RasterWeb!

I have to sort of backup Dave when he mentions FutureMe (with no link?) and Mail to the Future. Sort of. First of all, why not link to FutureMe? Don’t we link to the competition? Was it an oversight? Second, while Mail to the Future did come out many years ago, I see one distinct difference between the two. FutureMe has a social software-like feature, in it’s public entries. This simple little feature, which makes your email to your future self public for all to read, is the hook. It’s the bing! that Mail to the Future missed. The fact that people will write something wacky or insightful, or stupid for others to see, makes this a site to see.

I seem to remember that Mail to the Future might have had some API‘s behind it as well, which would allow you to do some neat stuff. It doesn’t look like FutureMe has that, but most people won’t mind, they just want to try it out and read other people’s emails…

I should mention once again that none of this stuff appears as technically hard to the average geekoid, I mean, there’s some dynamic pages, they hit a database, and there’s a cron job of some sort, right? These are the kind of applications you could build in a day or two, the beauty of it is in the details, and in actually doing it. The details require some clever thinking which some people don’t really possess. That’s not to say they aren’t smart. Smart and clever are two different things… I used to know this guitarist who could play almost any song he heard, and while technically proficient knowing all the notes and chords, he lacked the creativity to write a really good song. Creativity? Cleverness? Perhaps these are some of the X’s Mark was looking for…

Those familiar with The Road to Linux will know that we’ve dabbled with Linux for many years, and tend to use it a lot in the server room, and if “Mac OS NeXT” hadn’t come around to rescue Apple from the pre-X era, I’d probably be using Linux on the desktop right now. (Anything but Windows!)

That’s changed a bit, and I am now using Linux on the desktop, as time allows. I’ve finally gotten hardware capable of running as a desktop machine with a real live GUI and everything. It’s no speed demon, but it seems to handle Fedora Core 1 ok. As of yet, I have not really stressed the system, I’ve mainly just been installing and configuring old favorites like Firefox, Thunderbird and jEdit (which required Java as well.)

The Road to Linux continues! (And I might even update it one of these days…)

Antiword is a utility to read Microsoft Word files and convert them to plain text, PostScript®, or DocBook files… The DocBook stuff is still experimental, but the plain text seems to work quite well for me, and I’ve successfully turned Word files into PostScript® files, and then turned those into PDF filess using ps2pdf. You could go one step further than the PS to PDF Converter site and build an online converter to turn Word Files into PDF files, or, well… whatever else you can dream up.

(See also: antiexcel)

I’ve been using SQLite this week, which prompted me to look up when I last mentioned it. It appears that in December 2002 I said this about SQLite:

Could you take Movable Type (or your CMS of choice) and make it use SQLite instead of MySQL?

Hmmm, I know they added SQLite support to Movable Type at some point, let’s see, it was February 2003, about two months after I mentioned it.

You’re welcome.

(Ok, to be fair, Perl’s DBI probably made it very easy to do…)

I had gotten a letter from my cable company, who is also my ISP. It stated that back in September 2003 they offered me a trial period of increased connectivity. Faster! Faster! or something like that… I declined saying my current connection speed was fine.

So the letter states that the trial period is over, and I can choose a Faster! speed, or if I do nothing, I can keep my current speed for just $9.99 extra per month. First of all, I didn’t want this trial thingy, second of all, I don’t want to pay more… So I call the phone number they supply.

I must say the woman on the phone was quite nice, and answered my questions. I explained that I never asked for an increase in connection speed, and was told that “technology changes” and all users got upgraded to the new speed. the old speed/price is no longer available.

Me: “So basically I’m being held hostage and have to pay more now?”

Yes

Me: “Will this happen every year? Will the price increase by $9.99 next year as well?”

I don’t think it will.

After determining I don’t have many choices, she tells me the new billing will take effect April 1st.

Me: “Wow, that’s appropriate. April 1st, that’s April Fool’s Day. I guess the joke is on me.”

(No comment…)

She never got upset in anyway (what a pro!) and then asked me if she could help with anything else, and I told her to add my name to the list of customers complaining about this. She then said she would fill out a complaint form with my name on it.

Thanks for the excellent service Charter!