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GRAFFITI -- March 02, 2009 thru March 08, 2009>> Link to the Current Week <<Last Week << Mon Tues Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun >> Next Week Welcome to Orb Graffiti, a place for me to write daily about life and computers. Contrary to popular belief, the two are not interchangeable. About eMail - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy or anonymity, please say so clearly at the beginning of your message. |
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March 2, 2009
1839 - So it snowed. The commute into work this morning was pretty hairy. While the crews were out, it continued to snow, and it was in the low 20's (F). That makes for some mighty slick roads, especially since there aren't many cars out to help the treatment chemicals do their work. So it took me about 40 minutes instead of 20, and I was one of three people at the office for about the first two hours of the day. People trickled in through the balance of the morning. Overall, a productive day, still. The drive home was much saner. Still not many people on the roads, but everything pretty clear, and even a few dry patches. And joy, when I got home, our kind neighbor Chet had already done the driveway and sidewalks for me. He has a new-ish gas-powered snow thrower, that he's not had cause to use for two seasons, until now. Marcia told me he was having fun. I grok that. Now, back to the Monday chores. Ciao!
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March 3, 2009
No Post...
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March 4, 2009
2224 - Whoops, school happened yesterday. It turns out the prof. is offline for a few days, so I'm sort of keeping a close eye on the class conferences in case someone needs help. That ate most of the evening yesterday, along with finishing my assignment for the week. I still have reading to do, though. Just because I think I know it all doesn't mean I really do. And reading never hurt anyone.
First, a format change. While I was answering a question about HTML tags in class yesterday, I realized that I was using the strong tag to lead off each paragraph on these pages just because ... I felt like it. While that's a perfectly reasonable way to go through life, it doesn't really convey anything, and I don't need it. I still want to keep the emphasis tags around the timestamps - it's useful for me to see when something happened. I always like having timestamps on stuff. Otherwise you have no idea what span of time the written words are relevant for. It makes me nearly berserk when I go to a site that has some advise about accomplishing a particular task with some software or OS, and not know whether it's current or 7 years old. It's not like the electrons yellow with age, eh?
Second, I need a list. It's like a wishlist, but it's also a recommendation list, eventually. For example, from a Twitter post, @timoreilly is recommending people read Rich Gold's The Plenitude: Creativity, Innovation, and Making Stuff, based on this review by Gerd Waloszek. That goes on my list. It's not necessarily top of the list of expenditures, most things on the list won't be, or that wouldn't be the right list. So, a new place to go on this site, coming someday soon.
More schoolwork done tonight, but still no reading, sigh. A firewall update and some logfile compression and truncation outside of business hours wraps up my evening. Such an exciting life I lead, eh? Ciao!
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March 5, 2009
2054 - Harmony sez she needs an update. BBIAB.
2106 - Happy Harmony. So, all is right with school, I have no work obligations this evening, I think I'll relax and watch some more of Walter Lewin's MIT 8.02 lectures, having finally finished the 8.01 lectures a couple of weeks ago. Ciao!
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March 6, 2009
2117 - Probably following my Wednesday post referencing a need to list, possibly just of books, possibly much more, Chris sent me an invite to goodreads. Yeah, yet another social media site, another set of harvestable data in the cloud, yadda, yadda. So I accepted the invite, and plunked a few books in there: past, present, and future. But I think I'll still keep (meaning make it happen, sooner or later) here. Because as happy a place as the Cloud is, I still like my data to be mine. If goodreads were to go tits up, where would my list be? Gone? Probably. Is there an export API? I should look. After all, it's my list, not theirs. They want to get a commission on selling books, I think, and more power to them. Books are a manifestly good thing, even comic books. But my data is mine, and it's good to have it on my computer(s), and pushed to my site. Nothing much else going on. A busy day, capping a busy week, finally winding down. Ciao!
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March 7, 2009
1550 - On Monday we took 8-10 inches of snow, and stayed below freezing for the next two days. The warming trend thereafter has been swift. The snow was almost gone by last night, excepting the plow piles. Today, at 70°F I spent 5 hours working the yard in t-shirt and genes jeans (well, both, I guess). Out front, I stabilized a chunk of ground next to the driveway, and took out the low dead decorative grasses. In back, I cleared the strawberry boxes, and emptied the oldest one into the newer one. The elder is rotting, as I didn't build it with pressure-treated lumber. So that gets a rebuild and a refill on soil in the very near future. I think we'll do herbs and such in those, instead of pots on the deck. I also used the rototiller and turned over the composting box and all of the raised-bed boxes. They'll need another go round with amendments, but progress is.
Here's something I just wrote for class, to a classmate who asked why people use Linux:
For me, Linux is about choice, and about freedom. The choice part has to do with the huge (some say "overwhelming") number of distributions (a "distribution" is a version of Linux), and the huge number of packages (software components and applications) that can make up any distribution. Most of the software is licensed in such a way as to be "free", as in free speech. You have the right to redistribute most of the software that is part of a Linux distribution, but you also have the obligation, if you do distribute, to make the source code and any changes you make thereto, available as well. This is enforced by the GPL license, which ensures that you can't take the software and make (usually commercial) use of it without giving back to the community that gave you the software to start with.
Another big deal for me is the open data formats. Until Office XML goes live (*and* MS hasn't promised not to put proprietary extensions on top of the "standard"), MS Office formats are closed binaries, and you put your data in. If you use Office 2007, and I use Office 2000, you send me a document in Word 2007 format, I can't read it. I guess that may be part of Microsoft's business plan, such is life. But putting my data into a proprietary format that depends upon the good will of a commercial entity to ensure that I will always have access to my data ... strikes me as a bad idea.
So I use OpenOffice.org for my office suite (mostly), when I need to make fancily formatted documents. But far more often I use text-based formats such as HTML. I put them online, they're searchable and I can use Google as my extended memory bank.
In deepest reality, I regard operating systems and applications software as tools to get the job done. If a commercial software package on Windows is the only way to get the job done, then it's the right tool for the job. If I can do the job with GPL software and open data formats, I'll choose that over commercial/proprietary every time, for the reasons discussed above. But they're tools, and I'm not religious about it, or I'd never have transitioned to the Mac for about half of my total computing work.
From the perspective of the potential new user of Linux, the OS is a much more stable and user-friendly place to be than 5 years ago, and the cost of adoption is stunningly low - you can put Linux on your system for free. In tight economic times, when your old hardware won't run the new MS operating systems, Linux seems ever more appealing.
Today, I mostly point new users at Ubuntu: http://www.ubuntu.com/
Time to move on to the next task, roasting coffee. Ciao!
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March 8, 2009
1846 - Well, the "next task" turned out to be relaxing and reading for a couple of hours before heading over to Blair Mansion Inn for a Murder Mystery Dinner Theatre event (a company party). So today, after shopping and washing the truck, and cleaning up the garage a bit, I did finally get around to roasting coffee. Then I grilled, and we just finished supper: turkey burgers accompanied by mashed potatoes mixed with lots of kale and a little bit of bacon. Yum! Kudos to Marcia for menu design.
Quieter this week than last in the DoD casualty reportage, but still four deaths, three combat-related, since last weekend. My personal moment of silence past; our condolences to the families and units of our fallen warriors.
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Visit the rest of the DAYNOTES GANG, a collection of bright minds and sharp wits. Really, I don't know why they tolerate me <grin>. My personal inspiration for these pages is Dr. Jerry Pournelle. I am also indebted to Bob Thompson and Tom Syroid for their patience, guidance and feedback. Of course, I am sustained by and beholden to my lovely wife, Marcia. You can find her online too, at http://www.dutchgirl.net/. Thanks for dropping by.
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