Steve's New Zope Thing

Welcome to my new Zope site. Almost everything you see here is running under Zope, a Python-based web application server. The old content, which was still served up by apache, is mostly gone, other than things like ViewVC and the static files area (see the relevant links below). For more info on Zope and Python, see the Zope Quick Start and the new Python for Beginners on the Python wiki.

Some truths about Ada by Joachim Schüeth, the winner of National Museum of Computing's Colossus Cipher Challenge. "Ada allowed me to concisely express the algorithms I wanted to implement..." An interesting article on using Ada in robotics appeared recently on CircuitCellar.

Get ready to interact with users and developers at the next PyCon. Why Python? (found on a blog somewhere...)

An interesting wrap-up to some thoughts on education and computing by Walter Bender, entitled: A Page From The Hilbert Playbook. Although he seems to be pretty much a software guy, his involvement in the OLPC project seems to have led him to many of the same questions currently being explored by the education community.

FOSSCON (Free and Open Source Software Conference) is a community-focused live event designed to build and strengthen relationships between Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) developers and users.

Nerd articles for regular people (articles on computing by a nerd) on a selection of topics. The one on security would be a good place to start (hint: not all operating systems are created equal).

Another good geek site, from a nerd named Nate, with lots of good info and links on Linux, BSD, security, and system administration.

Main things you can see here, more or less:

• Steve's World - Papers, CV, and the feedback form (and other miscellaneous stuff), plus some of the software packages I work with, mostly for Gentoo now (no more new rpms). See my SVN Repository for more, including some snippets of code and small programs I've written or collected, including some decent examples of Ada, Python, C, etc. Questions about the code, or programming, languages, tools, etc, can be asked in #code-hell or #ada on irc.freenode.net (see my short IRC page for a brief intro). Feel free to drop in and chat; look for nerdboy...
• Earth Sci. Software - Links and descriptions of some freely available software for earth science, geography/social science, and general scientific and technical work, although Python is good for pretty much anything. A few packages are even hosted here.
• Some Linux Tips for configuring and managing certain devices, etc. It's more-or-less a newer-things-near-the-top list of topics that seemed worthwhile to document at the time, either to fill in the gaps or document the current state of affairs, etc. And yes, I actually refer to them myself, on occasion... ;-)
• Image Archive - Random image library. Some photos of various trips and conferences (one to Lassen Volcanic Park a few years ago, and a couple of trips to AMS meetings in Orlando and San Diego; see the Steve's world page for abstracts and more). Also includes Linux World Expo pics from the west coast; the cheesy movies are on my Gentoo page. And what geeky photo archive would be complete without geeks, hardware pics, and desktop screenshots...
• General Geography Course Info - Various pages for geography course information (Meteorology, and both Physical and Human Geography) and related links. Current homework for Physical Geography (Spring 2009) and info on the upcoming Intro to Meteorology (Fall 2008) is available; please update your bookmarks (the latter is still quite drafty). Short IRC primer for online office hours.
• PHHS Alumni site - A CMF portal and Squishdot forum for alumni of my old high school, including Class of '77 reunion info. If you're an alumnus of Patrick Henry High School, or Patrick Henry Evening High, feel free to join the portal. Existing CMF portals are also disabled during the server upgrade until converted over.
• The Wyrd - MP3 versions of some tunes from my old college band. Listen if you dare...
• Downloads - Some src.rpms (migrating from RH to cAos, should be compatible with recent redhat spinoffs), plus some Xchat-2 scripts, some kernel configs, Wryd mp3's, and miscellaneous other stuff.

Climate change is not a hoax, and the influence of humans is no longer in question. We can debate all we want about almost anything else, but we need an intelligent energy and climate policy now. The scientific consensus and related societal impacts are well described in several places:

• AMS Statement on Climate Change - An Information Statement of the American Meteorological Society, intended to provide a trustworthy, objective, and scientifically up-to-date explanation of scientific issues of concern to the public at large.
• AGU Position Statement: Human Impacts on Climate - In contrast to the more subtle AMS informational statement above, the American Geophysical Union position is short and to the point.
• APS Policy Statement on Climate Change - The American Physical Society, a sister organization of the AGU, also has a statement on climate change, which is also a part of their statements on energy policy.
• A new project of the National Science Digital Library, "Classic Articles in Context," launched in April with a concentration in atmospheric science called "Climate Change and Anthropogenic Greenhouse Warming: A Selection of Key Articles, 1824-1995, with Interpretive Essays" (see the NSDL wiki).

As I get the chance, additional Zope features will be migrated, upgraded, or added, since the CVS repository migration to Subversion has finally been done; the old server has been migrated (again) to newer hardware (this time hardened Gentoo with lemony-fresh RAID!). Much of this site will probably always be under development, but it shouldn't lose anything important, and it should always work (as long as the power stays on, anyway).

Python is so cool; check the weather in Cocoa Beach or Santa Maria here. It's updated every once every hour from the NOAA METAR data server (or when the page is displayed, if it's more recent).

Feedback Form - If you wish to leave feedback, please use this form (or send email to webmaster at the URL of this page).

If you're having trouble with understanding what I say, read this.

Last updated: 03/14/2010 11:17