Webmaster Page for www.KenJennings.cc

Web Site of Ken Jennings

www. KenJennings .cc

Email to the web site administrator >>> WebMaster@KenJennings.cc

Tools and Stuff used to make the pages you're lookin' at:

Hardware:

The "OLD" HP Pavilion N5295 laptop before the personality upgrade

850 Mhz Space Heater
256 Meg RAM (this now seems to be the bare minimum required to make Windows useful)
20 Gig hard drive (50% used after only a few applications installed)
CD-R/W and DVD (the DVD is the only really cool thing I like)
Polk Audio
blah, blah blah
Windoze ME (a pox on humanity)

The "NEW" HP Pavilion N5295 laptop after the usability makeover

Same 850 Mhz Space Heater that it had before
256 Meg RAM (for some reason this seems roomy now)
20 Gig hard drive (50% used after dozens of applications are installed)
CD-R/W and DVD (the DVD is the only really cool thing I like)
Polk Audio
blah, blah blah
The same thing it was before, but now it is a 100% Linux system -- SuSE 10.0 Pro!

Amiga 2000

50 Mhz 68060
128 Meg RAM (gross overkill, even 16 Meg is overkill)
2 Gig hard drive (about 50% used after 10 years of programs are installed on it.)
CD-Rom
Picasso II graphics card
blah, blah blah
Amiga OS 3.x, Workbench 3.9

Walmart White Box

1.8 Ghz-ish AMD Athlon
512 Meg RAM
200 Meg on 2 hard drives (120G and 80G)
32x10x40x CDRW
SuSE Linux Professional 9.2, I'm a KDE kind of guy

Software:

PC Stuff
Notepad (yes, really)	99.5% of everything was just plain typed from a keyboard. No bloated FrontPage meta-symbol nonsense.
Ulead Cool 3D 3.0	Used for most of the 3D graphics text. Also good for making Windows crash and reboot the PC.
Ulead PhotoImpact 6.0	General image manipulation and also cropping, converting, and optimizing the less than ideal GIF files made by Cool 3D
SoftLogik's PageStream 4.0	Real DTP software. Did the Davie GOP club's membership form in PDF.
Some Commercial Font Collection	I bought so many clip art and font CDs I really don't remember where the western style font (called AllNight) used on the Davie GOP site came from.

I also have about a dozen other graphics and web things on the PC that I haven't yet had the need to use, so they're not worthy of mention. Not much PC software is worthy of mention, anyway.

Amiga Stuff
CygnusEd Pro	Like notepad, only it lets you edit huge files, search and replace quickly, program complex macros... ok, maybe it's not much like Notepad
Imagine 5.x	Miscellaneous 3D work that hasn't appeared on the web site yet. I also have this on the PC, but it works better here.
Art Department Professional	Why do PC programs have to make it so difficult to do something simple precisely? Cropping to exact pixel dimensions for one.
SoftLogik's PageStream 4.0	Yeah, it's available for the Amiga, too. And it prints better to PostScript than the Windows version.
Personal Paint and Deluxe Paint IV	PC programs are pathetic when working with low-color/palette-based GIF images. Try to remove one stinkin, stray pixel in a full-blown, multi-layered, pressure-sensitive, photo-imaging paint mostrosity on the PC. I dare ya.

Linux Stuff
vi	Actually, vim. Syntax coloring is just so cool, ain't it?
Gimp 2.0	This is pretty nifty, though I still do drag things back to the Amiga from time to time.
OpenOffice.org 2.0	This works so well, and its PDF output is so good that it has taken over almost everything for desktop publishing.

I had been abused by MicroSoft products one too many times. System and application crashes destroyed my personal data. It was a job in itself to keep the system "optimized" to work properly and maintain the virus protection updates. I can tolerate a fair amount of abuse, but having to blow away the laptop and reinstall everything from scratch for the fourth time in a year exceeded even my high threshold for pain and disgust with Windows.

So, in early 2002 the "defenestration" of my computers began. It started by transitioning all my custom code for web site maintenance to GNU/Linux. It finally ended about a year and a half later when OpenOffice.org worked better than MicroSoft Office. About October 2003 the disk drive space wasted on Windows was recovered after reinstalling Linux without a dual booting option.

Given all the entertainment provided by multiple, repeated virus attacks on Windows over the past year (2004, 2005, pick any year Windows works the same any time), I'm feeling more than a little satisfied with the decision. In the last year I've not had to reinstall the OS and all the programs on a computer due to virus or inherent instability of the OS as was often necessary to survive with Windows.