Dustin’s Blog

I have a couple of ideas for a new series I’ll be kicking off soon and hope people find them interesting. I’m going to do a bit of writing about setting up home networks and getting the most out of the GNU/Linux command line.

The basics of computer networking are very easy and a home network almost always employs nothing more than the most basic parts of a computer network. I’ll be breaking down these parts as well as what to look for in a broadband connection, simple things you can do to help protect your network, when to go wired over wireless and more.

On the Linux side I’ll be covering the basics of what the command line is, why you would want to use it, how to use it and tidbits on why I prefer to never actually sit at my Linux system.

I recently started doing some freelance web work. The company I’m working with right now demands that sites be coded to XHTML strict standard and that testing be done on all major browsers on the major platforms. Macintosh is one of those major platforms that I don’t have yet have always secretly wanted to get one. Doing freelance work is the perfect excuse to pick up a Mac Mini so that’s just what I did today and I’m expecting it to arrive sometime next week.

I’m not sure if owning a Mac Mini will convince me to make a full switch or not. It’s hard to say at this point because I’m so used to the Windows world but others have tried to make the switch for themselves and lived to tell about it. And with the new Mac’s being based on Intel processors and the availability of VMware Fusion or Parallels it’s possible to run Windows along side OS X anyway.

Recently on digg.com there was a list of UNIX/Linux commands every person should know. A few people were a bit miffed that the list included nano rather than VIM. VIM is easily my favorite text editor so I wanted to share some of the most useful commands that VIM provides. No doubt there are people out there that have their own set of commands they use most so I encourage them to comment about it.

Read on to learn more about VIM.
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So I have a little something to admit. I’ve never played a console game over the internet. No really, I never have. Way back in the day when 56k was the next best thing I played a Star Wars game online with a buddy but that’s pretty much the extent of what I’m done.

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My Wii has now been back for a week and all is good. Although the shipping took forever the entire process went very well. It was refreshing to deal with a company that didn’t try to walk you through some idiotic script of did you try this and did you do that. I guess when you depend on your product to generate future sales you can afford to actually please the customer.

We (my brother-in-law and I) were able put a number of hours on it, along with the projector, playing a number of games including Resident Evil 4 and Super Swing Golf. My short review is, RE4 is a keeper, Super Swing Golf is hardly a renter. I usually stick to the first party Nintendo games so RE4 is a bit of a departure for me. Although I wasn’t able to put a lot of time into it, it was fun.

I stopped by our local Best Buy to pick up a classic controller. The place was filled with people and yet they had a number of Wii’s on hand and nobody swarming them. There are Wii’s on ebay selling for *less* than $250 (plus the outrageous shipping of course). Has demand slowed or production increased?