Upping the ante: A website of organized nonsense

Yes, ladies and gents, you are looking at the proud owner of a new domain weighing approximately…well, howevermuch a bunch of electrons weigh these days. Actually, you’re looking at your computer screen, as am I gazing upon mine as I thwack upon my keys, composing this blog post, but let’s look past that little detail in the interests of moving things along, shall we?

Good.

In true wömblian fashion (and yes, you naysayers, that umlauted beauty tucked neatly into the beginning of this sentence is indeed a word, at least in the environs of this website) I have procured a domain entirely appropriate for me. Without meaning to hurt any feelings, whether it is appropriate for you or not is not really any of my concern at the moment. It’s my domain, I’m hanging on to it, and you can’t have it. So there!

Giving thanks for friends, puppies, floating, and pie

Wow. It’s been a really long week, but the weekend is just about here.

I saw the notice on the WordPress blog about the “Giving Thanks” contest earlier this week and knew that it was just the right kick-in-the-pants to get me to try out the MiniDV camera that I recently purchased on eBay. So I grabbed a few of my friends, asked them what they’re thankful for, and cut it all together into a short video. Thirty seconds isn’t that much time, especially when your friends are so voluble!

I wasn’t really sure how this film would turn out. I shot a lot of footage, but as I only had 30 seconds for the final cut I had to really pare things down to make sure that I could include a clip of each person.

Filming each person was fun. Pure and simple. Each person had their own unique quirks and mannerisms that really came out when they were put in front of a camera lens. Percy with the sheep, Alex with a ping pong ball, and a highly-caffeinated Nida all presented unique challenges when filming (such as keeping the subject in frame!) and offered not only different answers to “For what are you thankful?”, but even took different approaches to answering the questions.

Okay, enough chatter from me. Here’s the meat of this post, the video:

Motorola Droid vs. HTC Droid Eris: Side-by-side spec comparison of Verizon’s Android Phones

Being stuck at home for the past couple of days has afforded me extra time to get things done. One thing I’ve wanted during the past week is a side-by-side comparison of the technical specs of Verizon’s new Android Phones.

I’m interested in getting either the Motorola Droid or the HTC Droid Eris as I’m eligible for the New-every-two upgrade plan and could save $100 if I upgrade when the phones come out on November 6th.

Being a strong supporter of Free Software, I’d like to be able to replace the stock Android build with an entirely Free Software build such as Replicant. Of course, it’s entirely possible that Verizon has locked down the handsets to such an extent that it is impossible for us to replace the OS running on the device. That’s why I’m going to wait a couple of weeks and see how far people have gotten in rooting the device before I make any decision.

Outdoor Movies: Kicking it off with “Duel of the Tough”

When was the last time you went to a drive-in?

For me it must have been at least 3 years ago. There’s a drive-in over in Fairlee, VT, and during the summer season they show double features for $8 per person. It’s a lot of fun to pile in a car and head over there, hoping for clear skies.

The Fairlee Drive-in also has a motel, and the rooms are situated such that you can open the curtains on one of the walls and watch the movie. It’s kind of a fun gimmick.

Last night I kicked off my career as a projectionist with the spectacular film Duel of the Tough, originally titled Shen tui mi zong shou. We’d had a BBQ over at my place and Cyrus stayed around to poke at the fire when I had the epiphany that I had finally acquired all of the pieces necessary to project movies outside.

Fake Linus Torvalds, a Rap, and a Response

The Linux Foundation is doing some kind of special promo for LinuxCon where they’ve had some “fake” Linus Torvalds tweeting and denting (the verb describing “tweeting” on Identica). There’s a bit of a contest going on to see if people can guess the real identity of these pretenders.

The whole thing sounds rather fun and ridiculous, and the group even made a rap video to go along with the project that you can see on the Fake Linus Torvalds page above. Unfortunately the rapper in the video flubbed the recitation of the first 6 digits of Pi.

Tsk, tsk, tsk.

It’s possible that the flub might have been intentional, but I couldn’t just sit idly by while the future geeky rappers out there are potentially being mislead. I mean, think of the children!

Digital Document Management at Dartmouth: We’ve a long way to go

Last week was rather busy for me. Right after I got back to the Dartmouth campus from a tour of the composting facility I had to hightail it to Carson (the “pseudo-building” glued to the side of Berry Library) to attend a class in Digital Document Management (DDM). Over the course of two hours, Dartmouth Records Manager Wess Jolley [PDF] described some of the ideas and theory behind DDM and presented analysis of the progress Dartmouth has made towards transitioning from paper-only offices to largely DDM-only offices.

Although the management of documents at Dartmouth is very large and complicated — Jolley described us like a “small town” in terms of document diversity — the College is making steady progress towards bringing DDM to the various departments. As Dartmouth doesn’t even have DDM software selected yet, and given the hurdles associated with transitioning and retraining employees to use a digital system, it will likely be several years before a majority of the departments are wholly switched to a digital document management system.

I’m dreaming of a snowy FreeGeek…

Trying to catch up with everything, I just posted the pics I took of FreeGeek last December (2008). Hopefully I’ll get a chance to take some pictures of Wincycle for an East/West comparison.

The outside picture of FreeGeek covered in snow is really nice:

HTML5: The only way we’re going to get standard media codecs

According to a recent article on Slashdot, any hope of getting media codecs added to the HTML5 standard is going down in flames.

HTML5 editor Ian Hickson stated on the WHATWG list (the dev list for HTML5) that

After an inordinate amount of discussions, both in public and privately,
on the situation regarding codecs for <video> and <audio> in HTML5, I have
reluctantly come to the conclusion that there is no suitable codec that
all vendors are willing to implement and ship.

I have therefore removed the two subsections in the HTML5 spec in which
codecs would have been required, and have instead left the matter
undefined, as has in the past been done with other features like <img> and
image formats, <embed> and plugin APIs, or Web fonts and font formats.

Well, frack. That really cracks my barnacles. (Yes, I’m trying to keep it PG here).

Why software patents are slowing us down

In the beginning there were a bunch of old guys with wigs, and they wrote The Constitution and The Patent Act of 1790. These weren’t your run-of-the-mill guys with wigs that you’d see on the street today, these guys wore powdered wigs with ribbons in them. Having just recently broken up with their domineering but sometimes loveable companion England, these men thought that it would be a good idea to

“…promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;”

Not bad, founding fathers, not bad.

But if we fast forward a couple hundred years to today, we find that we, the United States, currently have some issues with these limited grants of exclusivity. Despite our parents’ best efforts, we seem to be having severe problems both in comprehending the idea of “limited” and in seriously discussing how best we can promote Science and the Arts. If the Founders were alive today I’d half expect our current congresscritters to roll their eyes, stick their fingers in their ears, and say “lalalalala, I can’t hear you” whenever the Founders stopped by for a chat. I must say that it seems like a lot of common sense was lost when men stopped wearing wigs.

One of the most egregious problems of today is the granting of software patents. There are several reasons why software patents should not be granted and should not exist, but I’m going to focus on just one aspect in this post: Interoperability in a world of digital distribution. In order for software developers and software users to be able to innovate and create and distribute and interoperate with others (and yes, those two groups include just about everyone out there), we must get rid of software patents as they are like millstones tied ’round our necks.

Free Geek t-shirt doodles

Free Geek, a nifty community computer recycler and technology enabler that’s like a cross between Habitat for Humanity and that place in your high school basement where they piled up old computers and oscilloscopes, is designing a new T-shirt and asked for help from the community. Being far away from PDX and faced with the distinct possibility that I’d have to do real work on a lazy Sunday afternoon, I figured that the only way out was to make some sketches. If it’s useful, does it still count as procrastination?

I was relived to hear that “Designs don’t have to be polished, as long as the idea is clear.” I mean, I’ve designed a t-shirt before, but doing the inking of the design took near about as long as drawing the darn thing in the first place!