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A few days ago, Google combined its amazing GoogleMaps technology with the satellite technology Keyhole which allows you to zoom in geographically with near-time satellite imagery on things from space.

While this is, for instance, very handy for figuring out what your apartment looks like from space and where to direct the aliens when they finally arrive, but obviously not the most practical application of the technology.

More practically and more ethically, imagine you’re an activist. I know more than a few of you are who are reading this. Now imagine using this to show the geological devastation apparent from say, clearcutting, or an oil spill or another sort of environmental disaster. You need a dramatic visual because you know that “if it bleeds, it leads” is the only way you can get media attention on critical issues these days. How about some context? What this thing looks like from space ?

Since I’m moving moved to new digs in a new city, one of the first thing I had to do was to get a new borrowing card for the Vancouver Public Library before a scary portion of my disposable income ended up in Amazon’s pockets.

Out on the internet though, where I basically live most of my professional life, people point at Amazon when they want to reference a book - not the library. What’s a poor, environmentally and cost-conscious book lover to do ?

The mighty Matt articulated the full changes made to Wordpress 1.5 for the Strayhorn release . You’ll notice AWWS is already up and running with 1.5.

Cliff Notes version for the ADD afflicted:

• Easier template and theming system
• Gorgeous new default template (Kubrick !)
• More robust content management beyond blog content
• Great comment management (and better spam blocking)
• Refined administration
• Faster, more secure, smaller, cuter, etc (overall size less than 1.2 !)
• Still free (as always)

I’ve had the release up from about an hour after it was in the wild and I’ve noticed (or perhaps imagined) that it seems to run much smoother. Cleaner code, faster execution, and maybe it’s just my imagination but I actually detect a hint of lemony freshness too.

One thing I’m finding a little difficult since I’m used to develop enterprise wide interoperability options for large organizations and companies is that scaling down to very small workgroups is much harder than it seems in terms of getting them to collaborate but still stick to standards that will allow the group to grow over time.

I mentioned the other week about chucking MediaWiki in favour of the much, much more stripped and simple Dokuwiki for my non-tech-savvy and predominantly dial up enabled political organization here in the Okanagan. That was a major coup. It’s scary how suddenly even luddites are using it. I love the fact they are though. I feel it’s made the whole group much more productive. Oh yes, and free – important for a group on an IT budget of zero.

Ah yes, combining popular civil disobedience and positive environmentalism, I am *compelled<*to point to the this great little howto on setting up your own solar panels and feeding back into the grid. Very handy if you’re out in the boondocks and no one is looking. Of course, today is the first sun we’ve had in quite a few weeks here.

As pointed out in the article, this is probably not legal where you are without proper permits, but let’s face it, microgeneration and conservation are probably a big part of the future and aren’t you just a little tired of the big dead dinosaur co’s and big utility inc. dragging their feet over making it easier for you ? I know in the Valley here, Fortis has yet to allow net metering which is a crime.

Wow. I’m going to say this again, because it is so rare for me to use this word in relation to programming at all: Wow.

In fact, the last time I used it was in regard to my first view of XCode whose ability to remove the grunt work from creating interfaces and allow you to concentrate on coding instead is amazing (sadly though, I’m not a big fan of ObjectiveC and you really need to code in ObjC to get XCode’s full power… though apparently someone has come up with Ruby bindings for Cocoa which I am also going to check out since Ruby seems to save so much pain.

But mostly just about the Word2DokuWiki macro.

Part of the interesting thing about working with a group I’m working with is that many of the users are substantively non-technical. In order to allow people to collaborate together I had installed a wiki and in fact, had chosen the most feature robust one I could think of, MediaWiki< - the same software that runs the mighty, mighty Wikipedia .

Not smart. Basically, even though a wiki is a pretty simple concept the interface and software and extra features were a little too much for the team(s). Concepts like watchlists and a need to have flexible ACL and easily administered security as well as occasionally restructure the wiki made MediaWiki, for all its power, a mistake. So, I looked for the most stripped down, pure wiki I could find and stumbled across Dokuwiki . Less is more. DokuWiki uses simple text files and directory structure and a simple ACL and security structure to provide a robust minimum of wiki features and does it well. It also allows quite easy restructuring of the wiki since you’re not using a database (ie. simple moving of pages between directories). Very, very handy and easy to understand and hack. Quite taken with it actually. Oh yeah, and backups are a simple tar and gzip of the root directory. Put that on a cron job and you’re set. Sweet.

Bit of a tardy post, but considering the time of year and the fact that we should be thinking about the less fortunate at this time of year, definitely topical…

A really fantastic and financially responsible organization, Architecture for Humanity recently announced its finalists for the Siyathemba project (dead link) whose aim is to battle AIDS in Africa with a low cost, combined sports facility and healthcare project. The finalists are linkied from the front page.

One of the scary things I find missing from people discussing the issue of our movement to new energy sources is the simple concept of the net energy argument. Simply put, this generally means that any system for generating power must yield more energy out of the generation than you put in to get it.

And while I do hold out a lot of promise for microgeneration (ie. a wind turbine or solar cell in every home), the fact is there are serious issues for large scale power generation currently.

I’d just like to applaud the Canadian Supreme Court for making what I consider a swift, wise and judicious ruling on constitutionality of same-sex marriage and defending the cause of human rights and equality in Canada.

I haven’t read the full ruling or opinions yet (this is all that is posted at time of writing dead link), but in summary :

1. Same-sex union is constitutional under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
2. The high court also recognizes the religious freedoms of those who may be opposed to the idea of same-sex marriages religiously, clergy and groups can not be compelled to perform those marriages
3. Perhaps most importantly, the definition of marriage is a Federal responsibility and provinces are only concerned with the civil ceremonies surrounding the solemnizing of the union, thus preventing province’s from invoking the notwithstanding clause (and knocking down Alberta’s against same-sex union legislation)
4. The Supreme Court did avoid ruling on the traditional definition of marriage as a union between a man and woman and punted that down to Parliament

The ruling now paves the way for Parliament to introduce same-sex marriage legislation (which the PM has announced will happen rapidly). If the legislation passes Parliament, this means that Canada would join the Netherlands and Belgium as the third progressive country where same-sex marriage is legally recognized by the state.