Skyfaller.space

Here’s where I flip out and jump up and down and scream, “hell yeah!!”  I’ll post something more coherent later after I’m done partying and I’ve read the decision.
* http://eff.org/
* http://eff.org/news/archives/2004_09.php#001961
* PDF of court decision

The video of my high school physics musical is now online, available on the Internet Archive.  I will try to put it on campus webspace somewhere, but I don’t know if that will be possible since it is half a gig in size.  When Dan Crosta’s media server project comes through, I’ll probably be able to put it on that.

Also, if you are my friend, and you are an artist, I need help making graphics for a powerpoint presentation I’d like to give at the first SCDC meeting on Thursday at 10pm.  I know that this is a bit much to ask, and if you could help but you can’t meet that deadline, that’s helpful as well, since this presentation will be used by other FreeCulture.org groups on other campuses when they launch their local clubs.  If you are not an artist, but you have a friend who is, please talk them into helping us out!   Perhaps a good way to get artists interested in us is to show them our National Barbie-in-a-blender Day project that we did over the summer, which is all about how artistic freedom is threatened by overly restrictive copyright law.,

I finally got my hands on my old Linux desktop again now that I’ve returned from San Francisco.  I’m trying to clean it out so that I can wipe it and reinstall Linux, because all of the old installations on it are borked to a greater or lesser degree.  I’m currently using the most functional one, a Knoppix/Debian installation which works fine except that you have to manually type “pump” after starting up in order to get on the internet, and apt-get seems to have self-destructed.  The inability to install new programs using apt-get is a deal-breaker, so I have to wipe and reinstall, b/c I’m not enough of a guru to fix apt-get once it’s borked.  I like clean installations anyway, crap always builds up on your computer and it’s so refreshing to throw out all the stuff you don’t need.  I’m just SCP-ing all of my stuff to an account on another server while I make the transition.

One thing I found was a couple notes from like February, which included a link that I meant to blog which I never got around to doing.  Kevin at Werblog makes a very interesting point about the free culture debate, the problem of both sides treating the other side as evil radicals.  He also uses the abbreviation FCM for Free Culture Movement, which I haven’t seen before.

There is also this awesome project, FutureMe.org, which lets you send an e-mail to your future self.  Interestingly enough, it takes into account that you may not have the same e-mail in the far future, so you can manage your account so that your “future e-mail” is always current 😉  I know I used this once, but I can’t remember what e-mail I used… presumably it was my Swat e-mail account, I must have known that I would have that until the end of my senior year.

In my notes I also came across the contact info of random reporters from the Diebold case, drafts of SCDC propaganda, thoughts about getting business cards (I really need a business card!), random quotes that I liked to use in my AIM profile, and scattered to-do lists that I’ve forgotten about.  What else is lurking in my old computer?  Stay tuned.

Anyone who reads Real Live Preacher‘s post on homosexuality and the bible should be able to agree that the Bible is at least very open to interpretation on the subject.  I think it  demonstrates that sacrificing cattle should be a higher priority on the Christian agenda than banning gay marriage.

I found this in the comments to Wil Wheaton’s blog post about how the push for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage is part of a general “divide and conquer” strategy on the part of conservatives.  I’m not sure about that, but some Republicans are pretty sleazy, especially the ones in the White House, and the FMA definitely does reek of “separate but equal” and the breakdown of the separation of church and state… Hello, this country is not composed entirely of Christians, nor should it be, that would be rather boring.  And it would probably be a pretty disgusting country if it were composed entirely of Christians who believe that their point of view should be enforced on everyone else.

Someone in the comments said that the separation of church and state means that the church shouldn’t have legislative control, not that religious beliefs should be absent from the laws, and when I google for “separation of church and state”, the third hit is noapathy.org’s The Myth of Separation of Church and State, which is a tract written along similar lines. my thoughts on the subject

Today at 12:45pm PST I fly from San Francisco to Newark, and arrive at home in NJ around 10pm.  Interestingly enough, my friend from my hometown, Matt Pagano, is coming in from China on the same day, and he is taking the same flight home with me.  Purely coincidence.  How awesome is that?

On Sunday I will be going to NYC to try to meet up with people.  This means you!

On Monday I will pack.

On Tuesday I return to Swarthmore, to act in the freshman orientation play.  We get like 10 days to rehearse, which is kind of crazy.

And then school bloody starts, and FreeCulture.org kicks some ass!

Nooo! I arrived on Blogger 3 days too late to get my normal username, “skyfaller”. I’ve been here before, I should have registered a long time ago. http://skyfaller.blogspot.com belongs to someone else… I’m going to see if I can talk them into using a different name, has anybody had success in the past in talking someone out of using a username that you’ve been using for a long time? I’ve been calling myself skyfaller for a while now: if you google for that username, practically everyone you turn up will be me, the only other is the person who owns “skyfaller.com”. The most notable instances of me using “skyfaller”:

http://skyfaller.livejournal.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Skyfaller

Certainly the first page of google results is completely me. This new “skyfaller” looks like a nice person, I hope that we can come to an equitable and mutually beneficial solution!

(Cross-posted to my hopefully temporary Blogger page, http://freeculturist.blogspot.com/)

I’ve really been letting my blog slip, and I really regret that. I should have kept a better record of what I’ve been doing with my summer, because a lot of cool stuff has been happening, which I haven’t been documenting. Allow me to attempt a quick recap.

[writing furiously, trying to figure out why I can’t embed a picture in this post properly]

[I fail miserably]

Alright, so I’m tired and I have to go to bed now, it’s 2:30am here in San Fran. I’ll attempt a recap again tomorrow 😛

The Democrats and Republicans only defend your civil liberties when it is convenient to do so. Check out this Reason article, which examines how Ashcroft and Kerry have undergone a peculiar role reversal.  Here’s my favorite quote:

Kerry then expressed his belief that bank customers are entitled to essentially zero privacy. “The technology is already available to monitor all electronic money transfers,” he wrote (emphasis added). “We need the will to make sure it is put in place.”

Uh huh. Is Kerry really that much of a safer bet than Ashcroft? Power corrupts, and once he has the power… ?

For the latest project of FreeCulture.org, the international version of the SCDC, we ask you to join us in excercising your First Amendment rights and celebrating a legal victory for artistic freedom… by taking pictures of Barbie in a blender and sending them to us!

I’ve tried writing down my schedule on my Handspring before, but I didn’t have much reason to stick to it, because nobody could see it but me. So nobody would know if I changed it, or just ignored it completely.

Now that I have a shiny new Mac and a Mac.com account, those days are over.

You can view my calendar in any web browser, although it seems that you can only see it in Eastern Standard Time, which may be confusing to those in different time zones (including me, since I’m in California!)

You can subscribe to my calendar with either iCal or Mozilla Calendar. Mozilla Calendar is becoming quite usable, I suggest checking it out if you’re on Windows or Linux and using Mozilla Suite, Firefox or Thunderbird.  Unsurprisingly the Mac version isn’t receiving much attention since we have iCal already. Mozilla Calendar is based on the open iCal standard, so it’s completely interoperable.  Hooray for open standards!

I now make this pledge to the world: My schedule will be at least 90% accurate from this day forward.  You should be able to look at my schedule and be reasonably certain that I am actually doing the things I claim to be doing at the times that I claim to be doing them.  If after following my schedule for a while, you determine that I have not followed through on this promise, you are to beat me with large sticks or shave my head or do something equally horrendous.  When I am not certain of my schedule, I won’t write anything down, or I will put question marks on the appointments.  So there!