Archive for June 2005

Marriage, AirJamScam

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I spent last weekend in Jamaica for Edward Loper‘s wedding to Jee Bang.

Jamaica

Edward and I were best friends starting in kindergarten, until we both went off to MIT and mysteriously fell out of contact (a mystery I won’t explain here).

Uxoriousness / maritusiousness The wedding was beautiful. I never expected Ed to be the first of my lifelong friends to get married. He and I programmed together starting around age 7, and we even started a software company (“C-Soft”) when we were 14. I still have a dozen notebooks full of video game design notes we made together (every programmer has these somewhere).

Nat and Ed

On another note, Air Jamaica is running a scam of selling “non-stop” flights from Boston to Montego Bay, and then stopping in Philadelphia. These flights consistently arrive 2-3.5 hours late. You decide to fly Air Jamaica and pay extra for the convenience of flying nonstop, and then they make you pass through immigration and customs in Philadelphia.

An Air Jamaica employee in Montego Bay told me she couldn’t remember the last time the flight actually flew non-stop. On the way back, the Philadelphia – Boston leg was populated by 65 pissed-off passengers, arriving at 1:30am instead of 10pm like they expected.

To make matters infinitely worse for me, on the way back an angry and inattentive flight attendant dropped several rum bottles on my head out of the overhead bin, and actually gave me a concussion. It hurt like hell, but I didn’t know I was concussed until the next day, having dinner outside with Phil Schwan, I felt dizzy and every time a bird flew by I completely lost my train of thought. And I spent about half the week flying off half-cocked at people over email (sorry guys).

I don’t think I’d be quite as annoyed, but I didn’t even get an apology from this she-beast. When I yelled “FUCK! WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?” she rolled her eyes and scolded me not to put my bottles in the overhead bin. “They weren’t my bottles!”

So, if anyone knows of a good personal injury lawyer, let me know. AirJamScam is gonna pay.

30 June 2005

OSS Projects Talk

Last Friday Miguel and I gave a talk to the Massachusetts Software Council about how to create a successful open source project. Our slides are here, and the audio is here. If you only have a little time, you might listen to the first ten minutes, in which I tell the story of what I think is the earliest example of an open source-style project. Maybe someone knows of an earlier example?

The audio cuts out briefly around slide 11, naturally when I’m making what I consider to be one of the most interesting points. The point I’m making is that you can’t just create an open source project and say “come help out!” and expect a flood of contributors. The smart move is to build what Tim O’Reilly calls an “architecture of participation.” Design the software so that there’s an easy and obvious place for people to contribute, in small, self-contained morsels. Projects that have done this successfully include xscreensaver, Eclipse with its plugin architecture, and the svg flags project.

At the end of the presentation, I talk about Hula a little bit.

28 June 2005

Raw files needed

Larry Ewing is working on adding raw file support to F-Spot so that Linux will have a high-quality photo management tool for professionals.

In order to test the raw format support he’s written, he needs to build a library of raw files from various cameras. He particularly needs raw format photos from Kodak, Olympus and other non-Canon/Nikon cameras, as they are harder to find.

So, please mail raw format photos to Larry’s special gmail account.

20 June 2005

64 shopping days left till Nat’s next birthday

There’s still time!

10 June 2005

Planet Hula

The various Hula contributors now have an aggregator for their blogs. Also see Ryan Collier‘s initial storyboards for the calendar user interface.

We are also offering accounts on a live Hula server running daily snapshots of the code. Mail Greg Patterson if you want an account.

10 June 2005

You’re a real asshole, Superman

Have you ever noticed how in superhero stories, the villains are always laying these grand, intricate plans, and the heros are always trying to sabotage them?

Superheros don’t actually do anything cool, they just stop uncool things from happening.

It’s not clear whether it’s creativity or organizational skills they lack.

In any case, you’ve got to hand it to the bad guys for taking the initiative.

9 June 2005