All posts by Ben Kaplan

Good Wine

Here is my current list of red wines that I like:

Good

  • Ramsay – Pinot Noir
  • Louis Jadot – Beaujolais
  • Domaine Saint-Damien – Corbieres 2003 (French mix carignan, grenache, and syrah)
  • Bogle – Merlot
  • The Francis Ford Coppolas are all pretty good
  • Markham – Zinfandel 2000 was kinda nice
  • I had a Chec red called Egri Bikvar. Bought a bunch in 2000 and got bored of it. It has aged well!

Better

  • Fife – Zinfandel is pretty good
  • Rodney Strong – Sonoma County Cabernet Sauvignon – 2003 Very good
  • St. Supery – Napa Valley Merlot

Windows free

Ok, so…I’m windows free on my laptop. Microsoft caught up to me with my “pirated” version and said, “hey! We think you may have a pirated version!”

Rather than pay the $150, I decided to chuck it all and go with Linux.

Ubuntu to be specific. It’s a derivative of Debian.

Very nice. While I’m quite used to Linux, having all the desktop features is pretty nice. Things I like so far…

1. Integration with Windows networks is seamless. The guis created for this desktop version are bang on and well done. I can find my windows box here at the house with no problem.

2. Rdesktop – ooohhhh, now that puts windows remote desktop feature to shame. I can connect to a windows box, ala remote desktop, and even control the experience. It runs MUCH better than the standard windows version. I can control bandwidth and color and size and everything!.

3. Workspaces 🙂 aaahhhhh.

There is more…I’ve just not figured it out yet.

So far the only thing I don’t like is the utter lack of support for high end graphics. Gimp is, well, not much better than it was 10 years ago when I first tried it. If I become rich (really rich) I’m going to fund a port of Photoshop for Adobe and fucking give it to them to maintain. Talk about conversion of the masses. Webdevelopers world wide will toss aside that last little niggling dependency and convert full on.

In the meantime, maybe I’ll consider VMware, its just that I’ll still need to buy fucking windows. *sigh*