July Site Updates

Posted on July 2, 2011 by Jesse Zylstra

No outages this month!

A new segment is being introduced: each week we will show a technology related picture that has little copyright restrictions (i.e. public domain). Our first, Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine. Focus will be on images with historical significance, or any image that holds educational value.

ZylBlog is becoming increasingly popular, and we are not really sure why. Nevertheless, we’ll keep on going, trying to improve more and more. We need article suggestions. Please submit them here.

You can now “Like” a post on Facebook, tweet it, print, and share each article in literally hundreds of new ways. Continue reading →

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Ad: Deep Blue Pools

Posted on July 2, 2011 by Jesse Zylstra

The following is a paid advertisement.
We are not responsible for the content of the actual website.

Are you looking for Utah swimming pool installation services? Deep Blue Pools and Spas is Utah’s leading swimming pool and spa builder. They also offer pool and spa maintenance and repair services. If you are looking for swimming pool builders Utah, Deep Blue is definitely a company you should check out. Deep Blue is more than just a pool store, it is a place of service. Visit their website and check out some of their information on services they provide. Go ahead and call or email for a free quote, you never know what you might find in your budget.

 

Special Number: 1283
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Ad: Dell Inspiron Battery

Posted on June 30, 2011 by Jesse Zylstra

The following is a paid advertisement.
We are not responsible for the content of the actual website.

Do you need a battery for Dell Inspiron 1546?Laptop Spares Online has batteries for the Dell Inspiron 15, 1525, 1526, 1545, 1546 and many more batteries for Dell, Acer, Apple, Compaq, HP, Gateway, Lenovo, and may other brands.

Special number: 1277
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Image of the Week

Posted on June 29, 2011 by Jesse Zylstra

Image via Wikipedia

The Altair 8800

The Altair 8800. Photo by “euthman”. Click image for more

 

photo by euthman on Flickr

The Altair 8800, one of the first microcomputers to be available to home hobbyists in a “build it yourself” kit. The Altair 8800 changed the way computers were thought about, and helped to bring computers from the commercial world into homes. Read more to learn about it. Continue reading →

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Google Opens “What do you love?”, a new website

Posted on June 28, 2011 by Jesse Zylstra
Google Logo officially released on May 2010

(Image via Wikipedia)

The Internet search giant, Google, has opened another website. This one is called “What do you love”, available at wdyl.com

It is a clever little advertising gimmick. You type in what you love (i.e. ZylBlog) and Google shows you how all the products it offers can help you love it even more. (Those are my words for describing what it does..) I don’t think it is worth writing an entire article on as the site is so self-explanatory. Check it out.

It is mildly amusing. Google has not announced the exact purpose of this website, or the reason for it. My guess is for fun, more than anything.

Here is an example search for ZylBlog.

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Free Image of the Week

Posted on June 24, 2011 by Jesse Zylstra

Copyright Limited Image of the Week (more information below)
Charles Babbage‘s Difference Engine. A mechanical computer.

Babbage's Difference Engine. Image by: Jacques Foucry. (Click for more)

Continue reading →

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Fedora Linux Adventures Continued:

Posted on June 22, 2011 by Jesse Zylstra

I am starting to wonder if Fedora is really the distribution I feel like sticking with long-term. But, now that I have the WiFi driver figured out, I figure I might as well give it a little longer.

I’ve noticed a few things about Fedora, compared to my Ubuntu experience, both positive and negative. I will now introduce those in no particular order.

The package manager of Fedora is much much slower. It opens quickly, but searches applications slowly. Also, I find that it often sits and waits saying “waiting in queue” as other package commands finish in the background. The package manager is, however, much better at avoiding file-locking conflicts. In Ubuntu, if you did two package manager things at a time, one would work and the other would not. In Fedora, one o the managers will wait until the other is finished. This means you could install something through the package manager, and something else through the command line at the same time with no problems.

Continue reading →

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They say exhaling is good for you, but I’m not convinced.

Posted on June 19, 2011 by Jesse Zylstra
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Linux Distributions: Fedora 15

Posted on June 18, 2011 by Jesse Zylstra
This is the Gnome-Logo made with vectors. GNOM...

(Gnome Logo) (Image via Wikipedia)

I’ve been a fan of Ubuntu for a very long time, but lately I had been questioning the direction they were heading in — especially regarding Unity. Unity is the latest desktop interface shipped with Ubuntu 11.04. It is based off Gnome 3, but has many differences.
I tried Unity for about two weeks, and then I tried Gnome 3 for two weeks — Gnome 3 beat Unity to the ground. My search of a distribution that supported Gnome 3 began, and yesterday I took the final steps towards this process.

Fedora 15: A trustworthy and well known distribution of Linux that supports Gnome 3. Over the next few weeks, I expect to make more posts relating to my change to this operating system. This article encapsulates my first impressions of Fedora 15, as I have been using it for two days now. Continue reading →

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Zemanta: A Blogging Multi-tool

Posted on June 14, 2011 by Jesse Zylstra

Description: Zamanta is one of the more interesting WordPress plugins that I have run across. (Though, I want to mention up front that it works for various other platforms, and can also work as a browser plugin..) Zamanta is a blogging tool that provides a few wonderful features when creating new posts. To start, let me tell you what I am seeing right now:

In my right-hand pane, I see a Content Recommendations box. Inside, I have a media gallery (where Zemanta recommends images that may be appropriate for the article being written). The image gallery is neat, and it helps you avoid copyright issues by telling you what the copyright for the images are when you hover over them.

Below that, I have “Related Articles” which pulls articles on websites all over the Internet that have similar content, so I can link to other pages on the web if I would like. Here are a few example articles, based on what I have written so far:
Related articles

In my Content Recommendations box, I can choose to only view my own sources — which it then only shows images that I have uploaded on my website and related articles that only exist on my own websites (I can specify which websites I want it to include, even outside my domain). Continue reading →

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