Advogato blog for jwboyer

14 Jul 2004

Wed, 14 Jul 2004 20:57:00 GMT

Luddite:

From Wikipedia:

The Luddites were a group of English workers in the early 1800s who protested against the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution that they felt threatened their jobs, often by destroying machines.

The original Luddites claimed to be led by one Ned Ludd, also known as "King Ludd", who is believed to have destroyed two large stocking-frames that produced inexpensive stockings undercutting those produced by skilled knitters, and whose signature appears on a "workers manifesto" of the time. Whether or not Ludd actually existed is historically unclear.

The movement spread rapidly throughout England in 1811, with many wool and cotton mills being destroyed, until the British government harshly suppressed them. This included making "machine breaking" (industrial sabotage) a capital crime, and executing 17 men in 1813. At one time, there were more British troops fighting the Luddites than Napoleon Bonaparte.

In recent years, the terms Luddism and Luddite or Neo-Luddism and Neo-Luddite have become synonymous with anyone who opposes the advance of industrial technology.

Now those of us that are historically challenged know what a luddite is.

12 Jul 2004

Mon, 12 Jul 2004 22:24:51 GMT

Returned to work today. Surprisingly nothing major was waiting to explode when i got back. That's unusual. I'm sensing a calm before the storm...

dwmw2 decided to update the geometry stuff in MTD and merge with Linus soon, so that means lots of actvity in MTD CVS. And of course, some breakage :). He makes me laugh. I onced asked him what he does to test his code. His response was, "make and users". If only i could use that at work ;)

Mental note: lookup what a luddite is. Apparently anyone who uses a 2.4 kernel is one...

11 Jul 2004

Sun, 11 Jul 2004 23:31:31 GMT

more laying around doing nothing. watching old 80's movies is fun. especially when i was too young to see the orignial release. it's like experiencing that decade all over again from a different point of view.

nice to see that a couple people have certified me as an Apprentice. Thx Lobster and ploppy!

11 Jul 2004

Sun, 11 Jul 2004 01:22:46 GMT

Vacation makes me happy. Gnome doesn't.

Spending 4 days doing absolutely nothing is so refreshing. I need to do it more often.

But, inevitably when returning from vacation, something always goes wrong. Stupid computer wouldn't turn on. Then it decided to magically boot by itself. I don't know why and I don't care.

Gnome can be a PITA. When FC2 came out, I switched to Gnome from KDE, just to see what it's like. For the most part, it doesn't really make a diff to me. But it took me 2 hours to figure out how to add a program into the damn menu. Either I was being particularly dense, or it's not that intuitive. Either way, now I know. And knowing is half the battle.

5 Jul 2004

Mon, 5 Jul 2004 21:59:08 GMT

Ok, giving this a shot. Must say I've never done this before, but reading davej's blog among others has inspired me.

Short background:

I work for a very large company. It has a 3 letter acronym and is commonly refered to as BigBlue. You figure it out. Overall, it's a great job. The work is interesting, and I get to tinker. But, like any large company, things can move too slowly for my taste sometimes. Oh well.

Some projects I am interested in:

I have never met any kernel hackers outside of work, but I have IRC'd or e-mailed a few (although probably not enough to make an impression).

That's about it for now. I'm new to this blog thing. Cut me some slack ;)