musings

Videocassette recorder

My twelve year old Videocassette recorder finally died yesterday. The circuitry burned out. Now I am left with a stack full of tapes…what will I do now? Time to hit Craigslist!

Jamaican food

Cuisine of Jamaica – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Stuff I had in Jamaica:

Ackee and saltfish, Jerk chicken, pork, fish, Curry goat, chicken, Rice and peas, patties, brown stew chicken,red peas Soup, escoveitch fish, mackerel rundown, callaloo, steamed fish, festival, johnny cakes, bammy (fried and steamed), candied plantains, conch soup, fish tea, curried shrimp and of course Red Stripe.

Hope I didn’t leave anything out.

Concrete and grass

Groklaw – Interview with Walter Bender of Sugar Labs

I liked PJ’s comparison of Sugar to grass “You can pour concrete over it, and it will still grow, pushing through every crack in a sidewalk to reach the sun’s rays, and then it grows and spreads and flourishes.” Microsoft just
seems sooo determined to cover the world in concrete.

Sugar everywhere

55,000 Sugar/GNU/Linux XO machines are being shipped every month to kids all over the world. This is a generation getting ready to break the bonds of digital slavery and build a commons for themselves on free and open source software and open content and standards.

In the meantime, Microsoft announced a pilot study to run Windows XP, that seven year old system that it is desperately trying to ditch in the US and Europe, on the same XO laptops in a last ditch effort to continue to poison the pool. Keep at it, Microsoft. Your own incompetence will be the end of you.

By the way, I’m curious – why not Vista on the XO? Too fat for kids?

sterilize the phone

Someone just walked into my office and sterilized my phone!

I’m visiting at the University of the West Indies where they gave me an office and a phone. I rarely use the phone, but of course, most people here do. So, they have someone who comes in once a week with a washcloth laced with something antibacterial and wipe down the phone. How neat!...and amusing :-)

Best things in life are free

“We all pay for life with death, so everything in between should be free.” – Bill Hicks

Heaven and Hell

As seen on Slashdot.

“Heaven is where the Police are British, the Chefs are French, the Mechanics are German, the Lovers Italian and it’s all organised by the Swiss. Hell is where the Chefs are British, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss, the Police are German and it’s all organised by the Italians.”

Much ado about nothing

Microsoft has signed up Jerry Seinfeld to plug poor perceptions about Microsoft Windows Vista. Perhaps they realize that all this show about Vista is really a show about nothing!

C or F?

As seen on Slashdot…
Celsius is based on water temperature, and Fahrenheit is based on alcohol temperature. Ergo, Fahrenheit is WAY better than Celsius. QED.

being good...

As seen on another blog:

Being a good writer is 3% talent, 97% not being distracted by the Internet.