In Honor of the Last Shuttle Launch
Posted by Matt Zagaja in General on July 8, 2011
JFK’s speech titled We Choose to go the Moon.
Appeals Court Tosses Media Ownership Rules
Posted by Matt Zagaja in Law on July 8, 2011
I thought that this was an interesting opinion because the FCC ended up losing in the Third Circuit based on a failure to follow something called the Administrative Procedures Act. I saw the link to this opinion at TechDirt who criticized the opinion. The authors there tend to favor the free-market and do not appear to be trained in the law. Otherwise I think they would have reflected upon and understood the importance of following these procedural regulations. The authors of a statute always have reasoning behind it and here I believe the authors wanted to allow the public time to have input on the rules promulgated by the government. It’s not an unreasonable demand and the FCC’s counsel should have been aware of it.
I Was Hacked!
Posted by Matt Zagaja in Technology, The Web on July 6, 2011
I still cannot figure out how it happened but somehow my twitter account was hacked and tweeted a single spam tweet. For this sin I lost about ten followers and was the target of the inevitable witticisms. Well just one:
The only recourse I had was to delete the tweet from my history, change my password, and review access by third-party apps. My theory is that one of these third-party sources was compromised and managed to push tweets out to my account. However to be safe I am changing all my accounts that used my twitter password. Thankfully I have a good password manager. If you are not using one already, I strongly recommend 1Password. It allows me to carry my passwords with me anywhere and generate randomized secure passwords for all my accounts.
An Early Start to the Presidential Campaign
Posted by Matt Zagaja in Politics on July 5, 2011
I met with a summer organizer from the Obama campaign today. The campaign and Democratic National Committee have been hounding me for money and I eventually had to ask them to take me off their list. When the organizer called I almost gave it to her, but was glad that she was not asking for money. I think its a smart step to start out early but am wary of the lack of coordination with the party. Having been involved for many years I have seen the animosity created by the building of parallel organizations between the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee. This sentiment has been echoed both within College Democrats and town committee circles. People are asked to volunteer for both and there ends up being a lack of efficient coordination and management. If the various democratic campaigns worked together and coordinated their efforts there would be greater payoff for everyone. Unfortunately it seems the weakened importance of the party has made this difficult.
30 Day Challenges
Posted by Matt Zagaja in General on July 4, 2011
Google employee Matt Cutts did a TED talk about 30-day challenges. It was a great watch and I’ve embedded it below:
ICYMI: Connecticut’s New Delegate Selection Plan
Posted by Matt Zagaja in Politics on June 18, 2011
At my last DTC meeting our state central committee person brought to my attention the fact that there is a new delegate selection plan for the Democratic National Convention and we are currently in an open comment period. The plan is linked at the bottom of the front page of the CT Dems website or you can click here. The website asks people to submit comments to info@ctdems.org.
Riding for Charity
Posted by Matt Zagaja in General on June 12, 2011
Me and my bicycle at the rest stop.
As I sat on my saddle at the start line the clouds kept things fairly dark overhead. The wind was cool and crisp across my skin. I sort of regretted not bringing my cool weather gear. I was struck by the variety of riders. Some had full kits and expensive road bicycles while others were wearing street clothes and riding mountain bikes. The announcer came on the speaker system and gave-us our final instructions before a rendition of the national anthem. Then we were free to go! After about ten minutes my body warmed itself up. We rode through a mostly residential area. Lots of trees and some older houses decorated the countryside as we zipped across the pavement. The only tough part was a steep hill leading up to the rest stop at the midway point. Many riders chose to dismount and walk up the hill. Dad and I downshifted and kept pedaling.
The cool weather kept the sweat and fatigue that normally accompanies this kind of activity at bay. I almost felt underworked. However I was more than hungry at the end and excited that they provided us with free sandwiches and strawberries. I enjoyed it so much that next year I hope to try the 50K or even 100K if I’m feeling ambitious.
Cool Find of the Day — CT State Library Databases
Posted by Matt Zagaja in The Web on June 9, 2011
I’ve been spending a lot of time at the Connecticut State Library recently. If you are a resident you can get a state library card for free and this entitles you to access their databases at no charge. Two databases that are especially neat are the Oxford English Dictionary online and Safari Bookshelf. OED Online normally costs $295 a year and is the most comprehensive source of information on the English language. Safari Bookshelf has a subset of about 78 titles from O’Reilly Media. If you were looking for some books on programming, blogging, or twittering its the place to go!
Planet Money’s “How to Create Jobs” Research
Posted by Matt Zagaja in General on May 28, 2011
If you have not yet done so you should check out the Planet Money reports on job creation. There is an episode of This American Life and an issue of WIRED magazine. What I found interesting were the graphics that noted Hartford as an epicenter of jobs for the aerospace, automotive, communications, and electrical equipment industries.
On a side note I downloaded the issue on my iPad and was rather impressed with WIRED’s iPad application. In addition to the regular magazine content there were infographics that came to life and it included a video presentation on the research that Adam Davidson made at a WIRED conference.
O’Reilly Data Bootcamp
Posted by Matt Zagaja in Technology on May 17, 2011
I finished finals yesterday and so my first summer project (besides finding an internship) is learning how to process and visualize raw data using tools on my computer. I bought the O’Reilly Data Bootcamp video from their Strata Conference and hope to learn some new things with it over the next day or two. The first pitfall I encountered was setting up my Macbook Pro with the proper tools. The bootcamp requirements are here and they include use of Python. The version that comes pre-installed did not appear to function well so I had to download the latest one from Python.org. I also had to install XCode (included on the Mac OS X install CD) before I could get all the modules installed. I plan on doing the course tomorrow and will post a review and results.
