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Twins Game

For my first day of vacation, I took Alex and Zoe to the Twins game at the Metrodome. It was Alex’s first Twins game, and Zoe’s first baseball game as we watched the Twins take on the Blue Jays. We had the use of a suite, just to the left behind home plate, with a gorgeous view of the field:

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Zoe and Alex seemed to have fun, Zoe enjoyed being able to run around the suite, and both kids enjoyed all the foods and snacks.

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(My batteries were low, so I don’t think the flash worked).

After the baseball strike in the early 90’s, I swore off all baseball. It wasn’t until last year where I started to have an interest again, mostly due to the Twins being such a quality organization, both in management and the players. They play baseball as it was meant to be played, as a team, without ego, and truly appear to have fun. That has translated in to 4 AL Central Division championships in the last 5 years, and I’ve found myself watching a lot of games this year. It doesn’t change the fact the Metrodome is a terrible baseball experience – baseball should always be played outdoors!

The game started out rough, with Frank Thomas basting a 3 run homer in the first inning to give the Blue Jays a 4 – 0 lead. It was Frank Thomas’ 500th home run, as he became only the 21st player in MLB history to achieve that milestone, and the Twins fans rewarded him with a standing ovation. The Twins scraped an clawed led by Torii Hunter’s two home runs to take the lead with a nice come from behind win.

More photos (including Zoe’s new fake smile she’s using and the temporary tattoo we got at the game) in my Flickr set.

Reno vs. ACLU

Today is the 10th anniversary of the landmark Reno vs. ACLU decision, which set the course for free speech on the internet.

From the EFF:

Tuesday marks the ten year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Reno v. ACLU, which recognized that free speech on the Internet merits the highest standards of Constitutional protection. EFF participated as both plaintiff and co-counsel in the case, which successfully challenged the online censorship provisions of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) of 1996. The Court’s decision — its first involving the Internet — was issued on June 26, 1997.

The CDA fight was one of the first big rallying points for online freedom. When the law passed, thousands of websites turned their backgrounds black in protest. EFF launched its “blue ribbon” campaign and millions of websites around the world joined in support of free speech online. Even today, you can find the blue ribbon throughout the Web.

The Blue Ribbon campaign was the first introduction I had to the EFF – I remember the day the web turned black to fight the CDA, and I remember putting a Blue Ribbon on one of the first very basic websites I created.

Ten years later, I am still a believer and supporter of the EFF – wearing their swag, blogging their causes, and supporting them financially by having become a Pioneer level contributor for the last 5 years.

The EFF supports many different worthy causes, including: fighting for free speech, fair use (including fighting the broadcast flag), illegal spying, and anonymity.

Thanks to all the fine folks at the EFF for all their hard work.

ChicagoBarcamp Day 2 Recap

After a handful of hours sleep, we made it back to BarcampChicago on Sunday.

The crowd had definitely thinned out compared to Sunday, but there were still quite a number of folks there.

Ken’s first talk on installing a MythTV appliance was great. There is so much buzz and interest in the community around virtualization and appliances, and Ken’s talk and the live demo of installing the appliance went over well.

After a brief juggling of the schedule, and a little swearing at the projectors, Ken kicked off the Foresight presentation. We had put the presentation together on Saturday, and I’ll get a copy posted to the website this week. I was mostly watching the crowd’s reaction and listening to questions. I want to take a snapshot of the current presentation, and then work on version 2. There were lots of questions about Conary, and later, rPath, that would be good to address in the next version. The presentation provides an overview of why Foresight was created and it’s purpose, an overview of the innovative applications included, and where Foresight is headed in the future.

A brief while later, we had a small get together on kicking off the first US based GNOME Usergroup in Chicago. Kevin Hariss did a great job in sharing his passion for GNOME, and shared some ideas on what a GNOME Usergroup could hope to accomplish, and next steps for the group. I’ll throw up a post in the next day or too with some additional details and the meeting notes.

Shortly after that, I took off, grabbed a Chicago style hot dog at a local restaurant, and took the train to O’Hare where I promptly took a nap on the flight home.

A big shout out to the Chicago BarCamp organizers, the event was a blast. I’ve finished uploading the photos I took from Saturday and Sunday, here’s the set on Flickr. A big thanks to Kevin for hosting Ken and I, and thanks to Ken and Kevin for all the great Foresight discussion. I was excited about Foresight before, and now I can’t even put it into words.

Happy Birthday Bladerunner

Today is the 25th anniversary of Bladerunner. To celebrate, I’m off to watch the movie on the big TV with my laptop in tow to get some work done.

I was only 9 when this was released, but I still vividly remember seeing the re-release in 1992 at the Oriental Theater in Milwaukee when the Director’s Cut was released. I love everything about this movie, and can’t wait for the box set later this year.

I’m still working my way through the Library of America collection of Philip K. Dick novels. I’ve read The Man in the High Castle and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch so far. I’m looking forward to Ubik and re-reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the story Bladerunner is based on.

Quake Wars Update

I’m standing in Chicago last night (just after eating at a Chicago-style hot dog place, one of my favorite things to eat, but I digress) waiting for the train to take me to the airport when I get a call from a good friend informing me that Quake Wars beta keys were available.

Linux Games has an update from Timothee Besset at iD regarding the Linux client and lack of beta:

I don’t want to commit to any schedule for the ETQW Linux client at this point. Most of my time is spent working on the game itself, on the Linux dedicated server and on the network infrastructure.

Once those things wind down (in the upcoming weeks) I will start working specifically on the client. But fear not, ATI and NVidia have expressed interest in getting a Linux client early, so they can review how it performs and get their drivers adjusted. When we release, we’ll release a high quality product, just like we do on Windows.

In any case, don’t expect to find Linux binaries on the retail DVD. It’s hard enough for everyone to get gold masters done, there are enough things to check and worry about, I will not place additional strain on the procedure by trying to squeeze my additional set of files on there.

I have my key, looks like I’ll have play the beta at a buddies house for now. September can’t come fast enough for when I can play at home.

GNOME Journal

The latest GNOME Journal was published today. Articles include:

  • Fun with Gstreamer Audio Effects
  • Exercising Your Application With Accerciser
  • GNOME.conf.au 2007 Wrap-up

And most importantly, my first contribution GNOME Journal,

Creating the GNOME 2.18 Live Media: An interview with Ken VanDine. Hopefully, this will be the first of many articles I hope to write in the future.

I don’t know if I’ve ever told this story, but I first met Ken last February when I was trying to figure out how to build a new GNOME LiveCD. Dave Neary pointed me at Ken at one point, who was already working on this as well. After talking to Ken, he was lightyears ahead of my struggles as he was using the rPath toolset, which enabled him to quickly publish a GNOME 2.18 LiveCD. I helped out with the easy stuff, editing the LGO pages for Live Media, and the PGO page which was later committed.

Ken was so welcoming to the help, I gave Foresight Linux a try as he is the founder and lead developer. I had just installed it when I started the interview, and by the time the interview was done a month later, I was helping out Foresight with docs and website updates and other little stuff.

Three or four months later here we are, and I’m still going strong helping out, and I enjoy the Foresight community as much today as the first time I asked a question in IRC. I hope you enjoy the article as much as I enjoyed working with Ken writing it.

Barcamp Chicago Day 2

We’re back at Barcamp as of just after noon after 4 hours of sleep. We’re surprisingly awake and ready to go. We had a small hicuup trying to download the images needed for today’s Conary talk, but SpecialKevin bailed us out.

Ken is on in 10 minutes – the first talk is on Conary, and he will be demonstrating a MythTV appliance. (I’m so excited – I’m on vacation as of Thursday, and one of my projects over vacation is to get my MythTV box up and running finally. The timing of this talk couldn’t be better!)

Ken then continues on for another hour at 2:00 CST with the Foresight presentation. The day’s a little in flux, so we might push it back as people are still trickling in (we were up late….). And then at 3, the first US based GNOME usergroup meeting, a brainstorming session with SpecialKevin.

More to come soon!