[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“372” caption=“Perhaps taking the introspection a bit too literally”] [/caption]

My blog has always contained some degree of introspection.  It has varied based on my interests at the time.  While it’s not impossible to include some self-examination in a Linux review, it’s certainly not par for the course.  But, recently, reading Min and Kailyn’s blogs recently has inspired me to try and include some more of my thought process when blogging.  I think I’ll definitely try to give it a shot on my next photo essay, but also on other posts, such as those dealing with my photography or politics.

And we just about got all the kinks worked out. So update your links to point to http://www.nothingtothetable.com/

[caption id="" align=“alignleft” width=“160” caption=“Dan, of “I Bring Nothing to the Table””] [/caption]

First mentioned in this post , Dan’s been blogging on this server for just over a year.  So how has the blog come along in these 13 months?  Very well, I’d say.  By the Google search results metric, Dan is doing very well.  He’s been driving the bulk of our Google search related traffic with his sports and video game posts.  (My posts tend to spread by word or mouth or search engines other than Google)

Jeffrey Friedl and I share a few similarities: we both are computer programmers, love photography, and enjoy blogging. Unlike me, however, Jeff is an expat living in Japan. Also unlike me, he has a great photo blog. Jeff documents his travels throughout the islands of Japan as well as his daily life in his blog.  Ocassionally, he also blogs about technical issues or new tech toys he bought or new Adobe Lightroom Plugins he has developed.

I am just sharing this because it’s about my alma mater, it’s a little funny in a geeky way, and I like Mark’s blog.

Check out this story about CIT and Cornell labs.

[emesa@mario ~]$ uname -a Linux mario.mushroomkingdom 2.6.24.5-85.fc8 #1 SMP Sat Apr 19 12:39:34 EDT 2008 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux [emesa@mario ~]$ history | awk ‘{a[$2]++}END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}’ | sort -rn | head 176 ls 172 eog 81 ./makeSpiral.pl 80 cd 61 ./makefibonaccicollage.pl 58 mplayer 51 ./makePolar.pl 36 mv 28 flickr_views.py 24 exit

and root:

[root@mario ~]# history | awk ‘{a[$2]++}END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}’ | sort -rn | head 193 ls 127 cd 102 exit 87 mount 77 yum 71 history 43 emacs 35 cat 20 rm 16 ifconfig Notes:

As I mentioned here, Micro$oft has provided yet another example of why digital restrictions management does nothing but hurt legitimate consumers.  To remind you, this is when Microsoft turned off the servers for its ironically named “playsforsure” DRM system.  These songs, which consumers would told, would play for sure on any digital media player containing the proper logo, will no longer play once August comes around and Microsoft turns off the servers which validate you as a non-criminal.  I hope there’s a huge outcry that forces them to un-DRM all these songs and sounds the ultimate death knell for DRM.

And it is hilarious!  So Dan finally got around to updating the blog I created for him on my server.  He gave it a pretty witty name “I Bring Nothing To The Table” which is a great pun on our last name.  (Although I recently found out he saw it on a T-shirt, so, while still cool, is not worth as many cool points as before)  If you read nothing else on his blog, you MUST read this post in which he gives his British friend some tips on Americanisms.  It is one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard come out of Daniel’s head.  So go and check it out and laugh out loud…

Andrew’s post on Imus and his firing prompted a response from me. I decided that since I hold a dim view that other sites may exist in the future, that I will post select bits from his post and my full response. By clicking on that link you can see his whole post and my response.

…Sharpton and Jackson were both like piranhas when Imus made his offensive statement. But Imus’ comments were outright tame compared to what the average top 40 rap song has in it. Why aren’t they going after rappers more vehemently? Because they’re black, or are they afraid 50 cent’s homies are going to cap them for it?

Tristan Rhodes has come up with a great analysis of Open Source vs Proprietary software by using fruit. It’s on the same par as Neal Stephenson using the car metaphor to describe Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Here are some of the key arguments that I loved.

Mabolosoft is a company that sells seedless fruit. They have orchards full of fruit trees that they have genetically-altered to be sterile, so that no seeds will be included with the fruit. Consumers want fruit, so they buy it from Mabolosoft. This fruit is seedless, so when people need more fruit they must go back to Mabolosoft.

Dina Mehta’s post about the current state of Blogging in India resonates so well across cultural and state boundaries because she touches on topics which transcend the human race. One of the best things about the article, in addition to the great writing, is the fact that, by reading it, one realized that in most ways all of humanity shares the same traits.

For example, this paragraph of her article pertained to me in every aspect: