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.

I’ll be attending Ohio Linuxfest in Columbus this weekend with Zack, Jon, and others. I’ll be taking pictures and posting a review/synopsis of the event throughout the weekend on the BIOS_LEVEL blog and at my blog, The Flow of Consciousness. Next week, I’ll combine the posts for an article at BIOS_LEVEL. Dave Grega, a Pittco regular, will be speaking on usability during the event, so I’m excited to hear what he’s researched.

I read a very informational article on the differences between and the logic behind A4 and US Letter paper sizes. The A series of paper is based on the ratio of 1:sqrt(2), or 1:1.414, as a paper with dimensions of that ratio can be folded in half length-wise and the resulting size retains the ratio. The US series does not keep its ratio, but skips between sizes.

From TFA:

Which raises the question, why the difference at all? If both sizes are arbitrary, why bother with maintaining a difference. The answers are long and involved, and mostly outside the scope of this article. At the core, however, it comes down to one thing: A4 isn’t an arbitrary size.

I stumbled upon (probably via Digg) an article on WikiHow regarding things to remember in order to avoid colloquial (informal) writing.

• Know the meaning of colloquialism.
• Understand basic English punctuation.
• Avoid using common colloquial words/expressions (list at the end of the article).
• Avoid using “filler” words.
• Avoid contractions.
• Limit your use of subjective pronouns.
• Avoid splitting infinitives.
• Avoid ending your sentences with a preposition.
• Avoid clichés.

Of those items, I probably have the most difficulty avoiding clichés, especially when I’m writing an editorial for The Holcad. Clichés are more acceptable in editorials because similes and metaphors add flavor when one must write at an elementary school level, but it is still better to avoid them when possible.

[Read more]

George Orwell was not only one of the greatest opponents of totalitarianism in the twentieth century, but one of the greatest writers, as well.

In his book, Politics and the English Language, Orwell outlined a twelve tips for writers. These six questions should be asked of every sentence the writer scribes:

1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
5. Could I put it more shortly?
6. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

He then adds six maxims to remember:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Courtesy of WritingClasses.com.

The Probabilist wrote an article about the 10 most misspelled words in blogs, or, rather misused words.

From the article:

1. Your – You’re
2. Then – Than
3. Its – it’s
4. To – Too – Two
5. Were – Where – We’re
6. There – Their – They’re
7. A – An – And
8. Off – Of
9. Here – Hear
10. Lose – Loose

In the comments, others mention "Alot – A lot" and usage of the possessive "’s" and the contraction of "is".

Another one I see often is "ahold", which should be "a hold".

JD tagged me. Ready? Go.

• Graduate.
• Key to success, here. The only people who could keep me from graduating are Dr. Shaffer and Dr. Hickman, who are teaching Capstone and Calculus, respectively. Passing capstone is a matter of simply doing my project, and passing calculus is a matter of getting enough people to help me even though I’m mildly terrified of it.
• Go to grad school.
• I want to get my M.S. in Business Education ASAP. Robert Morris, Bloomsburg, Gwynedd-Mercy, and Mercyhurst (just a certification there, though) are my options for that. Otherwise, Pitt has a M.Ed. English/Communications to which I’m also applying, figuring that I can get a job as an English or journalism teacher and earn my business, computer, and information technology teaching certification for my required continuing education hours.
• Keep writing
• Evann Garrison, the woman behind my writing minor (had her for four of the six required classes!), once said, “Keep writing.” I intend to do just that. My new blog will help with that, as I’m going to keep most of my punditry there and my cutesy stuff on my Livejournal.
• I want to get into writing about politics and technology a little more. Net Neutrality is a perfect example of the topics about which I want to write. I will continue to avoid religion, thank you.
• I’m enjoying doing reviews for ThinkComputers, any may soon start doing them for ThinkGaming, too.
• Keep coding
• I finished a site in about 24 hours this week (thank you, Smarty). I need to make manifest more of my site ideas so that I can perhaps start pulling in a little bit of money from them.
• Also, I want to get my idea for a social bookmarking site off the ground. I doubt that it’ll start prior to summer, perhaps launching this time next year.
• I want to improve my Python and Smalltalk knowledge.
• Learn more Esperanto and German
• My Esperanto is slowing getting better. It’s difficult to really work on it because there’s no one else around here that speaks it. I’ll continue to use Kurso de Esperanto and lernu.net to expand my vocabulary.
• I kinda wanted to take German in college, but I didn’t have enough time during the few semesters it was offered. My mother bought me a “learn German” program a few Christmases ago, but I have yet to even open it. Perhaps I’ll open it this summer.

I tag rosejoliefemme, morrigan32, jessbevan, billmeir, and dauphin1.

A story I wrote for ThinkComputers.org made the front page of Digg!

File, Print, and Webcam server in 1, the Asus WL-500W N Router