We are all accustomed to the concept of TODO lists. You might have a shopping list in your pocket right now, or a piece of paper in the shed with a list of things that need to be done around the garden. Or when you go to work in the morning, you might have a morning meeting where your team decides who does what. Or, like some, you might consider every email you receive as a TODO item.

Life -- personal life and working life -- seems to be an immense, endless TODO list. Or, worse, two or three or four TODO lists, probably racing into your head.

The Internet gave us Facebook, the biggest time waster since the invention of the television. Can the Internet also provide us with tricks to manage time properly, rather than wasting it?

Welcome to the world of project management software, a world started by the guys at Basecamp (proprietary) and then continued by free software projects like Fengoffice and then revolutionised by Apollo.

Senator Barack Obama and the Democractic National Convention Committee,

In his campaign speeches, Senator Obama often evokes images of citizen participation in the governmental process. He proclaims that his message of hope is built on the foundation of mutual respect, and the prospect of working together to return the government to the hands of the people.

Is Senator Obama earnest in these rhetorical statements? Or is this simply campaign slogans flung about with feigned sincerity, to be discarded once the US Presidential election is over?

My brother lent me his PS3. I’m not sure why. But I do know I’ve already wasted several hours on it, first playing my old Ratchet and Clank games, then Resistance: Fall of Man, and Flow, and so on.

After I bored of the games (about an hour after turning it on), I decided to explore the home media functions of the PS3. The first thing I noticed was the menu item at the top of the media areas: “Search for Media Servers”.

Three hours later, and a lot of experimenting, I have discovered the wonders of serving up media.

My neighbor Jim is obsessed with vintage gasoline pumps. He collects them. He restores them. He named his dog Petro. He stores them in his garage, and under his carport. They are beautiful things, I must admit, all shiny and strangely elegant. And though he suffers from severe fibromyalgia, he spends much of his free time restoring rusted and neglected pumps to their original beauty.

I don’t know why he does it. Nobody claims he does it out of boredom, or that he’ll stop doing it because he isn’t getting paid. But I don’t know why he does it.

Neither do I know why I write free software. But I know it’s not from boredom.

As much as I despise MS-Windows, I live in a world that requires at least a working knowledge of the Worst OS In The Universe (tm). From my earliest experiences with MS-Windows 3.0, I looked for ways to make my life bearable: from the Workplace Shell demonstrations to the registry hacks of today, I try to make MS-Windows very unlike MS-Windows.

We make many sacrifices in the name of employment. Giving up our soul to MS-Windows should not be among them. It should bow to our will, not the other way ’round.

I love the command line. If the command line were a dog, it would be a hard-headed labrador: big and somewhat intimidating, but really kind of even-tempered and friendly once she gets to know you.

I just compared the command line to my dog Roscoe. I love them both, and they both frustrate me.

I can't do much with Roscoe, but I can help out a bit with the command line. And so allow me to introduce four of my favorite utilities: df, du, file, and find.

I am lurking on the OpenMokomailing lists. This is an educational experience for me. Although Ihave participated in many heated discussions concerning Free software, I have never watched such a high-profile full-fledgedFree software project start from the ground up.

It's fascinating watching different sorts of geeks interact.

I recently re-read David Brin’s essay, “Why Johnny Can’t Code”. He posits an interesting idea, one I’ve had for a while—we are raising a generation of techno-illiterates through our focus on high-level languages, rather than on the simple languages like BASIC, on which many of us cut our geekteeth.

What I observed had nothing to do with programming, and everything to do with Mr. Brin’s approach to computers. His point may be valid, but his sight is limited by his own understandable ignorance.

He forgot there are other options.

There are some scientists who believe the universe may be a largequantum computer. I follow this thought into the dark places, andI realize it implies we are nothing but information, as AntonZelinger believes.

This doesn't bode well for modern artificial intelligenceresearch.

Welcome, 2007!

The fresh scent of hope and useless prognostication is in theair. Journalists and bloggers all over the world are cranking outtop-ten lists of the best of 2006, and the most likely or mostoutlandish predictions for 2007. Will this be the year of the flyingcar? Secure MS-Windows? Duke Nuke'em Forever? One can hope!