JD made an interesting point here about a desire to have the ability to create what I will call a new "project space" at will; a place where we can discuss, document, brainstorm, and implement a programming idea. The idea has merit and it brings to mind a question of what [web] tools are needed for such things? A wiki? A forum? A blog? A run-of-the-mill CMS? I've tried to do this stuff before and invariably things break, and I'd like to figure out why and what to do about it.

The Wiki

The wiki is a great place to brainstorm ideas and document direction. Beyond this I don't know what it has to offer. It's a terrible medium for discussion and it's not ideal for one-way communication "from on high", so for "immutable" docs a wiki is a bad idea.

The Forum

This is a great place for discussions and to hash out the merits of feature x vs feature y. The problem with forums, however, is once the topic thread leaves the front page it's a dead topic no matter how eloquent. Forums are great for ephemeral conversations and hashing things out, but they beg for someone to do a "formal writeup" after the fact. Forums make terrible reference material.

The Blog

To be honest I'm not even sure how this could be useful to a development team. It has all the drawbacks of a form and the wiki but none of the gain. And yet it is a tool for getting information out. Does it even apply in a development environment?

The CMS

This one can work for those immutable documents (but then how is this not a wiki with security?). This gives a person(s) the ability to push out those few settled upon docs, but again, isn't this premature in a development environment? Isn't this the tool to use to distribute the software and have press releases and stuff?

The Trac-like Thing

I'm not a major fan of Trac; it doesn't work for me all that well. But the software idea of having a shared list of "action items" and bugs, along with milestones, goals, and deadlines could be handy. I'm not sure to what degree but it could be handy. Now having a browsable repository . . . that's not too shabby either, especially if it displayed the commit logs in a meaningful way.

The Main Question

What things are needed in order to create a project space? Right now I like having a forum (in which only the invited devs can access) and a wiki. Are there other components? Is there a way to join these two into one package (a wiki/forum combo)? Thoughts? Ideas? Flames?

Call me crazy because I don't actually think using this proposed software would be all that much fun, but it might make for an interesting RoR project. Here's the idea:

A person creates a project (it has some intro text and all that malarky) and invites people to join it. Each person who joins will participate. A moderator (not necessarily the owner) will arrange all the participants in an order. After a person makes a post an email will be sent to the next person in line. They will then have x number of (units of time) to accept or decline their turn. If they accept they have a deadline. Should they decline or pass either deadline the turn will progress down the list. This will continue until such time as the project creator determines the project is "done" and "closes" it.

I'm sure I've seen of sites doing something like this, but this would be free-form, not a GM-led anything, and more of a turn based campfire story. You wouldn't play a role, you wouldn't just write one character, when it's your turn it's your story, write as much as you want. Sort of like "Once Upon a Time" without the cards or the interruption rules.

What do you think?

No two geeks are alike right? And yet it seems we have so few choices in our geekdom as it relates to computers. Sure, you can argue that we've got all kinds of choices, but I'm going to factor down all the choices to just a few, for as I see it there are some choices that change the playing field. I will also make an assumption for the purpose of this issue that all geeks are in some way enthusiasts, and all computer geeks are computer enthusiasts to one degree or another; the degree to which I want to restrict myself is to stay away from hardware engineering, for they are a different breed of geek. This leaves me to ask, what drives computer enthusiasm today? The underlying question really should be this: why are some geeks enthusiastic over their favorite OS? Maybe even more perplexing to me: why does anyone get excited about Windows?

Maybe the question isn't even a valid question, because when I think of computer enthusiasts I think of people whose hobbies (or hobby) includes computers. I'm only assuming geeks with computer hobbies span all the Great OSes, but is that a valid assumption? I know from personal experience that I used to be a DOS geek, and enjoyed making it do things I wanted, things that were against its nature (so to speak). I switched to Linux instead of embracing Windows '95, and for many years that was a hobby of mine. Now I'm using OSX with the same hobbiest/enthusiast attitude. But what about Windows? Can anyone actually be enthusiastic about Windows? I know gamers are excited about the games they play, but do they really care if it's Windows (my argument being they care more about the game than about the features of the OS underneath, thus as long as they can play their games they don't care if it's Windows or TrapDoor2010).

I know plenty of people who spend their time learning and using Windows, but I cannot think of one person who does that apart from some underlying business motive. Windows is so prevalent knowing it will open many employment opportunities, but that doesn't mean you are enthusiastic about it.

Is there a case for Windows? Why do we like what we like? Why are we enthusiastic about our OS of choice?

So I got the redesign of the blog done a while ago, and I am pleased with its appearance now. There was one final thing I was not happy with, the URLs. I didn't like the 000100.html links as they didn't really say anything. That's easy enough to change, MT has some publish settings that govern how your templates get named into the file system, the hard part was keeping the old URLs around but redirecting them to the new location, and not having to figure that all out by hand. With 300+ entries, plus categories and monthly archives, I wanted an easy way to create the Apache Redirect rules.

I'm not a fan of MT's license, but I have to say I am a fan of their software. They are they only blog CMS that I know of that lets me create arbitrary templates at arbitrary times. Armed with this seemingly insignificant feature I had MT create the Redirect rules for me! It only got one section wrong (the categories) but I could fix them all by hand. In no time at all I had all my rules for a permanent redirect from my old URLs to my new ones.

Yeah, so I'm a little geeky, and I was nearly ecstatic when I discovered I could use an MT template to do my dirty work for me.

[composed and posted with ecto]

So I did what MacZot told me to do and I blogged about SubEthaEdit. Later that night I noticed it had dived below $0.00 and the message on the front page said the first 3,000 people to send an email would get a free registration. Not able to find the original agreement for the bloggers I thought I might have misunderstood it, so I sent the email. Last night JD told me he got his license in his junk mail box, and lo and behold I had mine. This morning, on a hunch, I checked my email and I had a second one.

To make a long story short I have a licensed copy on my laptop and Holly now has one on her laptop. Oh happy days.

My new 300GB drive arrived today, and in a strange show of diligence I installed the drive. I not only installed it, but this time I attached some drive rails and mounted in one of my bays; this was done to maximize airflow around the drive on the chance that the old drive died due to head. I also took a risk and plugged in my 200GB drive, the first one to fail. The machine booted, the drives are active, /dev/hdb1 was formatted, /dev/hdd1 (the 200GB drive) is mounted, and I am recovering data from 4 months ago!

I'm still not sure how /dev/hdd1 will hold up, so I hesitate to put the spurs to it, and I'm still not sure how I may or may not change my current anime habits. But as of right now I have 580GB of functioning storage space on my own personal server. This was a good night.

[composed and posted with ecto]

H.P. Lovecraft's works were never renewed. Which was a requirement prior to the Sonny Bono Act.

This means Lovecraft's works should now be in the public domain.

With that in mind, sites like Complete works of H.P. Lovecraft have started making his works available.

The lack of action by Arkham Press seems to further justify the belief that the works have moved into the PD.

The flaw in all of this is that the above statements refer to English and Canadian copyright law (Were H.P. Lovecraft's works are PD). I'm not really sure about the US copyright law, which we all know sucks.

Public domain at wikipedia

update:

This seems to make a very strong legal argument that the bulk of H.P.'s works are indeed PD.
Which may be why Arkham House hasn't sued anyone.

Another list of H.P.'s works which are ready to read (and not in the ever suspicious PDF format).

My not-yet-two-month-old 300GB drive is officially dead. Fdisk cannot see it, fsck doesn't work on it, and all the data is lost. How do you backup a 300GB hard drive on a home budget? I didn't lose any important data, but I will lose some time over this . . . time spent taking the drive out, shipping it off, and replacing it. I did lose data, data that I probably won't replace.

I have been thinking about this since I first found out that my HD had some problems. The data I lost was in the legal grey zone, stuff that could get me into trouble. With all my moral preaching on subjects of ethical and legal things my fansub “collection” has been weighing heavy upon my soul. I have access to anime on DVD, and anime itself doesn't provide me with anything I need, just stuff I want, and I have enough wants that I probably won't miss it so terribly much if I drop out of the scene.

As I contemplate these things I'm still saddened that I have to part with a source of joy like this. Who knows, maybe I will dodge a bullet. Maybe I will find better, dare I say it, healthier things to do during my lunch break. Maybe I will get a different job where watching anime at lunch won't really work. In the end, what have I lost, but a pursuit and a hobby that brought me some joy. (There's some irony in that)

[composed and posted with ecto]

Rather than blast ya'll in SILC with a list of sites I think are interesting enough that ya'll might enjoy them as well I'll archive them here. After all, we can't all be expected to look at every link that comes through, especially when I have so many to share.

How to Write a Better Weblog: A List Apart:
I have not read this yet, but in skimming the headings it appears that it might actually have some good thought behind it, good enough at least to skim it and mull it over (perhaps).

Dialog by Episode - Firefly-Serenity Chinese Pinyinary:
This little gem already came in handy for me. This purports to be a lexicon of all the non-English dialog in the Firefly series along with the translation! I cannot gauge it's veracity but when I read the dialog for a recently viewed episode it seemed to make good contextual sense.

9rules network » A content network that happens to have blogs in it:
This is supposed to be a site that aggregates other blogs considered to be examples of good writing. From what I gather it's an attempt to raise the literary quality of blogs. With that said there might actually be some good content linked in this network.

PS3Blog.net:
“PS3Blog.net: PS3 news and views. A little Xbox 360 and Revolution dabbling may occur.” I have not read through the posts, but it still could be interesting, for a while anyway.

The Traveling Guys:
I only link this because of the design. This is one pretty website. Considering we are all geeks and dabble in design I thought we might appreciate a little inspiration here and there.

Overcaffeinated:
This is another really pretty site, well laid out, and designed such that it is easy to read. The palette is different enough to make me take notice (Holly too).

ThinkGeek :: Pirate Mug:
In case you missed it this has got to be the best coffee mug around. My only question is, do coffee and rum go well together matey?

ThinkGeek :: Mind Molester:
It seems to me this could be easily constructed, and something I expect I'll read about in JD's blog, but still, I love the idea. Insert evil cackle here.

/* Position Is Everything */ Modern browser bugs explained in detail!:
This has some rather “bizzare” and advanced CSS happening, as well as documenting how it breaks on each browser and some workarounds. I'm going to keep my eye on this site (if I remember to).

That does it. Aren't you glad I didn't flood the SILC channel with all this stuff?

[composed and posted with ecto]

My first impressions of Tiger: I LOVE the dashboard! Spotlight rocks!

I finally got the wifely permission to buy not only Tiger but a 256MB RAM upgrade. I'm in super-happy land. Combine this with a more relaxed wife (due to no papers to grade) this has been probably the best day I have had in a long time.

[composed and posted with ecto]