Jordan Schelew

VMWare Fusion 3.0 and Parallels Desktop 5

// November 6th, 2009 // No Comments » // Technology

Long ago, when VMWare Fusion was first announced, Parallels Desktop was the only way of running Windows on a Mac (I think this was even before Boot Camp came along). VMWare was the sort-of goliath virtualization company, having long since been making Windows and Linux based virtualization solutions. I remember downloading the trial of Parallels and feeling annoyed that I had to do little tweaks to make things work properly and that they lacked support through their online forum. I reached out to the VMWare Fusion beta, which was free until final release, and found stability, simplicity and best of all, their engineers actually responded on their forum! I bookmarked that very link and decided right then and there – Fusion was my choice for Windows on the Mac.

Things have changed a lot since then. Microsoft released 7, finally a respectable Windows operating system, meaning that the cautious folks can finally upgrade from Windows XP. Vista and 7 have some excellent DirectX-based user interface (UI) animations that make working with the UI a pleasant experience, but of course virtualizing these features was a long-time in the making. The Parallels folks started responding to people in their forums and their downloadable application just started working right after download – without requiring tinkering with the settings. The lines between the two applications began to blur, both in terms of features and support.
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New Website Design

// November 3rd, 2009 // No Comments » // My Life, This Site

After working for a couple of weeks to update Web Savers with a great new theme and process flow, I realized that I no longer felt comfortable having this web site looking as it did. Linking to this site as my professional online presence just didn’t feel good as I was not satisfied with the design.

Adam, my partner in crime (and by crime I mean business), loves Woo Themes and because of this, the new Web Savers site began with a Woo Theme at heart. Although we modified it heavily, the original theme remains in spirit. I think the WooTheme template we used was the first template for WordPress that I have ever felt comfortable modifying and working with – it wasn’t a major hassle and didn’t leave me running into constant roadblocks.

Since I had such a great experience with Woo Themes for Web Savers, I figured, why not try it out here! So thanks to Woo Themes for the lovely design. I’ve never truly been much for designing sites from scratch – my forte has always been at nitpicking at details after starting with an existing design. Therefore, sticking with my personal creation (this site’s previous design) was not a great move, as it really didn’t represent what I would consider a nicely designed web site. If it didn’t meet my own standards, how was I to expect it to meet the standards of others? This new design is the answer to that question.

Thanks to Woo Themes for this great design – I look forward to enhancing it and modifying it to my needs in the coming months.

Microsoft Notebook Mouse 5000 not working with Ubuntu or Moblin?

// September 8th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Technology

It turns out there’s an issue getting many Microsoft Bluetooth mice working with Ubuntu 9.04. In my brief research on the topic, I have learned that in an attempt to make Bluetooth configuration easier for 9.xx, the Bluetooth stack used by default was changed, and sadly does not update through the normal system updates.

After some searching around I found the solution found about half way down this forum thread from the Ubuntu Forums.
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In search of the best netbook operating system (OS). Win7, WinXP, Ubuntu NR, Jolicloud, Moblin – all here!

// September 7th, 2009 // No Comments » // Technology

Netbooks are an interesting phenomenon. Every day I see people purchasing them for both notebook replacements and the novelty factor, not to mention those simply upgrading from their 10 year old desktop just looking for the cheapest portable available! Although many are able to succeed at replacing their notebooks with a netbook, many are not – their limited performance (stemming from the weak specifications) coupled with the lack of an optical drive fumbles many people up; they wind up returned to the place of purchase.

While I had been contemplating the purchase of a netbook since just before my trip to Hungary in May, I did not actually wind up buying one. Although the purchase for the trip’s sake would have been a practical use, its usefulness following that would be purely novelty, and the $350+ pricetag was not justifiable. Recently I was able to avoid that downside altogether! Just last week I won a draw from a local self storage company which consisted of an HP Mini 1035nr as its first place prize – and thus the search began.

I used my new HP for about a day with Windows XP and constantly felt the creaking of the old operating system’s bones. After a quick search for netbook operating systems, I proceeded to download and install Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04.
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