Here come the wedding photos.

I got married at the end of October. Here's the proof.

The Lazy Man’s WordPress Photo Gallery with Dropbox

I keep my photos on Dropbox, but I want to post them for everyone to see. Managing online photo galleries like Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, and friends is really tedious – and I don't like how hard it is to get those photos back from those services. I could send people to the Dropbox pages, but … Continue reading The Lazy Man’s WordPress Photo Gallery with Dropbox →

My interview with Linux Format.

Linux Format just published their interview with me at OSCON 2012.

A “New to Open Source” Reading List

A non-technical colleague of mine wanted to learn more about the IT industry and open source. He asked for some reading suggestions, and here it is. It's heavy on open source, as you might expect.

I truly loathe the Tumblr Android experience.

Why would you strip all markup and links from a post when someone edits it? Why would you disable a super-useful feature for mobile work, like markdown? Why would you shut down any competition from other apps, preventing me from using any alternative? Because somewhere, and for whatever reason, you decided to make your mobile … Continue reading I truly loathe the Tumblr Android experience. →

Ersatz pragmatism and the lock-in problem.

Bob Plankers believes that OpenStack exhibits lock-in behavior, and is therefore equivalent to proprietary technology like VMware and Hyper-V. This kind of argument sounds, on the surface, perfectly reasonable. Unfortunately, it ignores some important characteristics of both proprietary and open software in order to make good on a black-or-white argument in service of middle-ground ersatz … Continue reading Ersatz pragmatism and the lock-in problem. →

Open source software policy is better without open source.

Here's a fun1 experiment: take an open source policy from your agency, company, whatever, and strike out the words "open source". Bam, you now have a much more sensible and reasonable "software" policy. When the OMB and DOD declared open source software to be "commercial software," it wasn't a bureaucratic trick to legitimize open source. … Continue reading Open source software policy is better without open source. →

Neil could use a hand.

Neil Clarke has hit what could charitably be called a rough patch, and he could use some help. When I was about halfway through college, I went plumb broke. Couldn't even afford to fly back home to Honolulu. Neil found me a job which let me stay in school and earn a little money to … Continue reading Neil could use a hand. →

Save Conference Calls for later on Android

Most hosts are good about publishing recorded meetings so I can listen later. Until now, it's been way too complicated to remember to actually listen to it. But that's all changed, thanks to this setup. BeyondPod Save the audio file to a directory in DropBox. I chose "Podcasts". Configure DropSync to download that directory to … Continue reading Save Conference Calls for later on Android →

IT as Manufacturing

I'm accustomed to a certain amount of bluster and grim cynicism when I talk to customers. It's a bad time to be running an IT shop these days, especially in government. Even before we meet, my relationship with a customer is already strained: I'm a vendor, and most vendors have only two interests: 1) the … Continue reading IT as Manufacturing →