It’s interesting how the Internet and social networking websites like Facebook have truly changed the meaning of “life after death”. Have you noticed this?

Even after my friend in college passed away over a year ago, he still lives on in the digital world. How is that, you might ask? He still has a Facebook profile. Believe it or not, social networking profiles of the departed have become the digital equivalent of a memorial. People still write on his wall and tag old pictures of him. I think this digital memorial has given people an easier way to deal with death and remember their loved ones. It’s a good thing™.

Today, I’m running in a 5k road race for the Somerville Homeless Coalition, a non-profit that provides services to Somerville’s “homeless, near-homeless, and working poor”.

I was never a runner in high school or college and I didn’t really train for the race. I’m doing it partly because of the cause, but it’s also because I want to prove to myself I can still run a 5k Sometimes you need to just go out and do things like that. Like a retired baseball player may go out and play in the old timer’s game and know that he’s “still got it”. It’s a great personal motivator.

If there’s something you used to do but haven’t in a while, I implore you to try doing it again. It could be fun

Update: I ran it in 26:57 with an 8:42 pace!

I could never understand people who say “I can’t cook” or who were always impressed when I would tell them that I almost always cook homemade meals and usually bake from scratch.

Believe it or not, making food from scratch really isn’t that hard! I mean, we’re not talkin’ milking-the-cow-and-growing-the-wheat from scratch. But I think all it takes is a basic knowledge of cooking terms (do you know what simmer means? simma down, now!), the right tools, and the ability to follow directions.

Trust me… I’m not a good cook. I just have good recipes. Thanks mom!

Have you noticed how “donations” and “charitable giving” has changed as a result of the digital age? Usually when we see those words, we think about physical donations like money, gifts, clothes, furniture, etc. Obviously this type of giving is still true these days (and may be even more true than a hundred years ago), but the digital age brought us virtual donations.

Things like Wikipedia, open source software development, and Folding@Home are all great examples of the new form of charitable giving people are taking part in these days. Each of these projects helps everyone throughout the world and only happen because there are people willing to donate their time and resources. It’s important that we appreciate these volunteers in the same way we appreciate volunteers building a home for Habitat for Humanity.

We all know this guy to the left here. His name is Ronald Popeil. You know… that rotisserie chicken product. “Set it and forget it!” It may just be a simple catchphrase, but I think that phrase describes a style of life.

Nowadays we have so many things going on, so much interconnectivity between people that we’re constantly being inundated with new tasks or information. All of us have “no time” to do anything, so perhaps it’s time to try to take Popeil’s catchphrase and try to adopt it to life.

• Do you constantly check websites for new articles? Get an RSS reader
• Do you backup your computer every day/week/month? Set up automated backups with BackupPC
• Have a pet you need to feed? Try the automatic pet feeder
• Need to mow the lawn? Use the Robomow 1000

Okay, maybe some of those suggestions are a stretch for some of us, but take a little time and try a set-it-and-forget-it lifestyle. It’s well worth it.

Wikipedia has worked so well for providing a pretty decent source of quality information as an alternative to the old-school encyclopedia. I’ve always wondered what would happen if someone applied the Wiki philosophy to the development of a real open source library. Anyone can make changes to the code without even being registered. What kind of results would this have?

• Faster development?
• More bugs?
• More features?
• Hackers injecting security vulnerabilities?

It would be interesting to find out. Anyone want to volunteer to run an experiment?

First, I’d like to thank you for dropping by and checking out the blog. Hopefully we’ll see some interesting things come out of it. I’ll be talking about random topics, many of which will probably be related to software development. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at aaron@pluginaweek.org.

Look forward to talking to you soon!