Write now I am writing this blog in the wonderful [Textmate](http://macromates.com/) Blogging bundle. I do most of my writing in Textmate, from interview preparation to my book reviews. I don’t really have an excuse to open Word anymore, except when jobs place their postings up as .doc files. Built into the blogging bundle is the [Markdown](http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/) syntax and some other fun time saving tricks which makes writing HTML or CSS or anything else a lot faster. I also don’t use Word anymore for academic writing or my resume, having completed switched to the markup based [LaTeX](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX).

Over the weekend I purchased an old CDROM drive for $6.95 CDN to intall [Xubuntu](http://xubuntu.org/). People might have heard of Ubuntu. Xubuntu is a version packaged with a light-weight windowing system. I installed it on this old computer—actual the one I bought with me to my undergraduate degree. It is a Pentium III, and according to the bios only 1.0 GHz.

I hooked it up to my television and a keyboard for only 30 mins. After doing the initial install I’ve connected to it from my laptop through the terminal program [SSH](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ssh). I mostly use it to download things from the Internet and watch videos on the TV (thinks I can initiate from anywhere on the Internet).

A lot of this time off from my job search has been trying to realize what I actually enjoy doing.

Today I continued to work on designing my own WordPress template from scratch, which should be ready very soon. And I just caught myself reading about [Advanced SSH Techniques](http://www.mikehan.com/ssh/advanced.html). I also have been working on designing a Content Management System for a non-profit organization.

Not that I necessarily want to be entirely technical in my work, but I think it is an important set of skills to have in my toolbox.