The most useful session I attended was John Feminella‘s presentation on Internet Privacy. It was a great example of the kind of nuance that I see missing from general public discourse on any topic. The first step in addressing any problem is understanding the problem. And when the problem is privacy on the Internet, we have to understand what we mean by privacy.  John’s main point was

privacy != secrecy

that is, our privacy is not achieved through secrecy.  Instead what we really want is control over our information.  When Facebook changes their settings or when we find out about Spokeo’s listing on us it’s the lack of control that causes our anxiety, not the lack of secrecy. We don’t put secrets on Facebook for our friends to read and Spokeo’s data is collected from public records like the Charlottesville City Assessor’s Office. The problem starts when we feel that we don’t have control over how the information is distributed.

Facebook’s big change this year was their new “API” or interface (called Facebook Open Graph) for other websites and applications to read data out of their site.  And by data I mean what you and I have put on Facebook. They reorganized their privacy settings to align with this new API and to align with their business goals of making money off our information.  The two big problems with the new privacy settings are that many of them defaulted to be more sharing than most people like and that it’s very hard to tell when you’ve locked them down enough to suit you.   That’s where the tool John Feminella showed comes in handy.  Not sure what the Internet can see of your Facebook profile? Go to http://zesty.ca/facebook/ and put in your Facebook ID.  Click on the links in the list it generates to see what anyone else can see about you.  Because the tool’s navigation is not the best, I recommend ‘center-clicking’ to open the links in a new tab or ‘shift-clicking’ to open in a new window. Review each category of information, then go back into Facebook and change the settings.  Because of the loose structure of Facebook’s database, there may be a time delay between changing the settings and seeing the changes on Zesty’s tool.

I locked my profile down a few days ago and now the only thing it shows is a list of “likes” I belong to.

Hope this helps you feel okay about staying on Facebook.

beCamp 2010 is almost here! April 30th and May 1st are just four weeks away!

If you’re a geek in or around the Charlottesville metroplex or even if you’re merely tech-curious, this is the event you don’t want to miss. beCamp is Charlottesville’s version of the BarCamp unconference phenomenon—organized on the fly by attendees, for attendees. Realizing that the most energizing parts of any tech conference are the ad hoc conversations that take place in the hallways between the sessions, beCamp facilitates these types of interactions for an entire event.

So if you’re a programmer (or “geek” or “tech-curious”) in Charlottesville and NOT trekking to Reston for No Fluff Just Stuff Sign up and show up. I have some experience with the Open-Spaces-Technology philosophy of conference and the results are consistently interesting and unexpected.

In Charlottesville, Virginia, United States
Jeff Lavezzo

I spliced together this coloring page from a couple sources on the Internet (click for PDF). I was then required to print it out about 10 times between the two of them.

Charlottesville Tech Companies in no particular order

• Commonwealth Computer Research
• OpenSource Connections
• Perrin Quarles Associates
• ScholarOne (now owned by Thomson Scientific)
• Hotelicopter
• Dominion Digital
• Lucid Imagination
• SNL Financial
• Perrone Robotics
• Meddius health care tech
• University of Virginia
• and separately: the University of Virginia Medical Center

These government contractors have offices all over so be sure to specify Charlottesville:

• SAIC
• Booz Allen Hamilton
• CACI
• Pragmatics
• Northrop Grumman
• General Dynamics

When finding jobs by going directly to company websites, remember that a company busy enough to need to hire may be busy enough not to be able to get a job on their site. If a site doesn’t have a job you’re looking for, use their website to find out the name of a manager in the department you’d like to work or just call the front desk and ask for the name of the person in charge of developers, tech writers, testing, hiring project managers, etc. Ask for the HR manager. Ask if they’re hiring now or expect to in the near future. Do some research ahead of time so you have some idea of what their industry is like so you can ask informed questions. Then you can follow this sequence:

1. Give them a reason to expect your Coverletter (and resume)
2. Write a coverletter that makes them want to read your resume
3. Write a resume (customize it for each job) that makes them want to give you an interview
4. Interview so they know they can work with you

That last point is often important. A lack of domain experience can be made up for in a month on the job. Being someone no one can get along with is really unlikely to be corrected.

“Where there is love, nothing is too much trouble, and there is always time.” – Attributed to `Abdu’l-Baha

A friend and I just looked up the source for this quote. Yeah, turns out it’s not much of a quote. I mean, it’s lovely and poetic, but I can’t find it in that form. The closest we came was in “Daily Lessons Received at Akka” by Helen S. Goodall and Ella Goodall Cooper.

Abdu’l-Bahá brought us flowers or oranges or grapefruit from the wonderful Ridvan nearly every day and also gave us delicious grapes from a vine that was planted by His own hand. (This vine yields seven crops of grapes every year, and these particular grapes were the seventh yield.)

His constant shower of material and spiritual favors caused us to exclaim that we did not deserve so many blessings, and while we received and received everything from Him, we were unable to give Him anything in return.

He replied, simply, “That is what I am here for–to give, and not to receive.”

When we deprecated the trouble it must be to answer so many questions and to give us so much time, He replied, “Whatever is done in love is never any trouble, and–there is always time.”
— [page 42]

I can assume this is one of those cases where someone read the book, was telling a friend about it and paraphrased it. The friend wrote down the paraphrase and that was what’s vaguely quoted by all and sundry, including a great song by Conrad Lambert.

Guitar and Vocals: Ali Youssefi of Chile www.AliYoussefi.com
Percussion: Gustaff Besungu of Cameroon http://besungu.blogspot.com
Violin/Fiddle and Mandolin: Pam Hill of Charlottesville

So I present to you, in no particular order, my list of Baha’i Musicians on MySpace:

• Ali Youssefi
• Gustaff Besungu
• Grant Hindin Miller
• Birds On A Wire a group of several musicians
• Melissa and Todd Christopher’s Bliss Green
  . -as Wish
  . -and.. More Bliss

• Devon Gundry also for sale at http://www.insigniarecords.com and http://cdbaby.com/cd/devongundry
• Katharine Key also has www.justkat.com for sale at www.earbuzz.com/katharinekey
• Rachael Price Tom Price’s daughter
• Andy Grammer Red’s son.
• Ashley Southal AKA:YouNoYou
• Conrad Lambert “Merz” also www.merz.co.uk
• Kelsey Bulkin buy at http://indierockcds.com/kelseybulkin
• Boston Praise Collective
• Zahyia
• New Creation
• Justice Leeg
• Unrestrained as the Wind songs for Ruhi book 2
• Sara Sara-Uhibu Masr
• Primal Point
• Benny Cassette
• Fort Tabarsi
• Laura Harley
• Hector Buitrago from the band Aterciopelados
• Aterciopelados
• Andrea Echeverri from the band Aterciopelados
• Starlight Cafe Performance space at the Dallas Baha’i Center
• Bahiyyih
• Ian Shaw/ Ian Ross Quartet
• Martin Newman Former leader of The Pearl Divers

Did I forget anyone?

In Charlottesville, Virginia
United States

Jeff

A regular photo has a dynamic range of about 300:1. This is sort of like the contrast of the picture. Brights vs darks in the shot. One way to think about it is in a picture with greater dynamic range, you see more detail in shadows and highlights. OR you can preserve the shadows and highlights without loosing detail. The article I was reading suggested that cameras will ditch their built in flashes in the next 10 years, since the camera will be able to record a darker image more accurately.

The other way to look at this is cameras are going to be getting better at recording whatever we can see, the way we see it. Really that’s always been the goal of photography, record a moment and let us examine it with more detail than when we were in it.

If you check out flickr.com, there are many pictures tagged with HDR. They’re, for the most part, completely amazing. I wish I had time for a new hobby. I almost want to do this full time and make money on really high end weddings or something! yikes I’m having a hard time writing coherently on this.

Flickr HDR pool

The photographers of some of these pictures describe having made them using a tripod and several shots at different exposures. “Bracketing” as it were. There’s some technique to grab tones from different shots and combine them.

This really speaks to me in my typical “left and right brain” way. Having an architecture background and working as a computer programmer, I’m used to using both sides of my brain. What better way than using computers to make great photos?

Anyone want to set me up with $15,000 of equipment and 20-60 hours a week of free time to take this up?

In Charlottesville, Virginia (US):
Jeff Lavezzo

For Tici and I today includes one of those “Quality of Life” events. As you may know, Tici’s very interested in Montessori education methods and is considering getting trained in it and at least getting a job as a classroom assistant. Turns out one of the preeminent authors on the subject lives and works in Charlottesville, Angeline S. Lillard is a professor at UVA. Before we even knew that she was local, we’d picked up a copy of her book Montessori: The Science Behind The Genius. Turns out as part of the Virginia Festival of the Book events this week, she’s speaking tonight at our local Barnes & Noble.

It’s at 6pm, so Tici will go by herself while I stay with the kids. Maybe I’ll get her to post a summary here tomorrow.

In Charlottesville “Quality of Life”, Virginia (US):
Jeff Lavezzo

PS: Mostly, I wrote this post because a search for LIllard’s book brings up her website in about 15th place. I hope more links like this one and ones from vabook.org help improve her ranking. Of course, I’d like to help her improve her site to make it worth visiting, but eh… I am already over subscribed.