Slashdot user rodgster sent me 1000 slashdot subscription pages because he likes my comments. Thanks, rodgster!

Some of you may remember my technology policy / technology news site Technocrat.net. The site is reactivated. It's intended to be a more mature, and hopefully more relevant, forum than Slashdot. No ACs, a special focus on technology policy and high technology outside of the conventional corporate model, but conventional tech news as well.

I'd really appreciate it if you'd create a login on the site and submit articles. Especially original work, which hasn't always been well recieved on Slashdot - they seem to prefer linking to other people's coverage. RDF and RSS are available at http://technocrat.net/rdf and http://technocrat.net/rss, so you can keep track of articles from elsewhere.

Bruce

Please read this article. And please pass the link around, if you agree with it.

Thanks

Bruce

This post and my response represent one of the most fufilling conversations I've ever had on Slashdot. I liked his arguments and writing style, and I am very much pleased with how my response turned out.

Yes, it's tooting my own horn. So what? I seldom get to.

by Damian Yerrick

I got the nick "yerricde" in late 1999 when my former school created my user accounts under a nick based on my legal name (Yerrick, Damian E.) It seems that too many people have seen an extra 'i' (*yerricide) in my nick. To prevent further confusion, I decided to phase out that nick starting in early 2002. I wrote a program in the Scheme language to generate a nick that's not so easy to misread, and the result was "tepples". You may recognize me from NewsForge, gbadev, DDRei, or nesdev.

I'm a quick reader. I'm also a quick typist. And I've held this Slashdot account for nearly four years. Though I have posted nearly 10,000 comments to Slashdot stories, claiming that I "have no life" would be thoroughly misleading. But some trolls seem to imply this, having started some sort of countdown to 10,000 comments by user "yerricde". I'd as soon shed this nick and ho up a new Slashdot account in the 720000's rather than let them win. I might even subscribe this time.

New on Pin Eight: GPL'd NES games | The real Brother Bear

Anita and I will be travelling for the next few days. First down to visit my parents on the Oregon coast, then back up to Portland for OryCon over the weekend. I will try to get the rest of the 'best of' posts up when I can. (I have posted tons more verbage than seems reasonable in the last year, so there is lots to go through.)

Cue music: 'On the Road Again'

Eric Raymond's blog 'Armed and Dangerous' has moved here. Which may be a good thing, he is certainly posting more. His latest rant tears a new asshole out of the ". . . dope-smoking ponytailed dimwits . . ." who create stylesheets with absolute font and box sizes. (AKA graphic designers...)

Such have been the bane of my existance when doing websites as well. Nothing sucks more than getting an email saying "Do the page exactly like this." with a 3 mb graphic created in photoshop attached.

P.S. I cut off my ponytail more than a month ago...

Well I know what RSS is of course, but you might not. And I could tell you, except Mark Pilgrim does a better job of answering the question 'What is RSS?' than I could. So you should read that.

But why am I answering a question you haven't asked yet? Well, because even here on /. people are trying to use it and because I am working on something that does cool things with it. So I think talking about this is very timely and I think you should want to know about RSS even if you don't know that you want to know. That's why.

(It seems odd to call this post 'Best of: The Columbia Disaster' when there was nothing 'best' about the Columbia disaster. However this is the first part of a series of entries linking to my best posts in the past year, and these posts certainly qualify.)

After the Columbia disaster I was fairly upset with the regular media reporting and with NASA's lack of open discussion. However NASA did release some telemetry information gathered right before the shuttle breakup. That information seemed to contain some clues as to exactly what had happened, but it was pretty hard to understand. Being a visual thinker I needed a more graphical view of the sensor results over time, so I created my own animation of the data.

Veiwing my animation and a picture taken of the shuttle right before the breakup led me to the conclusion that one of the leading edge carbon/carbon shielding blocks had failed, just outboard of the wheel well. For whatever it is worth, I turned out to be 100% correct!

However being right did not make me feel good. Instead I was irritated on several levels. First off, I was an amateur using those little bits of information openly released to come by my findings, while NASA engineers with access to even more information were silenced -- even after the 'official' findings were released. Something that took another four months. Certainly they arrived at the same conclusion long before I did; why weren't they alowed to speak and why did it take so long?

Furthermore none of the various news sources, any of whom could have done the same thing I did, paid any attention to this data at all. Yet another case of someone in the blogosphere getting it right while the media yammers about inconsequentials. Oh well. And it didn't even lead to fifteen minutes of fame for me. Probably a good thing...

• Columbia Disaster
• What happened to Columbia? An amateur analyzes the data (Initial release of the animation, February 9th, 2003)
• More indications my Columbia theory is correct (April 3rd, 2003)
• I called it on the Columbia disaster! (The CAB releases their findings, corroborating my own on June 25th, 2003)

According to Richard C. Hoagland NASA may have accidently set off a nuclear explosion on Jupiter when they sent the Galileo probe plummeting into its depths.

A fascinating idea, and the background information is very interesting on its own. However Hoagland's tendancy towards conspiracy theories makes him an unreliable source. In so many ways...

Via Flutterby.

One year ago today I posted my first /. journal entry. From the beginning I have used this /. journal as more of a weblog than a personal diary. Although I have sometimes talked about my personal life, and occasionally posted a rant or an essay or a review, most often I just posted links to something I found interesting at the moment and wanted to be able to find again in the future. So, for me, this journal has been a sort of backup memory. One that I am sharing with you.

Along the way I gathered up a few readers (yourself for an instance) and, hopefully, you have found your time here worthwhile. Although I probably could have boosted my readership by making this journal more of a soap opera that just isn't what I am about. So I am proud to think that you read me for content and (hopefully) quality of prose instead of for titillation. I do know that I intend to continue, although it is certain that I will move off of /. before another year passes. And I hope some of you will come along for the ride when I do, just as I hope I will gather more non /. readers by doing so. So I guess I am part of the /. exodus (also here).

Nonetheless I am grateful to /. for giving me this venue and for the opportunity to connect to people like yourself. I like it that you read my writing and I like it when you comment. And, even though I am not doing this entirely for the egoboo, I can say for a certanty that - if you were not reading this I wouldn't be writing it. So I would like to thank each and every one of you that has marked me as a /. friend or who links to me from the great web outside or who has added this journal to your favorites list; you do me honor by reading...

Anyway, to celebrate the one year anniversery of this journal (and maybe to get you to read stuff you might have missed) I am going to post some 'best of' entries over the next couple of days. These will contain links to those entries from the past year that I am most proud of, organized by subject. Enjoy!

Update: Best of: The Columbia Disaster links to posts where I analyze the data from the breakup of the shuttle and get the right answer months before the official findings.

I am driving one handed while I fumble for my cell phone. Quick glance, select the number, press 'Call'. Put phone to my ear. It rings.

"Hello?"

"Anita, it's me. I am driving down Pine and guess what I just saw in the sky?"

"What? Oh, the Concorde. Very cool! It was supposed to come in at 3:00."

"Ya, I think it was on final approach to Boeing Field."

"Well, now you have something to blog."

Yes, I suppose I do. But just what do I blog? Do I talk about how this particular Concorde was on its final flight because British Airways had given it as a permanent loan to Seattle's Museum of Flight? How cool it is that I will get to walk through it just as soon as the exhibit is ready?

Or do I talk about the mix of feelings that swept through me as I watched that bright arrow slip through the Seattle skyline as it came in for what may well be its last landing? The joy of being in the exactly right place at exactly the right time to get that amazing view? And the sorrow that I felt knowing that an era which never really came to be was somehow coming to an end? How this was yet another proof that the future had failed to deliver on the promises Heinlein, Clarke and Asimov had made to me when I was a child? How truly bittersweet that moment was?

I don't know what to say. I really don't...

Nelson Minar thinks so. According to him Python has reached the point that you can create the same kind of quick and dirty Windows applications VB is best suited for. He has pointers to lots of good Windows Python tools.

Via Ted Leung.

Some time ago SF writer Bruce Sterling gave up his blog on my friend Eileen Gunn's webzine Infinite Matrix in order to start a new blog for Wired magazine. This trend towards subsidized blogs is an interesting one and I hope it brings enough value to continue (and perhaps be extended to 'regular' bloggers like myself).

Well, after nearly two months of waiting, Sterling's new blog Beyond the Beyond is finally up -- and so far I am underwhelmed. His old blog, Schism Matrix suffered from Sterling only posting once a day (weekdays only) although the links and commentary were usually pretty damn good. 'Beyond' seems to be following the same format with the addition of pictures.

However 'Beyond' is also butt ugly, the first week's worth of posts are a bit boring and the blogroll is narcissistic. Not an auspicious debut...

None the less I am going to add 'Beyond' to my own blogroll in the hope that things will improve once Sterling hits his stride. I am also going to watch Wired Blogs to see where they are going with it. Wired certainly doesn't seem to be putting much in the way of money or design sense into the effort, even the hosting and software is provided through a partnership with Tripod's new blogging service. Are they going to add other 'A-List' or 'name writer' bloggers? Are they going to have some of their regular columnists start blogs? Are they going seek for new voices of some kind?

Time will tell on the whole thing I guess. In the meantime you will probably want to check out 'Beyond', after all your mileage may vary.

I spent my High School years here in the Seattle area, in the days before Microsoft, Amazon and Starbucks. Back then Boeing was king and one rite of passage for young men was going to a dance at the Sons of Norway hall and (this was extra points) eating some Lutefisk without puking. (Note that you didn't have to be a son of Norway to go to a Sons of Norway dance, there were plenty of that sort around and they would always invite their friends. Probably so they could laugh uproarously when their friends tried the Lutefisk)

Now some of you are wondering 'What the hell is Lutefisk?' I urge you to browse the google for edification. The rest of you already know and are probably sniggering at the thought of a teenage Jack screwing up his courage to either ask the tall blonde in the red dress to dance or to down a cracker full of a nasty, gelatinous, fishlike substance. And wondering which will have the worst immediate result...

What made me think about all this was this Ode to Lutefisk and its comprehensive instructions for how to eat the stuff. Although I am not certain it really does taste like Python (the snake, not the language), partly because if Python tastes that bad I don't want to find out.