Advogato blog for duff

29 Jan 2001

Mon, 29 Jan 2001 22:12:54 GMT

Well, I haven't written anything here in a while, but since I have these fleeting thoughts all the time, I decided that I might as well put them here rather than forgetting them :-)

Today I heard on the radio about a new song from Alice Cooper called something like "The Little Things" (I don't remember the exact title). They interviewed Alice and asked him what the song was about and he said he was trying to capture the idea that it's the little things that piss people off (the example he used was when someone cuts you off in traffic , you get all pissed off and want to kill them) while the big things go relatively ignored (global polution for instance)

I think Alice Cooper is on the money about society. Many people are just selfish and ignorant and do not take responsibility for themselves. People get angry when cut off because an injustice was done to them. Forget that people make mistakes and that sometimes it's not even their fault. Forget that there are bigger problems in the world that affect us all. Forget this world doesn't need anymore anger or violence.

To paraphrase Larry Wall (who was probably paraphrasing someone else), "Be strict in your actions, but liberal in your reactions"

26 May 2000

Fri, 26 May 2000 15:47:22 GMT

I was just looking at shapr's diary entries regarding his Bicycle Repair Man project and it occurs to me that there should be another relationship type between people and projects: Commentor (or is that Commentator?)

The category would be for people who normally go in the "special thanks" section of a book. People who don't necessarily contribute code, but give lots of ideas and insight. I guess they would be contributors (since they contribute ideas), but my impression of contributor is contributing code.

All you people who read recent diary entries ... feel free to comment :-)

7 Apr 2000

Fri, 7 Apr 2000 19:52:05 GMT

So I check advogato this morning to find that I'm suddenly a Journeyer. How did this happen? Wish I could say. I have 1 Dimwit, 2 Apprentice and 1 Journeyer certifications ... How that translates to Journeyer is beyond me. I guess I'll have to read the trust metric document again.

In reading the recent flurry of posts in response to "Meta", I think I have to agree with the certification titles need to be changed. Here's what I like (with associated numeric ranking):

Guru 10
Developer 5
Apprentice 3
User 1
Troll -1
Wacko -3
Inept -5
Anti-Guru -10

Anti-Gurus are people who actively try to destroy the free software community.

Why does advogato suddenly seem like a big neural net project?

7 Apr 2000

Fri, 7 Apr 2000 02:50:56 GMT

I just certified StevenRainwater as a Journeyer.

On what did I base this decision? He seems to be On The Road as a Lead Developer in an OSS project and a Contributor for mod_virqule. That's assuming I can take him for his word. (It may be naive, but I'm a trusting soul ;-)

Oh! And this bug in Preview is annoying. I posted it as a reply to an article as that's where I noticed the problem. I just did a Preview of this diary entry and it doesn't seem to have the problem. How odd. I would have thought that they would use the same code for both operations as they are nearly identical.

ARGH! I just noticed another Preview bug (at least for diary entries). If I screw up the HTML in this diary entry it hoses the whole page. You'd think that with the plethora of HTML parsers out there and since only a very small subset of HTML is accepted in these entries that the text could be validated before Preview.

5 Apr 2000

Wed, 5 Apr 2000 14:45:39 GMT

It appears that a few people have certified me. I guess that makes me certifiable. :-)

lilo seems to have the same conundrum as I with regard to certification. And kelly thinks I'm a Dimwit (no, kelly, I didn't take it personally) but also thinks that there's no difference between Dimwit and Master. Maybe I should certify myself as a Master.

And that's another thing ... why do people certify themselves? I think some sort of negative bias should be instituted for self-certification because you can't trust what people say about themselves.

5 Apr 2000

Wed, 5 Apr 2000 01:12:10 GMT

Today is my first day using advogato. It's neat.

I really don't think this ranking system ... excuse me ... "certification system" is really a useful metric of anything.

BTW, where do I fall in the ranking?

I have all of the skills necessary to participate in an OSS project, I just haven't because of other things in my life right now. Therefore I'm not an Apprentice.
I haven't made any contributions to OSS other than a few minor comments here and there on various mailing lists. Therefore I'm not a Journeyer.
I'm not the lead in any OSS project. Therefore I'm not a Master
I'm not a dimwit. Therefore I'm not a Dimwit :-)

I guess the current entry is accurate. I'm an Observer But we'll see what other people have to say about me. That is ... if anyone says anything about me.