Things Are Not Going Well

I finally got my grades back from the third semester of law school. Unfortunately, this was the worst semester yet. This was supposed to be the semester where I was closer to campus and thus wasted less time going back and forth. I was also supposed to rise above the silly required classes of first year.

Maybe it was my grandmother dying in the middle of the semester. Last fall I got sick for like a month so that had to slow me down at least as much as leaving town for the funeral.

Maybe it was concentrating too much on Patent Law and Evidence (the only two classes I am happy about). Maybe it was being in classes with 3rd years. I don’t know.

I’m not sure what to do either. Things are already not going as well as I would like with Netizen Empowerment Federation. I have three days left to find interns before the semester starts back. I was also hoping to get all of my music shows for Music Manumit done during break. I’m only up until the end of March.

I could barely be more slack than I already am during the semester on sportazine.com and opensourceplayground.org. There are other writers for both of those sites, but they are busy and not writing as much as I would have hoped. I’ve already written about options for the summer, but now that I know how the semester went, I need answers sooner than the summer. Any thoughts?

Music Manumit is looking for an intern

As already “announced” on Google Plus, I am looking to get an intern for the Music Manumit Podcast/Lawcast.

I haven’t “announced” this on the Lawcast blog because I’m not sure the best way to formulate the internship.

Here’s what I’ve come up with so far though:

An intern interested in music would be putting together our music shows in blogger and searching out great new bands releasing under remixable Creative Commons licenses. We would also have an intern interested in music help with booking bands for interviews. We have long talked about putting a live show together and that is something we may finally be able to do if we have a capable intern willing to help out with booking.

An intern interested in social media/advertising would maintain our facebook and Google Plus pages. We would likely also start a dedicated twitter account. Right now, I am just using my personal twitter account because there is too much to keep track of otherwise.

An intern interested in technology would be helping us write a script to take banshee (a Linux media player written in the mono language) playlists and get them into blogger in the most efficient way possible. This is going to take some serious regular expression manipulation. My master’s degree is in information science and I could easily speak more about the requirements for this project. We also have some projects lined up for the SIP telephony protocol.

An intern interested in law would do legal research on the Creative Commons license. This is likely where Nicholas and I can provide the most to an intern.

Is this legit?

I got this email after emailing a potential landlord on Craigslist. Does it seem legit? They followed up my request for pictures with pictures, but they could be from anywhere. Thanks for your email and interest in renting my house..I am [name redacted],the owner of the house you are making enquiry of.Actually I resided in the house with my family, my wife and my only daughter before and presently we have moved out due to my transfer from my work now in Warsaw,Poland. Presently my house is still available for rent for $700USD (rent already includes utilities).More so Now, i’m currently in the ( West African )for an international Christian follower’s crusade. Please i want you to note that i spent a lot on my property that i want to give to you for rent,so i will solicit for your absolute maintenance of this house and want you to treat it as your own, It is not the money that is the main problem but i want you to keep it tidy all the time so that i will be glad to see it neat when i come for a check up.I also want you to let me have trust in you as i always stand on my word..  The house include the utilities like Heat, A/C in wall/window, Hydro, cable, Garbage Disposal, Fireplace , Fridge, stove, Dishwasher, Dryer, Breakfast Bar, Dining Table and Sofa Set,Refrigerator,Canopied deck overlooking nature.,internet access e.t.c. because of this reason and more we need a responsible person  that can take very good care of it as we are not after the money , but want it to be clean and for you to take it as if it were yours….. This is the address of the House ([address redacted]) The rent is: $700 Security Deposit: $500 For this 2 Bedroom Home. Pets Allowed:Dogs and Cats. Available :Available Now for move in. SO IF YOU ARE REALLY INTERESTED I WILL WANT YOU TO FILL THE RENT APPLICATION FORM BELOW.                                                   RENT APPLICATION FORM. FIRST NAME:__________? MIDDLE NAME:__________? LAST NAME:__________? PROFESSION:__________? PHONE: (CELL)PHONE__________? (WORK)PHONE__________? (HOME)PHONE__________? KIDS_____ (YES/NO), HOW MANY________ PRESENT ADDRESS: _____________________ CITY: _______________ STATE:______________ ZIP CODE: ____________ HOW LONG? ___________IF RENTING WHY ARE YOU LEAVING__________? IF THIS HOUSE IS BEING GIVEN TO YOU, HOW LONG DO YOU INTEND STAYING? ____________? WHEN DO YOU INTEND MOVING IN?______________? IF YOU HAVE A PET, NAME OF PET: _____________? KIND OF PETS: _____________? HABITS DO YOU SMOKE ______________ ? DO YOU DRINK ______________? DO YOU WORK LATE NIGHT?____?.   Looking forward to hearing from you with all this details so that i can have it in my file in case of issuing the receipt for you and contacting you.Await your urgent reply so that we can discuss on how to get the document and the keys to you,please we are giving you all this based on trust and again i will want you to stick to your words,you know that we have not seen yet and only putting everything into Gods hands,so please do not let us down in this our property and God bless you more as you do this.The house is available for rent at the moment so you are free to move in as soon as you wish to.A Deposit of $500 (which happens to be the security deposit) is required before moving in. for more information and arrangements on how to get the keys and other necessary documents delivered to you.The house will be available for rent for a period of 4 years so you have a choice of deciding how long you intend staying there.    God Bless. [Name Redacted]

Is WordPress dying?

Ok, this is just an n of two, but I can’t help but notice the stark decline in both graphs. The declines begin at different times. Perhaps SportAZine.com just died after the World Cup? Perhaps this site began to die when I started preparing for law school? Both of those make sense to a point, but the starkness of the SportAZine.com graph makes me feel like there has to have been something else going on. Any thoughts?

SportAZine.com stats:

DouglasAWh stats:

Santa Claus, er, David Rovics is coming to town.

As many people no doubt did, I got an email from David Rovics about his fall tour. I asked him if the information was online somewhere and he said no. For the time being, I am correcting that problem:

Hi folks in New Hampshire,

OK so I realize the kids aren’t even getting out of school yet and summer
hasn’t technically begun yet, but I’m already making plans for September,
because that’s the way these things work…

I’m planning on being all the way up and down the east coast in the fall to
meet and greet politicians at both the Republican and Democratic National
Conventions in Florida and North Carolina, to do various shows in the
southeastern and northeastern US — hopefully including New Hampshire!

And the whole way this shoestring operation of mine works in a nutshell is
I make plans to go somewhere and then I blindly hope that some people in
their right minds will decide that one thing they want to do with their
life now is organize a gig for David Rovics when he next comes to town…
So if one of those people might be you, I look forward to hearing from you!

Hope to see you on the road and in the streets in this year of 2012!

David
http://www.davidrovics.com
(503) 863-1177

Also, David is right, it is time to schedule for September. If you are in a Creative Commons band and you would like to speak with Tom and I on our show, Music Manumit, let me know!

If you can’t beat them, join them.

After Amendment One passed in North Carolina, I have had a change of heart about this Old Testament legislation thing.

Based on Old Testament values, I think we should get rid of eating burned, carcinogenic animal corpse.

Selected passages:
“The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and care for it. And the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden’ – Genesis 2:15-16

“The Lord said to Moses “Say to the Israelites: ‘Do not eat any of the fat of cattle, sheep or goats. The fat of an animal found dead or torn by wild animals may be used for any other purpose, but you must not eat it. Anyone who eats the fat of an animal from which an offering by fire may be made to the Lord must be cut off from his people. And wherever you live, you must not eat the blood of any bird or animal. If anyone eats blood, that person must be cut off from his people.” Leviticus 7:22-27

“But all creatures in the seas or streams that do not have fins and scales – whether among all the swarming things or among all the other living creatures in the water – you are to detest. And since you are to detest them, you must not eat their meat and you must detest their carcasses” Leviticus 11:10-11

“Every creature that moves about on the ground is detestable; it is not to be eaten. You are not to eat any creature that moves about on the ground, whether it moves on its belly or walks on all fours or on many feet; it is detestable” Leviticus 11:41-42

Based on New Testament values, “let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”

how do you chmod -R for perpetuity?

First off, if this is a bit incoherent, let me apologize and explain. The first thing I found out when I woke up this morning is that I had to go downtown for an emergency. It’s cold and raining. I do not have an umbrella while out of town. I have a rain jacket, but every other part of me was soaked. I had to take care of some things before leaving for the emergency. All-in-all, the emergency cost me 2+ hours of my day. I do not have 2+ hours to spare while in law school.

Separately, one of my friends got arrested and his mom has tried to call me a couple times. Remember I said I don’t have 2+ hours to spare. Yeah, this hasn’t gotten any better.

Now, some background to the issue at hand. Adding to my frustration this morning was that my SD card died, again. I think this is related to the slow as hell Internet here, but it’s not entirely clear to me why my SD cards all seem to die. I tossed two a couple of weeks ago. I left dd running on one of them for an entire week and it never finished. I have posted about the SD card issues several times over the past couple of years on my microblog site. No one has ever given any good reason as to why this happens. I would buy a new phone, but I am poor. I have tried to fix this issue in the past by buying new SD cards, but after buying however many I have bought (I think two, but I can’t find one of them…maybe I have forgotten throwing it away), I feel like I can’t afford to spend any more money on it (though given the amount of time I have spend on this today, I may change my mind about this).

More details on the issue at hand:

I am trying to use ext2 for my SD card rather than FAT because FAT craps out on me all the time. It has happened twice on my trip already and I have only been gone since late on Friday.

I can use chmod to set permissions to 777, but once an Android application makes a new dir, I cannot access those files. Specifically, I can download podcasts using BeyondPod, but then I cannot actually listen to those files until I have changed permissions. It looks like this from gnome-terminal (minus the changed username):

drwxrwxrwx  3 dw      10038  4096 2012-02-29 11:15 Android
drwxrwxrwx  4 dw      10067  4096 2012-02-29 14:17 BeyondPod
drwxrwxrwx  3 dw      10065  4096 2012-02-29 11:27 com.google.android.apps.scoreboard
drwx——  4 10021      10021  4096 2012-02-29 14:16 DCIM
drwxrwxrwx  2 dw root       16384 2012-02-29 11:00 lost+found
drwxrwxrwx  3 dw dw  4096 2012-02-29 12:55 Music

You can see, for example, that the camera application created DCIM, but left it as user 10021, not my user, which is the global owner of the SD card.

So, I did a bit of reading and it seems like I should be able to put apps in .android_secure. However, I cannot move any apps there. The internal storage on the Nexus One is quite small, so I can’t really install any apps without moving them to the

I tried using “Fix Permissions” but no permissions appeared to be fixed.

I tried to use “Root All to SD” and while it appears to have created a second partition and mounted it to /data/rallsd, I do not understand how to actually move apps. It also appears that Link2SD does not use that second partition, perhaps because it can’t or perhaps I do not know what I am doing.

 

So, to be clear, if I haven’t been in my rage, all I want to do is use ext2 on Android without having to change permissions every time an application creates a file. Please help me!