Week in Review - 2010-03
Its been a good week. I got my Virgin Mobile Broadband Prepaid 3G modem working, and learnt a lot in the process, and actually contributed to the GNOME project: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=607731
As part of this, I installed Pidgin so I could join the IRC channel and talk to developers, but I haven't yet figured out how to view the history for a channel - so I can see what happened while I was offline...
It does surprise me though, that the database for mobile broadband providers is specific to the window manager (GNOME) instead of being a system level thing. I'm sure there are good reasons, and it probably doesn't matter, but what do the KDE (and others) users do? Define it all over again?
Worse than that though is that Virgin don't seem to make the APN easily available. I found it by searching the web, and finding it in forums, but why isn't it in the FAQ on a Virgin site?
I didn't anticipate how much I'd enjoy having access to the internet while training it back and forth from work (1hr train ride) but I'm loving it. I'm pretty sure the documentation that came with the modem says to keep it at least 15cm away from the body, so its attached via the provided usb cable, and sits in my bag on the floor a good distance away.
I've taken to using VLC Media Player as my favourite media player - it lets me use a minimal interface (video only, no controls displayed) to minimise real estate and has an 'always on top' option. This means I can put the video in a corner of the screen and program away - it works well.
I've also been playing with Wordpress:
Also, I've read up a bit on Joomla. I haven't installed it yet, but I've been meaning to look into CMS alternatives to Wordpress for a while. It was frustrating understanding exactly what it could do until a friend pointed me to this resource : http://www.cmsmatrix.org/matrix/cms-matrix/joomla
As part of this, I installed Pidgin so I could join the IRC channel and talk to developers, but I haven't yet figured out how to view the history for a channel - so I can see what happened while I was offline...
It does surprise me though, that the database for mobile broadband providers is specific to the window manager (GNOME) instead of being a system level thing. I'm sure there are good reasons, and it probably doesn't matter, but what do the KDE (and others) users do? Define it all over again?
Worse than that though is that Virgin don't seem to make the APN easily available. I found it by searching the web, and finding it in forums, but why isn't it in the FAQ on a Virgin site?
I didn't anticipate how much I'd enjoy having access to the internet while training it back and forth from work (1hr train ride) but I'm loving it. I'm pretty sure the documentation that came with the modem says to keep it at least 15cm away from the body, so its attached via the provided usb cable, and sits in my bag on the floor a good distance away.
I've taken to using VLC Media Player as my favourite media player - it lets me use a minimal interface (video only, no controls displayed) to minimise real estate and has an 'always on top' option. This means I can put the video in a corner of the screen and program away - it works well.
I've also been playing with Wordpress:
- customising the Thesis theme,
- using a static page for the home page,
- learning that I can turn commenting off for individual pages/posts
- specifying excerpts so the teasers are better
Also, I've read up a bit on Joomla. I haven't installed it yet, but I've been meaning to look into CMS alternatives to Wordpress for a while. It was frustrating understanding exactly what it could do until a friend pointed me to this resource : http://www.cmsmatrix.org/matrix/cms-matrix/joomla