Miscellany

Posted on by Luis Villa
  • I have finished my first set of readings for my first day of classes. Only 1,000 or so more to go.
  • An hour of my afternoon vanished into ‘Overheard in Law School‘ today. Best quote, capturing both law school and NYC:
    • “Frottage is the act of rubbing genitals against somebody for sexual gratification. For example, in New York on the subway. In fact, it’s so common that if there’s a man standing next to you on the subway and he’s not committing frottage, you can ask him why.”
  • Blackboard has patented assigning homework over the internet, more or less. I may blog more about this over the weekend, but in the meantime, Alfred Essa describes the basics of the patent. Very, very interestingly, someone is using a wiki to help disect the patent and discuss prior art. If you know of any prior art, head on over to the wiki!
  • It is sad that at the same time that Lessig is explaining the deep and important relationship between Free Culture and Free Software, the CC v3 is preparing to ignore the DFSG. I hope CC comes around on this, but I see little indication on their license-discuss list that they will. (For a little more context on CC v3, see this post.)
  • Apple is getting ready to make a big social software push, apparently. I was convinced that Free Software needed a social software play before. Between Apple’s move (which will make us even less appealing, relatively speaking) and my growing addiction to facebook I’m now even more convinced. So maybe mugshot will give me some facebook integration, eh? :)
  • I’ve become a facebook addict in large part because Columbia IT appears to be sort of a mess. They send info semi-randomly to two different email addreses, a series of two discussion boards, a central ‘everything except class discussions’ information center, a class discussions information center, an orientation website, and sometimes put documents on some netware drives. When they make me dictator for life, job #1 (so far) is to find a good IA. Rekha, you available? :)
  • This is the funniest thing and most pointed thing I’ve read about the last round of terror threats. Very long; for the best part, just search for ‘FDR’ for comparison of our reaction to Japan, Germany, and… well, a bunch of guys with bottles of bleach.
  • I continue to be impressed with the utility of the 770. If google calendar worked on it, I could probably stop taking my laptop to class.

Published by Luis Villa

5 thoughts on “Miscellany”

  1. بهداد اسفهبد: Vertical PangoDavyd Madeley: getting back the footLucas Rocha: The GNOME Journal, August EditionGlynn Foster: OpenJavaThomas Thurman: So I was trying to write an englynDavyd Madeley: journalling filesystemLuis Villa: MiscellanyJono Bacon: Glade 3 releasedGlynn Foster: Communties at WellyLUG

  2. Hello. I have a 770 too and I just wonder which software you are using for note taking. Do you have any tips to share? At the moment I use maemopad+ and write directly in the sketch format as it is faster than waiting for the text recognition stuff. Are you using a bluetooth keyboard? Thanks for the coming answer and also thanks for the reading (through planet Gnome in practice). –Loïc

  4. Loic: I’m just using the included note app; it sort of sucks but has worked for my minimal needs. (Mostly, I’m using it as a device for reading and not writing- I’m just too uncomfortable with the text entry to try taking notes for an entire class on it, regardless of the note app.) I’ll try maemopad+- thanks for the pointer. (Might try xournal too.)

    .: I have not tried minimo yet; the packages won’t install for me (conflict with libxt which came via maemomapper, I think.) The author keeps promising to fix the problem, and keeps not doing it :/ I’m eagerly awaiting it. Given my current usage patterns, I might just give up and uninstall maemo mapper if the problem doesn’t get fixed soon.

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