Sunday, March 22, 2009

Shifting gears

Today, I decided to change this blog's description from "linux, java, and physics over a cup of coffee." to "Open source over a cup of coffee." As I take out one major component, physics (hopefully I'll find time to relocate this topic to another blog), this move will make the niche more appropriate to the blog's title. I will still cover Java since Java is, well, partially open source nowadays. As for Linux, I already mentioned its current status in the blog in my last post.

I will have to avoid posting Linux news articles (which makes up majority of my posts here) while I am connected with APCmag.com.

Since practically all of my articles here are related to Linux, I was anxious that this blog would eventually fade away. Luckily, I came across one writing job at ODesk that required knowledge in Drupal. Having heard of it quite often lately, I became curious. So, I googled away and after a few clicks, found my way into its site, Drupal.org. I was then greeted by this text

"Drupal.org is the official website of Drupal, an open source content management platform."

An open source CMS? "Wasn't Joomla also an open source CMS?", I thought. So I zoomed straight to the Joomla site, and sure enough, my suspicions were confirmed. Anyway, before I could ponder on which one was better (and I eventually did), it suddenly hit me...

Why not transform Steaming Open Cup's niche into open source? It seemed logical enough. You don't find Linux, Java, or Physics in that title but you do find the word "open". Pretty lame explanation, but I suppose it would work best for me if it boiled down to SEO.

There's one problem: Aside from Linux, my knowhow on open source is practically nil. But what the heck? There have been many posts here that had topics that I had no inkling about at first but eventually learned something about after much research. Besides, I don't intend to share or write any code here.

So, I guess that's about it. From this day onwards, Steaming Open Cup will be talking about open source... still over a cup of coffee.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Where I've been

hi!

For those of you who are wondering why this blog has been silent since the post dated January 12, it's because I've been busy with some writing duties lately. Right now, I'm writing some news articles for APCmag.com. I'm not sure how long those great guys from down under are going to keep me but while I'm there, you won't be reading any of the usual articles, i.e. on Linux, on this blog.

If you want, you can still see my outputs @ APC. They're more regular this time, thanks to the wonderful folks there. I've set up a feed widget entitled "My contributions at APC" at the center column of this blog if you want to access them from here.

In the meantime, thanks for dropping by!

Best regards,

John