Having a Good Job – Feels Great

Living in Austin – Feels Great

Getting a New Apartment – Feels Great

Being Broke After Getting a New Apartment – Not so Great

Working on WordPress in my Spare Time – Feels Great

Using Ubuntu – Feels Great

Playing Guitar – Feels Great

Listening to Good Music – Feels Great

Sex – Been Awhile, but I Remember Feels Great

Bottle of Jameson – Feels Great

Morning After Jameson – Not so Great

Free Stuff at SXSW – Feels Great

Getting Sick During SXSW – Not so Great

Seeing Old Friends – Feels Great

Riding Bicycle and Getting in Shape – Feels Great

I have lots more, but feel free to add your own…

Last night I had the opportunity to attend a party sponsored by Automattic, creators of  Wordpress.com, and Hostgator.com, one of my employers. I made it just in time even fighting through the heavy South by Southwest tourist traffic . It’s said usually 100,000 people show up in Austin for SXSW. Honestly, I really just wanted a WordPress SXSW t-shirt and to have a good time with my Hostgator coworkers. Mission accomplished. It’s a shame I had to come back to work the next day because the weather hasn’t been better and Austin may be one of my favorite places I have ever visited so far.

The party was awesome and I want to thank everyone who made it possible. Everyone there was very friendly and it was more than cool to be at a who’s who of the best open source content management software out there.  Which this site is powered by. Next time I’ll finally make it to a SXSW show so I don’t miss out on great indie music like the Octopus Project, who appeared there last year. I’ll make sure not to under dress either.

Other developments include me moving all of my sites over to my own self-managed VPS. Now I have root access and can finally start experimenting with live streamcasts among other technologies not permissible on shared hosting.

I would have only used Linux distributions like Ubuntu and CentOS if more of my essential Windows applications were ported for Linux, namely the Adobe suite of software including Photoshop, Flash, and Illustrator. My hopes for a cleaner, better, more efficient Windows were lifted with the announcement of Longhorn, Microsoft’s secret codename for their upcoming Vista release. Without getting into the details of it, Vista was crap. It didn’t even run well compared to XP and had a user experience that was seemingly much worse.

It took me awhile to come around, but after hearing good things I decided to give Win7 a try. I was instantly impressed. The new Aero graphics and effects were developed with a keen eye for aesthetic quality and look extremely slick. The user experience is much more intuitive with the implementation of a new user library system. With improved service process management, the new OS is even snappier then XP. Searching for files is a breeze and everything about navigation and window management just makes more sense as well as life easier. I haven’t had any trouble with compatibility issues and I am really digging the slideshow desktop wallpaper feature of Ultimate.

Microsoft has just redeemed themselves in my mind and I give my hats off to their development team for this one. Even though it did take them awhile.

I am also making sure to forage all I can from the web to start compiling the two resource blogs I just created. While on my journey I did come across one gem, pearl rather, that is proving to be quite an indispensable for organizing my interests on the web.

I was just using folders and bookmarks to index the various sites I visit for reference, however Peartrees offers a flash interactive mind mapping interface that is pretty intuitive and easy to use. I have already mapped out most of my top web interests. It is a very strange concept to grasp at first, but I think the French based outfit is on to something with this.

In their own words …

“Pearltrees lets you organize the web your way! Use Pearltrees to keep at hand the contents you find everyday on the web, to discover new contents from people who share your interests, to drive them through your own web… And contribute to the first human-powered organization of the Web.”

Not only is your map available in html and includes blogging-like capabilities for each of your pearls, but they offer a Firefox extension that I can use to easily add sites that I find interest in. Alltogether, I find it very valuable for compiling the resources I have encountered for my productivity here at digital-cole.com. It also is open source, of which I am a big fan of. Something you’d know by visiting my account!

The State of Texas Department of Information Resources has released online shopping tips for internet consumers this holiday season at http://www.dir.state.tx.us/security/reading/index.htm#tips

When not working or going to school I am spending the time finishing my current projects or enjoying the festivities this time of year brings us.  The Google Calendar integration project for canvashouston.org is near completion and the WordPress integration for that site will ensue into my holiday break until the end of the year. My plans are to complete tito-fabian.com by this time, as well.  I am also excited to start breaking ground on a new project. Details to be revealed in a later post.

One thing that has been on my mind is what direction do I really want to take digital-cole? Is this a personal blog site? Should it be a gateway for my IT and other web services? I also had intentions to make this a repository for some really great resources for the world to access in hopes to help them traverse the ever-changing realm of technology and the internet. But then another question arises. Who will be my core audience? Should I focus on helping beginner users with beginner issues or should I accommodate the more advanced users and leave the world at the mercy of the Video Professor?  Well, I figured…why not have it all?

Following the completion of my current projects and year, it is my plan to focus on continuing the development of digital-cole.com into a invaluable and indispensable resource for nerds and noobs alike. The main page of my site will remain to be the designated space for my personal rants and ramblings. While the impending resources section will be divided into two sections each with link and content to complement both dichotomies of the modern digital user.  I am very excited about this new idea and can’t wait to see it come into existence.