I believe that the more choice in Linux distros, the better! It’s good to have one for each purpose and the following website shows why: the best linux distro

This was one of the best Christmas celebrations either in spite of or because it was so simple. I got some really great gifts including:

• Final Fantasy 6: Grand Finale - this CD has some AWESOME symphonic recordings of the best songs of FF6
• Fantastic Plastic Machine: Les Plus - a great remix CD of that funky Japanese DJ, FPM. I’m sure you’ve heard him in commercials and movies and didn’t even know it. For example, one of his songs from this CD was in the second Austin Powers movie.
• Linux Shell Scripting with Bash - to help me continue honing my programming skills
• A great book on creating surreal artwork with Photoshop
• Hollywood Shuffle - a great movie about Blaxsploitation films
• 1776 - a book about the American Revolution
• some other stuff that was ordered, but didn’t arrive on time

But my favorite part was giving my presents to my family members. I made a calendar for my mom and her brothers with old pictures from their childhood since their mother died this year. I don’t know how my uncle in Miami reacted, but my uncle who was with us in Tampa was near tears. I’m glad I was able to make them emotional in a good way as they remembered simpler times. I think that’s one of the reasons God gave me the talent of photography and photo editing. Oh, and I gave my cousin a blog for Christmas as one of her presents. She loves to write and now she can write for the world. She has some great poetry up. You can check out her site here.

Went to Disney a few days ago with my family and found out that Disney is not quite the innocent little park it once was. I never quite felt the same about the park after 11 Sept 2001 when they began checking bags, but this time it was even more invasive. In order to enter the park I had to insert my ticket and then be digitally fingerprinted. Why did I have to be fingerprinted? To tie the ticket to me. In addition to the fact that it had my name printed on it, it now had my fingerprints attached to it. Now, I can’t really think of too many nefarious things Disney can do with my prints, but it was just really weird. Are that many people having their tickets stolen?

In all the magazines and web articles I’ve been reading, there has been a call to arms in the Linux camp. Microsoft is going to be innovative, for once, and we’re going to take advantage of it. There will be significant interface changes for Vista and MS Office 12. According to Linux Format Magazine issue 73, there will be major changes to the way Office looks. Why does all of this matter? Well, one of the complaints leveled against Linux time and again is, “it may be simple, but I already know how everything works in Windows. Why switch and waste time relearning it?” It’s the whole gist of Microsoft’s campaign that it costs more to switch to Linux than remain with MS. It’s not cost as Linux is free as in beer and freedom, but because we have to retrain the workforce, they claim. So, the logic amongst Linux enthusiasts goes, if MS is going to overhaul things, why not give us a shot? I must say this viewpoint appears to have some merit.

1. In this post, wget had created a directory structure, foiling my plans to do the md5sum check automatically. The correct way to do what I wanted to do was use the option -nd for no directories. If I had typed

wget -nd address

it would have just saved to my current directory and the code would have worked perfectly. It would have also worked the roundabout way that I showed.

2. If you like Neal Stephenson’s style of writing then you MUST read Catch-22! Catch-22 is the literary father of his style of writing so be sure to check it out! I just finished the book a couple of days ago and I loved it! It was a little confusing at first, but then I couldn’t put it down.

I’m really busy, so check these out, they are awesome. It’s a guy who synced up his Christmas lights to music. Saw it on CNN and googled to find it. Sorry it’s in evil Windows Media Video…

http://members.cox.net/transam57/lights.wmv http://www.msftlabrat.com/funstuff/jingle.wmv

Reading a post from Miss Izzy is like watching a Simpsons episode. The beginning has nothing to do with the end, but serves only to set up the source of conflict. While reading Sunday Digression, she moved to a topic I feel pretty strongly about, the value of art in culture. She writes:

If you think about it, nearly all the most famous modern fiction work that is set in a world after a sort of semi-apocalypse has the burning of books and the confiscation of cultural capital as the fundemental conflict between the state and the people. 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Vertigo’s V for Vendetta, all of it have books being burned and the media under tight scrutiny. You’re kidding yourself if you think Art isn’t important and that I’m nothing but a cultural elitist.

Richard Pryor died yesterday of a heart attack. His comedy set the stage for a whole slew of comedians like Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock who told jokes about the differences between whites and blacks. Although many chastised he and his disciples for their use of profanity and the fact that their jokes hindered racial progress, I feel that, by pointing out our differences and exagerating them, they helped us to realize the frivolity of racism. As a quote from a GRITS track points out, “both whites and blacks who are most interested in bringing about racial equality shy off certain facts that deserve recognition. There are cultural differences, a truth that not only supports integration, but will help bring about honest equality. This is, after all, the ultimate goal of integration.” We shouldn’t ignore our differences or hate each other because of them. We should just realize that we are different and there’s not one thing wrong about it.

For a while I kept wondering what the heck was going on in Iraq. Why were the Shi’ites and Sunni killing each other? Aren’t they both Muslim? What barbaric behaviour to kill your own compatriots, not because they are a different religion, but just a different sect! But then, one night as I lay awake in bed, I thought of Europe in the 14-1800s. Dozens of wars were fought between different countries in Europe because one side was Protestant and one side was Catholic. Heck, the British suffered through a few civil wars over different sects of Christianity. So, I guess it’s not so strange to see them fighting this way.

My wife asked me a poignant question a couple of weeks ago, “If Linux is SOOO awesome, why don’t you stop using Windows?” I told her that I couldn’t play civ4. “I thought you said it was ready for use and equal to Windows,” she continued. And I realized, there are probably some others who prosthelyze about how awesome Linux is. While I think Linux is amazing, and can do some great things which are hard or impossible to do in Windows, it is not for everyone.