574 spam messages. That’s what you get when you feel a little under the water and haven’t been looking at your blog much. Fortunately, I have this nifty spam filter that only missed 4 spam comments out of 574.
What else is going on? I am in Hong Kong and trying to get ahead of all the pressing things I have to do for Cosima Inc, which accumulated during our extended stay in Berlin. It’s all the more pressing because the Chinese New Year celebrations start soon. That’s when roughly 1.3 billion people stop working, board crowded trains to their birth place, and celebrate with their families. In short… Christmas x 10. As my suppliers tell me, it’s also the time when quite a lot of workers decide that their last place of work pays not well enough, and they leave for greener pastures.
China’s economy is booming, and who wants to work in manufacturing when the service sector promises lighter work and better pay? What kills me is that Western media still thinks that China will take over the world by manufacturing everything cheaper, and start World War III. Here is the inside scoop: they are much too busy eating abalone, and carrying Chanel bags.
To wind down, I have been watching LA Ink. Please tell me why she wants to get a boob job. I don’t understand the world anymore.
At the risk of sounding like a total geek, I am counting open source software today. It’s software without restrictive copyrights whose source code is readily available, and therefore can be improved, adapted, or changed. Best of all, it can be used for free.
Most open source software is developed and improved in a collaborative effort. And once the core software is written, lots of people contribute so called add-ons or plug-ins that make the application highly customizable. For me as a user, these add-ons are the biggest advantage of open source compared to commercial software.
I am not a geek, far from it, and you don’t really need to be, to use open source applications. Some of them have rather spotty instructions, but most are very user friendly, come with documentation, and have user forums, where non-geeks like me can ask embarrassing questions without being laughed at.
At the moment I am using the following open source applications, and I would recommend every single one of them:
I use Thunderbird for writing emails and Firefox to surf the internet. There are hundreds of useful add-ons for both applications, that make using them a real joy. Just to give you an example, I installed a Firefox add-on called ColorZilla, which let’s me determine the RGB and Hex code of colors in web pages. If I come across colors that I like while surfing the web, I can determine their code and replicate them for my own blog or website. Well, I don’t really need that, you say, but there are hundreds of other add-ons, and the nice thing is that every user can install the ones that are useful to him. I also think that Firefox loads web pages much faster than Internet Explorer.
My blog uses WordPress and is hosted on a Linux server. I was so used to working with blogger, that I hesitated to use my own domain, because it wouldn’t allow me to use the new version of blogger. However, since I switched to WordPress, I haven’t regretted that I did. Most of WordPress’ advantages can only be seen behind the scenes, at the administrative level. For example, comment reading and reply is a much more convenient than in blogger. And again, there are many useful plugins that can be installed to customize the application.
For Cosima Inc’s web page, I use Joomla which is a bit like a blog application only more versatile in how pages are structured and which features can be chosen for a page.
I also installed FileZilla, which let’s me quickly and conveniently upload files to my webserver. Most of the music for my Musical Monday posts were uploaded to my server with FileZilla.
Today, I also installed Vanilla (don’t ask me why half of open source software names end with -illa), a forum software, on Cosima Inc’s server. I am going to use it as a private messageboard that only invited users can see, and I am hoping that it will make communication between me and the company of my partner much easier.
Seven applications, all open source and for free, on my non-geek notebook alone. I like all of them, and am thinking of adding more. There is this open source office suite that I have yet to check out…
I have unpacked a few boxes at my new site, so to speak. Notice the new theme? It is based on Red Train by Vlad Simovic, but I had to make quite a few changes. The good thing is that I learned a lot in the process: editing background graphics, changing a style sheet, and learning all the behind-the-scenes functions of WordPress. I would like to change a few more things, especially adding a few more widgets to the sidebar.
But enough of that for today. I am taking a break, to see what the rest of you have been up to.
Oh… don’t forget to update your bookmarks to:
Happy HNT!
Glad that you found the new Cosima Underwater :).
I intend to make it as nice, if not nicer, than the old blog, but it will take a while. I still need to find my bearings around WordPress, which is totally new to me, and also work on a new template. But all the essentials are already here, including the entire archive of my previous blog.
My next post will be the 300th. I hope that I will have unpacked a few more boxes until then.