The Graduate School of Education and Information Studies has given us server space to host a MediaWiki version of the Informatics Wiki that has been on PBwiki. Wow, that sentence sounds funny with all the wikis.

I’d like to get upset at MediaWiki naming conventions a bit. This forced capitalization of article titles and usernames drives me crazy. I really hate seeing my username as Tkeswick instead of tkeswick. It’s just ugly. I typed it all lowercase on purpose, because I wanted it that way. Whoever came up with the idea that people would like their usernames to be automatically capitalized didn’t think it through.

I first noticed this sort of thing when using Google Docs & Spreadsheets a while back. Still, I notice that on the documents I have shared with other users, the first letter of their email address account name is capitalized which just looks bad and inconsistent to me, especially when people use the convention like me of first initial, last name. The last name does not get capitalized. Why capitalize the first initial if the last name will not be capitalized as well. It ought to just remain in the same format that the user types it in without introducing all this mixed-case ugliness.

Today in the San Francisco Chronicle is a little tiny feature about a photoset on Flickr that my friend Jessica created. The only reason that it became a set was because I mimicked one of her photos and then Tamiko caught on. I’m only bitter now because my photo wasn’t included in the ones that were featured.

John Curley, who put together the little blurb, seemingly didn’t bother contacting anyone involved. Excellent journalism skills.

OG bedhead:

UPDATE: After emailing John Curley he called me an “unsung hero” so all is forgiven.

technorati tags:sfchronicle, bedhead, flickr

Blogged with Flock

This is a bit old by now, but I’ve been quite busy this weekend.

The front page headline of Friday’s San Francisco Chronicle read: Silence means prison, Judge tells reporters. Apparently two Chronicle reporters are being threatened with jail time for not revealing court sources in their ongoing coverage of the BALCO story.

I know very little about the story. I don’t follow sports at all and I don’t care about steroid use in sports. What I do follow with interest are cases of First Amendment disputes, overarching government authority, and the Drug War. Regardless of the reporters’ opinions on how the whole steroids in baseball controversy should be solved (I’m not aware of what their opinions actually are), the whole issue stems from the War on Drugs.

Were the use of steroids among the general population not a matter of illegality but of personal choice, the issue could have been resolved within Major League Baseball itself. If baseball players had the choice of whether or not to use steroids without the threat of legal action, the only consequences they would face would be the rules of the league or of Major League Baseball. Major League Baseball as a private, voluntary organization is perfectly capable of setting its own rules with regard to its members’ behavior. If they wanted to keep steroids against the rules of the game, they could easily bar any player who infringes upon that rule. (There are those who say let them be permitted.) Also, as a voluntary organization, testing could be mandated in any fashion and players who disagreed with the policy could leave by choice. The Chronicle reporters would still have been covering a fantastic controversy whether or not steroid use was considered illegal by the government.

The fact that this scandal has now resulted in the very real threat of prison for journalists simply doing their jobs is rather shocking. The drug warriors (which include many prosecutors and judges) apparently regard the trampling of rights as insignificant as long as high profile users get busted. That the matter of steroid use among athletes is a higher priority among government prosecutors than the abuses perpetrated by government upon citizens every day appalls me.

technorati tags: baseball, balco, steroids, drugwar, freespeech, freepress

I’d never written to my elected representatives until the other day. I was pissed.

Dear [Congressman Honda, Senator Boxer, Senator Feinstein]:

I understand that the terror plot that was foiled caused great fear in many people, but having the TSA react with extremely burdensome regulations after the fact will not likely halt further attacks. The security measures currently in place obviously worked in this instance. Why, then, cause undue havoc in the private lives and schedules of millions of Americans?

My parents and elderly grandparents are going to my uncle’s wedding next weekend in Denver. They are only going for a few days. They were not planning on checking any bags so they could get through the airport rapidly because my grandma has a hard time walking or standing for great lengths of time. They will be forced to check bags and waste time in the airport because THEY CAN’T CARRY LIPSTICK ON THE PLANE.

[Mr. Congressman, Senator Boxer, Senator Feinstein], I know you get special privileges because you are in the government, but you really must make an effort to understand what a hassle this causes in ordinary Americans’ lives when it doesn’t do anything to make us safer.

By allowing the TSA to disrupt our way of life, you are helping the terrorists win.

Sincerely,

Tommy Keswick

technorati tags:tsa, feinstein, boxer

Blogged with Flock

I woke up this morning to find about 18 emails in my Gmail Inbox that were spam. I had caught a blurb on Slashdot yesterday about a new wave of spam but didn’t think it would get to me. It did. The way it seems to be working is they paste a bunch of text from a novel of some sort and then attach an image with the spam message in it.

It bothered me so much at first that I considered scrapping my Google Account under this name. I’ve gone years on this account without getting much spam. The funny part is that as soon as I stopped giving the address away on even sites I semi-trusted and started using Bloglines disposable email addresses for every sign up form, I started noticing more spam in the Spam Folder. I’m sure the spammers sell lists to each other and that is why it is growing.

The good news is that Gmail seems to learn quickly. After marking all of those messages as spam and then a couple more that trickled in this morning, Gmail placed one in the Spam Folder on its own. There is hope.

technorati tags:email, gmail, spam

Blogged with Flock

My stint teaching summer school has ended.  This week I’ve been filling for the office manager at my dad’s optometric practice.  My dad isn’t even here this week.  He’s vacationing in Tahoe.  The other doctors appreciate my help, I suppose.

I can’t stand Lite Rock radio stations.  It’s even worse that I grew up with my mom listening to this stuff and I know all the words.

technorati tags: literock, work

I haven’t paid much attention at all to the San Jose mayor’s race. I’ve seen blurbs in the paper and a few ads in the mail. I was thinking the other day, though, at least three of the candidates are current city council members. There is at least one other guy running, a developer, I believe. My first impulse is to support the developer. I think I figured out why.

When a person has a private occupation, even one that some may not particularly like, we know where that person stands. We know the history, and we know what we should be skeptical of in that person. It would be much more apparent, and egregious even, were a business person to be elected mayor and then award known friends and contacts of that person with beneficial contracts, favorable regulations, or what have you.

On the other hand, when a candidate is already a politician, his or her full time job is already a spinner, a deceiver, and a back-room dealer. It is much more difficult for the public to see what this person is doing when already his or her time is constantly spent making false promises and covering up blunders.

By default, I pretty much distrust anyone who aspires to be a politician, so I cannot see the sense in repeatedly electing those same people.

I set alarms to wake up at 9:45 on a Saturday. I had 4 different browsers open to the Ticketmaster site. And still there were no Tool tickets left when the first page came up after hitting F5 repeatedly.

Who wants to get me tickets? They are only about $500 a pair now on eBay.

technorati tags: tool, tickets, music, concerts

I had to write checks to the United States Treasury and the Franchise Tax Board today. They are relatively small amounts but I don’t let that fool me. They’ve stolen my money all year long in the form of withholding. For 2005 I paid $1,253 to the Federal Government and $210 to the State of California. Not much compared to some people, but that is a whole month’s salary to me. There is no way I can recoup that much in services from either the state or federal governments, so basically it’s going to go to someone else.

I am a big fan of the idea to end withholding from paychecks so everyone would have to pay a big chunk of money to the government all at once so it would be more clear to them how much they take. Couple that with making election day the same day or the day after tax day and things would change.

technorati tags: taxes

I read an interesting piece today by Gene Callahan at my favorite anti-state site. He makes an analogy between men who beat their wives and people who support the state. Since the state is simply an intstrument of force against individuals, he argues, those who support it, even in the most minimal way, would be the same as a man who says it is acceptable to beat his wife, if only rarely. Therefore, minarchists, who only support the state’s effort to protect life and property, are only one step away from totalitarians.

Anarchists reject the notion that it is permissible to employ violence against someone who has not themselves committed an act of aggression, no matter how much one wants to get that innocent person to cooperate in forwarding one’s desired ends, and no matter how important one believes that end to be. Minarchists, to the contrary, defend their right to initiate aggression in any circumstance where they see the use of coercion as being really, really useful.

I wish more people would understand anarchism like he does.

Technorati Tags: anarchism, minarchism