Administrative updates

[Bill Sun]

Thank you, Brian, for the email. I think it was much needed. I'd like to give a
few responses:

Blog or Email - A Blog is more open to the public than a mailing list, and it
doesn't clog up the subscriber's inbox.  With some HTML formatting available, a
blog can also be easier to read.  It is also convenient for those that just
want to passively follow the project, and will perhaps save the mailing list
for those that want to be more involved with the project.  Thus, I believe
blogs are more suitable for well formulated ideas, public announcements...etc.
The mailing list has a target audience - its subscribers - and thus is useful
when you want to solicit for feedback or want to convey a message to the more
engaging (hopefully) subset of your project's community.  The mailing list can
be a more formal communication channel between the active members of the
community, while the blog is more of an broadcasting channel that is more
informative than interactive.

CMS - Recently, I've been trying out Pier as a repository for consolidating my
project documentations into a central location.  While I didn't go underneath
the hood to customize anything, Pier is already pretty useful.  For one, it
takes care of updating the internal links fairly well, and is generally easy to
use.  There's no setting up needed (except for maybe 3 questions to answer) to
get things going.  So from an user perspective, that's definitely valuable.  Of
course, you probably already know this and understand the technical side more
fully that I, in that case, just take this as an user's experience.

Psoriasis - Although this isn't directly tied in to Slate, I do appreciate the
open disclosure on how this condition can affect you and how you interact with
other people.  I must admit, a lot of times I get the impression that you lose
control of your emotions easily and think negatively of you.  But being aware
of your condition will allow me to more easily read through the emotions and
into the point(s) that you are trying to make.

-Bill

--- Brian Rice <water at tunes.org> wrote:

> These are just a few assorted notes on what's going on with the  
> project and me in particular:
> 
> Server Status - The tunes.org server hiccuped this morning, and  
> rebooted. Everything is now available again.
> 
> New Server Status - The machine is installed and running. I am  
> working out how I want the project to be handled, by learning to set  
> up a jail to which I can hand out logins relatively freely so that  
> people can assist more and have to go through me less.
> 
> My Communication Style - As has been a bit of a tacit "open secret"  
> about the way the project is run, I primarily have interacted with  
> people via IRC which is largely more productive than what most others  
> do on said medium, but is of course in general a bit of a waste of  
> time as the center of a communication style. What I need to do is  
> maintain a blog and generally insist that proposals make it through  
> email and blog discussions rather than in IRC, regardless of the  
> public logging. So to that end, I am committing to only spend time on  
> IRC for specific requests and meetings which I would like to schedule  
> via this mailing list. Otherwise I'm going to try to set up a blog/ 
> CMS system on the new server and publish my thoughts that way. It  
> does concern me that email and blog content should not be too  
> redundant to save effort on my part, so I'll try to figure a decent  
> dividing line there. I'm also trusting those who do like the IRC  
> channel to take part in assisting other users who are new in  
> explaining concepts and getting them started. Hopefully by doing this  
> we can all be a little more effective in gathering and filtering  
> information/feedback.
> 
> Project Public Representation - It's pretty obvious (to me and others  
> I'm sure) that our website does not really reveal as much as it  
> should about what's good and relevant about our project and how it  
> works, and basically for me the bottleneck has been the fact that I  
> manually edit the server HTML and CSS in order to update the website  
> and that some kind of CMS is in order to make news/structuring/layout  
> much easier to deal with. I am leaning towards Pier, a CMS on Seaside/ 
> Squeak, or Plone, or one of the other big-flexible frameworks for  
> managing website components. Suggestions for particular things about  
> website improvement or modules that should be there would be much  
> welcome.
> 
> Personal - As I have not really discussed, but is sometimes relevant  
> to my work habits, I have a severe and life-long case of psoriasis,  
> an immune-system-related skin disease which basically has had a  
> constant but low-level affect on my pain and stress levels and  
> general sociability. I had tried treatments for years unsuccessfully  
> but this last year I've been getting treatment through a US medical  
> study which has been very successful. Right now, however, I'm on the  
> trailing end of a placebo period. I realize that most people don't  
> really want to know this, but in a month I'll be treated again and  
> will likely be able to coordinate more without irritability, which  
> should allow the project to accelerate. This free treatment will last  
> at least 2 years. And to those who ask why I might be on a study  
> instead of paying for the medication, my response is that $18,000 per  
> year medical bills would make me significantly more tied to a boring  
> career and not able to hack Slate as much. I feel that this treatment  
> will let me bootstrap a business or other successful derivation of  
> the work I do so that I won't have monetary problems when I need to  
> pay for the treatment. We shall see.
> 
> --
> -Brian
> http://tunes.org/~water/brice.vcf
> 
> 




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