Phantom Phones
Saturday March 12, 2005 - 1:14PM EDT
Do not answer the number 801-494-1992. It is the number of a market research firm and it could have you answering questions about who knows what company. The company is called WesternWats or something, I hear they do Kinkos' research and political polling. Either way, just don't answer it. Just about finished these two websites, then I can start working on the software again and begin setup of my test server for the new project. I'm really excited about this new project for so many reasons. First it is a solid idea that I've already processed for while so it isn't just came up with it last week. Also it will give me a chance to do a lot of new things with Linux/Apahce/MySQL setup and administration. It will be a good experience and skill building project. I've also always wanted to make the switch to Linux for my everyday use. Because when I consider the applications I use everyday, I don't need windows. With the exception of Adobe Photoshop I don't need Windows for anything exclusively. I guess I can lear to use The Gimp but I don't know how that compares to Photoshop. One of the main reasons I want to use Linux is to design my own UI. I want something more intuitive and less intrusive. I want a UI that is almost transparent to the information you need. I feel that UIs today are to cluttered with extraneous crap and don't focus on the actual data enough. And don't have nearly the amoutn of data manipulation functionality that I'd like to see. I guess they will advance but I want to try and design my own. And I liked Microsofts idea of integrating the browser into the OS, in fact I think the web browser should be the centerpiece of the OS with auxilary apps to handle specialized operation(music, graphics editing, etc..) I think that most applications should use an HTML/CSS engine for UI layout or just be browser based and have more connetivity to the internet or some type of network. Also every OS file system should be built upon a relational database. Which is actually the trend for the future but we are not there yet. I don't plan to make all these things a part of the UI I design in Linux. Mainly I just want something really nice looking and powerful. Something that has all the things I use regularly easily accessible. Maybe I'll work on a KDE that has similar functionality to the software. Honestly I just don't like the Windows XP UI colors, they freaking suck. Mac OSX is much better looking, though I haven't used it that much because I don't have a mac. The one thing that OSX doesn't do that windows does is the right click, which is the only thing I think Windows UI does better than Mac OS.