database and direct customers to them. As travelling becomes more frequent and tourist have no idea what direction they are going in they are simple using what they have… Blackberry, computers and there car GPS systems. they can all search the web and other resources and find what is close by. Having your shop with its geotagged location could benefit you as this will help them on there why.

enough with the bable here are some helpful links:
http://www.geo-tag.de/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocoding
http://www.flickr.com/groups/geotagging/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geotagging
http://maps.google.com/
http://maps.yahoo.com/
http://geotags.com/

Also if you are usinga system like wordpress, then there are plugins you can get that will include the needed meta data for your page to be geotagged. I am using the All in One SEP Pack for wordpress which includes the feature for giving your page a geo.position. for more information about the html needed read geo-tag.de, it will generate the code needed to make your page geotagged.

I have added the meta data for this page to be located in Cape Town, South Africa

Facebook for business, Good or Bad Idea

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So I’m always thinking of was to make some cash on the net and using the online tools to communicate with people out there. Over the weekend I came across a new contacts tool called Plaxo. Now this site is still in beta phase but from using it, its got all the business features that facebook does not. I mean, you can import your contacts from LinkedIn and you have a Business, Friends and Family Profile. So I mean you can hide all those picks from your parents and Business partners and also give out different email addresses to each one.

The best part is that you can save all your contact details to your machine. This is a feature I dont think Facebook will ever use. Think about it, you spend hours working on getting people into your group or Page and then one day its gone. What you gonna do? Is that really a thing you want left up to chance?

Freelance Contracts

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So was just loking for freelancer contract type things and found this quote

I’ve found that a contract is only as good as the people signing it. If you don’t trust the person, maybe you should look for another client anyways…

From this article

I think thats the best thing I’ve read in awhile, considering the client I am having issue with at the moment. I wasn’t 100% sure about them when starting but now, they are on my black list.

pre made cms

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hmm yes, this is why i took so long to use a premade cms, they always give issues, not sure how long i had a contact form up as a post but when I acedetly did that i did remove it but didn’t check that it was gone and today i saw it was still there, strainge. Wel hopefully one day when I have a bunch ofpeopl working for me I can sit back and creat a wicked cms system that I will enjoy using.

Its hard as a developer to use someone elses work, I mean you sit there thinking about how you would rather do it and how you could make it simpler, but getting the time to site and write a realy nice cms takes time and for now I need to pay the bills.

which reminds me, which is better, having a php script read the content of an image file or displaying the image, that is a dumb question but I need to update a script that reads a image from a database and displays it and I am tring to figure out if I should change the script to read from a file or just change the whole system to call a file and have a script cash all the paths and if its not there check the databse for the image and then create it and then display.

I think that is better but its alot more work.

if you are wondering where my mind is please let me know if you find it.

wishlist

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So I have this wish list page on my site, not sure how many people view it but I like it up there. It seems to work, So far most of the stuff I added I got so I have to update it every now and again with new stuff. Its a good idea I think.

My reason for this post is that I am trying to think of what services I can offer, I want to put it on my wish list so that I can get some sort of stable monthly income. I have tried advertising web hosting on facebook but all I got was people asking about sites and saying they would need more space and bandwidth.

Why people go asking for more when I was advertising a basic package. I mean basic means basic. Its good enof for a blog company website or family web site, but these people then go and say they need more and want a website.

Anyway, my thoughts on the monthly thing is getting to me, I have to think of something interesting that people will want, I mean I’ve done all these viral marketing email campaigns and simple newsletters but they take up too much time and are not a monthly thing.

Oh well, I’ll find the answer soon.

WP-Hashcash

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Just installed Wp Hashcash which is a spam filter for WordPress, so far the result is not good, if you try to leave a comment and it fails email me at alex AT(@) openstyle dot(.) co dot(.) za and I will re-think using it.Have a great day.Alex 

Blog About Nothing… and Facebook

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This is a post about nothing, yes you read correctly. I am now adding complete junk to this site. If you are woundering why then keep reading. Well firstly, English was not my greatest subject in school and I am now faced with this issue of not being able to write a decent Blog post. I think of all sorts of cool topics I could write about and all, but when I sit down to get them in, my mind goes blank on how to start.

So I am now just going to start adding random junk to this site till I think my writing skills improve. Once I have done that then I can start writing about all the interesting things I think up.I think they are interesting, yes. A topic that has been on my mind and alot of others is Facebook.com, yes yes you might be getting board of that topic by now but I have just started freelancing full time and have been going through facebook a bit to find out how I could make some money on it. Of course there is the obviuse solution to create an application andd then get as many people to use it, but my idea was a bit more simple.

Firstly, the marketplace is a great way to sell yourself and or your skills. I thought this was great till I tried to see my soul to the international market. This got to be a bit tricky. I also am finding it hard to keep all my calendar and contacts in one place and it occured to me if you had your calendars and contacts all on facebook, and access to your messages via a pop account, thats all you would need to run things more smoothly.  More great features they could add is the ablilty to have is a friends category, where depending on the friends group they are in they would see only what you want them to see.

For example, if your trying to get work from fellow facebooker’s, but at the same time added some sort of druggy application to your profile, it would be great if yo could say that people in this group cannot see this app or all your applications. This would also be great so you can add those drunken photos of you and not have this shown on your business contacts feed. This is just a bit of what I’ve been thinking and there is many more to come. As I said in the beginning of this blog I am realy just tring my writing skillls for a bit first. On that topic another reason I posted this was to find out how many people would read a post that gives very little information and really not worth reading. Please leave a comment below so I can see the number off people who spent the time reading this. Thanks