Luis VillaRamblings on software, law, and the spaces in between.

Totally forgot earlier the reason I opened the editor. Apparently the Harvard undergrads have a term for telling someone they go to Harvard- they call it ‘dropping the H-bomb’. I’m not sure why that amuses me so much, but it does.

Work

Had two long (90+ minute) meetings today. Both were actually quite good, since they involved information going from people who knew things to a person who didn’t know anything- i.e., me.

The first meeting was about the project we’re still hiring for- what I’m now calling the ‘scumware’ project. It is getting more interesting- some very smart people (not me) throwing around interesting ideas, and more very smart people getting on board soon. Hopefully I’ll find the right people to drive it to completion. :)

Second meeting was a website revamp meeting Berkman has tons of old, fascinating content, but it is hard to find sometimes. So we reviewed more than 50 important pages of content, and I got some handle on what is old/fresh/important/comatose. We’ll get some of the worst edges sanded off soon, including a new aggregator, probably courtesy of planet, and probably some simple tweaks to the front page.

Other

Om Malik of Web 2.0 is looking for people to help him write about the Nokia 770. Surely there are some pgo readers who can help him out :)

Passionate Users continues to kick ass, this time ruminating about what your software would be like if you took it on a date.

jbz pointed to this article on the week that was at novell and suse- sounds pretty dire. JB refers to it as short fiction; he’s clearly in a better position to know than I am. Still, interesting.

Am totally psyched by the pango performance work that I’m seeing on pgo. Haven’t seen anything about Ridley lately, though- am hoping that is just puttering along quietly :)

In case you were wondering (as I was) it isn’t that you are behind the times, it is that Nat is so far ahead of the teen-sex trends that he is the first person to ever use the phrase ‘ride on the wild elmo.’

update: Mark Gordon points out that the web has seen ride the wild elmo, though not very often.

A bittersweet night out with the monkeys tonight. Good to see lots of friends; good to hear some good decisions are being made at Novell; but sad to hear some good people were purged, even if I understand the rationale.

Sort of amused that planetn.org is down, though admittedly if I were an exec I’d be pretty afraid of what would go up on something like that even in the best handled of large layoffs. Will certainly be something more companies will have to think about in the future. Aaron has the best post on it so far, at least that I’ve seen.

personal

Very long day at work today. Very good and productive, though. Hopefully tomorrow more of the same, though with a different focus- webgui updating. Wish I had had more time to play with bzr/baz/svk while unemployed, unfortunately.

Also wrapped up the fifth draft of my personal statement; the fifth draft was the first that wasn’t completely rewritten from scratch, and I think the sixth might actually be shippable to reviewers.

misc

Great collection of links on the google print controversy, from Tim O’Reilly.

Great excerpting of Paul Graham on amateurs.

halloween

For the first time in years I have not carved a pumpkin. I knew exactly what I wanted to carve this year, too, just didn’t find the time. Oh well… the CC pumpkin will have to wait until next year.