Television affiliates are dead meat


Consider: Tonight, I watched the latest episode of Kings. I watched it on Hulu, at 480p, which is so-called Enhanced Definition TV (EDTV). It needed only a little over 1 Mbps of bandwidth. Video and audio quality depends on more than the stream's resolution, so it's possible for a 480p stream to look no better … Continue reading Television affiliates are dead meat →

PyCon 2009: Tutorials, Day 1


In the morning, Introduction to the Google App Engine. PyCon-supplied Wi-fi bandwidth is excellent in the public areas. Talk was great, lunch food was great. In the afternoon, Eggs and Buildout Development. This is great, it's like drinking from a firehose. Everything you wanted to know about virtualenv, distutils, setuptools, and buildout. Tonight, I had … Continue reading PyCon 2009: Tutorials, Day 1 →

A review of EMC Retrospect 8.0 for Macintosh


What do you look for in a backup solution? If you have only one system, you might choose a local FireWire or USB disk, and a simple quasi-real-time application, like Time Machine. If you have multiple systems, you have to consider multiple local disks and backup applications, or one central target (a tape, NAS, whatever) … Continue reading A review of EMC Retrospect 8.0 for Macintosh →

Being digital-only for PyCon 2009


Next week is PyCon 2009! Can't wait! For the longest time, when I attended a conference, I took notes in a notebook. (No, not a notebook computer, you young whippersnapper. A notebook. Like a Moleskine.) About five years ago, I graduated to bringing a notebook and my laptop. Why both? I wanted on-line connectivity, but … Continue reading Being digital-only for PyCon 2009 →

Newspapers and the Internet. Next, TV Stations?


Clay Shirky wrote a brilliant treatise on the Internet's effects on the newspaper business. It nicely summarizes how newspapers got into their current state, and advocates a from-within-the-revolution way of thinking about what's happening to information. It has many money quotes. Here's one: If you want to know why newspapers are in such trouble, the … Continue reading Newspapers and the Internet. Next, TV Stations? →

Open Source Bridge 2009: Deadline approaching


If you're thinking of giving a talk at Open Source Bridge 2009, you'd better hurry up and submit your proposal. Their submissions deadline is March 31! At last count, they have 33 submissions on topics including Linux kernel development, Drupal, OSS project maintenance, Ruby, and Plone. I've been working on getting the word out at … Continue reading Open Source Bridge 2009: Deadline approaching →

PyCon 2009: Seattle-area tally is 10…


PyCon 2009 is only 20 days away, and it looks like 10 greater-Seattle-area denizens are registered, out of about 800 total registrants so far. This is according to the registration site, of those who agreed to publicize their location.

Seattle Lunch 2.0, Open Source Bridge


Yesterday, I met up with members of Open Source Bridge's brain trust at the Seattle Lunch 2.0 happy hour at Axios/TalentSpring. Lots of people, lots of good chats. Lots of pizza and drink. IANAL but gosh their office is nice. Open Source Bridge was represented by Selena Deckelmann, Rick Turoczy, Jake Kuramoto, and Kelly Guimont. They … Continue reading Seattle Lunch 2.0, Open Source Bridge →

identi.ca vs. twitter


I've used identi.ca micro-blogging for the past five months. I'm switching to twitter. Why identi.ca? I was involved with a number of projects at Fisher Communications until last month. Including building a Plone system to be its news sites' in-house CMS. Our development environment and technology stack were open-source, with only a couple exceptions. When I worked … Continue reading identi.ca vs. twitter →

OSCON- -, Open Source Bridge++


I was disappointed by OSCON's move to San Jose starting this year. Their official justification was nonsense — basically, O'Reilly expects infinite growth forever, and thinks that bigger is better. As a happy northwestern transplant, I wish O'Reilly lots of luck with infinite growth in this economy. And with San Jose's higher costs of everything, concrete everywhere, … Continue reading OSCON- -, Open Source Bridge++ →