Posts tagged: WORLD

An energy conservation law from 2005 makes Daylight Savings Time (quaint US custom) begin earlier this year – this coming Sunday, to be exact. It’s supposed to be saving us energy, but I’m not sure if the upgrade costs were factored in. Anyway, I have a couple FreeBSD servers that needed the update. Went like this:

sudo portinstall misc/zoneinfo
sudo tzsetup

It took three times longer to find this information (buried at the bottom of this notice) than it did to implement the fix.

Today is Talk Like a Pirate Day, but when is Talk Like a Pilot Day? “This is chrome-plated stove-pipe triple-nickel eight ball, angels eight, five in the slot, boots on and laced, I wanna bounce and blow…”

…is, according to Technorati, Chinese. And likely will be forevermore.

I found out about the amazing Pop!Tech conference last year when browsing through the archives at ITConversations. I was surprised that a full set of recordings of this fascinating (and expensive) conference were available for free. I still remember listening to Malcolm Gladwell telling stories taken from his then-unpublished book, Blink.

This year, if you want to be one of the first to get the audio files, you have to pay for them; $5 per session or $100 for the whole set. Otherwise, you can wait as they post them to their free archives over the next few months.

When I started this blog I pledged it would remain focused on technical topics, but that’s trumped by what’s going on in New Orleans right now. Hundreds of thousands of dislocated people are struggling down there. I don’t need to tell you how to donate to the Red Cross, but here are some less widely circulated links to information and ways to help.

• Habitat for Humanity – lots of houses to rebuild
• Second Harvest – and lots of food needed
• Wikipedia entry on Katrina – dauntingly comprehensive
• NOLA.com – Local news site with lots of up-to-the-minute coverage
• New Orleans Craigslist Katrina Aid Page – excellent list of ways to donate and help
• Paypal is waiving fees for donations made to the United Way. I would be interested in hearing about other places that take Paypal donations as I think many people have a little Paypal “kitty” that they would gladly tap. That’s what I did.