Pardon the many technical terms for my less technically inclined readers, but really, you should take a Linux for a spin, too,  and learn a little more about it.  It’s one of the greatest inventions of the late 20th century that will reduce your fear and apprehension to computers which Windows probably created in you since young.

I guess I got convinced by the arguments for the superiority for a source-compiled system, where everything can be customized and tweaked to run with your processor, your choices. My GCC’s MARCH flag set to -native with a few other “safe” flags and I kind of like to tinker around with the useflags before I go around emerging the software. Well, I wasn’t bold enough to jump from Mandriva to Gentoo, or confident enough to set up my system (wireless; desktop; everything) from scratch, so I landed upon Sabayon, which in earlier years seemed like a specialized gaming distro, but in recent times has seemed to lean towards creating a general desktop distro for all.  The Sabayon LiveCD came with a graphical installer, something people like me can use to build a system with a complete out-of-the-box “everything works” experience with my favourite KDE desktop manager; wireless connection (something most other distros usually disappoint me in) and few essential programs e.g. Firefox ready for use right away. Sure, it was something like cheating, since it would be a binary installation rather than a source installation, but hey, I had to start somewhere right. More to this later.

As I was saying earlier, Sabayon’s key difference from Gentoo, other than installing a binary-based system on the initial install, is the introduction of Equo, which is supposed to be the default package manager for the former. It offers pre-built binaries, though, so customizing it for your system to your taste is not possible with Equo. But actually from the start, I only wanted Sabayon for the easier fresh install, so I wasn’t particularly impressed with Equo. Well, I guess there is actually some disagreement over what needs to be done in my case and how, but I did an “emerge -C sys-apps/entropy app-admin/equo app-admin/sulfur sys-apps/entropy-client-services app-misc/magneto-loader kde-misc/magneto-kde sys-apps/magneto-core" and a few other commands (as inspired from this forum thread) to purge my system of all Equo remains (or I hope I did) and I wrote all the necessary Portage make.conf things in /etc/make.conf, something I think you do in Gentoo but not Sabayon, as the latter must preserve compatibility between its source-based Portage and binary-based Equo, making some Gentoo-inspired Portage manoveurs very risky. But heck it, I’m on my way to trying it out. Now at least my system is not distracted with the binary package manager. Instead, I can focus on using Portage only to build my intended source-optimized system.

Well, first thing I did was to do an “emerge -uDav –newuse world”. Now, I know this exactly isn’t recommended… But I’d supposed that I try just to see how things go… It’s still a fresh system, in any case. If need be, I could wipe the whole thing out and try a different way of doing things. I will see how it goes from here. As I type this post, the world is being emerged afresh… I hold the hands of others in Ubuntu fashion as I pray it all goes well…

Now, back to the accusation of cheating. If all goes well, I’m planning to do some kind of “emerge sabayon-sources“; “localmodconfig” and “genkernel --kernel-config=/usr/src/config --menuconfig --bootloader=grub --splash=sabayon --disklabel --luks all” combo. This, with a a bit more work, should compile for myself a lean, Intel Pentium Processor T2080, hardware-optimized Linux kernel that still gives a perfect out-of-the-box experience, but marginally faster and better. Oh, and source-compiled so I kinda don’t cheat. Building the kernel out of the existing Sabayon base should ensure compatibility and stability, and good for first-timers like me to ensure that I don’t break anything unecessarily.

I had a few preliminary trials with using emerged Firefox versus equo-ed Firefox. Unscientific benchmarks-absent user testing determines that the compiled Firefox outshines the binary with blazingly fast startup speeds and a sort of “snappy feel” to things. Or it could always be placebo.

But in overall, so far, I have been quite satisfied with my Sabayon so far. I haven’t, at least, found any strong reason to go back to binary-based Mandriva. But I’d still recommend Mandriva to newcomers to the Linux world. It is still more user-friendly and although you lose the satisfaction of source-based distros, if I was a newcomer I’d be turned off by the latter. Mandriva’s still more… Graphical? There are some things you cannot do as well on source-based distros if you don’t look at the shell. Portato helps, but only to a certain extent.

My only gripe thus far is that the current Sabayon Linux logo (as seen in the post thumbnail), looks too much like some Adidas logo. I much preferred the older, meanie-looking chicken feet logo. It reeks of aggressive power reminding people of some fighting cock, kinda like what a source-based distro would give.

To all who understood that, or the rest who already know what I’m talking about, or use it even (on my blog or not), this lamentation’s dedicated to you.

Certainly, web feeds do get rid of all the distractions of a normal website. You need not waste bandwidth downloading CSS files; JS files and a million and twelve background images. Fast, pure, efficient, brutal. Technological. Simple. Industrialist. Scientific. You get to see where you wanted to read, after all. That is like the main reason you follow the site, ain’t it?

BUT NO! What if, the site author NEVER meant all the CSS; JS and background images as distractions? They could be distractions to YOU, but ART to HIM! They were meant to be savoured together with the rest of the text, the blog posts. A grand scheme of things. A holistic picture. An overall experience.

Oh well, that’s how I see it anyway. Why else would I spend time into making the header and loading image, customizing the theme and installing the many plugins in The Staccato Slur, if it was not meant for your dear enjoyment, my readers; the appreciators of my work? Sure, it might not be van Gogh to you, or that you might already be bored of seeing the same thing all the time, but hey, it’s part of the grand design. It’s like, erm… Ordering fine dining, takeaway please. Reading a book, using Kindle. Dating a girl, straight to the bed. Okay maybe not. Horribly bad assumptions there.

Yes okay, you get the idea. Every time you are there, doing the same thing as you did before, seeing the same thing you would have seen for ages, that is there. Whatever attracted you to it in the first place; the novelty of the very first.

The atmosphere, the façade!

Alright. Why in spite all these then do I still give my readers the option of subscribing to The Staccato Slur via RSS? I could easily disable it via my WordPress Admin console.

Here is what I think, my part of the deal. If you fancy feeds and cannot bear to part with the convenience it brings,  sure, go ahead and use it on The Staccato Slur. No issue, only if you would come back, once in a while, to see the site in its entirety… Kinda like going for a live concert for your favourite band for once, instead of just listening to their MP3s and watching their DVDs, eh? Oh, and when other people ask you about The Staccato Slur, be sure to direct them to the main site first. Don’t just forward articles from the feed! Deal?

Ah well, by the way, I do use feeds as well, if you wonder.  But purely for data/news sites and updates, technical stuff about WordPress and Linux that doesn’t usually have an aesthetical element to its content layout. Distractions, that is. Heh, but I do go to the website every now and then to see if they have changed the layout to something more pleasant, and of course, to bask in the non-design of things. The whole experience, still, even if its of a mediocre aesthetic.

For purposes of consistency, I have migrated The Staccato Slur from ajanimgo.com to staccatoslur.com. The old domain name will still continue to exist, but henceforth redirect visitors to the new domain while people get used to the change.  All other related web presences e.g. email address, have been adapted to the new domain as well.

In short, reach The Staccato Slur at http://staccatoslur.com from now on. Shouldn’t mispell it if you can pronounce it.

Driving this opportunity for change is a migration to a new web host, Cyber Ultra. My old subscription at 3iX had expired, and let us just mention that Cyber Ultra gave me a better value-for-money ratio. 3iX is a good host in its own right, though.

For the WordPress geeks, I have also done a review of the site’s engine; installing new plugins and removing obselete/unoptimized ones. Instead of using the old WP Super Cache, I am now using the W3 Total Cache that does database caching; gzipping; minification and CDN as well in one single plugin. Along with the optimization of a few site images, this should give quite a boost to the responsiveness and speed of the site. Unfortunately this has broken quite a few features e.g. Snap Shots; collapsible sidebars, but I think the end gain in speed could be worth it.

The admin backend is powered now by Fluency Admin. Looks that are consistent; features that are time-saving – why not?

These, and a series of other unstated plugin/method changes now make it easier than before to maintain The Staccato Slur, and understand from an admin perspective.

Does this mean that I will be writing more? Maybe, now that my staff job in the army gives me marginally more time in comfort to think and write.  The alternative would be just to let The Staccato Slur stagnant as usual, but after writing to you of all these changes,  I would guess letting it stay dormant would be dumb. After all, some of these changes e.g. domain name; hosting, cost money. But then, if I had no plans to write more on The Staccato Slur, then why would I have wasted money and time on all these? Hmm… Begging the question.

I got a video from the WordPress blog here about WordPress 2.7; well, you can see how the admin panel looks like here. I have no wish to congest the Internet further with screenshots of my own panel – they all look about the same anyway.

Quite obviously, I think that 2.7 is but a first step to greater things to come. The new interface will take time getting used to, but hey, they have already simplified plenty of things for me. The inclusion of an in-built plugin installer; comment threading and sticky post system will be good news for other WordPress users and I, now that we can do away with third-party plugins for such purposes. The most exciting thing is the clear “modular” structure everything now is arranged. That seems to be the trend with Internet applications nowadays e.g. the dashboard has draggable elements; everything is, or looks AJAXed to open and close intuitively etc. I like it. I find everything integrated, tight, uncluttered.

I think that should be it? All about the candy; I don’t have much to bitch about then. I like the candy and only the candy’s changed. I can’t think of what else WordPress lacks that I cannot extend myself… Ah, the power of open-source.

• New Name

“The Staccato Slur” pretty much sums up nicely what the newer ajanimgo.com will be like – personal and maybe more meditative, with the presentation of staccato (random, or rather, not having a thematic structure over time) thoughts and writing, but yet having a slur in writing, a certain inertia in thought and need to unify the diverse notes into a decent melody – an articulated smoothness that comes from the linkage and consideration of seperate philosophies and events, but yet not precisely legato, which seems to connote a flow that naturally “goes without saying”.

“An aesthete to save us all” is the new tagline, which has replaced the old “Condensed for the Chic” which was far too cheesy and overused, both in the old Abridged Ajani and the new Staccato Slur. The new tagline rocks, however, because it does mean something personal. Romanticism today will save one from the dangerous despair of existentialism.

• Proper Branding

Quite a decent bit of work has gone into The Staccato Slur’s branding; you will notice quite prominently, a header banner that will be representative of what this entire revamping project stands for – Foucault; Nietzsche and Sartre and their influence upon my ethos and thought. Don’t worry about Foucault though – he looks stressed and Nietzsche looks hungry but they are only playing a game of Scissors, Paper, Stone.

I am trying to find as many avenues to personalize this site as far as possible – mainly by writing. Design-wise I have made only few changes on the most significant aspects e.g. header of the site because yes, this theme I am using now is an excellent theme, which brings us to the next point.

• New Theme and Look

My previous theme was “Freshy 2“. It was good, no doubt, but it lacked the ease of customization of the theme I now have defected to – “Mandigo“. I found no reason to however attempt customization beyond what would be immediately obvious to the reader. The background which the main frame of the content sits on by default, for instance, I thought was a perfect fit already.

• AJAX Navigation

On a more technical note, I have installed a new AJAX plugin on the site. Its benefits however is easily observed; as you navigate on the site, switching pages and reading posts, you will notice that instead of having to face a conventional page-loading process, a rather more sleek loading process kicks in and you see Auguste Rodin’s Le Penseur impatiently dozing off to the loading process in the middle of the page – the Zs mark the loading of the page. Well, perhaps it’s best empirically observed to get what I mean – so go clicking. I thought this new feature to contribute to the user experience, above all.

And yes, I had got a bit creative with the capabilities of the plugin in order for Le Penseur to serve me as such – the default animation loaded was actually that of a boring throbber you see everywhere nowadays on Web 2.0 sites e.g. Facebook, so I made the decision to create the animation you see now.

Unfortunately, if you take a quick look on your browser’s address bar, the plugin does not generate nice, memorable URLs as it does its work. Well, honestly, the plugin’s engine’s in some Javascript foreign to me and as such, too bad huh, I have no idea how to tweak it properly to give you nice URLs to look at. I have however posted a comment with the plugin’s author on the issue, but meanwhile just bear with the unsightful side effect for the greater beauty of watching The Thinker in sleep.

• Visitor Statistics

Well, you wouldn’t notice much of this, it’s meant to be invisible to all save for me. I have upgraded my phpMyVisites installation to the much updated Piwik. As of the time of writing however there’s some potentially long-term technical barriers against me using Piwik, so hmm… This is not something I’m able to definitively confirm now. But don’t worry – there’s nothing that sucks for you.

• Creative Commons

The Creative Commons licenses are going to be referenced at the end of every piece of writing ideally to give each piece of writing of mine their due copyright status, since I thought that I might be writing more than just essays on The Staccato Slur now, but also novels, perhaps uploading too films and drawings if I have the mood for them. This replaces the generic fit-all Attribution-Noncommercial license used earlier, so look carefully! But well, I’m a nice guy – I’m not going to sue you lest you grossly violate the spirit of the sharing of human knowledge.

My writings will hopefully be friendlier to the reader, above all. I will remind myself to introduce every concept I make reference to, holding the assumption that none of my readers are acquainted with the outlooks and ideas I quote. Guess these should be all the changes I made or will be making consciously, anyway.

Well, welcome to The Staccato Slur.