...making Linux just a little more fun!

### To everyone who helped to produce LG#132...

Benjamin A. Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]
Thu, 2 Nov 2006 09:28:38 -0500

...a most sincere "thank you"!

This month, a number of new volunteers came aboard - and, in a word, revitalized LG. Some came in and cleaned up the dusty phrasing, straightened up the crooked grammar, and replaced the broken spelling; others brought their technical expertise and poked into the complicated corners of articles. Yet others looked at LG with fresh eyes and pointed out a few broken phone cords and the bumps under the carpet (which turned out to be broken stuff hastily swept under in the past.) All who contributed have left their mark.

As Editor-in-Chief, I took great pleasure from seeing all this activity; in coordinating all of this [1], I got to meet a number of smart, energetic, capable individuals - people whom, as a group, I'm proud to know, and ones whom I hope I may come to call my friends.

Because of all of you, - even during this first month while everybody "settled in" and got familiar with the tasks needed to keep LG moving - my end of the production process has shifted focus, in large and positive ways. Just in case anyone missed it, this month we published the largest Mailbag (mailbag, talkbacks, and 2-cent tips) ever, by a large factor (over 620k, as contrasted against, say, 45k in LG#113.) In large part, this is due to our fearless Mailbag Editor, who also happens to be my fearless wife - but in part, it is due to the fact that I had the time and the energy to 1) rethink the Mailbag process and presentation, and 2) write a script which automated/relieved a great percentage of the drudgery that Mailbag used to be.

My best hope for the future is to revisit and revise every part of LG to shift that work/fun ratio toward the fun end by leaving the repetitive work to the machines as much as possible - and leaving the fun, interesting, challenging efforts to us humans.

I'm very, very glad that all of you are here to share this with me. Thanks again, and I hope that our interaction continues and improves with time.

[1] To the extent that a herd of cats can be coordinated, of course. Part of my enjoyment in all of this was seeing people indepently grab a hunk of work and make it by-damn behave without much input from me.

I'd mentioned, in an email exchange with René Pfeiffer, that I don't want to tie people down to process details. I've written or tweaked every LG FAQ to define results; the implementation is mostly left undefined, or stated in general terms. What I want is for everyone to do their piece the way the think best; if they get stuck, I'm always here to troubleshoot the process along with them. The way I do things is only my way; it's not the way - and if you do them better than I do, then I'll happily learn what you have to teach. That, to me, is one of the best benefits that cooperation offers.

    --
    * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *

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Steve Brown [steve.stevebrown at gmail.com]
Thu, 2 Nov 2006 15:53:01 +0000

On 02/11/06, Benjamin A. Okopnik <ben@linuxgazette.net> wrote:

    > The way I do things is only my way; it's not the way ...

What else from a perl guy.

    --
    Steve

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Benjamin A. Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]
Fri, 3 Nov 2006 19:45:16 -0500

On Thu, Nov 02, 2006 at 03:53:01PM +0000, Steve Brown wrote:

    > On 02/11/06, Benjamin A. Okopnik <ben@linuxgazette.net> wrote:
    >
    > > The way I do things is only my way; it's not the way ...
    >
    > What else from a perl guy.

Not just Perl, dear sir; not just Perl. There's More Than One Way To Do It.

    perl -we'eval{$java="1PL/1";JsP$java "C";$lisp->forth($lisp)};print+(split
    //,$@)[19,29,20,4,5,1,2,15,13,14,12,52,5,21,12,52,8,5,14,1,6,37,12,52,75]'

    --
    * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *

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