Ice Cavern Studios

After looking at the front page of my website for a while, I realized that I haven’t updated in almost a month. As is the case, this is more a sign that I’ve just had an absolute crap-ton of stuff going on in my life. Since I’ve got some time, I figure I might as well update as to some of the happenings.

Firstly, a couple of weeks ago I decided to splurge and take a trip to Hawaii. Since I had the miles and someone was willing to host me there, I figured I’d go before work got crazy. Let me tell you, it was one of the best ideas ever. I spent most of the time laying on the beach and lounging around. It was amazing. I didn’t make it to see any of the famous sites, but I figure I’ll go back and do that again later.

Beyond the trip to Hawaii, my life has pretty much come down to a few basic activites: training for Ragnar, working, and climbing.

As is normal for the month of July, I’m completely deep into my training for the Ragnar relay. As has been the case in previous years, I’m in a good regimen of running, lifting, and abstaining from drinking in any way. This year, I’m actually pushing myself a bit more in my runs, and I’ve decided not to ease off the lifting. As it turns out, I’m seeing great benefits over my training in my previous years and I’m really excited to see how things go with this years race. I’ve also been training in Vibrams, which I feel have helped me a great deal. As the relay is less than two weeks away, expect to hear more from me about the whole thing soon.

The next big thing in my life has been work. With the upcoming of release of Windows Phone 7, my team has been ramping up for the last push. As it often goes with software, this final push is where it all falls into place. Unfortunately, this also means a lot of work, some long hours, and a bit of a toll on me physically is all in store. I am, however, really loving what I’m doing. I’ve always been a bit of a phone freak, so getting the opportunity to work in this technology space is a real treat. It’s very much akin to my time at Zune. Although we aren’t quite marching like we did there.

The last big thing I’ve gotten even more into has been climbing. Since November, I’ve gotten into a pretty good rhythm of climbing with my friend Shawn. We’ve been climbing generally at least once a week, and life permitting, even more. Given that Shawn is quite a bit better than I am, I’ve actually improved a great deal, which has been rather awesome. I’ve also started climbing outdoors and leading, which is something I never thought I’d be up to doing.

So yeah, that’s kind of the life I’m living right now. I’m really happy with everything. As I told my friend Josh today as we were walking to dinner, “Life is good.”

Gadgets, Life and Times, Rock Climbing, Technology

I learned how to do all that crap manually when I was in college taking digital photography. As both a photographer and a computer scientist, I’m in awe.

Software, Technology

I’m on Wave. I’ve got a whole bunch of invites. I still see almost not real good use for it. But this I was at least amused by.

Geekdom, Technology, The Internet

So, a couple of weeks ago, I posted a rather annoyed entry about how Linux hasn’t changed all that much. Now, while I will stand by a lot of what I said, I can say that I don’t think MY hardware issues are linux’s fault. After getting Windows 7 on my machine, it seems there’s still a hardware failure somewhere. This is unfortunate because when it’s running, Windows 7 actually performs better than Linux was on my box.

So, while I am not happy in any way about it, I may have to bite the bullet int he near future and upgrade my computer hardware. I mean, I guess this is to be expected, given I hadn’t purchased new hardware in almost 6 years, and what I did get was a netbook. Still, I’m again keen on having some sort of desktop machine; and my media server is also giving up the ghost, so it looks like it’s time. Thankfully, I think I can use a lot of my stuff spread across the new gear, but I’m looking at another grand or so to get two fully functioning machines.

Oh well, I guess going almost six years is good enough.

Technology

Had an interesting discussion with Yorke today about how far Linux hasn’t come over the better part of a decade. Now, before I go any further, I would like to point out that I’m currently typing this up on my Linux box, so no accusing me of merely being a Microsoft shill.

The basis of the discussion was the fact that, due to a bit of instability in Ubuntu, my machine had gotten itself into a rather nasty state after a failed attempt at applying some system updates. Clearly, I was able to get the system back, but what isn’t so clear was how I had to do it. For the sake of brevity, let’s just say that a lot of command line work was required to get everything going gain.

Now, for me, this isn’t such a big deal. I prefer using the command line; I find it to be faster to get things done. Mind you, I’m also a software engineer, so what I think of in terms of an optimal user experience are a we bit different. I also look at the command line as a choice.

What is kind of sad about Linux given that it’s now been over a decade since it hit the “big time” is that it feels like it hasn’t changed in say…six years? Sure, the windows now fade in and out, but copying OS X (or God forbid Vista) shouldn’t really be seen as an improvement. I still need to use the command line to reliably do anything. The window manager just stops redrawing app windows for no good reason. (This has been a major issue for me with Ubuntu) And package management…well, there still needs to be “package management.”

Everything about this set-up feels exactly as it did when I was in college and futzing with this crap on a regular basis. All of the modularity that makes this awesome for geeks/powerusers/sysadmins really is kind of stupid when you just want to have a PC that runs. I installed a pretty basic version of Ubuntu and the update (it had been a week or two since I had done it previously) needed to change 100+ packages. And this wasn’t even for the complete distro upgrade.

I had heard how much better Linux had gotten since I had last looked at it seriously. Honestly, I don’t see it. Sure, they’ve put some graphical front ends onto the command line stuff, but given how often they’ve failed on me, they might as well not be there. It’s been about ten years since I started futzing with Linux and beyond some higher res art, it’s pretty much the same thing I was using before.

Technology