Open Source Contribution Attempt

As I said a few days ago, I’d love to contribute to an open source project or start a new one.  Well, since we had off today (yes!), I had some time on my hands.

Rails is starting a new wiki (which is much needed), so I checked to see their progress.  To my surprise it was almost completely bare.  I took the liberty of adding the Installing Rails on Windows page (and in German, though it’s pretty rough).

I don’t know if this really counts as completing my goal (I want to actually contribute code), but it’s definitely cool.  I hope a lot of people benefit from it, and I hope to see refinements made to it as other people add database types, etc (or simply clean up the German).

Goals for 2009 (part 1 of ?)

I really didn’t think I was going to make a list, as I’ve never really done these before.  I don’t normally think about goals as a “must do”, but rather I mentally keep a running list that changes as I re-prioritize and find different things interesting.

But, over the past few months I’ve really been thinking a lot about open source and what it means.  While some probably associate the phrase with the “super geeky”, it’s really more altruistic and selfless, or at least it can be.  If more operating systems or user software (OpenOffice!) or systems (databases, server software, etc) become open source and become competitive with commercial versions, it means greater accessibility and greater productivity for a whole economy.

Alright, enough rhetoric.  Here are two items that I need to put on my list:

1) Make a Wikipedia contribution.  (Anyone can do this)

2) Make an open source contribution to some project or start a new one (I’d like to give back to Rails or some of the open source Javascript WYSIWYG editors I’ve used).

And, since we’re adding things…

3) Read the entire Bible.

We’re doing #3 with my Bible study, but I really need to get my act together to complete this one.  I sat down the one day to “really make some headway” and stopped when I felt like I couldn’t read anymore…I realized I had read a day’s worth.  Doh!  It’ll be a good lesson in discipline as well as just some good, long-overdue reading.

Whitehouse.gov revamp

There’s a short article on the whitehouse.gov site update and a campaign promise to put new legislation on the site for public comment.  Pretty cool.

Web Tablet Update

TechCrunch just posted their update on their Dead Simple Webtablet.  It’s nice to see they hit their goal of around $200, but they’re saying $299 is more realistic, especially if they want a decent LCD.

I want one!

Originally they were going to open source everything, and it seems they have a lot of people donating time to build drivers and such.  But, it seems like they’re considering moving the project towards production.  Does that mean they won’t supply scematics and software for free for us to build our own?  I really hope not.

Farmer Power Suit

Haha, check out this “Farmer Power Suit”

It says Japans agricultural population is shrinking, and I think that’s to be expected.

Day of Service

This is what I’m talking about!  Nice work, Seth.

I specifically like #12:

Find a tool that non-profits need online, and then organize some brilliant people to build it as an opensource utility.

Any ideas?  What are some non-profits in this area?

Plug-in Ford Escape – 140 mpg

Yeah, that wasn’t a typo. Check it out. SO AWESOME.