Open Source

I've manage to learn UNIX enough to completely install a new website, which I will make known to everyone here once it is available for usage. It is a photo sharing site, and I used what is called "open source" software as a base.

To those who don't know what open source is, allow me to explain. I'm relatively new to the game, though I've heard of it for a long time, and have even benefited from its use in the past. There is a community of software developers that enjoy the idea of pooling their collective efforts so that others can benefit without having to (pardon the cliché) reinvent the wheel. The wheel in my case is a web application much like Flickr, where users can download photos, organize them into albums, allow users to comment, search, email, etc. This has already been done for me. I just had to learn enough to install it and make it available on my own website.

Pretty cool, huh? There are thousands of such applications ready to roll -- yours for the price of your time to understand it.

So that, in part, is what has consumed me -- that and my continuing effort to write my novel. An online buddy of mine has offered to collaborate on a short story in the fantasy realm so that we can both expand our resumes. Sounds exciting. I'm not sure how these things work, but I know how valuable a second and third pair of ears is with what I'm trying to do now.

Oh, and my writing mentor would like for me to read his newest and pre-published novel, in exchange for a latte and an acknowledgement in the final print. How sweet is that?

Since there was so much snow over the weekend, the Cub Scout Pinewood Derby was delayed for a week, which is ever so lucky for us. We would have had something ready, but not nearly as cool as what is almost completed now. We decided to pillage Jackson's old Lego sets and found a spaceship cockpit, a steering wheel, stick-shift, and the makings of some radical looking laser cannons. I'll post a picture when we finish. What you see here is a slick looking derby car I found online, which I used as a base. Our final product won't have the industrial edges that bound this little piece of perfection, but I have to say, ours is pretty damn cool.

Peace friends. I hope to be back soon.