The new EricMartindale.com is an experiment in data aggregation, and might have a few bugs. Feel free to explore, and then provide feedback directly to @martindale.
As of today, I've changed the address of my blog from just EricMartindale.com to a new location that will contain my blog posts in a new format. Don't worry though, all your old links will still work just fine.
Why am I doing this? Well, there are a number of reasons why - not the least of which are some SEO (search engine optimization) adjustments that I'm in the process of making. However, the biggest and most important thing to you is the introduction of Eric Martindale's Lifestream, which is the newest and latest feature of EricMartindale[dot]com. This new area of the site is called a Lifestream because it will show you everything that I've been doing lately, from shared posts on Google Reader to photos from Flickr.
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There's some discussion about how forums are or are not social media, (frankly, I don't think there's any question at all) - and it occurred to me the answer of why there is this rift in perception of forums/message boards.
Message boards haven't changed in almost 25 years. There simply hasn't been any real innovation - and that's why there's so much "real" social media out there that's exploding right now. The stuff is so radically different from traditional mediums such as forums that everyone is missing the core of what social media is: community engagement and interaction
So, here are some of the things I'd like to see in a forum, and some things that I've implemented on some of my own forums (heh, or at least planning to implement):
Trackbacks
It'd be awesome to have the same functionality in a blog post that we have on Wordpress or other blog software - did I give credit to someone? Let me hit the trackback API to make sure there's a connection between the two posts in the semantic web.
A forum thread is no different than a blog post. It has a topic, a goal, and a discussion pertaining to the original post. Let's see some of the functionality we found in the current decade put to use!
Native RSS Support
There's nothing worse than having to write an RSS extension for your forum, and still not have the functionality you want. Give every URL on my forum a /feed, please. This includes forums, threads, posts, users: the whole shebang.
While you're at it, tell Feedburner to support filtered feeds - a lot of my users don't want every single post. And I sure as hell don't want to burn a new feed for every forum. C'mon, let's meet somewhere in the middle.
Semantic URLs
Blogging software does it, why do we still have URLs on forums that use IDs right there in the URL? What benefit does that have to the user?
Social Profiles
Alright, we've got friends and foes lists on our forums, now - but where is the option to make this information public? Why aren't we displaying a users' friend list on their profile page by default? What about all their most recent posts and actions, and selected excerpts?
A community can only grow in a stifled manner if interaction between members isn't made as easy as humanly possible. Current forum software is stuck in the 90's, with an XHTML wrapper around it. Let's fix this, and soon - before we all melt.
Real Metrics and Algorithms
Stop using post count as a legitimate metric. This only encourages poor post quality. Let's see the ability to easily show Flesch-Kincaid, average word count, or something similar. The amount of posts a user has is not a good valuation of their contributions.
Instead, replace these with something more community-driven. Look at Digg for example. There is a solid (questionably) algorithm in place that measures users based on what they've submitted and the reactions of other users' reaction to that content, whether it be a comment or a submission.
Maybe I'm just whining. Maybe I've got legitimate desires. What do you think?
P.S.: And good god, phpBB! Why didn't you include this stuff in your phpBB3 release?!
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I've just learned of a virus that was launched against the U.S. Drone Fleet. See the attached article from Wired.
Earlier this year, the Pentagon recently concluded that digital attacks such as this can constitute an act of war [1]. This one doesn't [yet] seem as sophisticated as last year's attack on Iran's nuclear reactors by Stuxnet [2], but it continues to show how important and integral our computer systems are in this rapidly changing world. Security professionals +Alex Levinson, +Jerome Radcliffe, and +Scott Hanselman surely have some great insight here, I highly recommend you go take a look at some of the things they've written.
In 2009, a very sophisticated [and successful] cyber-attack was launched from inside China that targeted the United States through Google and Adobe [3] that caused surprisingly few stirs within our government, especially after NATO was sent in to assist in the defense of Estonia's computer systems during the 2007 attacks [4]. Not long after this, the widely-used and [formerly] explicitly trusted RSA security mechanism, used in a large number major institutions around the world. was completely and entirely broken [5] by an embarrassingly simple hack [6].
Aside: We can look back at some of the things actual software engineers like +Ryan Dahl [7] and +Zack Morris [8] have been saying lately and quickly conclude that there's something fundamentally broken with the whole system. If you've ever worked on or with a large software project, you can see evidence of negligence and ignorance alike embedded at every level. It certainly contributes to if not causes these types of security concerns.
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I've just learned of a virus that was launched against the U.S. Drone Fleet. See the attached article from Wired.
Earlier this year, the Pentagon recently concluded that digital attacks such as this can constitute an act of war [1]. This one doesn't [yet] seem as sophisticated as last year's attack on Iran's nuclear reactors by Stuxnet [2], but it continues to show how important and integral our computer systems are in this rapidly changing world. Security professionals +Alex Levinson, +Jerome Radcliffe, and +Scott Hanselman surely have some great insight here, I highly recommend you go take a look at some of the things they've written.
In 2009, a very sophisticated [and successful] cyber-attack was launched from inside China that targeted the United States through Google and Adobe [3] that caused surprisingly few stirs within our government, especially after NATO was sent in to assist in the defense of Estonia's computer systems during the 2007 attacks [4]. Not long after this, the widely-used and [formerly] explicitly trusted RSA security mechanism, used in a large number major institutions around the world. was completely and entirely broken [5] by an embarrassingly simple hack [6].
Aside: We can look back at some of the things actual software engineers like +Ryan Dahl [7] and +Zack Morris [8] have been saying lately and quickly conclude that there's something fundamentally broken with the whole system. If you've ever worked on or with a large software project, you can see evidence of negligence and ignorance alike embedded at every level. It certainly contributes to if not causes these types of security concerns.
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I've just learned of a virus that was launched against the U.S. Drone Fleet. See the attached article from Wired.
Earlier this year, the Pentagon recently concluded that digital attacks such as this can constitute an act of war [1]. This one doesn't [yet] seem as sophisticated as last year's attack on Iran's nuclear reactors by Stuxnet [2], but it continues to show how important and integral our computer systems are in this rapidly changing world. Security professionals +Alex Levinson, +Jerome Radcliffe, and +Scott Hanselman surely have some great insight here, I highly recommend you go take a look at some of the things they've written.
In 2009, a very sophisticated [and successful] cyber-attack was launched from inside China that targeted the United States through Google and Adobe [3] that caused surprisingly few stirs within our government, especially after NATO was sent in to assist in the defense of Estonia's computer systems during the 2007 attacks [4]. Not long after this, the widely-used and [formerly] explicitly trusted RSA security mechanism, used in a large number major institutions around the world. was completely and entirely broken [5] by an embarrassingly simple hack [6].
Aside: We can look back at some of the things actual software engineers like +Ryan Dahl [7] and +Zack Morris [8] have been saying lately and quickly conclude that there's something fundamentally broken with the whole system. If you've ever worked on or with a large software project, you can see evidence of negligence and ignorance alike embedded at every level. It certainly contributes to if not causes these types of security concerns.
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I've just learned of a virus that was launched against the U.S. Drone Fleet. See the attached article from Wired.
Earlier this year, the Pentagon recently concluded that digital attacks such as this can constitute an act of war [1]. This one doesn't [yet] seem as sophisticated as last year's attack on Iran's nuclear reactors by Stuxnet [2], but it continues to show how important and integral our computer systems are in this rapidly changing world. Security professionals +Alex Levinson, +Jerome Radcliffe, and +Scott Hanselman surely have some great insight here, I highly recommend you go take a look at some of the things they've written.
In 2009, a very sophisticated [and successful] cyber-attack was launched from inside China that targeted the United States through Google and Adobe [3] that caused surprisingly few stirs within our government, especially after NATO was sent in to assist in the defense of Estonia's computer systems during the 2007 attacks [4]. Not long after this, the widely-used and [formerly] explicitly trusted RSA security mechanism, used in a large number major institutions around the world. was completely and entirely broken [5] by an embarrassingly simple hack [6].
Aside: We can look back at some of the things actual software engineers like +Ryan Dahl [7] and +Zack Morris [8] have been saying lately and quickly conclude that there's something fundamentally broken with the whole system. If you've ever worked on or with a large software project, you can see evidence of negligence and ignorance alike embedded at every level. It certainly contributes to if not causes these types of security concerns.
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One of my favorite blogs is run by Martin Reed, and it's about online community building. He's really onto something here, and it's a shame there aren't more blogs out there on the topic (ahem, nudge nudge, wink wink). His content is top notch, and it relates directly to what it is that I do with my sites, particularly RolePlayGateway.
Just today he posted an article on active forum members and their value, and I'll be damned if I didn't forward that article to two teams on RolePlayGateway. And then I submitted it to StumbleUpon for good measure! Keep up the good work, Martin!
Does anyone know of any blogs about online community building? Please, share!
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I got a haircut last night - I'm down to maybe half a curl of hair. I don't have any pictures yet, but as soon as I do I'll post them here. Tonia killed me two or three times over when she found out. Sorry!
On another note, I'm writing this post in Google Docs. Since I'm using the Blogger Beta, I wasn't able to do this up until about a week ago, but I'm only now testing it out. It's a fairly easy setup, all I've had to do is select "Blogger (Beta)" from the Blog settings here in Docs, and then enter my username, password, and finally which blog I'd like to post to. This last bit of information is optional, and they said that they'll post to the first blog they find if you don't specify it.
We're (GWing Roleplay) looking at some excellent affiliate options, and will be presenting the community with a good number of resources in the near future. There are some outstanding opportunities that have presented themselves, and we're striving to give GWing the best environment possible for the roleplayers. We'll keep you updated as things progress, we promise!
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There's a large number of Content Management System, Bulletin Board, and Blog solutions available, all with amazing functionality that simply can't be missed on today's rapidly advancing internet(s).
My challenge is this:
What is the smallest full-featured CMS, BB, or Blog that you can create?
Contest submissions must include the following features:
User Accounts
Article Posts (or "Topics" in BB-land)
Comment System
Submissions will be accepted in any language, so long as the content can be served up over HTTP. To submit, comment on this post with a link to your project!
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I've been seriously slacking in getting RPGateway's blog up and running, but I've finally gotten around to re-posting the files and re-connecting Wordpress to the database. Now all I've got to do is to get a couple of our admins (and hopefully, one of our loverly owners) to start posting and managing it.
The idea here is to create a single update page where watchers who don't want to be involved in the site can still read updates from the staff. A buzz can be established, and hopefully, some real momentum can be generated with content that is updated daily. The so-called 'blogosphere' (I cringe too, relax.) is a very powerful force in the tubes today, and I think it's important to at least begin to establish some sort of presence here.
I was recently pointed to Trevor Somerville's 30 days to success, and I'm only reminded that articles are the Queen in a world where daily updates are King. Good luck to Trevor, I'll probably swing by once or twice to check up on his progress and see if he has any useful tips.
I started fiddling with some new posting options again, in particular the email posting. Blogger lets you set up a secret email to which you can send blog posts, at which point they'll automatically be added to your blog. I had a contact set up in my Gmail as of (insert long period of time) ago, and I sent a post to it, but I haven't seen anything of it. It looks like the same email, but... apparently not. I guess I'll be reconfiguring this later.
I've been having great experiences with SEO and RolePlay Gateway, we're rising in rankings rather quickly, even after the domain migration. Many thanks to the folks over at DigitalPoint for my education over the past few months. I'm sure I'll be telling these success stories soon, but right now I have to head off to Winston to run a few service calls.
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I'm a pretty heavy feedreader, with about 164 subscriptions. Over the last 30 days, I've read 8,032 items, starred 9 items, shared 20 items, and emailed 2 items. Of course... I really enjoy a good number of things that I read - and I want to share these items with everyone.
Then there's the question about content-theft. Some bloggers like to take RSS feeds and republish them on their own site, earning revenue from the content, and there's a huge backlash from the original authors.
What I'd like to do is publish my shared items feed here on my blog, without changing anything in the original article. I'll have to play around with tagging and the like, and I'll have to decide on what plugin to use exactly. However, will I get any backlash from the authors? Is this appropriate?
(There's supposed to be a list of shared items here... but apparently it isn't working.)
Now, keep in mind that each of them would most likely get their own post, with all of the original links intact. I'd be pulling the RSS feed from my Google Reader account (if I could link to my profile, that'd be great - then people could even "Add Eric as a Friend" and subscribe to my shared items. Alas - Google doesn't make it that easy), and letting people read and see it here.
What do you think? Blog authors who I frequently share from, I'd really appreciate your opinion, or even suggestions on alternatives. Google Trends says my most shared items are from Lifehacker (a getting things done blog) - so YOUR comments would be especially helpful. ;) Let me know!
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I've been using Twitter since pretty early on (and long before @oprah), and I've found it to be a superbly convenient communication tool and notification service. Even though it's still very young on the web (Twitter was founded in March of 2006) It's been the home to great ideas like the #twitterdata proposal and the publicdomain book-via-tweets project. It's also an awesome reputation management platform, and can be used to both to provide effective customer service and help distribute news and updates about your business or product, which is exactly how I use it for my online roleplaying project.
But as with the rest of the social media world, Twitter can become very complex very quickly (but I still contend that there is no social media overload) and as a result, can be difficult to manage. As a result, I use several third-party tools to help me manage and gather information that helps me do my Twitter job much more efficiently and effectively.
Splitweet
[caption id="attachment_196" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Splitweet allows you to post and monitor multiple Twitter accounts and brands."][/caption]
For those of us with multiple Twitter accounts (like some people who create a Twitter account for each roleplaying character they use), Splitweet is an absolute savior. This service allows you to tweet to multiple accounts at the same time, as well as combining the "stream" from each account into one page. A lot of desktop Twitter clients offer this kind of functionality, but where Splitweet truly excels is in its ability to track what it calls "brands" (more reputation management terms here): you can specify keywords and phrases that will appear in a separate feed, even if you do not follow those users. This gets us around the disastrous changes Twitter made to the @replies, and helps us keep up to date on any mentions of our site's name and any tweets relating to what it is that we do.
Sherflock
[caption id="attachment_195" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Sherflock provides detailed statistics and summaries of Twitter users you are associated with."][/caption]
Sherflock is an absolutely awesome stat tracking machine that helps weed out the waves of spam that have been coming in since Twitter has gone mainstream. Sherflock gives a large number of statistics about each every account the either follows you or that you are following, and lets you sort and filter users based on these statistics.
Twitterfall
[caption id="attachment_194" align="alignnone" width="217" caption="Twitterfall offers a live stream of twitter updates on keywords that you specify."][/caption]
This tool allows you to specify any number of keywords that you wish to view on a live, moving stream of tweets. This is very useful if you are using a computer that allows you to "pin" a window on top (like Ubuntu Linux), or if you have a multiple-monitor rig, or even if you use multiple computers using the input-sharing app Synergy. You'll get a live feed of updates on any topic of your choice, which can even be updated and changed in real-time.
Using these three tools will help you maximize you Twitter performance and make the most of an already awesome service, preventing you from being inundated with the massive stream of messages that you're surely going to subscribe to.
What are your top three Twitter tools? Feel free to make a comment or write your own post, and I'll gladly append a link to this post to help everyone out!
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"Since 1998, the Open Directory Project has been the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a passionate, global community of volunteer editors." - and they just launched a blog.
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So I've finally given in to the likes of John Chow and opened up a blog using my own name. Sadly, right as I've started and configured the blog - I've lost all interest in posting anything to it!
Here's what I've done so far:
Added new theme.
Installed All-in-one-SEO
Installed Google Sitemap plugin
Toyed with NextGen Gallery
Configured my permalinks
Conspired against humanity
And that's about all. Oh, just disabled the visual code editor too - I hate it. Please badger and pester me until I make this place worth your visit. Got it?
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In speech recognition breakthrough, Microsoft converts spoken English into spoken Mandarin, using the same voice.
Jump to 7:11 in the video for the speech demo. Quote below from Rick Rashid, Microsoft’s Chief Research Officer:
“Just over two years ago, researchers at Microsoft Research and the University of Toronto made another breakthrough. By using a technique called Deep Neural Networks, which is patterned after human brain behavior, researchers were able to train more discriminative and better speech recognizers than previous methods.
[...] We have been able to reduce the word error rate for speech by over 30% compared to previous methods. This means that rather than having one word in 4 or 5 incorrect, now the error rate is one word in 7 or 8.”
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In speech recognition breakthrough, Microsoft converts spoken English into spoken Mandarin, using the same voice.
Jump to 7:11 in the video for the speech demo. Quote below from Rick Rashid, Microsoft’s Chief Research Officer:
“Just over two years ago, researchers at Microsoft Research and the University of Toronto made another breakthrough. By using a technique called Deep Neural Networks, which is patterned after human brain behavior, researchers were able to train more discriminative and better speech recognizers than previous methods.
[...] We have been able to reduce the word error rate for speech by over 30% compared to previous methods. This means that rather than having one word in 4 or 5 incorrect, now the error rate is one word in 7 or 8.”
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In speech recognition breakthrough, Microsoft converts spoken English into spoken Mandarin, using the same voice.
Jump to 7:11 in the video for the speech demo. Quote below from Rick Rashid, Microsoft’s Chief Research Officer:
“Just over two years ago, researchers at Microsoft Research and the University of Toronto made another breakthrough. By using a technique called Deep Neural Networks, which is patterned after human brain behavior, researchers were able to train more discriminative and better speech recognizers than previous methods.
[...] We have been able to reduce the word error rate for speech by over 30% compared to previous methods. This means that rather than having one word in 4 or 5 incorrect, now the error rate is one word in 7 or 8.”
Replies are automatically detected from social media, including Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. To add a comment, include a direct link to this post in your message and it'll show up here within a few minutes.
In speech recognition breakthrough, Microsoft converts spoken English into spoken Mandarin, using the same voice.
Jump to 7:11 in the video for the speech demo. Quote below from Rick Rashid, Microsoft’s Chief Research Officer:
“Just over two years ago, researchers at Microsoft Research and the University of Toronto made another breakthrough. By using a technique called Deep Neural Networks, which is patterned after human brain behavior, researchers were able to train more discriminative and better speech recognizers than previous methods.
[...] We have been able to reduce the word error rate for speech by over 30% compared to previous methods. This means that rather than having one word in 4 or 5 incorrect, now the error rate is one word in 7 or 8.”
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Google Reader + Disqus would be a better Google+ than Google+
I'm not feeling Google+. I get that people are excited about high level of "engagement" and stuff, but to me it looks like something that is trying to solve too many problems at once. Or combine things that don't need to be combined.
My stream on Google+ looks something like this: link post, link post, lolcatz, lolcatz, long 3-page-down post by +Robert Scoble , lolcatz, link post, long post, etc. It's kind of like twitter, but it's not glanceable. I can have twitter on my secondary monitor and glance at the timeline every few minutes and get back to what I was doing if I don't see anything interesting in a number of tweets that fits on the screen. With G+ the number of posts to glance at is about 1. So you have to scroll to check what's going on - no go, imho.
And to be something like a social blogging platform it lacks formatting, flexibility, etc. And most importantly it requires you to make a move which is not what most people are willing to decide to do easily.
On the other hand, I like that you can read the stream and comment right away. Unlike in Google Reader (or any other RSS reader) where you have to click through to the site to comment/read comments. And quite a lot of the blogs already use a global social commenting platform - Disqus.
So if there was a GReader-like RSS reader combined with inline Disqus comments it would have everything I like about Google+ without all the other stuff that looks like a big indecisive pile of everything to me.
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Google Reader + Disqus would be a better Google+ than Google+
I'm not feeling Google+. I get that people are excited about high level of "engagement" and stuff, but to me it looks like something that is trying to solve too many problems at once. Or combine things that don't need to be combined.
My stream on Google+ looks something like this: link post, link post, lolcatz, lolcatz, long 3-page-down post by +Robert Scoble , lolcatz, link post, long post, etc. It's kind of like twitter, but it's not glanceable. I can have twitter on my secondary monitor and glance at the timeline every few minutes and get back to what I was doing if I don't see anything interesting in a number of tweets that fits on the screen. With G+ the number of posts to glance at is about 1. So you have to scroll to check what's going on - no go, imho.
And to be something like a social blogging platform it lacks formatting, flexibility, etc. And most importantly it requires you to make a move which is not what most people are willing to decide to do easily.
On the other hand, I like that you can read the stream and comment right away. Unlike in Google Reader (or any other RSS reader) where you have to click through to the site to comment/read comments. And quite a lot of the blogs already use a global social commenting platform - Disqus.
So if there was a GReader-like RSS reader combined with inline Disqus comments it would have everything I like about Google+ without all the other stuff that looks like a big indecisive pile of everything to me.
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Google Reader + Disqus would be a better Google+ than Google+
I'm not feeling Google+. I get that people are excited about high level of "engagement" and stuff, but to me it looks like something that is trying to solve too many problems at once. Or combine things that don't need to be combined.
My stream on Google+ looks something like this: link post, link post, lolcatz, lolcatz, long 3-page-down post by +Robert Scoble , lolcatz, link post, long post, etc. It's kind of like twitter, but it's not glanceable. I can have twitter on my secondary monitor and glance at the timeline every few minutes and get back to what I was doing if I don't see anything interesting in a number of tweets that fits on the screen. With G+ the number of posts to glance at is about 1. So you have to scroll to check what's going on - no go, imho.
And to be something like a social blogging platform it lacks formatting, flexibility, etc. And most importantly it requires you to make a move which is not what most people are willing to decide to do easily.
On the other hand, I like that you can read the stream and comment right away. Unlike in Google Reader (or any other RSS reader) where you have to click through to the site to comment/read comments. And quite a lot of the blogs already use a global social commenting platform - Disqus.
So if there was a GReader-like RSS reader combined with inline Disqus comments it would have everything I like about Google+ without all the other stuff that looks like a big indecisive pile of everything to me.
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Google Reader + Disqus would be a better Google+ than Google+
I'm not feeling Google+. I get that people are excited about high level of "engagement" and stuff, but to me it looks like something that is trying to solve too many problems at once. Or combine things that don't need to be combined.
My stream on Google+ looks something like this: link post, link post, lolcatz, lolcatz, long 3-page-down post by +Robert Scoble , lolcatz, link post, long post, etc. It's kind of like twitter, but it's not glanceable. I can have twitter on my secondary monitor and glance at the timeline every few minutes and get back to what I was doing if I don't see anything interesting in a number of tweets that fits on the screen. With G+ the number of posts to glance at is about 1. So you have to scroll to check what's going on - no go, imho.
And to be something like a social blogging platform it lacks formatting, flexibility, etc. And most importantly it requires you to make a move which is not what most people are willing to decide to do easily.
On the other hand, I like that you can read the stream and comment right away. Unlike in Google Reader (or any other RSS reader) where you have to click through to the site to comment/read comments. And quite a lot of the blogs already use a global social commenting platform - Disqus.
So if there was a GReader-like RSS reader combined with inline Disqus comments it would have everything I like about Google+ without all the other stuff that looks like a big indecisive pile of everything to me.
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Now that I've upgraded to Google's Blogger Beta, I'm tweaking a bunch of controls on my blog. I am continually running into the user-friendly syndrome, where a feature is too user friendly and I can't get down to the nitty-gritty tech side of the application. While it saves me the five minute trouble of setting up a Wordpress or similiar in-house blog, it constantly reminds me of the merits of having the Wordpress, and consequently influencing me to neglect posting here at all.
I woke up this morning to a completed upgrade from Ubuntu's Dapper Drake (6.06 LTS) to Edgy Eft (6.10), after encountering some problems resulting from my own stupidity. Upgrading from the servers took a grand total of 16 hours, start to finish. This includes my time working out the kinks from my said stupidity, which I won't go into further here. Due to the complications, my personal alarm clock (XMMS and an alarm plugin...) failed to wake me at the goal of 5:30 AM, having not rung at all. Sadly, this caused me to miss the chance to see my beautiful Amber, with her leaving for school at 6:30, and me waking at 7. grumble
After rebooting the machine to seal the deal, I opened up my shiny new Firefox 2.0 to look at the GWing RSS feed. I clicked the most important thing at the time, a new topic titled A Tale of Two Wreckages: A True Story. I then proceeded to heartily laugh my way through the time I had remaining before I had to leave for work.
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Share if you oppose "Booberday," the G+ meme of sharing photographs of cleavage.
It's demeaning, and it is precisely the gateway to harassment that drives women away from online communities. We have a responsibility as early adopters to create a respectful, caring community where everyone feels welcome. If it is acceptable in a community to post a photograph of cleavage, it becomes okay to comment on it with sexual jokes, then to comment on a photograph of a woman in the G+ community with a sexual joke, and then with sexual comments that are not jokes. If left unchecked, an online community that tolerates harassment against women can become dangerous for women, professionally and physically: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/06/gender.blogging.
When I commented on +Robert Scoble's post disagreeing with his participation, there were two primary reponses: (1) telling me to relax because it was just a single post of a woman who consented and (2) explaining that the purpose is breast cancer awareness. I normally wouldn't get upset about a single poster, but when my stream went from a thoughtful, respectful community to 2/3 animated gifs of breasts, I think I have reason to warn people: this isolates women and will cause them to leave. And this is not about breast cancer awareness, this is an excuse to share photographs of breasts without being derided as a pervert; if there ever was a component related to breast cancer awareness, that was lost the moment that the photographs were directed to excitement, rather than to the collection of research dollars (immediately?).
+Robert Scoble, I expected more from a public figure than to join in with a concept that degrades the quality of this budding community. You have one of the highest follower counts here, so what you endorse can dramatically shift the nature of the community. As a result of your post, thousands of additional people will join in this meme next week. That participation will harm women.
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Share if you oppose "Booberday," the G+ meme of sharing photographs of cleavage.
It's demeaning, and it is precisely the gateway to harassment that drives women away from online communities. We have a responsibility as early adopters to create a respectful, caring community where everyone feels welcome. If it is acceptable in a community to post a photograph of cleavage, it becomes okay to comment on it with sexual jokes, then to comment on a photograph of a woman in the G+ community with a sexual joke, and then with sexual comments that are not jokes. If left unchecked, an online community that tolerates harassment against women can become dangerous for women, professionally and physically: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/06/gender.blogging.
When I commented on +Robert Scoble's post disagreeing with his participation, there were two primary reponses: (1) telling me to relax because it was just a single post of a woman who consented and (2) explaining that the purpose is breast cancer awareness. I normally wouldn't get upset about a single poster, but when my stream went from a thoughtful, respectful community to 2/3 animated gifs of breasts, I think I have reason to warn people: this isolates women and will cause them to leave. And this is not about breast cancer awareness, this is an excuse to share photographs of breasts without being derided as a pervert; if there ever was a component related to breast cancer awareness, that was lost the moment that the photographs were directed to excitement, rather than to the collection of research dollars (immediately?).
+Robert Scoble, I expected more from a public figure than to join in with a concept that degrades the quality of this budding community. You have one of the highest follower counts here, so what you endorse can dramatically shift the nature of the community. As a result of your post, thousands of additional people will join in this meme next week. That participation will harm women.
Replies are automatically detected from social media, including Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. To add a comment, include a direct link to this post in your message and it'll show up here within a few minutes.
Share if you oppose "Booberday," the G+ meme of sharing photographs of cleavage.
It's demeaning, and it is precisely the gateway to harassment that drives women away from online communities. We have a responsibility as early adopters to create a respectful, caring community where everyone feels welcome. If it is acceptable in a community to post a photograph of cleavage, it becomes okay to comment on it with sexual jokes, then to comment on a photograph of a woman in the G+ community with a sexual joke, and then with sexual comments that are not jokes. If left unchecked, an online community that tolerates harassment against women can become dangerous for women, professionally and physically: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/06/gender.blogging.
When I commented on +Robert Scoble's post disagreeing with his participation, there were two primary reponses: (1) telling me to relax because it was just a single post of a woman who consented and (2) explaining that the purpose is breast cancer awareness. I normally wouldn't get upset about a single poster, but when my stream went from a thoughtful, respectful community to 2/3 animated gifs of breasts, I think I have reason to warn people: this isolates women and will cause them to leave. And this is not about breast cancer awareness, this is an excuse to share photographs of breasts without being derided as a pervert; if there ever was a component related to breast cancer awareness, that was lost the moment that the photographs were directed to excitement, rather than to the collection of research dollars (immediately?).
+Robert Scoble, I expected more from a public figure than to join in with a concept that degrades the quality of this budding community. You have one of the highest follower counts here, so what you endorse can dramatically shift the nature of the community. As a result of your post, thousands of additional people will join in this meme next week. That participation will harm women.
Replies are automatically detected from social media, including Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. To add a comment, include a direct link to this post in your message and it'll show up here within a few minutes.
Share if you oppose "Booberday," the G+ meme of sharing photographs of cleavage.
It's demeaning, and it is precisely the gateway to harassment that drives women away from online communities. We have a responsibility as early adopters to create a respectful, caring community where everyone feels welcome. If it is acceptable in a community to post a photograph of cleavage, it becomes okay to comment on it with sexual jokes, then to comment on a photograph of a woman in the G+ community with a sexual joke, and then with sexual comments that are not jokes. If left unchecked, an online community that tolerates harassment against women can become dangerous for women, professionally and physically: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/06/gender.blogging.
When I commented on +Robert Scoble's post disagreeing with his participation, there were two primary reponses: (1) telling me to relax because it was just a single post of a woman who consented and (2) explaining that the purpose is breast cancer awareness. I normally wouldn't get upset about a single poster, but when my stream went from a thoughtful, respectful community to 2/3 animated gifs of breasts, I think I have reason to warn people: this isolates women and will cause them to leave. And this is not about breast cancer awareness, this is an excuse to share photographs of breasts without being derided as a pervert; if there ever was a component related to breast cancer awareness, that was lost the moment that the photographs were directed to excitement, rather than to the collection of research dollars (immediately?).
+Robert Scoble, I expected more from a public figure than to join in with a concept that degrades the quality of this budding community. You have one of the highest follower counts here, so what you endorse can dramatically shift the nature of the community. As a result of your post, thousands of additional people will join in this meme next week. That participation will harm women.
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So, Firefox allows you to open favorites in a sidebar - which is great for things like FriendFeed, Google Talk, Twitter, or even Facebook chat. It lets you use a good web service as what essentially becomes an extension for your browser, so you can browse your regular pages while still participating in the conversation.
I recently switched over to the social browser, Flock - with great success and elation. Flock is built from the Firefox codebase, but they are massively more social in what the browser does - drag and drop images, open media feeds, view your friends in their People and Places sidebar, among many other really cool things.
Then there's Friendfeed - which is a web service that recently took off (but I must say, I've been using long before the hype. :D) because it allows you to combine all of your social media connections (Web 2.5, if you will) and even cross-post responses between them (closer to Web 3.0, minus filtering and duplicate content issues...). After putting in a request to Flock's develpment team to start moving in this direction, I decided to take matters into my own hands.
When you bookmark something in Firefox, you can open the properties of the bookmark and hit a checkbox, "Open this link in the sidebar." However, this option is not available in Flock (by default). So let's open our trusty about:config:
Do a filter on "sidebar", and you'll find a value called "flock.favorites.loadPageInSidebar" - which is set to false by default. Right click this value, and click "toggle".
Bingo. Now you will have the checkbox on all your bookmarks that will allow you to open links in your sidebar!
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Hello there, adoring internet-stalkers! (I'm kidding. ~_~) You may have noticed (if you were loyal, that is ;)) that my Feedburner-powered RSS Feed has been lacking in activity lately. There's a reason for that.
Recently, I got rid of WordPress and Sweetcron in favor of a new CMS platform, Chyrp. I had been running Wordpress for a long time, using it to share my thoughts with the general internet populace. However, it had become a bit of a chore to maintain, and it really felt like duplicate work on top of all the other content-generation I was already performing (i.e., forum posts, blog comments, Last.fm "Loved" Tracks, Google Reader shared items, etc.), so I began to look for a way to aggregate this content into a central place.
For a while, FriendFeed served this purpose well, but I didn't like the lack of control I had over the source. Facebook also filled part of this gap (and it still does, to a point), and they've even purchased FriendFeed, but I was looking for something quite a bit more customizable and self-hosted. Through various referrals, I came across Yongfook's Sweetcron project which was a new platform designed specifically for this new thing they called, le gasp, "Lifestreaming".
However, after fighting with Sweetcron and its aggregation methods, particularly its lack of support for various service feed formats; I decided to look into something else. Initial searches landed me upon Tumblr, who had conveniently announced a feature that syncs comments across multiple services (or aggregates). Sadly, I didn't want to get back into a world where all my code was hosted by someone else, and I had no control over it. I kept Sweetcron running on my site under lifestream/, but I continued searching for a better solution.
I then stumbled across Bazooka, which was billed as "the first free PHP tumblelog engine". Thanks to Bazooka developer Evan Walsh, who alerted me to a more up-to-date and current replacement called Chyrp. And I was sold. I immediately spent a few hours converting my existing content from WordPress and SweetCron over to a test installation of Chyrp, and then took the next night changing my site structure and 301'd all my old links to the new URLs.
That's where EricMartindale.com stands today. I've spent a few weeks getting my stream set up the way I want it, and I'm turning the RSS feed back on. Posts should begin flowing into your RSS reader very shortly. Post comments, feedback, and questions here!
Edit 10:13 PM EST: It looks like Feedburner is having some trouble parsing my new RSS content. You can subscribe to my direct feed and it will always work.
Edit 10:58 PM EST: I've fixed the problem and committed the patch to GitHub.
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I've been relying heavily on node.js this past year to provide a robust set of tools to solve the problems I encounter on a daily basis. I was pleased to see honorCipherOrder was added to node's TLS library in node.js v0.7.6, and released with node.js v0.8.0.
Late last year, security researcher Juliano Rizzo announced a new attack against the AES encryption used in the SSL/TLS transaction he dubbed BEAST. The details are interesting to those who care, but it turns out that we can mitigate this attack in node.js by enforcing honorCipherOrder on the server. Let's take a look.
If you have an HTTPS server that looks like this:
var https = require('https');
var fs = require('fs');
var options = {
key: fs.readFileSync('key.pem'),
cert: fs.readFileSync('cert.pem')
};
https.createServer(options, function (req, res) {
res.writeHead(200);
res.end("hello world\n");
}).listen(443);
...you can now manage the cipher order by using the ciphers option. In the following code snippet we're going set the options for the above server to use Steve Caligo's cipher order, which prefers TLS 1.2 ciphers (which are not vulnerable to the BEAST attack) for clients that support TLS 1.2 but falls back to the RC4 ciphers on TLS 1.0 clients.[...]
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Hurricane Sandy: Resources, Guides, and Information
With #HurricaneSandy already flooding streets [1] and causing damage [2] in #NYC due to the effects of the combined hurricane, western stormfront, and full-moon tides [3], I wanted to take just a quick moment to collect some resources related to the storm. I have quite a few friends directly in the path of the storm (ahem, +Sharon Strandskov!) and I want to urge everyone to stay safe. Make no illusion, this storm is serious business: take a look at the attached photo to see a comparison to Hurricane Irene.
As always, preparedness is key. If you're in the path of the storm and haven't yet found your battery-powered radio, it's strongly recommend that you do so now while you have the light, as both your Internet and cell signals are likely to be interrupted. If you haven't stocked up on water and [non-perishable] food, it's a bit late and you're going to have to hunker down and hope for the best.
Course of Action: From the FEMA Guidelines [4]: 1) Listen to the radio or TV for information. [ed.: or FEMA's Twitter [5]] 2) Secure your home, close storm shutters, and secure outdoor objects or bring them indoors. 3) Turn off utilities if instructed to do so. Otherwise, turn the refrigerator thermostat to its coldest setting and keep its doors closed. 4) Turn off propane tanks.· Avoid using the phone, except for serious emergencies. 5) Moor your boat if time permits. 6) Ensure a supply of water for sanitary purposes such as cleaning and flushing toilets. Fill the bathtub and other large containers with water.
As an additional tip that I recently learned, you can fill plastic bags with water and put them in your freezer to prepare for extended power/water outages. These will stay cool longer than bottled water in your refrigerator.
If you're in one of the evacuation areas and haven't yet followed the instructions or aren't able to do so, make sure to seek shelter and follow the appropriate guidelines. [4]
Take a moment and look up your local news station's Facebook / Twitter and subscribe, optionally via SMS so that when the power goes out, you still have a method of receiving realtime updates (provided cell coverage doesn't go down / get inundated with emergency requests).
As a bonus, there's a pretty awesome #HTML5 canvas wind visualization demo that updates in realtime [6]. Some pretty slick techniques there, so view the source [Luke].
Feel free to add your own resources in the comments. I'll edit the post to add the most helpful resources.
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Hurricane Sandy: Resources, Guides, and Information
With #HurricaneSandy already flooding streets [1] and causing damage [2] in #NYC due to the effects of the combined hurricane, western stormfront, and full-moon tides [3], I wanted to take just a quick moment to collect some resources related to the storm. I have quite a few friends directly in the path of the storm (ahem, +Sharon Strandskov!) and I want to urge everyone to stay safe. Make no illusion, this storm is serious business: take a look at the attached photo to see a comparison to Hurricane Irene.
As always, preparedness is key. If you're in the path of the storm and haven't yet found your battery-powered radio, it's strongly recommend that you do so now while you have the light, as both your Internet and cell signals are likely to be interrupted. If you haven't stocked up on water and [non-perishable] food, it's a bit late and you're going to have to hunker down and hope for the best.
Course of Action: From the FEMA Guidelines [4]: 1) Listen to the radio or TV for information. [ed.: or FEMA's Twitter [5]] 2) Secure your home, close storm shutters, and secure outdoor objects or bring them indoors. 3) Turn off utilities if instructed to do so. Otherwise, turn the refrigerator thermostat to its coldest setting and keep its doors closed. 4) Turn off propane tanks.· Avoid using the phone, except for serious emergencies. 5) Moor your boat if time permits. 6) Ensure a supply of water for sanitary purposes such as cleaning and flushing toilets. Fill the bathtub and other large containers with water.
As an additional tip that I recently learned, you can fill plastic bags with water and put them in your freezer to prepare for extended power/water outages. These will stay cool longer than bottled water in your refrigerator.
If you're in one of the evacuation areas and haven't yet followed the instructions or aren't able to do so, make sure to seek shelter and follow the appropriate guidelines. [4]
Take a moment and look up your local news station's Facebook / Twitter and subscribe, optionally via SMS so that when the power goes out, you still have a method of receiving realtime updates (provided cell coverage doesn't go down / get inundated with emergency requests).
As a bonus, there's a pretty awesome #HTML5 canvas wind visualization demo that updates in realtime [6]. Some pretty slick techniques there, so view the source [Luke].
Feel free to add your own resources in the comments. I'll edit the post to add the most helpful resources.
Replies are automatically detected from social media, including Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. To add a comment, include a direct link to this post in your message and it'll show up here within a few minutes.
Hurricane Sandy: Resources, Guides, and Information
With #HurricaneSandy already flooding streets [1] and causing damage [2] in #NYC due to the effects of the combined hurricane, western stormfront, and full-moon tides [3], I wanted to take just a quick moment to collect some resources related to the storm. I have quite a few friends directly in the path of the storm (ahem, +Sharon Strandskov!) and I want to urge everyone to stay safe. Make no illusion, this storm is serious business: take a look at the attached photo to see a comparison to Hurricane Irene.
As always, preparedness is key. If you're in the path of the storm and haven't yet found your battery-powered radio, it's strongly recommend that you do so now while you have the light, as both your Internet and cell signals are likely to be interrupted. If you haven't stocked up on water and [non-perishable] food, it's a bit late and you're going to have to hunker down and hope for the best.
Course of Action: From the FEMA Guidelines [4]: 1) Listen to the radio or TV for information. [ed.: or FEMA's Twitter [5]] 2) Secure your home, close storm shutters, and secure outdoor objects or bring them indoors. 3) Turn off utilities if instructed to do so. Otherwise, turn the refrigerator thermostat to its coldest setting and keep its doors closed. 4) Turn off propane tanks.· Avoid using the phone, except for serious emergencies. 5) Moor your boat if time permits. 6) Ensure a supply of water for sanitary purposes such as cleaning and flushing toilets. Fill the bathtub and other large containers with water.
As an additional tip that I recently learned, you can fill plastic bags with water and put them in your freezer to prepare for extended power/water outages. These will stay cool longer than bottled water in your refrigerator.
If you're in one of the evacuation areas and haven't yet followed the instructions or aren't able to do so, make sure to seek shelter and follow the appropriate guidelines. [4]
Take a moment and look up your local news station's Facebook / Twitter and subscribe, optionally via SMS so that when the power goes out, you still have a method of receiving realtime updates (provided cell coverage doesn't go down / get inundated with emergency requests).
As a bonus, there's a pretty awesome #HTML5 canvas wind visualization demo that updates in realtime [6]. Some pretty slick techniques there, so view the source [Luke].
Feel free to add your own resources in the comments. I'll edit the post to add the most helpful resources.
Replies are automatically detected from social media, including Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. To add a comment, include a direct link to this post in your message and it'll show up here within a few minutes.
Hurricane Sandy: Resources, Guides, and Information
With #HurricaneSandy already flooding streets [1] and causing damage [2] in #NYC due to the effects of the combined hurricane, western stormfront, and full-moon tides [3], I wanted to take just a quick moment to collect some resources related to the storm. I have quite a few friends directly in the path of the storm (ahem, +Sharon Strandskov!) and I want to urge everyone to stay safe. Make no illusion, this storm is serious business: take a look at the attached photo to see a comparison to Hurricane Irene.
As always, preparedness is key. If you're in the path of the storm and haven't yet found your battery-powered radio, it's strongly recommend that you do so now while you have the light, as both your Internet and cell signals are likely to be interrupted. If you haven't stocked up on water and [non-perishable] food, it's a bit late and you're going to have to hunker down and hope for the best.
Course of Action: From the FEMA Guidelines [4]: 1) Listen to the radio or TV for information. [ed.: or FEMA's Twitter [5]] 2) Secure your home, close storm shutters, and secure outdoor objects or bring them indoors. 3) Turn off utilities if instructed to do so. Otherwise, turn the refrigerator thermostat to its coldest setting and keep its doors closed. 4) Turn off propane tanks.· Avoid using the phone, except for serious emergencies. 5) Moor your boat if time permits. 6) Ensure a supply of water for sanitary purposes such as cleaning and flushing toilets. Fill the bathtub and other large containers with water.
As an additional tip that I recently learned, you can fill plastic bags with water and put them in your freezer to prepare for extended power/water outages. These will stay cool longer than bottled water in your refrigerator.
If you're in one of the evacuation areas and haven't yet followed the instructions or aren't able to do so, make sure to seek shelter and follow the appropriate guidelines. [4]
Take a moment and look up your local news station's Facebook / Twitter and subscribe, optionally via SMS so that when the power goes out, you still have a method of receiving realtime updates (provided cell coverage doesn't go down / get inundated with emergency requests).
As a bonus, there's a pretty awesome #HTML5 canvas wind visualization demo that updates in realtime [6]. Some pretty slick techniques there, so view the source [Luke].
Feel free to add your own resources in the comments. I'll edit the post to add the most helpful resources.
Replies are automatically detected from social media, including Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. To add a comment, include a direct link to this post in your message and it'll show up here within a few minutes.
There's been a lot of active discussion about the state of AOL's directory project, DMOZ. There have been many attempts to unseat the directory project from its position as the most authoritative listing resource, such as the Yahoo Directory. Many of these attempts have fallen by the wayside, as Rand Fiskin points out, but none have remained more controversial than DMOZ. More recently, Chris Crum's post on WebProNews about his lack of respect for DMOZ has stirred up a hornet's nest of DMOZ criticism, including a particular post claiming DMOZ is a waste of time.
I forwarded a lot of this on to Philip Nicolcev, known by username as "frug", who is the editor of several roleplay-oriented categories on DMOZ. He responded to me directly with a highly insightful email, and I was fortunate enough to receive his permission to share its contents.
I've been editing the pbp category at DMOZ for what... 4 years now? About that. This article is a big whiny complaint which misses the mark. They are both correct and sadly mistaken.
Yes, dmoz is outdated and yes, it fails because of attitude problems, but not silly allegations of 'corruption' or people who are bitter because they didn't get listed. We don't list everything, I don't list even half of the submissions I get, and anyone who has been an administrator or an editor for a similar type of project knows better than to take these kinds of complaints seriously.
One thing they say is definitely correct: Apply once carefully following their rules if you wish and then, as Will suggested, forget about them.
This is exactly the approach that should be modeled for any directory, regardless of its state or condition. When you are submitting a link to a directory, you are being offered the privilege to be listed as a resource by the owners and management of that directory. They are not obligated to list your link, let alone review it in a timely fashion--but this would be genuinely appreciated and would reflect on the directory's position as a "good" resource.
DMOZ is the primary source for Google's Directory, and you must respect the opinion of such a large and successful company. It's obvious that the idea behind an open directory like DMOZ is good, but where they fail is in execution. More on that later.
He continues:
That is what you should do. Apply once and forget about it, don't claim anybody is corrupt because whether you believe my opinion or not, there's no corruption. Nobody cares enough about dmoz anymore for it to be valuable for extortion. Don't be ridiculous. Furthermore if you were to speak to some of the senior editors you'd discover that they are pretty damn uptight, even obsessive.
The problems with dmoz are, in my opinion, twofold. First off, you have the dated trashy look of the website which is a relic of the 1990's. It's not user friendly, it doesn't entice anyone to go browsing, and it hasn't adapted or added features that would help people understand the structure of the directory or find what they're looking for. The editor forums still use phpBB2, and you should see the editing panel. You wouldn't believe how dated this stuff is. Frankly it has needed an overhaul for years now.
I largely agree with him. The phpBB team deprecated the phpBB2 branch at the beginning of this year, ending support for the outdated platform. AOL would do well to do a complete overhaul of the site's design now that "Web 2.0" has come and gone (and I could referencepostsallday on that) - and AOL has completely missed their opportunity to latch on and ride the wave.
Philip finishes his correspondance with the frightening truth that has been plaguing many post-Web2.0 sites and services:
The second problem, attitude, is partially the cause of the first problem. It's a stagnant atmosphere where nothing gets done and nobody gets listened to. They would rather leave a directory as a cluttered mess of garbage than risk breaking its structure by overhauling it. Fixing my category took me about two years before I had approval to restructure it, and I'm in a small niche category nobody pays much attention to. Since becoming an editor I have deleted about 60% of the outdated links listed. Had I not joined, they'd still be there cluttering things up with linkspam geocities pages from 10 years ago.
So yeah, dmoz is failing, but not because of corruption or because some guy didn't get what he wanted. And, honestly, if the author of this article was applying to dmoz just to 'test how fair it was' then I'm glad they rejected him. Somehow they made the right decision because he's wasting their time.
And that's the exact problem - the DMOZ community has completely stagnated, which has resulted in the puddle of goop that the directory has become. In my personal opinion, I think that AOL could do a lot better job at community management (all reputation management aside) by setting up a more rigid structure of responsibility. The editors need to be held responsible for a timely review specified by their superiors, and there needs to be cross-checking of the editor's work by other qualified editors.
All said and done, DMOZ needs some love if it's going to survive as anything more than a relic of trust and authority in the Web 2.0 bubble. As Philip points out, it has both good and bad traits and deserves further attention, but it needs to be attention in (and from) the right direction. The questions remain; where has AOL been? What can be done about the editors (or lack thereof)? How can DMOZ be improved?
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I just came across an artist's work of a futuristic fantasy Tokyo that is overgrown with vegetation, and is amid reclamation by nature. Immediately, I thought that these images demanded a roleplaying game to go along with them, perhaps of the walk-through nature.
They came from a blog called Tokyo Genso (Tokyo Fantasy) - which has some altogether amazing works of art, so go check them out. :)
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Interesting blog post, He seems pretty angry about it all and while I agree that a deeper understanding is needed for some programming tasks, other just need you to crank out code. Could be wrong but I think people use to argue that Java wasn't scalable either... it evolved and every bank in the country seems to think its the only language out there now. It scales now even though it could have been reasonably debated back in 2001 when it was slow and immature.
What it really comes down to is that a huge majority of software is ephemeral, give it 2-3 years and it will be rewritten not because the code has any real problems but, technology has changed along with the business requirements. Things move change, don't build a cathedral when a bazaar will exceed the requirements.
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This post just went up on GitHub's blog, showing some action-steps they're taking to help us move towards a mass-algorate society. They're hosting a CoderDojo class for kids aged 7 to 18 in the San Francisco area. How cool is that? #education
“Sit back, close your eyes, and think about how good you are at coding. Man, you're awesome. When did you learn how to be so awesome? Now just think how awesome you would be if you had learned how to code when you were seven years old.”
How can we engage our children in learning how to program?
I can't find the author (Cameron Mcefee) or GitHub on Google+, so I can't tag them. Sadface.
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This post just went up on GitHub's blog, showing some action-steps they're taking to help us move towards a mass-algorate society. They're hosting a CoderDojo class for kids aged 7 to 18 in the San Francisco area. How cool is that? #education
“Sit back, close your eyes, and think about how good you are at coding. Man, you're awesome. When did you learn how to be so awesome? Now just think how awesome you would be if you had learned how to code when you were seven years old.”
How can we engage our children in learning how to program?
I can't find the author (Cameron Mcefee) or GitHub on Google+, so I can't tag them. Sadface.
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This post just went up on GitHub's blog, showing some action-steps they're taking to help us move towards a mass-algorate society. They're hosting a CoderDojo class for kids aged 7 to 18 in the San Francisco area. How cool is that? #education
“Sit back, close your eyes, and think about how good you are at coding. Man, you're awesome. When did you learn how to be so awesome? Now just think how awesome you would be if you had learned how to code when you were seven years old.”
How can we engage our children in learning how to program?
I can't find the author (Cameron Mcefee) or GitHub on Google+, so I can't tag them. Sadface.
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This post just went up on GitHub's blog, showing some action-steps they're taking to help us move towards a mass-algorate society. They're hosting a CoderDojo class for kids aged 7 to 18 in the San Francisco area. How cool is that? #education
“Sit back, close your eyes, and think about how good you are at coding. Man, you're awesome. When did you learn how to be so awesome? Now just think how awesome you would be if you had learned how to code when you were seven years old.”
How can we engage our children in learning how to program?
I can't find the author (Cameron Mcefee) or GitHub on Google+, so I can't tag them. Sadface.
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Work is work, as per the usual. I'm work at a company called TechNoggins, doing all sorts of various things. Primarily, I am Callcenter Manager, handling calls for three states and eleven major cities. It's unfortunately fairly slow today, which means my salary isn't augmented by the influx of web development work. Sad day.
I've been messing around with some of Facebook's features, recently. I just linked "My Notes" to this blog, which seems like a cool feature, but it needs some work. It imported my posts what seems to be twice?
Someone posted LeekSpin on the Grand Tournament forum. I've been subtly amused by the music to which this has been put, and have been listening to it for just over an hour now. You want to talk about overplaying, hrm? Full immersion, hrrrm?
Well, looks like I have a PC here in the office that I need to fix. So, until later, I'm gone. :P
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Venezuela would need to transport the gold in several trips, traders said, since the high value of gold means it would be impossible to insure a single aircraft carrying 211 tonnes. It could take about 40 shipments to move the gold back to Caracas, traders estimated.
“It’s going to be quite a task. Logistically, I’m not sure if the central bank realises the magnitude of the task ahead of them,” said one senior gold banker.
So the challenge is this: how can Venezuela safely retrieve 211 tons of gold from its European stores? What solutions can you come up with using lateral analysis?
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Between work, my social life, and training, I play a game called EVE Online. It's the first game I've ever shelled out a monthly fee for, and it's well worth it. I came across this fan-made video for one of the in-game factions on CrazyKinux's blog.
Full screen this and play it in HD, while keeping in mind that this is made entirely of recorded gameplay video.
I'm the director of a group of players (called a "Corporation" as opposed to "Guild" in other MMORPGs), and if you're interested in playing with me, shoot me a line or message me in game as "Baeryn". You'll never find a game so perfect.
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Yep, this April 22nd, 2008 is my birthday (credit to the intro goes to sXePhil), and I'm turning 21 today. However, due to the upcoming MMA fight that I've got at Dorton Arena on April 26th, all mandatory 21st birthday celebrations will be postponed until after the fight.
For those of you who aren't already aware, you can pick up tickets at Carolina Fight Promotions. I'm going to be fighting Andy Teague, a well-versed jiujitsu competitor, and the match is scheduled for three rounds at 3 minutes each.
So, today being my birthday--and as such, I've received tons and tons of birthday wishes--I thought I'd give some shoutouts to everyone who has done so. It's pretty simple, all you've got to do is write a "happy birthday" post somewhere on the web, link to me, and then show me the page you want me to link back to.
My twitter friends have had an early start, and it's already the afternoon - don't procrastinate, I'm ending this at midnight tonight!
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Since I subscribed to your feed (in early 2005), I have received and read every post you've made using my RSS reader of choice (Google Reader, currently). Your excerpts have been enticing, with well-written post titles and seemingly interesting topics. The idea was good, to aggregate content and discussions about Search Engines from multiple locations at one central blog.
Unfortunately, I've found that your articles are less informative than I'd have hoped, with frequent referrals to other locations where the conversations are actually taking place. Instead of effective bullet points and topic reviews, I find quick and hastily-written overviews of the content and discussion in question.
Not only that, but you're only providing partial content in your feeds! When I come across your posts in my daily reading of over 500 posts, you've caught my attention with your title - and because you're only giving me the partial article text, you've got me clicking through to your site (hoorah, ad impressions!). Unfortunately, half the time I'm wasting even more time by being forced to click through to yet another page to follow the conversation.
I rarely (if ever) find myself sharing your content, and from what I can tell from a cursory glance - you've never shown up in my shared items feed. (PS, when will I be able to control this page, Google? I hope this link juice means something in the future. Maybe even market that page in a bit more of a controlled fashion. I digress.) I've maybe starred one or two of your articles for future reading, but again - when I do finally read the posts, I find that I'm disappointed by your article quality and content.
What's up with that?! Alright, rabid feedreaders and social media evangelists - tell me if I'm in the wrong here, but I'm going to unsubscribe from Search Engine Roundtable.
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So, entirely not in light of any recent events, I was integrating the chat rules that Vexar wrote into RolePlayGateway's Rules, and I was looking for some examples of forum etiquette that other forums use. In searching, I found this perfectly humorous video:
(I found it on Neil Boortz's website, but since headed over to videojug to get the original. PS, Neil? You're awesome.)
That was probably the best one I found, above and beyond the video I came across that seemed geared towards the Steam forum community, which was a bit too NSFW to actually embed here on my blog. If you'd like, you can go check out posting a new thread on AlbinoBlackSheep.
I'm admin on several online forums, and I'm a moderator on many more; not counting the countless other communities where I'm an active member. I was pretty proud of the rules I put together on Gateway, and I think they're clean, simple, and easy to follow. No one likes being bombarded and tacked down by rules, so I try to keep them as simple as possible. What do you think of them?
How do you manage forum users and set rules? I know Martin Reed has some good tips on forum rules, and there are many others out there that learned a lot from running forums. The best thing that we can do is learn from others, and gather experience on how to handle these issues. What is your approach to forum etiquette?
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As I have mentioned before, I'm in a love affair with Chyrp, which is an up-and-coming platform meant to replace WordPress and work a bit like Tumblr, as a microblogging and lifestreaming service.
One of Chyrp's major draws for me is the Aggregator module, which is included in Chryp 2.0 by default. Mike Crittenden of MergeWeb Fame has covered the use of Chyrp's Aggregator previously, but I figured I'd dive in a bit further and help others in configuring their feeds.
You may also be familiar with StackOverflow, a crowd-sourcing social-media head-bashing awesome site that enables users to ask tech-related questions and get awesome community-approved answers. The same group runs several other sites using the same model, including SuperUser and ServerFault, and they are even releasing their codebase as free and open source as the <a href="http://stackexchange.com/>StackExchange project.
But, onward into the goodies: syndicating your activity on StackOverflow (and the other sites) using Chryp.
The first you'll need is your Activity Feed. To acquire this, visit the "Recent" tab of your user profile and look in the bottom right hand corner: you'll see a link to "user recent activity feed". This is the URL for your activity feed, grab that and let's move on to Chyrp.
In Chyrp, you'll want to add a new aggregate in your Admin panel. Paste your Activity Feed into the "Source URL" box, then configure the remaining settings as follows:
Feather: Link
Post Attributes:name: "feed[title]"
source: "feed[id]"
description: "feed[description]"
Now, assign a "Name" and make sure the correct Author is selected, and click "Update". You're all done! You'll see new content from your feed the next time your aggregates update.
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The author of the particularly famous Wheel of Time series passed away yesterday due to cardiac amyloidosis. Diagnosed with the disease in March of 2006, Jordan, born James Oliver Rigney Jr., vowed to fight the disease and continue his legendary writing career for many years to come. It is a great loss to the fantasy community, and on behalf of RolePlayGateway, we send our condolences to his family and friends, who will no doubt be the most affected by his passing.
It is with great sadness that I tell you that the Dragon is gone. RJ left us today at 2:45 PM. He fought a valiant fight against this most horrid disease. In the end, he left peacefully and in no pain. In the years he had fought this, he taught me much about living and about facing death. He never waivered in his faith, nor questioned our God’s timing. I could not possibly be more proud of anyone. I am eternally grateful for the time that I had with him on this earth and look forward to our reunion, though as I told him this afternoon, not yet. I love you bubba.
Our beloved Harriet was at his side through the entire fight and to the end. The last words from his mouth were to tell her that he loved her.
Thank each and everyone of you for your prayers and support through this ordeal. He knew you were there. Harriet reminded him today that she was very proud of the many lives he had touched through his work. We’ve all felt the love that you’ve been sending my brother/cousin. Please keep it coming as our Harriet could use the support.
Jason will be posting funeral arrangements.
My sincerest thanks.
Peace and Light be with each of you,
Wilson
Brother/Cousin
4th of 3
To Catalyst: Never, never loose faith. RJ did not. Harriet hasn’t. I haven’t. Going through what we have, our faith is only strengthened. Besides, if God didn’t exist, we would have never had Jim. We did. God does. Remember my Brother/Cousin, my friend, think of him fondly and glorify God’s name.
Editor’s Note:
The entire staff of Dragonmount.com would like to extend its most deepest sympathies to Robert Jordan’s family. He touched all of our lives in some way and we wish him the rest and peace he deserves. We will be posting information in the near future about where you can send condolences. Please check the News Section for these updates.
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I often get asked for my Skype address, sometimes in relation to business or casual conversation. I politely decline with some degree of hand-waving about my reasons, and suggest an alternative form of communication (typically either Google Talk or Google Hangouts, depending on the context—both are built right in to Gmail!). I'd like to outline some of the reasons why I've made the decision to avoid Skype, primarily so I have something to link to when someone asks me about it.
First and foremost, we don't really know what Skype actually does. The binary (the actual program you run on your computer) is obfuscated, so attempts at disassembling it [PDF] to verify some of its strange behavior and the information it is transmitting have so far come up with very little. This is an issue, because Skype produces encrypted traffic even when you are not actively using Skype. This means we can only speculate on what information Skype is collecting about you after you've so graciously chosen to install it, and perhaps more importantly who it is sending that information to.
When a Skype client is not in a call and is running on a machine with public IP address, it has on the average 4-8 active TCP connections and atleast one UDP connection.
While connecting to external IP addresses is normal for a server/client architecture and necessary for receiving notifications, the volume of traffic and number of connections is concerning, considering the compounding issues between Skype's peer-to-peer architecture [PDF] and the "reasonable level of detection accuracy" in snooping on voice calls in Skype [PDF], despite the [purportedly] encrypted nature of the Skype protocol.
Speaking in general terms, Skype is "black box" software which has undergone no public review despite very concerning observed behavior. When new Skype malware (like Skype IMBot, of which an analysis is available, or the more recent Skype account hijacking) is released, there are very few options to protect ourselves if we've got Skype installed. On Linux, tools like AppArmor and TOMOYO exist, but without the ability to easily view the source and understand the attack (per perhaps even fix it proactively, before it occurs) we are at the mercy of Skype's new maintainers to provide a timely resolution in a reactive approach.
If you use a proprietary program or somebody else's web server, you're defenceless. You're putty in the hands of whoever developed that software.
— Richard Stallman
In conclusion, while Skype may be convenient, it presents a series of questions that must be asked and implications to be considered before choosing it over other chat, VoIP, and video chat solutions. I can only hope that more people consider these things before doing so.
Asides
Some of the other things I found interesting, more recently than the research I've linked in this post, include Skype's role in the Syrian conflict, in which a claim was made as follows:
A media activist in Idlib named Mohamed said a rebel informant working for the government was killed in Damascus six months ago after sending warnings to the Free Syrian Army on Skype.
“I saw this incident right in front of my eyes,” Mohamed said. “We put his info on Skype so he was arrested and killed.”
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[K]r.github.com. Keith Rarick's GitHub redirect. Total ass-kicker.
[L]inkedIn. Pretty straightforward, between hiring for our team at @Mirascape and the travel to and from various conferences and Meetups lately.
[M]irascape. The augmented reality platform I'm responsible for.
[N]oxBot. A nice PHP-powered IRC bot with various plugins. A bit out of date, but very powerful. Been using it for a couple things lately.
[O]K, QR Me!. A QR Code-generating link shortener I built.
[P]ostmark. Best Email delivery service I've used. Nice RESTful API, flat rate for emails sent.
[Q]uora. These guys nail Q&A, and they're doing it pretty well. Check out all their buzz, too. But for some reason, I just don't stick.
Google [R]eader. “From your 1,040 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 21,549 items, clicked 274 items, starred 853 items, shared 37 items, and emailed 8 items.” -- </stats>
[S]erver Stats for Mirascape. Powered by Munin, it's how I keep track of the status and metrics of all my servers.
[T]witter. Not surprising. I love their webapp for my personal use, but own and manage at least five accounts using SplitTweet.
[U]serVoice. Pretty sweet tool I use for giving the communities I manage a good way to build a consensus on what they desire most. Examples I run: for RolePlayGateway, and EVE UserVoice for EVE Online.
[X]DA Developers. An indisposable resource for getting rid of carrier-installed crap and running my own choice of software on the hardware I purchased!
[Z]ecco. Where I trade most of my public stocks. :)
Surprisingly populist, and there's a lot of Google-owned properties in there. I'm also using Chromium, so I think it prefers the roots of the sites I visit instead of searching through my history for individual pages.
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As of today, I've changed the address of my blog from just EricMartindale.com to a new location that will contain my blog posts in a new format. Don't worry though, all your old links will still work just fine.
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There's been a lot of active discussion about the state of AOL's directory project, 
As 
I often get asked for my Skype address, sometimes in relation to business or casual conversation. I politely decline with some degree of hand-waving about my reasons, and suggest an alternative form of communication (typically either