Marcus' Blog

Zimbra

2009-04-10T07:51:00.001-07:00

Not sure if I've seen Zimbra or not, but it sure looks nice.

Both barbarians and Hellene

2008-04-28T21:40:00.000-07:00

I am reading about the trail of Socrates and thought I'd start a little quote label in my blog.

"We revere and honor those born of noble fathers," Antiphon wrote, "but those who are not born of noble fathers we neither revere nor honor. In this we are, in our relations with one other, like barbarians, since we are all by nature born the same in every way, both barbarians and Hellenes."

Author: I.F. Stone
Book: The Trial of Socrates

Yes we can

2008-02-04T23:33:00.000-08:00

http://my.barackobama.com/page/invite/yeswecanvideo

No Country for Me?

2008-01-06T08:51:00.000-08:00

I went into No Country for Old Men (IMDb) with really high hopes; however, I was really disappointed. Now I do agree there were a lot of really cool individual scenes, but I really felt that the movie did not flow well together. Besides the chop, the overall meaning did not measure up.

At first I thought the man in black was death or possibly some form old testament God, but quickly realized that those theories did not pan out (numerous senseless killings). So the dude is creepy for sure and he has does a really good job in general, but I didn't really find him as disturbing as say Hannibal.

Maybe that was the whole point of the movie and the man in black - that evil has crept into our lives and has now permeated our culture. Now I don't need every movie to have that nice ray of hope, but I really wanted another aspect to the movie: that even though evil is present it always makes sense to fight against it.

Then again, maybe the whole point of the movie is to hate it.

Eclipse Plugins

2006-11-13T11:19:00.000-08:00

Here are the Eclipse plugins I use all the time:

Subclipse works pretty well, now and again I'll notice a few things, but it's pretty good.

Rubyclipse ... this ain't bad, but really only gets you syntax highlighting (maybe in the future it will be better)

QuickREx - regular expressions ... I use this one all the time and have for a few years now. It's good stuff.

I used to use Quantum (DB access) and I liked that, but nowadays I just use phpmyadmin. If I needed something today I would prolly start with the DataTools plugin and then fall back to quantum if that didn't work.

And of course all of the WebTools plugins are pretty nice. I think these will only get better, but sometimes they crap out. I am running linux, so Eclipse on linux sometimes has a few issues ... but I would start here if you need any web plugins (the editors are nice and start/stop tomcat is there too).

Debian vs. Ubuntu

2007-04-15T20:19:00.000-07:00

I was reading the Debian redefines itself with new release article today and was just wondering about Ubuntu and Debian in general. My first thought on this was: isn't it about time that Debian and Ubuntu merge? I do understand that Debian is really designed for the server environment (or at least it is seen that way now), but I think it wouldn't be hard to merge these two groups, from a purely technical perspective (seeing that Ubuntu is based completely on Debian). I would imagine that the difficulties would come more from human factors. There might also be legal issues, but more importantly merging these two groups just might not work.

But in the end, isn't it really about making the best Linux distro possible? Wouldn't it be in the best interest of all to have a combined effort, not only from a development and marketing perspective, but also for the open-community?

For me, and I suspect this is true for a lot of us, Ubuntu is the re-definition of Debian and we like it.

LinkedIn Open Healthcare Group

2008-01-06T18:10:00.000-08:00

I just joined the LinkedIn group Open Healthcare. At the time of writing this there are 491 members - not huge but not so bad either. This is the first group that I've joined on LinkedIn, so it will be interesting to see what comes of it. Maybe I'll send the group an e-mail soon - intro and maybe to collaborate on a few things. I've been trying to figure out a way to get hooked into/start something here in Portland, so this might be a great resource. We'll see how it goes.

New Look (Template)

2008-01-05T11:42:00.000-08:00

After a long time coming, I've finally updated the look of my blog with Plantilla-Webby. Part of the reason it took me so long is that I really haven't had that much time, but I also was rather frustrated with the blogger templates. After much searching, I finally found the plantilla webby template and I think I'm going with it. Naturally I'll make some customization, but I think it's pretty clean and look decent right out of the box.

Cell Phone Hunt

2006-11-05T23:00:00.000-08:00

Looking for a new phone. It's come down to the following:

- Nokia N75 (not out yet, but soon)
- Sony Ericsson W810
- LG CU500

I really wanted something with a flash HD greater than 2G, Radio FM and WiFi. Doesn't look like I'll get all, but these phones have most of what I'm looking for. I am partial to the flip phones, so that's the main reason I'm not so hot on the Sony. More than likely, I'll be making a decision w/n the month.

Portland - Bike Friendly?

2006-08-02T12:35:00.000-07:00

I used to think Portland, OR was a very friendly bike town. In terms of both the city infrastructure and the people. I do think the city of Portland does try very hard to be bike friendly, what's taken me by surprise these past few months are the people of Portland. Let me say that for the most part - Portlandites are very friendly to bikes; however, there's been a few really rotten apples.

Take for example yesterday: I was riding downtown heading for the Broadway bridge. There really isn't a "good way" of getting to the Broadway bridge from downtown - that there really aren't many bike lanes heading north/east. So, I'm on a street where there isn't a bike lane and I start to hear things like, "The streets aren't for bikes!" and "Why don't you get in the bike lane!" In fact the guy rode right up next to me and start yelling at me. First of all, why is this guy so interested in what I'm doing. I wasn't riding aggressively, nor did I run any red lights; I was just in the middle lane waiting to cross Burnside. I might also add, there was a fairly large backup ... so it's not like he nor anyone else was really going anywhere fast. Oh and I wasn't even darting through cars - just waiting in line. Anyway he pulled up next to me and started yelling (see above). I started to say something, "I have just as much ..." but his yelling pretty much cut me off. After that, I just thought to myself forget it and ride.

I've had a couple of sour experiences on my bike over the past two months and it really has surprised me. I wonder if it's just me or do other people experience similar events?