End of blog_2008

This is my last post before New Year's eve. I've just finished reviewing the changes in the site and I think that everything is ready for publishing. I don't know when I am going to upload the new pages but I suppose that I'll do it on the 31st or maybe on January 1st. Probably the latter since I want to start the 2009 blog with the 2008 statistics of chalsattack.com.

The renewed chalsattack.com will include my personal profile and a new section of class notes. I hope to post on the blog on a weekly basis and keep on updating the site monthly as usual. I may include visit statistics for each month too.

Happy new year!!!

ps: Today is Holy Innocents' Day but I didn't remember.

The NASA

Last Sunday I was visiting Fedoraproject's site and I was drawn to the section "Who uses Fedora?"  I was amazed to learn there that the Nasa uses Gnu/Linux in their servers. Fantastic news!!!

It's also interesting to know that Linus Torvalds (If you follow the link and read the interview) has never used pure Debian because he prefers Fedora's ease of use. Well it's not bad at all, everyone using Debian knows a lot about package dependencies and compiling from source. There might be millions of reasons to use Debian but I can't imagine any better reason than having all dependencies resolved.

Anyway I downloaded Fedora 10 liveCD and I must admit that I like it a lot. I have been using it for a week on my laptop and on my ultra-portable and it works fine. It is perfect as desktop OS; it is capable of dealing with most day to day jobs. The repository is very good and complete (There are 7264 available packages)

But still I am not sure whether it is suited to stand hard work as a powerful Debian workstation does.  To begin with I wasn't able to locate the apache software using yum's gui. Yes, I downloaded the desktop edition, but still I missed the package.

Thoughts on music

I have always liked music. At least as far as I can remember. That's why I can't comprehend why some people simply don't mind music at all. How is that possible? How can someone not care at all about music?

Well this question has remained unanswered for so long that I had almost forgotten. But now that I don't like music myself I can perfectly understand. But I need to explain this a bit further. Perhaps I should have said, now I do not simply like music, now I do love it and that's because I enjoy it like never before. When I was younger music (mainly hard rock) was powerful and fun but as I grow older music is still powerful and fun but it is also (or at least more than before to me) feeling. Pure feeling, and when you feel it deep in your veins you just can never let go of it. It's got you forever.

last.fm

I'm new in last.fm and I must say that I love it. It's out of this world. I used to listen to Virgin Radio (UK) everyday in the afternoons. They have recently changed their name into Absolute radio but it doesn't matter. I still like it but since I discovered last.fm I just can't do without it. Still some days I miss Leona Graham's voice and have to tune in.

But I haven't been able to find any group or even listened to any of Mark Free's songs. (One of my favourite singers ever) If you say you want to listen to Mark Free, you are connected to Mark Free's radio and listen to similar artists but never get the real thing.

I'll keep on trying and maybe some day...Maybe it would be a good idea to type one of the bands he was in. King Kobra, Signal or Unruly Child. I'm gonna try right now ...

Cloud computing

Cloud computing is about using software as an online service rather than on your own personal computer. The problem with that is that the information is stored on a remote server being exposed to security issues. I understand why some people like for example Mr.Richard Stallman consider it a complete stupidity, but I would like to give this matter a twist.

A big part of our computing time is spent online, many of the services we use are server based. So if we are so server dependent, what is the real difference? We upload our files to our web servers, the information thus made public, but still is stored out of our control.

I think that web based applications are cheap, easy to use and very handy. It is also true that there is no real need to use say, a web calendar when you probably have one installed by default in your system. But that information can only be edited on that computer, however, being online you can access it from anywhere.

Let's find a middle ground position and let's use these applications when they are useful but let's be especially careful what kind of information we put at risk.

Site update!!!

I'm about to finish updating the site. I'm trying to improve some sections (mainly the blog, including my personal profile) and give it a new look for next year, although I'll probably publish it next month.

I have decided to freeze the mirror sites until I have them ready. There is quite a lot of work to do so I have disabled the links from this site. But this does not mean that they are not up and running, for they in fact are. If anyone knows the url they can perfectly access them as usual.

My second greatest discovery!!!

I'm not very fond of social networks. They are entertaining and fun but they are a highly time-consuming activity to little or no avail. Last week I signed up for Facebook  since I was curious about this famous network. It's not bad, but I do not think I'll continue with it for long.


I have also signed up for last.fm I was amazed to discover such an incredible site. It is similar to an online radio station. Only that you can choose what you want to listen to. Yes it's true, you type the name of any group and then you are presented with a series of groups of the same style. Each song is accompanied by the cd cover plus a short biography of the band. Registered users can comment on the songs, get recommendations, join groups and also build a personal audio library. 

Simply that, 24/7 without pauses or ads. Simply awesome!!! Again, I'm still amazed. I can assure that this is the second greatest discovery after years surfing the net. My first one was GNU/Linux.

Hallowe'en!!!

Rain all day long!!! I have to update the site a bit, upload some new photos and start working again in the English activities section. There is a plan to include Halloween and Christmas activities or pastimes and also finish and upload a new section which is a series of grammar class notes. There is a lot of work to do though!!!

And good news: After a year or so I've finished my happy feet penguins collection. You can see it here.

Lenny Frozen!!! (On July 27th)

No doubt this is good news for Debian users worldwide. Lenny 5.0, the next stable release, has been frozen. This means that no new packages can be uploaded to the servers and that developers will concentrate their efforts in fixing critical bugs.

Lenny is scheduled for September 2008

A bit too late maybe ...

I'm not sure any of you have noticed yet, but this month I have improved the English activities section by including print-outs of all the interactive activities, this way students can easily print the activities to carry them anywhere (the swimming pool perhaps???)

Anyway it's an excellent idea.

I just couldn't help it!!!

Only two weeks after getting my eeepc I wiped it out and installed Debian lenny with the help of Debian Wiki. Nothing like pure Debian inside!!! They provide a nice network installer of appoximately 13 mb that you can copy into a pendrive and boot from it.

I have been trying it for a couple of weeks and everything seems to work just fine. I think that Lenny has not yet been frozen but I suppose it is about to in a few days. Here is a screenshot of lenny in the eeepc.

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It's so cute!!!

No blog entry for weeks, I know. But I've recently bought an ultra portable, an Asus eee and it's such a nice toy that I just can't give it up.

It ships with a linux distro called Xandros which is based on Debian. I have been playing with it quite a lot and what impresses me more is its integrated wifi card. It detects nets from a long distance.

It's my birthday!

A huge thank you to all of you out there who have sent me a message wishing me a happy day. Thanks from the bottom of my heart.!!!!

Well, not many interesting things today. Only that I didn't feel like writing any blog entry in the morning nor in the afternoon. But strangely enough I'm doing it right now when I'm supposed to be more tired than before. I may be turning into a night creature. Gosh!

There is only one thing that I would like to comment in relationship with computers. You know that I fell in love with pendrivelinux 2007 version based on Debian Etch. I enjoyed it a lot and still do. I carry it everywhere I go. But today I have switched my love to Debian live. A project I have followed from the very beginning. Today I have downloaded and tried the Lenny release. And it works just perfect. What a great present for my birthday. Thanks to all the team at Debian live.

Keep up the good work!!! You are making history!!!

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It has finally seen the light!

This week the 'Brand new chalsattack' has been published. To tell you the truth my intention was to start building it next year. This way I would follow tradition of new year, new site. But having a new domain name and a new hosting service was too much candy for me and to put it simply, I just couldn't wait.

I hope you like the new design, and the new sections. I'm especially proud of the English section because it's interactive for the first time. I hope to be able to improve it a lot more in the months to come.

Here is a screenshot of the process of making the site.

It's rocked, and ready to roll!!!

This is a screenshot of the latest version of chalsattack. The first one was issued in 2006, the second one in 2007 and this one in 2008. Is this one going to be the definitive version? No, I don't think so. I dare say that 2009 is going to witness the birth of chalsattack 4th. Well you never can tell ... we'll see what the future holds.

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Interactive online activities

Today the English section has received a twist. My Virtual Class was a great improvement, but today I have started to upload several interactive activities that we have created online.

So far there are only four activities but they can give you a hint of the new style we are going to follow. As the section grows bigger and bigger I'll have to include a table or some other way to organise the exercises.

Hopefully next week we will create crosswords, word searches and even vocabulary games or other pastimes. I hope you enjoy them.

Chalsattack VC Virtual Classes

Hi! After two weeks looking for a way to have virtual classes in my site, yesterday I decided to create a virtual class at http://www.nonstopenglish.com/ .The name of the first class is obviously "Chalsattack". That name may not be too serious but it is fun.
Well I think that the service they provide at that site is excellent. At least what I've tried so far. I have known and used the site to do activities online for years but to tell you the truth I did not know that they provided this virtual classes thing until I started to really look for it. Oops! after so many hours searching the net just to go back right where I started from. Well, these things happen!!!

Now I must write the 'how to' on my site as clear as possible so that everybody can understand the instructions. But in short it is very easy. Students can do interactive exercises on the site without registration or alternatively they can register and provide my e-mail address so that they are forwarded to me and thus I can assign them to a class with a specific level of English, I can give them homework and follow their progress online. Again: it's amazing.

Maybe in time I start building a site like that since I have all the necessary things (Web server, hosting service, domain and debian software) except time to do it. It's one of the options that I had in mind in the beginning.
I had also considered writing some interactive quizzes to post in my site. This option is still in mind. But in the meantime let's focus on what we've got and enjoy it and learn from it!!!

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Donation to Debian project

www.debian.org

Yesterday I made a small donation to the Debian Project. It is a small quantity but I intend to donate some time later. I had thought of contributing with the Debian team several times, well in fact I already help Debian in a variety of ways according to their list of possible ways of helping Debian: How can you help Debian? Especially the last one some would say!!!

Well talking seriously, I had considered donating on several occasions, but so far I had not done it. I decided to do it thinking that I had paid for a windows license which I had not used and that I had also paid for my first linux distribution, so why not spending some money if it can help improving the best operating system I know so far, or at least the only operating system I use so far and probably will for many years. Debian team: Keep up the good work you are doing!!!.

Well I don't know if I should write a different post for this... but I must inform you that after buying my new domain chalsattack.com I am making several changes to the DNS and also working on a new site, so I must apologize for any inconvenience that anyone trying to access my site may experience. I hope the new site is finished in a couple of months. Keep in mind that I am writing it from scratch in pure html.

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chalsattack.tk to be chalsattack.com in short!!!

I definitely had to do something about it!!!. The dot.tk DNS service doesn't seem to work properly when it comes to redirecting to a specific port. I have known it for a long time but now I'm very much into promoting my own web server (which has been online for maybe more than one year). The problem was that I could not create my own subdomains since I couldn't point the name servers to my IP:port. That's why I bought my second domain: www.chalsattack.com (While I get down to work seriously I redirect it to googlepages). No need to say that right now I'm redirecting several subdomains to my apache server.

So now you should see the logo changed with the new domain name and also hopefully a brand new redesign of the whole thing. I hope you like it.

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This is day one!!!

Hi, welcome to my blog.

Now we're off on a journey together as long as you remain here by my side.

I'll publish my first picture here. This is a nice start!!!

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First Post!

This is my blog. You'll see that I do not publish posts very often even though I do write them on my mind almost everyday. Sometimes I drop the ideas because I do not believe they are interesting enough but most of the times it is just because it takes some time until the entry is written down, accompanied by its attachments and uploaded to the server.


Besides, if that is not enough I also have to update the mirror sites. And that turns out not being very handy.


 Another drawback is that this blog is not very well organized. My mistake! but this is a situation that I must change, so I'll write it on top of my todo list.  


BLOG TODO LIST
- Organize Blog
- Post more often
- Upload to the server automatically
- Forget about meaningless attachments
- Improve mirror sites