More of my sites

WinInfo Daily News
SuperSite for Windows
Windows IT Pro Magazine
Connected Home
Thurrott Dot Com
Windows Weekly at TWIT

About this site

For six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul

Saturday, April 19, 2003

About this blog, 2003 edition
Hey there. Apparently people are reading this all of a sudden, so maybe I should explain what the heck this site is all about and why I maintain it. I started "blogging" in September 2001, about a year and a half ago, though I really never intended for this to be anything more than private documentation. I write for a Windows-oriented news publication called Windows & .NET Magazine and am fairly well-known in the Windows world. However, I'm not just interested in Windows, and spend a lot of time using and evaluating Mac OS X, Linux, Mozilla, and various other non-Microsoft systems. This blog basically documents this non-Windows work, again, for my own use. I throw the occassional (often ranting) opinion piece up here as well, generally the ones that aren't appropriate for my work-related sites. I'm not interested in holding back here, or sparing anyone idiotic my wrath, so if you're one of the Gene Steinbergs of the world, stay away. You are hurting people, and I'm going to explain why here. Anyway, as I explained in one of my first posts, this blog was inspired by Neil Stephenson's excellent In the Beginning Was the Command Line. After a decade of using and evangelizing the Macintosh, Stephenson turned to Linux and its command-line oriented user interface for a variety of reasons that are wonderfully described in the book. I agree with most of Stephenson's assertions in this book, and recommend it highly. And in case the entire Microsoft empire comes crumpling to its knees, I'll be ready to move onto the Next Big Thing. Heck, I think I'm ready anyway.

In any event. I'm not sure what else to say. People ask me about my hardware. I have two Macintosh systems, a 2003 iMac 17-inch (1 GHz, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB hard drive) and a 2001 iBook (500 MHz, 640 MB RAM, 40 GB hard drive), both running Mac OS X 10.2.5, which I use to test Cupertino's best software (and let's not forget my beloved iPod). I also maintain at least one Linux box (a 600 MHz Gateway Solo 3350 notebook with 256 MB of RAM and a 20 GB hard drive), in addition to various Linux virtual machines I run from my main Windows desktop using Connectix Virtual PC 6.x (which is excellent). Currently, I'm running (and recommend) Red Hat Linux 9. I have several other PCs and notebooks at home as well, which I use in my Windows work. I have a Media Center PC hooked up to my main TV as a DVR, with which I have a love/hate relationship.

I'm also working on a few books at the moment, the most important of which is an update to George Beekman's excellent Computer Confluence, which is aimed at the educational market.

This is all very exciting, isn't it? If you're looking for the short version, I guess you could say I'm like Jerry Pournelle ... without the insanity, science fiction writing, or money. Or something. The opinions expressed here, naturally, are my own.

[ Posted at 9:04 AM | Permalink ]