Dan McCullum DesignDan McCullum Design

Introducing...Nightly Builds

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Enough said... check out http://dmdzine.net/nightlybuilds.html for more details.

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And in other news...

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

I have also recently completed a total redesign (just the appearance, not much was done to the site structure) of The Friends of Point au Roche website. I felt that it was time for a refresher, and so I redesigned it... Tell me what you think! (Use the new comments feature! Just click on the post title, and scroll to the bottom!)

This new design happens to be the first design I've done that has been totally W3C valid XHTML and CSS!

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Now the Tides Turn

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Not too long ago I talked about how I had just gotten a Dell Desktop and was running Windows XP on it. Well, over the last week, I took a blind leap and installed Debian Linux on it. I then installed XAMPP and VirtualBox. So, ironically, the tides have turned and it is Windows that I am running in a virtual machine on top of a Linux box. 

Things have gone fairly smoothly, and I am really enjoying the many similarities in functionality between Linux and OS X, though I do miss some of the ease of use that Windows and Mac still have a bit of an edge on. But altogether, this seems much more stable, safer, and more powerful than the previous XP system.

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Contact Form on dmdzine.net

Friday, October 19, 2007

I've just finished implementing a contact form on Dan McCullum Design (http://dmdzine.net) that should make getting in touch with me through my website even easier than ever. It replaces a ReCaptcha mailto link, and hopefully will be a boon to both the site users and myself.

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Linux. Is it Ready?

Thursday, October 18, 2007

With the release of Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon, the question is once again raised, "Is Linux ready for the mainstream?" For year after year that answer has been "no," much to the disappointment of the Linux faithful.

This time, however, things are different. Though I have not yet used the new system (I'm downloading it as I write this), a look at the "New Features" page showed me enough to get me excited.

It looks like Linux is finally taking a major step into the realm of mainstream desktop computing with this latest release. Though I am a die-hard Mac user, I would be willing to switch my Windows desktop entirely to Linux if I can get my Netgear USB wireless chip to work with it.

There are some real quality features in this release that seem to make it accessible to a much larger audience.

But...

I do think that, for the average user, this is not the right system...yet. Emphasis on "yet." From what I can see, by the time the next major version of Ubuntu is released, it will be ready for just about everbody. There are a few things that might keep inexperienced users (or advanced users who, like myself, just don't have enough time at the moment to work out major issues) from wanting to switch, but the latest steps towards better and easier driver integration are promising. I'll be crossing my fingers and hoping... Meanwhile, I'm Linux or Mac proselytizing to everybody I can. Keep up the good work Ubuntu team!

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Introducing Reviews

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Well folks, there is a new page on Dan McCullum Design called Reviews. It's a beta offering that is basically "Music reviews by a musician and music producer."

I'm a bit excited about this page, and feel that it has a lot of potential, perhaps even more so if I decide to switch my site over to Wordpress (though, because of the time necessary to convert my theme, this is unlikely for at least a while).

Check it out, tell me what you think, and enjoy!

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Virtualize This

Thursday, October 11, 2007


Virtual Box
Originally uploaded by dmdzine

I just finished setting up an Ubuntu virtual machine on my new desktop, and thought I would share with you the cool little program I did it with.
VirtualBox, provided by Innotek software, is a very cool and very free program that allows you to run virtual machines within a Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X (Intel only) environment. The program supports practically every OS supported by its expensive brethren, and has some nice little features packed in. I previously used it on my MacBook to run Windows until I got my new Dell.
Check it out... it's very cool

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I love that new computer smell

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

*Sniff* Ahhhhhhh... There's nothing quite as satisfying as that new computer smell.

I just picked up a new (for me) Dell desktop that my aunt was getting rid of, and I am jumping for joy. Although I am a Mac user to the core now, it is still important to for me to have both a Mac and a Windows PC available to me easily.

Now, the specs:

Dell Dimension 4400
1.70 GHz Pentium 4 (Fast enough for my uses. Video editing, photo processing, and music recording I do on my Mac)
1 Gb RAM (sweeeeeet!)
40 Gb Hard Drive (kind of small, but ok for what I'm doing)
Radeon 9800 XT 256 Mb (best graphics card I have ever had!)
SoundBlaster Live! (better than the integrated crap that normally comes on Windows PCs)
Windows XP (no Vista please)

I'm now using it as my testing server, replacing the aging Dell that I had previously been using.

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NJ, the land of WiFi

Saturday, October 06, 2007

I'm visiting my grandmother in New Jersey this weekend, and just got back from a day at NYC where I went to the Natural History Museum (which incidentally is absolutely nothing like the one shown in the Ben Stiller movie, A Night in the Museum) and experienced NYC driving from the passenger's seat (which was plenty for me, I can tell you). I'm now blogging away from the upstairs bedroom of her house. Now, it is important to note that my grandmother is the farthest from technically savvy as it is possible to be (a TV is pushing the limits), so she definitely is not maintaining an open wireless network in her house. But I still have pretty good connection to at least 2 open wireless networks!

Of course, I'm being a bit more careful about entering passwords and such, but I must admit it is pretty cool!

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Now, Comments

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

You can now comment on the Dan McCullum Design Blog... Be polite!

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Yay It's HERE!

Tuesday, October 02, 2007


Yay It's HERE!
Originally uploaded by dmdzine

Got Logic Express 8 last week and have been playing around with it a bit. It is definitely a major improvement over the previous version. It's easier to use, more powerful, and more...Mac. I'll check back in when I have had more time to use it.

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Setting up a Testing Server

Monday, October 01, 2007

After a recent decision to learn PHP, I found myself in a predicament: It takes far too long to upload each minutely changed file to the web just to test a small change. So, I decided to set up a testing server in my studio.

I used an old Dell XPS (933MHz PIII, 128Mb RAM, 40Gb HD) as the platform, installed Windows 2000 Pro on it, and downloaded the amazing XAMPP Server-in-a-Box (Apache, PHP, MySQL). The installation went smoothly, and I was soon up and running. After installing a wireless USB dongle, I connected the computer to my home network. I then went into the XAMPP install folder and changed the share permissions of the "htdocs" folder to allow network control, which is the internet folder for XAMPP.

Next, came what appeared to be the most difficult part of the operation: connecting the MacBook to the server. My experience with connecting two Windows XP boxes to each other and getting the permissions, firewalls, and access controls to be friendly made me dread the thought of inter-OS sharing. Actually, this part ended up being the easiest part of the entire process. If Macs integrate better on a Windows network than Windows computers do, Microsoft definitely has a big problem to deal with.

After connecting the two computers via wireless router, I proceeded to download and install WordPress in a folder on the testing server. I'm planning to learn how to create WP templates, and this should be a much faster and easier way to do so...

I have not yet connected Dreamweaver to the testing server, but I plan to do that the next chance I get... I'll write more about this once I get a chance to use it a bit more.

Till then...

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