It’s been a while since I gave the old blog some love, so when I heard WordPress 2.5 had been released yesterday I thought it would be the perfect opportunity. The upgrade went very well, and I have to say I’m impressed with the new admin interface. Very pretty!
I didn’t stop there either, I changed the theme as well. ‘Steady on there Jackie, before you know it you’ll actually post things too!’ said my inner voice(s). You never know, stranger things have happened. :) If you do happen to stop by, I am still playing a little with the theme, so if something looks very broken, it won’t be for long.
Just so that this post isn’t completely without value, I’ll leave you with a video of the best dog in the world, brought to my attention by a friend of mine on last.fm (thanks Andre!)
Firefox Personas is a Firefox addon that gives you a nice themed look for your browser. Why use Personas when I can just install a theme? For one, all this does is give you some nice background images, as opposed to a complete overhaul with new buttons etc. It’s also a lot easier to switch between looks - they’re all accessible right from the plugin menu (which you access via the little fox face at the lower left corner of Firefox) so no need to keep going back to the Mozilla site for a new theme.
Having been pretty inactive blogging wise for some time, I feel the break has done me good. Why? Because what was beginning to feel like a chore, I now have a renewed sense of enthusiasm for. I even have a new project in the works (more on that soon), one that I’m pretty confident I can carry off. I’m even doing some proper planning and everything! Christmas is just around the corner though so it likely won’t launch until the new year, but stay tuned for details. I’ll announce it here as soon as it’s up and running.
As for this place, it will remain my personal blog and expect to see more frequent updates here too. I have my blogging mojo back it seems.
And now I’m off to recover from the shock of having made a blog post!
Every now and again whilst trawling my linux feeds, I come across the question ‘Should there be a linux distro for women?’
What a ridiculous question. I can’t imagine why anyone would want or need this, and as a woman myself I find the concept more than a little patronising. Can women not use the regular distros? Of course we can! I’m living proof of that. I’m no linux guru by any means, but I manage perfectly well, just as my male counterparts do. The last thing I would want is to be told by some guy ‘Here you are, here’s a dumbed down version, just for you!’. I imagine they’d want to put in a pink GUI to go along with the stereotypes too.
While we’re at it, why not propose a distro for gays and lesbians, or blacks, or….you get the idea. I mean hey, these ‘minorities’ obviously aren’t capable of using anything the rest of the tech world is.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for helping people where it’s needed, but why must we segregate in this way? I’ve heard the argument that women find linux an intimidating field to get into. I sympathise with that to a point, but generally that’s crap. I’ve had no problems finding help and information. There may be the odd occasion where women feel intimidated, but this isn’t limited to linux and certainly doesn’t justify this idea. Women are under represented in the linux world (as they are generally in technology), but stupid proposals like this honestly don’t help. A support group for women I can understand, this I can’t. I mean you don’t walk into a store and ask for a TV for women do you?
Seriously, get a grip people!
Now I’m off to play with my new Ubuntu installation under VMware Fusion (which incidentally didn’t have to be coloured pink for me to use).
I’ve been into lifestreaming for a while now, using great services such as iStalkr and Profilactic. iStalkr is great because it saves your data over time, but I’ve long wanted a self hosted solution - not to keep track of data but just a simple visual of my online activities. There doesn’t seem to be an awful lot of offerings in this field, probably because lifestreaming is still seen as a relatively new concept (to the general populace at least).
I spotted a post over on the Lifestream Blog which mentioned Simple Pie a while ago. Some people have been doing interesting things using Simple Pie as the backend to a personal lifestream, so I thought I’d do the same. However, my php skills are pretty much non-existent, so I struggled to really do anything with it. That was, until Steffen came to the rescue!
The above is a screenshot of my brand new lifestream using Steffen’s LifePie app. You can see my lifestream here. It’s still very much a work in progress, and it breaks on smaller screens at the moment, but it’s a workable model and I’m very impressed with it, it’s exactly what I’ve been looking for! Steffen is planning to release LifePie, so if you’re interested take a look at the post linked to above.
I will be adding to it over time, but you can already keep an eye on most things I do online via my lifestream. There is also a feed for the whole thing, I’ve used Afeeda to put that together - a great free service that allows you to mix up your own feeds from different sources.
Jackie on 
Jackie on 
Feeds
