100th Post! KDE 4.1 Rocks, School, Textpattern, and C
July 9th, 20081. Yay! This is my 100th post on this blog. This is quite an achievement for me since I’ve probably gone through about 2-3 blogs/sites and was never able to really maintain them. I guess it’s quite different when you actually have an audience. 
I was hoping to post something special for this 100th post, but certain things came up and thus my plans changed. So instead, I’ll treat you all to a hodgepodge of stuff.
2. KDE 4.1 is so going to rock! At least it already does for me. And I include a disclaimer that I’m not your average KDE joe, so YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary). Seeing the project evolve as a whole (and not just focusing on some more visible part) is truly amazing. Of course, some will not like it, and some will. What’s important at this point IMHO is that things aren’t stagnating. Of course, it’s not yet complete (depending on your “completeness” requirements). But I firmly believe that it’s too early to really bang the gavel on KDE 4. Only time would tell (and there’s always KDE 3.5 while waiting). As for me, I’m planning to migrate my main user (jucato) to KDE 4.1 this week.
3. We had our class’s first online session last Saturday. We were told that we’d be using Yahoo! Messenger. Not knowing how it will be done, I opted to use the real client on Windows XP. It turns out we’ll be using the conference feature, which is perfectly supported by Kopete, so no need to switch for the next sessions. Right now I’m considering suggesting and helping setup a more permanent online session place (like IRC) for group studying (because people might prefer synchronous communication than forums). A friend suggested using a web app like Campfire. I’ll have to take a long look at it since it’s not something I’m familiar with and, thus, can’t confidently recommend. I’ll try to see if the university can setup something for us and make it more “official”.
4. I’m considering migrating my blog from WordPress to Textpattern. When I do that, I’d probably make all the static pages I have in my site also under Textpattern. I don’t have any problems with WordPress actually, and it has served me quite well. Textpattern just happens to come highly recommended by a good friend compared to WP. Other supposed advantages of Txp include: better and cleaner template system (no messy PHP, which I’m not really keen on learning right now), more CMS than blog (whereas WP is more blog than CMS), and created by writers for writers (like me?). Anyway, it’s probably not going to happen immediately as I still need to actually use Txp. And when that time comes, I hope I don’t flood the Planet and get kicked. 
5. One of my subjects this semester teaches Principles of Programming using the C programming language. Having some previous experience gives me a bit of an edge in class. One of the things I’ve noticed is how our book really doesn’t say much about good programming practices. It’s a very short, direct to the point textbook. I presume that we are being encouraged to research on our own. For example, the book mentions that something like sum1 = sum2 - (x - (y = 10)) * 4; “makes the code unreadable, but certainly shorter”, either implying that “shorter” is to be preferred over “unreadable”, or not explicitly discouraging such kind of code. Anyway, I don’t really expect much from the book and the professor, since the study program is more or less based on independent studying, but I’m somewhat uncomfortable that beginning programmers aren’t being taught good habits as early as possible. Fortunately, the subject makes use of Moodle, which has a forums feature which I can probably share my thoughts, as well as solicit other people’s experiences.
Hm… I really need to learn to write shorter…
Just some small updates, while I'm trying to get off my ass and migrate the site completely to Textpattern.
July 9th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
regarding 4: Check out Drupal (http://drupal.org). It’s way better than Wordpress if you’re looking for “more CMS, less blog”.
July 10th, 2008 at 8:07 am
Drupal would do more than what he wants… TextPattern seems to be “usable” (though not for me) for you, Jucato, so good luck.
July 10th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
its good to see that you’re still in good shape. good luck with school!
July 11th, 2008 at 11:46 pm
@timtom & ž—龍Œ (wth? O.o): Yeah, I’ve had some experience with Drupal, co-administering our Ubuntu local community’s site. It’s a mess and too much. In a continuum between “full CMS” and “Blog”, Drupal and WordPress would be on both ends, and TextPattern seems to be in the middle. I will have to see for myself though. Who knows, I might be wrong.
@irvin: Hey! Long time no talk! Where have you been hiding! Thanks for the good luck, I need it terribly for Discrete Math.
July 25th, 2008 at 1:27 am
happy 100th post then! keep up the nice works around here!