Does 1.0 Matter Anymore?

October 5, 2003 by Steven Garrity

More and more of the software I’ve been using lately has been open source. With this shift comes a different approach to releasing updates and to version numbering. Following the “release early, release often” mantra canonized by Eric Raymond in The Cathedral and the Bazaar, many major open source projects like Mozilla release “nightly builds” throughout the development process.

The practice isn’t unique to open source. While they don’t release them, Microsoft does nightly builds of developing versions of Windows. The developers of the closed-source RSS reader I use on Windows, NewzCrawler, have be releasing frequent “beta builds” publicly.

I remember an old article in Windows Magazine (I think it was by Fred Langa) that worried that delivery of software over the internet rather than on physical media would lead to “dribble-ware” – software that was let out the door before it was ready, only to be patched after the fact (sound familiar?).

With all of these changes, I’m beginning to wonder if major version numbers are loosing their significance. Three applications that I am relying heavily on these days are all significantly pre-1.0 (Mozilla Firebird – 0.6, Mozilla Thunderbird – 0.2, and Gaim – 0.7). Having been released frequently for months (years) already, I doubt that these applications are any less complete or stable than most “1.0” software.

Hurricane Juan Photos

September 29, 2003 by Steven Garrity

Photos of Hurricane Juan from last night here in Charlottetown:

I’ll update this post if I find more.

Update: The list at newrecruit.org is more up-to-date than mine.

Weblogging the P.E.I. Election

September 28, 2003 by Steven Garrity

Friends of Acts of Volition and speakers at the Zap Your PRAM Conference Robert Patterson and Will Pate have been running the Election Watch weblog to blog the Prince Edward Island provincial election.

They’ve done a fine job. I was hoping to participate myself, but it didn’t pan out (too much else going on). CBC PEI has an in-depth RealVideo piece on Robert and Will’s Election (6min 44sec – RealVideo).

They even have Premier Pat Binns on camera explaining why he doesn’t post to his weblog himself. CBC did a good job of covering the convergence the weblog and politics. It’s not an easy thing for the traditional media to cover. Well done to Nancy Russell and all of CBC PEI.

Luna Blue Theme for Mozilla Thunderbird – Development Version

September 20, 2003 by Steven Garrity

I’ve put together a version of Chris Cook’s Luna Blue Firebird theme for Mozilla Thunderbird, the new Mozilla email client application.

We’ve borrowed heavily from Chris’ Firebird themes, so he deserves much of the credit.

This is a rough first version of the theme. There are many elements that are either missing or broken. We have most of the icons completed, but we still haven’t done the newsgroup icons. Also, since I don’t have much experience working with Mozilla themes, there are some elements we haven’t been able to figure out yet.

Since I haven’t found a version of Thunderbird with the DOM Inspector (and I’m too incompetent to build it myself), there are some elements I could use some help on. See this diagram of what I haven’t figured out yet, and let me know if you are able to help.

Feedback, suggestions, constructive criticism, and help are all welcome.

UPDATE: A new version of this theme has been released. See
Luna Blue Theme (v0.2) for Mozilla Thunderbird Update for details.

Download/Install Luna Blue for Mozilla Thunderbird – Development Version

lunabluethunderbird.jar – 477Kb RAR File

Screenshots:

Long-time readers (if they exist) might remember me criticizing the concept of themes and skins (see these two old posts Thoughts on Winamp3 and A discussion of ‘skins’ strangly free of sexual innuendo). You can read about my partial change of heart here: XUL: How I learned to love non-native GUIs.

Update on the Zap Your PRAM Conference

September 20, 2003 by Steven Garrity

Planning for our Zap Your PRAM conference is coming along well. We have a great line-up of speakers. We’ve posted a tentative schedule including most of the speakers and some of their topics. Keep an eye on the conference weblog for updates.

We still have room for more, so let us know if you are interested.

Vacation Beta 0.9

September 16, 2003 by Steven Garrity

Since my day-to-day life is already quite a bit like what most people would consider a vacation, taking an actual vacation isn’t something I do very often. This year, I decided to take a week, pack up some book, and take to my parent’s cottage in Stanhope, Prince Edward Island.

My parents built this cottage with my grandparents back in the early 1970s. I spent most of my summers here as a child. As a teenager, I came to associate the cottage with boredom and a lack of television channels (ironically, now the cottage here has way more channels that I have at home). Now, it’s exactly what I need.

Only on Prince Edward Island would someone take a vacation at a cottage that is only a fifteen minute drive from their home. However, it’s not so much the location that I was looking for (as beautiful as it is), and the fact that it was somewhere else. I needed a break in routine and a change of scenery (both literally and figuratively).

I’m pleased to report that I actually feel like I’m on vacation. I was a little concerned that I’d get bored after a few hours and just go back to work. That won’t be a problem.

A few observations from living on a dial-up connection for a few days:

It works — I can do most everything I need on a dialup.
If something is slow, you don’t bother — I’ve dropped heavy sites from my regular visit list (News.com was going to be dropped, but they conveniently redesigned with CSS during my vacation).
Tabbed browsing is a mixed blessing on a dialup. On one hand, it’s a bandwidth killer — I often open a group of 10 or more weblogs in tabs — that really swamps a dialup. On the other hand, you can open 10 sites in tabs, get a cup of tea, and do all of your waiting/downloading at once.
Spam goes from being a small annoyance on a fast connection with good filtering to being a major pain in the ass on a dialup, where you have to download all the spam before filtering (on the bright side, we’ll soon be able to handle spam on the server side).

I’m only half-way through, but I’ve already got a load of vacation photos up in my gallery. The one advantage of tourists feading the foxes in the National Park is that the foxes will walk right up to your car (bad for foxes, good for photos).

Oh, and if you would like to rent my parent’s cottage next summer, let them know.

Zap Your PRAM Conference Weblog

September 15, 2003 by Steven Garrity

The Zap Your PRAM Conference previously discussed now has a weblog of its own.

Come Zap Your PRAM on P.E.I.

September 8, 2003 by Steven Garrity

We (we being myself, Dan James of CEOBlues.com, Daniel Burka of silverorange, and Peter Rukavina of Reinvented) are organizing the first ever Zap Your PRAM Conference in Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, Canada – October 24-26, 2003.

The idea is get a small group (max of 40) of interesting people together to share ideas and talk about what interests us (weblogs, technology, design, etc.). We have some really interesting people on board so far including Buzz Bruggeman of ActiveWords fame.

What the hell does “Zap Your PRAM” mean? Read all about it.

Attendance is by invitation, but if you are interested, then chances are you are also interesting — so drop me a line and request an invitation (steven@actsofvolition.com).

All of the details of the conference can be found at ZapYourPRAM.org.

Steven on CBC Radio on Weblogs in Politics

September 8, 2003 by Steven Garrity

Pat Martael from CBC Radio PEI did a quick interview with me today for the morning show tommorrow (Tuesday, Sept 9). I’m not sure what time it will be on – probably between 6AM and 8AM – before I get up.

We spoke about how weblogs are being used, or could be used, by polititians. I understand the story will focus on the unusually personal weblog of Jean Tingley, who is running in District 18 on Prince Edward Island for the Liberal party (warning: website plays stupid music).

If, by some chance, I’m awake – I will try to record and post the segment.

Can I put your picture on the web?

September 7, 2003 by Steven Garrity

After resisting for months, I finally gave into peer-pressure at work and bought a digital camera. I couldn’t justify spending the better part of $1,000 (Canadian, that is) since I really just use the camera as a toy. I opted for a refurbished 2-megapixel Canon Digital Elph PowerShot S330 from a shop called Carman’s Foto Source via eBay.ca.

The price was right and I’m quite happy with the camera. Now, thanks for my friends at silverorange, I have a photo gallery. This new found photo publishing power has brought up some interesting questions about permission and privacy.

When I take photos with close friends and family, there is implicit permission for me to post the photos online for anyone to see. They all know I have the gallery and generally trust in my discretion as to what gets posted online and what stays private.

This gets a little more complicated when the circle of those photographed expands beyond this close group. If I go to a party (which I may, someday) and snap some group photos, with friends and friends of friends (aka, strangers), may I post these photos online? Must I ask permission of all those photographed?

I don’t link prominently to many photos, but security by obscurity just doesn’t work in the age of Google. Even if you prevent search engines from indexing your photos, a link from another site (by a human being) can put a photo of an unsuspecting friend at the top of Google when you search for their name. After posting about a set of photos from a recent para-sailing excusion, I got an email from man England wondering where I got my leather shoes – as he was in the market for a pair and liked what he saw (they were from Payless). Apparently, people are looking at these photos.

So far, the tack I have taken is to use my own judgement and discretion. If I think a person might have a problem with a particular photo being online, I either don’t post it, or I ask explicit permission (explaining the implications).

This is really just an extension of the dilemma many webloggers face when writing about personal issues or other people in their lives. This hasn’t been an issue for me on Acts of Volition as most of my writing does not focus directly on personal issues or other people in my life. Having a digital camera, though, has brought the issue to my attention, as many of my photos are of friends and family.

I’m curious to how others are dealing with this issue. Do you always ask permission? Do you avoid posting any photos online for these reasons? Do you have a story about photos posted online showing up in awkward ways?