Monthly Archive for September, 2006

Google Standing

Published on September 25, 2006 in pi. 3 Comments

A long time ago I tried to find myself on the Google search for “Erik” and gave up something like 20 pages in. I figured I’d never rank high on such a popular term.

But on a whim today, I tried the same, and over the last few years I’ve made it to page 3, which is pretty exciting. I’ve never tried very hard to manipulate my Google standing, except by including my name in my page title, but it’s nice to know that I’m moving up in the world.

On a related note, I am on the first page for “loin cloth stud“, thanks to a recent comment from Lucy.

Thanks, Luce.

Broken links

Published on September 19, 2006 in pi. 1 Comment

Grr…. the photos I liked to earlier were broken links. Here’s the real album.

Beer

Published on September 19, 2006 in pi. 5 Comments

Thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday… I’m sorry I didn’t get to talk to more of you on the phone, but my phone was on silent due to constant activity throughout the day… I was orientated, then Brynn and I made the arduous journey down to the beach, nearly sliding down several steep sandy declines, and only getting to dip our feet in the water for about 190 seconds before striking back up La Jolla Shores Drive to the UCSD parking lot. Following that, a bunch of us went up to Pizza Port in Solana Beach, which is the eighth best brewer in the world according to RateBeer.com users.

In fact, many of you will be surprised to know that San Diego is home to THREE of the top ten brewers IN THE WORLD.

I’ll give you a minute to let that sink in.

I can hear Kynthia letting out some sort of guffaw.

In addition to Pizza Port, San Diego is best brewer in the world, AleSmith Brewing Company, and the third best, Stone Brewing Co. Indiana, interestingly enough, is home to number two, the Three Floyds Brewing Company, which I never once visited while in Indiana. I blame Kynthia and David for this. What happened? The second best brewery in the world mere hours away and we were sitting in Yogi’s?

Anyway, all of this is according to RateBeer.com, which may not sound like the most reputable source, but accept this toasty warm fact into your salivating minds:

There are 1600 users on RateBeer who have rated 100 beers or more. There are about 250 users who have rated 1000+ beers. I doubt I’ve even tried 50 beers in my lifetime, let alone gone to the trouble to rate them online. These people lie somewhere between connoisseur and obsessive freak on the beer enthusiast scale.

And beer from Stone is pretty good, I have to say.

New Apartment

Published on September 17, 2006 in pi. 5 Comments

Our courtyard

I found an amazing place in San Diego… It’s on 4th and Robinson, a mere block from restaurants, bars, and coffee shops, about four blocks from Whole Foods, seven blocks to the UCSD shuttle, and zero blocks to my heart.

The neighbors are awesome… everyone around the courtyard (about ten of us) hangs out on the hammock/at the table on the evenings. It’s a reall nice home away from school.

My long walk home
Our courtyard
The party table
Our apartment (on the 2nd floor)
Our door
Up the stairs to the apartment
The hallway
My room (is a mess)
Bathroom
(Tiny) kitchen
Living room facing west
Living room facing east

Swag

Published on September 17, 2006 in pi. 0 Comments

You know when you try to think of a word and you can’t remember a phoneme? Is this a bezel or a bevel? Am I masticating or micturating? Is the free loot at conferences swag or schwag?

I’ve been wondering about the last one for a while, but Matt’s post about the Future of Web Apps Summit reminded me to look it up, so I did.

Turns out, the correct word for the free branded t-shirts, pens, and blinkenlights dispensed at conferences is swag. I believe schwag is slang for a certain kind of marijuana.

Kids these days…

Published on September 5, 2006 in pi. 0 Comments

As most of you surely already know, Steve “Crocodile Hunter” Irwin was killed by a Stingray shot to the heart yesterday. Children all over the world are quite upset, with one mother likening the situation to the death of Princess Diana or JFK–for kids.

What really got me was this quote, from a Daniel, 11, of Australia. He asks,

“Why did it have to be Steve Irwin? Why couldn’t it be someone older like Sean Connery?”

Why indeed, Daniel.

Wet Whistle

Published on September 5, 2006 in Favorites and pi. 7 Comments

I’m sitting in a hotel in Missoula, Montana (the most beautiful state in the union). I’ve had a hugely eventful summer, I’m still hacking away at my summer of code project, and dreaming up lots of exciting projects to start on after I get to San Diego. But I don’t really have the time to post about all of that, so instead I offer you this:

Skinny dipping in glacially fed Isabelle Lake

More fun to come…

State of the Code

Published on September 5, 2006 in OLPC, Summer of Code and pi. 4 Comments

My official time is up for Google’s Summer of Code. I didn’t get as far as I would have liked, but I think I made a good start, and I had a hell of a summer.

Design

What’s been done…

A decent bit of user research: writeup of related projects in history, who are the users?, education in Brasil, and education in Nigeria.

A big part of making Abi work well on the OLPC is making it mesh well with the design work being done at Red Hat. I’ve documented their vision as I understand it and how it applies to AbiWord here.

Part of making Abi simpler so it can fit Red Hat’s vision is paring down the functionality. I did an inventory of Abi’s features and their relevance in an OLPC context.

Many sketches have been created.

What’s left to do…

The big hole in the design process is evaluation and iteration. I didn’t do a very good job finding kids to help me evaluate Abi on OLPC (I had only one lead, and it fell through), so I haven’t done any evaluation yet. This has been especially hard because I’ve been travelling around so much this summer.

When I get to San Diego (next week) I will start looking for some kids to try AbiWord out so we can get some real feedback. And from there we’ll be able to do some real iteration which will help fix the massive problems my design undoubtedly has.

Implementation

What’s been done…

  • AbiWord runs in the sugar shell
  • It has a minimal interface with a custom toolbar
  • I implemented a new clipart toolbar that lets kids drag and drop pictures into their documents

What’s left to do…

  • Polish (make clipart bar look nicer, have it look for clipart somewhere intelligent)
  • Finish implementing table menu button
  • Integrate AbiCollab with Sugar shell
  • Use clipart bar to add drawings drawing app

Documentation

I’ve dumped a lot of documentation on my wiki and my Summer of Code blog, but I think there would be some value in writing up more polished, complete guides to both designing UI for Sugar and getting software to work with it. The Red Hat folks are already working on some of this, but I could certainly contribute.

So, that’s that

My #1 goal for Summer of Code was to start building relationships with people in the Free Software world and get started hacking, and I absolutely accomplished that.

So this is both a retrospective and a look to the future. There’s more to be done to get AbiWord onto the OLPC, and I intend to keep contributing to the effort.

But for the next few days at least, I’ll stick to enjoying the American West.