Sat, 07 Apr 2012

Advocacy-free

advocacy-free My writing used to be heavily philosophical, with lots of advocacy and questioning. I still consider the why of things much more meaningful than the how, but it's time to focus on the how rather than the why. I'm making this little writing place a "no trolling zone." I will try to avoid preaching, and the obvious corollary is that I will also avoid worrying about whether people agree or disagree. Instead, I will try to simply share little pieces of code as it comes to me. There is no advocacy on here. I frequent a few scuba diving forums. One annoying part of scuba culture is that it can be very polarizing. A bunch of people over here say there is only One True Way to dive, right down to using the exact same equipment as each other. Another bunch of people over there disregard the conventional wisdom and choose to dive solo, attracting criticism from young and old. The forums discovered a long time ago that running flame wars simply drove members away, so they have instituted "no trolling" zones within their boards, places where people can discuss the how of solo diving, or sidemounting, or DIR, without getting into a battle of whether such a thing is a good idea or not.

-- Reg Braithwaite.

[rhetoric] permanent link and comments

Thu, 11 Aug 2011

Apple and product names

...in the comparison with apple is that apple has never had a product called “apple”.

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Tue, 02 Aug 2011

Steph Alarcon on education

Steph and I were discussing programs like the Boston Python Workshop. She said:

This can't be the future of education -- outsourcing it to volunteers in the upper middle class.

[education] permanent link and comments

Why it's important to focus on things

A friend recently sent me an email. It wasn't intended to be about me -- it was written about someone else. But his words apply so well to me that I will mis-quote him here.

I'll pretend it's about OpenHatch just so that the effect is more personal on me.

He was great when I spoke to him on telephone a few years ago but I and many others, who were working on or interested in working on the OpenHatch project, found it nearly impossible to communicate with him meaningfully via email. I understand by his own statements at the time that his attention was very divided and unfortunately OpenHatch was receiving very little attention from him. Almost everyone involved with OpenHatch at the time was failing to give the attention to the project which would have been needed to make the project a great success. The problem was not Asheesh himself but a culture which pervaded the environment he was working in. This is a general problem of small projects managed by people pursing too many other interests.

[people] permanent link and comments

Fri, 27 May 2011

SpiderOak gives back

a FCGI/web-server embedded directly within GIMP

-- open source libraries released by SpiderOak.

[code] permanent link and comments

Fri, 13 May 2011

Gay pride shirt

“Write me up then. It’s one more story that I can go home and tell my mothers. And I’m sure my girlfriend would love to hear it, too.” Then she smiled and walked out.

-- Found on tumblr.

[people] permanent link and comments

Thu, 28 Apr 2011

On entreprenurs, and risk-taking

"I still look at it. I love that chart," Paulson says.

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Wed, 06 Apr 2011

The internet in space

Some hackerspaces have slow Internet connectivity sometimes:

Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2011 14:35:53
From: Alex Sojda
To: interlock-rochester mailist list
Subject: Internet in space very slow

Guys,

...

[net] permanent link and comments

Wed, 22 Dec 2010

Micro melodrama, over IRC

* paulproteus sighs.
* christine works

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Thu, 21 Oct 2010

Upgrade Virtualbox

A snippet from the VirtualBox Changelog:

VirtualBox 3.2.2 (released 2010-06-02)

This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:

...
Teleportation: several fixes
...

I guess I should upgrade.

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