NOHO-NYC Adventures

We're on a trip to The Moon, says Remy D... with a mild diversion on the way, a stop in Pluto. Eben Moglen of the Software Freedom Law Center and Columbia University Law History department, has asked for a meeting with the founding members of The Causemaker Foundation, and it's just a little out of the way: we came out this way to see the show for Umphrees McGee in Northampton Massachusetts, and that was a bust for me. We went to a nice restaurant (The Dirty Truty) instead of that, Mike said that the concert was a rockin good time!

Have been enjoying Northeastern hospitality and the beautiful weather and scenery of New York and Mass, we're taking a train into NYC and I have yet to contact anyone for lodging or more serious scoping out of the area. We've got enough friends in NYC, and Remy has made some links, that I'm not worried about it. I could come out of this trip with an incredible story or even an internship with one of the great heads of the Free Software movement, with doors leading to Law school and worse: real political activism.

Wish me luck! My phone is out of service, if you need me call Amy Gavin at 585.781.4145, we're in Northampton for a day more, after that you can try my number or Jeremy DeCausemaker at 315.945.1601 -- he's got a Cingular phone, my Cricket has been out of service since near Syracuse. I hope it works in NYC!

Facebook Work

Been contemplating lately what kind of groups and other manners of dancing that I should focus on involving myself with, centering around questions like who exactly is going to pay to fund my continued existence. This is not a question of depression, it's a matter of practicality!

The best way that I can think of to kick-start this process is to update my resume. I've been meaning for a long time to build a resume that allows central maintenance of both a printed and an online format. Second note here is that all of my previous resumes have been focused on providing a long list of technology keywords, and I'm not sure of the benefit of that anymore.

I have used a large number of programming languages and it is not helpful to enumerate them, as I will generally need to refresh myself with a book and some form of homework before I can successfully jump into another coding project. Also from my own perspective, I would rather work with a technology that is new to me than one that I have already struggled with before now, so a list of my own known technologies is almost a "bad seed" for any manager that might seek to hire me.

Also while it's helpful to know a lot of languages, usually programming takes place in one language so it could be quite helpful to regain fluency in at least one programming language before re-entering the software development job market. The neatest target language with the most interesting developer buzz ongoing today is PHP and the Facebook Platform API.

I think I'd better set up another server this evening and see for myself some of what can be done in PHP today. Facebook is an incredibly massive well-ordered database of information on groups and individuals, and I suspect the platform is especially ripe for data-driven applications! Lets get one started, or take a closer look at one of the applications that has already been developed.