Punderings

Well, at least to those of you living in Suffolk county, which is the only place it’s officially celebrated. Huh – I didn’t realize that Cambridge and Somerville schools also have it off!

• Wikipedia: a general reference
• Boston 1775: the real history behind Evacuation day
• Commonwealth of Massachusetts Legal Holiday Calendar

HT2UH.

It astounds me that there’s a lengthy NYT article on Hadoop – clearly with plenty of research, given the different companies and people involved – about an Apache project that never once mentions the ASF or includes the word “Apache” in it.

I sure wish the NYT technology writers would learn how to appropriately refer to ASF projects, just like any other company’s trademarked names, and call it “Apache Hadoop” at least once.

Sigh. Guess I’ll need to work with the PRC (and find time around ApacheCon) to finish writing and finalizing the ASF’s trademark attribution guidelines sooner rather than later.

Hey – congrats to Hadoop on scoring prime coverage. Did anyone check the logs to see if you got a lot of new downloads or server hits today? Oh, wait – the article doesn’t link to the project at all. Ooops!

Too many interesting tabs open in FF right now to not link them.

• Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable How the printing press – and the internet – change the world. Best quote: “If you can’t trust Aristotle, who can you trust?”
• Geir’s most recent perspective on the problems Sun is causing with TCKs. This is an important issue for people who care about Java licensing (I know, a number of you are laughing about caring about that), and unfortunately a confusing one. Now I’m trying to remember if I’m covered under any NDAs, or if I could write my own scathing article about it. Oh, it all started here.
• A few select quotes about the evolution of HTML specs. Here, 99% of the world doesn’t care; but if you do care, Sam’s laconic recounting of how the specs got here is a key source.
• Open source advocate gets beaten up. This is just plain wrong. I really don’t care about religious arguments (context: GPL vs AL vs proprietary, etc.) that color the posting and a lot of the comments. But punching someone for working for a charity that helps kids? Inexcuseable.
• Irish Stormtroopers. Hey, the list needed some humor! Plus, a neighbor used the Imperial March from Star Wars over the weekend, and I needed my stormtrooper fix. Too bad not everyone is allowed to participate in the parade.

A couple of unusual things have happened in the past two days which make me suspicious that there’s an imbalance in the force. That, or I’m just stressed and tired from overbusy $dayjob work, ApacheCon planning, and social events coming at the same time.

• The Lexington (MA) Stop & Shop has no smoked salmon. OK, they have a little: two brands, one of which is out of stock and the other had 3 four oz. packages left. How can a major Lexington Stop & Shop not have smoked salmon to go with my bagels?
• When googling “zeff photo coupon belmont, ma”, one of the top 10 hits was to the Star Bulletin, the online version of a Hawaiian newspaper. How in the world did a listing for a local Belmont, MA photo store get into a newspaper in Hawaii? Even so, why would it be relevant?
• Trying to choose between a super-compact point-and-shoot camera with at least a 5x zoom lens, it turns out that none of the local camera shops carry the camera I think I want, the Sony DSC-T500. Sigh. And of the other models I’d consider – the Nikon S60 and one of the ELPH’s – no camera shop nearby has both models in stock to see in person.

Color me curious that something odd is going on today.

I just had a couple of brainstorms for really witty t-shirts – where should I get them printed? I have my ASFSwag CafePress store, although they’re expensive and not good for bulk orders. When I have time – probably over ApacheCon – I’ll setup at least basic stores on Zazzle as well, to give people the option.

But for bulk orders – the occasional funny shirt or community message that I want to spread around – where I’m willing to front some money for shirts – where do people go? Whurley pointed me to the seemingly excellent Sanctuary Printshop, but being in Texas is not so good for quick delivery of a big box of 50 shirts. Anyplace local? (Where local is defined as inside of 495).

Oh, and I have a new blog: in case you don’t read me on the upgraded Planet Apache, you should go see Community Over Code as well for thoughts about community, and especially about ApacheCon Europe 2009.

.. how many new twitter followers have you gained today after your beautiful essay about not using Twitter?

Welcome to http://planet.apache.org/committers/, your new Planet Apache. Many thanks to Sam Ruby, Joes4, and the infra@ folk who twiddled the appropriate bits.

It’s amazing what can happen once you decide to do it. Right now, I’m going to go to sleep. G’nite!