W. Doug Bolden
on Linux & the Web
Linux, Applications, Webdesign, The Internet, Social Networking, and Open-Source.
Linux Apps of Choice
Going to rework this section...
Solutions for Linux Problems I Have Come Across
I'm not a computer wiz. I'm good at computers, and I'm tenacious, which helps to love Linux all that much more, but I would never be able to decompile a program to tweak a segfault issue. However, I am decent at experimentation and digging around and coming up with odd solutions now and again. This is mostly random style stuff, mind you, but some of it might help you from time to time.
Games for your (Linux) Box
Webdesign, Website Philosophy, and Tips
Twelve mostly non-technical tips to reduce the headache of starting a new website (based on my experience) (16 Dec 2009). Take these tips as you will, but here are 12 generally short ideas that can greatly reduce your headache upon starting a website. You won't find anything about formatting or proper CSS sheets, here, just stuff like "make sure you can check how often your website is used, because you will want to know".
Notes on Wyrmis.com history and Site Philosophy
The final return to first intentions with Wyrmis.net (4 Dec 2009). A look at what I wanted to do with my website from the beginning (i.e. link to blog posts as static webpages after the fact) and how I finally got around to doing it, something like 6.5 years later. Includes some history of this website, for those who might be, for whatever reason, curious.
What I did to my website, how, and why. aka breaking for a good cause... (9 Dec 2009). About how initially simple solutions can lead to big headaches down the road.
New website design (sort of) and the trip to Tuscaloosa to see Neil Gaiman (20 Feb 2010). This past Thursday, Sarah and I went down to Tuscaloosa to visit the University of Alabama campus (especially Gorgas Library) and to attend an event featuring one of my favorite authors: Neil Gaiman. I talk a little bit about that event and some about changing the layout of my site to better work with mobile devices and so forth.
Social Media and the Internet as a Social Phenomenon
Why I Have Come to Dislike Facebook
7 Reasons I Hate Twitter, Despite Kind of Liking It (13 May 2009). One of the last posts from the old blog format (and the last full, non-misc post), and one of my favorites. Whats more, nearly every single thing is still true as of the time I link it here).
Is the Internet Making Us Dumber? (26 May 2009).
Double strength Earl Grey double steeped, with extra sugar... (29 Jul 2009). Something of a two-fer article, in which I complain about the Amazon Marketplace and how the shipping comes about, as well as talking about FUD and the spreading of it across the net...and a woman who was sued becuase she tweeted about mold in her apartment.
Since more and more of my friends are obsessed with Facebook Quizzes, please read... (15 Sep 2009). I think the rules have changed since I made this post, but I just wanted to keep it up since it's the kind of thing that shows up on Facebook at least once a year.
Twitter Parody That Might Work: Just Five Words Or Less (28 Sep 2009). I started out making fun of Twitter and its future, but honestly, I think I can make this work.
Four basic tips to make Facebook a tad more sane in these "trying" times (26 Oct 2009). A lot of my friends went angry after the switch to "Live Feed" on Facebook. I came up with tips on how to overcome some of the features. I was mostly ignored, but there you go.
What we blog, a quick look at two and two half axes of interest (aka from 11nr to 77uw)(18 Dec 2009). I come up with a way to roughly measure what we blog about.
9 Things that Web 2.0.09 Has Taught Me (2 Jan 2010). Web2.0 proves one thing, no matter how much the tools change, the tools that use them stay the same.
The night of many posts, dealing with the mood I am in, facing Doug's Third Rule about Blogging, and coming back on Monday (16 Jan 2010). In the middle, I talk about three related "rules of Blogging" as seen by me. Namely, you can care about the blog's input or output, but the two things are surprisingly exclusive.
From zero to five stars in Facebook, applying common sense Information science to a sluggish social networking giant (17 Feb 2010). Facebook is massive. Millions of people use it. So many millions that it is on it's way to approaching the "b" word. We are talking about a country sized population. And, well, really it is almost unusable...let me tell how it is, and why it is, and one way to fix it.
The Solitude Project (March 24 through June 24, 2010) (23 Mar 2010). I have begun to wonder the power of solitude in our day and age. However, rather than some project where you go completely without contact, or completely without social sites, or some other extremes, the plan is to merely redirect some of the energy spent on social connections back into self-development, quietude, and peace. To perform this miracle of the modern age, I will use a simple Quadrant system. The time spent upon secondary contact (meaning all contact not fully developed or fulfilling) will be fourthed. The new free time will have new direction.
My End-of-Semester Resolution - Fewer, or No, Brain Droppings (7 May 2010). Brain Droppings, our short littly pithy quoted adages and false intellectualisms that run the gyre of Facebook and Twitter, where human discourse becomes less about communicating and more about being, however briefly, recognized, where the greatest compliment is not merely imitation, but replication. How about I stop contributing to the mess?
Eight and a Half Reasons Why Tomorrow Will See the End of My Facebook Account (11 May 2010). Tomorrow, I will delete my Facebook profile that I have increasingly used as an online persona for, man, I don't know. Awhile? The reasons are varied (partially, I just need to take a break) and I wanted to lay them all out since a few them might be eye opening.
My greatly shrinking online footprint, mixtape for my brother, and 3000+ visits to DoaB (12 May 2010). Over the past few weeks, I have greatly changed my online presence to just a couple of core sites. I'm starting to twitch. In other news, making a mix-tape for my brother, Danny, and my website has reached 3000+ visits since December.
Are Social Networking Experts Going to Eat the Internet? (17 May 2010). As I see more and more blogs about blogs, more and more tweets about tweet, and more and more social network experts being self-proclaimed on social-network sites: I can't help but ask, will meta-net eat the Internet?
10 Things We Do on the Internet Even though We Know They Waste Our Time (25 May 2010). I was sitting around and thinking about this today, the way that Internet, for all its good, does become a giant time sink for most of us. I figured it would be fun to chronicle just some of the ways we waste time, many of us daily, using it.
Lazy Days, Policies and Procedures, Months without Facebook, Inception, etc (29 Jul 2010).
A twofer! The greatest spam subject-line enticement ever? and Speaking of evil Spam, the worst "referer Spam" I have seen (both published 17 May 2009)
What if spam (e-mail) was more like actual Spam... (8 Dec 2009). A humorously intended "top 10" list asking what if the e-mail plague was more like the not-quite-foodstuffs.
The NYTimes on why innocent e-mails can lead to trouble (20 Aug 2010).
Me Versus the Net (By the way, the Net wins!)
For some reason, I like to go on rants about the aspects of the Internet for time to time. I decided to go ahead and start collecting them, here.
"I do not think it means what you think it means"
Snappy Answers to Message Board Questions
Notes to Spammers Trying to Trick me
True stories: The internet is a bad, bad place; no water; et cetera (23 May 2009). Only the first part is about the Internet, but it's one of those "absolutely amazing" stories.
And here is an MP3 file of how Linus Torvalds pronounces it which I got from this site. I am not trying to be snarky, I just thought it was neat.
The flavor of linux (i.e. distro) that I use is Kubuntu. Its a good, stable distro in that its small enough to not be overwhelming, allows for a good number of apps, has excellent support communities and excellent release schedules. It might not be the best for you, but I recommend trying it out.
The Best Things in Life Are Free
"Linux" Edition
If you want to try out any of several free (yes, really free, not like some of that "freeware" that you have to pay to use succesfully) distros of Linux, then head over to LinuxISO.org. The choices can be overwhelming, but try out a few, it won't cost you a dime.
Linux Runs This Website
This website, I wanted to point out, runs on Linux. I used Quantu Plus to do the initial edits, and now primarily use vim to do the insertion of text. I use Mozilla Firefox to preview it (apologies to MS-IE people, but I do try and get to work well on both). Apache is the webserver I use and what few graphics I have tend to be edited by the Gimp.
For those wishing to get in touch, you can contact me in a number of ways
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
If you use it for the purposes above, then a quick line to let me know would be appreciated, but I would not say required. I am willing to grant exceptions (non-share alike, for-commercial) to this overarching clause if you contact me and work it out prior to creating the derivative work. You may quote me as much as you want, and link to me as much as you want, I only ask that you do so "morally", however you take that term. This license only applies to original works by William Douglas Bolden (i.e. me) and only to works posted to this website. All quoted and referenced works, be they movies or books or other websites or whatever, are subject to their original license or copyright and are the property of their owners. I have made a strong effort to properly attribute them, so please respect me and them by doing the same.
The longer, fuller version of this text can be found on my FAQ: "Can I Use Something I Found on the Site?".
"The hidden is greater than the seen."
