Author: Bob Martens

Categories
Technology

What Happened to the Month with Linux

If you want the short version here it is:

I lasted about five days before I gave in and decided that I’m just going to give up with trying to do anything like this and continue to use the best tool for the job for me, or (as my friend Aaron Spike has said), the tool most familiar to me.

The longer answer starts here:

It is the same thing that always happens. When I need to get work done, I reach for my Apple products. If I need to do something quickly, I’ll reach for my iPad and/or iPhone and/or MacBook Air/mini because, frankly, they just work. They also work well together.

I also gave in because WWDC happened.

Why is that important? BECAUSE APPLE ANNOUNCED A LOT OF REALLY COOL STUFF!

So basically, I’m just really weak.

I’m still going to keep my Lenovo ThinkPad X220 with openSUSE around at work for doing the odd thing here and there (and for testing), but I think that I’m even more-firmly in Apple’s camp now than I was at the end of last month.

openSUSE still would serve my needs quite ably, but I enjoy using Apple’s devices and OS (on both desktop/notebooks and mobile devices) more than I enjoy using the laptop that I currently have openSUSE installed on.

The benefits still stand, as always. I really like having a dock available so that I can bounce between work and home with the same machine and have identical setups available to me with little-to-no fuss at all. I’m hoping that Apple can come up with something similar for their notebooks (a Thunderbolt dock with a power adapter comes about as close as possible right now … but that is still two cables).

The sheer amount of available hardware is great but it is impossible to find a great laptop anymore. Most of what is available does not entice me in the slightest. Apple’s hardware still, to and for me, is the best available. I’m hoping that rumored 12″ MacBook Air will actually happen one day.

Linux is still firmly with me every day, and that is not going to change. As for this challenge, I completely failed.

Categories
Technology

Silver Linings

On Novell’s Cool Solutions there was a recent post titled Turning Data Breaches into Positives. The best paragraph for me is the following:

Another way to use a breach is in communications to your customers. You don’t have to sell security software to offer value. The first thing you can do is spread the news. It’s often important for affected parties to act quickly after a data breach, so notifying your customer base in the hope of reaching any who might be affected is an important service.

That is true not just for data breaches, but for when anything goes “not right” within an IT department. Anytime you have the opportunity to speak with your users/customers/people, do so in a way to make it as positive an experience as you can.

Making a bad experience good can pay off hugely in the future.

Categories
Gaming

The Legend of Zelda 2015

I’m sorry if you missed it, but Nintendo announced the next installment in the Legend of Zelda series for the Wii U yesterday during its digital keynote for E3 (link to Polygon’s article on Zelda 2015).

We don’t have a title, nor a story, but we do have the following from the producer himself (and you can hear it all at the link above):

  • First installment made specifically for the Wii U
  • Supposedly will harken back to a more open-world feel of the original Legend of Zelda

That is about all we know.

Zelda 2015 2

Needless to say, I’m more than a little excited about this game. The style seems to be a good mixture of Skyward Sword and Twilight Princess. It will be fun to see what Nintendo can do in HD with this franchise.

While I don’t know what an open-world Zelda is going to be or play like, I am interested to see what a Japanese development studio will do with what has become a decidedly American style.

Categories
Technology

SwiftMN

As an aside related to my post about Swift, there is a group forming in Minneapolis around Swift and Apple technologies: SwiftMN.

Join the Meetup group and let us know what you want to try out. I know that I won’t be able to make every meeting, but I am hoping to make the 2+ hour trip as often as I am able.

Categories
Technology

Swift

In case you were underground last week (and I was close to being just that for the week), you heard that Apple announced a new programming language, Swift, at their World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC 2014).

Needless to say, this is something I am going to take a nice, long look at. I happen to kind of like Objective-C, but there are many things about Swift that I really like.

If you are interested, you can download a book from the iBooks Store title The Swift Programming Language and take a look at what the future might look for Apple development.