My new website

For a while now I've been considering setting up a website on my own domain name, as this would provide an excellent way of showcasing my abilities with HTML, CSS and JavaScript, and provide a URL I can put on my CV when applying for jobs. I've had my eye on the domain name matthewdaly.co.uk, and last night I bought the bullet and paid for it (bargain at about £6 for 2 years, including VAT).

I've wanted to put a blog on there, but I couldn't find a blogging engine that I could easily integrate into it. I was thinking that the way to go would be to write a custom blogging app using Django, but right now I really don't have time to sit down and learn Django properly, what with doing an unrelated day job and studying in my spare time. So, I thought rather than put it off, I'll get some free web hosting and put something on there now, even if it's fairly basic.

And here it is! Please feel free to have a play around with it and let me know what you think, or any problems you've had with it. I've used a little CSS3 in making it, partly because it was by far the easiest way to implement drop shadows and rounded corners, but it degrades fairly gracefully in browsers that don't support CSS3 yet. I didn't have too many problems with adjusting for IE6 thanks to the reset style sheet I used, and the PNG fix.

In future I will expand upon this fairly basic site (and naturally I'm going to have to stump up for paid hosting in future) but for now this is my first hand-coded website!

Switching to Slackware

I've had my Dell Inspiron since 2004, and it's worked very, very well for me (it's still going strong), but I can't deny that it's too slow and old for many modern operating systems. I've been running Kubuntu Hardy on it for a while as that was the last version which shipped with KDE3.x but I was feeling the pain of running an older release, so I started hunting around for a replacement. KDE4 is just too heavy for this computer, so that wasn't an option.

I've tried a number of Ubuntu derivatives, including CrunchBang Linux and Xubuntu, but Xubuntu was too slow and I didn't really get on too well with CrunchBang (too basic for my liking). What I really wanted was a fairly default XFCE desktop (I really like the base XFCE desktop and it's not as bloated as Gnome or KDE).

Unable to find an Ubuntu derivative that really met my requirements, I decided to look elsewhere. I was considering Debian with XFCE as I have had a lot of good experiences with Debian-based distros outside Ubuntu, including sidux and SimplyMEPIS, but I felt like a little distro-hopping as I haven't done that for a while (since my trusty Philips X58 died at Christmas time I've only had one Linux machine, that being the old Dell, so I've relied on my MacBook a lot). I've always been interested in the sound of Slackware, and I had a copy of Slackware 13 that came with Linux Magazine, so I thought I'd give that a go. I'm familiar with the installer so the only issues I was likely to have were with configuring my wireless network. Fortunately, Slackware nowadays ships with wicd included on the disc, and I'm familiar with this. Once I'd finished the install (not hard by any means, just more involved than, for example, Ubuntu's installer), I booted it up and installed wicd from the DVD, and it worked straight away.

I've heard that Slackware has a lot less bloat than most other Linux distros, and my experience certainly bears that out. Compared to Xubuntu, my new Slackware install with XFCE is lightning-fast. As of right now I'm running slackpkg to update my system and while it may not be as flexible and powerful as apt, and not have a nice graphical front-end, it's perfectly usable
and I'm happy with it. I'm used to sudo from both Ubuntu and OS X so I've set that up, and all in all I'm very pleased with my new system.

I'll let you know how I get on with it over time, but for now I think Slackware is a great distro for what I want on this machine, and one that'll help me learn more about Linux. Don't get me wrong, I still love Ubuntu, but Slack has its place too, and I have my own reasons for liking both.