Archive for September, 2005

The Washington Post published this article about a pastor having a hard time convincing evacuees to move to Rockville. Can’t blame them .

The entire city was about 10 minutes late today. Nobody seemed to be particularly bothered by it.

I have an idea. Something better may already be in place. If this is the case and you know so, leave a comment.

We have thousands of people scattered amongst several large sports
arenas in Houston, San Antonio, Lafayette, probably Dallas, and
probably Shreveport. Many of them were told they would be reunited with
their families in a certain city, only to discover otherwise. These
arenas should all have the following in common: electricity, Internet
access, and large marquees/screens.

Someone needs to build a central database where people can search for
family members. If none are found, they can enter their information
into the system and get a ticket with a number. If they do find
someone, they can leave a message. When a message arrives for them,
their ticket number will flash up on the marquee and they will be able
to go to a bank of computers where they can read the message. Going a
step further, they could set up some of the computers with video
conferencing.

Once all of this is in place, they should be able to arrange rides so
that families can be reunited. The technology and infrastructure for
all of this is already in place, they just need cooperation between all
of the venues to use the same system. This way, you don’t end up with
duplicates and added frustration.

So, could they round up a squad of UTA students to build all of this? They’re pretty good at programming on the spot, as repeatedly demonstrated at programming contests.

The content management system formerly known as Mambo is now known as Joomla.
This is evidently Swahili for "all together" or "as a whole." Although
I’m very glad that the core team has made a decision and we’re
continuing development, this name seems a bit clumsy.

Oh well, I had my chance to influence the naming decision and couldn’t come up with anything substantial. A quick googling reveals that ‘Joomla’ is wide open. (only 5 pages so far!)

Off to change my tutorials…

To do this.