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Sun, 28 Nov 2004

The importance of picking the right voting system

First of all, the solution to the e-voting problem is available at the Open Voting Consortium. If you’re not afraid of thinking, you owe it to yourself to review some of their material, otherwise just support them when the question of e-voting comes up. A good place to start reading is the Open Voting Faq. They are very smart people who have done a lot of thinking about all the good things and bad things that can happen during an election, and the “right” way to solve the problems that can come up.

Some common objections and solutions I’ve heard are as follows:

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12:34 CST | category / entries / links
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Sat, 27 Nov 2004

Basic Open-Source Migration Path

Made a slashdot comment trying to help out someone who is trying to pitch a Linux solution to their business, specifically about the role of Open Office in the mix. I commented that it already has a non-animated version of clippy, thus you will automatically impress the people you are showing this to. :^)

Actually, in my experiences, Open Office support (not tech-support, but document support) is very solid. There are slight quirkisms (slightly different line-wrappings if fonts arent found, some UI choices are slightly different), but regardless of the maturity of the OO.org software, some important elements to your pitch must be:

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13:32 CST | category / entries
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Fri, 26 Nov 2004

Open source in asia / India / China

The Chinese market and Indian markets are huge— beyond your wildest dreams huge. Imagine the combined market of the US and EU in EACH country, but the economic maturity (read potential) of 1955 in the US.

[source…]

Imagine if you could time-warp back to the 1950’s and set up shop, knowing what you know now. But imagine that it’d be different and interesting because it’s all involving new technology, new ways of doing things (will China be tech, nano-tech, bio-tech, etc?, and to what extent will each of those play a role).

And now the funny part. Socrates did this, right?

Intel: Hello we would like to show you our processors and this lovely software called Linux and OpenOffice.

Oriental Guy: Very nice. The chips are a bugger to copy, we will just have to buy them. How much for the software?

Intel: Free.

Microsoft: You will be sued and die!

[source…]

14:22 CST | category / entries / links
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This one goes out special to David…

“If at age 20 you are not a Communist then you have no heart. If at age 30 you are not a capitalist then you have no brains.” (attributed to George Bernard Shaw)

[source…]

So I’ve got 4 more years, Dave. ;^) … The guy has some other interesting statistics, quotations in his other nearby entries.

11:42 CST | category / entries / links
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Thu, 25 Nov 2004

Got the visa!

So, the whole reason I put up this thing is to have a place I could point people to about the whole Visa process with Bety. Short of it is we got the visa, after much sitting, standing, and waiting. Didn’t know it was still possible to wait eight solid hours for paper to move from one side of the building to the other, but I guess there are a lot of people that apply for visas, and it’s almost guaranteed that each case is unique to some extent.

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01:14 CST | category / entries
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Wed, 24 Nov 2004

Got Blosxom installed…

So, I started updating my website, and ended up installing Blosxom. It feels like the Mo-zilla (well, FireFox) of blogging software, the base software is simple to the point of being unusable, but the architecture is great and there is a decent ecosystem of trivial to use plugins that customize it to your needs.

Most time was spent diddling around with the HTML templates. The one I’ve come up with (as you can see) is pretty simple, but that’s kindof what I want. Nicest thing about Blosxom is that it hides an incredible amount of complexity behind an incredibly simple interface.

Plugins I’ve got installed are:

…installation of plugins (and blosxom itself) is generally as simple as “stuff this file into your ./plugins directory” … you’re expected to edit everything inline for configuration (local modifications), which is a really good system for certain types of techy people, and it makes everything uber-easy to get started with.

23:00 CST | category / entries
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Tue, 23 Nov 2004

Blog Archives (hiding in the past)

2010

June
30 very interesting “craigslist + freecycle + googlemaps” … ~rent~ stuff from your neighbors … http://neighborgoods.net/
28 Just got #BT - These Hopeful Machines. If you like(d) ESCM this one is a buy but I hope that means you’re willing to put up with some 90s | Halibut or Haddock in Tomato Sauce
24 Puerto Rican Home Cooking
21 Hat tip to NorthTexasBoxing.com for pointing out: http://www.license.state.tx.us/sports/sports.htm#schedule … get your boxin’-watchin’ on
17 ProTip: applescript puts the regulation on resizing gigantic itunes windows http://macmembrane.com/resize-any-window-quickly-and-exactly-with-applescript-and-fastscripts/
14 Just pulled the trigger on sekrit project code name: Mosquito-Net-Magnet-Door. http://kjmagnetics.com/ http://sailrite.com/
1 Meanwhile in Super Mario Land…
May
27 Carrollton treasure new little fruteria at Josey / Frankford by Nico’s http://www.robertames.com/files/2010-05-27/pina-colada.jpg
24 Microwave Pralines | Microwave Peanut Brittle
11 To Upgrade Or Not To Upgrade
10 SketchUp Closet Shelves
2 If this doesn’t make you want tex-mex then I refuse to associate with you- http://vimeo.com/9194146
April
27 “Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.” — Clay Shirky
26 I love it when I get the chance to work from home. The food is good but the service sucks. (whole wheat basil pesto + chicken parm w/swiss)
23 SketchUp Makes Closets Nicer | Anybody make gigantic anti-glare stickums for glossy macbook screens? (like for iPhones?) I’m tired of being able to do my hair in my screen.
16 I used to love the school library and their books on castles, especially with maps and pictures. How Castles Work: http://podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2010-04-15-sysk-castles.mp3
12 Swedes are widely considered to be atheists because assembling their furniture doesn’t make you want to take the lords name in vain. #ikea
1 /* nerd prompt for deeply dotted hostnames zzzzzz.aa.bb */ H=`hostname | sed -e ‘s,.\(..\)[^.]*,.\1,g’ -e ‘s/…$/./’`; PS1=”[\u@$H:\w]$ “;
March
29 HTML5 Rumblings
26 nerdgasm! http://aturingmachine.com/
23 Shoutout to Mr. Snipe- HTTP Basic Auth is refreshingly straightforward in Pylons: http://snipeworld.com/2009/02/27/basic-auth-in-pylons/
22 Jaw Dropping - Binder Clips as Cable Organizers
20 Snowing again now- light but fluffly and recognizeable. I was missing Winter League this morning running through the cold into Home Depot.
17 Out of 72 faces, you got 78% correct. The average person recognized about 80% http://www.faceblind.org/facetests/fgcfmt/fgcfmt_intro.php
15 Convince me one way or the other…
12 Huzzah! Single multilingual templated page with python, pylons, mako, babel, gettext, paster and a partridge in a pear tree (and no PHP…)
10 For My Canadian Frisbee Friends…
8 Complexities of Airline Pricing
4 Pivot Tables - They fix everything. #protip
February
26 Youth is not a time of life…
15 Amazon is Evil (in a good way). Wait a year and don’t buy something: they’ll re-recommend it to you around the same time next year. Evil.
11 It’s been snowing constantly in Dallas since before 7-8am, forecasted to continue until 4am. 4”+ on roofs. Hopefully we avoid ice tomorrow.
9 Playing matchmaker today. Java, .NET, internal, external, old co-workers, new co-workers… Good luck everybody!
January
31 Dynamics of Internet Video Publishing
27 Bathroom Tile #ProTip - Smooth tiles allow suction cups. Non-Smooth? No suction cups. Won’t you please think of the suction cups?
26 One of the click and clack brothers is loaded on the day after Christmas show: http://www.cartalk.com/ct/review/show.jsp?showid=200952
22 Just paid my property taxes today. So so far from the carefree week just past. Eat. Drink. Run. (Catch). Sleep. Hace calooor…

2009

December
28 Part two of “I love my Police Department” - http://www.carrolltonpd.com/faqs_details.php?Do-I-have-to-have-an-attorney-8
4 “The Rest of REST” - @johnvh http://www.infoq.com/articles/roa-rest-of-rest
November
23 I Love Ukulele
18 RT: How does the man in the moon cut his hair? http://www.dumbjokesthatarefunny.com/j/34 from @oatmeal … Thanks, Tommy. :^S
14 Getting Started with Functional-Style Programming | Area Man Passionate Defender Of What He Imagines Constitution To Be http://www.theonion.com/content/news/area_man_passionate_defender_of
10 Winter League 2009-2010 registration is open - http://dallaswinterleague.com/wp/ | Now you’re speaking my language…
8 Flash has redeemed itself… for now! http://govegan.hit.bg/
7 Malarkey’s Tavern in Carrollton (Tollway + Trinity Mills)- Draft beer in glassware. Worth your attention. http://www.malarkeystavern.com/
5 Mitch: http://www.angelfire.com/comics/herzdogg/mitch.html … *sniff*
October
26 PyFacebook Tutorials Suck
21 your typical soccer instructional video (david and chris and damn well better watch this) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOSVVrj0WZo
16 The new Star Trek, in brief. http://www.othieves.com/mcomics_startrek.html
11 Frenemies, attack! (article on Parkland free healthcare) http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3257/is_3_61/ai_n18764829/?tag=content;col1
September
28 Props to Glenn for doing a full-on hour podcast- keep it up and invite me! http://www.thesummerofsteve.com/Resources/DrunkLunch1.mp3
27 “If you would be loved, love and be lovable” — Ben Franklin | Mmmmmmhhh… Crêpes
17 Tomatillo Salsa
14 Jason. Joey. This is getting out of hand: http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2009/09/04/05 Food Douche(tm) makes it to NPR.
4 YUI 3 Overview Video | @jasrags #protip vim foo.php :syntax on :set syntax=php :TOhtml will ghetto-colorize your stuff (don’t look at the HTML :^)
1 Cops. Egg house, get fired.
August
24 Advice to Future Travelers to Paris
12 10845 Messages in your Yahoo! Mail Inbox / We organized 1465 which is 9% / 71 merchants / 96 per week avg. / 14 per day avg. #otherinbox
2 Yahoo! Mail - Like a Boss…
July
21 new Yahoo! homepage released today http://m.www.yahoo.com/ … is pretty awesome. RT to spread the word #yahoo
20 10 paint(); 20 if not_all_painted() goto 10; … finished gazebo, primed living room and ~11% done actually painting (have to include trim)
15 Down with Twitter, Up with Bash | fyi - be careful about mentioning vacation plans on twitter/facebook http://bit.ly/Rv283 maybe @CarrolltonTX can let other cities know too
2 “the big sort” is happening online too- http://bit.ly/126XkW
June
30 Deep Space Nine Inch Nails
26 @jasrags you need to organize a DFW flight control throwdown, @airios roll initiative - you tweet too much when you’re stunned | @kreuzader finished wolf3d episode one on the iphone … *that* was a blast from the past … and doom + multiplayer? nerd heaven- coop ftw!
24 #ant, the only language that needs 3 jar files totalling 1mb to change “2.4.0” to “2_4_0” (bsf.jar, js.jar, commons-logging.jar)
22 anxiously awaiting my package from Kunshan (昆山), China | #protip OH @airios “and you see… that’s how physics works”
19 bash Pro-TipTM: Select a Random Line
12 bash sucks because you cannot google it.
9 quick somebody call @mrxtothaz !! only he will know how to put xml in our xml that has xml in it.
4 Y.I.P.P.E.E. - Yahoo! Invisible Platform Player (Eventing Edition) or Y!IPP^EE for short.
May
22 The Development of Spaces and Tabs
15 http://www.zangief.net/
April
28 What’s brown and rhymes with “snoop”?
19 @crissyjancic 200 IM’s, while in the pool? no wonder you’re on twitter! :^) on another note- dang! I used to feel good about doing 2 laps
18 @crissyjancic what, now that opra’s doing it you can too? :^)
17 @joeyjoejo1200 you need to tweet to xzhibiht: i heard you had a weak vacation, had long john silvers instead of cajun bacon crusted lobsters | whee-nar
13 when google doesn’t know the answer, it uses inverse markov chains on the search terms and posts it as a question to answers.yahoo.com
6 I bought the @MacHeist 3 Bundle. 12 Top Mac apps worth $900+ for just $39 AND I just got Delicious Library 2 FREE! http://mhtweet.com/PD7pHe
2 @jasrags when @airios stood me up for work on sunday @ 9am and I forgot my badge so could get into work, I went for UTD student union wifi. | rt: trent_reznor Guess what I’m doing now; It was a trick. I was lonely wondering WHAT to do. Now I have plenty of ideas- TwitterPower.!
March
9 pro-wide.
February
21 http://twitpic.com/1m4zf - @airios @johnvh - more pics. soon i’ll get joey’s up here too.
17 http://twitpic.com/1jdsw - @joeyjoejo1200 the three horsemen of agony, pain, and misery. only because joey can’t punch me through twitter.
14 Happy Birthday to Abel | currently: not paying any attention to messages from twitter and they certainly don’t go to my telephone. | http://twitpic.com/1hfuu - @airios @johnvh I joined twitter just to spam this graphic to john and abel.
7 Run-on Programming Redux
January
11 Obama’s: “Yes Pecan” and Bush’s: “___________”

2008

December
16 Paco De Lucia in Your Kitchen
8 Arrogant Linux Elitist
November
20 Run-on Programming
October
11 Obama: He’s not an Arab
8 Y! Cool Thing
1 Home Sweet Home
September
23 GBC Pro-Click Binding Machine Video Review
July
31 Delicious, Refreshing!
28 Mmmmmmhhh… Crêpe
11 Burlington Coat Factory, I Love You
10 The Soul of the Guitar
8 Kicking and Screaming Towards Lisp
2 Simple PHP Framework Performance Comparison
June
30 You Don’t Have a Cell Phone?
25 Worst security questions ever (seriously)
9 Fighting Mojibake at Home
May
31 Beers Worth Your Consideration
15 Debian, SSH keys and Crypto
12 In the Desert
March
31 So you want to learn guitar…
February
28 Overheard on Slashdot
4 Guitar Hero for ummm- Guitars?
2 MS + Yahoo! == Crazy Delicious? | If you’d like to contact me…

2007

December
30 Throwing Out Old Software
October
31 Perl and a few other tips
September
26 Staples, OfficeMax, the Brother 7820N and Linux
21 One Semester of Spanish
6 Boned By Apple
July
17 How does JavaScript Suck?
5 The Nexus of Etude (by Carulli)
April
11 DallasPHP Unit Testing presentation
2 Sheet Music and Midi
February
13 One step closer to SheetMusic Hero
January
30 The Zen of Vim

2006

November
28 Heaven!
25 Advancements in UI
20 CBS 11 News on Yahoo! Video
16 Pretty sweet guitar playing
14 PHP Session Handling
8 Make sure you’ve eaten breakfast…
October
20 Imagine, if you will, two roommates at Thesaurus U.:
8 Software for learning the guitar?
4 Mexico Part 1
September
18 Spreadsheets as Functional Languages
August
25 Are you aware? | Plethora of Links (now with more Ukulele)
24 Hey Ya!
June
16 Mr. Cash
May
28 Upgrading from PHP4 to PHP5
April
15 Quickies! | Music Theory and the Guitar
March
19 Tomorrow Starts a New Chapter
12 Fun Tennis Thing
7 Where does your company fall?
February
23 From the Mysterious Future…
January
26 Ring in the New Year

2005

November
18 Stepped Intervals in JavaScript
1 Spamblogged!
October
4 The Time-Travelling Filesystem and Other Oddities
August
1 Put Everything in a Box
July
24 Denver Agile Conference
June
4 Where was this in college?
May
21 A married man… | Bad Joke…
6 Expensive Hardware Logging and Greasemonkey
5 Protests over Coulter at UT-Austin
April
23 MRD’s and Southpark
March
19 Ubuntu and Travel…
3 Commonly Confused Words Test
February
19 Ishkur’s Guide to Electronic Music
15 Patents (old) and Lawyers (older)
13 Favicon generator | Paul Graham Parody
11 Or, One Person’s Experience with HDTV and the Superbowl
7 When were planes invented?
3 Coolest Watch Ever
2 Behold the power of Vim!
1 Grrr @ Large Media
January
30 Genious, I am.
28 Miscellany
27 Internet Mail 2000
21 “The Long Tail” and computer stuff
17 HDTV Experience
9 Beware the Broadcast Flag
5 Zap! If Pac-Man were converted to Quake 3 Arena.
3 Story Driven Video Games

2004

December
21 No cell phone subscriber for you
20 The history (and future?) of P2P | Nifty: JavaScript + OpenGL == JiggleScript
19 Name Change Proposed for GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program)
14 The “Dell Tech Force”
9 The Ultimate Matrix Collection
6 In defense of “only one return statement”
November
30 Human Trafficking
28 The importance of picking the right voting system
27 Basic Open-Source Migration Path
26 This one goes out special to David… | Open source in asia / India / China
24 Got the visa! | Got Blosxom installed…

02:00 CST | category / entries
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