This morning at 9:00:00 PST, I turned the software switches that opened Linkbidr to the public.

It's a great feeling to finish a project. Even if it is mundane (this one wasn't), having a complete working site is a source of pride. I might not have came up with the concept, but it is my ingenuity and knowledge that made everything work according to spec.

So today I will click through the links, over and over again, knowing what will happen, because I made the links and because I've clicked them a dozen times already, but I still do it, polishing the mirror of my vanity.

This particular site is an interesting concept, and I don't know if it will catch hold. But it the first site I have built that aimed to be "Web 2.0".

Of course, "Web 2.0" isn't a well-defined term. This site has AJAX-ish functionality, and it has javascript effects. It has a community, kinda. And finally, the site name doesn't have an 'e'. That's as good an indicator as anything that it is Web 2.0.

Good luck Linkbidr.

A fews days ago I decided the time was nigh to install Linux on my development machine. My standard tools were already free, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Open Office, GIMP, Inkscape, one exception being TextPad, but I'm sure there is a suitable alternative. Hell, I'm pretty good with vi, ;-) or I remember liking emacs back in college.

Anyway, the time was nigh. So I started the download for Ubuntu 7.04 - the Feisty Fawn.

It went pretty smoothly. I had to start Ubuntu in safe graphics mode after getting no picture. Then after some worrying over the partitions I installed the system.

I spent a couple of hours trying to get my dual monitor setup working. It turned out to be simple matter of turning on the Nvidia driver in the Restricted Drivers Manager and using nvidia-settings.

The hard part was getting wireless networking functioning. Eventually, I followed the steps outlined in this article. I had to uninstall Network Manager and run sudo modprobe bcm43xx but now my precious Internet connection is working—without having to string a Cat5 from my laptop.

All in all, it's been the easiest Linux setup ever. Of course, I'm more knowledgeable about how things work these days. But a large part of it is the community around Ubuntu—they seem to have a large enough user base to support most common problems.