I'd like to invite everyone over for some grilling at my house and a movie at fisher tonight. My plan was to fire up the charcoal grill and have it hot from 6:00-10:30 or so. I'm going to buy some of the cheapest hot dogs that econo has. If you want cheap hot dogs you can eat mine or if you want something better, you are welcome to bring it. I'll grill whatever you bring as long as it is safe and food. I might have a few hamburgers or sausages also but no guarantees. I'll also have some KBC beer for those that like beer (and are of age) and some KBC root beer (or whatever they have right now). Just like with the food, feel free to bring other beverages. I have Rock Band and Guitar Hero III (two guitars) that people can play while there are here. People can play both at the same time cause we have 2 TV and they are on different systems. My address is 306 W Edwards Ave. Houghton. It is a yellowish house with a big pine tree in front of it. Google maps has the location correct. If you need a ride let me know. Otherwise it is a half hour or so walk from campus. Prev by Date: Re: start a new LUG? Next by Date: Re: start a new LUG? Previous by thread: Re: start a new LUG?

A parasitic blight has woven itself into the fabric of our tools. With godlike precision, it tracks our behavior, learns our preferences, and anticipates our weaknesses. It knows everything, and it follows us everywhere. If we stray too far from its influence, our Happy Boxes dispatch reminders to Consume. Potent videodrugs lull us into mental anesthesia, then milk us for all we're worth. Our eyes kinda hurt. A familiar bitter flavor is faintly detected; this Content has been laced with something. The Algorithm looks on as additive advertisements steep in our subconsciouses. Maybe I should buy another mechanical keyboard? Our thoughts have been planted, and our carts floweth over. Were we moving too fast? Did we break too many things? Was putting profits before people really the wrong move? And, uh.. can this thing be undone? Twenty-six years ago, two technologists envisioned a different kind of future: one where humans and quiet, unobtrusive computers comfortably co-existed. In their prophetic 1996 essay The Coming Age of Calm Technology, Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown spoke of a time when tiny, Internet-enabled computers would be embedded in everything from clocks, to toys, to microwave ovens.

In Weiser and Brown's ideal future, our information systems would be deeply integrated into our physical environment. Subtle peripheral cues would clue us in when our attention was needed, but fade into the background when it wasn't. Contrasting the attention-leeching tools of today, Calm Technology promised to inform without overburdening. But where is this "Calm Tech", anyway? Weiser and Brown said its time was coming, but an ETA might have been nice. Maybe we should wait for our corporate overlords to build it for us? Or, perhaps, Calm Technology is something we must build for ourselves. In a previous experiment, I dumbed down my smartphone by permanently removing all but four essential applications. The result was certainly calmer, and even freeing, but vestigial user-interface elements, designed with the It Only Does Everything paradigm in mind, routinely got in my way. If I wanted to do this thing right (and I did), I knew that eventually, I'd have to rebuild my phone's operating system from the ground up.

Whetstone is my answer to this problem; a calm Operating System that informs without overburdening. This project actually started two years ago, when I developed a minimal launcher app called forte. Building forte was a breeze, but once I finished, I couldn't decide which problem to tackle next. The Whetstone project nearly drowned in development hell because I didn't have a plan. Actually, wait.. does this mean I'm done? Okay, wow. I really thought of everything. In an effort to find a path forward, I've gathered a messy pile of scribbles and scrawlings from two years of journals and sketchbooks. There's a lot here to go through, but, like the prospectors of yore, we'll sift through the silt till we sniff out some gold. If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. I. Whetstone will be open source and high heat searing free in every sense of the word. If this software is to be of maximum use to its users, it is imperative that the freedom to use, study, modify, and share the software be guaranteed from the get-go.