In case anyone was wondering, I have not disappeared off the face of the planet. Upon a recent migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux from SunOS, cgiwrap stopped working, and since not many people use it, it went completely unnoticed.

That is, it went unnoticed until I blogged about it on the new blog@USF site.

The upside? Cgiwrap is working again, my blosxom site seems to be working great, and I also have a new WordPress site

The always impressive Eric Pierce responded quickly and now I should be ready to port my Blosxom archives to WordPress. w00t!

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Yesterday, cyclists from all over Florida gathered in pre-dawn Dunedin, clad in Lycra, and carrying liters of water in preparation for the Gulf Coast Cycling Classic, an annual 35/65/100 mile tour along the Gulf Coast. From Dunedin, the course meandered along coastal back roads, past the familiar concert ground at Coachman Park, across a causeway and south along Gulf Boulevard.

On my hybrid steed with chubby tires, I finished the tour in just under three hours. Props to my amazing one man road crew, and the sundry recumbents, tandems, and roadies that I toured with.

I look forward to seeing everyone at the next event.

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I've been playing with this BlogMap thing that Dave blogged about a while ago. In any case, being a devoted geocacher, I pulled out my GPS and entered my home coordinates into Feedmap.

I must have made a small error in entering the East/West component, because my BlogMap appeared in Nepal. The last time I checked, I'm as far from the Himalayas as possible, so I take this as an error. As it turns out, Nepal is located at the same latitude as Tampa, Florida: 28.047500. Tampa, however is located at 082.394800 degrees West of the prime meridian. Nepal on the other hand, can be found at 082.394800 degrees East of the prime meridian. Oops.

I try to correct this any way I can. I submit my blog with -082.394800 as the East/West coordinates. No such luck. I break down and enter my address in Tampa. Nothing seems to help. I resign myself to my fate: my blog is now broadcasting from Annapurna.

There's only one NeighBlog here in Nepal. It's called Nicole's Love Story and it's hosted on MSN. But, her profile says she's from Taiwan, not Nepal. Could this be another error, are there any bloggers in this area who didn't get here accidentally?

As I read more about my blog's new home, it turns out that all media in Nepal is subject to military censorship. No articles against the King, government, or court, and no articles related to terrorism. For more information, look here. Wow, I guess Nicole and I should tread ligh

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It appears that someone at USF caught on to what I've been doing in my free webspace, and has started blog.usf.edu It's based on Word Press and it comes fully integrated with flickr and other neat blog tools.

I was tempted at the addition of TrackBacks and all the other neat features, most notably support for gnome-blog but part of me still enjoys the challenge of writing plugins myself. A large part of me also enjoys the simplicity of blosxom. Plus, all the CSS is already uploaded, so I'd have to shoehorn my blog into something that works. I'll consider it over the next few weeks and update my decision.

But of course I can't really comment, having put my own blog on the back burner for over a month now. Allison at An Unsealed Room suggests that blogging, with all the news media attention recently may be on its way to becoming passe.

I agree, but only partly. Political blogs are running out of steam fast, and it seems like only niche perspectives have a shot at surviving the kind of intense scrutiny the community is under. Should be an interesting development. Focusing on tech reporting is getting a little dry, but I'm looking forward to shaking down the cell architecture as soon as I can get my hot little hands on one.

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This is old news, and somehow I know it's going to get a good deal of unwanted attention on Google, but if you've been reading lately, you know that I've become fascinated with Ubuntu Linux.

Now it seems that there's a bit of controversy surrounding this otherwise fantastic distro.

Behind Ubuntu is a core idea of humanity, togetherness, consensus and concord. The word Ubuntu has been described as "too beautiful to translate" though Boston University has an article that summarizes the historical significance and importance of Ubuntu.

In order to properly convey this spirit of unity and humanity to others, the Ubuntu desktop included the option of some artwork embodying this concept. The problem, artistic photograpy symbolizing Ubuntu tends to be semi-nude.

I'm a pretty liberal guy, but I'd agree with the common consensus that this isn't a very safe corporate artwork scheme for desktops. I rather enjoy most of the work on my own desktop as I think it goes rather well with the "spirit of humanity" feeling behind all of Ubuntu.

But Ubuntu is all about avoiding divisiveness and staying off the toes of other cultures, so the appropriate action was taken by a consensus of the community (as always) and the artwork is still updated monthly, but kept strictly optional and in the "universe" repositories with other questionable software like libdvdcss.

For screenshots of the "offensive material" look here, here, or here.

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If you're like most computer-savvy techies, you've come across the ethical dilemma surrounding digital music.

I know at least one recording artist who has said to me, "Do you want to go down and pick up my new CD so I can get a quarter, or would you prefer to see if it's on LimeWire yet?"

The sad truth is that the status quo with music recording is that the majority of the sales price of an album goes to the record label or producer, not the artist.

Online music circumvents some of these problems, but the disparity between label and artist still exists. Plus, as Sarah has discovered, DRM (Digital Rights Management) can be quite a headache for the end user and can limit the freedom that a user has over his or her music collection.

A solution to this connundrum can be found at Magnatune.com. Their motto is "We're a record label, but we're not evil." More than a little Google-esque, but that's okay.

This is the deal. You can listen to every song on the album in its entirety in a streaming MP3 format. Like "try before you buy" for digital music. Then, if you like what you hear, you can buy the album for whatever price you like, between 5 dollars to the full 15 dollars. (The recommended price is eight dollars.) This price is split 50/50 between the artist and the label. The artist makes more money per album sale, the consumer pays less, and since the label doesn't have to invest all the money in stamping, packing, and shipping albums (not to mention heavy advertising expenses) the extra cost can be shaved from the label's typical cut and Magnatune can still make profits!

You can then download DRM free music in FLAC or WAV format, so you can burn it to a CD without any loss of quality. Plus, if you change computers, you don't have a ton of DRM limitations to work through.

They also have a few internet radio mixes:

• Rock
• Electronica
• Metal
• World Beat
• Classical

I enjoy Falling You, Ehren Starks, Jag, Shiva in Exile, and the Drop Trio to name a few. Check them out.

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New Yorkers and others are outraged over the eviction of the hawk known as Pale Male from his nest.

Thankfully, Conan O'Brien took in Pale Male to play with the Max Weinberg 7. Now Sarah noted that more than a few musical guests have gone the route of having a bit more than a backup track.

As a closet musician, I must object to Pale Male's performance. The music began long before the hawk even touched the keyboard. This seems like another media frenzy waiting to happen if you ask me.

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"Welcome to my neighborhood."

This is the phrase that Mr. Bill will utter the instant you realize that he's been living the life you've always wanted to live. The grin on his face lets you know instantly that this is a man who loves his work and takes it very seriously.

His work? He lives in SOHO and runs the definitive website for guests and residents alike. He was kind enough to host this month's TBBF, a regular gathering for bloggers and assorted geeks from the Tampa Bay area. A bar-hopping marathon through the many diverse bars, clubs, and restaurants that the area is known for.

Walking into a club with Bill, one feels almost like a celebrity instantaneously. One gets the impression that every time someone breathes in SOHO, Bill knows about it. He certainly knows how to throw a party, and did a great job keeping us geeks entertained all night.

Whether it was the Lounge Cats at 42'nd Street, politics at HoHo of SOHO, Dubliners (where everybody knows your name), or some quiet sophistication at Mangrove's, this neighborhood has something for every taste.

Plus, getting better acquainted with some local bloggers was great too. There are more than a few musicians (including a fellow violist.) So naturally there was some discussion of TBBB, Tampa Bay Blogger Band. Not sure how that'll go. I think bloggers must have an affinity for keyboards, since they spend so much time in front of them.

I didn't see Tommy of Sticks there, which was unfortunate since I've been looking forward to meeting him, the enigmatic blogger behind the popular urblog Sticks of Fire

Sarah posted her camera phone pictures as always, and they're great, Lewis has some shots (images) of beer and of Dave's absurdly large camera.

Here's my photo documentation for the kids. As Bill would say, "Welcome to SOHO."

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As a prelude to University of South Florida's move to the Big East, they planned a homecoming game against Army.

The USF Bulls learned firsthand the definition of demoralizing humiliation. It's a good thing the professional teams in the Tampa Bay area are impressive, otherwise we'd never have the opportunity for a good celebratory revelry.

Best of luck in the Big East, Bulls. You're going to need it.

Some photo documentation of the humiliation follows.

Let's hope for better days next weekend.

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Students at the University of South Florida were able to hear Senator and Presidential candidate John Kerry speak at the USF Sun Dome. Some interesting points were made regarding Kerry's platform, which up to this point has been somewhat nebulous.

Betty Castor made an appearance as well, but didn't speak. I tend to think it was more a name recognition event for her, since the smaller the office, the more the battle takes on a simple name recognition or party line flavor.

These races are the important ones, however, since gubernatorial and congressional elections have more to do with laws as they are observed on an individual level. Likewise, county commissioners, school boards, mayors, and city councils have an equally large impact in areas such as local budget or transportation issues, for example. The $700,000 grant to improve two intersections here in Tampa, incidentally, was vetoed by Governor Bush.

In any case, Senator Kerry lined out a few key points that were of interest to me:

• A $4,000 tax credit to every family with a child in college.
• A rollback of Bush's tax-cut to the wealthiest 1% of taxpayers.
• Energy independence, he didn't actually say "Alternative Energy" but anyone listening for it would have heard it.
• Multinational foreign policy and a move away from the doctrine of unilateral preemption.

After the debates and Kofi Annan's speech to the U.N. previously, the rally was a breath of fresh rhetorical air.

All in all, I'm active politically, but I don't treat politics as sporting events, like some. Perhaps college students will be the hobbits of the coming elections: small, generally uninvolved, disenfranchised and out of the loop, usually ignored and completely unexpected by those in power.

Pictures from the rally, for those interested:

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Sticks of Fire is reporting this week on the fact that while we are not last here in Florida, we are working diligently to become last.

This could be due in part to policy choices such as vouchers, or simply due to the fact that the education budget leaves teachers to buy classroom supplies out of their own pockets, or overcrowding, or forcing teachers to shape their curriculum to the FCAT.

Many times in the course of my High School education, a teacher would comment to me that the curriculum "dumbed down" the course material to fit the FCAT, leaving the students hopelessly unprepared for college. Thankfully, I taught myself as much as I could about subjects I found interesting, with the help of a few influential instructors who took a very strong interest in students who were interested in grokking the material.

This didn't happen by chance.

In Brevard County, a few instructors and administrators (twelve, to be precise) took it upon themselves to create a school built for students who cared about learning and teachers who loved teaching. The product was West Shore, (I'll link to it, but I'm almost certain their servers still lack power in the wake of Jeanne)

West Shore was based on some basic ideas:

• Students applied for entry.
• Selection was random and could draw from the entire county.
• Teachers should be given the opportunity to teach (and some degree of academic freedom.)
• The school should have strict academic requirements (i.e. if you don't keep up with the pace that the teacher moves at, you get to go back to your original school)
• Honors course should be standard, AP course should be encouraged.
• Parental activity within the school and community is required.
• Students are required to complete a project, based around community service and research, in order to graduate.

This school quickly earned a reputation, even in planning, for being the "Nerd School" and it lived up to that reputation quickly.

I could talk about West Shore, its merits, and its shortcomings for pages.

Let it suffice to say that in 2002, my graduating year, West Shore was ranked fourth out of all the high schools in the state.

And they're only in the middle third of funding expenses.

Obviously, schools of this class are doing something right.

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Cat Stevens (now Yusuf Islam) is apparently on a federal watch list preventing him from entering the country, despite writing such songs as "Peace Train," which the government has decided to selectively ignore due to the threat to national security.

If musicians are now threats to national security, can we deport Britney? Oh right, only musicians are a threat.

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