OME months ago I received a trophy, which I have not gotten around to posting anything about… until today. Having just done some housekeeping in schestowitz.com I finally updated the sports page and uploaded my results from Mr. Fitness 2009. Mike Coogan won this last competition.

FEW months ago I started to phase out E-mail to an extent. I still use E-mail, but it’s just not a communication tool of choice. The frustration of falsely-flagged (and filtered) messages has convinced me that I made the right choice. Why should I spend half an hour in vain trying to just (re-)E-mail a friend messages that he did not receive for months because his ISP shot these messages down? This whole E-mail chaos (caused mainly by SPAM that compromised Windows boxes spew out) leads to degradation of relationships between people, it not only interferes with work (data loss). When people think that they get ignored simply because their E-mails are not received on the other side, then perhaps it’s time to give up on E-mail, then find a more reliable medium. Last month I reconsidered my position on E-mail, but after seeing it ruining more relationships — simply due to the loss of many messages in a row — I decided to just put friends before E-mail, even if that means not using E-mail unless there is no other choice.

Have any of your friendships been harmed by E-mail problems? Could it possibly happen without you knowing about it (due to communication problems, obviously)?

Cross-posted (Techrights)

Summary: TechBytes is a new audiocast we’ll start running shortly

AVING arranged a sort of partnership between OpenBytes and Techrights we are proud to announce TechBytes (yes, it’s a combination or fusion of names). What is it? It’s a podcast, but we call it audiocast because “pod” is falsely associated with Apple.

Start date: November 2010

Recurrence: Weekly (hopefully, depending on our daytime jobs)

Slogan: “No episode number, this isn’t a soap opera”

On the show we plan to bring many people, including regulars of OpenBytes and Techrights. We have already arranged and resolved some of the technical issues, addressed some needs, and we received permission for use of a theme song. The show will be available in free formats such as Ogg (maybe more later).

This ought to be a lot of fun and help put a friendly face on folks who are sometimes wrongly perceived as angry and rantsy because text-only communication (words alone) leaves out most of one’s message. If any of our regular contributors or readers wishes to join, let us know in IRC or in the comments section below. It is supposed to be an open forum and we want to have as many guests as possible.

Cross-posted in Techrights

Summary: Techrights is in the December 2010 issue of Linux Format Magazine

OR THOSE who want to know more about the history of Techrights, there is a new article in the December 2010 issue of Linux Format. The content is available only to subscribers. We thank Linux Format for generally being quite supportive over the years. There are some circles that are hostile towards us and upon closer inspection it usually turns out that they also oppose GNU/Linux and/or Free software, in which case this hostility may actually be indicative of the idea that we are effective. Techrights is still a group effort and achievements that are being made are communal, not personal. Thanks to all those who recommend the site to friends and colleagues, thus ensuring the continued growth of readership and input that accompanies it (recently we have been getting translations too).

Back to nature… sort of…

London (2010)

arlier today I watched with great patience this wonderful new interview with PZ Myers (thanks, Thunderf00t!), who spoke about his hugely popular science blog. I very much enjoy his site in which he started writing only 7 years ago. It was about 6 years ago that I started my own science blog (on computer vision) and later started another one about my particular area of focus (that was in 2005). They grew nicely and reached the niche whose narrow topic of interest they covered.

I have been thinking recently of the potential to inform people who are my peers through scientific blogs and decided that I will probably restore activity in those older two, as well as this one neglected personal blog where I hardly wrote anything for the past 3 years (it totals 1416 posts though, mostly from the olden days).

I found it gratifying back in the days around 2006 when people in my scientific field knew me in conferences because of my blogs and wanted to hang out with me because of these. The readership grew steadily as long as I kept writing. PZ Myers sees the same type of trend and Techrights, where I wrote over 11,000 posts, is the same. Perhaps I will resume posting in blog form about science later this month or next month. As always, I will separate my professional life, my personal life, and my hobbies (the 4 blogs I run will provide this separation).

On several occasions I was offered an opportunity to write a book, but frankly, I believe that books are seeing their end of days (when older generations are no longer with us, then pen and paper too may vanish). I was fortunate to get into blogging early on, thanks to Free software. It’s a rewarding experience even through there is no pay.

ack in early 2008 I wrote about my transition into a more idle mode — a mode which enabled me to focus on some more personal projects and de-emphasise research for a while. Between the years 2003 and 2006 I spent a lot of time building and maintaining schestowitz.com to the point where it attracted about 3,000 visitors per day. In late 2006 I relocated a lot of my work and writings to the site now known as Techrights. This is where I publish a lot of my opinions and the fruits of my readings, which fortunately helps many other people understand the industry (no spin, no bias, no conflict of interest or money at stake).

I have been thinking about returning to research at a higher level of capacity than at present because it is something that I enjoy doing and something that keeps me abreast of my field of expertise. I will write at a later date about my plans.

or no apparent reason, I rarely discuss Techrights in my personal Web site. This is not intentional.

The thing is, Techrights is the reason I hardly ever update schestowitz.com anymore. I spend a high number of hours sharing my thoughts over at Techrights, so if you are already subscribed to my personal blog, please consider subscribing to Techrights.org too. It mostly covers software and ethics.

On a separate note, Google has been looking to hire me recently (they do this with a lot of people and they occasionally contact me too), but I am torn between my obligations to serve the public interest and someone’s private interest.

What do you think? Is Google not evil? About 90% of my writings about Google are positive; the rest are not.