Its that time again to celebrate the freedom of software. On September 18th, 2010 the world will be celebrating Software Freedom Day. If you are interested in hosting an event in your local area, go to the wiki & sign up your team (Registration link). If you register your team before the August 1st 2010, you are guaranteed to receive team supplies like T-shirts, Linux Distro CDs to handout & much more.

If you don’t have the time to put on your own SFD event, look at the Map or the Teams Wiki page to join an existing team in your area. But if all of that doesn’t work, the easiest way to help spread the word is to add a SFD banner to your site. You can get them here: http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/Artwork#Banners

- Ken

Last night I was trying to test out Youtube’s HTML5 video playback implementation using Chomium. I end up getting hooked into watching a 10 part sci-fi series. Each episode was about 5 to 7 minute long so it didn’t feel like I was stuck watching a show that I couldn’t easily stop and get back to. The show was a down right awesome sci-fi flick. Its felt like it was a mix of the galactic wars from the Firefly series, Starship Troopers & Aliens (the second one). The show is called Trenches.

The Good:

1) The show was awesome!

2) I found an interesting new features from Youtube. If you are watching an episodic series, Youtube offers a “Autoplay” button. That lil feature made it very easy to watch all 10 episodes all at once without having to 1 setup a playlist or 2 navigate back to the main Trenches landing page to choose the next episode in the series.

The Bad:

1) The video quality was just okay at 480p. Watching it full screen on my laptop with a 1680×1050 resolution made it very pixelated. Plus, I believe all the shows were still encoded in Flash. I’ll have to actually go back an look.

2) If I was logged into my Youtube account I was served ads for watching the videos. I think its pretty weird that I didn’t get any ads through the first 5 episodes I watched without being logged in & then once I logged in I was given an ad. Rather crappy way of handling people with an account. You would think it would be the other way around.

That’s it. Go be a freedom hater for about an hour and enjoy a really cool sci-fi.

I had to pimp this nerdcore rap video by daleochase called “Coder Girl”. I like the idea of the song, but I don’t like the usage of all the Crapple products. But, baggers can’t be choosers when it comes to freely distributed music.

Have a look & listen . . .

You can follow daleochase on twitter & get the lyrics to his this song here.

Visit his web site @ http://syntaxbeats.squarespace.com/

- Ken

The idea of being a Geek is actually a cool thing these days. Everyone is driven by technology. Lots of people have smart phones or travel with a NetBook or laptop everywhere they go. When traveling people will have a GPS with them so they will not miss the next toilet stop along the highway. With this wealth of technology at our finger tips, you better be a person that is on pace with it or if your not you will be left in the dust to die with the dinosaurs.

When I say that you have to be on pace with the moving technology arena, I am not just talking about ponying up the cash for the hottest tech toy. I am talk about actually knowing what that tech toy can & can’t do. It is about educating yourself so you can become a smart consumer and a smarted user of technology.

If you are a parent, this is doubly important. As a parent myself, I know that I am going to be the first teacher of the world to my kids. I don’t want to rely on someone else or have my kids rely on themselves to learn about technology. Granted I am a skilled user of technology, but I don’t see this as any different then a person who is a mechanic, a carpenter or any other skilled trade. Most skilled trades man/women are going to tech their kids how to do that job or at least understand it. The is all I am doing.

So that this why I have started my kids out early in their technology education courses. With my first daughter, PJ, we had to get her a computer for herself so my wife and I could do our computing in piece. I put together a simple system when she was 18 months and we bought her a good amount of software that was fun and entertaining for her age [Reader Rabbit, Sesame Street, etc]. Many of our friends couldn’t believe that our 18 month old child was able to play computer games by herself and truly understood what was going on. All we had to do was ask her what game she wanted and load the CD. She was able to do the rest.

Now 7 years later, PJ has been the computer assistant in kindergarten & 1st grade. She is the kid all the other kids [& sometimes the teacher] turn to when they don’t understand what is happening on the computer. It’s actually funny & scary to hear that she has become a mini IT person for her classes.

With our second child, MJ, she is chomping at the bit to be able to use a computer. She just turned 1, but has had a computer keyboard in her face since she was born. It is hard to keep her away from our laptops and other other computer in the house. Cause she loves to play the, “I’m going to touch your Backspace button while you are typing or surfing the net” game.

But we already have the plan in place for MJ. We kept PJ’s old computer and when MJ is about 18 months old I will set it up for her. We still have all of games PJ used and have learned about many web sites over the years of educating PJ.

It is going to be a lot of fun to have MJ on a computer also. I know PJ will have a blast teaching her lil sister the ins & outs of the games and web sits. It will be hard to keep PJ out of MJ’s way, but I know they will work it all out.

I can’t wait to see where PJ & MJ will be in the next 6 years. PJ will be 14 & MJ 7. I bet we will all be sitting around the house on our computers mirco-blogging to each other about how good dinner was that night.

Thanks to ThinkGeek for helping me show the world that my littlest one will be a geek when she goes up. Here is a link to the Onesie

-Ken