It’s so freaking hot in Wisconsin!

NASA recently came out and said 2009 was the second warmest year on record and somewhere Glenn Beck is either getting his daily lobotomy, back in the mother-ship or getting advice from his scientific advisor, Mr. Magic 8-ball.  It has been cold in Wisconsin, but fittingly, today it got up to 37 here in Wisconsin…actually, it still is at nearly 1am.  Quite the heat wave (I’m not joking).

So, I thought I’d drop in and tell you a bit of what has been going on so you can fire away with questions.

1) falling out with the ex-girlfriend. It’s as over as over can be. I think we’re both very much at peace with that. No further questions, please.

2) I got FIFA 2010 for PS3. Now, I don’t own a PS3, but my roommate does.  I suppose I like to enjoy some freedom-hating every once-in-a-while.  My screen name there is douglasawhsport (just like on ESPN).

3) I had the worst abdominal pain the other day and ended up in urgent care.  Doctors don’t have any idea what happened. Appendicitis and kidney stone (the two original hypothesis) were ruled out with blood and fluid tests.  It caused me to miss my basketball game (which it sounds like we could have won), but it’s all better now.  Maybe my guardian angel knew something about the drive to the game I didn’t.

4) heard about Debian wine. Sounds awesome.

5) Ubuntu Lucid is looking fast. Everything I use is working atm, except VBox additions.

6) fought with WINE trying to get ESPN360 to work.  Supposedly it can be done.

7) working on freshing-up my PHP.

got my grub issue fixed.

9) I got World Cup tickets. Waiting on the travel agent to give me a call back about plane tickets.

Plenty more has happened with the move, time with the family and vacationing in New Orleans.  The fact that I haven’t written should be an indication I’ve got a lot going on.

If you want details on any of those, just drop a line in the comments!

interesting perspective on East vs. West

Back on August 27th, OkCupid sent me an email that told me my matches based on location around the world and in the US.  The last few months have been crazy because I’m working full time and talking a 4-credit statistics class 40 minutes away.  So, you get it now.

I fought with WordPress just a bit to get the images larger (and to use the original HTML) but in the end, just taking a screenshot appeared to be a better option, at least on my vertically rotated monitor (yay Fedora 12!)

Click to make it larger:

It’s not particularly surprising the results, though I don’t know enough about Maryland to justify it being up there.  The midwest and south are noticeably absent from the “Best Of” but at least the midwest also isn’t represented in the “Worst Of”

A lot of people are probably confused by my fascination about Scandinavia considering my hair and eye color doesn’t fit the region (mom’s side is partially Swedish though).  Anybody who thinks that it’s just some sort of weird ancestry worship thing should take a look though.  Iceland is noticeably at the top and Finland rolls in at #4.  Northern Europeans Germany also get in on the fun (though it’s probably a stretch to call *all* of Germany Northern Europe).

While there’s a pretty clear “east” versus “west” thing going on with the map, it’s interesting to note just how westernized Japan and South Korea must have become.  It’s also notable that Finland is somewhat of a border country in the East/West and previously was part of Russia.  I also found it interesting how that Brazil and Argentina appear westernized (by this trivial criteria) but the African nations of South Africa and Egypt are clearly in the “east”.  Ukraine and Trinidad and Tobago also jump out as interesting “worst countries”.  I wonder how many data points they have from each country.  My knowledge of Ukraine is mostly limited to Dynamo Kyiv and Andriy Shevchenko (though not so much together because I know Shevchenko from Milan, but Kyiv was his youth club and his current club).  T&T being in CONCACAF, it just seems like an outlier because of being so close.  They speak English for crying out loud!

Interesting fact about Ukraine: “Ukraine occupies 8th place in the world by the number of tourists visiting“

Now, I want to see if this data correlates with maps of FLOSS usage and see if there’s anything to the ways people think about freedom.

Also, I just clicked on the map of the world zoomed all the way out and I got the dart in Wisconsin. Pretty good!  I did change it to Madison though.

Quick note on why I changed the title

I think my old title gave the impression that I was interested in having the open world talk to the closed world, in a Samba/Mono sort of way. It really had more to do with talking to people at their level.  There are some people that are technologists that aware of FLOSS and even like the idea but for whatever reason choose not to use it.  There are also people who have never thought about their digital freedom.  We, as a community, cannot send the same message to both people.  The message to one is to give a little more effort and if you don’t like it, fix it.  The message to the other is that it’s not hard and there is a community to help.

Note: before people say that FLOSS is hard, yes, there are some things that are hard, just as there are plenty of things that are hard on Macs and Windows (or Adobe or whatevs, to stop the operating system tunnel vision).  There is no one-size-fits-all package. Everyone comes to things with a different background.

So, what do people think about the change?

The domino affect.

I meant to write this earlier, but like a lot of things in my life, they end up getting put off.

As I biked to work in the freezing temperatures, a thought about environmentalism struck me.  There is a lot of emphasis on green jobs or “green collar jobs” and I think that’s good, but I think we are missing the economic big picture, and I’m hoping the current economic crisis will get people thinking about this. We are running out of fossil fuels. I’m not going to spend any time debunking these, but let’s assume for a moment that global warming is either not happening, not man-made, won’t cause any problems or, finally, that even if not man-made, there’s no way our highly technological society could fix it.  Even if these for things are true, we are still running out of fossil fuels.  When the gas tank is empty, what’s going to happen? Chaos.  That is, unless we are prepared.  Let’s think about this.  What will be the first jobs to go?  Well, assuming there isn’t a ridiculous spike in oil prices (which of course there would be), gas station attendants.  Whatever you think about them, how many people do Exxon, BP, etc employ?  The most obvious others are the airline industry, shipping industry, the auto-industry and people that work on roads.  Let’s be serious though.  There’s no way anything will work except those that live in urban settings close to food supplies or that have horses.  In a way, it would be the return to glory for cities like St. Louis and Detroit, since shipping could go through them.  Places like Phoenix and Las Vegas would simply cease to exist (and probably should).

What can we do? We can stop flying and start riding trains.  Delta, AA and co should really get into that industry.

“Respected transportation economists Richard Gilbert and Anthony Perl reported that electrified high-speed trains traveling on their own right of way are about 9 times more energy-efficient per passenger mile than private automobiles or domestic jet travel (and hence emit about one-ninth as much pollution as air and auto).” – http://www.midwesthsr.org/fact/index.html

Now, it’s true that given the crappy state of affairs right now trains are not super-efficient.  Passengers are low and we aren’t using high-speed trains.  Look, I’ve been on trains in Denmark and Sweden.  Trains work.

There’s a ton of research that has gone into making jet travel efficient and I’m not saying they haven’t done their homework, but air travel has a fight against gravity that trains only have when going up hill.  One of the things I don’t know is what the most efficient travel speed for a plane is, but they have to maintain pretty high speeds not to go crashing into the ground and with cars there’s an efficiency point and once you  go over that travel is pretty inefficient.  I assume there’s a similar graph for jets, but unlike a car that *can* go 5 mph, jets don’t have that option.

Now, there is something to be said for using the space we have up there.  I’m not opposed to the idea of jet travel, and for things like getting across oceans, it’s pretty much needed, but a train from Madison to Chicago would be much better than the current situation, as would a train from Chicago to Louisville.  I use those examples because I know there are no trains, much less high speed trains.  Depending on how you get there the distance between Stockholm and Malmo is 613 km or 645 km and there’s a high speed train that runs between them.  In comparison, it’s 296 miles (476 km) from Chicago to Louisville and 434 miles (698 km) from Madison to Louisville.  Thus, at least the Swedes think it’s a good distance for the high speed train.  Brenda and I enjoyed taking the train from Malmo to Stockholm.
I’ve wandered a bit from the title of the post, so let’s bring it back.  Here’s a quote from earlier “Let’s be serious though.  There’s no way anything will work except those that live in urban settings close to food supplies or that have horses.” Kids will not be able to get to school, products will not be able to get to market.  People will not be able to heat their homes.  Society as we know it would collapse.

One last point. Skeptics will say there’s still oil out there, and they are certain right.  However, it takes millions of years of pressure to create fossil fuels.  There’s a reason it is called fossil fuel.  Unless we extract at the pace it’s created, it *will* run out.  It’s 2nd grade math (or whenever kids learn to multiply negative numbers).  Sure, we had millions of years bought for us and we could be 100 years out…and that number grows as things get more efficient but once the well runs dry, we won’t be able to build the facilities to create solar panels, much less the solar panels themselves.  Even if we built like we did in the old days, how did we run the computers for precision and where the plans are drawn?  Yeah, some of this stuff could be done pre-industrial revolution style, but we’re talking best-case scenario months to make the switch and by that time society will be in chaos.

Another interesting short thought to leave you with.  While we’re talking about a 19th century mode of transportation, maybe some of our solutions should/could come from steam punk.  Coal is still fossil fuel, but trees are a renewable resource.  If you can get over cutting them down (most of us can, though we need to regrow them, of course), they may be our savior in more ways than just taking carbon out of the air.

moving to-do list

I’m sure this will bore you all to tears, but I need a place to keep this where I can access it everywhere.

email new address to friends and family

change credit card addresses

change address at work

get power turned off

get cable turned off

reserve truck

get boxes

then there’s the whole packing thing, of course

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Now playing: Le Maximum Kouette – Affale
via FoxyTunes

some time and Ubuntu Release Cycle

For the 1st time in about two months (I know I took statistics to BarCampMKE) my citing down to write isn’t being rushed by the need to do statistics.  It is being slightly rushed by the need to pack, and I could certainly be making statistics flash cards for my final next Monday (14th), but I have a pretty good grasp of the content on the final and I’ve got today, next weekend and the week nights to do that.  Taking time off from my soccer team means that my weekend nights are free for a while and moving MadLUG meetings to the weekends is definitely going to be a stress relief for me.  We still need a permanent spot, but no more rushing to the meetings after work.

Right now, Ubuntu’s Release Cycle has the most votes for my next post.  I encourage you to continue to vote (but don’t vote for Ubuntu…that’d just be silly now.)

Also, how do I change the name of my blog?  I did it once before, but can’t remember…

Ubuntu’s Release Cycle

I say Ubuntu’s release cycle because I think it’s the most mainstream (is their argument on this? not the easiest for n00bs, but the most mainstream), but there are some other interesting release cycles I’d like to mention.  I can’t remember what Debian decided to do with releases, but I seem to recall them going to a release schedule, though they won’t ship hell-or-high-water like Ubuntu does.  Fedora does 6 month also.  OpenSUSE “recently” decided to go to an 8 month release cycle.  Between learning about the release cycle of OpenSUSE on FLOSS Weekly and Ubuntu UK’s discussion of the release cycle on what I think is the linked episode (it’s the only one I’ve listened to the whole thing and the other two I’ve started are not at all far into the podcast…a review of the podcasts to which I listen could be another show), I thought I should weigh in.

First off,  8 months is dumb, at least for a mainstream distro.  People need something that falls on a year; monthly, bi-monthly, tri-monthly, quarterly, 6 months or some integer of years (those are the things that divide into 12, if you didn’t catch that…8 doesn’t).  I know very little about the OpenSUSE community, but I think it’s fine for them if that’s what they want to do.  The idea with them was that 6 months is too short, which I’m beginning to agree with.  One point that was brought up in the Ubuntu UK discussion was that the non-LTS releases are seen by some developers as technology previews.  If that’s the case, it’s not being marketed properly for that.

All of this has made me think maybe I should move to something with a rolling release schedule.  Are there any Arch derivatives that give you GNOME out of the box?  I know there are some Gentoo derivatives such as Saboyon (note: their website looks like the 90s had a bastard child with a modern website), but I don’t think I want to spend coal burning time compiling stuff.  Now, if I were to move to Arch, I’d still want to keep up with Ubuntu development, and I could pretty easily do that (except graphics stuff) with VMs.  Right now, the dual booting is pretty lame and I’ve discovered (as one might expect) that there’s often problems in the alpha releases that make it unusable as a primary machine.  Just like the bug I filed last night.  Now, I’m happy to help out, but stuff like that is going to keep me from writing blog posts.

But, enough about me, what does Ubuntu lose with 6 month release cycles and why does this not matter for Fedora?  First off, Fedora is a distro for developers.  It has the lastest packages, which break things like Cisco AnyConnect and while I love much of the things about Fedora, upgrades are a pain in the ass (though perhaps had I used their GUI tool, I’d have found it easier, but they don’t make it obvious how to do that).  I’ve had trouble with every Fedora upgrade I’ve ever done.  I finally pulled one off successfully last night with some help from #Fedora on freenode, and that’s fine for Fedora’s community, but not for Ubuntu’s.

I think Ubuntu should move to yearly releases.  The longer beta period would allow more people to feel comfortable testing and there wouldn’t be so many problems right at release.  Yes, the new features generate a great buzz, but the problems generate just as much negative buzz.  One problem is worth 10 good reviews (maybe more…I just pulled that number out of my ass).

The one major problem I see with this is that the power users may move away, and if that happens, who is going to push the community and evangelize.  Maybe Ubuntu needs to work on a better backport system, or push information about it.  I don’t really know how backports work.  I don’t like waiting for a new Firefox version…certainly not for a year.  Maybe PPAs are the answer, because clearly power users can handle PPAs, and other than knowing where to go to get them, it’s not hard for n00bs either.

I don’t have all the answers.  I don’t know as much about the Ubuntu community as many, especially since I’ve spent so much time with Fedora, so I’d love to hear some reasons why yearly might not work.  I’m not sure who in the Ubuntu community/Canonical has the power to make such a decision, but if someone with Jono’s eyes could point him to this post, I’d love to hear his reaction to it.  I’m sure he listens to Ubuntu-UK and heard their thoughts on it.  The year of the Linux desktop is approaching.  Let’s not let our geeky need for new toys get in the way.

spoilers

To help people along in their decision on voting for my next blog post, I thought I’d give a “quickcast” of sort for each.

Community Leadership Summit

Why XP needs to die.

I hated Vista when it came out.  However, while UAC annoyed me, I’ve come to realize that most users need to be protected from themselves.
Ubuntu’s release cycle

I think people talk about this kind of stuff, which is why I think Gabe’s suggestion that people don’t take is ridiculous.  He’s just not a part of the conversation, because he’s not a Linux developer/FLOSS advocate (I have my particular definition of that and if you’re not involved in the conversation, you’re not one).

Essentially, the real issue is what hinders adoption.  I’ve said for some time that anybody can run Linux and that it isn’t hard, and it isn’t.  But I think that’s the wrong question.  Why should people *want* to learn Linux?  I think most of us in the community enjoy a good flame war.  “As the Stallman Turns” and “Guiding Linus” are nice little soap operas for us.  I’m guilty of running pre-alphas of Ubuntu…twice now.  You don’t have to do that, but people in the Linux community do.  Linux guys switch distros and try out stuff because they love technology.  The arguments and all the scripting turn people off.  There’s a lot of it out there, but you don’t have to do it.  If Ubuntu’s cock, I mean CoC, is trying to solve one of these problems the Ubuntu getting rid of The GIMP is *trying* to solve another problem.

The “problem” is the developers are the ones developing and there is no “target audience” other than developers and other technology enthusiasts.  Microsoft and Apple developers don’t have to eat their own dog food.  Linux developers do or, for the most part, they wouldn’t be Linux developers.

That all brings us to the release cycle problem as discussed on the Ubuntu UK podcast.
OggCampUSA
The new MadLUG presentation structure

Why I hate Twitter (and specifically 140char limits)

This has been discussed already on identi.ca/brainbird.net.  Since omb “in context” doesn’t work all that great, I can rehash it here.
Why I hate statistics

I found the length of the Cante’s Inferno classes to be brutal, but it was fairly easy and actually I think about the class a lot.  I wish we had done more Marx and Marxian thought and less “philosophy” but it opened a new world.  Statistics is just brutal.  I can expound.

The Science of Global Warming and the discussion about the science

The Earth could be like Venus. That would be cool, right?

How I was convinced to move everything to BY-SA

Basically, the Software Freedom Law show convinced me.
My move

moving sucks.

freeloaders in FOSS

There’s a whole lot of complainers.  Either shut your mouth, show me the code, become a community leader or donate to projects.  Preferably a combination.  “I’m not a developer” is not an excuse.  Ever heard of this thing called Google?  Let me be clear, I am not talking about people coming into the community or “users”.  I’m talking about long-standing members in the community that want to bitch and moan in identi.ca or blogs and don’t get involved in the formal Ubuntu or Fedora teams, where their voice could be heard.

the NaNoWriMo disaster

I didn’t do it.

Sneak Peek into upcoming MadLUG events

I pretty already linked to this above.  There are some subtle differences though in the two potential posts.
the “disaster” that was the identi.ca upgrade to .9

brainbird had a lot of problems too.

Why hatred of the mainstream is hurting GNU/Linux adoption

Ubuntu is definitely at a crossroads.  I think a lot of their problems would be solved by simply having a DVD version like Fedora does.  I could talk more about why that will solve things and in general, as I’ve already touched on, how this pro-techie culture is hurting Linux adoption, even if it is, and has been, completely usable by those with the lest amount of technical ability among us.
VOTE!
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Now playing: Cruachan – Unstabled (Steeds of Macha)
via FoxyTunes

Some thoughts on college sports

This was going to be a note on Google Reader, but it got pretty long, so I’ll put it here.  Normally I talk about technology, but since education is such an important part of technology policy (in both directions), I thought it was worthy of a blog entry.

Below is my response to Charlie Weis and Randy Edsall Shed Some Tears on the Football Field

Though there will probably never be a day I cheer for my alma mater over the team of my birth, UK Wildcats, or the team of my childhood, Alabama Crimson Tide, at least in their respective dominant sports of basketball and American football, one thing I have always been proud of Chapel Hill is it’s fantastic academic standards.  Now, I don’t know how that applies to athletics, and I’d like to point out that both UK and Bama have some highly rated programs (for instance, Bama law is ranked higher than UNC law), but I think a lot of students (particularly those that have gone beyond undergraduate studies) probably struggle with this.  In fact, I have been a critic of Butch Davis’ contract, even though I have been a critic of Calipari or Saban’s larger contracts.  My parents (who both have Bama degrees, two in my father’s case), don’t seem to mind too much either. Unless the NCAA enacts some sort of salary cap, I don’t see things changing.  I don’t think that’s a bad idea though.  Certain people coach for the love of the game and love of the students/school.  Roy Williams is one of those people, I think. Butch Davis, Nick Saban and John Calipari have all shown by going to the NFL and NBA that that is not why they coach.  And, don’t even get me started about the treasonous Rick Pitino.

Possible Blog Topics

Despite missing November, I’ve got plenty to talk about.  I’ve got a poll, but I’m not sure how to import it. I’m going to go ahead and publish this and then edit it when I figure out how to put the poll in.

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Now playing: Veil of Maya – Mark The Lines
via FoxyTunes

November was :(

Wow, November was the first month since May 2008 that I missed a blog.  That May, that was a good thing as I was having fun…though it was sad as I was leaving friends.  This November it was a terrible time, and actually, I finally lost it tonight. Long story short, after hyperventilating a while, I finally got things under control.

I did spend some time writing, and I started working on a Novel for NaNoWriMo, but didn’t not come close to completion.  I’ve also begun some very minor recordings and wishing I had a sound proof room so I wouldn’t bother people with my hardcore vocals.

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Now playing: Rose Funeral – Sodomizer
via FoxyTunes