Dual booting Vista and Linux

How to dual-boot Vista with Linux (Vista installed first)?
i used step by step guide at http://apacmag.com/ to do it but had to delete Linux Ubuntu 9.04 in this case, for i couldn’t get it work o a higher resolution than 800X600.

Here are the steps to do it, i mean dual booting Vista and Linux.
http://apcmag.com/how_to_dualboot_vista_with_linux_vista_installed_first.htm?page=2

Intense Debate vs ordinary wordpress comments

Intense debate is a new phenomenon and Automattic is proud of it as it features Intense Debate on its front page along with other useful and wonderful services.

But Intense Debate takes its time to load and thus increase the overall loading time of the page.

i trued Intense Debate and am still using it at my WordPress installations and at my Blogger blog.

Intense Debate is wonderful in other respects but the default fonts are small in size, yes it does save space but these are too compact and overall commenting is clouded, increase the font and line spacing a but might help.

I am used to WordPress and Blogger usual commenting systems and they do look good in their default font sizes.

Another thing is this load time increase, the intense debate commenting system or say setup increases the load time of the page overall and the spacing meant for intense debate loads after a while after rest of the page has loaded itself.

In Blogger situation worsens because it takes far more time than in WordPress installations, but overall it is a great tool and a revolution in commenting world, and i love it. 🙂

The Da Vinci Machine Project

A multi-language renaissance for the Java Virtual Machine architecture

Mission

We are extending the JVM with first-class architectural support for languages other than Java, especially dynamic languages. This project will prototype a number of extensions to the JVM, so that it can run non-Java languages efficiently, with a performance level comparable to that of Java itself.

Our emphasis is on completing the existing bytecode and execution architecture with general purpose extensions, as opposed to a new feature for just one language, or adjoining an unrelated new execution model.

We want the new languages to co-exist gracefully with Java in the JVM, and to benefit (like Java) from its powerful and mature technologies.

We are looking to remove “pain points” already observed by implementors of successful or influential languages, as opposed to attempting more speculative work on unproven features or niche languages.

Major sub-projects include dynamic invocation and extensions to class loading.  There is a large number of more speculative, lower-priority sub-projects. These are included in hopes that someone in the community will become excited with us at the prospects of a more dynamic JVM, to the point of sharing in its creation.

bbPress 1.0.1 released

This bug fix release has been made available for download to address a number of issues that have been raised after the release of bbPress 1.0 including a security issue where multiple users could be registered with the same email address.

This is a recommended update for all users of bbPress 1.0. These issues do not affect users of bbPress 0.9.

What does bbPress offer:
From the first post at bbPress blog:
http://bbpress.org/blog/

Fast and Light: nothing you don’t need.
Built in spam protection by Akismet.
Really simple interface: we want people using our software to forget that they’re using it.
Complete integration with WordPress.
Both the look and the functionality are highly customizable.
RSS feeds for everything.

Simple WordPress Themes

I am a big fan of simple themes, so i keep looking for simpler themes.
And i keep a copy of these at my local drive, what if the designer thinks of pulling the theme off the web, silly indeed;)

One of the recent themes i found is a custom theme designed by Noel Jackson of Automattic for his personal weblog at http://jcksn.com/
here is a screenshot of his about page:

Another of a post:

There are other themes too that i liked very much.

Those are Cleanr by Chandra Maharzan, Thematic by Ian Stewart and Hybrid by Justin Tadlock

Cleanr is a fine theme with medium size fonts, it is a sensible design. The theme is a two column one with everything so clear and clean it is a great design. Cleanr is available for download at http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/cleanr.

Demos are available at author’s site Cleanr demo and at http://wordpress.org at http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/cleanr.

Thematic has been designed by Ian Stewart of  http://themeshaper.com/, It’s description at wordpress.org goes as follows:

The ultimate in SEO-ready themes, Thematic is a highly extensible, WordPress Theme Framework featuring 13 widget-ready areas, drop-down menus, grid-based layout samples, plugin integration, shortcodes for your footer, & a whole lot more. Perfect for any blog and the starting point for theme development.

Thematic is available for download at http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/thematic.

Demos are available at author’s site http://themeshaper.com/ and at wordpress.org at http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/thematic

Then comes the Hybrid with beautiful design and beautiful fonts of appropriate size too, i simple love this theme it is simple yet beautiful and it’s description at wordpress.org goes as follows:

A user-friendly, search-engine optimized theme framework, featuring 18 custom page templates and multiple widget-ready areas, allowing you to create any type of site you want.

The Hybrid is available for download at http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/hybrid

All these themes are simple yet beautiful and subtle

Twitter Marketing! How Dumb!

Well I have been on twitter.com, and I still do the twitter thing.
To me it’s a wonderful thing to happen small bit size blogging, I would call it “Bit blogging” or “Nibble blogging”.
Truly a bird’s twitter! how good it sounds, it’s totally a wonderful phenomenon, and I it like very much.

But what I don’t like is people trying to milk twitter too, there are companies out there that offer links to post in Tweets, the Twitter updates, that’s what they call it. 🙂

These links are advertisements, holy crap!! ads even on 140 char posts?
Yeah it is happening, leave alone those who are marketing twitter, I mean marketing on twitter.
Just join twitter and you have followers selling money principles and ideas, they have their money formulas ready for you.
It makes me feel uncomfortable.
I mean Twitter guys are so patient and may even be incurring losses but they haven’t put up advertisements on yet. Don’t know how they are compensating their costs, hosting etc. (they raise funding each year from VCs)
This twitter thing has grown so big, yet twitter folks have kept a mum on whether they would do active advertising on twitter.

And then there are those bots etc on twitter too!

It’s a shame, I mean why can’t you leave a free small, cheerful service like twitter alone?

Ads by google at last…

Today I had the “honor” of viewing the web advertisements by Google on my blog at https://blockport.wordpress.com.
Yeah I am talking about this very blog. I searched my blog through Google and the page I visited had a simple half – banner ad on it but the custom ad matched the blog theme very well and it didn’t seem odd as ads on other websites does.
Wordpress does deploy Google ads on public blogs at http://wordpress.com to cover their costs, but they do it occasionally.

It is the first time I have ever seen an ad on a http://wordpress.com subdomain.

Best browser?

We had a post regarding desktop browsers. Firefox does rule the desktop world but for mobile devices Opera Mini is the king.

I use a set of  browsers for desktop browsing primary among them are Mozilla’s Firefox, Google’s Chrome and Opera desktop but what I really love and is also my favorite browser overall, the good old Opera Mini Basic.

It is world’s smallest browser at 57 kB but one of the fastest and most wonderful little being.

Best Web Browser?

In times when we have so much software available, it becomes difficult to decide for the novice to select the appropriate pack for him. With so many web browsers aroud, it does become quite a job, but not for the knowledgeable ones, only for the novices like me.

We have Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Mozilla’s Firefox, Opera, Apple’s Safari, Google’s Chrome, Netscape Navigator, Flock and many more.

Some of these browsers are simply built, some have good looks, some with efficient and clever programming.

So which one is the best for use?

Well I particularly don’t go in for a particular/ specific browser, instead what I do is keep a set of browsers, these web browsers have their pros and cons.

Take for example Microsoft’s IE, the tabbed browser has been introduced but it is no match for other tabbed browsers, the tabs take time to open and the usual default click sounds are annoying.  But the browser does support latest web technologies.

I don’t know why such a good browser as firefox has less share than the usual IE, perhaps because IE is inbuilt in windows and novices like me 😉 don’t want to risk and install a third party software maybe? 🙂

Here is what I read wriiten on a blog by Walter S. Mossberg:

“The war of the web browsers has taken another turn with the release of a major new version of Mozilla Firefox, the No. 2 browser in market share, but No. 1 in the hearts of many of the most knowledgeable computer users.”

And it is true for those who know bits about browsing, browsers and Firefox 🙂

Opera is a good browser except the GUI isn’t very well built, too many details and shortcuts are not the conventional ones but its own so if a person is used to shortcuts might end up doing something other than what he would have intended. But it isn’t that bad only some shortcuts are different most are same as in other browsers.

Besides it has widgets that are a plus point and has torrent support, which might be available only using some addons in other browsers.

DePo Masthead Theme for wordpress.com

I like DePo Masthead theme by Derek Powazek very much.

The design is simple yet so well built, helped by Noel Jackson from Automattic

As his contribution is acknowledged by Derek Powazek himself, “Special thanks to the supremely talented Noel Jackson for turning my PSDs into reality”.

The DePo Masthead theme isn’t available for WordPress installs but you can have it from:

http://svn.automattic.com/wpcom-themes/depo-masthead/

this is how Derek Powazek describe his theme which has been liked by a lot of wordpress bloggers.