Abe Nelson's thoughts on web design, tech news, and life in general.
My site is finally on the first page of Google search results when searching for “Abe Nelson”. That didn’t take too long.
Nothing else inspirational to blog about in the web design front. All my other pursuits have kept me running around enough.
One of the coolest things going on right now is Daniel learning how to ride a two wheeler. It really makes me proud watching him work so hard to learn something so difficult.
I resisted Google Reader for awhile, but a coworker of mine finally got me using it. You can access my shared items here:
http://www.google.com/reader/shared/nelson2a
Google Reader is a really easy way to stay on top of all of the various news sources and blogs that you follow. If you use Google Reader already, be sure to add leanbones.com to your feeds.
On another subject, I have started reading lately more than I had been in a while. My brother recommended Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I usually enjoy classic literature and this was no exception. It was a fun and engaging read from cover to cover. My wife bought me JRR Tolkien’s Children of Hurin for Valentines Day so that’s what I am currently reading. I can’t read quite at the three books a week rate that I could in high school, but it is fun getting back into it.
I haven’t posted anything in a while so I figured I would throw something up to let the many devoted followers of my blog know what’s been going on lately.
Not too much on the web design front. I have been spending a lot of time recently working on various IDX integrations for a realtor’s website. I have been frustrated by the sparse open source resources available. Most of the good products are paid and the decent open source projects have little support available.
Maybe I have just been taking the wrong tact in my research and planning. I’m just going to keep plugging away until I find the best solution. Meanwhile, I have been able to meet all of the core needs of my client using the ListIt Gateway service from Solid Earth. It works great but I would like to have the flexibility that an IDX solution like RETS provides.
Other than that I have just been doing everyday run and maintain work.
I had a fun experience with a pretty mean rootkit the other day. I thought I was going to be dealing with an average case of malware, but after a few hours of work, the PC kept behaving badly. It wasn’t until I tried to install an upgrade of Java that I noticed the problem. A very well hidden rootkit was running in the background and the Java installer prompted me to close down the instance of IE that was connecting to a Chinese domain name. So I regrouped and thought about ways to clean off the rootkit. Then it occurred to me… the PC was an older P4 with only 256 megs of ram. So I threw in the towel and gave the person a new PC. Some battles just aren’t worth fighting.
Don’t get me wrong, I am a huge Ubuntu fan. I have only tried a few Linux distro’s and have only spent more than a few hours in Ubuntu, but its accessiblity and easy of use are far superior to any of the other that I have tried.
That said, accessiblity and ease of use are relative. I am prepared to spend several hours trouble shooting some configuration files just to accomplish a simple task because its what I do and I enjoy it. Everyday mainstream users are not. They want something that just works without tweaking and customizing.
The reason that I bring this up is I just upgraded from Ubuntu release 9.04 to 9.10. This should have been a fairly simple upgrade and for the most part it was. However, my sound broke. Yes its not much but having working sounds is elemental to a computing experience. Until various Linux distro’s can standardize enough to minimize these sorts of things, Linux market share will remain minimal.
Wow! I thought my cable was fast. Obviously, I hadn’t tried Verizon’s FiOS yet. I got a chance the other day and it is pretty amazing. I went to download a file that I downloaded many times before and it usually takes about 20 seconds. I clicked on it and with the FiOS connection it was downloaded almost instantaneously. I thought for a moment that the download had failed or something. Unfortunately, it isn’t available in my area yet. Maybe someday…
Daniel and I went to Round Hill Farm today. It was great. Here are some pictures.
I just spent the last 3 hours putting the finishing touches on a new website. I suppose “finishing touches” is wishful thinking. I can never leave well enough alone. I am sure I will be tweaking my work here and there for a while.
Tomorrow is going to be a fun day. I have the day off and will be going to a pumpkin patch with my son’s preschool. I am sure that I will have some pictures to post afterwards.
So my new website is now live. The them maybe switching around a bit until I get the feel for WordPress and decide what I like best. I’ll be posting all kinds of random stuff periodically so check back when you can.
