alex.polvi.net

My blogging pattern has been really weird lately. Sometimes I blog about stuff that is only relevant to school and my life, and other times I am blogging about work stuff. I’ll be honest, the fun in blogging about work is that a lot of people read it (people even translate and repost them!).

But, ya know, I have other things to talk about.

My music listening pattern is just as weird as my blogging one. It goes something like this: Find a new artist, get a new artist’s album, find particular song on artist’s album, listen to song over and over and over until all my roommates hate me and I think, walk, breath to the beat of the song.

So here it is folks! Find / buy these songs and make sure repeat is on!

* The Flaming Lips - Do You Realize??
This is my current song. I’ve listened to it enough that roommate Mike hates it, but I’m still hooked. In particular, I really like the part where he says, “The sun going down is just an illusion caused by the world spinning around.”

* Say Hi To Your Mom - Super
I hope he is not making fun of people. It could be that he is just mocking some folks — but I really hope and think his positive message is true.

* Stars - Don’t Be Afraid To Sing
Title is enough. Skip the secret track after this song, it’s not worth it.

* Billy Corgan - The CameraEye
“Close enough to die a time… or two or three”. Billy! Come back to us!

* 13 & goD - Soft Atlas
“Without a universal law there is no gravity, without gravity there is no atmosphere, without atmosphere there is no chance at life…” Men Of Station was almost the song I listened to over and over, but Soft Atlas ended up taking over — per suggestion of Neighbor Emily.

* Bloc Party - Like Eating Glass
Makes me wave my hands in the air, even while in an office chair.

* Arctic Monkeys - Perhaps Vampires Is a Bit Strong But…
Catchy overload. Only listen to this one if you want to be caught up in massive catchyness. The lyrics don’t even matter — it’s f’n catchy.

* The Faint - Birth
Sort of gross, but very well put together.

* Snow Patrol - Set The Fire To The Third Bar feat. Martha Wainwright
I love this song. I love Steven Garrety for sharing it with me. If you only have time to pick two songs out of this list, pick the flaming lips one — and this one. a. m. a. z. i. n. g.

* Ratatat - Noose
This song is new to me, and I’m not sure if it should be on this list… but I have listened to it about 20 times.

* Tegan & Sara - Where Does The Good Go
Seriously, where does the good go? This song is the reason tenant emily hates tegan and sara.

OK — that’s all I got. If you need any help finding any of these songs, let me know. They are all worth your time.

You might not know what it is… but you still should use this blog button. All great paths have their foot prints in snow.

5/25 @ 5:25

snow in the quad.

In CSS499 (organic farming) we were asked to find some soil and write about it. In order to complete this mission I headed out to the resting garden (it was about midnight). Laptop in one hand, shovel in the other, it was easy to dig up some tasty dirt. First impressions yielded a medium clay, but closer examination revealed a loose, porous, rich soil. The micro-ecosystem contained many worms and organics, such as roots from plants past. As I held the dirt, it crumbled before me in an act of fertility, not futility. The soil was lush and begging for more life, so Tenant Emily decided it was time to plant some lettuce, broccoli, and onions. Under the burning white of a headlamp she did just that, and now the soils of chateau-geek are closer then ever to their basal symbiotic relationship — dirt and plant.

I caught my first steelhead (on a fly) this weekend on the north fork of the Alsea! Woot. It was a 12-13lb brown buck. Had to chase it for about 200yds, at which point I fell… got a little wet, but still landed the fish!

I’ve been meaning to blog about this for awhile, but we have a new geek here at Chateau Geek (my house). Emily is a brilliant young lady (she was smart enough to move in with us!), studying all sorts of interesting things. Yep, so, welcome Emily.

One of the best things that has happened to me this term is my writing 214 class encouraging me to read peer reviewed journals. My only prior experience with such journals is seeing them outside a professors door waiting for office hours. The topic were always very specific, technical, and over my head. For those reasons I have never really had any interest in reading them.

“The communications of the ACM” has been my journal of choice. It turns out that all my prior journal stereotypes were wrong. Sure, there may be some overly convoluted titles, but the articles are very relevant to my life and career. With that, I give you the moral of the blog post: Read your peer reviewed journals.

School is going well. I am on top of my projects at work. There are plans I am looking forward to and things that I am happy to have accomplished.

And I can’t keep myself from bursting out in laughter while walking down the street.

I have been thinking a lot about different open source business models. The February Issue of CIO magazine covers with the words “FREE CODE (for sale), Inside the Buying and Selling of Open Source”, so I could not pass it up. In particular, there is a section called, “Your Guide to Open-Source Business Models”. The article outlines five models based around open source; Open Source + Service, Mixed, Open Source + Buy Off, Open Source + Aggregation, Open Source + Hardware.

Open Source + Service
This model is based around the idea that software is a service industry, not a manufacturing one. Open source lends it self to this, so these companies follow the model. The software is free and the customers pay for service contracts. (RedHat)

Mixed
Using closed source addons to generate revenue on top of an open source product. (Tripwire)

Open Source + Buy Off
Licensing tricks so that companies can make modifications to ‘open source’ software with out disclosing their changes. (MySQL)

Open Source + Aggregation
Package up open source software so they are dead easy to use, then sell the package.

Open Source + Hardware
Use an open source platform on hardware. (NetApp)

In my eyes, the model that stays closest to the mantra of free and open source software is “Open Source + Service”. However, this model is also weak. As the article pointed out, “venture capitalists don’t like the service-only model because the margins on service are invariably lower than those for proprietary software.” (p.56) On top of that, it does not seem like it would be that much fun to be in the service industry.

“Mixed” and “Open Source + Buy Off” are clear evil. A mixed model is nothing more then a free trial. Sure, it may be a robust trial, but the developer is holding code back. It seems like a self created conflict of interest. The buy off method seems like a cheap trick in order to make some money. If a company is sold the right to not distribute changes, they effectively became a leach. If companies using this model are successful, the communities will not be, and everything is lost.

What is a good model? We need a model that does not stomp on the contributors, promotes community, and is not a support shop! How do we do it? Not really sure. I am in love with the Ubuntu model (Ubundel), but they have yet to show a sustainable future. This is sort of expected, since they are forging the way. New models will be followed out of their ambitious lead. But what’s next?

I purpose a model that applies open source practices outside of the software industry. This time we do not take Open Source and tack on some money making revenue, we use open source itself.

The Open Source Model
The communities are the core, in fact, they are the company. Start a community that is a revenue generator. Anyone can work for the company, and the individuals are paid via contribution, not via hour. The company would list what projects they are working on and any one interested could come on board.

What sort of projects would this work for? Only the rewarding ones. If this was a development shop creating boring software, nobody would participate. However, if we were working on projects that supported humanity, had people think outside themselves, or were straight up sexy, it would be unstoppable. The pace would accelerate as it grew. The bittorrent of business models!

Free Code (for sale) exemplified that open source models are still limited to one off successes. The models that they and I proposed are not perfect, and will not be, but they are a step in the right direction. Free and open source software has so much inherent value that it has already solidified its future, we just need to do a little backwards thinking to get there.

If you are interested in my performance at the 2006 Pacific Northwest Yo-Yo championships…. clicky (yes, that is a Firefox shirt :)

< polvi> wow that’s embarrassing
< morgamic> naw man you did good!
< polvi> i can’t believe i did that in front of like 100 people
< morgamic> more like 200
< polvi> oh ok
< polvi> thanks

This weekend I took a break from being on-call, went to Seattle, and got my ass kicked by 12 year-olds.