New Chapter

Well, tomorrow is a big day for me: I'll be starting a new job. I'll be working for a super-secretive company in Cupertino which means that I won't be writing any more tech-related posts. I'm sure the next few weeks will be hectic, so I doubt I'll be up to writing much anyway. But I've got some ideas of what I'd like to write about once things settle down.

I'd say "stay tuned" but I'm pretty sure no one is tuned in to my blog as it is. :)

Damn spammers

As much as I don't like it, spammers have forced me to disallow comments from anonymous posters.

posi.net going offline

My personal domain, posi.net, will be going offline for the next few days while I move. This means that any mail sent to the domain will bounce (I'm not setting up a backup MX on purpose, since 99.99% of my mail is spam). It also means the Cristin and Kelly's absolutely fabulous wine reviews, my 地球ラジオ archive, and other miscellaneous amusements will be temporarily offline too.

License for code posted on my blog

It occurred to me that while many people post code on their blogs, they seldom grant anyone else license to use their code. Google encourages their BlogSpot users to mark their posts with the Creative Commons License, but does not enforce users to do so nor do many blogs I've seen follow this recommendation. Now, the poster may know they have no intent to sue anyone over the use of their snippet, but how can the reader be sure?

To address the problem, I'm hereby declaring that all code posted on my blog (kbyanc.blogspot.com) is covered by the license below unless otherwise indicated in the body of the post itself:

Copyright (c) 2007, Kelly Yancey

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
THE SOFTWARE.

I hope that others will follow suite and clarify the license terms of use for content posted on their blogs too. Use a different license if you like (it is your code after all), but don't be fooled into thinking that simply posting code on your blog makes it open source.

And before someone writes that I should just declare the code to be public domain, I should point out that you can't do that (at least it probably won't become public domain until I'm so long dead that the idea of using the code I posted at the turn of the century seems quaint).

Don't get the wrong idea: I'm still stupid

I just renamed my blog from "Ignorance. Illustrated." to something more innocuous. I'm still an idiot, but I sometimes write about bugs I find in other peoples' code and I wouldn't want them to think I was referring to them.

In case you're curious, the new title is an allusion to the fact that, believe it or not, there is another Kelly Yancey and she's famous. And a girl.

Late to the party

My name is Kelly and I'm an idiot. There, I said it.

For years the blogging phenomenon has reminded me of the quote, often attributed to Mark Twain, "Better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt". Hence I've been following my friend JJ's blog with a bit of curious scepticism. However, the excellent feedback and generally friendly attitude of most of the commenters on his blog has given me the courage to give it a try myself.

I don't really know what I'm going to blog about yet. I do software engineering of all sorts, both professionally and personally, and I've been studying Japanese for almost 6 years. Both of which pretty much consume all of my time. I stopped watching TV about 6 years except as Japanese study practice (channel 26 here in the Bay Area offers a variety of Japanese programming Saturday and Sunday evenings). I haven't listened to radio in almost as long. Which is to say, I'm generally pretty boring.

Oh yeah, and I'm a fool. But you'll see that for yourself.