A perfect way of storing electricity generated by wind turbines has been elusive so far. Ideas like super-sized batteries, compressed air and hydroelectric storage have all been floated. One company though thinks the answer could be as simple as making ice. Calmac has come up with a storage system called IceBank that uses the energy generated at off-peak n […]
Shared by Douglas um, how about just not having Polar Bears? thanks St. Louis. Officials at the St. Louis Zoo are preparing for their holiday Wild Lights exhibit by installing electronic polar bear proxies in place of the deceased polar bears who died in their captivity. The gesture is rife with social commentary, given the fact that polar bears have become […]
Brett from small-press horror publisher Chizine sez, "ChiZine Publications (CZP) is an independent publisher of weird, surreal, subtle, and disturbing dark literary fiction hand-picked by Brett Alexander Savory and Sandra Kasturi, Bram Stoker Award-winning editors of ChiZine: Treatments of Light and Shade in Words. You've seen us mentioned recently […]
Shared by Douglas Ha. Google makes Linux a Mac! Google will announce more information about Chrome OS at a press event that starts at 10:00am PST. Google will offer "an update on Google Chrome OS and provide at the work that has been done thus far, an overview of the technology, and launch plans for next year. Speakers will include Sundar Pichai, Vice P […]
Patenting podcasting? You've got to be kidding. Yet a company called Volomedia just got the Patent Office to grant them such exclusive rights. EFF and the law firm of Howrey, LLP aren’t willing to just sit by and watch. This patent could threaten the vibrant community of podcasters and millions of podcast listeners. We want to put a stop to it, but we n […]
Shared by Douglas I like Dave, my uncle-in-law, but seriously, Texas, you are a collection of idiots. I favorited a YouTube video: Vote for TYT every day at http://www.podcastawards.com/index.php?option=index (through 11/30/09) & http://www.mashable.com/owa/ (through 12/13/09) For more details visit www.TheYoungTurks.com and follow us on Twitter at http: […]
Shared by Douglas I don't find this particularly funny, except for the 2Girls1Cup reference and picture. On keeping up with modern technologyA couple of years ago, I went round the house of some relatives, to see them sitting at the dining room table with his'n'hers laptops doing their Christmas shopping.I laughed.I told some other people, the […]
One of our top programmers, Parker Abercrombie, represented OVC at the National Institute of Standards and Technology workshop on Common Data Formats, OCT 30. OVC has been pushing for Open Source and Open Standards for some years now. By all accounts, our presentation there was very well received. The slides used are available here in PDF format. You can fin […]
No strings attached! Well, you do have to sign up for a 30-day trial membership, but you can cancel it before the billing cycle kicks in--and keep your two freebies.
On crap-o-vision, againTypical.You go a whole year without anything truly, truly bad on television, and then two gems come along in a week.And bugger my luck - I go and miss both of them.Regular readers know that I'm a big fan of rubbish, and last year's Demons on ITV was a true turd on the otherwise white tablecloth of British television which I t […]
Whoa, did Black Friday come early this year? Whatever the case, this is a seriously awesome deal on a 720p plasma. Just make sure to act fast, because it expires today.
I always said Brazil was a civilised country:O MinC proporá que a cópia privada de qualquer tipo de obra digital seja permitida sem a autorização expressa ou remuneração ao titular para uso privado e desde que seja apenas um exemplar, além de permitir o uso do conteúdo original em outra mídia que não aquela que o consumidor comprou originalmente.Na prática, […]
Dear 53% of Maine,Today you decided that homosexuals are lesser human beings who don't deserve the same rights as heterosexuals. You have just illustrated to the nation that you, like California, believe popular vote is a valid and moral way to decide human rights. I'm really glad we didn't use this method back when legalizing interracial marr […]
Shared by Douglas call me when there's a repo...the ubuntu version of "pics or it didn't happen" By the time you read this Karmic Koala will have been released to a waiting world, but I couldn’t wait. A felicitous combination of a desire to do a distribution upgrade to the release candidate and a Twitter arriving on my laptop giving me a […]
A BILL To address the concept of ‘‘Too Big To Fail’’ with respect to certain financial entities. 1 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa- 2 tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 3 SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 4 This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Too Big to Fail, Too 5 Big to Exist Act’’. 6 SEC. 2. REPORT TO CONGRESS ON INS […]
Shared by Douglas I'm not sure how I feel about this. My hope is GNOME does it, but Ubuntu doesn't pick it up for a while. Fedora, of course, will, because of their hemorrhagic-edge nature, which has it's place. The GNOME desktop environment is undergoing a significant transformation. The developers behind the open source project are working o […]
Shared by Douglas HELL YEAH! BLACK METAL! One of the best things about not working at The Atlantic anymore is not counting Robert Kaplan among my professional colleagues. Here’s his take on modern-day Europe: Europe, having been liberated from nuclear terror at the conclusion of the Cold War, proved unable to muster the gumption to deal with Yugoslavia on it […]
Ok, this is mainly pointed at two people, my brother and…well, we’ll call her an old flame. Both are reasonably progressive (though neither as radically to the left as myself) both are Tar Heel fans and I’m not sure either would claim to be geeks, but one is a paid programmer and the other has done some programming and gets an occasional Linux user. I think the days of simply being a geek by virtue of being a Linux user are over, but maybe they aren’t.
One isn’t on Twitter and the other is on, but doesn’t us it. Anyway, I thought I’d share the suggestions with everyone.
1. @smalljones – If you live in The Triangle (and both do) and you work or play in technology, Paul Jones is a must-follow. As an added bonus for Tar Heel fans, you’ll get the occasional Tar Heel tweet.
2. @UNC_Chapel_Hill – Unofficial (aka not sanitized) tweets about…well, you probably know that…
3. @UNCCH – Ok, I’m going to be perfectly honest and say I’m not sure this belongs in the top 10, but the guy behind this site is a good guy and the site may well be worth it in the future. Remember, you saw it here first!
4. @Carolina_News – The tweets thus far have been pretty boring, but if you look at the page you’ll see some other official UNC Twitter feeds that might interest you more. I’m throwing it out there as a general suggestion, but let’s look at it this way; I’m following 1-3, but not this one.
5. @MyTweetHeart – I am all about some online dating. It’s a pretty geeky thing to do, no? Nothing interesting has happened yet but I think Twitter is a better place to get to know people than looking at a facebook profile or something ultra-sanitized. Yes, some Twitter feeds are sanitized, but the dynamic nature of Twitter tends towards less sterileness that facebook, I think.
7. @4java – I’m not a Java programmer, but I need at least one Java suggestion. I’m up for suggestions! Leave them in the comments!
8. @theprogressive – ok, I’m not entirely certain I’d have put this one if I didn’t live in Madison, but hey, I do. Can’t change the facts.
9. @dailytarheel – there are a ton of news organizations on Twitter. The big ones (CNN, NY Times, LA Times, etc) as well as the big NC papers. The DTH actually live tweeted the UNC bomb situation last week. They get the nod for not just being a RSS headline feed.
10. @obs_sports – I went back and forth on this one. There’s not good way to cram progressiveness, geeksness and Tar Heelness all into 10 options. Basically, I needed something that covered The Panthers. You can find out people tweeting events by looking at hash tags (#) or just searching for key words at http://search.twitter.com.
If you’re an early reader of this post, my apologies for the lack of links. I’ll go back and put them early. Release early, release often! Any of these users can be found by putting the username after http://twitter.com/
One of the problems I have with blogging consistently is that I feel like I share a lot of my thoughts on Twitter (multiple personal accounts and organization accounts – ask if you want them), identi.ca or through Google Reader.
So, the title track, if you will, is about Open Everything planning. The Pyle Center seems to book up quickly. Chris wasn’t sure if it was both conference extensions (Pyle and Lowell) or just Pyle, but for the time being we’re planning on it being in Grainger, where we had the December 6th event.
Also today, I got in touch with one of the MinneBar planners. They do not have a date yet. I’ve decided to take a vacation day the Friday beforehand though and visit North Dakota, since it’s one of only three state to which I have not been. Vermont and Louisiana being the other two (I’ve been to Texas a couple times, Arkansas a couple times and live in Alabama for 8 years, but no Louisiana). While living in Wisconsin, I am definitely not missing the opportunity to go to North Dakota. New Orleans and skiing in Vermont and can wait.
Tomorrow is my first meeting as president of the Madison Linux User Group. I want to discuss not always meeting on Fridays (mixing it up and doing one Tuesday and one Friday a month). I’m thinking of doing the Tuesday meeting with Web608 group. I wonder how people will feel about not everyone being Linux users. I guess I’ll see tomorrow night. I can’t forget the penguin! Also, I have a late (11:30pm) futbol match after the meeting, so I can’t stay at the meeting too long!
Anything you guys would like me to talk about in my next post?
I was reading an article on Google Chrome and it’s spell-checking and was reminded that I said I’d write more on OpenCamp: An Open Everything Event today. As I went looking for that link it was 11:59…so, I sorta hit the deadline. Though it’s going to get published “tomorrow”. Anyway, I wanted to spend a little time discussing why exactly I didn’t have a chance to write much about OpenCamp.
For one, UNC beat Miami 69-65 and it’s a treat when the games are actually on here in Wisconsin, so I watched. I then watched a little of the NBA All-Star game. I have no idea when the last time I did that was. It was probably in high school, but maybe even further back than that. Not having papers to right or things I’m being forced to read has opened up a lot of time. This is not the place for sports talk though. If you’re interested, check out my sports Twitter account.
Aside from the fun, I slept late (which was needed because this new cardio routine is wearing me out) and worked on Skype. This is what I want to spend just a little time discussing. Skype in Ubuntu 8.10, Ubuntu 9.04 and Windows XP all either crashes or drops calls. Note that I’ve tried 8.10 and 9.04 on the same hardware (an HP), but also 8.10 on a Dell and Windows XP on an Acer. I know some people use Skype as their primary phone and with all the problems I’ve had, I don’t see how this is possible. Now, I already had a post about how the audio won’t work in Ubuntu 9.04. The audio works fine in 8.10, Skype just crashes. Assuming all these people that use Skype aren’t nuts, there’s a few points of problem. I’m on Charter in Verona, WI and my friend is on Time Warner in Raleigh, NC. Either of those providers could be doing something weird. It could be something networking on her end or on my end. I tried moving the computer closer to the router. I’ve tried ending other bandwidth usage on the home network. Wireless in 9.04 seems to be a little sketchy, but dropping calls shouldn’t cause the program to crash! Tomorrow I plan to test with my parents and if we continue to get dropped calls, I’ll plug in to the router. If I still get dropped calls, it’s likely either Charter or Time Warner (my parents also have Time Warner, but not in Raleigh).
Also, I should say I spent a fair amount of time testing dimdim and then Camfrog. Despite what the Wikipedia article says, Camfrog does not appear to work in WINE on 8.10 or 9.04. I guess this doesn’t really refute what the article says since the article says 8.0x (a clear indication they don’t understand the Ubuntu naming scheme), but I did have high hopes. I’d like to use dimdim, since it’s FOSS, but I could not get audio to work in Linux and in Windows I could not get video to work. Neither of the two individuals on the conference call with me could figure it out either. It certainly isn’t as easy to use as Skpe and I gain nothing from using it, so I won’t be using that.
In happier news, dual monitors on Linux seems to be going much smoother these days. The way the monitors are initially on top of each other is a bit bizarre though. Using the second monitor has also killed my desktop effects, but I prefer the screen real estate.
I’m also soon to finish a book on Marx, which is interesting both from a community and from a historical perspective. It’s interesting to me how much you can see later world events in what Marx said (but then again, this book was written in 1975, so maybe it’s designed that way). Whatever your political leanings, now is the time to figure out something about economics and Marx was certainly an influential thinker and as an international community leader, I think there are some lessons to be learned from that aspect too. Once I finish with that book I’ll probably be reading on travel books…though I don’t think I’ll be traveling as much in the next few years as I had originally planned.
Tomorrow should be a hectic day at work. Staff Meeting days always are. Assuming I get home at a reasonable hour, I’ll try to sort out what’s been going on on the Open Everything Madison list and maybe talk a bit about some of my ideas for sessions.
Alright, it’s Valentine’s Day, so I figure I should at least make mention of it. I don’t have a “special someone” but I’m optimistic about the woman I just met. However, she’s not in town today. I feel kinda bad about not seeing her on V-Day because I feel like she’s getting cheated. Then again, date two on V-Day might be a little much. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Madison
Geek Dinner February 24th
This isn’t that big of a deal since we have one every month. But I thought I’d share. Event information, as every month, can be found on facebook.
OpenCamp: An Open Everything Event
Expect to hear a lot about this on the blog in the coming months. This event will build on the event we had on December 6th. We don’t have a venue yet for OpenCamp, but expect that to happen before the end of the month. Right now, it’s likely it’ll be on the UW-Madison camp. That’s all I’m going to say about this now. There’s a lot out there on the event in listserv archives and the website. I certainly encourage you to sign up for the list or contact me directly if you’re interested in a Open Everything event; either the one in Madison or help putting one on anywhere in the world.
I have a job, for one, but it’s also on a Thursday…so, I’ll be at said job until 7pm. This is a great thing for Todd and Bucketworks to be putting on, especially given the economy. To me, openness is all about sharing and working together. This is a prime example of
Not going to this, but it’s not often I have intelligent things to say about the queer community (or anything at all to say really) so maybe it’ll bring some new readers to my blog! I want to be supportive of educational and participatory events, even if they don’t interest me personally.
I will be attending this. I’m not really sure what else to say about it. For those familiar with *Camps, what this is should require no explanation. For those not familiar with *Camps, I think that’s a post in-and-of itself. If you don’t know what an un-conference is, just ask in the comments section and I’ll explain!
Chicago
Not really interested in Fandom Camp, but I figured I’d make mention of it here.
What I’m more interested in is the Ubuntu Bug Jam. I think this would be a good opportunity to get people in Chicago interested in Open Everything. However, considering I still don’t know how expensive the Sweden trip is going to be and I potentially have some huge expenses coming up (it’s a secret!…yes, I know that’s not very open of me).
Twin Cities
I plan on going to MinneBar…whenever that is. Last yet it was in May.
If someone from Sweden, Finland or Denmark would get in touch with me, I’d be happy to help a small BarCamp or OpenCamp happen there. I’ve started following a couple people from Sweden on identi.ca. Once we get OpenCampMadison and BarCampMadison3 stuff better figured out, I’ll search harder to make some FOSS acquaintances in Scandinavia. It’s less than 4 months and 5 days until we fly out!
As far as I can tell, there is only a Windows version for Blackbird, the first browser for African-Americans.
(1:40:04 PM) Douglas A. Whitfield: “Blackbird is the world’s first web browser designed specifically for African Americans. Unless you count Mosaic before it was stolen by the white man and turned into Netscape.” (1:41:07 PM) Shaun: I’m glad to discover that that’s not on the page itself (1:42:09 PM) Douglas A. Whitfield: I wonder if they have a .deb (1:42:39 PM) Douglas A. Whitfield: because, if they are only Windows, they are still giving the white man their money (1:43:24 PM) Shaun: that’s bullcrap, you’re right
Blackbird has news for African-Americans. It also has videos. I’m skeptical of the social networks though, as it’s just Facebook and MySpace. Um, white people use those too. Here’s proof.
