wikidPad | Get wikidPad at SourceForge.net

wikidPad | Get wikidPad at SourceForge.net

WikidPad is a wiki-like notebook for storing your thoughts, ideas, todo lists, contacts, or anything else you can think of to write down

Before and after pics

Here are some before and after pics of my diet. The "after" pic was taken today, and the "before" one was taken 13 weeks ago. I went from 169 lbs to 147 lbs, which is a loss of 22 lbs (1.6 stone). That equates to a loss of 1.7 lbs per week. I am now a 34" waist. The real challenge is to see if I can maintain it. I hope to post an update at end of year.

Also, you can check out a commentary by my in my recent Youtube Video

Pretty penguin: five great themes for the GNOME desktop

Pretty penguin: five great themes for the GNOME desktop

Includes Sonar:

The Sonar theme for GNOME was created by Novell and introduced in version 11.2 of openSUSE. Its Gtk+ style has soft gradients that mix green and gray. The window border and titlebar are a combined black, with a green radial gradient at the top that looks a bit like floodlighting. The Sonar icons conform with the basic tango style, but have a bit more detail and more elaborate shading. The distinctive Sonar folder icons are especially beautiful.

Hacker's Diet - Phase 1 complete

I completed the first phase of my Hacker's Diet: weight loss. It now remains to be seen whether I can sustain the weight loss or not. I hope to post an update at the end of this year, or the beginning of the next, to say whether I had maintained my progress.

Here's some stats: I am male, 5' 7.5", 44 years old, and began my diet on 10 Jan 2010 weighing 169 lbs. As of today, the trend line is slightly below 147lbs, which is my target weight. The diet latest 13 weeks, I lost 22 lbs (that's 1.6 stone) , making the rate of loss about 1.7 lbs per week. I now have a 34" waist.

Below is a graph of my progress, from the start of the diet, to the achievement of my ideal weight. The blue line shows actual weight, and the red line gives a smoothed trend line weight.

Obituary to Common Sense

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as: Knowing when to come in out of the rain; Why the early bird gets the worm; Life isn't always fair; maybe it was my fault. Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge). His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition. Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children. It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an Aspirin to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion. Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses, and criminals received better treatment than their victims. Common Sense took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault. Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement. Common Sense was preceded in death, by his parents, Truth and Trust, by his wife, Discretion, by his daughter, Responsibility, and by his son, Reason. He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers; I Know My Rights, I Want It Now, Someone Else Is To Blame, I'm A Victim. Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone. If you still remember him, pass this on.

Smalltalk.org™ | versions | OOVM.html

Smalltalk.org™ |  versions |  OOVM.html

OOVM A/S (Object Oriented Virtual Machines) which develop a unique and advanced software development platform. OOVM develops the next generation software platform for embedded systems to dramatically improve productivity, serviceability, and reliability.

The OOVM platform is based on a small object-oriented virtual machine, which runs directly on hardware without the need for an operating system. All software components are compiled to safe, ultra compact bytecodes and executed on top of the virtual machine. The compactness makes it possible to fit the virtual machine, core libraries, device drivers, TCP/IP networking stack, and user applications in less than 128KB of memory. The OOVM platform supports pure object-oriented programming. Programmers familiar with object-oriented programming can take advantage of their skills and immediately start developing for embedded devices. Object-orientation enables software reuse. Since bytecodes are independent of the underlying hardware, software components can be reused across different hardware architectures.

Inferno (operating system) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Inferno (operating system) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Inferno is an operating system for creating and supporting distributed services. It was based on the experience of Plan 9 from Bell Labs, and the further research of Bell Labs into operating systems, languages, on-the-fly compilers, graphics, security, networking and portability.

Inferno applications are portable across a broad mix of hardware, networks, and environments. It defines a virtual machine, known as Dis, that can be implemented on any real machine, provides Limbo, a type-safe language that is compiled to portable byte code, and, more significantly, it includes a virtual operating system that supplies the same interfaces whether Inferno runs natively on hardware or is hosted as an application on other systems.

Cheap holidays from Co-op Travel

Cheap holidays from Co-op Travel

Education, education, education

The following post appeared on slashdot a few day ago:

Someday, public schools may be much more like public libraries open to anyone to use than day prisons for children of working parents, but until then, consider:

"Links about alternative peer-oriented education"
http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Education [p2pfoundation.net]

"The Underground History of American Education" by 1991 NYS Teacher of
the Year John Taylor Gatto
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm [johntaylorgatto.com]

"The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher" also by John Taylor Gatto
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt [newciv.org]

"State Controlled Consciousness" also by John Taylor Gatto
http://www.the-open-boat.com/Gatto.html [the-open-boat.com]

"The Big Crunch" by David Goodstein, Vice Provost, Caltech
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html [caltech.edu]

"Disciplined Minds" by Jeff Schmidt
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/ [disciplined-minds.com]

"What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream" by Noam Chomsky
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm [chomsky.info]

"University Secrets:Your Guide to Surviving a College Education" by Robert D. Honigman
http://web.archive.org/web/20060707100524/www.universitysecrets.com/us.htm [archive.org]

"In Defense of Childhood: Protecting Kids' Inner Wildness " by Chris
Mercogliano, who spent thirty-five years teaching at the Albany Free School
http://www.chrismercogliano.com/childhood.htm [chrismercogliano.com]

"Teach Your Own" by John Holt (and other books)
http://www.holtgws.com/ [holtgws.com]

"The Teenage Liberation Handbook" by Grace Llewellyn (and other books)
http://gracellewellyn.com/ [gracellewellyn.com]

"The Emergence of Compulsory Schooling and ... Resistance" By Matt Hern
http://web.archive.org/web/20071014123355/http://www.social-ecology.org/article.php?story=20031028151034651 [archive.org]

"Sustainable Education" by Jerry Mintz
http://www.greenmoneyjournal.com/article.mpl?articleid=195&newsletterid=1 [greenmoneyjournal.com]

"Federated Learning Communities"
http://www.ericdigests.org/2000-1/learning.html [ericdigests.org]
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/ilc/models.html [maricopa.edu]

"The Three Boxes of Life and How to Get Out of Them: An Introduction to
Life/Work Planning" by Richard N. Bolles (also writes "What Color is Your
Parachute")
http://www.amazon.com/Three-Boxes-Life-How-Them/dp/0913668583 [amazon.com]

General related:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies_My_Teacher_Told_Me [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_People's_History_of_the_United_States [wikipedia.org]
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/indextrue.html [historyisaweapon.com]

Mine:

"Post-Scarcity Princeton, or, Reading between the lines of PAW for
prospective Princeton students, or, the Health Risks of Heart Disease "
http://www.pdfernhout.net/reading-between-the-lines.html [pdfernhout.net]

"Towards a Post-Scarcity New York State of Mind (through homeschooling)"
http://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-state-of-mind.html [pdfernhout.net]