This is a testimony which I could not help quoting. It speaks of the rotten state of Web design courses.

I asked the teacher to direct me to a real website in the real world that he has developed. He told me his job is to teach, not create a site. I then asked if he could accurately describe the use of the [a href] tag and how to make it open in a new window. Total silence. I then asked if he knew what “CSS” stood for and its place in web design. Once again, silence. I asked what PHP is. I asked about asp and its purpose in web design. Still silence. I was sure he hung up on me, but I was wrong.

After 10 seconds of stammering his way through the css question, he summarized his comments by telling me that CSS is a very specific programming language seldom seen in the real world. He admitted he was not familiar with asp and phc (that’s right, ph”c”). He feels that since it is seldom used, there is no reason to teach it to the students.

OOGLE has got an illicit mirror, which is known as the infamous Scroogle (appendage of the words “scrape” and “Google”). It also has plenty of legal harvesters, which use Google as the source for some search results (e.g. Webcrawler et al. and Google with traffic gauges such as A9).

Google, however, has yet another mirror, but in a more practical sense of the word. Have a look. The nice little thing is that the user gets re-directed to the site which matches the query, only reversed! (anagram)

Related items: Gizoogle

OMPARING computers a human:

SuSE is rather hard to get, but others say she likes everyone and is rather easy.

Interpretation: SuSE (Linux distribution, can be pronounced “Suzie”) is rather hard to get (5 ISO‘s to burn), but others say she likes everyone (hardware) and is rather easy (to use).

Related item: Linux Chauvinism

friend has just sent me the following mock-up image. He occasionally has a play with graphical software and other people’s photos are used in the process.

So apparently I am responsible for one terrible disaster. I had never realised it until he told me.

If you are switching from Windows to Linux, be warned. An independent, small-scale study concludes that migrating from Linux (back) to Windows is hard. As Windows lacks the power and user-friendliness that Linux offers, frustration should be anticipated.

A similar and older article uses sarcasm and outlines reasons not to use Linux. In practice, both articles which are cynical serve as primers to the advantages of using Linux.

If you choose to upgrade to Linux, be aware that rather than reading surveys, you can use a questionnaire-type utility to determine which Linux distribution suits you best.

Also see: 25 Reasons to Convert to Linux

MUSING photos are appreciated whenever light entertainment is sought. So, in the past months I have created a few using the GIMP. Steve Ballmer is involved in two of these, both of which stem from discussions in the Linux advocacy newsgroup.

• Malware Magnet
• Flatfish

Lastly, I decided to give my own version of Microsoft Linux. I hereby present the box set of Microsoft Linux. Anti-virus and Service Packs are included free of extra charge.

(To Webmasters: You can borrow these images to use in your Web site; no need to request for consent. In fact, I do not mind HotLinking either.)

An old screenshot of one among several desktops

Y new year’s resolution will have been 1600×1200, but I think I need to purchase different monitors. I recently added a 5^th and 6^th virtual desktop, which extends an already large workspace as described in a previous item on virtual desktops. At the moment, my desktop is over 15,000 pixels wide! It is convenient to never have to open an application. The user merely brings it under focus using CTRL key bindings instead. The cost is memory, of course.

Related item: Last year’s new year’s resolution (I quite like the sound of it!)