Monthly Archives: December 2007

Review of 2007, the Promise(s) of 2008

Posted on by

The year 2007 has been quite a dynamic year for me. Instead of writing a long article about each thing… cause that might take me an year to write and edit, I will just present a list of lists of things that happened.

Academics

  • Completed my undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto at Mississauga.
  • Picked my diploma for Bachelor of Science.

Travel

  • Traveled to Italy and Poland.
  • Walked down Unter der Linden in Berlin, Germany.
  • Checked out the Tower of London, National Gallery and Museum of Natural History in London, England.
  • Saw the sights of Florence, Rome, Assisi, and bunch of the Umbria region of Italy.
  • Walked around Gdańsk, Szczecin, Poznan, Gdynia and Malbork in Poland.

Software Development

  • Increased my knowledge of information security.
  • Restarted my involvement with the justCheckers project.
  • Deepened my understanding on software libre and open source.
  • Learned Javascript, CGI-Perl and JSP.
  • Joined the Ubuntu Toronto Users group.

Business

  • Led a mock-up startup for a course.
  • Learned how to read and understand businesses.
  • Discovered the many aspects of open source businesses.
  • Read My Job Went to India, or how to stay in IT.

Art

  • Wrote six articles on quantum computing.
  • Wrote seven personal essays that form my Hacker, Gamer, Lover book.
  • Wrote and voiced in an audio documentary, Casanova.
  • Started writing a science fiction novel.

Social Activity

  • Learned of the open access movement.
  • Learned the basic ethical theories: utilitarianism, Kantian ethics, and Rousseau’s social contract.
  • Debated for network neutrality.
  • Read Stallman’s Free Software, Free Society.
  • Read about the anti-software patent efforts in the EU.

Personal

  • Went to Taize in Montreal.
  • Made a lot more friends.
  • Learned the subtle art of dating.
  • Survived the downs of 2007.
  • Got my G1 driver’s license. Again.
  • Invented task logs, an organizational tool.

Things to Do for 2008

  • Finish justCheckers.
  • Write and publish two books.
  • Get a software development related job.
  • Start a company.
  • Find a real girlfriend.
  • Learn to drive and get my full G license.
  • Learn C and C++.
  • Get involved in a major FOSS project.

Merry Christmas

Posted on by

Just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. To everyone expecting a card… its coming… hopefully sooner than later. Also no release of justCheckers yet… I broke it badly with the refactoring of the game package. Hopefully I can release something before the new year.

Good night. Long day, too much partying and eating cake.

Ubuntu Toronto Meeting @ the Linuxcaffe

Posted on by

Today I went down to a small, cosy cafe called the Linuxcaffe on the corner of Harbord St. & Grace St. in downtown Toronto. Other than the fact, that the Linuxcaffe is way cool with organic coffee and free wireless; its also cool that the owner advocates Linux and free software. But what got me to go, was a seasonal meeting of Ubuntu Toronto.

I got to meet a number of enthusiastic Ubuntu users, and I may have helped create a new one by installing and configuring Ubuntu “Gutsy” 7.10 on a laptop. Thanks guys for the great afternoon. And even the weather cooperated by not dumping snow until much later.

Restructuring justCheckers

Posted on by

As I started resuscitating the long dormant justCheckers project, I began wondering why did the development occurred at a comatose pace. Much of the problem I place on my own inexperience and my university workload. I also paid more attention to possible future problems than managing the team.

Yesterday, one my of good friends and fellow justCheckers developer basically verified that he had no time to work on the project. He has got a lot on his plate. And so do most of the other developers. Still I need active developers. He suggested to wait a certain amount of time for a response, and then start removing developers.

As much as I hate to restructure the team, it will be necessary if I want to create an active core development team and a community around justCheckers. So I decided that the deadline for the inactive devs to respond will be December 20, 2007.

The justCheckers project must go on.

Subverting the Eclipse of Sanity

Posted on by

Ubuntu Linux makes many things easier. Today, I hit a notable exception: running Eclipse so that I update and do other “insane” things with it. After a lot of hassle, I downloaded a Linux version of eclipse right off of eclipse.org. Some updates, installed the subclipse plug-in and I am ready to hack away at justCheckers.

I finally finished the majority of the justCheckers wiki too. So finally I can show some real work to the rest of the world. Now if I can gather back some of the “band” (the development team), then things would go much faster. Worst case scenario I can do this solo. But would rather work with someone together. Its just much more fun.

Busily Getting to Business

Posted on by

2

What a busy day. Today’s line of exploits include:

  • Installing a wiki. A moderated wiki will be the new justCheckers site.
  • Importing articles from a website and wiki into a… wiki.
  • Counselling about my career choices… and that I need to cold call. Brr…
  • A quick update with a friend.
  • Me time with a coffee and a danish.
  • Running to a moved conference.
  • Being told I am unfashionable. Big time. Still learned alot about business attire.

Quote of the day:
“Lose the camouflage pants. Seriously.” My rebuttal being… thats what I found before I ran out of the house.

Seriously, I am exhausted now. And this list is about the maximum level of cohesiveness I can manage today. More wiki and driving fun tomorrow. Night.