johnmccollum.co.uk

I was half expecting this post to detail the difficulties I was experiencing getting my printer and tablet to work in Ubuntu, having heard that the process could be troublesome. My experience turned out to be much better!

In fact, to my surprise, the whole set up experience was much easier than in Windows. The phrase ‘plug and play’ is bandied about all too often, but that’s exactly how it was for me in Ubuntu.

I plugged them into the USB port, and they worked, straight away. No messing about with drivers, and no configuration apart from clicking a few boxes for the printer. (On a dialogue box that automatically popped up.)

All of which is fantastic from the point of view of a user; not so great when I was hoping to have something to write about from the experience!

Onwards to the Ipod now. Maybe I’ll have something to complain about after that.

Digg’s users have been complaining for months about the horrendous adverts plaguing the site. Most notably the type of advert that shakes, flashes, and tries to convince you that “YOU ARE VISITOR NUMBER 1,000,000!!”.

This type of stuff doesn’t tend to bother me so much - I can install adblocker or just plain ignore them.

What does annoy me, however, is when their adverts break the primary means of navigating the site. Have a look at this:

Yep, it is now impossible to click on any of the drop down menus ‘behind’ the advert. That means that most of the subcategories in Science, Gaming, Lifestyle, Entertainment, Sports, and Offbeat are now off-limits to me. This has been going on for about a week, I think.

I appreciate that advertising is a necessary evil for big sites, but if you sacrifice usability for short term profit, I’ll be happy to take my disposable income, advert-clicks, and interest elsewhere.

There aren’t many areas in life where I can compete with the likes of Jeff Atwood. His blog isn’t just essential reading due to his technical insight; it is extremely accessible - if you ever thought usability was a dry subject, I urge you to head over there and take in a few posts.

In his latest post, Mr Atwood tells us that he’s given up his full time job to concentrate on a number of hush-hush projects.

His decision is one I can fully relate to. Not long ago, I took a similar leap of faith, leaving the relative comfort of a full time job for a leap into the unknown and the world of freelancing. Looking back, I was frequently working 70+ hours a week - whether or not you could call that “comfort” is open to debate. My decision has recently been vindicated with a fantastic opportunity within a great company.

I suppose I had reached a point where there wasn’t really a choice in what to do - although at the time, I was under the illusion that there was. When the time comes, you know when a change has to be made.

Good luck Mr Atwood - fortune does favour the brave!

I started my PC experience as a Mac user sometime around 1990, I guess. Having a parent in the education sector, it was the only choice really! My first Mac was the Performa 400, a monster PC with a 40MB hard drive and 4 MB RAM.

I remained a devoted Mac geek until just before the first iMac came out; about 1998. The lure of PC gaming got too much for me, and I moved to a Windows based PC.

I’ve been a loyal Windows fan (yes, we do exist!) until about a week ago, when I made the move to Linux. Ubuntu, to be exact.

I had always liked Windows - to the point of getting really annoyed about Linux enthusiasts on Digg. Even though other, cooler, web developers had long since moved on, I held steadfast in my Windows resolve. I always had a soft spot for asp.net, despite the vast majority of my work being PHP related. So what changed?

My previously athletic PC had gradually slowed to a near stop. I kid you not, it now takes around 15 minutes before my PC starts behaving itself after a Windows startup! I figured I had nothing to lose - if this failed, it was probably time for a new PC anyway.

What a difference with Ubuntu. Despite having every bit of eye candy switched on (wobbly windows, desktop cube…the lot), my knackered old PC runs like a dream. It just does everything I ask it to do, immediately. There is no learning curve as such - my only minor irritation being a troublesome install of Apache / PHP. In the end, though, I have to concede that it was my fault, not Ubuntus.

My old PC has been given a new lease of life.

Thank you, Ubuntu!

So I guess this is your typical “hello world” post!

I’ve been meaning to update my site for quite a while; although I still quite liked the look of it, my life has moved in a different direction and the old site didn’t really reflect what I wanted it to do any more.

To any new readers: welcome! I am a web developer from Glasgow, Scotland. My main areas of interest in this field are web standards, accessibility, CSS, and PHP.

You can also expect random musings on all sorts of nonsense. So stay tuned, and watch this space!

Thanks for dropping by.