Posted on
by

There is a tradition on Twitter called “Follow Fridays” in which folks list a few interesting people they follow on Fridays to help spread the word about people who are worth listening to.

Evan Prodromou, the founder and CEO of Status.net has built upon that tradition to create what he calls Federated Friday. Thanks to a bunch of protocols that allow websites to communicate with each other (slickly named the “Federated Social Web“) users of the Status.net service (including identi.ca) can follow the updates of users on a variety of social networking sites, including Google Buzz and Tumblr. Evan uses Federated Fridays to promote the Federated Social Web initiative as well as to bring attention to folks he thinks are worth following.

In the spirit of furthering open web standards and because I think it’s a really neat idea I’m going to jump on the Federated Friday bandwagon and share some of my more interesting FSW subscriptions. Here they are, in no particular order:

Posted on
by

Ada Lovelace Day

March 24th is Ada Lovelace day, which in the words of a good friend of mine, “[reminds] us all that ‘Girls can’t handle programming’ isn’t just wrong and stupid, it’s historically hilarious”.

It’s a day when many of us in the computer industry set aside some time to recognize our female colleagues and comrades who inspire us and help us along the way.

There are two women I’d like to recognize today for making my computing life all the more pleasant:

pleia2 Lyz Krumbach, along with the other members of the Ubuntu PA team, helped me to come out of my shell on IRC and make contributions to discussions as well as (meager, yet proud contributions) to the Ubuntu Project itself. She is a Linux sysadmin by day and devotes much of her spare time to the Ubuntu and Debian projects as a software packager, educator, and advocate.  Her name has been appearing in the blogs of many, on this day of recognition, in the Ubuntu and Debian projects and beyond, and I thought I’d take this opportunity to add my name to the list.
Emily It would be criminal of me to discuss the women in tech who have influenced my life without mentioning my blushing bride-to-be, Emily Oleksyk. We worked at the same company a few years ago where I was instantly impressed with her easygoing manner and confidence in a company full of stodgy old men (and a stodgy young me). And this was before we were even introduced! She’s ten times the programmer I’ll ever be and she’s even gracious enough to let me think she doesn’t know it.
I should also mention that Emily comes from an impressive tech pedigree. Her mother’s cousin, Isabelle French, was National President of The Society of Women Engineers from 1964-1966 and was actively involved in the organization long before and after. She was also the first woman to graduate with a degree in radio engineering from Tri-State College in Angola, IN in 1944. With someone like that to look up to it’s easy to see why Emily rocks as hard as she does.

Posted on
by
weather forecast

I must admit, I was a fool. Yesterday, I openly mocked SNOWPOCALYPSE ‘010 and now I have paid the price for my lack of vision.

Pennsylvania has been declared in a state of emergency. Flights in and out of Pittsburgh International Airport are grounded, public transit has halted in Pittsburgh, and an estimated 102,000 local homes are without power.

I awoke this morning to find my neighborhood bearing a closer resemblance to Hoth than Squirrel Hill, with trees bent under the weight of snow and drifts rising above knee-level.

Snow 11
The snow is over 20"

I took up my trusty snow shovel and went to work. Luckily we don’t have a driveway. We do, however, have a back deck that has seen better days and would be better off without the weight of 20″ of snow on it. That became Priority One.

Snow 5

With the back deck cleared off it was time to tackle the front walk.

Front Walk

I would have dug out my car, but someone had helpfully put up caution tape around it due to a downed power line. Maybe I’ll get to that tomorrow.

DANGER DO NOT ENTER
DANGER DO NOT ENTER

In the meantime, Emily and I are planning our snow fort.

Posted on
by

What’s this all about then?
This blog is little more than a toy and a dumping ground for whatever might be rattling around in my brain at the time. I make no promise of coherence, entertainment value, or relevance to anything. Ever.

Why should I care what you think?
You shouldn’t.

What is your current mood?
Frustrated 🙂

What is your biggest blogging-related pet peeve?
When lazy bloggers who can’t think of anything better to write about make their first post an FAQ.