Being a well-trained father, I did exactly that:

Subject: HOLY MOTHER OF FRAK YOUR FAMOUS
DAD.

DADADAD.

YOUR GODDAMN PHOTO.

FROM THE FIRST BLOWOUT.

IS.

THE.

PHOTO.

FOR.

DOOMTREE.

ON WIKIPEDIA.

WAT.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomtree

At least it is RIGHT NOW

(We’ll blame his failure to use the correct version of “you’re” in the subject on his abject excitement.)

Jeez O’Criminey Pete! – It’s true! If you head on over there, the picture of five rappers that they’re using is indeed one of mine from our first Blowout nearly two years ago now. That’s even Thomas’s arm and hand sticking out of the green sweatshirt sleeve in the foreground :-) (This link points to today’s version of the page in case they come to their senses and swap in a different picture down the road.)

There are certainly better photographers and photographs of the crew out there, so I’m a little surprised. I suspect my liberal Creative Commons licensing has a lot to do with it, as I’m pretty Wikipedia/Wikimedia friendly in that regard. Still, it’s super cool to see people using my photo this way.

I should also make it clear that it almost certainly wasn’t someone at Doomtree that made this choice. Wikipedia strongly discourages/disallows people creating or editing content about themselves, so I’m guessing this choice was made by someone outside of the crew.

I should also point out that the content of the entry is pretty thin and kinda sad. I think some folks should get on that – we gotta make sure there’s good text to distract people from the lousy picture up at the top :-)

Thanks to Thomas for the pointer!

The robots.txt file the Bush administration set up for Whitehouse.gov ran to almost 2377 lines and thereby stopped search engines logging a lot of the data found on the site.

On the first day of the Barack administration the robots.txt file shrunk to two lines allowing, for the moment, search sites to index everything it contains.

The new media team also created a Whitehouse.gov blog that will act as an informal record of events, speeches and decisions.

Combine this with the cool use of Creative Commons licensing on WhiteHouse.gov, plans to close Guantanamo, and smart, competent non-creepy people in is cabinet, and things are already a ton better.

I realize this hasn’t gotten us out of Iraq or created a million new jobs yet, but these are great steps at the beginning of a long journey.

Huzzah!

This wonderful little video (produced by some U of M Twin Cities mathematicians) has apparently been viewed over 1 million times now, which is a lot more views than it would ever get in class. I frequently run into faculty that are very intent on holding on to their teaching ideas and techniques, and certainly not sharing them openly with the world. They see those ideas as “their property”, to be guarded and controlled as much as possible. It’s a weird attitude, because almost none of them will ever see any money from those ideas, and the potential for wider viewing and usage is just so much greater if they open up (as in this case).

A good video like this takes a lot of time to produce, but faculty often put in huge hours on their lectures, labs, and demonstrations. Get it out there!