Technocrat at large

So, I’ve had quite a string of bad luck with technology as of late. One incident involved my personal server at home, and the other involved my website.

I spend quite a bit of time on the bus for getting around, mainly because the places I need to get to the most have pretty good service, and also because the price of gasoline is atrocious. Because I spend so much time on the bus, I want to be able to use my time to accomplish something. Although I sometimes use the time to study, I also have used the time for writing on my blog. Sometimes an event inspires writing, and I’d rather start brainstorming immediately than forget what happened.

A few days ago I happened to be writing about the great weather (sounds boring, I know – more on that later), and I wanted to upload the draft on to the blog. Unfortunately, during that process I lost all of my work. Annoyed, I started to rewrite the post, only for it to happen a second time. Those of you who are sharper than normal may have noticed the lack of a post this past Monday; that’s why.

When I got home that same day, which happened to be a scorcher of a day, my mother suggested I move my server into another room for the summer. Normally I would ignore anything my mother says about computers, but she raised a valid point about cutting down the temperature in my room. With all the gear running in my room, namely a desktop, server, network switch, TV, and home theatre system, my room is hot in the dead of winter. You can imagine how hot it gets in my west-facing room during the summer.

After finding a suitable spot in the adjacent room, I powered up my server and hooked it up to the network. When I tried to access the server after booting up, I couldn’t. A quick look at the network switch told me the network connection wasn’t working. My geek instinct kicked in, and I started trying to figure out the problem. I was worried I had damaged my server while moving it, since I plugged the network cable into my laptop and the network was working fine. I ended up making a foolish mistake with the order in which I hooked everything up. In short, my server does not use the network manager service, so if the network cable is not plugged in upon boot, it won’t connect to the network.

I guess all I can hope for is that my string of bad luck ends. So far, things seem to be going well with both the install of the new iPod Touch 3.0 firmware and Fedora 11 (updates to be posted about both soon!), so let’s hope that things continue on the good streak.

When I started this blog up a short while ago, I was presented with a number of pieces of advice to ensure the so-called “success” of my blog. For a site such as mine, I’m not sure how one might measure success. Monetarily, the site can’t be a success since there is no form of income (aside: I sincerely hope that, one day, I will be able to eat those words and the site may provide me with a source of income). I suppose that, for a non-profit, one-man-show style website, one can only hope to be known well enough to be publically recognised. I don’t expect that to happen, so I’ll settle for being a well-visited blog. I’ll consider my first milestone to be 500 unique visitors in a single day, at which point I will not only be happy, but I will set myself a loftier goal which will seem just as unlikely for me to reach.

But I digress. Advice, right? One of the most logical pieces of advice I received was to have a regular schedule that I would regularly update to. Although I toyed around with the idea of updating three times a week, I came to the conclusion that is probably infeasible in the long run. Unfortunately, I don’t have the intension of updating frequently enough so that my university marks suffer. So, after much deliberation, I have decided that an update schedule of every Monday and Friday is a reasonable goal to uphold.

This is obviously all dependent on whether I feel like I have something to say, though. Although I don’t think it will be much of an issue, there always is the potential of hitting a bit of writer’s block. There always is the possibility, though. Because my classes this semester are not computer science courses, I will find it hard to refer to those courses without straying too far off topic (unless one of my professors makes another bone-headed comment again). The fall won’t present me with much more inspiration: at least, not directly. If everything goes according to plan, I will have an intern job with a firm involved in computer science, one of which, if I get the job, will not legally allow me to discuss what I do.

That being said, my development work, addiction to music, and everyday experiences I’m sure will provide me with ample fodder for you to stuff your brains with. Plus a little feedback here and there from you guys might give me some incentives to post a little more.

Of course, I might be a little more inclined to post three times a week if I hit 1000 visitors a day…

I vowed never again to use WordPress, but here I am.

Why, do you ask? Mostly because I got sick of having a domain just sitting there and not doing anything. When my own software is developed, I will probably swap it out again for my own custom software.

Ok, I’m getting WAY too far ahead of myself here. Who am I, and why do you care? Well, you probably don’t. I’m one more person with an opinion. But I will hopefully discuss some interesting things from time to time, both about life, computing, technology, and anything else that happens to strike my fancy from time to time. Hopefully, I will be able to update regularly. And hopefully I might say something that may get the cogs turning and provoke some thought. I’m sure my blog will most likely be about programming and the like, but will hopefully also discuss my other interests such as music and photography.

Stay tuned, San Diego,

–Brian