blog

 

Can We Stop Arming the People who Hate Us?

I have a simple suggestion: Can we stop arming other military groups with anything more powerful then a slingshot?

 

Some Thoughts on Amending the Constitution

I really look at the Constitution as the owner's manual. I want to know what the government is allowed to do and what it isn't. The founders knew that it should be changeable, which is why there's a process for amending it. If the Constitution seems out of date, it is OUR FAULT for not insisting on the required maintenance.

 

Spoilers ...Issue I Have With the Fringe Finale

OK, posting this here so I don't throw spoilers up on FB... also not posting this to the front page of the blog to avoid spoilage. Please comment here to try and keep my FB feed spoiler free....

 

Conspiracy Theory: TWO OBAMAS?

Multiple Swearing in Ceremonies, Birth Certificates. Could there be 2 Barak Obamas?

 

My Thoughts on Gun Control

It's obvious to the least casual observer that I'm a bit of a Doctor Who fan and from a young age I was programmed to want to believe that "intellect and romance overcomes brute force and cynicism". But when I look at the world, I don't believe that anymore. Every time I look into the issue I go looking for evidence to support gun control and come away believing that an armed population is the best answer.

 

Importing Drupal 7 Comments into Disqus

I needed to import some comments into Disqus and wrote a quick module to do it. There are things in here that are hard coded that I should fix, but thought it was worth posting for today. Share and enjoy!

 

Why I'm Wouldn't Give My Facebook Password to an Employer, It Has Nothing to do With My Privacy

Recently there's been a lot of press about Employers and Potential Employers asking for a person's Facebook password as part of a background check. When I've discussed this with folks many people have said, "If you have nothing to hide, you should just turn it over to them. In this economy you do what you have to so you can get / keep a job". I whole-heartedly disagree with this point of view and after some thinking about it I'm going to tell you why. It has nothing to do with my privacy and everything to do with honour.

 

The Case for A Content Management System

Recently, someone approached me for some advice on their website. The site was made up of around 200 static HTML files and they were having problems managing the site. Simple things like minor changes to navigation, social media widgets and adding Google Analytics were muti-thousand dollar efforts since even the simplest change required editing and testing all 200 files. When I first suggest Drupal as the CMS for the project, he initially balked mostly because he didn't know what a CMS was and why it would help him. My notes from my conversations with him are the basis of this article.

 

From Idea to Site #1: Wireframing

OK, I need to start off with a confession. Last week when I decided that I was going to describe how I built this site, the site was just the one resume page (minus the menubar). Since then I had a fit of inspiration combined with insomnia which I've put to good use and launched some functionality that I was planning on getting to in the spring. So, for the next few posts we'll be discussing how to build that page, and then expand outward exactly as I have on the site.

 

From Idea to Site #0 : Introduction

Since I posted my new Resume, a few folks have asked how or why I've implemented certain features. I've decided to go ahead and write a series of articles explaining how I went ahead and built it. Over these articles, we're going to go from the idea "I should put my resume on the web" to launching the site. Since I've done no custom coding on this site, I hope it will be approachable to new Site Builders. Although we're using my Resume as a example, my goal isn't necessarily to teach you how to build a resume site.

 

Nobody Expects the McAfee Acquisition.

Sign that I have a broken brain. When I head about Intel acquiring McAfee and security being the "third pillar of technology" this ran through my brain

 

Intellectual Property vs Real Property

Since the supreme court ruled on Kelso vs. The City of New London allowing the use of eminent domain to transfer real property from one private owner to another to increase tax receipts and jobs, many cities have begun projects to build sports arenas, corporate parks, factories and bus stations. They have taken advantage of eminent domain to assist developers in acquiring the land they require to execute.

 

Some Random Thoughts on the 4th Amendment

I'm going to try and revive the blog in the new year... here's the first post...

Recently in some reading I came across a Patrick Henry quote "The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government - lest it come to dominate our lives and interests" which made me think of a story.

 

Obama Addressing Students

I can tell you my first "political memory", it was January 21, 1981, I was 11 years old. When was came to school that day TV sets were in the classroom. By mid day we were watching Ronald Reagan's Inauguration. I remember the Pomp and Circumstance around the event. As it was a Catholic school we prayed for the President, and for the Hostages released from Iran that day. Where President Reagan wasn't addressing the students directly, I do feel I learned a lot that day.

 

It's The End Of My Hard Drive As I Know It and I Feel Fine or Why I'm Running Tiger on Snow Leopard Weekend.

So, I had some disturbing news this weekend, my MacBook Pro, Zen, had his hard drive die on me and unlike most folks who have had a drive crash, I'm not panicked, once I figure out how I am going to work over the next few days until Apple can replace the drive I've been doing what I need to get an old machine up and running.

 

Blog Hiatus

Folks who follow my tweets / facebook /etc know I've been up to my ears in a project. I've got to put seanreiser.com on hiatus for a couple of weeks until I get things running smoothly with this new client.

 

Thoughts about the Facebook FriendFeed Merger

Just got done listening to the latest FFundercats "emergency chat podcast" discussing the Facebook / FriendFeed merger. Of course there's a lot of fear around this from the community. Will they merge the 2 systems? If I'm only a friendfeed user, will I have to get a facebook account in order to retain all the things I've posted in friendfeed? If they merge the 2 systems will my contacts be merged? Will my Facebook friends be able to see my FriendFeed activity or vice versa? Will I have to become Steven Perez's bunneh vampire?

 

Twitter and Facebook Outages: This is Why We Need a Loosely Coupled Network

OK, last night I wrote a piece on RSSCloud in which I touched on the 140 character network and what I was doing to implement it. A few non-propellerhead friends sent me IMs last night not getting why a loosely coupled network is important, which is OK I didn't do a good job of explaining it. Today we are getting a practical example of why it's important.

 

Play With Keyboard and RSS Cloud

Last week I attended Dave Winer's roadshow for bootstrapping the RSSCloud. It was an interesting meeting lots of discussion and I think that RSSCloud has some potential. It's always fun being in a room with seasoned pros, young turks and other folks some smarter then you and feeling the energy as these things are discussed.

 

IM and the RSS Cloud

At Dave Winer's meeting about bootstrapping the Rss Cloud someone (I don't remember who, sorry) asked about the possibility of using the cloud as an opensource peer to peer IM network to replace Jabber/XMPP (there was a little discussion around how difficult it is to implement XMPP securely and correctly). As I'm working on my cloud I've gotten to thinking about how to implement IM. I have no time to lead this for real, so this may be just a mental exercise. But if someone does have to the time to implement it I'd love to help.

Pages

Top