Older blog entries for jakd (starting at number 6)

I updated postcardX.net's look and feel today with a few minutes of spare time. Code is here. The changes were taken fairly well; our growth rate is reaching 100 new addresses per week with over 10,000 hits per week. I'm going to slide the new system in (a python/ocaml self-serving hybrid) when the population tops 1000. This same code will also run my entire web site, and a part has been integrated into the medical device control system I developed.

Wow. Excellent speech by Dean Kamen at the Harvard Cyberposium. You can view it here.

It's completely mindblowing and refreshing to hear someone with such a great and person-based (vs. paper-based) outlook and drive. Inspired.

I really enjoyed the link from raph on taste and beauty. It ranks with other reading I've pulled from this site, namely Richard Gabriel's essay on Mob Software. I found the following quote particularly engaging:

In architecture and design, this principle means that a building or object should let you use it how you want: a good building, for example, will serve as a backdrop for whatever life people want to lead in it, instead of making them live as if they were executing a program written by the architect.

Wow; how true, and one of the driving forces behind my dig on available source code and a sharing community. Communities such as these allow the inhabitants to make their future on a shared canvas.

A friend recently had a "breaking through" point in her work. I can't help but think, wow, how amazing is it to be able to watch and share in that point? How often do we get to participate (whether through creation or observation) in someone's most creative driving endeavor and then get to savor the results, knowing the path that took us there all along? Awash in the possibilities that have in turn unfurled. The public source scene allows the same possibility: to partake or watch in something entirely creative, and to make the outcome more yours. It's those possibilities that make my life worth living.

Now it's time to water my plants.

I can't seem to get the new Apple developer tools to create a correct and righteous service, hence rendering my attempts to update SearchGoogle fruitless. The example service provided with the tools behaves in the same manner. I've put some feelers out on a few related lists.

I'm going to start a rewrite of postcardX.net soon, moving from php/mysql to python/xml. I have the underpinnings and flight plan in my head; now I need to put it down. The move is mostly out of a curiousity and will to strech.

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