Tuesday, 21 February 2012 at 12:26
Just a quick heads-up about the
Project Byzantium development sprint this weekend:
The development sprint will not be at HacDC this month, but instead it will be held
at the Thurgood Marshall Academy in Washington, DC because we'll be at
Discotech again. DiscoTech will be held between 12:00pm and 4:00pm on Saturday. Come one, come all, stop by and see what new things are afoot in DC!
Here is the
official website for the Discovering Technology Faire if you'd like more information.
Monday, 20 February 2012 at 10:06
Well,
another year has come and gone and it's time to look back once again across the calendar and see how things have changed for the Time Lord. This past year is likely one of the busiest of my whole life and shows few signs of slowing down or grinding to a halt. To put it simply I don't have the time or space on the database server to outline everything from 2011, but suffice it to say that the world is undergoing some profound changes outside of the control of the existing system, and in some small way I've been a part of that. I've learned a great deal about other aspects of the world that I had no contact with before and perhaps I've been able to help people who needed it most. I've learned the advantages of finally having decent bandwidth as well as how to put it to good use. It's long been my observation that kindness is to be shared, never hoarded, and that in itself is one of the most powerful ideas in the world. Small wonder why we're taught to forget such things.
I've learned that all of the planning and documentation and policy writing means nothing if you don't have the knowledge or wherewithal to actually put it into action, and that higher levels of complexity are not always good. In fact, they're often deletarious once a system hits a certain size and the smaller, more nimble, and more loosely connected groups can accomplish in mere hours what groups with traditional static internal structures can't pull off in months or years. It never fails to bring a tear to my eye to say to someone, "You're wrong. We do
(foo) every day."
In the last year I've been a part of three major software releases, one F/OSS project at work (even though I'm just the sysadmin I'm also the only one active in the Open Source community), one commercial project which is beginning to take off (go ahead and take up your torches and pitchforks because I also work on closed-source software, but I ask why you never say anything about all of those security patches...), and
one major collaboration that I've bent your ears about for months on end. The first is in a holding pattern now, the second approaching its next major release, and we're hammering on the third as fast as we can. Bugfixes take time to characterize, doubly so when you're already up to your neck.
More under the cut...
Saturday, 04 February 2012 at 01:32
I don't have a lot of time.
All hell broke loose in Syria on 3 February 2012. The city of Homs was invaded by the Syrian military, which then opened fire. Over 400 people are confirmed dead, and I don't have an accurate count of the number of people who were injured anymore.
Please follow
the hashtag #syria on Twitter for late-breaking news. And Twitter, if you even think of
censoring this you will make a Time Lord very, very angry.
To help the people of Syria connect to the Net to continue transmitting video footage and photographs of what's happening, the following dialups have been established for users in Syria to get online.
Here's the list, and here's a copy of the content made at 0134 EST5EDT on 4 February 2012:
- +4618700800 user:flashback pw: flashback
- +3908251872424 any user/password
- +3909241962424 any user/password
- +16033715050 any user/password
- +431962962 user: selfnet password: selfnet
- +492317299993 user: telecomix password: telecomix
- +33 1 72 89 01 50. login: toto password: toto by FDN
Additionally, I have a mirror of video footage shot in Syria during the Arab Spring
here. It's a copy of
this website. I'll try to update it at least once a day now that I've got it scripted.
Be brave, everyone. We're doing everything we can to help, wherever we are.
