Humanize the Earth!

automatic linking forward within my blog

Just learned something cool about wordpress. I wrote a post last week about learning Ruby. Then a wrote a post about setting up a web server on my machine and I linked to that post about Ruby. Here’s the cool thing. The post about Ruby (earlier in time) now has a comment (trackback, really) on it pointing to the later post about the web server. With my old blog I had to send a trackback ping manually and I never thought to do it when I referred to myself. Seems very useful this way. Cool. Now both of those earlier posts will have a link to this one so if somone happens along my earlier posts without seeing this one, they can follow my train of thought. Cool.

A Gamma-Secretase Independent Mechanism of Signal Transduction by the Amyloid Precursor Protein

My cousin Laura’s husband Matt just got this paper published: A Gamma-Secretase Independent Mechanism of Signal Transduction by the Amyloid Precursor Protein. Any idea what the heck that is?

server set up on my machine

I mentioned the other day that I’m learning Ruby. I’m doing that so I can help develop extensions (improvements, I hope) to the omidyar.net site. It’s a cool place and has cool people. The tech side leaves something to be desired. They do have an API (geek-speak for a standard way of getting information out and putting information in) so it’s possible to program better ways to interact with the same data, or possibly design additional data structures that will help. So I’m learning Ruby, after not having written a computer program in over 12 years.

One way to write is to use a text editor and write the program. Save it. Then run it on my machine. That’s cool. And doens’t do anything for getting this code on the web. So I’ve also installed a webserver on my machine so when I write something, I can test it through my web browser without having to send it to the internet until it’s time. Then it can be sent to a sever on the internet to be tested by the other openonet developers.

train travel and the Commons

I’ve ridden the Amtrak from Chicago to Dearborn (just before Detroit) quite a few times in the past couple of years. I love it. Here’s part of a post that made me think to write more about why I love the train: OnTheCommons.org | Train:

The Coastal Starlight was five hours late and I gather that’s not unusual. The train is on time only about half the time, and the main reason is that it doesn’t own the tracks it runs on. Those belong to the Union Pacific railroad, which requires Amtrak trains to pull onto a siding and sit while its freight trains pass. (Those trains can be very long.)

Stuff moves while people wait. There is something emblematic in that. But actually it’s worse. The tracks sit on land that by and large the railroads got for free. Congress gave it to them, which means that we taxpayers gave it to them, along with large sections on either side. The reason for the grants was so that the railroads could serve us taxpayers with rail service, including passenger service.

So now we get shunted aside on land we ourselves gave the railroads so that we could move.

Trains are public transportation. This means we’re supposed to fund it from our common resources (taxes) for the common good. We gave the land to the railroad companies. Our land (well, we stole it from the Native Americans, true). We fund air traffic infrastructure, highways, city streets, sidewalks, street lamps, water and sewer systems, garbage pickup and the like as public services. Why is public transportation any different?

I don’t often talk with people on the train. I can be very introverted and highly value my privacy, even in a public place. I sometimes listen, however. And there’s usually opportunities to smile at children. And the guy that runs the snack car is very funny. I like bantering with him a bit. I might be more able to talk with people and make friends on a longer trip. It’s only 5 hours between Chicago and Dearborn. Maybe not. Maybe I’d be just as quiet. The possibilities are there, however, for human interaction.

omidyar.net and this blog

omidyar.net is a website I’ve been hanging out at for the past year or so. It has a feature called “Personal News” that works somewhat like a blog. Max created a little hack that allows an rss feed to be imported into Personal News to avoid duplication of effort.

Since I now have this brand new blog and it’s got an rss feed (my old site only had atom, a similar but different phenomenon), I thought I’d give it a try. I already imported my last post here and then realized it wouldn’t make sense without this context, so here it is, backwards.

update on new blog

The new home of Humanize the Earth! isn’t getting ready as fast as I’d hoped. I’m having trouble importing the archives from here. And getting it to look right just doesn’t seem as important as having the info there. So we’re in a bit of a limbo. But I’m going to start posting over there anyway, and stop posting here, except updates on the move. Check it out! :-)

learning Ruby

I’m learning the Ruby programming languge. More about this later. :-)

link to archives

Since I can’t figure out how to import my archives from blogger here, let’s just link to my blogger blog, Humanize the Earth! in case anyone wants those archives. I’ll bring them over when I can figure it out.

import problem

Michael told me that importing was a snap. I just tried it and must have something wrong. Hmm.

maybe moving this blog?

The whole template thing has really gotten me down. At the same time, Michael Herman has been having trouble with blogger as well and has moved his operation to a wordpress on his own server. So I just installed the thing using their 5 minute install. It was a bit quicker. See http://www.tedernst.com/wp for the results. I’ll announce here if/when I’ve actually switched, but feel free to watch my progress over there.