I recently purchased a prepaid Virgin Mobile smart phone, the LG Optimus V. Since this is my first smart phone and my first LG phone, I thought that I would share my impressions with anyone else who is looking for a relatively inexpensive Android-powered phone. Man that is a dry introduction. I had a much… [Read more…]
January 31, 2011
My official title at work is “Engineer”, but I wear a lot of different technical hats. Most of my work tasks require me to spend a lot of time working with lots of different forms of plain text files like log files, XML files, and various programs. I like to stick to one text editor for… [Read more…]
January 24, 2011
My five-year-old computer died the other day. This was a problem because I used this computer to telecommute and because it was where I got most of my “real” work done. I therefore had to replace it in a hurry. I really wanted to replace it with a little net top, but I needed a… [Read more…]
June 12, 2010
Release It!: Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software by Michael Nygard My rating: 5 of 5 stars I need to start by saying that this is one of the best technical books I have ever read. To me, it’s easily as enjoyable and useful as Code Complete, The Pragmatic Programmer, or The Mythical Man Month. If… [Read more…]
April 22, 2010
The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage My rating: 3 of 5 stars This book is a fascinating account of the history of the telegraph and how it changed the world. If you are a history and technology buff, you will definitely get a lot out of this book. Please don’t be fooled by the title,… [Read more…]
February 13, 2010
Rails Deployment: Production Configuration and Advanced Rails Tactics by Ezra Zygmuntowicz My rating: 4 of 5 stars Overall, this book had a lot of very good information, and it was very helpful to me as I deployed my first Ruby-On-Rails application into a “Production” environment. Here’s the high points: Lots of good information on tools… [Read more…]
February 3, 2010
Agile Web Development with Rails: A Pragmatic Guide by Dave Thomas My rating: 4 of 5 stars In general, this book does a fairly good job of helping you create a rails-based application. Part 3 includes some great in-depth information on the topics that are briefly discussed in Part 2. I only have one real… [Read more…]
December 8, 2009
My Nokia 6101 just died after 2.5 years of faithful, inexpensive service, so I was in the market for a new phone in a hurry. When I originally bought this phone, I hoped that Google would have revolutionized the cell phone industry in America, making smart phone service more flexible and inexpensive. Well, the changes… [Read more…]
November 24, 2009
I apologize in advance for the corny, rhyming title I’ve been using an Asus EEE PC 900 netbook for about a year now, and have used it mostly for light word processing and web browsing. I also have a MythTV server running in my basement on an old Duron-based system. I can do almost all… [Read more…]
November 17, 2009
It’s unlike me to upgrade my systems very often since it can take so much time, but I was moved recently to upgrade both my “server” (to Ubuntu 9.04) and my EEE PC 900 (to Easy Peasy 1.5). In general, I’m very impressed with how much better Linux-on-the-desktop gets every 6 months, and I look… [Read more…]
May 7, 2011
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