Twitter has become my new blog

The last few weeks I’ve been more inclined to micro-blog on Twitter than to sit down and write well thought-out pieces on here. (Oh, the life of a college student at the end of a semester.)

Hence the present paucity of postings.

But I am saying a lot of interesting things on Twitter. So follow me there (@snay2) if you don’t already.

And hopefully if (when) I make it through the madness I’ll start writing interesting (or maybe just useless) stuff here again.

Google alternatives, Wubi, and successful blogging

• Living without Google – The Alternatives – An interesting article for those wanting to get as far away from Google as possible (myself not included, of course).
• Wubi: the Windows installer for Ubuntu – Wubi installs a disk image of Ubuntu to your Windows partition and then lets you boot into Ubuntu as if you had done a full partitioned install.
• ‘What’s Wrong With My Blog?’ – Some great tips about how to write good posts and increase your readership.

Web nostalgia, Microsoft’s Linux deals, and a few gadgets

Happy Friday the 13th! Here are some links for today:

• This Is What The Web Looked Like In 1994 A nostalgic look at the web 13 years ago. Somewhat depressing, altogether quite laughable. Now you can use browser emulators from that period to view current websites. A good study for those designing websites intended to degrade nicely in non-standard browsers. By the way, Geek with Laptop is a pretty slick blog; I just found it yesterday.
• The New Linux Distro – Are the Linux companies who have made “patent deals” with Microsoft really just letting Microsoft make money off Linux? Who is really benefiting here, Linux companies, the Linux community, or Redmond? A good quote about the importance of the community:
  

  These companies forgot one thing…the power is with the consumer. The power is in the community. Ubuntu realizes that…they’ve embraced the community and look what’s happened! The community holds the power to make or break…the power of spoken word cannot be underestimated.

• Mean Spirited Comments and Blogging – Good exposition on what to do when you run across nasty comments, as I did on Trolls.
• Running a Windows Partition in VMware – For Linux hackers who would rather not leave their comfortable environment to use Windows (and yes, the need does arise at times, sadly), here are directions on how to mount an existing Windows partition and run it in a VMware virtual machine.
• Call feature on Google Maps – Now Google will let you call any business number listed on Google Maps from your phone, without calling them directly. Google pays long-distance charges.
• Controlling Jobs in Linux – Great tutorial on job management from the Linux console

New Blogger features

Just as I leave Blogger in favor of WordPress, they roll out some new features:

• FeedBurner integration Now Blogger users can integrate FeedBurner features into their default feeds. (Read more on The Blog Herald.)
• Cool new search widget Blogger users can install a search plugin that allows visitors to search not just the content of the blog itself, but also everything the blog links to.

Alas. But I still like WordPress better.

Global Constant

So this is the new blog. I chose the title because it’s sort of the opposite of Instance Variable, for you programmers who understand that terminology. (Read this post for why I chose the name in the first place.)

So here are my tech-related posts. I’ve put feeds on both sites so you can keep track of everything from one place if you’d like.

Enjoy!