So, I landed in China Town!

[feoh]

Originally published at Blind, Not Dumb. You can comment here or there.

It has been forever and a day since I posted here. I apologize for the fade, my 4 or 5 readers must be thinking I’d joined the silent masses of bloggers who can’t overcome the inertia and fail to post ever again…

Comments

Eek.

[feoh]

OK, so clearly this Windows blogging client I tried isn't all it's cracked up to be :)

Unlike my beloved Mac editor TextMate, which made everything Just Work, it appears to have botched the cut, as well as failing to publish the picture I'd intended in a way the LJ crossposter could handle.

I'll fix it in the morning after some sleep, and maybe just draft my posts when I'm elsewhere and wait until I'm at home and booted into MacOS X to actually post :)

Re: Eek.

[feoh]

Aah, there we go :) TextMate saves the day :)

The silly blogging client didn't actually upload the image, but instead published a pointer to its location on my local disk.

How utterly unhelpful :)

Anywway, all better now.

[perspicuity]

sound good!

ah, chinatown. fun place. land of unique things.

i'll bet there's a shop there that sells $2 chant boxes and $5 buddha boxes :)

#

[feoh]

especially interesting working there and getting to see bits of Chinatown when it doesn't think you're looking :)

The open air markets in the morning are neat, too.

[perspicuity]

there's an out of the way dojo/martial arts supply store, silky way, 38 kneeland, that at street level, looks like nothing, but if you go in, and find the almost hidden staircase, and go UP, wow. paradise.

#

[feoh]

What's your favorite bakery?

[feoh]

Thanks! They're well rated on Yelp, I'll give them a shot :)

Chinatown is, even more than the rest of Boston IMO, unusually *dense* you walk by 10 places that are probably amazing every day :)

Been trying to explore as much as I can while I'm here.

[dimers]

they’ve failed to notice a truly powerful environment evolving out of the muck.

Powerful, yes ... lovable and likable, still failing there. Well, okay, I'm fairly happy with XP Home, but then Microsoft took a hefty step backward with Vista. That really showed off how a Microsoft OS could maintain control and enhance productivity, but it was unfriendly, opaque, and presumptive. I'd have preferred to learn Mac OS or Linux from scratch rather than deal with Vista.

I think it's amazing that people can have this kind of reaction to a collection of symbols. =)

[feoh]

Even Microsoft agrees that Vista was a mistake.

They've published a manifesto on how they intend to fix this with Windows 7.

We'll see.

For what it's worth, most of my comments were germane to Windoze in a business setting, for people who need a computer to Just Work, I'll always recommend a Mac.

[dimers]

I'm curious -- for just-folks, does Mac get your vote on the basis of functionality, design, or both?

[feoh]

From my perspective, the nice design is icing on the cake, the real winner is the functionality.

There is very little you absolutely *can't* do on a Windows box that you can on a Mac (or visa versa for that matter) - the differences are in how you get there.

For my money, the Mac Just Works in many instances where the same thing would require some substantial gymnastics on the PC side to accomplish.

Its interface is markedly more straight forward in a number of areas, making it much easier to provide support for as well.

Apple is all about providing its customers with a seamless user experience. You absolutely pay extra for that, but that extra investment pays dividends over both the short and long hauls.

Note that these recommendations only cover the home user. I believe very firmly in tool to task - I tend to prefer Linux for servers, or perhaps Windows if the business/application domain calls for it.

[dimers]

Oh, um, also -- YAY! You have job! *prrr*