Specialization is for Insects, Seth says » personal

Twittering

seth — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 21:16:18 +0000

I am, however, twittering. Catch me @isforinsects if you want to keep up with my minute-to-minute escapades. Part of the reason I’m dissatisfied with the lawblog is that I can’t embed js/flash widgets to show twitter updates :(.

Haitus

seth — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 21:10:57 +0000

Hey everybody. It’s that time of year :S

I have been completely swamped with work, and a little unhappy with the limitations of the MUwordpress here at Harvard. I’m considering moving my blag back to isforinsects.com or to a l.o address, or something else entirely.

Anyway, just wanted to let you all know that I wont be updating for the next couple weeks. FYI

things I don’t need

seth — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 01:03:21 +0000

Over the past six months I have drastically cut down on my personal posessions. I moved to Boston in June with a suitcase and a backpack. Since then I have had two smallish boxes of clothes shipped from back home (it’s getting cold).

And you know what? I don’t miss hardly anything.

At the end of August I made the decision I was staying past the end of the summer. My roommates‘ lease was ending and I needed a new place to live. I found a place pretty quickly with a coworker. But in the process of the move, I had noticed that I had accumulated quite a few posessions: papers, swag, electronics, junk; it was nothing that I needed.

I took stock and I pared down my posessions again. I got rid of a few clothes that I didn’t wear, dumped any paper and swag I didn’t really need. So when I moved to my new place, I came with two suitcases, the second picked up from traveling for OLPC (my backpack in the second suitcase).

Again about a week ago, I threw away a smallish pile of things that I didn’t need, and it felt really good.

I hear that back home my parents have gotten rid of much of my furnature, sold some of my books, and are looking to git rid of more.

Good.

Mesh News Knight Grant

seth — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 14:57:07 +0000

Long-time OLPC contributor Todd Kelsey recently submitted a proposal to the Knight Grant Challenge and has made it through to the second round! This is great news for Todd and for OLPC, because Todd’s project is about expanding journalism, writing and community around OLPC deployments.

Quoth Todd:

Mesh News is an entry on the Knight News Challenge, which has received a request for a full proposal. As of 12:30pm EST on 11-20, the 2000 entries have been narrowed down to around 350, and Mesh news is in 8th place in terms of overall number of views, and dropped from 3rd to 5th place in terms of “ratings”. If it does make it past the full proposal stage to the “final 50″, and then to the “final 20″, I think it could help a few kids out in various parts, provide a bit of employment, and help to get some additional publicity for OLPC.

I invite anyone who is supportive to go to http://www.tinyurl.com/meshnews, click on the sign in to comment link underneath the title, register, and then click on the rightmost orange star as you like.

The # of views / ratings don’t determine acceptance, and are quite subject to manipulation (including intentional down-rating), but sincere objective ratings don’t hurt, and a few extra clicks wouldn’t hurt either.

Go G1G1!!!

Please join me in wishing Todd the best of luck!

blogs dot com?

seth — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 00:57:07 +0000

I didn’t know that this was a real site. But blogs.com is real (they do exist!), and they just made an amazing post/update about OLPC. They covered just about everything that’s been happening lately.

They mentioned the OLPC Blog, G1G1, the new G1G1 FAQ, Amazon, SWIFT and Google, the manual and (the amazing) Anne Gentle’s work on the manual.

Crazy stuff. It’s pretty rare to see something so well researched on the web.

+1 Blogs.com

One Laptop per Child Blog

seth — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 17:56:53 +0000

Nice, we’re finally setting up a blog for OLPC:

We need guest posts! Please help! (email sj at laptop dot org with posts)

We’ve got 5 years

seth — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 03:03:21 +0000

And now David is going to sing us a song…

Actually this is the part where Harvard wont let me EMBED ANYTHING ON THIS BLOG.

1.) Floss Manuals mini-store:

.js was stripped out auto-magically, and could not import .css

2.) Berkman wont let me embed YouTube in my blog.

Ok, a little tacky maybe. But seriously. C’mon Harvard!

You Must Mine More Awesome!

seth — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 15:28:44 +0000

More images from the Internet Superhighway event. StarCraft FTW!

One Velociraptor per Child

seth — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 03:21:07 +0000

“It’s an education project, not a genetic engineering project.” – Dr. Ian Malcolm.
Mission Statement: To increase the Darwinian fitness of the world’s poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-energy, internet-enabled velociraptor with content designed for collaborative, practical, self-empowered survival

Those crazy Olin kids… Go check out www.velociraptorz.org/ and buy a t-shirt.

Blogs on XO-XP vs XO-Sugar

seth — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:11:00 +0000

Now, I haven’t actually used Windows on XO for more than a few seconds. There are something like three at the OLPC offices AFAIK. But with the announcement of a viable form of XP on the XO the blogosphere has had a field day. CNET has finally posted a reasonable, if non-technical, side by side comparison of the two versions of the machine. The results in the actual article are fairly ambiguous, but blogs, both secular and FOSS have decried that kids prefer Sugar over XP.

But more surprisingly, the great majority of blogs about the subject have been in Espanol.