Terribly Boring "I'm Still Here" Post

Yes, it's true. I'm still here.

It's been a while since I've posted because I've recently undergone yet another job change and relocation. In a crazy turn of events, I'm back at my original company and living extremely close to my old house. Anyway, I've got a lot things that I'm eager to blog about, but with the packing, moving, unpacking and Cox's seeming inability to get Internet installed on the first try (if they miss another install appointment, I'm probably gonna walk away), I haven't had the chair time for it. Hopefully, I'll be back on here contributing at least one post a week in the very near future.

Forrest

Head First Humanity

Most of you have heard of the Head First books. They are a series of technical books about programming that are written in a completely different style than, well, pretty much all other programming books I've read. They are meant to be engaging in a more holistic approach. Anyway, to keep from getting too far off topic, suffice it to say these books are either loved or hated by the members of the community. There seems to be quite a bit of emotion attached to them, because they are so radically different than all the other Java books out there.

This series was co-founded by a lady named Kathy Sierra, who was an author of several of the books and also maintains a blog called Creating Passionate Users. Ms. Sierra has found herself drawing more and more fame of late, and with the fame has come quite a bit of criticism. There's nothing wrong with criticism of course, but what is wrong is that some people have elevated their disapproval to the point of wishing her death.

Did you get that?

Her death!

For what reason? Well that's an interesting question, and one that Kathy herself isn't quite sure of:

What started the wave of threats? Is it a reaction to a specific post or topic on your blog or were the threats made out of the blue? That is the million-dollar question. I have had critics for a long time. Obviously the more visibility you have, the more critics you have, but it did turn much nastier the last few weeks than ever before.

For some reason [contributors to meankids.org site] really hate me. I asked one of them why. He said it is because I am just so optimistic. They are about rage, and if you are optimistic and positive you are part of the problem. It spun out of control kind of like a mob or crowd. Meankids was supposed to be a place where they could be as nasty as possible. It was like a feeding frenzy. Once they started down that path of anything goes, they weren't going to stop. Who crosses that line and makes comments like that as an adult? These aren't kids on MySpace. Anyone who is unstable enough to actually say these things, then I don't want to take a chance.

-ComputerWorld Interview

So what did they say? If you're interested, the most recent post on her blog details some of the things that were said, features an offensive digitally altered picture of Kathy, and explains her reaction to the undeserved hatred. To summarize, she's terrified. She's not leaving her house, she's canceled her speaking engagements and has suspended her blogging indefinitely. Personally, I can't say that I blame her one bit. I've seen some people say things like "...I don't think I agree with any parallelism drawn between verbal [and] physical abuse...I can't even see how they are similar" (1) and I just have to say that is complete crap. One is every bit as wrong as the other, and I agree with Kathy whole heartedly when she says "it's the threat itself that inflicts the damage." I've personally been in terror for my life before because of someone's inflammatory threats and I can attest that the threats seem to have every bit as much effect. Possibly more, because they can instill so much fear that you find yourself constantly paranoid, unable to sleep, unable to even leave your lights on at night for fear of indicating that you are at home.

These actions are horrible. This is an atrocity that makes me cringe. Something has to be done about this. The community should be taking steps to ensure this kind of thing doesn't happen. I am in no way advocating that we discourage free speech, mind you, but I am saying that we should make it so socially unacceptable for this kind of thing to happen (as in, illegal threats) that it simply stops happening. I'm sure that the people who threatened her will be taken care of by the proper authorities, but the things Kathy are going through right now will never leave her. So anyway, not that my voice counts for much, but I'm casting my support for Kathy and for others who want to figure out how to fix this. You know, maybe it can't be fixed. But at the very least we should be trying to encourage free speech while making sure anonymous stupidity in the form of violent and sexual threats is squashed flat.

Dell, I Stand Corrected

Well, I posted this entry about Dell not listening to their customers on the IdeaStorm website...and they've gone and actually listened. Good for you Dell. Really, bravo. I've cast my vote on the linuxsurvey, and you should too. I know it may seem like I just can't be pleased, but there is one thing about this survey that is concerning: there is no security measure at all to prevent ballot stuffing. So please (and not that you would,) don't take the survey more than once.

P.S. In related news, OpenOffice.org has written a letter to Dell asking for OOo preinstalled on their systems. Go IdeaStorm!

Become an Unofficial MIT Grad

This just in: MIT to offer all courses online by the end of the year. I didn't realize it until today, but they've already made quite a few of their courses available online through the OpenCourseWare website. If only I had a whole lot of free time on my hands...

New Language Features in C# 3.0

Just read this blog entry about three of the new language features in C# 3.0, and I hate to say it, but Microsoft is getting it right. In my short three months developing in C#, I have internally wished for a solution to each of the problems these features attempt to solve. Though they are simply syntactic sugar, I think they will each contribute greatly to reducing the tedium of typing in such a wordy language (although C# in my experience is still less wordy than Java). Maybe history will repeat itself and we'll see these features make it into Java 7. Much like generics, auto-boxing and variable arity made the leap from C# 2.0 into Java 5.

Tikal Eclipse

You may have heard that Tikal Eclipse was released this week. I gave it a download and it seems pretty nice. Think of it as Automatic Updates (almost), or apt-get (closer) for eclipse. I think this distribution fills a real need in the eclipse community, as updates and installation of plugins have not been quite as easy as they could. It also bundles several plugins for C++, Python, Perl, and PHP development within eclipse, if you are the omniglot type. It's good enough that I think I might actually use it, which is more than I can say for EasyEclipse.

Dell and Their Not-listening Ears

While catching up on my feeds in bloglines, I happened across this LinuxJournal posting that was quite intriguing. I appears that Dell has started a site to solicit ideas on what their customers want to see most from the company. Surprisingly enough, the top three requests are for pre-installed open source software. Furthermore, nine of the top 15 requests relate directly to open source software in some way. I realize there is a possibility that all of those votes could be the result of some sort of ballot stuffing, but I tend to think that's not the case. I think there are a lot of people out there genuinely interested in experiencing what the FOSS community has to offer. Here is their response to the top entry:

As this community knows, there is no single customer preference for a distribution of Linux. In the last week, the IdeaStorm community suggested more than half a dozen distributions. We don't want to pick one distribution and alienate users with a preference for another. We want users to have the opportunity to help define the market for Linux on desktop and notebook systems. In addition to working with Novell, we are also working with other distributors and evaluating the possibility of additional certifications across our product line. We are continuing to investigate your other Linux-related ideas, so please continue to check here for updates.

So basically, they gave the politician's answer. To paraphrase: "We're really glad you all signed up to tell us what you want, but unfortunately we don't care that much." In all fairness, though, I understand the sentiment. Supporting a Linux distro would be no easy or inexpensive undertaking. Can you imagine the calls they would be getting from your grandma; or even from relatively PC literate people who unknowingly selected the Ubuntu option because it saved them over a hundred dollars on their purchase? "Um, yeah, uh...I don't see a 'Start' button on this new computer I ordered from you last week."

Oh well, nice try Dell. For my part, I'm perfectly happy downloading Ubuntu and installing it myself if I so choose. But there are many out there who are itching to get away from Windows, but won't do so until the transition is much more streamlined.

Link Roundup 2-25-07

Some cool links I found this week while surfing teh InterWeb:

• Woot Watcher Firefox Extension - Get the latest from Woot without having to visit the site or check your feed aggregator
• LibraryThing Suggester - you tell it a book that you like and it will suggest other works you might find interesting
• Visuwords - graphical dictionary, must experience this one for yourself
• Google Talk as Universal Messenger - use your Google Talk account to talk to all of your friends that are still on loser IM networks like MSN, AIM, and Yahoo (EDIT: YMMV with this one, it's only kind of working for me in that I have to be signed in on Psi and logged in to the MSN transport for my msn contacts to show up in Google Talk)
  
• Delete Mistyped Entries in Firefox Url Bar
• Windows To Linux Roadmap - IBM developerworks article with handy tips for migrating from Windows to Linux
• Virtual PC 2007 - for some strange reason, Microsoft has decided to release the new version of Virtual PC as a free download. This app is great for experimenting with Linux without leaving the comfort of your Windows installation.
• The 4 Best Ways to Sit at Your Computer - me being ever more RSI conscious, I found this one interesting. I'm seriously considering the exercise ball, myself.
• Learn the Fingered Whistle - I always wanted to know how to do this...we'll see how successful I am
  

Note: Almost all of the above links were found through http://lifehacker.com a site which I have recently discovered and really, really like.

Blinky.NET now available for your poor, poor eyes

Problems with eye strain? You might have heard of Matt Smith's blink notifier application, Blinky. Well, in an attempt to become more familiar with .NET windows forms development, and to address some of the things I wanted to see added to blinky, I have released a first-pass of a port/rewrite in C#. The link below will take you to Blinky.NET's wiki page where you can download the application. This is basically a beta release, so be sure and leave me comments about things you'd like to see added to the application.

I started using the original Blinky application because I was getting massive headaches at work. After the first day of use, I noticed that my headaches had cleared up and my eyes didn't feel like they were going to pop out of my head. Needless to say, I was hooked. The problem is, I recently started a new job where I happen to have a nice dual monitor setup (which I highly recommend). And for whatever reason, Blinky wasn't notifying me to blink like it did on my old single-monitor setup. So I downloaded and studied Matt's source code and decided I just might be able to pull off writing this application in C#. Give it a try:

http://geek4christ.wikidot.com/blinky-net

Rebirth of the blog

Welcome to the rebirth of the geek4christ blog. This blog is mainly a space for me to publish notes, thoughts and news about what's going on with me. It is also meant to be a companion to my wiki, so feel free to check that out as well.