Monthly Archive: March 2008

We’ve had a long time to learn how to deal with a world of scarce goods, and that’s what most people understand. Scarcity. But I think our solutions will come more slowly until it’s widely understood that we shouldn’t try to create artificial scarcity for information (including software), knowledge, and ideas.

We’ll get there. A growing number of people understand. We’re slowly building up the free world. It’s great advice to not get overwhelmed by the job ahead, but just take steps toward the goal. Set that example. Improve those solutions.

And please share your solutions freely!

More fun with Python and regular expressions. Following up on a previous post, I wanted to share a little test regex function I wrote in Python to help me as I work through the regular expression book.

I’m mostly working at the interactive prompt and had been running commands from Python re (the regex module) as I experimented with different regular expressions. This was good as I spent time in help(re) and built up some muscle memory for Python regex functions, but it was becoming repetitious to keep typing the commands for analyzing the results of a match. Once I started learning about writing functions in Python, I realized it was time to enhance my …

The other night, sort of kind of on a whim, but not really, I upgraded my main machine from Ubuntu 7.04 to 7.10. There were some problems, but in the end, not very serious. No need for panic.

I’d upgraded my laptop when 7.10 was released, and that went fine. The plan for my other machines is to keep current, but to wait until the end of the six month release cycles, hoping that things will be more stable by then. After realizing that 8.04 will be coming out before long, I decided to upgrade my system76 box over the weekend, and that went pretty well. (My second upgrade on that one: 6.10 » 7.04 » 7.10.)

I was more apprehensive about upgrading Zodiac, however, since I’ve installed so much more stuff …

I don’t want to go all 7 Habits of Highly Effective People on you, but I’ll say this: I think it’s good to have goals and to work towards your goals.

I like this quote, which I’ve seen attributed to Zig Ziglar:

“Most people fail to reach their goals not because their plans are too simple or too complicated. Most people don’t reach their goals because they’re not committed and willing to follow their plans.”

I think that’s very true. There are so many things I haven’t done because I didn’t follow through on a plan.

What this means for you, loyal reader, is that one of the reasons I’m not accomplishing the goal of writing more for the web site (including a write-up of …

“Travellin’ and livin’ off the web…”

I have a GPG key, freshly created a couple of days ago. GPG is the GNU Privacy Guard, also known as GnuPG, used for encryption and digital signatures.

Many people include helpful comments about GPG encryption on a page with their public key and fingerprint. Instead of making similar remarks (which I don’t feel qualified to make), I’ll point to some examples: Karl Fogel, Peter S. May, and Henrik Lund Kramshoej.

I’ve read Karl’s page with interest in the past, and revisited it while preparing my own GPG key page. His comments have been influential in adding to my doubts about using the software and keys properly. I found Peter’s and Henrik’s pages recently in Google search results as I’ve been reading about the …

Well, Cambridge, actually. The Free Software Foundation is holding its Annual Associate Member Meeting at MIT on Saturday, March 15. (You can become a member and go also!) ;-)

I started mulling over the idea of attending last month. It occurred to me I might be able to get a deal on a flight with my paltry 31K NWA miles, and that it would be good to get out and do something different. Being on a weekend, I wouldn’t need to take much time off from work. So, with permission from my patient, gracious, and lovely wife, it all came together.

I’m really looking forward to meeting some free software folks. Are you planning on going? :-) Also keeping my ear out for an informal meetup on Friday night, hopefully …