Archive - Sep 4

Date

September 30th

Why Write, redux.

Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 09/30/2004 - 19:15 (Check me out!)

(Originally posted on the Ryze Blogs and Bloggers tribe)

“Why Blog?” is a topic that seems to be kicking around a lot recently. Jock Gill asked that question over on Greater Democracy. Andy Coote asked “Why write?” to a group of people who are oriented towards business blogs over at Ecademy.

I wrote a reply, mostly to Jock’s question at my blog, Orient Lodge..

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Creating Political Maps, Part 2

Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 09/30/2004 - 11:53 (Check me out!)

Over the past several months, I have been running a website, http://localpols.fordean.net which lists various progressive candidates. As the list has grown, I’ve been looking for ways to improve the navigation of the site. I set up a simple clickable map so you could click on a state to find specific candidates. I have expanded this to be able to click on the district level, for example, http://localpols.fordean.net/CTStateSenate

I wrote about my initial attempts at this here. As I mentioned then, people had suggested that I check out Mapserver. In theory, it is supposed to work with IIS. However, when I tried using it with IIS on my server, no matter what I did, I kept getting, “CGI Error
The specified CGI application misbehaved by not returning a complete set of HTTP headers. The headers it did return are:”

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September 30th links

Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 09/30/2004 - 10:47 (Check me out!)

Yesterday, I received emails from various groups, such as Save Betamax and IPac. Both of them are concerned with intellectual property issues and are worth checking out.

Also, someone pointed me to The Washington Note's entry about Republicans claiming Liberals want to ban The Bible. It is worth reading and following the links. Another site that has talked about this a little is Sojourners. I remember reading their magazine years ago when I was in college. It is good to see that they are still there and now on the web. I've signed up for their weekly emails.

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September 29th

why do you blog?

Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 09/29/2004 - 22:21 (Check me out!)

It is 9:45 in the evening. I got up sixteen hours ago. I needed to hop in the shower before my daughter had her turn. Then, I was off to a 7 AM meeting about local politics, a 9 AM meeting with a person searching for a new job, and then home to do some reading, some writing and some technology work.

In my readings today, I found the question that Jock Gill asks, “why do you blog?”

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Windsurfing

Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 09/29/2004 - 18:15 (Check me out!)

Must Read article in American Windsurfer Magazine

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FOAF

Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 09/29/2004 - 17:10 (Check me out!)

Today, I received an email that Tribe.net is now supporting FOAF.

I added it to PLINK, and now my PLINK listing only has my first name.

So, now, I have three good FOAF files:
Ecademy
Tribe.net
LiveJournal

The three FOAF browsers I've been playing with most these days are:
PLINK
FoaF Explorer
foafnaut(no listing there, yet)
FOAF: Web View

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September 28th

Random Links

Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 09/28/2004 - 14:58 (Check me out!)

As I dig through my emails and messages of the day, I am finding a few interesting things.

I received an email from Intelliseek. They have two interesting sites. http://campaignradar.com provides an interesting snapshot of what is being discussed in the blogosphere with regards to the upcoming election.

If you go to http://www.blogpulse.com/index.html, you can do your own searches on the blogosphere. It looks like a nice tool.

In blogland, my article Herding free-range cats is on CivicSpace.

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September 25th

New York Times Magazine

Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 09/25/2004 - 22:23 (Check me out!)

Well, my blogging at Greater Democracy makes the New York Times Magazine, sort of.

I am the greybeard sitting behind and to the left of Markos Moulitsas. However, my name, nor Greater Democracy, isn't mentioned in the article.

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September 24th

Better?

Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 09/24/2004 - 12:48 (Check me out!)

(Originally published in Greater Democracy)

“Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”

This is a question that gets asked during just about every election, and the answer usually seems to be more, “Do you want the current administration to remain in power?” People who do want the current administration to remain in power, cite examples of how they are better off, and point out that the places where they are better off are not a result of the current administration. Those who want regime change site examples about how things are not as good as the were four years ago, and how the things that are better are not a result of the current administration.

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Herding free-range cats

Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 09/24/2004 - 10:58 (Check me out!)

Herding free-range cats: An exploration into the organizational dynamics of an open software project

On a mid-September weekend in 2004, about two dozen people sat around a table on the fifth floor of an ecologically friendly building in San Francisco. Almost everyone there was under twenty-five, almost everyone there was male, almost everyone there had a laptop fired up and connected to the internet over WiFi, and everyone there was interested in finding ways to better use technology to bring about social change.

It was the first CivicSpace Summit. A year and a half earlier, a couple college kids who had become excited about electoral politics through Howard Dean’s presidential campaign had started talking together. They wanted to build the ultimate open source campaign tool. It would use some sort of content management, syndication of articles, maybe some sort of buddy list, etc. All the sites would be connected together.

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