Archive for February, 2005

How I got this really bad sunburn…

Monday, February 28th, 2005

I spent part of Saturday this past weekend as scorekeeper for team handball at a local Special Olympics competition. It was a lot of fun. And it reminded me that I should do more volunteer work (not only because it’s a good thing, but also because I enjoy it). My wife talked me into it [...]

Thanks for the five bucks…

Monday, February 28th, 2005

Thanks to the anonymous donor who kicked five bucks my way in support of the wheatblog app project. If half the people who use my stuff were as generous, it would offset my yearly hosting costs and provide a little encouragement.

Literate spammers?

Monday, February 21st, 2005

Now I know where my fellow English majors who didn\’t make the switch to IT careers wound up: they\’re writing spam copy for discount software houses. I got a spam today with this bit of text at the bottom to make it look like a legit email:
1ps4D6u49Rro3Ze55RdI was sub-divisional police officer of the town, and [...]

Gmail invites…

Monday, February 21st, 2005

If any of you regulars are interested in trying out Gmail (Google’s web-based email app), I have 49 invites left. Drop me an email or post a comment along with your email here and I’ll send ‘em out. I figure everyone has one by now, but maybe I missed someone. I don’t use gmail as [...]

Richard Stallman v. Bill Gates

Wednesday, February 16th, 2005

Free Software Foundation guru Richard Stallman publishes a fine critique of Bill Gates’ recent comments about open source development and uses Gates’ own words against him. Nice.

Please help save TRIO programs from Bush’s Cuts

Wednesday, February 16th, 2005

Many of you know that I used to work as technology coordinator for Pre-College Programs at the University of Arkansas. President Bush’s new budget proposal would eliminate those programs entirely: not just at my alma mater, but at every college in the US. These programs work. They help student go to college who would otherwise [...]

Here’s what I should have blogged on Inauguration Day.

Monday, February 14th, 2005

A nice commentary from shepcat (a new on my reading list, for sure).

CSS tips from evolt…

Monday, February 14th, 2005

I hadn’t heard anything from evolt.org in a while. But on del.icio.us I found this article on CSS tricks. Check out the discussion as well, which contains some revisions and better options. CSS guru Tantek has written a critique that’s worth reading.

Open Source .NET tools…

Sunday, February 13th, 2005

Just downloaded SharpDevelop, an open source IDE with the look and feel of Visual Studio. Also grabbed Nant, a build tool for .NET similar to Ant for Java. I’ll give a full review after I’ve had time to try them out.

Tricking out jEdit

Saturday, February 12th, 2005

It’s amazing how much time you can spend getting your favorite editor set up correctly. jEdit runs very nicely right out of the box, but there are tons plugins and other niceties that make it something close to a full-blown IDE. The best of these is ProjectViewer, which helps you organize your work (no matter [...]

personal weblog of James “Wheatbread” Martin