A preliminary review of Cinnamon 1.2
I think Ubuntu is a practical joke. After several years of progress, they were finally very very close to the mythical usable Linux desktop. And then they just started fucking with things seemingly at random. At the same time, the GNOME folks started making similarly erratic design decisions.
In response, the Linux Mint folks are making a new UI for GNOME 3 called Cinnamon with the goal of creating a more traditional desktop. They recently released version 1.2. I’ve been using it for a bit now, and some thoughts are below.
The genius of Hieronymus Bosch
No, not the painter. The death metal band. You know, the perpetually unappreciated band that toiled away in hidden genius for two decades before they tragically broke up a couple years ago? Yeah, those guys.
Not that a split up band really needs more publicity, and not that my blog has a large number of readers, but I’m going to write a bit about one of my favorite underappreciated bands.
My previous life as a programmer/entrepreneur – Part 6: The shadier the SEO, the bigger the profit
Avatic, MPLaaPE, SEO (2 Comments)
This is part 6 of a series of articles. If you missed the previous articles, you should start at the beginning.
At this point, I have a pure gold SEO tactic. I used this to make some quick cash and promote various side projects that I eventually sold off. That’s all well and good, but I thought it was time to try a slightly more bold moneymaking approach.
My previous life as a programmer/entrepreneur – Part 5: Getting fucked over, but still making a profit
This is part 5 of a series of articles. If you missed the previous articles, you should start at the beginning.
Previously, I discussed my website iTopsites (a remotely hosted version of my Aardvark Topsites PHP software). The software running iTopsites was quite unique at the time (and possibly still is today), so naturally there were people who wanted to license my software to make clones of iTopsites. My most notable customer was TopSiteLists.com.
My previous life as a programmer/entrepreneur – Part 4: Avatic
Avatic, MPLaaPE, SEO, Web Development (2 Comments)
This is part 4 of a series of articles. If you missed the previous articles, you should start at the beginning.
In the last article, I wrote about how I got into search engine optimization (SEO) and then had my first success ($$$) followed by my first failure (getting banned from Google). Subsequently, after recovering from that failure (getting back in Google’s good graces), I began a more cautious SEO strategy. Instead of promoting random spammy websites, I created my own legitimate websites and used SEO to gain footholds in different markets. Imagining myself running an empire of websites, I decided to call my entire web development business Avatic.
Model predictive control of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis
Research Blogging, Science (0 Comments)
Very recently, I’ve been intrigued by control theory applied to systems biology. This strategy seems to often produce insightful and unintuitive results. In this blog post, I’m going to take a look at a very cool article by Ben-Zvi and coworkers that applies control theory to a mathematical model of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, and hopefully put it in a bit of a broader context.
QR codes in academic poster presentations: A case study at ICCAI 2011
I’ve found that most people don’t know what a QR code is, so let me explain. A QR code is a 2d barcode that contains some content (typically a URL) and is intended to be scanned by a smartphone camera. You often see them in ads, linking to a product’s website or something. I recently (very recently… I wrote most of this while I was delayed at the airport on my trip home) presented a poster at ICCAI 2011, and I tried to use all this fancy smartphone scanning technology to enhance my poster.
Jekyll and other static site generators are, currently, harmful to the free, open source software movement
FOSS, Programming (43 Comments)
My blog is powered by WordPress. WordPress remains at its core a monstrous amalgamation of PHP spaghetti code. Thus, despite the fact that WordPress is free (beer+speech), easy to use, well supported, well documented, and all that jazz… it still pains my hacker sensibilities to use it. For similar reasons, a lot of hacker types are moving away from WordPress and similar blog software to static site generators like jekyll.
My previous life as a programmer/entrepreneur – Part 3: First steps into the dirty underworld of search engine optimization
Avatic, MPLaaPE, SEO (1 Comment)
This is part 3 of a series of articles. If you missed the previous articles, you should start at the beginning.
Last time, I wrote about my first failed attempt to make money, and my second somewhat successful attempt to make money. Even though it may sound fancy because it’s on the Internet, all of that stuff was very honest, traditional business. Either selling a product for money, or selling a service for money.
But as we’ve all learned in recent years, only suckers try to make money that way (see: Wall Street). The real money is a level removed from honest business.
My previous life as a programmer/entrepreneur – Part 2: Software development, business development
This is part 2 of a series of articles. If you missed the previous article, you should start at the beginning.
In the last article, I went from being an 11 year old with no clue about anything to a 15 year old with half a clue when I publicly released my first piece of software. In this article, I talk about acquiring users, getting unexpected contributions through the wonders of open source software, trying (and failing) to make money, and not trying to make money but actually making a little bit.