I wanted an inexpensive web host to experiment with, and NearlyFreeSpeech.net fits the bill nicely. Joe Strong’s blog post was great in helping to get WordPress set up at NFSn.
Now hosted on nearlyfreespeech.net
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Classic TV on Netflix for the win!
I just watched the first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation on Netflix. Excellent! Q, The Holodeck, beardless Riker, “Engage”! TNG is such a great show, especially for its time. I’m only slightly disappointed it’ll likely never be on Blu-Ray (many effects were done in video post-processing and would have to be redone to reach HD resolutions), but it’s great that Netflix now has all the Star Trek TV shows (except Deep Space Nine it seems)
WordPressed.
I have completed the move to WordPress. While Blogger has Google’s back-end support, the front-end was way too slow. WordPress’s back-end is more than sufficient, and the front-end (desktop & mobile) is nice and quick. So all further posts will be here.
WordPress’s DNS setup is also fairly easy, so justinwhite.net points directly here & just6979.wordpress.com redirects to here. Google Apps on mail.justinwhite.net, etc. seem be still working on (not that I use them much, forwarding to my @gmail.com).
Life is left-handed!
The chirality of the molecules of life is to the left. That is, the direction the proteins are wound the molecules of all life as we know it is a left-handed spiral. The molecules of inorganic things, rocks, metals, etc, may have chirality in either direction, but life is always left-handed! Yeah lefties!
Built-on or Based-off…
I see the phrases “built on”, “built off of”, “based on”, &”based off of” used often in on describing software genealogy, in what I think are usually the wrong contexts. To me, none are interchangeable, although “built off of” and “based off of” almost are.
- Built On:
- extending another piece of software by adding layers above or next to the existing parts.
- World Example: A house is built on a foundation. The foundation isn’t changed, the house adds functionality above what the foundation originally provided.
- Software Example: Flask is built on WerkZeug, because it uses WerkZeug as is, and adding layers above the existing code, without modifying it.
- Based On:
- Modifying an existing piece (deriving a new piece) of software to fit your needs, optionally adding layers above or next to the new derivative software.
- World Example: Veggie oil conversions of diesel fueled vehicles, where major subsystems (fuel storage and delivery) are changed to serve a new purpose: running the vehicle on veggie oil.
- Software Example: Jython is based on Python, with the back-end interpreter being changed to serve a new purpose: running Python code on the Java Virtual Machine.
- Built Off Of:
- Building a piece of software to complement an existing piece, with both still able to stand on their own, but the new piece may be fairly useless without the first piece being there.
- World Example: Building a deck for an existing house. The deck may be attached directly to the house, but could stand alone, though a deck by itself is and unusual thing.
- Software Example: I can’t think of a good one right now…
- Based Off Of:
- I don’t think this one should be used at all. By definition a base supports something, so to be “based off” of something doesn’t make a whole lots of sense. Hard to support something that is not on the base.
This is the first draft. What do you think? Am I completely off base? (Ha ha)
The Internet is becoming awesome again!
Firefox 4 was released the other day, it’s pretty sweet! I still like Chrome a lot (a ChromeOS netbook helps with this 
, but this update really brings Firefox back into the battle of fast and powerful browsers. A great example is this AMAZING demo using 3D graphics and video analysis.
Making Change
I counted my change box today while watching Bones. I completely expected it to have at least $50, since I get lots of quarters from buying train tickets, although I also often take quarters out of the box for the same train tickets. Anyway, I separated the coins out, and counted them (except the pennies, but I think there are a couple bucks there), and got $33.25.
Thirty three isn’t bad, but now I have to decide whether to keep going, or cash this in and reset the box. If the box is full, it will definitely have fifty bucks in it. However, I think now would be a good time for a reset, and I can see how fast it fills up at the new apartment in Boston, with two people!
Cleantech Open Alumni Startups
I especially like Fenix’. Hydrovolts sounds great, but the video was lame.
Three Cleantech Open Alumni Startups to Watch | Fast Company
Site Moving Day
I’ve decided that Blogger is a better fit for what I want this site to be, while I work on my custom programs on App Engine. Google Sites is good for documentation or reference sites that are easily editable, but Blogger offers richer layout and design options. Blogger does seem to be a little bit slower than Sites, but I can also create fully custom templates that may be able to get some more speed out of it on the client side, where Sites doesn’t allow any custom scripts or styles.
So now www.justinwhite.net and justinwhite.net will both point here, and the old pages will continue to live at sites.justinwhite.net. When my custom stuff is up and running, this blog will likely be made static and live at blog.justinwhite.com. I’m also trying to set up a redirect from there to here.
So, if you use Blogger or Friend Connect, follow me, and if not, subscribe to my feed on your favorite reader!
Work!
A normal Tuesday at the rock gym. Now back to the actual work!
Edit 2011/03/15: Original photo post via Email via iPhone. Details via web.
