ryan.freebern.org

Wow. A baby that developed outside her mother’s uterus was successfully delivered via caesarian section in Ontario, Canada this April. A doctor there said:

“We won’t see another case like this in my lifetime. A case like this won’t happen in the lifetime of my colleagues either.”

I guess that doctor and all of his colleagues must be dead now, because it just happened again, this time in the U.K.

Remember that moronic court decision I posted about in May? (A judge had ruled that a Wiccan couple couldn’t expose their son to “non-mainstream” religious beliefs.) Well, I predicted it’d be overturned in a week… and it’s been overturned, three months later! I was close.

Anyway, hooray for the Indiana Court of Appeals for protecting the religion part of the First Amendment. Now hopefully these people can get back to peaceably practicing their chosen religion without an idiot judge meddling in their affairs.

LJ UserPopup is a GreaseMonkey script that creates a useful popup full of handy links whenever you move your mouse over a username link on a LiveJournal page. The popup contains links to the user’s journal, user info, user pics, journal archive, friends page, and memories.

Before installing this, make sure you have upgraded GreaseMonkey to version 0.5 Beta, which has numerous new security features in place. To install this script (if you have GreaseMonkey installed), right-click on this link and select ‘Install User Script…’.

A young artist is raising money for her graduate school tuition by painting and selling portraits of Alan Greenspan. That’s great! But why aren’t my watercolors of Carl D. Covitz, ex-undersecretary for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, selling at all?

When Sarah and I bought tickets to see Tori Amos at the end of August, we were especially exicted because, at that time, Imogen Heap was going to be the opening act. Imogen used to be half of the duo Frou Frou, whose excellent album Details is well worth picking up if you like, say, Zero 7, Thievery Corporation, or The Postal Service. Her new single, “Hide and Seek,” was recently featured in the season finale of season 2 of Fox’s hit prime-time soap “The O.C.”, and has since been consistently high on both the U.S. and U.K. iTunes charts. Her new album, “Speak For Yourself”, was just released in the U.K.

However, I recently got notice that Imogen will no longer be opening for Tori. The reason? Well, in Immi’s own words:

Ok…you know that Tori tour…well…erm…it’s not happening. I’m really sorry for anyone who’s already bought tickets in the hope of catching me play. Some of you know I STILL haven’t signed a licensing deal for the states yet (my goodness these things take time!) and it’s now only 3 weeks until it would have kicked off. Also due to the exchange rate it’s almost twice as expensive for a US label to fly me out as ususal and at the start of the album US campaign that is a lot of money gone…

Despite her obvious commercial appeal and amazing success on iTunes, Imogen can’t find a U.S. label to even distribute her new CD, much less pay for a tour. Any U.S. label not leaping at the chance to get this wonderful, talented artist on board is a complete moron. The sales to fans of “The O.C.” alone will be huge. Imogen Heap is an artist to watch, and I’m deeply disappointed that I won’t get to see her perform live.

The Free Software Foundation has put out a call for nominations for the 2005 FSF Award for the Advancement of Free Software. I sent this nomination in:

I would like to nominate Mark Shuttleworth for the 2005 FSF Award. Mark Shuttleworth is an adventurous and innovative entrepreneur whose intrepid spirit has led him as far as outer space, but whose vision remains grounded. Mr. Shuttleworth founded Thawte, a provider of digital security certificates, ten years ago, and made his fortune. Since then, he has used his business skills (and no small amount of cash) to fund many exciting open-source projects.

Mr. Shuttleworth recently founded Canonical, Ltd., the creators of Ubuntu GNU/Linux, now recognized as one of the simplest to setup and use GNU/Linux distributions available. He also created and provided initial funding for the Ubuntu Foundation to provide support to users of Ubuntu and development resources for the project itself.

He is heavily involved in helping create and disseminate free software for use in education. His SchoolTool project provides school administrators, teachers, and students with a powerful system to facilitate all facets of education. The Edubuntu version of Ubuntu is optimized for use by teachers and students in the classroom. Providing students with hands-on interaction with free software at an early age is key to their embracing it as they grow older. I believe Mr. Shuttleworth’s work in this area will help create a new generation of free software enthusiasts.

The Shuttleworth Foundation has set up 155 “tuXLabs” (educational computer centers in schools, completely running open-source software) throughout South Africa, in an effort to enhance the quality of education there. Additionally, the Foundation offers a large number of monetary bounties for various projects aimed at furthering various free software packages.

See the following sites for more information:
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/
http://www.shuttleworthfoundation.org/
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/
http://www.schooltool.org/
http://www.edubuntu.org/
http://www.tuxlab.org.za/

Watching the election returns for the Ohio 2nd congressional district, I get a memory of the feeling of feverishly reloading the various news sites on election night last year. I’ve only marginally paid attention to this race, but now that it’s nearing the finish line, I can feel the excitement again. This is why I enjoy politics so much.

Update (11:09 p.m.):

US HOUSE Ohio 2nd Dist
753 precincts of 753 reporting
        JEAN SCHMIDT 	57,974 	52%
	PAUL HACKETT 	54,401 	48%