Older blog entries for bneely (starting at number 3)

Doctor

I have not yet called my medical professional. Someone kick my ass.

Keyboard

I bought a Microsoft Natural Elite keyboard. Here are my problems with it:

• The Enter key requires more force than the other keys
• The cursor arrow keys are too small
• The ALT and SHIFT keys are too far apart (a pain for me when I'm in Enlightenment)
• INSERT should be to the left of DELETE

The one good part about this keyboard is I'll finally be typing the letter "y" with the correct hand.

People

Seth is saying some really interesting things about the advogato certification system:

I've spoken at conferences, I've served on committees, I've Gotten Paid For This Stuff, I might have a shell script or three in your wallet right now, I've even held protest signs out on picket lines for free software, but I'm not comfortable with any certification system that makes me indistinguishable from the people I'd like to recognize as Masters.

My thoughts on this matter are:

• Perhaps we need ratings in more than one category. Currently, the overall metric is "open source project contributions." There could be, for example, ratings for open source enthusiasm and secondary participation (LUG attendance, protest attendance, wrting papers, giving talks, etc) where someone like Seth would rate very high.
• Give significant value to self-rating when a self-rating is below the certification level. I'm not sure how this could be implemented in a way other than absolute self-reduction.
• Or hey, how about certifications along with detailed constructive criticism? For example, I could rate someone as Journeyer, and add a comment such as "This person has motivated me significantly to further my perl and python skills. His SecureVPS system is in use on my apartment network, and I really appreciate his enthusiasm for BALUG." Or something like that. Justification and further detail for certifications.

I would definitely favor a configuration option for people to limit the diary updates list to certain certification levels, or select persons, etc. I feel timid about posting a diary entry every day because I'm just a green apprentice. It would be more comforting to me if people only saw the diary updates on the advogato homepage of people they care about.

Other Things (aka "meta")

Some people need to take a better view of life. How's the weather? Oh, and I like your haircut.

Planet Earth

Here is a list of places on planet Earth that I would like to acquire:

• The Gobi Desert - Mongolia
• Hong Kong
• Ivory Coast
• Tanzania
• Italy
• Brazil
• Arizona
• California
• Austria
• Thailand
• Singapore
• New Brunswick
• Mt. Kilimanjaro
• Ibiza
• Dover
• Tromso
• Sudan
• South American rainforests
• Uruguay

Same-Gnome

same-gnome is great. I think I will work on some cheat codes and other weirdness to make things even more interesting. The words "killer app" come to mind.

SourceForge

I wish the SourceForge folks would reply to my emails.

links

I'm going to play around a bit with links. Over the past few weeks I've noticed some oddities that I'd like to follow up on. It appears to have an occasional problem finding a link that wraps past the bottom of the screen, for example.

Thanks Martin for your 03 April 2000 diary entry. I am calling my doctor on Thursday. The pain started at the end of January when I worked for 23 hours straight. I've been feeling better since then, but that doesn't necessarily mean a thing. I'll post a follow-up soon...

Now I have to visit Montreal this summer instead of Toronto.