Monthly Archive: August 2009

FreeMind is a great free software program. It is identified as “mind mapping” software, for brainstorming or whatnot, but is also a general productivity/organizational tool. It’s early days for me, but I think it may help me organize my notes and projects more effectively. It’s basically just arranging things in a tree structure, but the visual/spatial layout seems to help me.

I tried it out a couple of years ago, but didn’t really give it a chance. Now with version 0.8.1, it seems very polished. It’s a Java program, which may suggest sluggishness to some people, but it’s very snappy and responsive for the maps I’ve created. It’s very easy to use: easy to add nodes and move things around and format them. After …

I saw an item pop up in my feed reader from the Freedom Now blog. It took me a moment to remember that this is Eben Moglen’s blog. I added it a while back but he hasn’t posted since April 2007, so the title looked unfamiliar in my reader’s “A” list.

I’m happy to see that he intends to start posting again. Eben is right there with Richard Stallman in providing inspiration for a free society, where all knowledge and information is freely available to everyone. There in his post are the kind of bold and sweeping claims I enjoy finding in his writing and speeches:

The movement I now realize it’s clear I’m giving my life to is on the verge of irreversibly changing humanity. I may yet live to see the world I have been dreaming …

While in Paris we play the Nashville Club, a seedy velveteen music hall in St. Germain, and are staying for a few nights in a flophouse behind the Gare St. Lazare. The entrance of our hotel is in a narrow and fetid alleyway off the main boulevard. In early evening it is flanked by the garish lights of a sex shop and dimly lit secondhand bookstore. The alley is a pitch for about twenty women leaning in doorways, chain-smoking. In their shiny open raincoats, short skirts, cheap boots, and high-heeled shoes they watch the street with hooded eyes, like spies in a B movie. Some are young and pretty, and some are older, and some of them are very old, with facial expressions ranging from sullen to wry. Most of the commerce is centered on the slightly older women, as …