bedeviled mojo slop

On February 22nd, I'll be speaking to the faculty and students in the Computer Science department at Union College about software internationalization. Abstract:

Software Internationalization is the process of writing software in such a way as to make the localization of the software to a particular region as easy as possible. In other words, internationalization aims to remove the burden of re-engineering an application when writing for multiple countries and/or regions. Localization deals with the translation of textual elements to a particular locale. There are also a number of user interface elements that may be added or removed from a locale to provide the user with a native look and feel to the application. This session will cover many of the aspects of internationalization such as locales, isolating locale-specific data, formatting of data, Unicode, input and output, GUI development, input methods, etc.

For a 45 minute talk with 15 minutes for discussion, this is going to be a marathon.

Elwood: It's a 106 miles to Chicago. We got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses.
Jake: Hit it!

Ned Batchelder: Get out of the zeros!

In the commercial world, it's important to put a good face on a piece of software, and shipping milestones are more formal than in much of the open source world. This makes it easier to decide when to call something 1.0. But the ease of releasing open source software shouldn't keep us chained to the amateurish zeros.

Own your work! Declare it to the world! Stand up and say, "This is good. It's real. I think you should use it."

Amen!

Oh ... oh my! A Family Guy video game?

"Splended! This calls for a sexy party!"

Dave Winer's also noticed how pervasive the iPod is becoming. And that's around the streets of cities ... where you'd probably expect to see the familiar white ear buds. But, it doesn't stop there. This year, I've seen more more and more kids at the skatepark wearing iPods. Last night there were at least 3 kids with iPods banging around the park. I'm sure it's age that's telling me, "You spent how much on that 40GB iPod and you're going to do what on that 8 ft. ramp?"

Honestly, I think it's a comfort and flexibility factor. As much as I'd like the motivation that music could provide, I don't think I'd want something knocking around my pant pocket. I know I'd be annoyed by the wires at the very least. When I was running 5K and 10K races regularly, I never wore a watch because I felt like, at times, it was constraining. The iPod shuffle might be the device where I think differently about this whole business.

But ... for the time being ... I'm content to roll around to the sound of wheels on wood.