Long-time friends will probably realize that with the coming of the new year comes a revisit to my annual donations.

This year's donations are larger than any previous year, but largely fall along similar trends as in the past. The larger donations this year (about $1,000-worth) go towards non-profit organizations. The choices this year were hard. After consulting with a few friends, I decided to donate to two new categories: Environmental and Anti-Gun.

Finding a good environmental organization to give your money is HARD. After a few hours of research, I had looked at many organizations that were doing good work. But a lot of those organizations were still trying to prove the point that climate change is an issue, or were focused on small-scale issues. These are both noble goals, but I think what we need now are big solutions on an international level. I'm no expert in this topic, by far, but I'm fairly convinced that individual decision making isn't going to solve the problem fast enough. It's great if we all learn to recycle and to consider environmental impact in our daily lives. That, I don't disagree with. But I don't think it's enough. I think we need to start forcing governments and organizations to be cleaner. I'm convinced that so long as the economic incentives are in place that have led to the current behaviors, the market will follow those incentives. I'm hopeful that my donation to the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions will help bring changes to these incentives.

Finding an anti-gun organization is easier, especially given the current state of affairs after Sandyhook Elementary School. While I'm not so sure that anti-gun legislation is going to solve any truly big problems, I hope that donating my money here will help strike while the iron is hot. I simply can't believe that the 2nd Amendment pro-gun lobby is as successful as it is, and I am hopeful that we'll be able to change the dialog around guns over the next few years. Gun ownership is trending down in the U.S., and I hope that we can accellerate that trend, bringing a cease to the needless gun deaths violence we currently live with.

The other big donations in this year's list go mostly towards organizations that I've donated to in the past. Fair Vote and Rootstrikers are organizations that work to fix the current political system. Most Americans (about 70%, I believe) agree that the current Federal legislation system is corrupt, and these organizations are working to fix that. I'm pessimistic that until these organizations find success, we won't be able to deal with the small or large issues facing the country, so these organizations continue to get the plurality of my donation ($400 between them). I think the ridiculous fiscal cliff "negotiations" are testament to how bad things have gotten. Our political system is paralyzed.

Other organizations that did well this year include a handful of open-source foundations that I rely on, but which otherwise give away their work for free. My livelihood and these very donations rely on these bits of infrastructure we take for granted, so I figure I should give them some money to keep 'em going.

Here's the nitty gritty breakdown of my donations this year (as well as last):

As always, I welcome input on these decisions, and suggestions for the years ahead. Those that made suggestions for this year, I truly appreciate your help.

I did a lot of traveling this year; more than anybody should ever really do. Since I'm already forgetting all the places I went to, I figured I'd write it all down.

Here's the tally:

I'm pretty sure some things are left out from the beginning of the year, and I'm still trying to figure out how I ended up doing so much goddamn traveling. For comparison's sake, I must note that the Earth is 24,901 around its belly, and this is a total of more than twice that.

Next year will be another banner year, as I already have seven weddings on the books. I don't think there will be so many trips to Europe though. That'll make the biggest difference.

I just hope I have enough suits. It's gonna be crazy.

The Law Via the Internet conference is celebrating its 20th anniversary at Cornell University on October 7-9th. I will be attending, and with any luck, I'll be presenting on the topic proposed below.

Wrangling Court Data on a National Level

Access to case law has recently become easier than ever: By simply visiting a court's website it is now possible to find and read thousands of cases without ever leaving your home. At the same time, there are nearly a hundred court websites, many of these websites suffer from poor funding or prioritization, and gaining a higher-level view of the law can be challenging. “Juriscraper” is a new project designed to ease these problems for all those that wish to collect these court opinions daily. The project is under active development, and we are looking for others to get involved.

Juriscraper is a liberally-licensed open source library that can be picked up and used by any organization to scrape the case data from court websites. In addition to a simply scraping the websites and extracting metadata from them, Juriscraper has a number of other design goals:

• Extensibility to support video, oral argument audio, and other media types
• Support for all metadata provided by court websites
• Extensibility to support varied geographies and jurisdictions
• Generalized object-oriented architecture with little or no code repetition
• Standardized coding techniques using the latest libraries and standards (Python, xpath, lxml, requests, chardet)
• Simple installation, configuration, and API
• Friendly and transparent to court websites

As well as a number of features:

• Harmonization of metadata (US, USA, United States of America, etc → United States; et al, et. al., etc. get eliminated; vs., v, vs → v.; all dates are Python objects; etc.)
• Smart title-casing of case names (several courts provide case names in uppercase only)
• Sanity checking and sorting of metadata values returned by court websites

Once implemented, Juriscraper is part of a two-part system. The second part is the caller, which uses the API, and which itself solves some interesting questions:

• How are duplicates detected and avoided?
• How can the impact on court websites be minimized?
• How can mime type detection be completed successfully so that textual contents can be extracted?
• What should we do if it is an image-based PDF?
  • How should HTML be tidied?
  • How often should we check a court website for new content?
• What should we do in case of failure?

Juriscraper is currently deployed by CourtListener.com to scrape all of the Federal Appeals courts, and we are slowly adding additional state courts over the coming weeks.

We have been scraping these sites in various ways for several years, and Juriscraper is the culmination of what we've learned. We hope that by presenting our work at LVI 2012, we will be able to share what we have learned and gain additional collaborators in our work.

I'm tripling down on my donations that I placed at the beginning of the year. Feels right.

This summer I've been busy with a number of things. One of them has been teaching Web Architecture and Information Management at UC Berkeley with two other guys from the School of Information. It's been a TON of work for not a whole lot of pay, but it's been really interesting.

Since the three of us split up the work, I only have to do about four lectures, but the class is two and a half hours long three times a week, which is a lot of talking time. I imagine it's not easy for the students to be in the class that frequently either.

I'm giving lectures on the following topics:

• HTML
• Search
• Browsers
• Privacy

If you're interested, I've posted my slides for these in the projects and papers section of the site. It's definitely true that the best way to learn it to teach.

I've also been learning a little about how to get the class to participate and be involved, but that's probably the most challenging part. A lot of the students know a lot about the material, and are pretty bored, while others are seeing everything for the first time. It makes it pretty tricky, but it's working out as the class gets to know each other. We started doing student presentations this week, and that has helped everybody get a little more skin in the game.

Howard Zinn was one of the greats. He may not have freed the slaves or created the nation, but it is safe to say that his every action and his every belief furthered the dream and the ideals of the American state. After eight years of Bush policies dragging down the nation, and a year of Obama sounding increasing like an echo of Bush, it is truly tragic that we are losing this thinker.

I posted this quote from Zinn's Passionate Declarations some time ago, but now more than ever it seems relevant:

What sorts of values and ideals are encouraged in the young people of the coming generation by the enormous emphasis on the Founding Fathers and the presidents? It seems to me that the result is the creation of dependency on powerful political figures to solve our problems.

...

Consider how much attention is given in historical writing to military affairs—to wars and battles—and how many of our heroes are military heroes. And consider also how little attention is given to antiwar movements and to those who struggled against the idiocy of war.

...

As a result of omitting, or downplaying, the importance of social movements of the people in our history...a fundamental principle of democracy is undermined: the principle that it is the citizenry, rather than the government, that is the ultimate source of power and the locomotive that pulls the train of government in the direction of equality and justice. Such histories create a passive and subordinate citizenry.

If you haven't read Passionate Declarations, you should.

It's my winter break right now, so I'm taking advantage of it by doing some of the things that have been on my list for far too long. One of those things was to build a repair stand for the work I do on the bikes in my life. For about $50, you can build this stand, which works remarkably well.

Click the pic to see a (very) short gallery and high res versions.

Essentially, what you need to make this beauty is five pipes, a 90 degree elbow, a 45 degree elbow, and a welder. Since I don't weld, I went to a local muffler shop and they were happy to do it (for free!) The one big lesson I'll share is that you can't (and shouldn't) make this from galvanized metal, since welding that is dangerous. The stuff you want is called "black pipe."

Well, another semester has begun at the School of Information, and so I figured I'd share my latest classes and books.

As of now, I've boiled my classes down to the following:

• Mixing and Remixing Information
• Interface Aesthetics
• Social and Organizational Issues of Information
• Strategic Computing and Communications Technology
• Information Law and Policy
• Cyberlaw

And somehow, I only had to buy three books and four readers this semester, for a total of $315. Somehow, this is more than last semester when I had five books and four readers. Oh well. The books from this semester are:

• Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy
• Software and Internet Law
• Pro Web 2.0 Mashups

So far, classes are going well, but at least one of them will need to get cut. It's going to be hard to decide, but luckily I don't have to for another few months.

There has been some talk in my family over the years about my great grandfather, Meyer Lissner. Over the holidays, I scanned some old photos, and discovered that he was quite the famous fellow. Below is a liberty ship that was named after him in 1943.

I also learned that my grandfather donated a LOT of his papers to the Stanford Library as the Meyer Lissner Papers. I haven't read up much on him yet, but he seems pretty influential to California history as part of a reform movement.

Interesting stuff. I'm going to have to do some researching on this fellow one of these days.

Well, there is an interesting development in the theft of my credit card number. Today I received supplements in the mail for my prostate. Supplements that were bought with my credit card. For those wondering, no, I do not need this medicine. No, I did not order this medicine.

I'm intrigued and a bit amused that this is what my identity thief decided to do with my money, but I'm going to have to decline their offer of prostate supplements. This purchase raises so many questions, I don't know exactly where to begin.

Well, we got back from Peru on Sunday (pictures forthcoming), and today was my last day at work with the Community Services Bureau of Contra Costa County.

I've never worked somewhere for so long - all in all, it was about three years, during which time I progressed from Temp Clerk to Intermediate Clerk to Assistant Manager. You do gotta love working in government.

In a way, I've been planning on quitting since about December of 2006, when I first applied to go back to school. Now that it's a year and a half later, I'm surprised I'm not more excited or elated about this change. It's possible it hasn't sunk in yet because I have been on vacation for the past two weeks (and am used to not going to work), but ultimately, I feel pretty normal, which is odd.

Tomorrow is the first day of school at the Berkeley School of Information. I've got my classes all set up, and I'm shocked at exactly how awesome the classes are.

Here's the official list as of now:

• Information Organization and Retrieval
• Distributing Computing Applications and Infrastructure
• Politics of Piracy
• Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation
• Computer Mediated Communication
• Photovoltaic Materials: Modern Technologies
• Metrics of Sustainability

A lot of classes, eh? It's 20 units as of now, so I am definitely going to drop a number of them. It's going to be hard to decide which to drop though. It's a three-way split between classes offered through Haas school of business, the Energy and Resources Group and the iSchool. I guess we'll see which float to the top.

My girlfriend and I have been travelling around Peru for the past week or so. It has been nothing short of awesome.

Our first stop was in Lima for one night, after which point, we left to go to the Amazon Basin, specifically Puerto Maldonado. In Puerto Maldonado, we were picked up by our guide, and quickly ushered down the Tambopata river. From our jungle lodge, we had a number of rather excellent excursions. We went to a bird clay lick, where we saw a fair amount of birds, including red maccaws. We went to a jungle farm, and learned about their practices, and ate a bunch of fruit (some normal, some strange). We climbed a tower into the jungle canopy and did some bird watching from there, and we spent a night camping in the jungle. On that last excursion, we saw the most poisonous spider in Peru (I think), and saw some other spiders that I have to admit were damned frightening. So far, no malaria, or other jungle diseases to speak of.

At the moment we are in Cusco, which is effectively the tourist capital of Peru. Today we saw the Sacred Valley, and tomorrow we head out on a four-day hike along the Inca trail, culminating at Machu Piccu.

From here, we head to Arequipa, and from there, to Lima and then home.

I thought I would post a quick entry today about how I came to be a Linux user and enthusiast. I guess it's a combination of a couple things.

Historically, what happened was that I was using XP and looking at thumbnails of some pictures in their file navigator. I was looking at about 300 pictures, and I didn't want to open them all up individually (this was before useful apps like Picasa came around). I just wanted to look at the thumbnails. Except those were too small, so I wanted to make them bigger. I spent about two hours searching online to try to figure out how to make such an adjustment. Eventually, I discovered a Windows "Powertool" that you could install. It seemed like overkill, but it did the job. What bugged me though about it was that obviously it didn't require a Powertool to adjust image size. It just required a tweak of some bit of code somewhere in the system. That was my tipping point. I decided I couldn't take the viruses, the expense and the closed product anymore, and promptly decided it was time for a new OS.

So that's what brought me to Linux. What kept me here is the openness and the philosophy. Sure, at times it's a bit trickier to get certain things done, but I love the philosophy that if I want a change, I can either make it myself if I am a programmer, or I can file a feature request with the developers. Somebody will read that request, and maybe it will get integrated, if it's a good enough idea.

I also love the fact that I can download, install and run an excellent email server, and a top-notch web server. For free. Also, no viruses. Ever. Nor any anti-virus software to pay for. And did I mention the whole thing is free?

As for the day to day stuff, I really don't notice much difference. At work, I use XP, which involves using Firefox, Word, Excel and Outlook (the latter three of which my work paid good money for). At home it's Firefox, Open Office and Evolution, all of which are very similar to the Microsoft package, only with better compatibility with other programs.

The other thing I really like about my Linux system is the ability to set things up like in the previous tutorial. I did an Internet search for "Linux wake on USB", and knew exactly how to adjust the system in a matter of moments. That kind of customization is a power you just don't have in Windows.

Got my eyeballs checked at the Berkeley Optometric Group on Friday. They dilated my eyes and took this picture. It was awesome. Now we know that my eyes are in good shape. Good.

That's a picture of my eye.

If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you are probably aware that I am a huge environmentalist. You may not clearly understand just how huge an environmentalist I am though. Lately, I have been doing some thinking about my long-term goals, and some of them are coming into some clarity:

1. I want to build a house and live in it.
2. I want my house to be made while maintaining a neutral carbon impact. If I use trees to build my house, I want those materials to be renewed before my death.
3. I want to stop using petroleum and coal altogether. No cars. No petroleum fed food. Only clean energy. Offsets for all things outside the realm of the above.
4. I want to achieve the above comfortably.

In a blog, these goals seem a little silly, but I have been thinking about variations of these for many years, and they are indeed quite serious, real goals.

That said, putting them out there in public makes me look and feel like an extremist, like a crazy person outside of what is considered the norm - outside even of the margins. I think I can do it though, and I think I need to get to work soon if I am going to feel like my life has been a success.

The first thing I need is money. More of it. Lots more of it.

Well, it's been a month, and the results are in. For the past month, I've been trying to realize some pretty ambitious goals, and let me tell you, it has not been easy.

The first, and perhaps most important goal was to "avoid single-passenger car usage at all costs." For the most part, this goal has been a success. To achieve this goal, I have had to change my behavior and paradigms pretty radically. For my daily commute, I changed from a 25 minute car ride to a 45 minute bike and train ride. For groceries, I had to carry a massive backpack full of food, and for everything else, I have been riding my bike all around town. The one time I failed at this goal was when my car broke (somebody else was driving it), and it had to get to a mechanic. For that, I apologize, but what can you do?

The second goal was to jump a rope 500 times daily. I have failed at this goal for a couple of reasons. The first is travel. I did a fair amount of travel during the past month, and it's a tiring thing to do. I don't like jumping rope after traveling. That's a fact. The second reason is that I was doing a lot of other exercise during the past month. I biked about 120 miles during my commute, I played soccer and basketball, and I hiked about 30 miles. Am I really supposed to jump rope after all that?

The next goal was flossing. I flossed pretty much every day during the period, but I did forget to bring it during one of the vacations mentioned above, so I didn't floss during those nights. I was lucky enough to have a dentist (dis)appointment during the month, wherein I learned that I have three fresh, new cavities in my mouth, so that helped to make the flossing goal a success (sort of).

No hydrogenated oil. This was a pretty easy one all in all. I failed once, when in a meeting it just was kind of unavoidable because of social circumstances. I made up for it though by persuading a friend not to eat hydrogenated oil at a later date, so my karma is good there. This stuff is all over the place in food. It's pretty surprising where it turns up when you start looking for it.

For the reading a half hour goal, it was a piece of cake since I was riding public transportation anyway. I did neglect it on the weekends, but I think the balance came out OK.

That was a lot of detail, I know. More than you probably wanted, but I wanted to get it on paper (so to speak). The real outcomes of this are not those of the 30 days, but rather the outcomes of long-term change in my habits. I can say that this was a rather challenging process, and I didn't really enjoy it the entire time. It made me a lot more tired each day, and the commuting made me have to get up earlier, so that was tough. Figuring out how to do things by bike has a learning curve as well, which was also stressful at times.

When it is all said and done though, I can say that this has been a positive experience. I am planning on continuing most of the goals (floss, oil, car and reading), but I think the jump rope can leave my life at this point.

There are two answers to the question of whether the mission was a success. I did not achieve any of the goals without some kind of qualifier, so in that regard, no the mission has failed. However, on the other hand, it has created lasting change in me, so in that regard, the mission is a great success.

I'm starting something new. I can't tell you what it is yet, but I'm very excited about it. It has nothing to do with anything you might be thinking that it is. Unless you already know what it is. Confused? Don't be. You'll find out what it is soon enough. For those of you that are wondering, no, this has nothing to do with my "Secret Skill" that I picked up while in Spain.

In other news, it's official - I'm going to Peru in August before starting at Cal. I had no idea Peru was so awesome. It's like a giant exaggerated California, except with jungle. They have massive sand dunes, the 4th highest mountain in the Americas, the headlands for the Amazon River, giant canyons that make the grand canyon seem quaint, and so much adventure, I have no idea how to handle it. Also, did I mention Machu Picchu? Lake Titicaca?

More details to come on this craziness.

Well, it wasn't easy to figure this one out, but I have officially chosen to go to UC Berkeley. The reasons were many, but what it boiled down to in the end were four things:

• Price
• Curriculum
• Location
• Reputation

These are usually summarized by the acronym PCLR (pronounced "Pickler").

I'm excited about having chosen Cal, though it was a very challenging decision. Obviously, my happiness for the next two years was at stake, but beyond that, it seems like my entire future was on the table. Check back with me in four years, we'll see how I'm doing...

Here's the mission folks. For the next month, I will do the following every day:

• I will jump a rope on average 500 times.
• I will eat no hydrogenated oil
• I will floss every day
• I will avoid single-passenger car usage at all costs
• I will read a book for at least one half hour

I started this on Monday, and so far so good. It's a lot for one day - especially the car and the jumprope thing.

Will report back (hopefully) in one month.

I had the pleasure of going to see Richard Dawkins last night at Cal. Although our fourth-row seating probably influenced my judgement, I must say he is a truly excellent speaker.

I finished his book, The God Delusion several months ago, and I had to agree with a friend who said he was a bit "heavy-handed" in the book. So when I went to see him in person, I expected much the same. I expected him to push me, to drive his point, to be a little bit too aggressive in his delivery. To the contrary though, he is a subtle, interesting, humble, and actually quite a funny speaker.

In his speech, he engaged in "consciousness raising", which he believes worked for feminism, and which he believes will work for religion. His example was that as a result of feminist consciousness raising, if I say: "All men are created equal", you might think: "Right, but what about the women?" He wants to apply this tool to religion, so if I say: "A Catholic child", you think: "Children aren't Catholics - They're too young to know where they stand on such issues."

He believes (and I must agree) that religion in the world has brought much violence and destruction, and that the whole thing could be cut off at the stem if we all realized that our children do not share our religion. I'm simplifying and combining several of his points, but that was really the thrust of his speech. If I am a catholic, that does not make my child a catholic; I a Muslim, does not make my child a Muslim. Etc.

To drive his point home, Dawkins showed a picture that he said he found on the Christmas cover of the UK's Telegraph Newspaper. In the picture, were three children sitting side by side in costume for some Christmas event (I think they were the three wise men or some such). The idea behind the picture was to depict religious harmony. To quote his book:

At Christmas-time one year my daily newspaper, the Independent, was looking for a seasonal image and found a heart-warmingly ecumenical one at a school nativity play. The Three Wise Men were played by, as the caption glowingly said, Shadbreet (a Sikh), Musharraf (a Muslim) and Adele (a Christian), all aged four. Charming? Heart-warming? No, it is not, it is neither; it is grotesque. [...] Imagine an identical photograph, with the caption changed as follows: “Shadbreet (a Keynesian), Musharaff (a Monetarist) and Adele (a Marxist), all aged four.” Wouldn’t this be a candidate for irate letters of protest? It certainly should be.

I can't say that I'm one to really get "irate" about such things, but he really does have a point. The number of people that grow up to be the same religion as their parents is astounding. How can it be that the religion of all peoples' parents around the world just happens to be the right one for their children? It defies logic.

So Dawkins believes that if we raise consciousness in a similar way to feminism, and find a way to allow children to be nontheists until they are old enough to make such decisions on their own, we might just be able to beat this religion thing. We might be able to curb religious violence by allowing children to make their own choices.

It could work, and I for one am officially convinced that I will not let people speak of religious children.