Tech Update

I just switched from the traditional blogger to the Blogger Beta; I thought my first post with the new interface should be a technical update.

First off, I got my new Dell Inspiron (Dell). Wow! Things are going a lot faster, I am not battling against bad sectors on the disk. Above all, the monitor resolution is astounding. I am now having to rethink my picture site protophoto. I had edited all of the pictures on the site with a monitor with really lousy resolution. Using a leading edge of 640px filled up the screen; now it is just a little box in the center of the screen.

I ordered 2 gigabytes of memory with the computer as I have been hearing rumors of some software failing with just 1 GB in Vista beta. Of course, I may decide to just stick with XP, and have an overkill on memory. With the diskspace and memory, I will be able to upload some server side software; which I was scared to do on the old computer.

As for the web: You may have noticed that I had several posts to Michelle Malkin. I did so, because I've been investigating the different trackback mechanisms on the web. She's a firecracker who seems to realize that there is something wrong with our methods of discourse.

When I first started blabbering on this blog, I went through the brain damage of writing my own comments/trackback program. None of the trackback/comment mechanisms had the same features as my experiment. I turned off the experiment as it was not getting a great deal of use. My web host couldn't handle the traffic if people started using it. Anyway, playing with trackback has me think of reviving the program I started. Of course, Google Beta seems to have a new linkback method. I will play with that thing next.

The problem with trackback is that the technology was built by people who've been hypnotyzed into thinking that XML is something other than a great big hassle. As with most XML projects, by building trackback mechanisms on XML, programmers have created a mechanism that is extremely difficult for humans to use. The trackback link mechanisms seem to be used by computers to generate trackback spam, but are not being used by people to link blogs.

A good linkback mechanism would be intuitive for humans to use. For that matter, a good linkback mechanism would require human interaction to register a linkback. An intuitive human driven mechanism would end up making meaningful links between blogs and web sites while minimizing computer generated spam.

Gulp

Yesterday, I read a news release saying that computer vendors would include upgrade coupons for the new Vista operating system. So, I decided to take the plunge and buy a new laptop. I ended up going with Dell. This will be my first Dell.

I hope to set up the Zend Studio, PHP and MySQL on the computer, so I went with the XP Professional and tricked out the computer with 2GB memory. The computer includes MS Word as I will be helping someone edit a book in the upcoming months.

As for my old laptop. The laptop is vintage 1998. It was the display model at Circuit City for a year before I bought it (meaning it was always quirky). The computer has a growing problem with bad sectors. Both the keyboard and mouse are broken. The real kicker is that I had purchased a wireless card some years back, and the card seems to have disappeared. I want to use the computer on the road, but a new wireless card costs more than I could get if I tried selling the computer. If it was not for the bad sectors and the missing wireless card, I would probably be happy with the old computer.

My expensive ($993 buck-a-roos) laptop is in the Dell plant being assembled as I write. Now, I have to figure out how to pay for it. Maybe I could get a squeegie and hurl myself infront of cars and threaten to clean their window if the driver doesn't pay me off.