It's been a ... very long time since I've written anything here. Rather than writing a bunch of boring excuses and explanations, I'm just going to jump right back in.

10 years ago I got my first exposure to Linux, and I fell in love. Almost immediately I shoved Windows behind me and jumped in with both feet. Slackware was my choice, and continued to be for quite a while. As time passed, however, I became less interested in maintaining my computer, and more interested in just using it as a tool. I got lazy, and wanted things to 'Just Work'. I can be moody like that. Eventually I began to drift back into the Windows world. I pretended for a while that I was bridging the gap by having my machine dual-boot. But before long the ext2 partition shrunk to nothing, and Fat32 took over again.

In the years since then, I have drifted back and forth, dabbling in Linux, but never having the commitment to jump right in. Partly this is because I didn't want to try out the more 'user friendly' versions, and instead stuck with Slackware, and then Gentoo. Finally, after buying a new computer, and spending a few months getting frustrated with Vista's memory consumption, I decided to do an experiment. So, yesterday, I downloaded the 64-bit version of Ubuntu Hardy Heron. By the middle of the day I had my system up and running and was working in Visual Studio within a virtual machine. The difference was unbelievable. The whole process didn't take much longer than it would have taken to install Windows and get it set up properly. Long gone are the days of researching every minutiae of your hardware, finding the right modules, editing multiple configuration files, and compiling your kernel before you can even boot a workable system. That flexibility is obviously still there, but choosing Linux no longer requires you to dig that deep. (Now, I realize that my thinking is probably antiquated, and it is likely that it has been this way for a while. I have probably just been too stubborn to try a version of linux that didn't assume you WANTED to do all that configuration on your own.)

Anyway, that's all for today. It's been far too long since I've written anything at all, and although this isn't a technical post, it's something. If you're curious, for virtualization I chose KVM (Kernel-Based Virtual Machine). It is the default choice for Ubuntu, and after some research, I decided that it was a good choice. It's integrated directly with the kernel, and as such runs closer to the hardware than a lot of choices. It is also able to take advantage of your processor's virtualization features. After going through the process, I now sit here unscathed, and I can definitely say that it was a good choice. If you're interested, here are a few links that I found helpful. (searching for information relating to KVM produces a lot of noise, so it can be tough to track down helpful info) 

•  General Setup Info
• Providing the Guest OS Access to the CDROM During Installation

And finally, a screenshot of my desktop with XP and Visual Studio running:

My last post was written as an introduction to the Greasemonkey API from Gmail. Its intent was to introduce wouldbe greasemonkey scripters to the various methods that are available in the API. It has recently come to my attention, however, that not everybody is interested in writing their own scripts. Perhaps, in fact, I am a member of the minority.  *gasp*

So. This post will be a simple rundown on how to install my Ad-Removing script, for those that aren't interested in how it works:

1- Get Firefox.

2- Install the Greasemonkey Add-On.

3- If you are using Gmail, install this script.  If you are using Google Apps, install this script.

4- Refresh Gmail/Google Apps.

And that's all there is to it. Lately there have been periodic changes in the way Gmail sets up their pages. I'm usually pretty quick to update the script, so if something starts looking weird, come back here, or head over to userscripts.org (links to follow) and re-install the script.

As a sidenote, while you're at userscripts.org check out some of the other scripts that are available from other users. There is a huge quantity of scripts there that do a lot of helpful things, and once you have Greasemonkey installed, it is a simple thing to add new scripts. Just do a search for the page that you're interested in modifying, or the action you want it to do (ie: remove facebook ads), and likely somebody has written a script for that purpose. Just be careful, as the big red banner at the top of every script page says, if you're installing a script that is new. I would go as far as to say that if you're not familiar with scripting, you shouldn't install a script if less than a couple hundred people have installed it. Also check out the comments to see what other users have said about it. And that's a wrap, as they say. Enjoy my script, and check out some others while you are at it. 

My pages on userscripts.org:

The Gmail Script

The Google Apps Script 

This is the first post on my new blog. It won't be long, as my intention is simply to give you a bit of an introduction.

Many people have written more eloquently than I am capable of doing on the subject of the people behind the software. However, I think as an introduction to my 'web outlet', I would like to reiterate that there is much more to who I am than just a guy that writes software. Because of that, there is a certain flavour to the way that I work, and also the way that I envision the entire software development process. I may subscribe to certain theories, and have people that I look up to, but there is always going to be a bit of my past and my personality that shines through. Because of this, a blog, or journal that I use to convey information about the things I am learning or working on is going to contain a certain amount of bias, or "personality". If it wasn't for this fact, technical blogs would be atrocious reading, and learning from peers would be a mind-numbing chore. I enjoy reading the blogs of certain people, and I think a lot of the reason for that is because they include pieces of themselves in the things that they write.

So, if you do take the time to read my blog, I hope that you are able to learn from me, but I also hope that you can enjoy the "personal rabbit trails" that will no doubt emerge as my journey with this blog progresses. Feel free to leave your thoughts in the form of comments, and I look forward to hearing what you have to say, whether it be criticism, affirmation, or another piece of the puzzle.