TedPage

As I'm about to embark on a red-eye flight to the East Coast I was looking at various things to help make the flight easier. The information I found that is the most fun, and informative, is at the JetBlue website:

• Inflight Yoga
• Inflight Pilates

Now, let's see how many odd looks I can get on this flight!

posted on Thu, 31 Mar 2005 at 16:51 | permanent link

The New York Times has an interesting article on Open Source in Brazil. It talks about a government program to try and get computers into the homes of people who could not afford one, and try to cross the digital divide. This, in itself, is an impressive initiative -- in too many countries this division between the rich and poor is accepted as a reality instead of something that can be fixed. What is more interesting is that they are considering using Open Source software to facilitate these computers.

Walter Bender, of the MIT Media Lab, was quoted as saying:

free software provides a basis for more widespread access, more powerful uses and a much stronger platform for long-term growth and development.

Which gives some credence to the analysis of the OS advocates. Microsoft would like to get into the program by providing a reduced functionality version of their software suite. From their perspective, they want to do this to continue to have a full featured, expensive version of their software package. But, that in fact makes the competition easier, as the Open Source software package is full featured.

While this is not over yet (we can assume that the Gates foundation might be making some critical donations to Brazilian charities in the next little while) it is a huge step for Open Source. I hope that the people of Brazil get a powerful suite of tools in the end.

posted on Tue, 29 Mar 2005 at 12:23 | permanent link

I've finally gotten online pictures from our quick vacation to LA over a year ago. It involved a quick trip to LA, and then leaving Stephanie at the ACS conference. I've got more pictures in the pipe, I promise!

           

posted on Mon, 28 Mar 2005 at 02:27 | permanent link

I've been a fan of RSS for quite a while now, I think that it is a wonderful way to read news. The idea of creating a shorthand format, that people can poll and get updates, just makes an increadible amount of sense for everyone. Fueled by blogs, it has really taken off. I don't see it as a bad thing.

The biggest thing that I've been using RSS for is my Metanews site. Although, now my hosting service is complaining about the CPU load it causes (2 minutes a run -- which is understandable). I need a new way to read RSS. I like the way that Planet Planet puts the whole list of items in a single list sorted by date. It seems that every other RSS tool wants to group the entries by blog -- I hate that!.

To the point! I've established some cool RSS feeds on Technorati that I thought other people might find useful:

• RSS feed of blogs mentioning SVG
• RSS feed of blogs mentioning Inkscape

Also, now that the Inkscape news is using Wordpress, there is another important RSS feed:

• Inkscape News

posted on Fri, 25 Mar 2005 at 18:02 | permanent link

So, I've put my blog on Technorati, which is an interesting website to try and get the 'vibe' of what is happening in the blogosphere (as the kids call it). I'm not sure that Google won't just do this themselves in the future, but it is interesting today.

Here's the code to claim my blog: Technorati Profile

posted on Thu, 24 Mar 2005 at 20:08 | permanent link

Seth Nickell has posted some impressive movies of hardware accelerated desktop eye candy. I think this is a very exciting direction for the Linux desktop, and I talked about it a lot in my presentation for SCALE. I also love the fact that Inkscape was used in one of the movies.

posted on Thu, 24 Mar 2005 at 13:00 | permanent link

I've now added Gizmodo to my Metanews site. It is a blog of news about gadgets and fun technology. Their website has tons of ads, but the RSS feed should be a lot of fun.

posted on Mon, 21 Mar 2005 at 18:17 | permanent link

For all those who need ways to get rid of money, you can now buy Inkscape on Ebay. Ofcourse, you could always just download Inkscape for free. Before people get too excited, remember, this is within anyone's rights. They're allowed to download it, and sell copies as long as they provide the source code along with the binary distribution. Nothing in the GPL prevents someone from preying on stupid people. I wouldn't encourage it, but it is legal.

posted on Mon, 21 Mar 2005 at 13:06 | permanent link

As we all know, the US has a pretty sick dependency on oil. With growing industrial complex it is looking like both India and China will start catching up. It's sad, and hopefully avoidable. I'm hoping that atleast China, who are known for not wanting to be dependent on anyone, will look at alternative means of generating electricity. I hope that both will look at some of the politically uncomfortable situations that this puts the US in, and choose wisely. I think this comic illustrates the point well:

posted on Sat, 19 Mar 2005 at 13:57 | permanent link

This morning I finished Robert Love's Linux Kernel Development book. It was very interesting. I love being able to look through such a complete analysis of a real life design. He also treats the whole thing with a humor that I enjoyed, but can be a touch excessive at times. I started out frustrated with how much repetition of various concepts that were in the book, but I realized that most readers aren't reading the book straight through. Probably most readers are flipping to the chapter they need right then, and learning about those concepts. The repetition is neccisary for those readers.

Now, all I need is a kernel project to do -- no itch to scratch there. But, I did realize how much I program like a kernel hacker. If you look how I designed the Inkscpae Extension Expiration Timer you'll see alot of kernel/embedded techniques in there.

posted on Thu, 17 Mar 2005 at 22:12 | permanent link

I went to the Linux Users' of Los Angeles (LULA) meeting last night, and had fun. The meeting was on how to react to a recent press release from a couple of council members in The City of Los Angeles who suggested using Open Source software for the city. Basically saying that it would save them 5 million dollars, which they could then use to hire more police officers.

Our speaker was Chelsea Shure, who describes herself as a "political junkie". She made some great points. Basically, I think the crux of what she was trying to say was that we need to establish relationships with the city council, not necissarily push one issue. When they need a technical board, who do they ask? People they know. Establishing yourself as someone they know with a technical bent makes you someone who ends up on the committees discussing those issues.

So, atleast for me, that is something I plan on doing. I've found my councilwoman and I plan on getting in touch with her technical deputy. I'd encourage others to do the same.

posted on Wed, 16 Mar 2005 at 16:32 | permanent link

I finally got a new music player, after I fried the last one by buying the incorrect car adapter (I swear it said 12V not 6V). Anyway, now that I'm riding the bus everyday music became a priority. I got the iAudio M3L.

I'm happy with it so far. The UI is a little different, but now that I'm used to it, I like it. It plays OGG and FLAC. And the M3L has 35 hours of battery life (very good). It also has a FM radio.

posted on Sat, 12 Mar 2005 at 19:15 | permanent link

Mike Miliard wrote this article about the tyranny of health. He claims that actions like smoking bans and employeers concerned about hiring smokers are limitations on lifestyle choices that should be protected. He believes that this is a prohibitionist agenda lead by religious voters. While, in some regards I agree with him (although, I hate people smoking around me) I think this steams from something entirely different, a culture of aversion to risk.

I think that this has come from all the lawsuits, well, for pretty much everything. Could I sue a bar that I hung out regularly at if they allowed smoking and I got lung cancer? Perhaps. But, this also comes down to employeers looking at the cost of their health plans. Does someone who is overweight or a smoker end up costing them more? Yes, it does. Those people are more likely to make claims against the health insurance, costing them in the long run. This also effects government programs like medicare/medicade -- so it does become a tax payer issue.

A friend of mine, who is working at a startup, they had one of their key technology people who wasn't in great shape. This was a concern for them. If something happened to him, their entire business would be on shaky ground. They bought him a membership to a health club, and encouraged him to go. I don't know if this is discriminatory, it is a very real situation where they just wanted to protect their business.

I'm not entire sure what the complete solution was. My favorite coffee shop in Arizona had smoking on the patio. Although I loved sitting outside and enjoying the lake, sitting in the smoke was always a turn off. Sometimes I did it, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I could have. I hope that a reasonable compromise can be found, insurance companies need to be limited. I think I'll vote for the drunkards a little, just to balance things out.

posted on Sat, 12 Mar 2005 at 14:39 | permanent link

I ran across the Unhappy Birthday website. It is a good website giving out the information on the copyright which is involved with the song "Happy Birthday". It also shows the craziness that has become our copyright law. Copyrights were designed to allow for limited protection, unfortunately congress keeps extending that, so it is effectively unlimited.

The other cool thing about the site is that it uses graphics from the Open Clipart Library. It is great to see that library getting used, everyone I talk to loves it. It is also really good promotion for SVG and Inkscape.

posted on Fri, 04 Mar 2005 at 12:12 | permanent link