Skyfaller.net

I dreamed that Downhill Battle had started some kind of free culture television station, that was striking fear into the hearts of evildoers everywhere. They had gotten some kind of TV studio through grants, and they were building it up into a juggernaut.  And it was changing everything… all of those people who watch TV but don’t go to free culture websites, who don’t listen to podcasts, etc., it was reaching them all. Which was like the entire nation. I’m not sure how they got the show into people’s homes, maybe they partnered up with TiVo or MythTV/Torrentocracy or something. The shows were just people, people who were tired of being passive, and it was so beautiful that I wanted to cry.

Today there are 3 articles related to me online, two in the Swarthmore Phoenix, and one on Keystonepolitics.com. 

- The one that I’m most proud of is the first installation of my tri-weekly column called “Peer to peer”: Swarthmore ITS an ally in quest for freer society. 

UPDATE: Eric Behrens of ITS responds.

- I was kind of frightened by the Nelson-worship in this article, The Nelson in you.  This was a positive, friendly, and well-written article about Free Culture Swarthmore, but I’m not sure how I feel about my leadership role being emphasized so heavily.

- The KP Interview: Nelson Pavlosky, Founder of FreeCulture.org – This one took me FOREVER. The reporter asked me to respond to all of these questions, and some of them were really hard! And since my responses were going to be printed verbatim I had to put in a lot of time making them pretty. I’m glad I did it, as I answered a lot of questions in writing that I never had to answer before, but in the future I think I’ll try to make the reporters do more of the work

Sarah had a pearl of wisdom the other day about the Linux vs. GNU/Linux naming controversy: “I know the best reason why we should call it GNU/Linux… so that Richard Stallman can get on with his life.” And Sarah is right… in one e-mail exchange with RMS, I was trying to make a point, but I accidentally said “Linux” instead of “GNU/Linux”, and he focused on telling me what I already knew, which is that “GNU/Linux” is ideologically superior, rather than responding in more depth to my point. It’s a waste of RMS’s time for a smart, creative, influential man like him to go around repeatedly telling people the same thing over and over again. In the words of ESR, “Hackers (and creative people in general) should never… have to drudge at stupid repetitive work, because when this happens it means they aren’t doing what only they can do — solve new problems.”

I realized recently that this somewhat applies to me as well, even though I’m not much of a hacker and I’m certainly not as useful as Richard Stallman (yet). I tell a lot of the same stories over and over again. This is good, insofar as through practicing I become good at telling these stories, and it’s also more interesting for people to hear about, say, the Diebold case from my own mouth. But there is one particular story which I am tired of telling, because it makes me angry every time I tell it, and I want to put it in the past. I’m going to write it down once on my blog, and then in the future whenever it looks like I’m going to have to tell the story of how I was defeated in a student government election through sabotage and sleaziness, I will simply point people to that post, and carry on with my life.

That will be the subject of my next entry: The Rise and Fall of the Action Party.

UPDATE: OK, maybe not the next entry, but it’s coming soon and I’ll link to it from here.

Sarah in bed with her Powerbook Sarah is so chill… she’s getting all of her laptop work done without getting out of bed. I brought her breakfast in bed, you can see the OJ glass off to the side

As I may have mentioned, Sarah Brown is my hero for letting me stay in her apartment for the week… waking up here is wonderful, I love her decor. I think today we’re just going to stay inside, I’m going to work on reading through and proofreading the Public Knowledge website. She’s going to work on her law school application essays. Wish her luck! (Sarah said that she wants her name linked to the Public Knowledge mailing list signup page so that we can googlebomb it… I don’t know if that’s really the best place to find information about her, but you should definitely sign up now!)

For those who I haven’t already told, I’m doing my winter “externship” with Public Knowledge, a public interest advocacy group for free culture issues based in Washington DC. (An externship is like an internship, except it’s only for a week or so over winter break.) This was actually a “create-your-own-externship”, because I missed the deadline for officially applying for an externship through Swarthmore’s Career Services office, so I just IMed a few people and invented one independently. Fortunately, one of my New Year’s resolutions was to be on time and not procrastinate, so that won’t be a problem anymore ^_^ *knocks on wood* Even more fortunately, I’m planning to crash the official externship party in DC with Lisa, so I’m getting all the benefits without all of the paperwork! Circumventing red tape makes life better.

patrissimo linked to this game 1000 Blank White Cards, which I’ve actually heard of before because my FC.o co-founder Luke Smith played the game once and posted all of his cards online.  It seems like a really awesome party game, or to play with your friends some night at 3am when you’re too tired to think about normal things but too wired to actually sleep.