To celebrate the reborn San Jose Earthquakes
Bill Ward
Moving pages to Brickpile
Prompted by the imminent shutdown of brickshelf.com I am moving all my LEGO entries from this site to my LEGO blog, brickpile.com. Although I copied all my photos from this site onto flickr.com some time ago, I never updated the blog entries to use those images until now. Since I’m updating them, I might as well move them to the LEGO blog. As I move each entry there, I will add rewrite rules to this site so that when anyone tries to visit the old location it will be redirected to the new one.
Pescadero, August 9, 2006
From a day trip to Pescadero, CA.
Half Way to Three Score and Ten
That’s right, I turned 35 today. I’m officially middle aged if you go by the biblical quota (I don’t). I don’t feel that old though.
World Cup 2006: Why It Is Good for Soccer in the US
1. One of the biggest ethnic groups in this country is Italian-Americans (but who were they cheering for when the USA played Italy?)
World Cup Lunch Break
Today I spent my lunch hour (well, two hours) at the Oracle gym watching the World Cup. It was an exciting game between England and Sweden.
My Mother’s Flower Pics
My mother has been making good use of her digital camera lately. She has an Apple iBook and we’ve been helping her master using iPhoto to manage her photos.
World Cup 2006: Mixed Emotions
The 2006 FIFA World Cup is going on right now in Germany and every team has played a game so far. There have been a lot of emotional highs and lows. Here are few examples:
My Mother’s Flower Photos
My mother has been making good use of her digital camera lately. She has an Apple iBook and we’ve been helping her master using iPhoto to manage her photos.
DCamp 2006: Design Unconference
DCamp was an unconference focused on design and user experience. It was held May 12-13, 2006, at Socialtext in Palo Alto, CA. Holly and I attended a lot of fascinating presentations.
With Jim at the Cliff House
I went to the Cliff House with my wife Holly and her brother Jim at dusk on Saturday (March 11, 2006), and we spent some time taking pictures of the stormy sea at dusk.
Cliff House at Dusk
I went to the Cliff House with Holly and her brother Jim at dusk on Saturday, March 11, 2006. We spent some time taking pictures of the stormy sea.
New Blog for LEGO, and Changes Are Afoot
I’ve started a new blog just for my LEGO®-related posts. You can find it at www.brickpile.com. I post new entries there at least once a week, which is a lot more often than I ever did here.
Linux Picnic 2005: Picn*x 14
On August 14, 2005 we had the annual Linux Picnic, Picn*x14, at the Sunnyvale Baylands Park.
Poem: A Three Ring Circus
“A Three Ring Circus”
by Bill Ward
2005
Victory in Broadcast Flag Case!
As I reported a while ago, the FCC wants to limit our ability to install digital TV tuners in our computers, and thus to build our own digital video recorders. The proposal would have made it illegal to make or sell tuner cards that would decode digital signals where a “broadcast flag” was set. This was supposed to protect the intellectual property rights of Hollywood but at the cost of making it impossible for us to watch such shows on anything but a commercially produced decoder box or TV. So now with this ruling, it will take an act of Congress for the FCC to get its way. The deadline of July 1 for buying broadcast-flag-free HDTV tuner cards is now gone!
Pictures from SSV Rally, March 31, 2004
Last August Soccer Silicon Valley held a Rally to show support for keeping the Earthquakes in the bay area. To kick off the 2005 season we held another rally, this time sponsored by the City of San Jose and the San Jose Sports Authority. Well, the Earthquakes are still here, still for sale, and still looking for a new stadium. We got a “stay of execution” last fall but unless the situation improves by late summer, we may lose our team. See the Soccer Silicon Valley Web site for the latest news.
Come see me speak at the BayLISA Meeting on April 21, 2005
I will be giving a presentation on Regular Expressions at BayLISA in Cupertino on April 21. Come out and see it! Here are the details: Whether running a simple grep command or writing a big Perl program, a thorough understanding of regular expressions is an essential skill for any system administrator. The talk will describe the history, syntax, and best practices for regular expressions; how a well-written regular expression can dramatically improve the speed of pattern matching; and give tips for using regular expressions in Perl programs.
HDTV capture cards and Digital TV Broadcast Flag
Join the Television Digital Liberation Front! According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) it will soon be illegal to “sell or distribute in interstate commerce a Covered Demodulator Product that does not comply with the Demodulator Compliance Requirements and Demodulator Robustness Requirements.” This takes effect on July 1, 2005.
Linux Holiday Dinner 2004
Last Wednesday night, December 15, 2004, was our first ever (hopefully annual) Linux Holiday Dinner which I organized. It was held by Silicon Valley Linux Users’ Group (where I was recently elected Vice President) and Peninsula Linux Users’ Group (of which I am the founder and President).
Vintage Computer Festival 2004 (7.0) Pictures
This past weekend I attended the Vintage Computer Festival 7.0, held at the Computer History Museum here in Mountain View, CA. I was there as part of the Fresno Commodore User Group, the last remaining Commodore User Group in California. We had a bunch of Commodore equipment, past and present, on display (inlcuding the new C64 DTV Joystick). Here are my pictures from the event:
Commodore 64-in-a-Joystick from QVC
This past weekend I attended the Vintage Computer Festival 7.0 here in Mountain View, CA. I was there as part of the Fresno Commodore User Group (FCUG, the only remaining CUG in California) booth, selling some of our old Commodore stuff and trying to attract members for a new Bay Area chapter. (Email me if you’re interested in joining!)
I Was on TV! Quakes Stadium Rally
Last week I attended a meeting of the Santa Clara City Council which was scheduled to discuss the possibility of building a new stadium for the Earthquakes – and I was on the TV news that night!
Get a Gmail Invite
By now you’ve probably heard of gmail, Google’s new mail service. It’s in a “beta test” mode which means they won’t let just anyone sign up. But people who have accounts are issued a few invitations they can give out, so it spreads by word of mouth.