Reddnet Scribbles

In this long-overdue article, I want to discuss the practical aspects of writing a resume, especially ones aimed for technology fields.

You can find a ton of how-to-resume stuff, but most of it lacks practicality, or just doesn't map to the needs of the majority of technology professionals. I also want to hit darker aspects of resumes that never get the kind of serious discussion they deserve.

I've been on both the hiring, and the applying end quite often through the years, but this is just one man's opinion... take what you find useful, and leave the rest.

BTW, this is a very long article (get some coffee).

Also note: I refuse to use the fancy French spelling. The English language does NOT include accent marks...

Audible.com is a great service for downloadable audio books, but they use their own format for the audio files. This format is internally very similar to MP3s, but without Audible's own software to play the files, they are nearly useless. Audible files are also notoriously annoying to convert to MP3 format, and information on converting the files is hard to come by, and often incorrect. Also, most of the tools that you see recommended for converting audible files don't actually work, so it is easy to throw a lot of money away buying commercial conversion tools only to find out they can't help you anyway. 

So, I've decided to share my own recipe for audible file conversion here. I've converted hundreds of my own books using this process over the last several years, so I know it does work, but this is NOT an easy process.  Also, it doesn't always work out for some people due to other software or settings on their system.

Anyway... I've done my best to make these instructions as clear and concise as possible, but I make no guarantees that you'll be able to get this to work. If it doesn't work for you, feel free to drop in some comments about your experience here, but don't expect me to troubleshoot it for you. I offer these instructions "as-is". 

Read on...

I've finally retired my Dell XPS M1730. The M1730 was, and remains, a very powerful machine but I'd only ended up with that beast because of bad timing. When I needed to buy last time there just weren't any reasonable machines in the upper mid-range. The available systems were either just a little underpowered, or you had to go with the overpowered gaming rigs.

The short battery life of the gaming rig has been a challenge though, so I have grown very eager to leave it behind for something a little more reasonable.

I picked the Dell Studio XPS 16, also known as the Dell Studio M1640.

So now it's review time again.

Here we go!

One of the most annoying things about Vista for me is the way it constantly tries to "guess" what kinds of files are in a folder and then change how windows explorer displays the contents of the folder.

This is especially annoying since I tend to use the "Details" view in windows explorer. 

There is a really simple application that can fix this problem right up for you though...

For 4 years, reddnet has been hosted by Webhost4life, but over the last two years I've been increasingly unhappy with them. So I've moved on to a new provider, ReliableSite.net . I'll write up a full review after I've had a while to really get to know the new provider...

Google's new Chrome browser, which I reviewed earlier this week, is planned as a platform on which Google will build out more ambitious web applications...

Part 3 in my roundup of the new breed of web browsers. In this installment I'll discuss the beta version of Internet Explorer 8...

Part 2 in my roundup of the new breed of web browsers. In this installment I'll discuss the beta version of Google Chrome.

With the recent releases of so many new web browsers, I thought it might be time to take my bearings again and review the new landscape. I'll tackle Firefox 3 first.

The Medium Lobster is back! How did I get along without his wisdom for so long?