Will's blog

Discovered that O'Reilly has a thing called Ignite which sounds just like Pecha Kucha. In regards to the Boston versions of both of these events, the most recent Ignite - Boston has video recordings of the presentations.

The United States Post Office increases the cost of postage periodically. They do faster than I use the stamps that I've bought. In the process of this, I ended up with first class stamps that have no value listed on them, so I had no idea how much they were worth.

Buried on the USPS web-site is this quick service guide that lists the values of all stamps that have no value listed on them. Hooray for search engines!

I didn't follow Rocketboom daily, but I did watch it frequently. I watched it today with Joanne. I liked Amanda better. First thing that crossed my mind is that they picked up another pretty face to replace Amanda. Why does it have to be a pretty face? Is Rocketboom just another "pretty face vocalizing quip-ridden news"?

How to Talk to a Global Warming Sceptic (which I discovered from Miguel de Icaza's web log) makes for some good reading. I'm definitely interested in seeing An Inconvenient Truth now.

S and her parents work at the Me and Thee Coffeehouse in Marblehead, MA (it's 30-45 minutes from Boston depending on how you go). I go every now and then and catch the shows I find interesting. There are a few venues in the Boston area that have a solid concert list and Me and Thee is one of them. For example, in the next few months they have Ellis Paul, Antje Duvekot, and Lucy Kaplansky.

Definitely worth checking the concert schedule to see if there are upcoming shows you might be interested in. It's a great venue and when J is there, they have amazingly decadent cookies.

Me and Thee coffeehouse
2005-2006 Concert Schedule

The Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA needs help! According to their web-site (http://www.brattlefilm.org/), they need another $200,000 before the end of February otherwise they're going to have to close their doors forever.

I've seen a lot of neat movies at the Brattle over the years. The theatre isn't wildly great, but the people are.

There has been some press about it, but I figured I'd post an item on my blog for those people who live in the Boston/Cambridge/Somerville area, didn't know, and/or want to help out by donating some money. I think it is important in this case, less for the legacy, but more because they bring in a lot of great movies and the people and atmosphere is great.

I discovered "Why I hate Advocacy" from jgoerzen.

I encounter this regularly when talking about operating systems, programming languages, text editors, and even non-technical things like car manufacturers, methods for making coffee, types of beer, music, politics, .... I never connected it with a "want to be part of the tribe" behavior. I wonder if this behavior is something that's relatively recent or dates back to primitive man. Regardless, it makes it difficult to discuss things in a rational, objective manner to understand what's really going on and the nuances involved.

Also on jgoerzen's blog entry is a link to "Why smart people defend bad ideas". Reading the two essays back to back was really funky.

We're watching CNN and MSNBC and a couple of other stations. MSNBC keeps showing graphics that will have a 0 under Kerry and a 0 under Bush and then a 0% between the two indicating what percent of the votes they have in and then whoever is talking says something like, "Uh, it's too close to call this state!" Silliness.

I wish Terry Bradshaw and John Madden were announcing the election stuff. That would be far more interesting. I bet Mike's with me on this one.

I wish more people thought like this.

If I hear someone say "no more Nomar" one more time, I'm going to cry.

It's days like this when all the newscasters are making the same joke and thinking it's original that make me realize that it's true--they're all products of a devious government cloning experiment to brainwash the masses.

Or geeks. You spend you weekdays writing code for a faceless corporation ("Cash"), then you spend your evening and weekends writing anarchic, weird computer games to amuse your techie friends with ("Sex").

http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/000889.html

This rings really true to me. Though my "faceless corporation" is actually a really decent company with great people and "weird computer games" is really my massive list of "interesting projects" that I think about almost all the time: showering, driving to work, driving home, brushing my teeth, preparing a meal, washing dishes, watching tv, walking to places, walking from places, waiting in lines, ....

Just read this and I think very similarly. I was talking with my roommate Brook about it a couple of weeks ago and his thought (as I understand it) was that Joe Public needs the information in this form because otherwise it's too difficult to consume.

Unfortunately, most of the articles I've read in the last 6 months (anything beyond that is beyond the scope of my memory) don't even have a central theme--they just babble. So here's my thing--I just want facts, thoughts, and opinions; I want them clearly stated and I like them in context. I'm concerned that my fellow Joe Public Americans are getting their news fast-food style with little or no nutritional benefit.

I do a lot of Linux development and most of my projects involve Linux, GNU software, Python, PHP, Apache and a variety of other Open Source software components. Naturally, this whole SCO thing has been somewhat of a surprise and originally made me hesitant since it brought up a series of questions I didn't really know the answers to.

So this whole SCO thing has been a very nice learning experience for me. I imagine it's been a very nice learning experience for many other people as well. Things like, "How can an Open Source project prevent copyright violations?" and "What are the legal ramifications of using software that doesn't come with a warranty for possible legal issues?" are being explained in very public forums--things that pockets of the Open Source community have known for many years, but which may not have been as obvious to the rest of us.

As time has gone on and SCO continues to make press releases indicating that either they are incredibly intelligent and are playing some kind of really funky publicity game or that they have no clue what they're talking about and are learning alongside some of the rest of us, various members and groups of the Open Source community (which is so large in numbers and varied in philosophies, motivations, backgrounds, worldviews, religions, ethnic backgrounds, programming backgrounds, favorite colors, spoken language, geography, vocation and such we might as well say "people on planet Earth") have responded in an increasingly comprehensive manner.

The most comprehensive article on the topic is this response to Darl McBride's most recent open letter to the community. I would posit that any C*O/person who reads that article will no longer have doubts as to the extraordinary benefits of the Open Source development model as it applies to due diligence, copyright/patent/trademark laws, and freedom.

Where I once was hesitant about various aspects of the Open Source development model, I no longer have doubts that it is a solid and valid model and will be around for many years to come regardless of who is poo-pooing it in the press this week.