Friends
The culture of open data
I'm kicking myself because I've been taking far too narrow an interpretation of "an open source approach". I've been focused on getting people to release data. That's the data analogue of tossing code over the wall, and we know it takes more than a tarball on an FTP server to get the benefits of open source. The same is true of data.
Open source discourages laziness (because everyone can see the corners you've cut), it can get bugs fixed or at least identified much faster (many eyes), it promotes collaboration, and it's a great training ground for skills development. I see no reason why open data shouldn't bring the same opportunities to data projects.
And a lot of data projects need these things.
via radar.oreilly.comI've been saying for a while that open data is a sort of new frontier. Open source is relatively wide spread and there is a general low hum of understanding about it in many places. For me, I sum it up by saying to people that they need to understand that their "code is worthless".
The next step is coming to understand about open data, and why we should care. Why we should convince people that their "data is worthless".
Categories: Friends, Technology
On demand book printing - bits come to the real world
I'm fascinated by tools and experiences that let us "DIY". Whether it's using blogging tools to easily put content online, or cooking things from scratch, I like the fact that many things that seem hard or specialized are in fact things that anyone can do. With the Espresso Book Printing Machine, publishing a printed copy of a book has just joined that list.
Oscar's Art Books in Vancouver is one of only a handful of places in Canada that has an "EBM". The Espresso is made by a company called On Demand Books. They're looking to sell the machines to bookstores, universities, and other places where "like minded" people gather.
Categories: Friends, Technology
Learning Student Names With Flashcard Software
Last semester while I was teaching two classes (120 students and 70 students), I decided that I needed some help learning student names.
I downloaded the classlists with student photos from UBC's faculty services website, and wrote a little script to grab the individual photos and process them, and put the resulting files into a format usable by the free/open source flashcard program Mnemosyne.
Using this, I was able to spend a few minutes each day learning the names of those "students in the back row".
Categories: Friends
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