So being new to Linux and the world surrounding the myth of linux has me searching across the vast expanse of trash that is the internet. In my travels I've come across some good sources of info and help, also some of the less involving places for information. One of the best ways I've found to get info is in the form of various mail lists. Like the theory that the collection of applications under linux should not be powerhouse all-knowing kitchen-sink-too type programs but rather individual applications with little or no startup time, very low resource cost and a specific and driving motive; mail lists are usually focused on a single topic such as a single program, or process.

By being subscribed to mail lists, my hard drive quickly fills as the barrage of email arriving daily mounts, and my experience with perl is not advancing as quickly as I'd like or I would be putting all of this information to use. So instead, I read through all the email that is coming in, trying to decide in the course of a given article whether or not I can use the information inside.

This I believe is called lurking, for as a newbie I have nothing to contribute to the discussions taking place. So I'm left to wonder, what, if any is the opinion of expert users of newbie lurkers? Also, if this is lurking and I'm not contributing, how guilty should I feel for replicating the data yet again across the net to my email box?

Maybe someday all these questions will be assigned answers, maybe someday I'll come out of the dark corner of my little internet and have something meaningful to say...

I figure that something akin to the topic of wasting time would be nice for a first journal entry, so I thought I'd begin to tackle the subject of lackluster enthusiasm over participation in opensource projects that don't pay.

So I'm no expert geek or anything, I often find myself whittling away the hours over at sourceforge in the 'Help Wanted' section examining calls for artists and high level programmers. I do java and all that but more to the point I'm an artist. I did the degree thing in it and I figure I should devote a little bit of hobby time to making some (because I'll obviously never get paid to do it).

Something I've noticed and I guess someone would have to force me at gunpoint to refute is that this whole thing is just a big clumsy creature. Project leaders often seem to make entries in sourceforge just to get the idea down before someone else, leaving an empty project that's going nowhere fast. Or any of the other multitudes of pitfalls that befall opensource (free) projects.

So today being a day like any other, I'm looking at my mailbox waiting for some kind of correspondance to drop from any of the number of projects I'm involved in. Waiting. Seems like I've been waiting for two weeks now for word on whether or not this or that element is approved for use, whether or not I should proceed with a certain design idea... There must be projects out there that receive constant activity, surely! I guess I'm just to 'new' to find em.