Windows
FTP is very risky; use SSH for versatile remote connections
Wed, 2008-04-16 07:20 — iDonnySSH
SSH has been around for a long time and there are now many commercial and freeware tools that enable you to get at least the same functionality as you have always had from your FTP server but without the risk. Notably, you need to generate and use a private/public key pair to make your SSH connection water-tight. Using any SSH capable application such as PUTTY to connect to your remote server, or locally in your Linux machine, you can generate a key pair base don a paraphrase using the following command.$ ssh-keygen -t rsa
Taking SSH to the next level
There is a small commercial application called SFTPdrive {http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SftpDrive} that enables windows and Mac users to configure remote machine-resources to be accessible like network drives mapped to be accessible locally. You do not have to pay for this feature if you have the skill and patience of configuring a tunneling setup with Putty (SSH tunneling), and map drives through the tunnelLAN, Windows bluescreen, Apple Safari, and Web Development
Fri, 2007-06-29 09:42 — iDonny- Reusable CSS, make your life easier [Fri, 22 Jun 2007 13:17:28 -0400]
I have come to find that while using CSS for layout, all hierarchical content is represented as UL or OL lists, and others items are enclosed in DIV or SPAN regions or left as orphan elements. CSS layout based on the above mark-up structure will have some repetitive definitions. For instance, all horizontal menus my require CSS to turn an unordered list into display: inline; layout, set the list-style-type: none; This means that you can make you rlife easier by creating a set of CSS definitions that can be the basis of all your layout and presentation work : - Apple Safari is benefiting Internet Explorer? [Fri, 22 Jun 2007 13:04:27 -0400]
The introduction of Safari for Windows might appear to be an attempt to eat away Microsoft Internet Explorer's market-share. On second thought though, most of the people that use Internet Explorer do so because it is the already available Web browser who will not care to replace IE with Safari if they have not already moved to Safari. It is therefore going to each away market-share from Firefox because it is those standards conscious users who have shunned IE that will be outgoing enough to try Safari... Apple's selfishness is playing right into Microsoft's agenda!!: - Choosing a Web Development Platform [Sat, 16 Jun 2007 12:57:18 -0400]
I am more inclined to choose opensource (e.g., PHP) and other low TCO (total cost of ownership) environments to develop solutions and self-train. I do not completely refute the claim that .NET is a valuable development environment; but it is not possible to properly evaluate proprietary development environments without investing money, and probably loosing it if the environment proves to be less than ideal: - HTML-Kit to blame for blue-screen, not Safari [Fri, 15 Jun 2007 23:23:53 -0400]
I am ashamed for jumping into conclusions and blaming Apple Safari for Windows XP crashing when I tried to browse folders in my markup editor. I had attributed the problem to the Safari browser because the problem came up after installing Safari. Coincidentally, I had installed an update of the Alpha version of HTML-Kit Tools for Windows, and that seems to be the culprit - my apologies to Steve Jobs: - Safari gets windows dirty [Thu, 14 Jun 2007 00:23:52 -0400]
My love affair with Apple Safari is coming to an end today. One day after I installed Apple Safari on my HP Windows Media Center, Windows has given me the "Blue screen of death twice", and Safari has been becoming unresponsive. Apple has good intentions, and the application is only in beta, but it has no place on my PC for now. I will be using System Recovery in a moment to remove it.:
Web Standards, Apple Safari, HTML-Kit for Windows
Sat, 2007-06-16 13:56 — iDonny- A Safari with a difference [Wed, 13 Jun 2007 12:21:27 -0400]
Many applications claim to be able to import your settings, bookmarks and other customisations from competing applications to facilitate migration. Apple Safari for Windows has humble me. Whether I go to pandora.com or Tumblr, it has imported by settings, bookmarks and even stored passwords from Firefox... impressionant quoi !!: - Choosing a truly free Linux distribution [Tue, 12 Jun 2007 13:55:12 -0400]
Now that I am comfortable and pleased with the usability, and stability of Ubuntu Linux, I am out to test another distribution on a different PC. I almost selected Fedora from Novell, but then again I thought that this might not be the correct way to support OpenSource being that Novell has been cutting some deals in the dark alley with Microsoft. So Mandriva Linux is my next Linux candidate.: - Taking a Windows Safari [Tue, 12 Jun 2007 13:30:15 -0400]
Not really a journey, but I have just installed Apple Safari web browser on my PC and it was a breeze. I am eager to see what the Bonjour service can do. I am a Firefox evangelist, but I am open to see what Konqueror, Epiphany, or Safari can do for me. If for nothing else, I can now test my web development on Safari too. Just when I had ordered a Mac notebook... : - No apology for following Web Standards! [Wed, 06 Jun 2007 16:01:47 -0400]
If you are using IE6, you will notice that that the top menu of this site is centered. This is caused by the fact that IE6 is not standards compliant, and it requires custom hacks to make the menu right-aligned as it is in IE7, Firefox, Konqueror, Epiphany etc. Should I apologise for this? I do not think that writing browser hacks is a good way to spend my valuable time.: - Pageflakes: Your desktop on the web [Wed, 06 Jun 2007 11:28:45 -0400]
First there were portals, and then there were portals! Widgets are beginning to become the approach of choice for representing web tools and content sections on a web-page. Pageflakes.com provides such as a facility by enabling you, the user to create a page layout with the content sections and tools that are important to you, selected to an extensive library. I know that netscape.com and google can also do this:
Switching from Windows to Ubuntu for regular Human Beings
The common fear of most seasoned Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP or even Vista users when told about switching or even just having Linux on a second computer is:
1 - Will I be able to install Linux without knowing intricate technical details about my PC?
2 - Linux is identified with Unix, how steep is the learning curve?
3 - I need to be up and running quickly with familiar applications such as Word and Outlook
4 - Will I be able to find as much free software as there is for Windows?
5 - Will my iPod, PDA, toaster work with Linux?
6 - All my friends, and my tech support is already on Windows!
To be honest, some of the above issues are valid, and others used to be, but they are not anymore. Here are some detailed answers to those questions. I am a seasoned Windows user, and so my experience will most probably be representative of that user-group.
1) As detailed in a related document (see link at the end of this page), yes, you will be able to install Ubuntu much much easily than you do with Windows. In my experience, I did not run into any software or hardware errors, and I did not even have to know what kind of PC I was running it on. I was able to install and use it on an Intel and AMD processor each with a modest 512MB or RAM. Windows would choke is it was run with that amount of Random Access Memory (RAM)
2) The learning curve is not steep, it took me less than a day about a day of use to figure out how to install applications and change settings, the usability is great. Actually, I must note that apart from some differences in menu locations and click-paths, most GUI based operating systems are now quite similar. May be I am just guilty that the Ubuntu Linux user-interface is so similar to that of Windows XP.
3) All software foe Ubuntu is free. Once you install Ubuntu, you can open the Synaptic package manager and install the pre-loaded applications as well as others that you may download with the same ease that you get on a recent Apple computer. You just have to look through the list and select what you want and click "Apply", it will install and one big difference with Windows is that Ubuntu Linux does not require you to restart it after installing software, not even System updates. You can even Windows applications using WINE (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wine). I was able to install and run Internet Explorer.
4) Granted that many pieces of hardware are made to run with Microsoft Windows, less on Apple, and even much less on Linux. But the list of supported hardware is increasing all the time. You can find out which hardware is supported on the www.ubuntu.com website, or from your hardware vendor.
5) I think the fact that there are many people running Windows is not a valid reason to stick with it. The only reason you may consider this to be valid is is you have a group license, or you want to use their software (which is piracy and will cost you morally and legally). With Ubuntu, you do not have to worry about paying for software.
