Accept no substitutes

Month: August 2006 (Page 2 of 4)

Tibetan-mania from Xeni

Xeni hasn’t posted about everyone I know in the Tibetan exile community in Dharamsala, but nearly everyone. I’ve put her in touch with the Volunter Tibet folks so that may appear on her Xeni.net/trek blog or in Wired News or in Boingboing or National Public Radio or whereever else Xeni publishes next.
Besides finally seeing pictures of all these folks, it’s great to see them getting great press in the tech community from Xeni and her editors. In many cases, the Tibetans have been at tech projects for a long time working hard and cleverly with not many resources but with great determination.
It’s been a blast being part of their tech growth through ibiblio.org
Looking forward to seeing as many of them (you if you are reading this in Dharamsala) next week.

Volunteer for Tibet (and get them off visual basic!)

VolunteerTibet

Brick Thorton of Volunteers for Tibet writes to ask for help from techies heading up into the Himalayas to McLeod Ganj and Dharamsala.

He says:

if you happen to know any programmers that would be interested in making a long stay in mcleod ganj, please let me know! we’re looking to upgrade our custom volunteer tracking app… (originally programmed in visual basic).

Go to their site and lettem know you can help.

Stutzman v Metcalfe

Ethernet inventor and failed predictor of Internet Collapses, Bob Metcalfe has taken on Fred Stutzman’s and others’ takes on the failings of Metcalfe’s Law as a visiting blogger on VCMike’s blog. Fred, like David P. Reed who corrected Metcalfe’s Law with Reed’s Law way back, has observed some serious failings in the Metcalfe formulation.
Fred’s original article is here. His follow up to Metcalfe’s is here.
Metcalfe’s response reminds me of the time he had to literally eat his words at the Inet conference. Metcalfe is always interesting combatative funny and most of the time so close to being right without quite getting there that it hurts when in the end he is decidedly wrong.

Tibetans in Wired and Slashdot and more

Xeni Jardin has followed her NPR coverage of Wireless Exiled Tibetans to Wired News with an expanded story featuring Yael Ben-David and Phuntsok Dorjee.

That’s been picked up at SlashDot in the Hardware area where there is a lot of discussion of the wireless and of dealing with Bad Monkeys.

And of course she always covers her own articles over on boing boing which helps me find them.

By the time I get there they’ll be too famous to talk with me ;->

Tucker to DJ Sunday on WCOM-LP

Readers of this blog who seem to be too shy to comment have stopped me and asked “When will Tucker be DJing again.” Fear not, o shy ones! Tucker and his friend Henry G will DJing the DanceJam on Sunday August 20 from 2 pm to 4 pm on WCOM-LP Community Radio 103.5. Yes you can listen online

As someone who plays a lot of 2 Tone music: Specials, English Beat, Selector and Madness, Tucker is disappointed that the upcoming Beat/Specials/Selector show at the Cat’s Cradle on September 26 isn’t an all ages show.

Red Hat Magazine covers BarCampRDU (and shares ibiblio love)

Red Hat Magazine
Bascha Harris has the best coverage of BarCampRDU that I’ve seen yet in Red Hat Magazine. And not just because I get quoted a lot either. She gets the essence and the background of it all:

160 attendees, 49 sessions, many hours, and several glowing reviews later… the camp was a success.

Glad she counted ;-> It seems so massive but with such a great community giving support it was pretty easy. Fred certainly busted ass to make BarCampRDU happen and it happened very well.

Jones makes History (to be shown in 2007)

Just back from doing the History Channel tape about North Carolina. My partner-in-being-interviewed tech entrepreneur Heather Hesketh brought up Open Source as on of the things that makes NC great and recognized world-wide. Naturally I jumped in and supported her. The producer was interested and had me try to define Open Source in 25 words or less (more or less). We may make it to the final cut on that. We also talked about BBQ, tobacco including Heather’s grandfather’s pipe factory, the Research Triangle and the importance of the past to the future. “Any place that wants to move forward quickly needs to have a good rearview mirror as well as a clear forward vision,” says Jones.

The show, which is 1 of a series of ten, will feature bits on five states soooo you do the numbers we might not be there at all or we may get a good bit. It will maybe run 15 seconds off my Warholian clock.

We’ll know in 2007 when the series is scheduled to run.

After a couple of friends who work in open source came by to join us. Dykki Settle of INTRAH is working on an Open Source package for Human Resources for Health Information Systems for Ministries of Health in various countries with USAID. Shava Nerad is working with the cool anonymity project, TOR. See earlier notes.

Great meeting of the Open Source minds there over lunch after the crew took off and left us to gab at length.

YouTube killed the net.Radio star?

YouTube will have “every music video ever made” [if they don’t already ;->] “in 18 months” founder Steve Chen tells Reuters news agency (as reported by BBC).

Already I look for music on YouTube before I look anywhere else. I can’t find a listening copy of “Urban Spaceman” by the Bonzo Do Dah Dog Band, but I can find about 10 videos on YouTube, promos, TV appearances, and live shows!
I can even explain how and where Death Cab for Cutie got their name. [note George Harrison and John Lennon in the audience].

Rich Beckman on State of Things

JOMC collegue photographer and multimedia developer, Rich Beckman talks about being in Chile out on Selkirk’s [also known as Robinson Crusoe’s] Island today on the air and later on the archives of WUNC-FM’s State of things. [mp3]

Chasing Crusoe: Three hundred years ago Alexander Selkirk opted to be marooned on an island rather than endure his English captain. His four-year long adventure inspired the classic novel Robinson Crusoe. Last spring a group of students from UNC-Chapel Hill returned to the island, four hundred miles off the coast of Chile, to document the legacy of Robinson Crusoe. Host Frank Stasio talks with Prof. Rich Beckman and graduate student Jay Heinz about the project. For more information, see: http://www.rcrusoe.org/ [this is the cool multimedia (flash) sight made there on the Island with games and 3-d images and photo essays etc]

SunSITE.za Rest in Peace

The un-updated box that was sunsite.za down in Jo’burg is dying and being put out of its misery — on pretty short notice.

The Sunsite web server is to be shut down in the near future. We regret to inform you that we are no longer able to host your web site http://www.[xxxx].za/ and alternative arrangements will have to be
made for your web hosting. Your site will be removed from the server as of this Friday (18th August). Please reply if you would like a backup of your web site files to be provided for you.

SXPHW

I did get a little stall from the PT after a drive to Saxapahaw on Saturday. The car started almost immediately this time though.
We were on our way to visit with Elizabeth and Zach Exley. Zach ZACK Exley. Zack worked with MoveOn.org and with the Kerry campaign on their on-line organizing in the last US Presidential campaign. He’s also a HuffingtonPost blogger.
The scene on Saturday at SXPHW is a very nice one. There’s a little farmer’s market. There is a very cool music series. This week featuring The Breaks and Maxwell/Mosher. And there was great BBQ from our favorite (other than Allen and Son) the BBQ Joint.
Nice weather, good music, good people, hula hoopers, good talk, what more could you ask for.

Radio Wally!

Elizabeth Brownrigg writes to all graduates of the Warren Wilson to let us know that she and Writing Program Director Peter Turchi will be on WUNC State of Things today at 12:40 pm (and will be rerun this evening at 9 pm and on Saturday upcoming at 6 am). Elizabeth and Peter will be talking about:

Swannanoa Writers: The master’s of fine arts program for writers at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa celebrates its 25th anniversary this summer. Program director Peter Turchi reflects on the program’s famous
names, its traditions and its future.

Lordi loved in Finland; Dumber than ever

Stories are all over the news about how the Finns are reaching out in pride to their Eurovision winning latex-wearing monster band, Lordi. Even one report that there will be Lordi stamps soon.

Lordi, the leader of Lordi, has things in perspective when he says “Being a hero is easy: you just have to win the Eurovision Song Contest, apparently. Until a few weeks ago the whole nation was against us totally — they did not want us to represent Finland. Now all the magazines in Finland are printing Lordi masks for children. There’s not much logic going on inside. But let’s face it, people are stupid.” (quoted from a story by Dan Bilefsky in the International Herald Tribune)

Speaking of stupid, the new Lordi song “Who’s Your Daddy?” makes their “Hard Rock Halelujah” sound like a complex ELO song with Bob Dylan lyrics. The video is a sex change on the oppression of Goths. This time a letter jacket wearing boy band-ish lad gets the Lordi abuse instead of cheerleaders. But Lordi had much more budget to spend on fireworks and sparklers this time out. And it all takes place in a roller disco!

Too good to pass up! Especially good in this live version but Lordi in the daytime means no fireworks and much less set. A plus is that you can see the costumes and those funky boots better.

PT Saga: Co-Piloting

I have Co-Pilot installed in the PT and am ready to stall. I wasn’t disappointed. I drove from the dealer to school without a hitch, but as I pulled into the parking lot, I pushed in the clutch so as to drift in the the parallel space. But suddenly I lost power steering! Yes! I had stalled. And Yes! the PT wouldn’t restart. And Yes! I even remembered to push the famous triangle button on Co-Pilot and record all the info.
No true stalls since then. I need to get three or so. And one false stall.
But we’re off to Saxapahaw, a trip which might just get me the next stalls that I need.
More news as it happens.

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