Wireless Networks in Boston
Two resources are immediately obvious:
bostonwireless.org
MIT's Rooftops project
Since I should have, at least initially on arrival in Boston, more time than money, and am
explicitly interested in meeting likeminded locals and getting involved
in community activities, working on community wireless is probably not a
bad first step.
Addendum: there is at least one
person thinking about public wireless in JP.
P.P.S. Another Boston wireless initiative: BAWIA. Plus, I found out our new
upstairs neighbors have an AP. w00t.
[/net]
New Jack Democracy
Today is the big MoveOn.org primary. It took me a couple hours of trying to load up the web page before I was able to vote; I'll be interested to see if any information comes out about whether the problem was one of simple slashdotting, or if ne'er-doells have been DOSing it intentionally.
Aside from the difficultly getting to the website, this has made some serious mainstream ink. News.google.com reports 209 hits for 'moveon', most of which seem to be all about today's primary. CNN, Wired, the Baltimore Sun, the Christin Science Monitor, Salon, the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette... not a bad cross-section.
[/net]
Mon, 23 Jun 2003
Today is the big MoveOn.org primary. It took me a couple hours of trying to load up the web page before I was able to vote; I'll be interested to see if any information comes out about whether the problem was one of simple slashdotting, or if ne'er-doells have been DOSing it intentionally.
Aside from the difficultly getting to the website, this has made some serious mainstream ink. News.google.com reports 209 hits for 'moveon', most of which seem to be all about today's primary. CNN, Wired, the Baltimore Sun, the Christin Science Monitor, Salon, the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette... not a bad cross-section.
[/net]
How to Legally Avoid Firearms in Minnesota
Faegre & Benson detail the hoops one must jump through to legally ban firearms from private establishments. Apparently, one must verbally inform all persons that they must not bring guns onto the premises, as well as sport a ugly sign. The sign must be readily visible and within four feet laterally of the entrance, with the bottom of the sign at a height of four to six feet above the floor. A sign is "conspicuous" only if the sign has lettering in black arial typeface at least 1-1/2 inches in height against a bright contrasting background that is at least 187 square inches in area. There seems to be more flexibility with private residences, and different rules for landlord/tenant and employer/employee relations.
These signs are starting to pop up, and they're pretty horrendous. I hope the "get government off my back" people are outraged that the state is dictating one bad design to every Minnesotan who'd like a gun-free nook to work or play in.
As far as putting one of these bad boys together - note that you can get 187 square inches by connecting two 8 1/2 x 11" sheets of paper (producing either 17 x 11 or 8 1/2 x 22). These are probably not the ideal dimensions from an aesthetic dimension, but so little else about the required features of the sign are ideal... such as the font, Arial. See this excellent article (thanks Eric!) if you wonder how a cheap knockoff font that Microsoft picked out years ago to save a few bucks has taken over the low-brow world. Just another example of how thoughtless this piece of legislation is.
[/rant]
Faegre & Benson detail the hoops one must jump through to legally ban firearms from private establishments. Apparently, one must verbally inform all persons that they must not bring guns onto the premises, as well as sport a ugly sign. The sign must be readily visible and within four feet laterally of the entrance, with the bottom of the sign at a height of four to six feet above the floor. A sign is "conspicuous" only if the sign has lettering in black arial typeface at least 1-1/2 inches in height against a bright contrasting background that is at least 187 square inches in area. There seems to be more flexibility with private residences, and different rules for landlord/tenant and employer/employee relations.
These signs are starting to pop up, and they're pretty horrendous. I hope the "get government off my back" people are outraged that the state is dictating one bad design to every Minnesotan who'd like a gun-free nook to work or play in.
As far as putting one of these bad boys together - note that you can get 187 square inches by connecting two 8 1/2 x 11" sheets of paper (producing either 17 x 11 or 8 1/2 x 22). These are probably not the ideal dimensions from an aesthetic dimension, but so little else about the required features of the sign are ideal... such as the font, Arial. See this excellent article (thanks Eric!) if you wonder how a cheap knockoff font that Microsoft picked out years ago to save a few bucks has taken over the low-brow world. Just another example of how thoughtless this piece of legislation is.
[/rant]
Design patterns in perl
Great article with some examples of what's handy about programming in perl that is absent in the unfortunately popular Java. In a nutshell the idea is this: if a programming task is so common that it's worth building a good pattern for, shouldn't that pattern be implemented in the base language? The verbosity of Java code has always driven me a little nutty; comparing it to perl reminds me of my college German classes, in which I often noted the relative lengths of an English phrase (a few dozen characters) and its corresponding German equivalent (multi-syllabic word after word continuing indefinitely).
[/code]
Tue, 17 Jun 2003
Great article with some examples of what's handy about programming in perl that is absent in the unfortunately popular Java. In a nutshell the idea is this: if a programming task is so common that it's worth building a good pattern for, shouldn't that pattern be implemented in the base language? The verbosity of Java code has always driven me a little nutty; comparing it to perl reminds me of my college German classes, in which I often noted the relative lengths of an English phrase (a few dozen characters) and its corresponding German equivalent (multi-syllabic word after word continuing indefinitely).
[/code]
Some people don't get wikis
The plus side of a public wiki: anybody can add / fix content. The minus, of course, is that random shmucks (in this case, someone from 80.109.253.93) can remove the stuff you enter. Good thing for the 'history' feature.
What was deleted (from the LiveSites page at http://axkit.org):
latitudes.walkerart.org
This on-line companion to the Walker Art Center's recent show 'How Latitudes Become Forms' was developed over a month's time and was the Walker's first use of AxKit. We found the separation of the site's design (using XSLT files) and programming (mostly via TaglibHelper-based taglibs) to be very efficient, and the site's performance under load has been very satisfactory. Based on this experience, AxKit has been selected as the technology that will be used to rebuild the Walker's main website.
[/net]
Mon, 02 Jun 2003
The plus side of a public wiki: anybody can add / fix content. The minus, of course, is that random shmucks (in this case, someone from 80.109.253.93) can remove the stuff you enter. Good thing for the 'history' feature.
What was deleted (from the LiveSites page at http://axkit.org):
latitudes.walkerart.org
This on-line companion to the Walker Art Center's recent show 'How Latitudes Become Forms' was developed over a month's time and was the Walker's first use of AxKit. We found the separation of the site's design (using XSLT files) and programming (mostly via TaglibHelper-based taglibs) to be very efficient, and the site's performance under load has been very satisfactory. Based on this experience, AxKit has been selected as the technology that will be used to rebuild the Walker's main website.
[/net]
Time to start working on the resume
And it's been a while. This article has started me thinking out how I should be organizing myself; more resources as I find 'em.
Such as the following tool: XMLResume, which bootstraps the process of transforming some XML into HTML or a PDF or other stuff.
Here's an actual resume for generally the sort of work I do. Of course, Jef was getting lifetime achievement awards while I was in high school, so his might be a little more impressive. And here's another resume from someone who seems to have done more things than I have.
While looking to post a job, I noticed that my alma mater has its own page of resources for alumni seeking jobs.
Some general observations from looking at the resumes of those applying for my old job:
objectives are pretty common, and tend to have quite a bit of wiggle room. Some clearly disqualify the person from the job - don't people read job descriptions?
Profiles of self-selected positive adjectives may be attractive for some sorts of positions that are all about self-promotion (sales, CEO, etc), but seem inappropriate for technical work.
Placing Skills towards the top is a common and useful strategy; much easier to find out about someone this way than by diving into all their work experiences. A little confusing when skills are expressed as specific accomplishments, which some tried. Even worse was the resume that mixed skills and experiences, then followed with three lines listing names and dates of employment. 'etc.' is not so helpful in a skills list. Typos are not indicative of attention to detail. Listing almost all skills as 'Expert' creates the impression of chest-puffing-up. Interesting how often it wasn't clear if the candidate had programming experience, web-related experience, etc.
Experiences are awfully persuasive when they include specific positive outcomes - dollars made or saved, etc. Buzzwords can be handy in relating larger concepts succinctly, but are off-putting when used in excess. I'm not sure how useful completely unrelated work experience is - maybe a highlight or two?
Length makes me happiest when everything fits in a page legibly.
[/general]
And it's been a while. This article has started me thinking out how I should be organizing myself; more resources as I find 'em.
Such as the following tool: XMLResume, which bootstraps the process of transforming some XML into HTML or a PDF or other stuff.
Here's an actual resume for generally the sort of work I do. Of course, Jef was getting lifetime achievement awards while I was in high school, so his might be a little more impressive. And here's another resume from someone who seems to have done more things than I have.
While looking to post a job, I noticed that my alma mater has its own page of resources for alumni seeking jobs.
Some general observations from looking at the resumes of those applying for my old job:
objectives are pretty common, and tend to have quite a bit of wiggle room. Some clearly disqualify the person from the job - don't people read job descriptions?
Profiles of self-selected positive adjectives may be attractive for some sorts of positions that are all about self-promotion (sales, CEO, etc), but seem inappropriate for technical work.
Placing Skills towards the top is a common and useful strategy; much easier to find out about someone this way than by diving into all their work experiences. A little confusing when skills are expressed as specific accomplishments, which some tried. Even worse was the resume that mixed skills and experiences, then followed with three lines listing names and dates of employment. 'etc.' is not so helpful in a skills list. Typos are not indicative of attention to detail. Listing almost all skills as 'Expert' creates the impression of chest-puffing-up. Interesting how often it wasn't clear if the candidate had programming experience, web-related experience, etc.
Experiences are awfully persuasive when they include specific positive outcomes - dollars made or saved, etc. Buzzwords can be handy in relating larger concepts succinctly, but are off-putting when used in excess. I'm not sure how useful completely unrelated work experience is - maybe a highlight or two?
Length makes me happiest when everything fits in a page legibly.
[/general]
slag code: