The Flow of Consciousness

Happy New Year!

I’m going to share my professional goals for 2008 with you, interested reader, but before I do so, I need to revisit last year’s list.

• Graduate
  • Mission accomplished. I graduated in May with a Bachelors’ Degree in Computer Science and a minor in Writing, focusing on journalism.
• Go to grad school.
  • I’ve got one semester remaining at Robert Morris University before I finish my Masters’ Degree in Business Education, and another year before I finish the teachers’ certification.
• Keep writing
  • I haven’t written as much as I would have liked, but I did keep momentum on this blog. Actually, I’ve been doing more reading than writing, mostly on political things. I read Lew Rockwell columns daily and find myself on Wikipedia and other sites researching politics. I’ve written a number of letters to my senators and congresspeople regarding various bills and whatnot.
  • I’m still writing for ThinkComputers.org and other sites operated by Bob Buskirk. I’m going to CES under the ThinkComputers banner on Sunday.
  • Obsidian and I got BIOS LEVEL off the ground, and we’ve had a lot of traffic as a result of the review of the OLPC XO and the articles on uShare and the Xbox 360 and extending uShare.
• Keep coding
  • I did not code as much as I would have liked. I worked heavily on a web site design one night this month, but even then it was just modifying someone else’s design and implementing a few small WordPress plugins. I did, however, learn a lot about MVC from Jon, so I hope to use that this year. Hopefully, Jon and Zack and I will get back into development when we work on our replacement for Autonomous LAN Party, a once-great GPL project which recently went Qt-licensed and is a terrible mess of coupled and incohesive code.
• Learn more Esperanto and German
  • My Esperanto vocabulary is growing, and I’ve joined Esperanto-USA, a group which fosters Esperanto advocacy in the United States. As for German, I’ve picked up a little bit here and there. I’m not able to speak much of it, but I can read a little. I may be headed to Germany, Norway, or Sweden for a part of my student teaching in May 2009, so I’m sure that I’ll pick up even more if that becomes a reality.

Now, this year’s list.

• Keep writing
  • I love writing for ThinkComputers and BIOS LEVEL. I’d like to get back into fiction writing, but we’ll see where that goes. I’ve also had a little bit of interest in playwriting, but I’ll have to hold off on that until I make a Debian package of Celtx, an open-source screen/play-writing package.
• Get move involved in the open source community
  • I recently joined the ubiquity team for Ubuntu. Ubiquity is the live CD’s installer tool. I don’t like it very much, mostly because of its network usage and silly crashes without decent error messages. I’ve also said that I’d package a few things (celtx, firefox-sqlitemanager). I’ve been using Ubuntu nearly full-time since the end of October—I never realized the awesomeness of the product which I’ve been pushing for years.
  • Hopefully, Jon, Zack, and I will resume work on the Pittco LAN Administration System, which will be open-sourced.
• Improve social networking
  • CES will be a great opportunity for me to network within the computer and consumer electronics field. While I don’t intend to make my career in this field, I do plan to keep writing about it and maintain my enthusiasm for it. Perhaps if teaching isn’t what I thought it would be, I could make it my career.
  • Grad classes at RMU have built my professional educator network, and I’m sure it will continue to grow as I meet more people.
  • Unfortunately, the New Castle/Youngstown area isn’t wonderful for this, so I may consider moving toward Pittsburgh if I can find a roommate or a job which pays enough for me to afford it without affecting my graduate studies.
• Lose weight
  • I lost 30 pounds in the spring of 2006. I’ve regained 10 of that, and I hope to lose 25 this spring, putting me at an even 200 pounds. Living at home hasn’t helped, but I’ve advised my parents of my wish to lose weight, and they pledged their help.
• Read more
• I need to read more often. I have a book list longer than I’d like to admit.

ScribeMedia has an interview with Yves Behar of the fuseproject. Behar talks about the OLPC and its abilities, being sure to clarify the difference between “cheap” as in low-quality/valueless and “cheap” as in inexpensive and valuable.

Yves Behar on the OLPC

I’ve completed my review of the OLPC XO laptop I received through the Give One Get One program.

It’s live on BIOSLEVEL.com and has been submitted to a number of social bookmarking sites, forums, and affiliate news sites.

Check it out! OLPC XO laptop review at BIOSLEVEL.

For Digg users: One Laptop Per Child XO Laptop from Give one Get One arrives.

For Newsvine users: One Laptop Per Child XO Laptop from Give one Get One arrives.

Here’s a teaser video:

I apologize for the Quicktime; I’m a fan of Flash embeds, but for some reason the Flash version of this video doesn’t function correctly.

I received today my OLPC XO, the laptop at the heart of the One Laptop Per Child project. I purchased it through the Give One Get One program.

It’s amazing, simply put.

I’m working on a review for BIOS Level and ThinkComputers, and will publish it later tonight.

I participated in the Give One Get One program earlier today. For $399 + shipping, I get an OLPC XO laptop and finance one for a child who would not otherwise be able to experience a computer.

If I, a virtually unemployed grad student, can afford to donate to this cause, I’m sure moguls such as John Chow and Shoemoney can afford to, as well.

Imagine if every employed computer enthusiast could find it in their budget this holiday season to participate in this program. Imagine the number of children who would benefit from this program and experience something of which they’ve never even dreamed, yet something with which we komputeristoj interact daily and of which we may own a multitude. $199 of the $424 total cost is tax-deductible, so that could help come April 15.

So, go, and donate to the OLPC project via Give One Get One.

Update: I want to thank John Chow for accepting my challenge by participating in G1G1 and posting about it on his blog, which has an immense readership. John is an incredible authority on search engine optimization and making money online.