Pluto logo sdc Pluto

July 24, 2008

Jessica Shindo: oh Shojo...

Yu Watase, why do you have to draw such good looking men in such girly dramas?

I almost had a heart attack from how cute Absolute Boyfriend is.

I want a mini-Night. T-T

EDIT:
omg. That was incredibly good. But so sad. I feel the need to consume chocolate or something. (Kidding) But seriously... SO SAD. (I cried)

Gregory Ruiz-Ade: Tweets for Today

  • 08:54 I need to wear this some time: tinyurl.com/58pgvl #
  • 09:24 is hating reading bloggers who have good information but HORRIBLE grammar and typing skills. Spell checking != editing, people! #
  • 09:49 @hotdogsladies source material: tinyurl.com/y87ww8 #
  • 10:06 okay, WTF, why does my phone suddenly refuse to accept OBEX transfers of vcards now? #

July 23, 2008

Jessica Shindo: Oh Nintendo...

What on <a href="http://www.vgcats.com/comics/>earth</a> are you doing? Seriously, it makes me kinda sad. And I'm not even that hard core of a gamer. So I've set a date to visit Vegas with Hanna and Stephi. I'M SUPER EXCITED. And a little nervous. lol. I was at work right... and I was the only girl out of like, ~10/12 guys. Why do I always find these unequal ratios? Not that I'm complaining, mind. It just makes me feel all the closer to the other girls there. I saw Norman and John on Sunday. ^_^ It took like, an hour to find the right beach in Del Mar (which is actually a pretty nice beach, in terms of water clarity and how crowded it was. Way less than shores). It made me super happy, cause it brought back so many fond memories of the ship, and of my surrogate phillipino family there. X3 OHMAHGOD. So. Breaking Dawn (the new twilight saga book by Stephanie Meyer) comes out on August 2 at midnight (the same day we're going up to vegas). The night before, the bookstore here in La Jolla is - get this - having a GOTH "prom" party. XD And Stephi and I are tooootally dressing up and going! I get to wear my cat ears again! X3 Eeeee, I'm so excited. I'm just a little worried that like... everyone who goes to that is going to be just hitting puberty or in high school. ._. Secretly though, I'm hoping that there are a bunch of college students like us who will be going as well. It'll make me feel less... old. But it's so weird, to think that I'm a FOURTH YEAR senior already. Jesus christ. Where did the years go?! When I was a freshman, I thought seniors were soooo old and (somewhat) mature. And then I look at me. And go "...." Sometimes, I worry for our future. Sometimes i also wonder what my brain looks like, and if I really did kill off a lot of brain cells in high school when I was falling, and if that's why my memory is so... bad. u.u;;;;

Jesse Ruderman: The bikeshedding continues

In 2006, Mike Beltzner filed a bug saying that Firefox's about:config should have a warning. Chris Thomas wrote a patch adding a warning page, and it was checked in with a playful title suggested by the same Mike Beltzner: "Be careful, this gun is loaded!".

Some people thought the reference to guns made Firefox too violent. After much discussion, Beltzner changed the title to "This might void your warranty!", which was a suggestion from Phil Ringnalda.

Today, Christopher Aillon of Red Hat filed a bug about the "warranty" string. He says it has caused several users to contact legal departments or IT departments with questions that should have been unnecessary.

My suggestion is "Caution: Firefox internals may be hot". As a bonus, it fails to make sense in Iceweasel-branded versions.

Additional suggestions may be hidden in the Firefox source tree. When Beltzner made the change from "gun" to "warranty", he also added a note to localizers, suggesting that the title need not be a direct translation from English but "should be attention grabbing and playful". At least three localizers substituted their own phrases. I'm curious what the strings say when translated back into English.

July 20, 2008

Eric Grunow: Vis 40 Project 2

The second project for my VIS 40 class was to make a piece of “Musique Concrète”, which is basically music made from sounds that you find in everyday life rather than music made from traditional instruments.

Unfortunately I’d never worked with any music editing software before, and so I needed lessons in GarageBand. Luckily Mike was willing to help, so we spent the afternoon recording random sounds around his house and then mixing it together.

Oddly enough, I guess the sounds ended up being pretty representative of Newport (adding machine, golf club swing, car Engine, and jet plane).

Listen to the final thing here.

Special thanks to Mike for the Garage Band lessons and the random noises. Also thanks to my Aunt and Uncle for pointing me in the direction of the iPod microphone.

DJ Capelis: A few amarok annoyances that occurred within a three minute window

I don't know exactly why amarok thinks it's acceptable to quit upon anyone typing amarok -h at the command line. I really don't know why whenever amarok quits it finds it appropriate to not come back with the playlist of over 500 songs I had queued up and I really don't see how it's at all acceptable that, having *saved* that playlist, it wouldn't appear in my playlist pane as a playlist I could select.

On the upside, it did actually save my ratings and flush the playlist (though I don't think I quite saved the newest one) to permanent storage, so I was able to recover things once where I found it had put it all.

But uh... the other parts are still really annoying and I hope amarok2 decides to be a little wiser in these particular areas.

In other news, still trying to find my way around the vaster world of music that ends up in your lap when you grab a copy of all your friends' music collections. I think the only genre that *hasn't* ended up on my playlist is country, and that's because none of my friends appreciates a good song like 10 shots of Jose Cuervo. Actually... most of them probably would appreciate it.

Also amarok isn't a very good tag editor. gtkpod is a remarkably good tag editor. More stealing (er... collaboration) should happen between these two projects.

All those other things aside, I *am* an amarok user now and I'm settled into keeping things that way because of all the things the media player did do right. So that's new.

July 18, 2008

Jesse Ruderman: Transparent text is transparent

Firefox 3 added support a new CSS color keyword, transparent. Surprisingly, this broke some sites, many of which had rules like table { color: transparent; } due to a Microsoft FrontPage bug.

The strangest part: Firefox wasn't the first major browser to support transparent. Safari was.

These sites were broken in Safari too — until the webmasters got emails from Firefox users. Is Safari's market share really so low that even when Safari is the first to make a change that affects compatibility, Firefox helps Safari more than Safari helps Firefox?

July 17, 2008

Mooneer Salem: The FSF speaks out against the iPhone

Now, I have a ton of respect and support for RMS and the Free Software movement. It definitely makes my job at a place that develops proprietary software easier, and I wish we used more of it. However, I do have to make corrections to their latest blog entry about the new iPhone:

iPhone completely blocks free software. Developers must pay a tax to Apple, who becomes the sole authority over what can and can't be on everyone's phones.

Even though you can only obtain new applications from the App Store, what's stopping someone from releasing the source code anyway? Seriously, is there something in the iPhone SDK agreement that makes your code closed-source that I don't know about? The rest of the point is true--even if someone did GPL an official iTunes app, they'd still need to pay $99 to Apple to put it on the store.

iPhone endorses and supports Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) technology.

In what context? The iTunes part of it? If so, they missed the part where Apple started offering DRM-free music on the iTunes Store. Apps falling under DRM falls more with the first point.

iPhone exposes your whereabouts and provides ways for others to track you without your knowledge.

True for every phone built in the last several years. It sucks, but it's hardly Apple's fault. The blame should be on Congress to fix that.

iPhone won't play patent- and DRM-free formats like Ogg Vorbis and Theora.

Last I heard, WAV wasn't patented, nor did it have any DRM restrictions. Video formats may be an issue, though.

iPhone is not the only option. There are better alternatives on the horizon that respect your freedom, don't spy on you, play free media formats, and let you use free software -- like the FreeRunner.

Filler. I'd argue that this isn't actually a point. However, once the UI kinks get worked out and the hardware gets upgraded, the OpenMoko will be a pretty cool phone. In fact, it's pretty cool right now. I'd also argue, though, that the phone isn't exactly "free" in terms of hardware--certain components, such as the GSM modem, are under NDA.

Anyways, I know what they're trying to argue, but they should potentially get their facts straight before posting a message telling supporters to boycott something.

Brad Fults: French-Canadian Autocracy

The Quebec government has passed laws which forbid French speakers and immigrants to send their children to English-language schools; compel businesses with more than fifty employees to be run in French; and ban English commercial signs. So, if your ancestors were French you, too, must by government fiat speak French whatever your personal wishes may be.

Err, what? When did Canada become an autocracy?

Jesse Ruderman: The return of NS_ABORT_IF_FALSE

After five years in hiding, NS_ABORT_IF_FALSE has returned. Please use it instead of NS_ASSERTION in situations where failure is likely to lead to memory corruption. By aborting rather than asserting, you ensure that debug-build users focus on the cause of the corruption rather than whatever random crash results from the corruption. This leads to happier debugging and better bug reports.

Of course, sometimes it's better to prevent the memory corruption entirely, e.g. by adding a run-time check or by making all builds abort (not just debug builds).

Gregory Ruiz-Ade: Tweets for Today

  • 08:35 @Angry_Drunk I would buy an iTaze. Today. #
  • 08:48 @bynkii so do you thing angels have tasers? #
  • 08:58 @bynkii somehow, "Every time a church bell rings, and angel gets his taser" doesn't have the same feel, but I like it. #
  • 09:03 @Angry_Drunk You mean there WAS a unix bandwagon? #
  • 09:50 @sirhc so long as you're not tweeting from ASSCON? #
  • 10:22 @sterno apparently it's the best battery usage of all the 3g phones. forget which magazine tested it... #
  • 10:22 Dear Apple: Can I have a 32GB iPhone 3G? PLeeeeeeeeeeease? #
  • 10:23 is wondering if he'll just break down and buy a 160GB iPod classic to load with his entire music collection and permanently leave in the car #
  • 15:50 o/~ awwww, doin' it baybee / do the humpty-hump / do the humpty-hump o/~ #
  • 15:51 @snipeyhead only if you share. #
  • 16:13 @Alowishus depends, do you want a full month's service, or one "service" per month? #

July 16, 2008

DJ Capelis: On appropriate pigmentation for the bikeshed

A lot of projects have been switching to date-based numbering these days. It's a beautiful system with well defined numbers that doesn't produce constraints on developers to break things or fix things by certain times or really do much of anything.

Which, to me, seems problematic.

When's the last time you saw a project with a date-based versioning number system innovate? Gentoo seems to have gone amazingly incremental since the introduction of it's date-based numbering system, don't get me started on ubuntu.

While date based numbering makes a lot of sense from some perspectives, version numbers serve a purpose: They let you know when to start throwing code away.

This actually ends tying into another larger observation that all projects should always be created with a date in the future in which the project should be thrown away. But that's another blog entry.

Short story long: I think the proposal to change the version numbering scheme to better solidify the current kernel development process is perhaps more dangerous than it seems. The current development methodology reflects a local optimum that's working very well for producing a stable and well-running code base while offering opportunities for incremental improvements via merge windows.

It does not however, seem to allow downright dangerous, crazy and insane pieces of code to quickly get into the kernel. Having a period where such madness can actually enter the kernel source without a multiyear project to maintain patches ready for merge to other git repositories has always been an asset to Linux.

Maybe the underlying SCM allows us to do this type of thing still. Git certainly is a good tool for this type of thing. Perhaps version numbers was an artificial mechanism that is proving to be unnecessary.

Or perhaps it's Davix time.

Gregory Ruiz-Ade: Tweets for Today

  • 10:34 Anyone know of an XM station analogous to Groove Salad (tinyurl.com/2m925h)? #
  • 10:57 @Alowishus Yeah, though we decided to pony up for the XM Radio and Traffic/Nav straight up. Still get 3 months free, though. #
  • 11:31 @azure7sky problem with the traffic info is that info on CA SR52 sucks ass all the time. Hopefully they'll fix it someday. #
  • 12:41 @Alowishus You must be hella busy or something; you're never on IM or IRC anymore. :) #
  • 12:44 thinks his cute-o-meter has broken: tinyurl.com/6hlqpj #
  • 20:57 @sterno Just don't become a Twitter Shitter (tinyurl.com/4eyba8) #
  • 21:53 @snipeyhead cat urine. #

July 15, 2008

Gregory Ruiz-Ade: Tweets for Today

  • 13:09 bought a new car yesterday. Enjoying New Car Smell, even if it is just a bunch of toxic glues and adhesives. #
  • 13:10 It's @azure7sky's and my first new car, ever. #
  • 13:27 @jauricchio 2009 Acura TSX. Eees purrrrty! #

July 13, 2008

DJ Capelis: Introducing exhertoo

Observation: Exherbo has no packages (by no packages, I mean it's only got a couple hundred)
Crazy motherfucking idea: Gentoo does (by does, I mean it's got thousands)
Possible solution: Use Exherbo's packages whenever possible, otherwise use a Gentoo ebuild

Implementation:

/etc/paludis/repositories:
3des repositories # cat arbor.conf unavailable.conf gentoo.conf
format = exheres
location = ${root}/var/db/paludis/repositories/arbor
profiles = ${location}/profiles/default-linux/x86/2007.0
sync = git://git.exherbo.org/arbor.git
format = unavailable
location = /var/db/paludis/repositories/unavailable
sync = tar+http://git.exherbo.org/exherbo_repositories.tar.bz2
importance = -50
format = ebuild
location = ${root}/var/db/paludis/repositories/gentoo
profiles = ${location}/profiles/default-linux/x86/2007.0
sync = rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage/
importance = -100
eapi_when_unknown = 0
eapi_when_unspecified = 0
layout = traditional
profile_eapi = 0


contents of /root/bin/fakeinstalls.sh
#!/bin/bash
for virt in `echo virtual/python virtual/editor virtual/c++-tr1-functional virtual/c++-tr1-memory virtual/c++-tr1-type-traits virtual/init virtual/libiconv virtual/libintl virtual/man virtual/dev-manager virtual/gzip virtual/libc virtual/modutils virtual/os-headers virtual/portage virtual/ssh virtual/pager` ; do importare --location /var/empty -i $virt;done
importare --location /var/empty -i sys-apps/baselayout 1.12.12

(That second line can be skipped if you actually have exherbo's baselayout installed... I wrote my own upstart scripts instead anticipating that annie will be more similar to upstart than sysvinit.)

contents of /root/bin/syncrepos.sh:
#!/bin/bash

REPOLOC=`paludis --configuration-variable arbor location | sed s/arbor//`

paludis -s
#ciaranm told me to do it right
#cd ${REPOLOC}gentoo
#ls *-* -d > ./metadata/categories.conf
#echo "virtual" >> ./metadata/categories.conf
#ln -s . packages
cd ${REPOLOC}arbor/packages
for pkg in */*; do rm -r ../../gentoo/$pkg; done
cd ${REPOLOC}unavailable
for pkg in `grep -h /$ *`; do if [ -e ../gentoo/$pkg ] ; then cat=$pkg; else rm -r ../gentoo/$cat$pkg; fi; done
paludis --regenerate-installable-cache

(This script makes rampant assumptions about the layout of your repository directories... you must have arbor as arbor, gentoo's repo as gentoo and the unavailable stuff in a directory called unavailable.)

Obviously, there is room for improvement... if anyone were to find that desirable.

Install:
1) Install exherbo
2) Add the unavailable repository to /etc/paludis/repositories as above
3) Add gentoo's repository to /etc/paludis/repositories as above
4) Run /root/bin/syncrepos.sh
5) Run /root/bin/fakeinstalls.sh
6) Call your distribution exhertoo
7) Shield yourself from both the gentoo and exherbo teams, both of whom now dislike you (hi guys!)

Exhertoo in action:

The world still works:

3des ~ # paludis -ip world
Building target list...
Building dependency list...

These packages will be installed:


Total: 0 packages


I can install packages from gentoo that don't exist in exherbo:

3des ~ # paludis -ip cfg-update
Building target list...
Building dependency list...


These packages will be installed:

* app-portage/cfg-update [N 1.8.2-r1]
"Easy to use GUI & CLI alternative for etc-update with safe automatic updating functionality"
-gnome -kde
161.03 kBytes to download

Total: 1 package (1 new), 161.03 kBytes to download

Use flags:

* gnome:
* kde:

* No unread news items found


Paludis lets me know if a dependency can be installed from an exherbo repository I'm not using yet:

3des ~ # paludis -ip blender
Building target list...
Building dependency list...

Query error:
* In program paludis -ip blender:
* When performing install action from command line:
* When executing install task:
* When building dependency list:
* When adding PackageDepSpec 'media-gfx/blender':
* When adding package 'media-gfx/blender-2.46-r1:0::gentoo':
* When adding build dependencies as pre dependencies:
* When adding PackageDepSpec 'x11-libs/libXt':
* All versions of 'x11-libs/libXt' are masked. Candidates are:
* x11-libs/libXt-1.0.4:0::unavailable (in ::x11): Masked by unavailable (In a repository which is unavailable)

* No unread news items found


The full dependency list of a package quite easily transcends distributions. Trac pulls dependencies from gentoo that don't exist in exherbo, yet dependencies that do are pulled from exherbo repositories:

3des ~ # paludis --dl-reinstall always -ip trac
Building target list...
Building dependency list...


These packages will be installed:

* dev-libs/expat::arbor [R 2.0.1]
Reasons: dev-lang/python-2.5.2-r4:2.5::arbor
* sys-libs/zlib::arbor [R 1.2.3]
Reasons: dev-lang/python-2.5.2-r4:2.5::arbor
* dev-libs/openssl::arbor [R 0.9.8f]
Reasons: dev-lang/python-2.5.2-r4:2.5::arbor
* sys-devel/automake-wrapper::arbor [R 0.1]
Reasons: sys-devel/automake-1.10.1:1.10::arbor
* sys-devel/automake::arbor :1.10 [R 1.10.1]
Reasons: dev-lang/python-2.5.2-r4:2.5::arbor
-slowtests
* perl-core/PodParser::arbor [R 1.35]
Reasons: dev-lang/perl-5.8.8-r1:0::arbor
* dev-lang/perl::arbor [R 5.8.8-r1]
Reasons: dev-perl/Locale-gettext-1.05:0::arbor
* dev-perl/Locale-gettext::arbor [R 1.05]
Reasons: sys-apps/help2man-1.36.4:0::arbor
* sys-apps/help2man::arbor [R 1.36.4]
Reasons: sys-devel/autoconf-2.61:2.5::arbor
* sys-devel/autoconf-wrapper::arbor [R 0.1]
Reasons: sys-devel/autoconf-2.61:2.5::arbor
* sys-devel/autoconf::arbor :2.5 [R 2.61]
Reasons: dev-lang/python-2.5.2-r4:2.5::arbor
-slowtests
* sys-devel/libtool::arbor [R 1.5.26]
Reasons: dev-lang/python-2.5.2-r4:2.5::arbor
* dev-lang/python::arbor :2.5 [R 2.5.2-r4]
Reasons: dev-python/docutils-0.4-r3:0::gentoo, dev-python/genshi-0.5.1:0::gentoo, 4 more
-berkdb -examples -gdbm ipv6 -ncurses readline sqlite ssl -tk
* dev-python/setuptools [N 0.6_rc8-r1]
Reasons: *dev-python/docutils-0.4-r3:0::gentoo, *dev-python/genshi-0.5.1:0::gentoo, 2 more
"A collection of enhancements to the Python distutils including easy install"
245.00 kBytes to download
* app-admin/webapp-config [N 1.50.16-r3]
Reasons: *www-apps/trac-0.11_beta2:0::gentoo
"Gentoo's installer for web-based applications"
101.15 kBytes to download
* dev-python/genshi [N 0.5.1]
Reasons: *www-apps/trac-0.11_beta2:0::gentoo
"Python toolkit for stream-based generation of output for the web."
-doc -examples
296.82 kBytes to download
* dev-python/pygments [N 0.10]
Reasons: *www-apps/trac-0.11_beta2:0::gentoo
"Pygments is a syntax highlighting package written in Python."
-doc
816.63 kBytes to download
* dev-python/docutils [N 0.4-r3]
Reasons: *www-apps/trac-0.11_beta2:0::gentoo
"Set of python tools for processing plaintext docs into HTML, XML, etc..."
-emacs -glep
1.18 MBytes to download
* dev-python/pytz [N 2008a]
Reasons: *www-apps/trac-0.11_beta2:0::gentoo
"World Timezone Definitions for Python"
158.98 kBytes to download
* www-apps/trac [N 0.11_beta2]
"Trac is a minimalistic web-based project management, wiki and bug/issue tracking system."
-cgi -fastcgi -mysql -postgres sqlite -subversion -vhosts
628.98 kBytes to download

Total: 20 packages (7 new, 13 rebuilds), 3.38 MBytes to download

Use flags:

* cgi:
* doc:
* emacs:
* examples:
* fastcgi:
* glep:
* mysql:
* postgres:
* sqlite:
* subversion:
* vhosts:

* No unread news items found



The number of packages I can install (or at least attempt to) is greatly increased:

3des ~ # paludis --list-packages | grep arbor | wc -l
247
3des ~ # paludis --list-packages | grep unavailable | wc -l
469
3des ~ # paludis --list-packages | grep gentoo | wc -l
12318


One of the most notable places for improvement:
If the paludis devs don't simply just want to kill me, they could make this considerably easier by allowing a user to declare a repo's packages shouldn't be considered if they're found in a repo of greater importance. Perhaps an exclude variable?

(You'll notice my sync script currently just deletes all the packages out of the gentoo repository that exist in the exherbo ones... we hope these packages happen to be named the same and are in the same categories. This is likely to break in much more noticeable ways in the future.)

And finally... let me conclude by warning you that this setup will eat babies and induce your computer to spontaneously catch fire.

DJ Capelis: Why use one distro when you can use two?

I'm not sure if I mentioned that I installed exherbo on my spare machine, but... I did. It's interesting to see the distro progress, but wow were they right about saying that they have nothing to offer users! I mean, I expected this... but the amount of things hardcoded or simply not there is still always provides a jolt. The distro doesn't seem to actually even be used by the developers at the moment. (It's not really... that... usable.)

So it's a bit exciting to see that part, but I'm also curious if I can't... well... install a few extra things I want. I mean, I could write a bunch of packages or use importare... but then I thought of a more nuts idea:

Gentoo seems to have ebuilds that are ready to go... can I just... point paludis at portage and install packages that don't exist in arbor yet from portage? Would that actually *work*?

Probably not. I'll let you know after I get this thing to actually come up on it's own and boot for the first time, I'm still chroot'd down into the system from a livecd at the moment... (In the middle of building a kernel for it now... then after I build a kernelspace for it, it's still unclear whether there's enough of an init system here to get userspace started... certainly not enough to get networking started... but maybe enough for a console.)

It's been awhile since I've done stuff like this.

July 12, 2008

Brad Fults: How to Write Email

  1. Send email in plain text - not “formatted” or HTML. Your font is hideous and your gratuitous spacing is offensive. Don’t even get me started on background images. Convey your message with punctuation, letters, words and sentences. If something is *really important* you can use asterisks, like that.
  2. Keep it short and to the point - a few sentences is almost always enough. There are many mantras about keeping your emails to two sentences or three sentences but the point is just that a shorter and simpler message is quicker and easier to understand for your reader. Always strive for the minimum.
  3. Proofread every email at least once - even if it’s just a “quick” email to a coworker, correct spelling and grammar are not optional. Your communications with other people are your connections with the world. Leaving those communications riddled with spelling or grammar errors only serves to jeopardize your accuracy, dilute your meaning and destroy the perception of your personal quality.
  4. Subjects are titles - so treat them as such. Proper title casing is in order when writing an email subject, except in rare cases when a question can be used instead. In that case, the question mark is not optional.
  5. Use quoting only to clarify a conversation - not as a huge anchor at the bottom of every email. Many email clients unfortunately insert the quoted text from the message you are replying to and most people don’t care, so they type their message above the quote — called “top posting” — and add to the madness (sometimes it’s several messages long). If you’re replying to specific parts of a message, type your response under the quoted part you intend to reply to and remove the rest of the quote.

Sample Email Exchange

To: John Doe <john@example.com>
From: Jane Smith <jane@example.com>
Subject: Buy Movie Tickets

Hi John,

Don't forget to buy the movie tickets before Thursday.

That reminds me -- have you looked up the directions to the theater?

--
Jane Smith
jane@example.com
To: Jane Smith <jane@example.com>
From: John Doe <john@example.com>
Subject: Re: Buy Movie Tickets

On July 11, 2008, Jane Smith wrote:
> That reminds me -- have you looked up the directions to the theater?

Yeah, I've got it all figured out.

--
John Doe
john@example.com

Mooneer Salem: rants and raves

To Obama: You're seriously making me regret voting for you in the primaries. If I had known that you were going to vote Yes for telecom immunity, I probably would have voted Clinton. At least she voted No.

This is seriously nearly a single-issue vote for me, and even more surprising since you're supposed to know the Constitution intimately, y'know? I know you're trying to appeal to the center, but the center is smaller than normal in this election. You were doing better appealing to the left and showing you were different than McCain, but so far, you're making the election look like yet another douche vs. turd sandwich competition. Your saving grace is that McCain is even worse, though, and I probably won't go run off and vote for McCain or 3rd party (I'm tempted to vote Green this time)--so at least you have that going for you.

To Google: You seriously need to put pressure on some handset makers to release an Android phone soon. iPhone 3G already came out, and its App Store is taking the wind out of the sails of arguments that their platform isn't open. Yes, I know you can't open-source any iPhone app you make, and you can't write certain classes of applications, but most people are going to overlook that. Wait much longer and your platform will be a flop, relegated to the same hobbyists who mess around with the OpenMoko (no offense to them). On the other hand, Windows Mobile is pretty open, and most of the applications for it are plain shit, so maybe Apple's onto something by requiring approval before publication...

To North America: Why must you be so? The location of San Diego means that 80% of the time, the xkcd geohash for SD is in the ocean. Another 10% or so of the time, it's in Mexico. And the rest of the time, it's on land during the week, and not during the "normal" 4pm Saturday date and time. Oh well.

Whew, done ranting for now.

Gregory Ruiz-Ade: Tweets for Today

  • 09:37 is actually liking Moutain Dew Voltage. #
  • 11:11 is getting really annoyed at having to re-kickstart this test VM so many times because I keep flubbing things in the configuration? #
  • 11:34 @bynkii I wonder what kind of device a "keyboard cock" would be. The imagination abounds. #
  • 13:45 Zimbra was apparently right that they couldn't duplicate our problem on RHEL5.2. Doesn't happen on clean 5.2 install, only on updated 5.1. #

July 11, 2008

DJ Capelis: Eternal September

Not how anyone quite expected October, 1993 to arrive:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/12/0014200

Gregory Ruiz-Ade: Tweets for Today

  • 11:17 is thinking about giving a full session talk at next year's UCSD Campus LISA about Zimbra? #
  • 11:18 will call it: "Dr. StrangeMail, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Email" #
  • 14:32 In-Car camera of Corvette ZR-1 turning a 7:26.4 lap time at Nurburgring: tinyurl.com/5eytwy #

July 10, 2008

Jessica Shindo: iPhone 3G

I don't know whether to be afraid for tomorrow, or excited. Or both.

Sheenika Shah: Update on my life

1. I’m going to be attending California Western School of Law starting mid-August. I am very very excited to start this new chapter in my life, however, it means I will be also very busy studying :)

2. I’m living at home for the summer currently and this means life has its ups and downs.

Eric Grunow: Life OS

This past week I’ve had to design a piece of “net art” for VIS 40. Net art was something that was cool from about 1994 to 1999, and it involved making a piece of art from html.

I was at a loss for how to go about this project until yesterday, when I was thinking about society’s obsession with computers and how they are “revolutionizing” everything. True, computers have changed the way we go about many things, but they are a far cry from being a solution to all our problems. That was the focus of “Life OS”, which can be found here.

I was not parodying Vista because I’m trying to say it doesn’t work, but rather because it’s easily recognized as an OS =P. I don’t know if this qualifies as “net art”, maybe I’ve missed the concept entirely. The prof said it was a piece of interactive art, usually humorous, that can only be experienced in html. I think this fits those qualities…

I’m not that happy with how it turned out, but this was made by coding html in the command line using vim. I used absolutely no tools like Photoshop or Dreamweaver. (I was going to, but the bookstore was sold out…) On top of the fact that I spent only about 5 hours putting this together, I suppose it turned out fairly well. I just wish I had had more time + the proper tools to do a good job.

Gregory Ruiz-Ade: Tweets for Today

  • 08:56 @declan you twitter addict. Pay attention to the presenter. :D #
  • 10:47 is enjoying UCSD Campus Lisa #
  • 11:42 @sirhc uh, wrong kind of "Lisa". #
July 24, 2008 16:53 PDT