Archive for September, 2006
Online videos
I don’t think much of the recent explosion of flash-based video sharing sites, but these are pretty good:
RIP, lilo
Rob Levin, aka lilo, has passed away in a car accident while riding his bike. He was the founder of the freenode IRC network, a place which I spend a lot of time. I have posted the following to his remembrance page.
Death is something that can strike at random. It can be expected, it
can be totally out of the blue. But it is unavoidable. Rob created
something wonderful, he had a dream and he fought for it. He poured
everything into freenode, and rallied people together for the goals of
the network. Now he is gone.Rob was always courteous and kind, and willing to help out. I wasn’t
really involved in IRC at all until freenode, where I joined for
Wikimedia. Once there, I quickly became hooked. I became interested in
how the network worked, and got involved in supporting users. Through
all this Rob was helpful and kind, willing to explain things to me and
work out situations.We must continue what was started. We should turn our grief into new
strength to journey on, and to make sure that Rob’s memory is
preserved and built on, pushing ever onwards and upwards. We can do
this together, and only when we succeed all expectations will Rob’s
death have not been in vain.RIP, lilo – you were a good soul, one of the best
Worthwhile projects?
I’ve recently taken up a role as a support volunteer on the freenode IRC network, which involves sitting on the list of staff that appears when users type /stats p and answering queries. A lot of stuff is questions that I can answer from my own knowledge of the network and the way it works (which is quite a bit as I have spent time learning about it); other things are requests for intervention which I then channel through the appropriate channels. I’m essentially a liason for users of the network to ensure that whatever it is they want doing is done, eventually.
This brings me into contact with lots of open source and community driven projects. For those who arn’t aware, open source means software that can be changed and improved by any programmer, whereas closed source software is effectively read only to anyone but the original people that wrote it. This means that open source software is (usually) a community effort, with many projects around the world churning out very high quality stuff. It’s a phenomenon that is worrying bigger companies and is starting to reach the news – most of the web runs on open source-driven servers. freenode is designed to be a safe haven for communication between people working on the projects in order to get things done more effectively. There are many important projects using it.
I originally came to the network for it’s Wikipedia channels, as being open knowledge and using open source software to power the site they fit in. Now, SilentFlame has a registration as a group that is a service to the community rather than an actual project, due to the charitable nature of it and the fact that service is put above profit. So, as I see the great work being put into all these great pieces of software, I question where my energy goes into and where it should. I find myself coming to the conclusion again and again that Wikimedia is a worthwhile cause because it hits a wider audience and is more worthwhile than developing a distribution of Linux. So I see us as working towards a goal that will help everyone. That’s my thoughts right now, but I’d be interested in hearing yours – many people have very negative viewpoints on the wiki concept.
I’m happy that I’ve written this down. It makes me more confident about the choice I have made.
Successful request
My request for adminship has gone through successfully, unsurprisingly. It had been looking like it was going to for several days, and it has. Interestingly, I have brought the total number of administrators to one thousand, and the (former) Wikimedia board member Angela Beesley decided to close the nomination and promote me – something she has not done since last November. It was a little scary when I loaded another page and a load of extra buttons appeared all over it, but I’m coping so far. I’ve cleared a bit of a backlog, and have done a few minor tasks, including blocking a user. This was for an inappropriate username, and it was indefinite… not nice for a first block. I’ll keep you posted.
In the mean time, here is the work experience diary at long last (or, the parts of it that are unposted):
Day 3 – Discussed Microsoft. Installed all Express Editions. Spent day battling Oracle and learning ASP.netDay 4 – Learnt more aspx and started to construct report interface, helped heavily by my contact. Got a free sandwich.
Day 5 – Was not allowed to eat free sandwich. Worked more on base code for reporting module. Made .sql files.
Day 6 – Discovered that control was not compatible with my software. Worked on output of mailqueue.
Day 7 – Lost all mail queue work. [P/W steal] Put queries into files. Teacher came and was pleased with progress.
Day 8 – Reconstructed mail form and had a team meeting using telecommunication equipment.
Day 9 – Attempted to implement OpenSearch after writing a control to display the most popular communities.
Day 10 – Spent morning doing paperwork. Tekan out for pub lunch. Ran queries on database into xls.
As you can see, I didn’t have much room to write in.