Earlier this year, I inherited responsibility for the website of the Knight Digital Media Center at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. The site is built with Django, a web application framework written in Python. The J-School has primarily been a PHP shop, using a mixture of open-source apps — lots of WordPress, Smarty templates and piles of home-brew code. Because it’s grown organically over time with no clear underlying architecture and a constantly changing array of publications to support, the organization sits on top of dozens of unrelated databases.

These are my notes and observations on how the J-School got into this mess, why we’ve fallen in love with Django, and how we plan to dig ourselves out.

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OK, it’s over, right? Get over it? Nope. It’s not over. We’re going to fix this. Humans must be free.

Keith Olberman gets past the bile and hits this one right out of the park. In the name of love, please watch this, and spread it far and wide.

What did liberals do that was so offensive to the Republican Party? I’ll tell you what they did. Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. What did Conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things, every one. So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, ‘Liberal,’ as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won’t work, because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor. –The West Wing

Always impressed by the clarity and perspective of copyright law professor Larry Lessig. His video explication of reasons to vote No on 8 is worth five minutes of your time.

See also: Amendment Song

Note to self: Look out the window to see if there are any really little kids waiting for treats before putting on the mask and opening the door :)

Thanks to YesWeCarve.com, found some excellent Obama stencils. Opted for simpler (read: more do-able) campaign logo background, hoping it speaks for itself (”Oooobama” would have been fun, but Miles’ bedtime was coming up fast). Amy went for the classic black cat (artfully executed), and Miles did a ghost. We’re ready!

Did some math and took some notes on real-world disk usage patterns by Birdhouse Hosting customers. Short version: The vast majority of users will never utilize even a tiny fraction of the massive amounts of space being offered by some of the largest/most-oversell-crazy web hosts out there.

Zowch!

This week at Stuck Between Stations:

This Band Could Save Your Life
Roger, on classic tracks that have a bpm count of around 100, matching that of the human heart:

A Reuters article this week reported that the Bee Gees’ falsetto-fortified 1977 disco hit ‘Stayin’ Alive,” which clocks in at 103 beats per minute (bpm), almost perfectly matches the 100 per minute rate that the American Heart Association recommends for chest compressions during cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

Strange Fruit
Roger, recalling the indelible power of Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit,” and the effect it had on his young mind. Connected to recent revelations about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and their sons’ reactions to the revelation.

As much as we’re all enjoying the endless Obama/McCain character assassination circus, there are other important things to think about before November 4.

Here in California, one of the most important propositions in state history is on the ballot — Proposition 8 — which aims to enshrine bigotry in our state constitution, so that it can never be challenged again. It was written by people who so cherish their bigotry, and who so fear fairness, that they want to be able to stop thinking about it.

In one corner, people who believe marriage is a contract between a man and a woman, who often intend to create a family.

In the other corner, people who believe marriage is a contract between two people, who often intend to create a family.

It all comes down to “a man and a woman,” and an irrational reluctance to accept that marriage can be anything but.

There are no non-religious arguments against gay marriage. And religion has no place in government. If you support Prop. 8, then you support the idea that tradition and religion — not reason — should be enshrined and enforced by government. Even though our Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, and says nothing about tradition.

Let me be blunt: If you don’t think gay people should be allowed to marry, you’re a bigot. And your attempt to amend the Constitution is an attempt to inject religion into politics. Worse, it’s an attempt to make unfairness into law.

If you’re a Republican, you supposedly believe in small government. That means the government stays out of people’s business, as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody. Gay marriage doesn’t hurt anybody. Therefore, if you’re a Republican, you should oppose Proposition 8.

If you’re a human, you probably believe government should be fair at the most basic levels. Not discriminating on sexual preference counts as “fair at the most basic level.” Therefore, if you’re a human, you should vote NO on Proposition 8.

If you don’t want to help set a precedent that government has a business in controlling individual freedoms that have no ill effect on society, then you should vote NO on Proposition 8.

Pretty simple, really.

Maybe this song from a long-ago Simpsons episode will help to illuminate:

How much is your Mac - or rather your Mac lifestyle - worth to you?

Just so we have some standard of reference as to what constitutes a “killer” job offer, we’re defining it here as making 25% more than you make now, all other factors being equal (same commute, same quality of co-workers, same boss, etc.)

Obviously, people who already work all day in Windows shouldn’t vote (but feel free to comment).

Swallowing my heart at the thought that Miles is six years old now. Remembering the day I raced home from work on my bike in the middle of a webcast (2001) after hearing that Amy was in labor. Cliche’ but true, the years between then and now have slipped by in a flash.

Miles has been planning a robot party for months. Wanted robot music. Robot games. Robot pinata. Robot making station. Robot cake. Robot music. The only thing he “planned” but didn’t get was a robot ice sculpture (where he got the idea for an ice sculpture is anyone’s guess).

Spent a Saturday afternoon building a pinata. Amy worked out the ingredients for the robot-making station (I had wanted to add LEDs with attached hearing aid batteries for them to attach, but turned out too expensive to provide electronics for everyone). Had a great time creating a playlist of music that was either about, or sounded like it was created by or for robots. The three of us collaborated on the robot cake making and frosting - tried to reproduce his original drawing as well as we could, typos and all.

Old friends and classmates had a blast.

Flickr set

Twitter’s best tweeter Merlin Mann (more famously of GTD and 43 Folders) abruptly stopped with the twitter thing in early September, and started blogging at kungfugrippe.com. Completely different style, hard to tell it’s the same dude. But loved this slide from a presentation on effective blogging, applicable to Just About Anything:

The old Bowie and Springsteen vids are also worth watching.

Since 1994, A Word A Day (AWAD) has done one thing and done it well - bring a new word into your active vocabulary (complete with audible pronunciations). Truthfully, I often skim or gloss entries arriving in the daily inbox, but every now and then one really catches my attention. Today’s word: Skeuomorph:

noun: A design feature copied from a similar artifact in another material, even when not functionally necessary. For example, the click sound of a shutter in an analog camera that is now reproduced in a digital camera by playing a sound clip.

The word captures the fake authenticity meme so well. Think wood-grained vinyl on the side of a 70s station wagon. Think “distressed” jeans. Think hockey mom.

Birdhouse Hosting welcomes karaandrade.com

Kara Andrade is a veteran of multimedia journalism, both for print and online. She builds communities both online and off-line and has reported and organized events in virtual worlds such as Second Life.

Great-looking site!

On a train heading North, mackin’ on salami. Just spent a week helping ma pull up roots, getting ready for the next phase of her life. Looking out the window into people’s backyards, thinking about all the useless crap we accumulate over the years. The longer you stay put, the worse it gets.

To be fair, mom has great taste. But on some level, all useless stuff is junk - great taste just makes it harder to divest yourself of the past.

Letting go is hard. New circumstances mean you don’t get to look to the garage as a catch-basin for every shiny thing that catches your eye. Native American artifacts, antique furniture, classic LPs, rare fabrics… all beautiful, all meaningful, all lacking much in the way of practical value.

Formats expire - cassettes and their players, VHS tapes and decks, records and their tuntables… all superceded now. School drawings and papers by my brother and me, and photos? My dad was (is) a master archivist. The drawers of snapshots go deep as you wanna go. That’s history you can’t dispose of.. but neither can you just flip through a few albums and make a judgment. So amazing that it all exists, all those honeycomb-encased moments. But all a burden too. Weird to see how different the print quality of various development houses was over the years - some shots over 40 years old look like they were shot yesterday, others half that old have gone yellow or purple, or have been virtually lost to the fade of time.

I was five in 1969, when Apollo 11 landed on the moon and Armstrong took his walk. Our family sat on the bed and watched in awe, knowing it was one of history’s great moments, unfolding in our lifetimes. What I didn’t know at the time was that my folks clipped newspapers for days around the event, and put them in a time capsule for my brother and me. Discovered the musty manila envelope last night and was moved, knowing that they had had that foresight.

I have a deep connection to Morro Bay and always will. It’s where I became self-aware as a teen, where I learned to surf and dive and build. It’s where I spent countless hours on the beach and in the woods, boy becoming man. My first experience of a sense of awe in the face of nature was on top of Black Mountain, where I often hiked (and did again a few nights ago, possibly for the last time).

Morro Bay is where I became a punk and a hippie, where I had my first jobs, where I made the circle of friends I was to keep for life.

It was an amazing place to grow up, large enough to not be podunk, small enough to be innocent and funky. Big enough to have a post office and a headshop and a sheet music store, too small for a mall.

A big part of me would love to move back one day - can’t imagine a better place to raise the squirt. We’re pretty entrenched in the Bay Area now, and would have to move some pretty big mountains to make a move like that. So it’s been comforting to have mom there, so we can visit a few times a year. But now, homeplate is gone, at least for the forseeable future. Trips to see ma will not include Morro Bay, a hard pill to swallow. But chapters have to close, and mom will be much better off (no, we’re not putting her in a home :)

Deep down, something in me knows I haven’t seen the last of this place. It’s got a magnetic grip on me - a grip I don’t expect will lessen with time.

Goodbye, boyhood home. It’s been awesome.

Birdhouse Hosting welcomes albanytoday.org, an experiment in low-cost community journalism by J-School student Linjun Fan:

Linjun Fan covers Albany related news stories and writes a series of feature stories about Albany’s diverse residents.

This is the first site we’ve migrated from a free wordpress.com blog (Fan wanted to start running ads, and to have the ability to tweak her own themes, both of which are disallowed by wordpress.com). Impressed by the quality of the export/import system (which included all media), and by wordpress.com’s domain redirection service.

This week at Stuck Between Stations:

Roger Moore: Change of the Century: A Campaign Playlist, on the politics of campaign soundtracks… or what should be campaign soundtracks.

Me: Zoe Keating, Tetrishead — Recent discovery of avant-cellist Zoe Keating on WNYC’s Radiolab has us re-thinking what the cello can do to your mind.