Moonlit Minds

I installed Crunchbang or #! on my mini netbook: Acer Aspire One. To make it right it’s enough to follow instructions from Wiki - link.
You can also, as me, download and install Kuki kernel from here. It’s very simple process (kernel is packed for Debian/Ubuntu system – so, Gdebi makes nearly work for you! ). The kernel is especially “tailored” for Acer One – and everything simply works.
I am really impressed both by performance of #! and its overall look & feel. And I’m so glad I finally decided to change default distribution (which is not bad but, well, a bit out-of-date…).
Here are two screenshots:

And – greetings from my mini!

…with Steven B. Smith (free Yale courses on You Tube)

Republican senator Chuck Grassley has made it his mission to shake up the cosy relationship between doctors, researchers and the pharmaceutical industry. Now he is introducing legislation to force drugs companies to disclose the payments they make to doctors. He tells Jim Giles why he has chosen to be a troublemaker

read more here:  Exposing the links between doctors and Big Pharma

(via NewScientist)

Carl Honore: Slowing down in a world built for speed

Splendid idea, worth spreading. If you really want to see – stop and look around. Enjoy!

Well, I do not write here as much as I would like to. But nevertheless – I would like to wish everybody a calm, peaceful and above all – insightful! – New 2009 Year.

We all are probably under strong influence of news about economic crises and wars. I have always believed that no matter how difficult matters look, there is a brighter side… Try focus on it, and try also to focus not only on yourself.

We have so many amazing and wonderful tools those days, I am thinking about technology – and especially – communication technology, but did it make us happier? Did those things really improved our communication? I beg to differ. We spend more and more time inside not only our houses but – inside our inner worlds. Paradoxically, the technology made for improving our relations with outside world and others, instead of reaching the goal very often destroys the connections. I am far away from blaming the technology for it. I suspect that the reason, why it is so, is hidden in our personalities. We all are more or less narcissistic and all those new “social web” tools facilitate our narcissism.

I am not saying it is wrong. I just wonder if it has to be so. How many of us use Twitter only because we want to have more and more “followers” ? How many of us share a real knowledge and not just the news about some shiny, new “toys”? How often did you comment on blogs or FriendFeed just to be noticed or – hm – sell your product not having anything to say on the subject?

No, I do not say it is wrong – I have no right to it. I just want to point out that this way we, in the same way as mythological Narcissus, become slaves instaed of mastering the tools.

There is, of course, the way to turn the things in our favour. There are probably even more ways than one. But let me point out that one – if you take part in social game as I do, try to think what is your higher goal, your mission. How would you like to improve the lives of others by sharing your words?

You see, perhaps this way you would become less “popular” but maybe in the same time you would teach at least one person something valuable. And as a bonus I hope a useful tip: if I am sharing something here on the net I have in mind one person – my 22 years old son…

Let’s make this New coming Year really happy – for someone else.

I managed – following instructions from WordPress Codex site here, I manged few minutes ago to upgrade this humble “bloggie” of mine.

The upgrade was painless and relatively quick. My host, one.com , worked without the glitch – big thank you to One!

Everything seems to work so far. What’s next than? Well, I suppose that it’s the time to play with the new Hybrid theme, based on Hybrid theme framework  Child Theme – “Old School”.  It looks quite amazing (especially “under the hood”) but – it will take some time for me to adjust it to my vision of the site (a bit “gloomy”, greyish, personal blog). Anyway, new version of software deserves “new clothes”  .

My first impressions of WordPress 2.7? It’s great – I like new administration interface a lot. It seems much more “user friendly” and the overall look suites my taste. I also hope that the new feature – automatic upgrade – will work in the future. Not that the upgrade was too complex or difficult. It was just… stressful.

And as the last note – apologies to myself and others who visit occasionally my place here. I did not update Moonlit Minds lately because of few reasons. One of them being learning how to use social web applications like FriendFeed and Twitter (yes, it takes some time…) another – being busy with real life matters.

I hope to share some of the things I’ve learned about “social web” in the near future. Perhaps my sharing my experince and mistakes will help some other people who, as me, are new to this stuff.

I wish everybody nice day (remember: weekend soon!)