ZenLinux Blog

A huge congratulations are in order to Nick Plante for publishing his first book, Practical Rails Plugins. Nick is a local buddy and fellow co-chair of the NH Ruby and Rails User Group, and I’ve followed the tireless effort he’s put into this book over the last several months. Nick knows his stuff, and I can vouch for the effort and thoughtfulness he put into making this book a readable and practical resource for Rails developers.

So Zappos sells shoes online. They have a very interesting marketing strategy – they exceed expectations so much they inspire word of mouth advertising. I placed my first order for a pair of shoes yesterday, and chose the free shipping option (4-5 business days for delivery). A short time later I received an email informing me that they’re going to upgrade my shipping for free. Today I discovered that they upgraded it to FedEx overnight delivery. I’m wearing my new shoes now, just 24 hours later.

Their marketing strategy works. I’m blogging about buying a pair of shoes from an online retailer.

I just found out that a group called the NH Media Makers will be meeting at Crackskulls coffee house in Newmarket, NH on May 11, 2008. For more details, check this blog post. I’m planning to attend and love to see groups like this popping up in the area.

My trusty Eclipse ergonomic computer monitor lamp bit the dust a few weeks ago (not the bulb, but the unit itself), so I decided to go hunting for a new desk lamp. Admittedly I’m picky about these kinds of things, so it took me several visits to various places before I found something I liked. I noticed that a lot of the lamps are halogen-based and have special bulbs. I didn’t think much of this and the one I liked happened to be this type. It had an adjustable dimmer knob so, I figured I was all set.

But when I finally turned the thing on at home, WOW, was it hot! The stream of light emanating from it felt like it was also capable of cooking whatever you placed underneath it. I hoped the dimmer knob would be the saving grace, but it didn’t help much in the heat department. It also caused the lamp to make an annoying buzzing sound when it wasn’t on full-brightness. Argh.

My home office is warm enough with all the computer gear and aquarium equipment I have, and I decided this lamp was just too much. If you’re looking for a dual-function light source and space heater, give a halogen lamp a shot. But mine is going back to the store and I’m getting one that takes normal incandescent bulbs (which I’ll replace with an energy-efficient compact flourescent to reduce heat even further).

Not that I think this blog is going to get a large readership, but I decided to create a free Feedburner account and use them as my RSS aggregation service, so I can get some metrics on who actually bothers to subscribe to this feed. It’s also an example of a successful web2.0 service that I wanted to try out.

So add me to your RSS feedreader, you know you want to!