Things I Like or Endorse
by Gerald Oskoboiny
This is pretty lame. One day it will be less lame.
Contents
- photo.net: tons of amazingly
addicting, high-quality content (photography, web/db
integration)
- useit.com: if everyone
listened to this guy, the web wouldn't suck as much.
- yahoo.com: most web sites
are big, bloated, buggy, and slow. Yahoo's aren't. Ever wonder
why they've been the #1 web site for the last 5 years or so?
- eGroups: I kind of
wanted to start something like this, but never got around to
it. They seem to be doing it extremely well. (the technical
part, at least; I'm not sure about their policies.) See related notes.
- other sites linked from my start page:
these are the sites that I visit several times a week
These companies know how to retain my business. There aren't
many, unfortunately. Every phone company I have dealt with in
the U.S. has been awful, especially Sprint PCS. Avoid them
like the plague they are. These guys should spend less on
advertising and more on trying to retain the customers they
have.
- Magma for DSL service in Ottawa,
Canada. Fantastic support, speed, quality, features, and prices;
finally a broadband provider that doesn't suck! (see endorsement sent to oclug list)
- SFNB (Security First
Network Bank): no service charges, 24 hour support by phone and
email, and pretty much everything can be done online.
(doh... someone else bought SFNB, started charging massive
service charges, discontinued online access to my credit card
statements, etc; so I terminated my accounts with them.)
- pair Networks: they
hosted my web site from 1996-2000. It's
amazing what
you get for less than $30 per month. I still use and recommend pairNIC for domain name
registration.
- Hacking
on cool software
- Free software: it's not the price
that matters, it's freedom, baby, yeah! (related: pilgram on
Movable Type)
- Open source
software: If I don't
like the way something works, I want to be able to change it.
- Linux: "the OS people
choose without $200,000,000 of persuasion" (attribution unknown)
- Debian GNU/Linux is my
preferred linux distribution (see why)
SCO sucks.
- Perl:
Perl gives such good instant gratification; it's hard to go
back to any other language after being spoiled by Perl.
Unfortunately it also makes it really easy to write
unmaintainable code, which most people do (including me.)
The Perl
Cookbook is a must-have.
- Apache: open source, fast,
standards-compliant, and popular -- what more could you want?
- procmail:
I can't imagine receiving the amount of email that I do
without a powerful filtering tool like procmail.
- vi. I don't have time for Emacs.
- Mutt: it's everything I ever wanted in an e-mail client!
- Postfix for mail
transport. sendmail
blows.
- Standards
(specifically, software interoperability. You're using it to view this
page!)
- DTRT (used on my start page):
if this gets any more useful I can call it
a portal
and get someone to pay $300 million for it.
- Usenet has a
lot of good info (buried with a lot of other junk), and Usenet
newsreaders are about a hundred times more efficient than web
boards and ten times more effecient than most email clients
(well, maybe only 2-3 times more efficient than Mutt :)
I used to read and post to Usenet a lot, but don't much any more.
You can see recent
stuff I've posted.
- todo: add misc recommended reading: crypto-gram, etc.
- Spending time with family & friends. I try not to pass up
any chances to socialize, and almost never pass up an
opportunity for a good road trip
somewhere.
- Vacations! Lots of people complain that they work too much
and that machines are draining away all their spare time, etc.;
I intend to make sure my life has more than
its fair share of slacking. I took about 2 months of vacation
time in 1999 (normal by European
standards, but difficult in America), and I hope to increase
this figure gradually throughout the rest of my life.
- Being Canadian, living in Canada, and Canadian people and
culture in general. (it's the best
place in the world to live! Related: quality
of life and cost of living rankings, 2004.)
You might want to read An American's Guide to Canada or
some funny anti-Canada
satire.
- Good beer. Grasshopper,
made by Big Rock, is my favorite
beer in the whole world.
Other recent favorites include:
- 1999: Mackeson XXX Stout (England),
Smutty Nose Old Brown Dog Ale (New Hampshire),
Guinness
- 2000: Smithwick's, Hart Amber, Hart Dragon's Breath,
Hart Cask Conditioned Pale Ale
- 2001: McAuslan
(Montreal, Canada) St. Ambroise Pale Ale, Griffon Extra Pale Ale,
and St. Ambroise Oatmeal Stout; Abbaye de Leffe (Belgium)
- 2002: Wellington
Cask Conditioned Ale (Guelph, Canada)
- 2003: Hoegaarden, more St. Ambroise :)
- 2004: Hoegaarden, various old favorites (above)
My housemate recently bought a beer fridge, so now we
always have a keg of fine Canadian microbrew at hand.
- Travel and
photography.
- Pool/billiards/snooker/whatever -- I never lose!
(I think most of my friends have recurring nightmares that look
like this
picture)
- Good coffee. Mmm, coffee. (I'm trying
to cut down, though)
My favorite albums of all time (approximately in order):
(last updated Mar 2003)
Actually, this isn't a very accurate list. It's really hard to come up
with a list like this... I know tons of stuff is missing, and lots more
shouldn't really be here. Oh well.
See also: my highest
rated or lowest rated songs on RadioParadise (highly recommended, btw.)
Most of what I read is online.
The few books I have read recently are:
Last modified: $Date: 2006/03/01 02:40:49 $
Gerald Oskoboiny, <gerald@impressive.net>
